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The Podcast that Unveils the Hidden World of Powder Coating Artists

August 1, 2023 by pcnearme

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.22.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:00:04) – In this episode, my featured coater interview goes bust. I usually have a set format when interviewing coaters, but today’s interviewee breaks the mold. Everything is different about him in a good way. He leads with heart first. Ashton Palmer is a true artist with a deep love of powder coating and a passion for myth busting the trade. This guy is easy to talk to. As we roll through topics like how the coating industry is evolving from the bottom up, the artist’s way, and the subtleties of powder coating the need for top down technology to serve us better, creating a better platform for the free flow of ideas and information. And listen up, Jimmy O’Malley. A great tip on coating candies. Will I ever get to his story? Find out. Get ready to level up your powder coater game. How’s it going? It’s going good.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfqgqLt-HyU[/embedyt]

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:01:34) – Heck, yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:01:36) – Hi.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:01:39) – How’s it going? Nice to meet you.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:01:41) – Me too.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:01:43) – So what you guys are doing is super cool, in my opinion. It’s about time somebody started, like, doing something like this.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:01:53) – Well, that’s great. I’m glad you like it. And I love your enthusiasm. Um, sometimes we kind of don’t know what we’re doing, and we get kind of, kind of lost on our path. And I feel like powder.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:02:07) – Coating, in a nutshell, is a very like. Like mistakes. Like mystic. Mystic. Like, you know, everything’s hush hush like you figured something out. Keep it to yourself. Don’t tell your competitor like it is. You know what I mean? And like.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:02:24) – It is, we we interview.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:02:26) – Very taboo industry.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:02:29) – If you go back and listen to Russell. 399, I think it was like the third or fourth one we did. It’s fast and I found it fascinating. In fact, it’s one of my still one of my favorite podcasts because he goes through the history of powder coating. That’s right. And and then goes into custom coaters and how they how they ended up getting started and stuff like that. So I really I really enjoyed that one.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:03:03) – But I’m a history buff and and stuff, so if you have time go back and.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:03:07) – Yeah I’ll definitely I’m definitely been like skimming through them and listening to a lot of them. Like I listen to Casas, that kid is, Oh.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:03:14) – I love him.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:03:15) – He’s a huge inspiration and a lot of what he does reminds me of myself and what I went through prior to becoming, you know, who I am today. And it’s it’s crazy, man. Like this industry is a dog eat dog world. And you’re either you’re either a laborer or you’re an owner or you’re both so.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:03:35) – And you’re still and then you’re, you know, you’re slave to your business. You know, it’s just. But I really like what you’re doing. And I just want to talk briefly before we get going.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:03:50) – Yeah, of course.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:03:52) – Um, what do we want to talk about and mean? Let’s. Let’s get some topics on the table. Of course, what I’m going to do or how it works is I’ll introduce you.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:04:06) – And then the first is. Can you hear.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:04:09) – That? Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:04:12) – Let me ask him how long he’s going to do that. We’re building the big oven right now. It’s 20 foot.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:04:19) – Oh, yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:04:22) – Are you done? I got a podcast. Oh, no. Well, I’ll have to. He’s cutting for the whole day, he said.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:04:33) – That’s fine. We’ll be.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:04:34) – Doing. He’s doing the. He’s connecting the electrical to it and stuff.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:04:39) – But when do you guys go with.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:04:43) – It’s a powder coating shop. People are just going to have to get over it, right?

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:04:47) – What oven did you guys go with?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:04:49) – Oh, no. We’re building it from scratch.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:04:51) – Oh, heck, yeah. Are you guys going Gas? Are you going electric?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:04:55) – We do electric.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:04:56) – That’s what I got to. Yeah, I got two of them.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:04:59) – When you say you have an electric oven and people. What?

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:05:04) – Yeah, that’s like. It’s super. It’s super like I come from. I’m in the northwest, so, like, I’m in touch really big with Kardinal.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:05:11) – Like, I have a really long standing relationship with Kardinal and Alex and Clint, and they’re. They’re a lot of y. I know. My knowledge is because of them. They’re awesome paint reps. They’ve helped me get to where I was at in the industry, you know, on the industrial side, and that every time I would tell them, you know, I’m doing stuff at home in my garage and he’s like, he just rolling his eyes. He already knows. You’re like, you know, they cringe when they hear electric. You know what?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:05:41) – They don’t even know.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:05:42) – Oh, I’ve test. I’ve done some serious testing on both ends, and my stuff is like that. You can’t tell. You cannot tell the difference. Well.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:05:51) – It’s so much better and mean it’s been thousands.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:05:55) – Of dollars on gas.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:05:56) – It’s cheaper.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:05:57) – Yeah. I’m just going to keep my mouth shut about it.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:06:01) – So, so good to talk to you and to have someone to talk to about this because it is seriously like the one of the deepest, darkest secrets out there.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:06:13) – It is. And like, Well, and like, my biggest thing is, is like I went to I got the the fab oven. I can’t remember the full name. It’s something fab. He’s out of like the East. I like the Midwest.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:06:26) – Yeah.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:06:26) – Fab Fab is the fab shop or whatever. You mean.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:06:30) – Ted’s fabs?

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:06:32) – No, it’s the fab shop. But I bought his 4×4 by six convection electric oven. And I have got no complaints. Right. So yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:06:44) – We kind of touched on it a little bit in one of our, um, I think in our, I don’t know, one of our first. Hi cast. Now they’re kind of getting to be kind of blurry now. I’ve done a lot of.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:06:57) – So have you listened to the Joe the Joe Powder Coat show or whatever? The guys from one Kevin.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:07:03) – Kevin Yeah. I hope to listen.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:07:05) – To one where they were talking about UV ovens.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:07:09) – Infrared.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:07:10) – That’s. That’s a trip. Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:07:13) – In fact, I was actually talking to.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:07:17) – Oh, What were they? You know, I’m on the PCI committee or I’m in the membership PCI, and somebody brought that up at the meeting, you know, and stuff.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:07:29) – Yeah. It’s curious to where it’s going to take our industry. That’s what I’m curious about. I’m curious about, you know, like, is it going to leave us convection ovens and gas oven guys in the dust or is it you know, it also kind of takes me back to like, you know, the actual you know, you’ve got to bring your substrate up to temp. We don’t want our actual powder curing prior to our substrate being, you know, at good temperatures. So it’s it’s a difference and there’s a lot of difference when it comes to, you know, chemical bonds and stuff at that point. So I’m interested to learn it. But then again, I’m also skeptical about it. Right.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:08:01) – So, um, I have something to share with you before we get going. But, but to finish, what I was saying is I usually just kind of introduce you and then.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:08:13) – And then, you know, that part about, you know, how to get in. You can take as long as you want. I usually unless there’s, unless there’s a topic topic, which I think the topic could be like artistry within powder coating. Um, certainly, um, what you do is so unique and I want to clarify that you actually sell the pens on your it’s a product and a finish or so.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:08:44) – Like what I’m doing is I’m offering like long story short is like in my, like, I’m a vapor. So like, I quit smoking years ago, like seven years ago when my son was born. And it was like a big thing to me, you know, like I’d smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and like, that’s any, you know, powder shop or any employers, you know, problem, you know, at a threshold is like his employee smoking or wasting time smoking. Right. So long story short, like I won’t bore you with the whole vaping thing.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:09:12) – I think you should tell people your story. So don’t want to stop you right there because don’t want to get it because it’s so easy to just start talking.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:09:19) – Yeah yeah yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:09:20) – I’ve started yet but usually it’s just like, you know, take as long as you need. Um, unless we have a deeper topic but think the topic we can just. It sounds like you and I are going to just roll it.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:09:35) – Go right. I could go for days. And I’m also like. So like, obviously I’m in the northwest, I’m in a cannabis culture area to like these things. This isn’t cannabis, this is just nicotine vaping. This is what helped me smoke. Quit smoking cigarettes. Yeah. And I’m on I do a podcast every Sunday that is counterculture for cannabis and vaping, and I’m a big vape advocate. So like the whole podcast thing is.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:09:59) – Well, no, because it’s.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:10:00) – To be with you.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:10:01) – Yeah, because there has been some careful guess about a certain person in the groups who has a cannabis thing going and they’re being backed or supported on some level by Are you talking about 710.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:10:22) – Oh God, please. Yes. You know about that. Oh with him mean.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:10:27) – No, no, no I’m not I haven’t talked to him on a personal level, but like I knew, I knew about him prior to what he became. Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:10:37) – And he out of his group.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:10:40) – So, like, I don’t like my big thing about the whole powder coat. Like people that do, you know, videos and shit, like more power to them. Like, I respect you for doing something with your life. You’re being productive. But powder coating is like, you know, with the whole custom thing and then the whole industrial thing. Like there’s this this head butting of like, who’s doing what, right? Who’s doing what correctly. And when you’re you’re doing stuff online and you’re doing stuff in like a sketchy booth or you don’t know how to ground your stuff properly and you’re smoking a cigarette while you’re trying to fucking paint and and you just look like a hack, right? You just look like a hack.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:11:18) – So at the end of the day, you make me look like a fucking idiot. You make Shaun look like a fucking idiot. And that’s like, where I’m like.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:11:24) – That’s where people were professional. Yeah. Profession. That is where people were drawing a line.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:11:31) – And the fact that he’s got like tiger dry black.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:11:34) – And that’s the thing. So that’s.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:11:37) – That’s got me pissed.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:11:38) – Oh no trust me I gave a because.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:11:42) – Shaun can’t even do this kind of.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:11:43) – Shit. No, hell no. Hell no. And so here’s the thing.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:11:48) – That’s the button.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:11:50) – Yeah, that’s crazy. And we’re going to. I want you to. I’m glad you have samples and stuff here because I want.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:11:56) – You did this one yesterday. You don’t really see.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:11:58) – I saw that on your Instagram. I love Malbec. It’s one of. It’s so.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:12:02) – Weird. I can’t the the thing about this, though, is, like with these doormats, I don’t think they. Have that one chemically, right? Because that shit mars up and scuffs.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:12:13) – No matter. I could cure that thing for a fucking hour. Yeah. And it’s this thin, like.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:12:18) – No, you know, we did a whole lift kit in that and unfortunately, nothing else.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:12:24) – I haven’t had that problem but that one.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:12:26) – Well, so what happened was we had we done this lift kit, the guy took forever to pick it up. It wasn’t. We tried to cover it up as best we can, but, you know, it still was a little bit exposed. And and on top of it, we were doing some huge ass like, architectural job with a 2605. And that stuff is so gummy. I have like it landed on everything and immediately bonded with anything. It was just weird. And so the whole the whole shop was covered in this shit and you can’t wipe it off. And then here.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:13:03) – We are, trapped in your gun.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:13:05) – Off.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:13:05) – Got got that shit coming out my gun for weeks and I like, rip the whole thing apart and clean it.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:13:11) – Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:13:12) – But I want to show you something that I’m working on, and I, I, I made a present for you.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:13:21) – Oh, shit.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:13:23) – I did. Well, sort of. I hope you think it’s a present. So we launched earlier this week. Um. And I’m going to pull this up. Hold on. I’m just. We launched a new website. I got some cares money and I wanted to. I wanted to do something with it, and this was part of what I wanted to do with it. So we’re wrapping it up. We have we’re it’s just a soft launch right now. But I want to show you what and get your opinion of it. But so let me share my screen.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:14:16) – Hmm.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:14:17) – So, um, I this is a directory website that we created, and the directory is for consumers to find powder coaters. So in my experience, you know, we do really well with the blog. My blog is like one of the top consumer blogs out there for powder coating.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:14:39) – And I realized this early on and, and I realized that when you type in powder coating near me and your Google search, it doesn’t necessarily tell you what specifically what that guy does. And if he doesn’t have a website or maybe he’s just on Instagram or whatever, you know, how do you know that that’s all he does, right? Unless you do a website and stuff. And so in a way to kind of define and, you know, I created kind of a directory site for custom for consumers to sort of marketplace who they’re looking for, what kind of project they have. And again, this is just like barebones, but we’re going to add so much more to this. But I you have a listing in here. I made sure of that.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:15:29) – Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:15:30) – Um, so let’s see. Let me.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:15:34) – This is so rad. You’re bringing so much light. To what? Like, here we are. I feel like. Like people like us that are doing. You know, like our own things and bringing like, our own topics to things.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:15:46) – It’s. It’s really bringing what powder coating should have been ten years ago.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:15:51) – Well, think about this. I mean, I don’t know how mean. Imagine people shop from all over the world, but you know like they could see you even more here, you know, beyond your website or whatever. And I don’t know if you’re on Etsy or where you’re at, but or how people find it. I imagine it’s Instagram, but, you know, how do they even know you exist? I didn’t know you existed and and stuff. So we just kind of, you know, took some pictures from your from your website and.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:16:22) – Those two mods right there that those that black and that pink one is really what blew me up.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:16:27) – Yeah, I’m sure it’s ideal. It’s like perfect. So here’s your page. You can log in and and alter it as much as you want. So you just hit claim listing. Okay, I’m going to get rid of this. This is not what I want on your page.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:16:43) – I want. I need something. There’s something else that’s going to be here.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:16:47) – But like, well, eventually, like once this is up and out, you could put the link to, like, our episode on that page. We could because this is going to be honestly, I’m going to take this as a driving force to like put your guys’s name on the map like and just big talk up you because honestly, like I’ve been holding back, jumping into like the actual powder coating scene, like I’ve been hiding from it just because of the sense of like, I don’t know how the industry is going to take that. I’m doing vape related stuff. I think it’s.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:17:17) – Great. That’s why I you on the podcast when you.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:17:20) – Can see like I don’t I don’t know that thing like you know like Alex from Cardinal he’s just like super blown away by what I can do. He doesn’t even know, you know, like he’s told me, he’s like, Ashton, you’re doing something that 99% of people around the world haven’t even figured out with powder.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:17:36) – No.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:17:37) – I look at the patina powder coating. I mean, it’s your.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:17:42) – Guys’s patina is insane. I was I was looking at that and I was like, Oh, awesome.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:17:51) – We’ve got concrete, we have wood, we have steel.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:17:58) – See, I’ve been trying to get like because so like my background, my brother is a really, really good airbrush and pinstripe artist and that’s really kind of why I did this with powder coating. I grew up in the background of the custom car culture and doing bodywork and paint work and doing collision work and, you know, really suffering and trying to figure out what life was and. Once we get going and stuff. I’ll tell you, like the startup of where where it came from. But really my background, you know, lied in custom car and the hot rod industry around here and. I ended up going my own way. And, you know, like a lot of a lot of what I do is inspired by my brother and him, you know, having his own business and being.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:18:43) – You know, an artist and everything. And once I started powder coating, it was like. I don’t know. It took me like, probably. I’d say about a year. And then I started doing my own vape stuff and then it was just like over from there.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:18:59) – Yeah. What you’re doing is just it’s mind blowing and it’s only going to get better for you. I see that. In fact, I was thinking, who is this guy that reached out to me on my Instagram to get on the show? And then I was.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:19:17) – Talking to Sean. I talked to Sean.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:19:19) – Oh, you talked to Sean? Okay.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:19:21) – Well, so I was talking to Sean the other day and I like I just kind of like I don’t really I’m not a big follower of his or. You know, in the instance of just like out of respect, like I respect him for what he does and, you know, his work is speaks for itself. But at the end of the day, like I don’t care about, you know, just talking about just shit like he does, I guess.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:19:44) – I don’t want to get too far into it, but, um, yeah, like.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:19:48) – He. He’s very good at it too, you know? So. Oh, yeah.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:19:51) – Like, Oh, I messaged him one day just to shoot shit, and I was like, What’s up with 710 Trying to copy your fucking, your, your sparkle. Like, I already know how he makes it because I’m like, my brother is really in cahoots with PG. And I’ve had people be like, Hey, you should use some of this. And like, that just takes away from the whole powder coating thing in my head. So I don’t do those kind of things. Um, but I was like, I messaged him, I was just like, What’s up with, you know, 710 trying to copy you and blah blah, blah. And then I was like, Dude, we me and you need to, like, sit down and talk and just kind of have like a roundtable to, like, weed out the fucking bullshit online.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:20:33) – Yeah, it’s, you know, I look at it and.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:20:37) – Then, you know what he said to me? He’s like, You need to talk to Maui Powder works.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:20:43) – You know, Here’s how I look at it. I look at it as there’s, you know, just like what you said earlier, you know, we’re there are some movements in a very boring market. Right? It’s it’s an industrial market. And yet there are people like you. There’s people like Sean. There’s even people like 710. As much as I hate to say that word.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:21:08) – Exactly.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:21:10) – Yeah. At least they’re moving and shaking, right? And it’s waking up a very dormant industry. Corrupt.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:21:19) – It’s like it’s disturbing an industry.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:21:22) – It is. And it’s so quiet and almost when I talk to these industrial people that have, you know, they’re they’re they’ve been general managers, CEOs, you know, sales guys, they can’t even wrap their head around it. They’re so into, you know, they’re their they’ve been working for the one same company for 30 years or it’s it’s mind blowing and here we are.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:21:48) – And okay, so I’m going to date myself right now because I remember the 70s and Punk and UK and, you know, whatever that whole movement and then I’m going to date myself again. Madonna and I was in fashion back then, so, you know, I was paying attention to that. I was going to college for fashion marketing. And by, you know, I wanted to be a buyer. At least that’s what I thought.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:22:20) – I wanted a lot of my life and a lot of my colors come off of what I grew up doing in the 90s and yeah, we’ll get into it. Trust me. That’s like why you see me using a lot of fluorescent colors and yeah, so just bringing the layer back.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:22:35) – Here’s the thing that Madonna did. Madonna was on the streets of New York. She was playing around local gigs. There was a you know, this was kind of towards the end of the whole punk movement. And we were transitioning into the 80s and she picked up on a lot of first of all, she was, you know, a starving artist and she picked up on a lot of that fashion coming out of the out of that world.

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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.22.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:23:01) – And she would shop at vintage markets and stuff like that for her fashion, right? She literally pulled this was the first time this had ever happened. She pulled from the street and brought it up to haute couture, which had never been done before. Mean Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld, all of these people, Christian Dior, they never looked at the street for inspiration. Right. They they she somehow managed to cross over and broke through. I think she did more for mean as good as she is or how how much she broke broke barriers in music. She did the same in fashion, especially at the beginning of her career. And that had never been done before. And I’ve seen that before in fashion. And I’m telling you, it’s happening in powder coating people like us that are creative and are thinking outside the box. Whether you’ve got a YouTube channel and you’re just teaching people everyday stuff or you’re you’re doing extreme coating on small items that are artistic and beautiful and super highly customized, or you’re doing a patina powder coating or some other strange anomaly that is just so out of the norm.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:24:36) – You’re breaking people’s minds. And that’s a good thing. And you know, it’s going to it’s it’s a tough road, though.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:24:44) – You know? It is It’s like a my biggest thing was, is I started doing this because a lot of these products, you know, as a consumer, you know, trying to quit smoking, trying to find a nice mod that was going to stand up with me, going to work and being, you know, dirty powder coat hands, being in an industrial shop all fucking day, you know, maybe I drop it and it breaks all these these. Products were, you know, maybe if they were made in America, they were coming with Sarah coat finishes. And I’m not here to knock Sarah coat you know, Sarah coat has its place and its time, you know, maybe on your gun on the shelf that’s never going to see use. But. You know, Circo is something that when you’re using something every day, it’s very it just wears. And, you know, as a coater myself, I was like, I saw an opportunity there and I was like, okay, I have a I have this opportunity to, you know.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:25:37) – Combine both of my passions, you know, with, you know, the the love for quit smoking and helping people to quit smoking and spread that awareness, but also take my passion from a custom culture and background and actually put something on this device that’s going to stand a drop test, that’s going to stand, you know, the acids on your hands that you know it’s going to stand the nicotine and the juice may be rolling down your mod like it’s it’s it’s things that it’s more than just, you know, me. You know, locking myself in my garage and figuring things out. But it was, you know, it’s it never.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:26:11) – Involving solving a need.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:26:13) – Yeah. And that was that was like the big thing is, like, I looked at it in like a, you know, I guess I could go back on if you want me to start like on how I, you know, got to where I’m at. I could Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:26:26) – But, but first I’m going to give you your present.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:26:29) – Okay? We’ve given you your present yet? This is just. I wanted to get your opinion on this. Um, you know, and this might just, you know, we might just roll with this the way it is. It our conversations just happening naturally, and we’re just kind of talking. Talking the shit about powder coating, so. Uh, you know, this is just. I liked your profile. This is exactly what I want to see Powder coaters doing, and I hope they’re going to log in and register their page and stuff because this is ideal. This is what we want. You know, you’ve got specialty items, specialty finishes. So it’s all just growing. It’s just the basic thing. Oh, geez, hold on. Nobody’s supposed to call me on a Saturday. We’re closed. Maui powder works. Uh, you can stop by. We’re not officially open, but you can stop by. We’re here now. Yeah. Yeah. Come on. Bye. Okay. See you.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:27:46) – Okay. Sorry about that. No, you’re good. Cut it out. Um, but anyways, I really wanted to show this to you just because I knew we were going to talk and stuff, and it’s a good.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:27:59) – Place for people to go and like and put their stuff and become, you know, make other people well aware. Not only necessarily, you know, somebody’s looking to get something done specialized, but just people within the industry. This could be groundbreaking in the sense of, you know, this could help somebody that’s struggled with illusion. Violet Every time they’ve sprayed it, you know, and, you know, maybe they’ve gone by the spec sheet, but something’s not right. You know, that’s that’s where I kind of pride myself in as I came from, like a big background. One of my employers was a big guy and obviously he had Cardinal in there 24 over seven. And if it wasn’t Cardinal, it was Sherwin Williams or it was my Wagner rep or it was my my gamma rep in there trying to sell me a gamma or it was, you know, it was there’s a lot of things.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:28:47) – And that’s kind of like why I want to be here and touch on because I feel like I’ve touched every aspect of this industry in a short amount of ten years. And. There’s a lot of things that I want to bring to light in this subject when it comes to even just, you know, a kid that’s maybe in his mid 20s and he’s been doing it for five years and he’s, you know, maybe he hates his life, but he’s still coating, you know, like those are the kids that I want to give inspiration to because I was maybe once that kid at one point, you know, like getting to the point where you felt like you’ve done everything and you’ve accomplished all these goals within yourself and trying to just be a good painter at the end of the day. And, you know, and sometimes that’s the unfortunate thing about powder coating is you live these really high highs and then you live these really low lows of like maybe there’s a lot of work coming in and you’re loving it, but then it’s like you finally catch up and it’s done and then it’s never ending or, you know, you did something really, really cool.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:29:45) – And then like the next customer, you know, you did something just as cool, if not better, and they’re not satisfied. It’s a it’s a juggling act and it’s.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:29:52) – A it’s a struggle. And especially when you work with your hands and it’s a it’s sort of a mastery thing. And I Ross and I are both like this. We we tend to master things and then we want to move on.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:30:08) – Yeah, that’s, that’s where I’m getting to.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:30:11) – Yeah. And I don’t know what this solution is to someone like us because it’s like. You know, unfortunately, the downside of that is you’re constantly creating something new, which sounds beautiful, but it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to financial. A regular or financial because you need stability in order to. And that means sticking with something for the long haul in order to generate you know, if you’re self-employed, you’ve got to keep on that day in and day out or you’re going to have to hire someone to to make sure that you can achieve that day and day out.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:30:54) – Right. And so that’s the problem. I think that we mean, on one hand, we have so much experience, we have so much energy, we have so much stuff to share people with with powder coaters because of all the ups and downs we’ve learned. But at the same time, we constantly are trying something new or doing something new, and we’re not focusing back on what we’ve created, you know, and there is a you know, it’s sort of a it’s the journey of the alchemist, really. Yeah, That’s.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:31:27) – Like what my brother told me, you know, like I asked my brother because, you know, it’s like sometimes I struggle with it. And he told me he’s like, Ashton, you need to go back and look at what you’ve done just in the last month or look at what you’ve done and look at what you’ve done in six months fashion. He’s like, You got to go back and just put yourself in that same headspace or like, I’ll have I had a customer that a lot of like you seen that mod that had the pharaoh on it and the beetle and its like ten different colors with you know, that purple and violet shift and then it glows in the dark like I’ve had my customer be like, I want to do something crazier than this.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:32:03) – And I’ve told him, like, I honestly don’t think I could put myself in that headspace again because, you know, like at that point I was like working a full time job and running my business. So I would go paint, you know, 10 to 12 hours a day, run, you know, 15 to 20 carts a day or 2000 to 4000ft of handrail, whatever it may have been that day. And then I’d go home and spray all night long till wee hours in the morning in my garage with my craftsman powder coating gun and my my convection toaster oven. And, you know, I would slam these orders out and then I would get up and drag my ass to work and do it again. And that’s.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:32:43) – Insane. Yeah, it’s hard to keep that up. I mean, that’s how I feel right now. Covid 19 is certainly.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:32:51) – I don’t think I’ve ever been busier. This is this thing has made me so busy. It’s been like a blessing in disguise.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:33:00) – Yeah. How is that? I’m trying to answer that question.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:33:03) – I cannot think if you look at it in the aspect like I’m really big into motocross and supercross and I’ve, I grew up racing BMX and dirt bikes and stuff, but now I’m like, I’m a big fan of it all. But I listened to a lot of podcasts. I listen to a lot of announcing and and one of the announcers said he was like, you know, for racing motorcycles, everybody’s racing Saturday to sell dirt bikes on Monday, you know, because dirt bike shops like that’s how that’s how dirt bikes are sold and bought. You know, whoever’s winning Sunday or Saturday. So and so is buying that bike, right? So when all this hit and every all the racing stopped or, you know, give or take it’s basketball or football or whatever it may be. Yeah, like everybody’s like, wait a second. Like they’re freaking out. Like, what’s this going to do to our industry? What’s this going to do for sales? You know? Well, the first thing everybody did was like, I’m going to go outside.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:33:56) – So bicycles got bought, dirt bikes got bought. You can’t go to a dirt bike or a or a bicycle shop right now and find what you want because they’re all sold out because everybody’s doing everybody’s doing and wanting to do what they’ve they’ve held back for how many years? So it’s like it’s kind of like a crazy thing.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:34:18) – It is mean for us digitally. What we’re doing is we’ve got Maui Powder Works, but we’re also opening up this digital side to our business, which in itself is its own business, you know? Oh yeah, for sure. Ultimately, you know, this is going to, you know, bring consumers. It’s a marketplace for consumers to come and find power, coaters also to learn about more about powder coating them in themselves. Right. You know, because they’re on the hunt as well. And so, you know, I think that it’s getting there. And I think that something like this that can marry the powder coaters to, you know, the people that are searching for the information is is going to be you know, it’s small right now.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:35:10) – But ultimately I want it to give, you know, a value. This is a valuable backlink to your to your website.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:35:18) – This is it’s valuable for, you know, like I come from like this this crew of like these people that do the podcast with and like that I’m on like if you type my name in, you’ve probably seen me on quite a few vape shows. And the vaping community is something that I’ve aspired to like show the world. Like because I grew up, you know, following my brother around to pinstriping shows, doing brush brushes and being in that side of an artist world where, you know, there’s 10 million stripers and there’s 50,000 airbrushes and they’re all got these egos and they all don’t get along. And, and there’s all this, you know, animosity between each other. But when I stumbled across the vape community and became a part of it, and everybody’s out to help everybody, you know, like I’m out to help, you know, if somebody’s trying to quit smoking, I don’t want them to jump through the loopholes and and find all these products that didn’t help me.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:36:15) – You know, I want them to experience it and not have to deal with that stress and and you know what I mean? And move on. And and maybe that’s what this industry needs as as powder coaters. We need to help other people solve problems because you know what? Guess what? Our our paint isn’t going to show up and be better because we just bitched about it. You know what I mean? Like, our guns aren’t going to get better because if we don’t voice our opinions, you know what I mean? That’s, that’s the thing. We’re starting to see the technology and the paint and like, the guns and the paint are starting to match up with technology today. Yeah. And if we don’t keep going, it’s not going to get better. So, like, if we want things to get better, we have to want that. We have to voice our opinions. And yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:36:56) – I hate that. I hate to, quote, wrestle again, but that’s exactly what he said.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:37:01) – It’s time for us to band together to demand lower prices for equipment, to demand better services from these industrial companies that think that we’re just mosquitos flying around their head and and to create a better equipment mean.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:37:23) – And I guarantee you I would put I would put my business name on it that I guarantee you I can do something with a gamer that a gamer rep couldn’t even figure out with his own gun.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:37:34) – That’s good.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:37:36) – And that’s the thing. Like, I started on the first powder coating gun I ever use back in the day when I started in 2012 at an industrial shop after I had had to sandblast for two years prior to even him letting me touch the gun, I. I started on an old nordson versus spray two out of a pressure pot. And then like as time went on, I moved to another shop. I got to learn on a GMA. I learned the GMA really well, and then I moved to another shop and all these three shops that I’ve been to, I was the lead coater and all three of those shops I got to use Nordson and Wagner and the Wagner sprint.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:38:16) – Sorry to say, you guys, that is my favorite gun out of everything I’ve ever used. That’s there’s something about that double click feature gun that I could not get away from. I’m saving my money up for another one.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:38:30) – Good. That’s good. We need to hear about that and and stuff because it’s just the same question that gets asked every day in the groups. If I have to see another one, I’m, you know, like, Oh, maybe that’s what I’m seeing in the groups today. I took a look at some stuff that had been going on in the last couple of days and. It seems like it’s and getting back to what I was saying earlier, it’s like it’s evolving. It’s evolving right now. It’s oh, it’s going yeah, it’s evolving really fast on the group’s. It’s evolving.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:39:07) – And that’s the thing. I don’t want to be behind. Like I want I want my name to be out there. I want to be able to help people and I want to be able to.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:39:14) – At the end of the day, I really want to be able to help companies like I want to. I want yeah, I want to be able to reach out and talk to Columbia Coatings about my cool coat benchtop setup that I’ve been running for over a year now. You know, and, and that’s the thing. Like, I don’t see people. Doing that. Like, I want these companies to know that their products are working good, right?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:39:37) – It almost when I talk to these guys and I talk to them about the products in the, you know, the equipment, it almost feels like they it’s like they’ve never heard what I’ve just told them before, you know, like that kind of that kind of unsolicited opinion or review or whatever is marketing gold to them. But they’re not used to getting it. They’re only used to it at their level or their high level. It’s like the hot couture or the high fashion people. And you know, of the 80s, they, they hadn’t heard the street before.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:40:17) – Um, and that’s what changed fashion from there on out. A lot of stuff is much more freer and open and deregulated in a sense of, you know, creativity in fashion today because of that, that change, that that sea change. And I see it. We’re on the verge of that right now. And that’s why it’s happening. It’s evolving really fast. And I think the more the merrier at this point. Um, I don’t necessarily condone, um, you know, uh. Some some stuff and maybe that’s just me. But like, you know, you don’t want to prey on people either. And that’s some of the stuff that I haven’t been happy with in terms of, you know, preying on innocent people. Or maybe they’re not so innocent, but if they are, maybe they’re asking for it in terms of like, you know, helping someone who doesn’t even have a legit coating company represent us that I get uncomfortable with. It’s fine. He wants to have a digital marketing company because that’s really all it is.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:41:32) – You click his affiliate links and he gets paid. Just because he’s recommending this certain brand of tape doesn’t necessarily mean he knows anything about coating. That’s just my opinion. Right. But. But I haven’t given you your present yet. So we’re about ready to promote the directory. And I thought, I’m going to just take the coaters that I’ve interviewed and make kind of like mini commercials because I think every coater has a story to tell. And so I created a sort of a mini commercial that was going to promote on Facebook. It obviously features your stuff, But so let me get to the commercial and see if you can. Oh, shoot. Where’s. Oh, here it is. Can you still see my screen?

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:42:27) – Oh, yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:42:28) – Okay. Um.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:42:33) – This is cool. It’s like a dream. It’s a dream for me. Like to put Idaho on the map for a lot of different things. You know what I mean? So that’s cool. It’s like when I see this kind of stuff and you guys doing what you do, it’s been a I’m excited for it.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:42:47) – So. Yeah, I did see this earlier. I seen this somewhere. Got.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:43:06) – Not bad.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:43:08) – Yeah. You’re just like the marketing whiz. You got your. You got your husband in the backseat, you know, sweating to death, and you’re in the office just making your guys’s name loud. That’s awesome.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:43:20) – Well, you know. Exactly. I mean, it’s his fault. I’m going to just right now. So I had a very successful refinishing business. And in addition to that, we got into remodeling condos and homes and and all kinds of things, you know, because, uh, you know, the, the Great Recession happened, and so we had to just wear many hats, right? And so we got into room makeovers and condominiums and, and everything. And it, it blossomed really fast because I was already in the market. And so it was easy to pick up jobs here and there. And, you know, it was a great company in the sense that it offered a lot of cash flow.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:44:11) – But it wasn’t a you know, a lot of contracting companies don’t profit, you know, they just have the cash flow, right? Yep. So that’s kind of the unless you can really master the all of that, It’s that really was kind of a dead end.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:44:28) – You got the unless you got the whole contract on the whole island. In your case?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:44:33) – Yeah. So plus it was high pressure and we’d been doing it for ten years and Ross was just over it. And he’s like, you know, we’d already had this side. Powder coating thing going. But, you know, we just decided, well, hell, let’s you know, he was just giving me such a hard time of trying to get stuff done, you know, finishing up. Oh, here comes a customer. Hi. Hey. How’s it going? Did you call? Did? Okay. Let me direct you around the corner here and talk to let you talk to Ross. Perfect. Thank. Just another day at Maui Powder Works.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:45:28) – Yeah, you guys. You guys are. You deal with the general public. I’m a wish. You guys ever come to Idaho? You have to come to my shop like I love you would be mind blowing because we’re. We’re like, by appointment only. Kind of. So when you walk into my shop, a lot of it’s obviously my brother’s artwork and his airbrushing and everything. And then there’s like the candy machine I powder coated or like the tons of vices that I’ve done and then like the sores in there and it’s just everywhere you look, there’s airbrushing on the garage door, there’s Bob or we got Jimi Hendrix on the back door by my, by my booth and stuff.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:46:05) – So my nephew does airbrushing and I’ve always wanted him to airbrush, like the oven door. Yeah. And that’s what.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:46:13) – Chaz wants to do, my big logo on my door. And I’m like, Yeah, I don’t know.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:46:17) – I know a lot of people put stickers on their butt, was like, I have an idea for, for, for that.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:46:24) – But yeah, you know, it’s. I forgot what we were talking about. What were we talking about? Where this industry is going or where it should go, kind of just to redirect and giving back. Think it should just be starting with just a give and a give and a give and then hopefully something will because somebody got to start doing it right. You know, somebody has to get it out there at first. And I got this a it’s called an adaptability grant through my county. And I’m like, I’m just going to do this. And I ended up getting most of what I requested. And so we went to we went right into building out the directory and and getting it going. Um, but yeah, I want to feature and talk about as I interview people, I realized they have a story. It’s like Victor Pete from Black Label has a story. He’s, he wasn’t satisfied and he started his own powder line, you know, So you have your story, which is, you know, kind of touched on in the in the ad And, you know, I think everybody has a story, you know, and every powder coater does.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:47:46) – And we should just be highlighting those stories, you know, and and putting them up on the directory and and seeing what happens, you know, it’s just content, right? It’s just content. So, um, I think we can. I think we can do it. I hope you like what I created. Um.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:48:04) – Yeah, I’m all for it. I’m definitely going to be a I’m definitely whenever you guys need help or anything like this side of things too, even with the podcast, like I’m down to come in and chat whenever you guys are available or that’s great. Just to keep it, keep it flowing like, you know, I know once podcast things get going, sometimes at the end of the day, it’s hard to get people on, you know and, and maybe, you know, like, you know, Ross says, you know, we need a lot of people in maybe one of these days we can get Ross on and just have a couple other people and get a roundtable of, you know, things going, maybe get a question I would.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:48:38) – Love to do. People know.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:48:41) – Questions of, you know, serious questions that you know from coaters that we want not necessarily answered, but we want, you know, questions asked to us and then we can relay information because at the end of the day or the people using the products and, you know, and dumping the paint.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:48:55) – Let’s do that think you know, and and I’m just you know.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:49:00) – At the end of the day what can it hurt from like a bunch of people at the end of the day that are really behind the gun with the experience? You know, because at the end of the day, a lot of these reps would come in and they’d be like, Oh, your guns set up wrong. And they would set my gun up and I’d be like, Look at my boss. And I’m like, This is what they think transfer efficiency is. And I’d spray it in. More than 50% of it’s hitting the ground. You know, you’re like, That’s not how my guns set up, dude.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:49:25) – Like, and, and that’s the thing you know, a lot of these I’ve seen a lot of these reps come in from Sherman Williams to be exact, and they don’t know their fucking foot from their ass. And they’re selling Wagners and and they’re trying, you know, it’s just like. That’s like, you know, at the end of the day, my boss told me one day he goes, Dude, a rep really isn’t a rep today. They’re fucking salesmen.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:49:46) – Right?

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:49:47) – You know, like at the end of the day, they’re trying to sell you what their product is and it’s the best.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:49:52) – Yeah. And that’s. And that’s kind of like in the groups, too. Why so many people ask that same question over and over again, you know, Which again, should I get? What, you know, I just saw it again.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:50:03) – You should get is what gun you know how to work the best and what tailors to your your environment your your what applications you’re doing like you know and.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:50:14) – Like so if you go and, you know, we’re in Hawaii, so we never attended any we never went to Powder X, we never went to like powder coating week and done the one on one class or the 102 over there. We never done any of those things. And so like, have you ever done those and.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:50:33) – Got the opportunity to do a seminar with Forrest? But so I didn’t get a go because the shop that I was in, I was I was the only painter for like the two years that I was there until I quit. And that was like the thing I was told I was going to be flown out to Pcci and I was told I was going to do this or I was told I was going to be featured in PCI Mag and all this crazy stuff. But at the end of the day, it was like, No, you still got to paint and and do this stuff. So I felt like at the end of the day, if I did go to any of those seminars, I would have a lot to tell and to teach.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:51:05) – But I felt like some of the things like just from experience of like certain reps coming in and kind of like confusing me and taking away and like almost setting me back like a week or, or give or take, you know, like I did a lot of, I did a lot of spring in my industrial career and felt like some of those things were they were they were awesome when it came down to learning chemicals and and just learning, you know, the whole chemistry behind things and understanding, you know, primers and, and, and zinke’s and stuff and how you shouldn’t spray zinc, you know, above 250 or you shouldn’t, you know, if like you’re in a production shop and you’re trying to put the paint down like. Primer and Zinc was a big learning curve for any applicator. And if you can’t apply it and you can’t get transfer efficiency with zinc, your life’s going to be hell and your boss is going to be mad. Right, Right.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:51:55) – So, yeah. And you know.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:52:02) – It looks like there’s a homeless man outside my door. Okay. With this tweaker bike and all of that stuff. Okay.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:52:10) – So the industrial park life.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:52:15) – So, yeah, you know, and but it’s crazy because I’ll go to the source, right? And I’ll go, I’ll call up or I’ll call up these people that I’ve been talking to and they are so in and passionate for the business, yet they’re not they can’t relay right.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:52:33) – Information to you.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:52:35) – Well, I think that that has something to do with the corporate thing. Right? You know what?

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:52:41) – They’re very they’re very particular about the right vocabulary when you’re talking about stuff and, you know, certain painters have certain vocabularies about things, that was like the hardest thing for me when I worked in. I was the lead coater and the paint manager at Precision Powder and Blast here in Idaho, and it’s the biggest it was at the time when it first opened, it was the biggest booth and oven this side of the Mississippi. So it was like 55ft long, 15 wide and 15 tall.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:53:08) – Wow. And I was I had two Wagner pumps in there. So like, one would either be in Primer or, you know, whatever one was in top coat, vice versa. And I would dump at least 300 to £400 a day. And like learning, learning all that and learning like, you know, how far an actual mill goes or, you know, learning how to actually stack mills and watch, you know, back ionisation and really watch how Powder’s talking to you, that that’s one thing even to this day that I’m just like, Oh, I’m a glutton for that information. You know, Like, that’s like I saw my eyes are addicted to watching powder transfer to metal in like, what, 3 or 4 passes does that, you know, 45 Like I’m very big on, you know, on your, on your amperage and your voltage settings and where they’re at with your air. Like if I can see somebody spraying with too much air, I’m just like, oh yeah, comment down, bring it back down, dude.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:54:04) – And that’s that’s the thing is you’re seeing a lot of these. Guns. And a lot of these people are they’re fucking maxing out their CVS and their micro amps and you really don’t need to be at the end of the day, if you want that gun to last you 20 to 15 years. If you spent 7 to 8 grand on a gun. You don’t need to be rocking it at 100. And you know, I like to keep mine around 80 if I’m doing hot coats and stuff. And that’s like what you guys are talking about the other day. Ross is talking about hot flocking and I’m pretty big on hot flocking.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:54:36) – So many people are. And by that I don’t know.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:54:40) – I got videos on videos of me doing like thousands of feet of handrail, just just ripping and then letting it drop. Temp cool back. Go over to your gun. That’s the cool thing about doing a hot flock. Like, let’s say if Ross was to to mess with a Wagner, you could set that gun up to, you know, higher, higher voltage and amperage.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:55:02) – Bring your your powder, your air up and your powder down a little bit and just get a decent coat over everything, let it drop, and then you can set up the gun to where you can double click it and then it’ll drop your microamps and your voltage and your air and your powder or put your powder up or, you know, wherever you want to save that setting and then recut the whole thing. Boom, it’s done going back in the oven and. You got perfect Mills. Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:55:28) – Yeah. I think there’s a lot of. Upside in what can be talked about in the future. And of course it’ll all be driven. The more we create in this case, the more questions will be answered, the more you know. And that’s what I was talking about earlier. Like there was some discussion in the groups about how like forums aren’t being used and yet a lot of us were, say, us, but my husband, that’s how he learned, you know, and they’re not user friendly.

[/et_pb_text][et_pb_shop posts_number=”3″ _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_shop][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.22.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]​RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:56:08) – They’re bulky and awkward to use. You just want the answer now. And so that’s why the groups has. You know, blown up in terms of, you know, getting answers to questions you have. Plus, people want content. In their fingertips. They don’t want to have to go and search it now.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:56:28) – They want to just be able to type in what their problem is and they want an answer for it. Now, like, that’s the biggest thing about like when I would go to a new shop and let’s say I just came off the nordson and I had to learn how to run a GMA that bought my boss isn’t going to tell me or give me a load on on how to run his GMA. He expects me to know how to run that thing. So guess what? I went and try to search all the gun settings you could figure out for GMA. Guess what? Nobody was online five years ago telling you how to do that. Yeah, nowhere. And. And so what do I do? I just go up and I look up the user manual and I would figure out every damn button and how to run that box.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:57:06) – Yeah. And that’s that’s really what you have to do. And it’s like at the end of the day, I don’t, I don’t like, I don’t like settings being told like I don’t like, okay, you need to run this setting. Like, no, that’s not how it’s going to go. I’m going to set my gun up how I feel like on my body or, you know, specific application. Like if I’m doing a set of wheels and I’m doing them hot. Yeah, I want my, my, my voltage way up and vice versa. But it’s like those are the things like if you can’t figure out how to set up your gun correctly, like you just need to go back to square one, dial the gun back down like I learned on an old dial gun. You know what I mean? And now we’re learning on guns with digital buttons. And that’s it’s like a big learning curve going from a gun that you’ve used, you know, with dials and getting everything set just right.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:57:56) – It can mess with you when you get to a new gun.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:57:59) – And let’s face it, I mean, I’m I’m always the way of the warrior or the way of I’m I’m an alchemist at heart. I read a lot of esoteric and alchemy. Books and stuff like that through for my own spirituality and stuff. And yeah, you know, there is, um, you know, the, the search for the human or, or just a deeper understanding. And let’s face it. Electricity isn’t for everybody. You know.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:58:29) – And that’s that was, that’s kind of funny you bring that up because, you know, I spent a lot of my younger 20s like. Wondering like, is this electricity messing with my psyche? Is it messing with my emotions like. And that’s that’s one thing that I kind of like. It was weird to think about. Like, there’s that sound that, you know, if if anybody knows if you’ve worked in an industrial shop and you’re doing handrail or you’re doing wheels and and you pull a load out of the oven and it’s at 400 degrees and you got your gun set up just where you need it.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:59:02) – And you start spraying a hot coat and you get that that sound of just, you know, like that sweet hot coat sound. And I remember the first time, my very first I see my very first boss doing a hot coat on this old I was sandblasting these old circus rides and there’s these old rocket ships that you would sit in, right? Oh, cool. And they had I can’t begin to explain how many mils of like lead and lacquer paint was, you know, all over these things. And, you know, I’d blast them and then I’d run them over on the forklift to the powder shop and my boss would hang them up and he was spraying them, but he was heating them up. And, you know, the dudes that were in their sprint at the normal times, they weren’t doing or I wasn’t catching them doing stuff hot. And I remember walking into the shop, I was like 19 years old and my this big fat boss that I had just sweating his ass off, no mask on, you know, spraying in this dark dungeon.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (00:59:55) – And it’s like this bright purple from Sherwin-Williams at the time, and he’s laying it hot. And I’m just like, that’s when I knew. I was like, whoa, this is this is cool. Like, this is cool right now. I now I understand what you’re doing because it looks wet, you know, like growing up painting hot rods and doing all that stuff with my brother, I was like, Oh. And then I was like, I was just waiting for somebody to quit. Waiting for somebody to quit to get that spot. You know.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:00:21) – There are subtleties to to it. And you kind of touched on that a couple minutes ago when you said, you know, how’s my body feeling? How, you know, and the gun settings and and watching the powder float, you know, people think it’s just, you know, and it’s not it’s there are especially when you do the fine work that you’re doing, you know.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:00:46) – So that’s kind of like the the inlay work and like the that stuff’s like a totally different thing, but.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:00:53) – Like when you think about Faraday Cage and stuff like that, like I can touch on things that I had to do when I was working in the big industrial shop and I had to do all these like huge boot dryers for like ski resorts. They were like there were like 27, just like 60 slots for boots to go in. And they’re like these big, you know, sheet metal structures. But then they have these slots coming out. And the Faraday cage behind that.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:01:19) – Between the two was.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:01:20) – So gnarly to get. And my boss is like, I was like, Let me paint one hot. Like just let me paint one hot in those spots real quick. And he’s like, No, it’ll get too heavy. And, you know, because there’s like textured, it was like BC 47 or something from Cardinal. And I’m like, Just let me do it, dude. And I did one and he’s like, Oh my God. And I’m like, See? I got to stack it more and it looks more healthier.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:01:43) – But then I’d figured out like, I could go in like, you know, say I had ten of them on a cart. I couldn’t get them all hot. But like, you’d be surprised with like how you can the whole shaking thing I’ve got away from over the years and like coming into these new guns, like these new guns have so much. This this cloud of electricity that you work with and there’s sharp edges to it. If you know where to point your gun and you can kind of like, okay, you can kind of come into things and then pull the trigger and then come out and then whip and do certain things with like, you know, regular fan tip. Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:02:18) – It sounds like you’ve been a deep study on that.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:02:21) – Oh, yeah. And it’s pretty it’s pretty tricky. And that’s just from time. That’s time and experience of, you know, hours of being in the booth, you know, nonsense. And those those were the the days that I honestly, I don’t miss that.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:02:33) – I don’t miss the, the hustle and bustle of it, because those are the days that I was ignoring the science. Those are the days that I was listening to podcasts just to get me through the day. You know, like that looks jumpy enough. Like after it comes out and I’m milled out, fine, I’m cool. You know, like I was just at that point of life in this industry. I was just like a robot, you know, And I felt like a number and I was getting paid good. But there’s there’s a lot of things that that fall into it.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:03:00) – Yeah, you have a way of explaining things into the the subtleties that I think even my husband has a hard time talking about. And it’s, you know, it was when we were teaching our employee, you know, those, those subtleties, you know, and the confidence, you know, just get in there, get in there. And it’s like.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:03:22) – The best thing that I can say for anybody is like, you’re not going to learn from doing it right.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:03:27) – Like you’re going to fuck shit up. And like, at the end of the day, that’s what makes you a better painter is if you can fix that, if you can sand it down and recode it with no issues because guess what? You’re going to have an issue recoating. If you can’t code it properly the first time, you know, like and those are the things you know. But it’s I just encourage even like employer employers or if they have a coater that’s, you know, getting frustrated and stuff, just like give him time, let him figure it out, you know, And like that’s the thing. Like in those, in those instances like I had at the very first job that I had, I had a boss that was like my favorite boss that taught me the most. And in the instance of like not giving a fuck and just doing it and getting in there and figuring it out like he didn’t tell me, like, this is your error, this is your power, this is this.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:04:11) – He was like, this does this. This does this. This does this. Figure it out. And he gave me he gave me eight years to figure it out. And I learned, you know, and like. Right. But then I went to other shops and you don’t have that time like you don’t have that time to figure it out, your.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:04:26) – Margins, because they have, you know, and that’s why you got a 50.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:04:31) – When you got a 50 foot oven, that’s a fire breathing dragon. And if there ain’t 50 grand pumping out of that fucker every, you know, ten hours, you’re losing money. Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:04:41) – And they don’t have that time to waste on mistakes and stuff. And I can understand totally, you know, this is great. We’re talking about this because you can totally understand that. Um, but I, I resort back to those original scientists, mad scientist that came out with the powder coating and, you know, gamer and Fortnite and all of that stuff that came out of that out of 99 podcast because that’s where I.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:05:16) – I gravitate to write those people. That’s the stuff.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:05:19) – That, like, need to know about and I don’t know about yet.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:05:22) – They were experimenting every day and it was like, Talk about hustle. Yeah, they were trying to beat out the other guy because there were patterns on the line. There were industries to. Yeah. And I mean probably more under the gun back in the 50s and 60s than we are today. We definitely have more of a privilege because it’s out there. And yet, you know, as big as the coating industry is, we’re still a small, small part of it that’s supposed to be, you know, I’m excited because I don’t think these powder coaters understand even the garage guys. Shout out to you guys. You need to understand that we’re about ready to double double how much money this industry is going to produce in the next 7 to 10 years. Double.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:06:18) – That’s what that was like. I had a lot of insight on magazine.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:06:21) – That was.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:06:23) – That. A lot of insight on that last year.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:06:26) – At the tail end of my, you know, my industrial career. That was like the big thing with where I was living in Idaho at the time. That’s like the big boom city right now. And they’re supposed to be, you know, they’re expecting another 50,000 people moving in that area. Guess what? That’s housing developments. That’s that’s more numbers in handrail footage than you can fucking put your mind on like. Right. Right at that. At that point, it was I walked into a shop that. He put millions of dollars into this shop and didn’t know how to run it. And I walked in and I’m just like, I remember the first day I walked in and I ran like ten carts in like an hour for him. And he looked at me and he was like, How did anybody ever let you walk out their door? And I said, I guess you’ll figure that out in a couple of months or a couple of years, you know? And that’s that’s just the, you know, the severity of it.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:07:18) – Yeah, it’s definitely evolving. Think it’s good evolving, but, you know, it’s not without, um. You know, it’s not without its drama. You know, it’s not about.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:07:34) – Talk about an industry full of drama that you don’t hear about. Right. It’s like there’s so much drama, But I don’t it’s just it’s fucking hilarious.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:07:44) – And how do you, you know, had this issue last week with Tiger? It’s like, how do you. How do I. Tell. This corporate guy.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:07:59) – You don’t. You just let him fall on his face because at the end of the day, that’s what’s going to happen. Fuck fuck me for saying it. But somebody got you through.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:08:10) – And I explained it to him. He didn’t get it. I explained it again, and I’m thinking, Am I just not saying this right? Or are you that derpy? And, you know.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:08:20) – Like, you got to look at it in the aspect of like, look at America and look at what paint companies are on the West Coast and look at what paint companies are on the East Coast.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:08:30) – Tiger Dry Lake and PG and Axel Noble, they rule the East Coast and there’s not much you’re not seeing what we’re doing. You’re not seeing the severity of just the sheer passion and and and and skill of people that you do on the West Coast. And with you guys going into Hawaii that you do on the East Coast. East coast is they’re big, big money shops. They’re big production shops. It’s just big box paint. So and that’s that’s where like what you’re saying, we’re breaking that mold and, you know, it might be six months from now, it might be a year to now. But like at the end of the day, I think, you know, it’s like the companies that are on the West Coast are more towards, you know, the center of the states like Columbia Coatings and prismatic, And you got Cardinal in Washington and California and Vegas now. But Cardinals, you know, a big box company. But I’ve worked a lot with cardinal They’ll send you £5 of paint.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:09:26) – They’ll they’re very, very awesome with their technicals and a lot of their blacks, a lot of their whites. You can spray that stuff hot and you don’t have to worry about it running like that. Stuff like BC all that stuff’s formulated to be sprayed hot and cold like, right? There’s so much like and that’s the thing that kind of bugs me about Cardinal is like they have such a good base for colors like black gloss, black silvers, you know, charcoal grays. Like if you can’t get your hands on ifs, which I mean, if you can get your hands on ifs, I would suggest it because it sprays so nice. Yeah. But, you know, that’s at the end of the day, it’s like if it’s if it’s cost effective, if their shipping is on point, you know, there’s a lot of variables that roll into where you’re pulling paint from and if you’re getting. You’re getting like bad feedback from certain colors, you know, like I get sometimes I get bad feedback from, like, Jack Black from Prismatic.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:10:22) – Right? Think they think the one big thing that’s holding back these bigger companies is the fact that they don’t have e-commerce sites. Yeah, and it’s very expensive to build that out and it’s not been on their radar and it should be 100% priority number one. Make it. Well, it’s.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:10:44) – Like prismatic put it out there and everybody’s face you guys could be selling small amounts and be making a fucking killing off of it, especially if your product is good. Like at the end of the day, if I would if I could pay ten bucks to get a pound of just something from Cardinal from their website, you bet your ass I would. Yeah, you know what I mean? But at the end of the day, certain companies just, you know, they’re stuck in their old ways.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:11:12) – I think the think the pandemic has helped them understand that, although I think the majority of what they’ve been more worried about versus e-commerce is just logistics and getting making sure that their product and.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:11:26) – That it’s going to go.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:11:27) – Is working. And that’s what’s definitely been an issue in this in this whole thing and what makes it slightly different than other recessions. But, you know, I think that it’s expensive to start on the level that they’re at with the size of their company, the size of their websites to build out an e-commerce site. Even if they could just do a separate it could even just be a separate website.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:11:55) – Yeah, a separate entity. You know, like I don’t see like even Cardinal and PG, they already have the format. They already sell custom colors, you know, like they already have somewhat of what these other big box companies don’t have. I don’t see why they’re not like. Here. Like here’s the like.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:12:16) – Said, don’t think it’s on their radar and.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:12:18) – Like, have you seen this new color changing stuff that all of a sudden just popped up in the last month? Like, you know how long I’ve been waiting for those five color changing colors that just hit powder? Like we’ve been waiting ten plus years for that.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:12:31) – Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:12:32) – Yeah. Um, is that the tiger one?

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:12:36) – Yeah, Tiger just did one. And I seen powder by the pound has one, but we all know they buy and sell everybody else’s powder.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:12:43) – And I went to SEMA 360. It was sort of a non-event. Um, from what I’m hearing about the participate participant. Yeah.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:12:54) – Was like curious about that and like, I didn’t really see anything.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:12:58) – Like it was probably the most expensive. Experiment ever done.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:13:05) – In the car industry? For sure. That’s everybody. That’s everybody out there on a limb, though, Like that’s that invests into that show. You got to think about it like Foose and all these wheel companies and all these tire companies and all these paint companies seem as what keeps us alive at the end.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:13:20) – Well, I think part of it was that the week of SEMA was the same week as the presidential. Yeah, the.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:13:27) – Election. Well, I mean, even even, you know, like you you have social media platforms.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:13:34) – You saw a drop in a serious drop in the last two weeks in activity than anything.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:13:41) – Yeah. And you know.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:13:43) – Unless you hashtag like fucking some politician bullshit like you weren’t showing up in the algorithm that week.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:13:52) – Right. So I think timing wise, that was not a good time to have an online event. And then, you know, the content seemed interesting. Of course, I was in Hawaii, so I was already missing the live stuff. But yeah, you could attend the webinar after just like any other webinar. They’d hold it up there. But then and so I was excited that, okay, I missed it this week because of all the, you know, crazy stuff going on business and the politics and all of that. And then I go back like a day later after the event, like, think it ended on the sixth, then it went on the seventh and all the webinars were gone. Like, leave that shit up. I’ve already paid to go, Leave it up.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:14:37) – Why leave it up for a month? Leave it up for a year, Who cares? You know, it’s not.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:14:41) – Like we can go and shake each other’s hands right now.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:14:44) – You can’t even click on the website now it’s just gone. And I’m like crazy. I could go back any time I want now and listen to anything that anybody said. And there was some good topics. They were topics about trends. There was talking topics about rims, there was topics, you know, and, you know, I just went there as I got in as press mean, my God, it took me an hour to come up with all the stuff that they wanted in order for me to qualify as press, you know, and then to zip it off and make it go bye bye just because the event was over. Like, what is this? You know, you could have people all over the world watch this 24 over seven every day of the week. All they got to do is just pay a small entrance fee.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:15:31) – So what, you’re not there at the lives. Anyways, I did talk to some of the Tiger guys that were there and they were saying it was just a big bus. But then I noticed when I went to search I was just assuming Prismatic is going to be there and they weren’t. So if anything, that should have, you know, let Tiger know that they shouldn’t be in it either because they were the only powder code or the crazy.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:15:54) – Thing that like the shit that cracks me up about them at like expos. Like, I’ve never got to go to an expo and experience it, but like, to see their booth and they have like fucking 3600 colors on the wall and you’re like, Dude, 90% of us ain’t going to try to figure out how you formulated that certain teal. Like you’re crazy.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:16:16) – Right? Right. Just give me the teal, right?

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:16:19) – Yeah, yeah. Just give me the teal, or I’ll just buy the next one over. That looks somewhat close enough, and I’ll just go a little darker.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:16:26) – Right? Yeah.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:16:27) – I got a I got a quick tip for you. If you guys are ever doing, like a candy red or a candy blue and you’re having a hard time with it, you know, if you’re just spraying like an actual candy instead of an illusion. I’ve been doing Cadillac gray first. And. And then, like, go like 80% cure on the Cadillac gray and then come into it with the candy red or the blue or green or or whatever else and then go full cure. It is so deep and rich and you don’t have to worry about like the pink. And.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:16:59) – Yeah, whereas I was having problems with brassy gold.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:17:03) – Yeah, that’s a good one.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:17:05) – And I wanted to bring it up here. Let me see if I can bring up the.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:17:11) – Is it going copper on you?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:17:15) – Um, no, it was running, It wasn’t staying. And it was like, are we having a Faraday? Because it’s small parts, right? And it’s break break handles for some Decoutere don’t know.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:17:29) – Or some kind of motorcycle. The guys from Oahu. So, you know, it’s a big deal when we get these.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:17:36) – Jobs off.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:17:37) – From other islands, you know, we want to impress them and.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:17:42) – What are you using for a base or are you going over like raw substrate?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:17:47) – Ross was using the new Prismatic Chrome two. Okay. Because that was what was suggested and so we’d already wanted to try it anyways. And anyways, so I want to bring this up and share it because it’s Steve from Okinawa and I know I keep bringing Steve up. He’s just so awesome. Where’s his So it he posted brassy gold same week but he did a rim and let me share my screen because it’s absolutely beautiful work and everybody should be. Everybody should follow Steve. He’s in Okinawa. He’s awesome. And every time he just seems to be improving his work over and over and over again.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:18:39) – Helene.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:18:41) – Yeah, he is. He has stepped it up a notch.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:18:46) – He is in for a gun.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:18:48) – Uh oh, It’s.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:18:50) – I did see it. Here. Hold on. He just did one here. Nordson. Look at that.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:18:56) – Oh, he’s using an encore.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:18:57) – It’s surprised me. He was using Nordson. And he doesn’t say that.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:19:02) – You know, it’s. I’ve been. That’s the only gun I haven’t got a spray with is the newer nordson stuff.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:19:08) – Yeah. Think I’m going to have him on the show. Okay, Steve, I know you listen to the podcast, you’re invited. I’m going to message you today. But he was helping me out with Ross Ross. If this is just two, three tiny little things, I mean, it’s crazy. He’s redundant 2 or 3 times.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:19:26) – Well, so like, the biggest thing is, is is he going full cure on the chrome?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:19:30) – No. What? Here’s what I showed Ross this this post today and told him that I talked to Steve about what he used on this rim and he said Chrome, a chrome chroma chrome. What is that.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:19:46) – It might be tiger dry like.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:19:48) – I don’t know. So I. I messaged him, but he hasn’t messaged me back.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:19:52) – But Cardinal. Cardinal does a pretty decent chrome, too.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:19:57) – Yeah, we usually use tiger chrome, but we want to come to you.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:20:04) – I got to do. I did a whole barber chair with it and I went I went like fucking 20 minutes over here on it. And then I cleared it. And then I went from like. I think I went 25 minutes on the clear. And it was fine, but it still goes gray.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:20:24) – Yeah. So Ross looked at this video and he goes, You know what? I bet. Um, it’s the prismatic room, and it’s the first time he was using the new chrome tube. And I bet you it’s. I don’t know. You know that chrome from Prismatic? It’s temperamental.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:20:45) – It’s, uh. It makes me curious of. Because, like. Okay, so with super chrome one, they were suggesting at nuke the shit at 450 degrees and going forward, you’re.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:20:55) – Right.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:20:57) – That you’re fucking burning the shit out of it at that point. Like. Like, I mean, God damn, we might as well just go grab a chrome wheel and clear it and clear it and cook it for 12 minutes at that point. But you know what I mean. It’s just like it’s the, it’s the it’s that color where you’re like. I’m going to give you what I can give you. And if this is what satisfies you, then I’m fucking stoked. At the other end, you’re like, it’s chemically, it’s not. You can’t do it. It’s just we’ve I mean, how many years have we been spraying this shit? How many renditions have we sprayed? And we all fall for the damn same joke again. It’s going to look like chrome. You know, the only thing coming out looking like chrome after you clear everything is the damn hooks you used to hang this shit with. But I mean, at least it looks. At least it’s. Yeah, At least it’s not orange.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:21:51) – Peel your shit this time.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:21:55) – Yeah. Oh, man, that could be a whole nother podcast. Maybe that’s what we talk about if we get the whole group together right now.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:22:05) – Now. Okay, so a lot of people think that I had, like, this huge thing on my paint booth at Precision when I was there, and it was like this Sherman Williams like guide to troubleshooting. And it was almost comical to me because like some of the things of that, Oh, I think I do. I was like looking through it for through my phone the other day and I was like, I swear to God, I have a picture of this thing somewhere. But if you have Sherman Williams available or if you have a Sherman Williams rep, say, Hey, can I have one of your guys’s troubleshooting posters for powder.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:22:40) – Coating if they reply to my email?

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:22:43) – Oh fuck, it’s hilarious.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:22:45) – Answer the phone.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:22:46) – Like they’re talking about like, you know, if you have, you know, like how you have your pass through and your gun and then it get kinks right there and you’ll get build up inside there if you don’t clean it out and stuff.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:22:58) – They’re talking about debris coming out of your gun. If you don’t clean it and you’re like, this is like one one like powder coating 101, like, did you not blow your gun out five colors ago? Like, it’s pretty funny.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:23:15) – Yeah, I think it’s going to change. I have a feeling if we shout out loud, loud enough, you know.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:23:22) – I was could get from Cardinal on this.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:23:26) – I bet I could tell you I was literally shouting on Friday last not this past Friday, but Friday before. I just was like. You don’t know me, you don’t know custom coaters and you don’t even know what you’re doing. And they weren’t even watching the videos is what I got. And they weren’t even aware. And they thought it was a funny thing that the prismatic versus Tiger thing was cool. Oh, that.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:23:57) – Shit got my blood boiling. I was was like.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:24:00) – How dare you bash prison? You okay? Okay. I’m not prismatic.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:24:05) – I’m not trying to talk shit or knock somebody’s fucking hustle.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:24:09) – But at the end of the day, when you badmouth ink black or if you just badmouth any gloss black at that point because you’re not getting coverage, maybe you should learn how to fucking spray and set up the gun right at the end of the day, rounded properly. Then you might not have those problems.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:24:28) – Just saying and he was saying how flashing the light in there. And it’s like, Dude, you didn’t even cover in there. What are you saying? It’s a bad, bad.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:24:37) – That’s why that’s like you can’t bad mouth something if you didn’t like get coverage.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:24:42) – Yeah I know.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:24:44) – Like if I’m doing a set of wheels and they’re like a solid wheel and they’re not a custom color and they’re like, semi-gloss black. You bet your ass I’m hot coating them and then I’m going to coat them again.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:24:53) – You go back to that video and this is what I brought up. You go back to that video where he’s hitting it with a gun and running it down the road. Oh, whatever it was he was doing.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:25:04) – I mean.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:25:04) – I saw some of that on Instagram last night and I’m just like.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:25:08) – Okay, so you you look at that and they thought, oh, wow. Well, they’re using Tiger. How what what harm could it do? And I’m like, don’t you don’t even understand. You stop the video. And you look, this is something that John and I were talking about because we were watching it together and he was like, look at this video. And I’m like, you look at this. You look at the rim, it’s barely got any mil on there. Like it’s barely coated.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:25:35) – Yeah. If I’m doing wheels, I want it job. Yeah, I want it like a mil above spec. At least I’m going out the.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:25:44) – Door thin it is mean. Everybody go back to that video and stop it and look at how thin that is coated. It’s not even coated properly and I don’t know, whatever. It’s just silly. But you know, if they want to pander to silliness and stuff like that or, you know, then.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:26:04) – Guess at the end of the day. At the end of the day, if.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:26:07) – You look what he’s doing, that he’s that he’s infuriating the custom coaters, the legit guys that are out there, the professionals.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:26:14) – I’ve spent 11 years of my life getting to this point. Like at the end of the day, I’ve spent 11 years of my life getting to this point to be able to even talk to somebody in the industry, you know what I mean? Like outside of dealing with reps, Like that’s, that’s like, yeah, okay, that’s the industry. But like at the end of the day, like if we have a platform to speak on, right, like I feel like my word in your word speaks way more louder than a rep is going to because the rep is going to get shut down by a multi, you know, a CEO. Like at the end of the day, you know, it’s we’re the people doing the actual work. You know it’s yeah we’re the people and.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:26:50) – I feel insulted. I know you do. Yeah.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:26:53) – It’s the end of the day. It’s like I’ve, I’ve spent, you know, my even my whole career in the industrial side of things. I spent my whole, my whole goal was to make liquid painters look like shit. At the end of the day, that’s been my whole goal because my brother’s a liquid painter. My brother’s been a collision car painter. He’s been a hot rod painter. My brothers painted multimillion dollar paint jobs on boats like. Right. And my brother is like, I’ve aspired my finish to look tight and glassy like his, you know? And at the end of the day, there’s a lot of that. There’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears that rolls into that. There’s a lot of knowledge that rolls into paint that you’re flying out. There’s a lot of knowledge that, you know, where is your your power and what’s your oven doing. A lot of people don’t understand like how much the oven plays in, you know, and if your oven’s not clean, you’re not going to get a clean product.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:27:44) – Yeah. Yeah. I you know, I see. I see the upside and I see it changing and evolving rapidly. And I think that I hope that the podcast just helps people. That’s all I want to do. I’m not making at the moment not making any money. I do have one advertiser and I hope to get many more because it does take a lot of time and effort to put to to produce it. You know.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:28:12) – Think once, you know, as time goes on, I mean, think about it. You’re, what, three months into this. You know about and. You know, give it another three months, give it another like just a year. And like, you’re going to be surprised by the people that are going to come on and the things that are going to get said and just the things we’re going to learn. But you got to think of it’s only going to be a matter of time until Wagner wants to get on here and talk and, you know, or even other people.

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:28:40) – And that’s the thing that’s like, I feel like these companies, they want to be out in there and they want to be, you know, conversing all this stuff. But I feel like a lot of these companies don’t understand how to and with like how media is.

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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.22.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]​RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:28:54) – Is No, you know what the problem is? It’s it’s people that are, you know, the that have been in the industry that are just you know they’re they’ve worked for the company for so long and they’re they’re enthusiasts and they do want to share their information. They are passionate about what they do. They’ve worked for the company for. And but the problem is, is it gets trickled. Unfortunately, they’re not the ones that we want to talk to, the ones we want to ask questions to, the ones we want to get answers from are not the ones that are readily available. It’s sales reps. And that’s the problem. Um, you know that is with these corporations is we don’t want to talk to the marketing guy, we.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:29:39) – Don’t want to talk to you want to talk to like the chemist Clint from fucking Cardinal guy.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:29:44) – That’s formulating the powder. We want to talk to the guy that’s shooting out of the gun and testing the gun or creating a new feature, or. We want to talk to those guys.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:29:53) – Yeah. Speaking of that new feature, have you seen, uh, Norton just came out with a gun with a light on top.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:30:00) – Mhm.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:30:01) – Yeah. No, if you go to like the Norton Instagram page, there’s they just rolled out a newer gun that has a light on top.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:30:12) – Norton has a Instagram.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:30:16) – Yeah, it’s like Norton. So it’s like a partnering company with Norton. So I think act. So like act. They do. Like, I think they also build something. Oh, yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:30:27) – Wait, it just came up and there it is.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:30:32) – Yeah, I got big love for Norton because there were the guns that I first learned on, and those old school versus spray twos were like. Relentless.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:30:41) – You could, like, drown that tip of that gun into, like, Faraday areas and it wouldn’t make the paint react. It was the weirdest gun. Like, you could get away with murder with that gun.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:30:51) – Which video is it?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:30:54) – I. Yeah. See? Look it right there. The second row down there it is. The encore and light.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:30:58) – Oh, you know what? I think I did see it. They post so early. By the time I wake up, I don’t, you know, I don’t see it. I have to actually go to there.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:31:06) – That and that switch. Look at how they have like the whole white piece is probably like the trigger. But then there’s that black piece up in the top of that switch. I wonder if.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:31:15) – Yeah, Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:31:17) – I wonder what that’s for. I wonder if that’s for like, extra air to, like, get like your tip cleaned out and enlightened. There’s some. There’s just like the technology with guns that’s coming out today.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:31:30) – I get so excited, but then I’m like, Oh wait, you’re probably going to be ten grand. Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:31:36) – Yeah. Well, Ross just, you know, not, you know, that’s actually kind of a really simple solution. Um, he ended up just doing the full Led and I don’t, I don’t know if I think I posted it on my Instagram. Um, let me go back to my page.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:31:56) – Do you know anything about Luma Light? They make lights for liquid guns.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:32:02) – No. You mean like guns?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:32:05) – Yeah. VLP guns. So, like any of your Iwata or any of your Zetas, they make Led lights that screw behind the tip of the gun. And I talked to them a couple of weeks ago and they said they got something coming out in the new year for powder coating.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:32:23) – I didn’t post this. I don’t know why I didn’t post this, but let me look good. Yeah, he’s. Everybody likes red here. Yeah, Red.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:32:34) – Is a black. You don’t want to know how many pounds of candy red I go through.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:32:39) – Oh, I know. It’s just a hot color. Don’t know.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:32:42) – Don’t even order candy red anymore. I prefer deep red candy because then you can avoid some of the issues that you would have with, like, candies and having to spray it twice.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:32:55) – Well, the lollipop thread is nice. Yeah, this is. This is cherry.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:33:02) – Mm hmm. Um.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:33:05) – This diamond. Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:33:07) – So you could make that cherry with you put, um, the Cadillac gray down and then just any candy right over it. Interesting. Yeah. And you come up with a nice, really rich, deep candy Red.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:33:20) – I wanted to show you a picture of the, um. He’s so proud of this. Of course, it doesn’t look this clean now, but let me see if I can. I’ll stop sharing. And then we keep talking. I’m going to bring up this picture, um, because. The problem with our shop is. Okay, so we had a small shop, just like everybody always needs more room in their shop.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:33:45) – Right? But what are you going to do? Because you need to make your. Business bigger. You need to have bigger equipment and then all of a sudden you run out of space. So we thought moving over here to the bigger part of the island and being closer to our customer base, we’ll get a bigger shop. All our problems will be solved. And then Covid happened and then that just went out. But instead of, you know, instead of downsizing in his mind for equipment, he kept the size. He went bigger in his mind. But the shop size really wasn’t. It’s only like, well, it’s only like 102, 200ft² bigger than what we had before. So the problem is, is everything in here is giant. It’s just giant, but there’s no room shop floor space to work or that.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:34:35) – Was what it was like when I walked into precision and it was like the Taj Mahal of powder coating, you know? And then six months into the job, I’m the only painter that’s walked in at the time that’s pushing, you know, making this place stay alive.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:34:50) – And then guess what? There ain’t no fucking floor space in this place anymore because you got so much stuff you’re doing.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:34:56) – Oh, my God. He didn’t downsize his mind, right? You know, you only kept it big.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:35:02) – So, yeah, even.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:35:03) – Got a look. It’s just kind of funny, you know, We’re in this. I don’t want to say just. It’s not a dysfunctional space.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:35:13) – These were. This is some of the bigger stuff that I was doing last year. That’s the booth that I was in.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:35:21) – Oh, wait, let me see. Hold on. I got a I went out. I opened up this. Hold on. I’m just. Oh, wow. That is huge. Whoa. That’s giant stuff. Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:35:31) – And I would do that whole thing hot and then come back and recode it. Wow. So that thing would be preheating in my oven at 420 degrees because it’s so big. And like, the plates on it are just so thick that you’re just trying to get it to get up to 400.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:35:47) – So I would get it up to, you know, 420, let it sit there for 20 minutes. And then by the time I could get it out of the oven and then pushed into my booth, I would just start spraying it hot and it’d be at like probably 403 50 and I could get the whole thing done hot and then come back and do it cold. Wow. And then put it in the oven. And I would do like three of those a day on top of like push and handrail in between. And I got some crazy videos I’ll have to send you day. Yeah. I would come home and just be done with the wall. Yeah like it was I’d start at five in the morning and sometimes I wouldn’t get home till two in the morning the next day like, and I was the only painter at this shop like that was, it was really, it was a really a. It was a really fun time, but it was also a very like I felt like I was taken advantage of and a lot of other things.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:36:37) – Like once I get into like my story and shit, I’ll tell you. Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:36:42) – Okay. Let me show you the booth here. This is what it turned out to be. Can you see that?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:36:49) – Oh, man.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:36:51) – Yeah. He’s very proud of this.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:36:54) – So nice gun.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:36:55) – Yeah, he’s a Wagner guy.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:36:57) – Heck, yes. I love Ross now.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:37:02) – But these are 4500 looms led.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:37:08) – He didn’t want any in the ceiling, Huh?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:37:11) – This is so bright. You don’t need it.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:37:15) – I’ve always been curious about spraying in a booth that has cross lighting like that instead of ceiling lit.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:37:22) – Well, the reason why he did it like this, because we used to just have just a ceiling light in the booth. So we converted a six by six spray booth that we owned for years when we have our refinishing business. Yeah. And you guys.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:37:38) – Made it into your open face booth.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:37:40) – Yeah, we created. And then hope I can zoom in. Let me zoom in, because people have asked us what this stuff is, and I didn’t get a chance to respond to what Ross bought, but it’s a special kind of.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:37:59) – Like the sack filters.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:38:00) – Yeah, that. That’s what it is.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:38:02) – Yeah. They’re like, you pull out the whole square, but then it’s got like. They go back quite a ways.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:38:08) – Yeah. Um, of course there’s a bigger. Well, it’s not a bigger engine. I’m not engine, but, um. Fan motor. Yeah, fan motor. It’s the same that we had before. But I’ll tell you this. He bought these and laid them up like this because of the long, linear architectural jobs and gates and railings that we do. But, man, what a difference.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:38:33) – And I’d love I would love to come out there and spray like a bunch of gates and stuff with you guys because that’s like I used to do so much of that kind of work when I was younger and just to like, it’s.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:38:44) – A whole nother game. It’s mean.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:38:46) – I can show you how to paint a gate like a huge driveway gate in less than 30 minutes.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:38:52) – Yeah. Wow. That’s amazing because it can be awkward.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:38:57) – And then how do you know when you’re a job shop like us? How do you switch your game from. Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:39:03) – That was that was like a big thing when I was when I was a lead coater, it was like I was very, you know, like being the lead coater. You have to set the tone in the shop. And if you’re kind of like the person that, you know, kind of just shuts down and kind of is quiet, you’re going to be taking advantage of that aspect of like, let’s say I’m paying, I’m painting something that I have to spray zinc primer down and then I have to flash it just until it’s going wet and then pull it out and then start getting top coat on it. And then, you know, the fucking dude from the office comes in and he tells me, I got to get off this job and get on this job. Okay, You know how frustrating that is as a coater to fucking just flip on a dime and be like, Oh yeah, I’m not stressed out now.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:39:49) – I got to blow my gun out and clean this 50 foot fucking booth out and totally change the operation of what my brain’s computing, what my gun is telling me to do and right. And that’s like I’m super manuals.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:40:03) – There’s two different manuals going on in your head, you know. Yeah, that’s what you have to. And I never knew that, you know, I’m kind of the one that drives the sales and do this. Do you know I’m.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:40:13) – That’s like, let’s say you’re going from just black and then somebody wants you to do some candy job. You’re like, Here comes the anxiety, you know, like.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:40:22) – Right, Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:40:23) – I found myself.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:40:25) – And now I do.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:40:26) – I found myself even like at the top of my game, you know, day in, day out. And, you know, in a real shop, I found myself like, let’s say like, like the big wild mint that I just showed you that I painted. And it’s sitting in the oven getting hot for me.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:40:40) – Like I would be going stir crazy because I’m just like, itching. I’m like, ready to just get color on this thing, you know? And like, you’re just so excited. And sometimes your emotions and your anxiety and your excitement gets the best of you. Some days, you know, I’m like, Yeah. And then you pull that out and it’s not hot enough or, you know, it’s those are the those things kind of got, you know, can get the best of you. But that’s why I like doing what I do now with the custom side of things is because everything’s on my own time, you know, like I can spend up to six hours on one tube, you know what I mean? Like, and that’s that’s a lot of time and that’s a lot of energy going into something so small. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think I’ve, I try to pride myself in, you know, making somebody look at what I do and being like, No, dude, he’s using paint.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:41:26) – And at the end of the day, guess what? I ain’t using any paint. Zero paint.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:41:30) – It’s hard to tell, you know?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:41:33) – And prismatic.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:41:34) – When I saw them originally, I was like, Wait, is he painting those or, you know, And then I realized it’s powder. I mean, it took me a while to kind of I went through several of your Instagram posts and there’s only.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:41:48) – One job on there that I did airbrushing on and then cleared it with automotive Clear.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:41:53) – I’m going to go back because I want to share. I want to tell you what I want to show you. I’m not a vapor, but my favorite one is the Disney one. Yeah, those got taken.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:42:05) – Those got taken off the shelves. So I’m partnered up. That’s Merle’s mods. They’re out of the UK and I partnered up with them to make my own signature tube. Yeah. And they did a bunch of like, Disney dope ones and we went crazy on them. And he’s like, Dude, we can’t post these now because I think we’re going to get too much attention.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:42:23) – Yeah, that could be. Um.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:42:26) – But like, all I said is like, yeah, I totally understand. I really respect that. But at the end of the day, I feel like, you know, me and you aren’t this big company that’s really making that much noise toward Disney is going to come out and sue us.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:42:40) – This is mean. It’s like, well, first of all, you know, Disney’s. If you follow like a lot of the crazy conspiracy stuff, you know, like Disney connection there. Yep. And and then it wasn’t just mean you didn’t realize how many kooky crazy.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:43:02) – Oh, there’s like Alice in there. There’s the Mad Hatter in there. Like if you go.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:43:07) – Oh, yeah, the Mad Hatter. Okay. Yeah, I’m going to go to the video. But this one right here, the, the, the is the Pinocchio one, you know, And then there’s Mowgli. I mean. Oh, yeah, mostly. That’s right.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:43:23) – Then there’s the Indians smoking the hash pipe.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:43:27) – I mean, it’s nuts, right?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:43:30) – That’s just simple. The black and white inlay. That’s super simple.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:43:34) – Yeah, I love that. The black and white is my favorite one. Me too.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:43:38) – Like black and white. It’s my favorite. That’s even when I have on my Mac.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:43:41) – Clear on that or.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:43:42) – No, that’s so that’s just soft satin white and Jack Black from prismatic.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:43:47) – Oh, okay. All right.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:43:49) – So if you guys are curious on those two, they go perfect together, sheen wise.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:43:53) – And so this guy created the graphic. Is that what it is?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:43:57) – So the company Merle’s mods they’re out of the UK they do they are the ones that actually machined the tube and do the engraving and then they have a team of artists throughout the whole world that do a bunch of stuff for us. Wow.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:44:11) – It’s, you know.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:44:13) – Keep going down. This is like this is like just cookie cutter stuff. But if you keep going down. Um, to.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:44:23) – That’s a nice combo.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:44:25) – Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:44:25) – The candy red with silver vein. Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:44:29) – Whoa.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:44:30) – That’s the one that the fire one with. That’s done with airbrush. And then I cleared it with automotive. Clear. But that is a black powder coat base. And that that coke cooler is pretty classy. Did that? Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:44:46) – That’s cool.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:44:48) – And then. Wow.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:44:49) – Look at that one.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:44:51) – Yeah. That’s just my brother’s pinstriping work. There’s some of the RS I’ve done. Mhm. That’s a big.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:44:58) – Is this with powder or.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:45:00) – Yeah. That’s all powder. That’s a big that’s cool. That’s a big uh, fart gone over in church every time I do again.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:45:07) – Yeah. And then it looks like Malbec.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:45:12) – Yep, That’s Malbec. I did that on, like, a little. Toolbox kind of thing for my brother.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:45:17) – Whoa, That’s cool.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:45:19) – Yeah, that. That’s like a faded black pink. And then I flip flop the engravings on the inlay.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:45:28) – Wow. Wow.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:45:33) – Zero liquid.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:45:37) – Ashton. That’s amazing.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:45:38) – Did you see those rocket racing wheels? I did.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:45:42) – No.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:45:43) – Yeah. Keep going. Oh, wow. There you go.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:45:47) – Okay. Didn’t get. Wow. That’s nice. That’s.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:45:50) – That’s my first set of two tone wheels I’ve ever got to do. You know how long You know how long I’ve been dreaming about doing that.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:46:00) – Those are nice colors that you used.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:46:03) – So that’s misty root beer from prismatic and then Yankee gold.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:46:09) – Nice. Did you put it up on your prismatic page? Do you have one?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:46:14) – I think I do. But I, like you guys are saying something about it. In one of the episodes that I was watching. I need to go in and do some of that stuff.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:46:21) – I’m going to do. I’m getting ready to do a podcast or I don’t know if it’s a podcast really, but it’s it’s like a tutorial. Guess I’m going to I’m going to start kind of doing more different kinds of content other than just the podcast.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:46:36) – Yeah, you guys have definitely inspired me to kind of like come out of my shell and post like lives or videos of me what I’m doing.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:46:43) – Like with like the tubes and stuff. Like, I’ve just. I don’t know. I felt like I needed to, like, stay quiet for a while because I didn’t want people to, like, steal my my ideas just yet. And I feel like now, like even just coming on the show, like I felt like now I’m confident enough. And I feel that I have, you know, quite the backlog of work that I.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:47:04) – You know, if.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:47:05) – Anything, trying to come out now, you know what I mean, and be in the industry and just kind of show my work off to like I’ve kind of just kept it behind. And even locally, I don’t really I do a lot of work locally for like antique restoration and stuff like that, but I just haven’t really hit the pavement to, you know, have people banging down my door just yet because I want to be. Really ready for it. You know what I mean?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:47:30) – Like, well, isn’t that what’s so ironic about 710? And I’m not going to bash them any longer.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:47:37) – I’m over it. But here’s the thing. Most custom coaters like yourself, like Ross, like Shaun. And, you know, they’re humble people. They don’t go out and be bombastic and all this stuff. So that right there might tell you something about the kind of type of people we are. Um, we’re.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:48:01) – I’m just like, at the end of the day, like, before, I’m a powder coater, before I’m a husband. You know, I’m a father to two children. And that’s, that’s they’re the main driving force behind polymers powders. You know, like, I walked away from the industrial industry because. You know, I. I would get scrutinized because I had to stay home with my children because she was sick or my son had a doctor’s appointment. And, you know, bosses don’t like that. You know, they don’t like you when you’re making them money. They don’t want you out of there, like and that’s kind of what it came down to. And at that time, like that black and pink mod that I was showing you, that was I got a job from a big vape reviewer that’s from Australia.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:48:44) – And he he commissioned me to do like it was like 38 of those mods. So I did like 19 pink and then I did like 17 or so black. And that’s really what kind of set me up social media wise and like got my name out there, you know, within the vape industry to, to start doing custom work. So I was going to work, you know, full time spraying all damn day. And then I’d come home and I would do these mods and. After a while, it got to this point where so much noise is going off over here outside of work, and I’m just kind of like getting stressed, you know, like feeling like I’m taking advantage of, like, you know, I’m working. I was working almost six, seven days a week. I was working 10 to 12 hour if not 15 hour days, just depending on what what had to get done and how much the freaking boss bit off more than you can chew. And it was like, you know, I was I just said, fuck it.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:49:38) – And, you know, I grabbed everything. I walked in Sunday, grab my mask, grab my gun, and my boss is like, Where are you going? I said, I’m fucking leaving, dude. I’m done. I’m done. And I walked out and I never looked back. And at that, around that same time, my brother was just getting his shop and he was like, Come set up your bench and stuff in here. And he’s like, We can just share the shop together. And I was like, okay. So then at that same time I had bought in my bench top, set up my Columbia coatings, you know, cool coat booth and little tiny, you know, bench top set up. And that was going to be my new coating setup for my mods. So I ordered that. And then I got a little like impulsive because I was still making, you know, decent salary money for my real job. And I was like, Fuck it. I bought one of those optiflex two clones from the powder coating gun chick.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:50:35) – You know I trust you so much. She’s so rad. She helps me out a lot and ordered one of those guns and just been killing it ever since with that thing.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:50:45) – Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:50:46) – That was after my craftsman gun went because I was spraying all these mods with with a craftsman gun for like two years.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:50:53) – Wow. We started with the Eastwood thing, like, just.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:51:01) – I’m sorry.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:51:02) – Very beginning. Well, 180 bucks mean can’t beat that. It was 180 and we didn’t know. Again, you know, this was just hobby side, Right? Right. And just trying.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:51:16) – To figure out the concept of it.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:51:18) – Like.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:51:19) – Mind blowing. Even when you do it with like that gun and you may you may have done a tumbler or something for yourself and you’re just like.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:51:27) – Well, we were. We. Our shop was right next door to custom motorcycle shop. They did mostly customs and Harleys and stuff. Nice. And and I mean, we’ve told several stories and there are several stories to how we got into this business.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:51:43) – But one of them is that we just were convenient, you know? And so Ross had been looking, going to all the forums and stuff and, you know, so he decided to pull the trigger on. But, you know, I mean, our main thing was just refinishing and stuff. This is way well before the crash and all that. And so he started with that. And then of course, you know, that didn’t last very long. Um, and then, you know, we had the infrared or the, the propane lights or what do they call there on the stands?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:52:19) – Oh, the infrared lights.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:52:22) – The heat lamps.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:52:23) – Oh, God, those things scare me. Like, I remember I worked.

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RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:52:29) – For a paint shop with like, probably urethane and oh, I have, like.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:52:35) – I have, like, a nightmare. And sorry about those things.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:52:38) – I was worried. Right. Anyways, um, so we. And the reason why we started with that is because most of the air conditioning registers were, you know, that’s what we were getting, right? We had this one hotel that was renovating and, you know, we were, they had a special custom size made.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:52:58) – And so ordering was improbable or impossible to get something new and be reasonable. So we got into refinishing the registers and so we would have these heat lamps and some of these registers were like 30, 40in long. So literally, like we’d watch the powder flow out as we dropped the thing down, down, down, down, you know. And that was, you know, we didn’t have an oven. We didn’t have, you know, a nice cool gun or anything like that. Um, it was just crazy how, how we just made steps towards that and didn’t care what he was doing. I thought, Oh, this is just one of those other hobbies that he’s picked up and is another thing.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:53:48) – Another garage thing.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:53:50) – Yeah. You know, and of course he had a motor, he had a custom bike that he had bought off of somebody that for a real good deal. So of course, you know, he had his own project just like all the other guys that are getting started right now.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:54:02) – It’s a similar story. Um, and then we and then he decided to get serious and he bought a Wagner brand new $5,000. And I’m like, Whoa, this shit is expensive. This is insane gun that cost $99 at Home Depot. And, you know, well.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:54:22) – It’s even like I even make my brother laugh. Like he’s got $700,000, you know Ira’s and say to us that he does his work with. And I just laugh. I laugh at him and I’m like, Dude, I could buy like 5 or 6 of those things for the amount of one unit of mine.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:54:39) – Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, what happened was the Wagner was too complicated for him. Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:54:46) – So even to this day, even to this day, if he needs help, call me. I will answer any given damn time of the day and help you with that gun. Because that gun is so user friendly compared to what is actually now.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:54:59) – This is our second Wagner now. But. But he got scared using it because it was so complex.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:55:06) – So he went from Eastwood to Wagner, but then he got scared and something happened to it, like it brokered. I don’t know, some part, I don’t know. So he kind of shelved it and he bought the cool coat from Brian Alley because, you know, Columbia. Yeah. And we use that. That was a great intermediate kind of level.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:55:27) – It taught you how to to adjust your flow and your air and your powder. And it gave you like the basics of understanding what you’re watching. And that’s like the big thing is nobody really relays that information of what you actually want to see comparatively, what you don’t want to see, you know, and and and a lot of it actually it comes off a feel. You know, a lot of it comes off of field experience but. At the end of the day.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:55:52) – You know what? The jobs were just getting more complex. They were getting more, you know, and and and then, you know, of course, we ran that thing into the ground.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:56:01) – And then, you know, things started to pick, you know, get kind of, you know, just growth and everything. And that’s when we decided, okay, let’s get back to this. Wagner Let’s try to figure it out. What’s the problem? I know a lot more about caves and clouds and, you know, like all that.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:56:18) – The cool thing about that gun is it’s got slope adjustment.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:56:23) – Well, I don’t know how old this one was. This was like I want to say we bought it.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:56:28) – The one you guys got now in that spray booth.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:56:30) – That’s the new one. That’s. Yeah, that’s.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:56:31) – The sprint that’s got slope adjustment. You got, we got, you got every damn cool setting on that gun and it’s, it’s really honestly it’s user friendly and it’ll that gun will tell you if you’re setting like because what that gun is telling you is it’s telling you like how close you have your tip to your substrate. So even if you do have your setting wherever you want it, that gun’s going to dial down.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:56:56) – Even if you get like this close to the substrate, that gun is going to be like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’m going to come back down here where it’s safe. It’s. It’s pretty damn cool.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:57:07) – That is cool. I don’t I’m pretty sure he knows that. But I’ll. I’ll make sure he listens to what you just said. Um, yeah. He loves that gun. He loves it. But he.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:57:18) – Because you can also set up that gun to actually spray true to a conical tip because it’s got air adjustments for the tip and you can mimic try both through that gun.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:57:27) – Okay, So he’s now interested in trying comparing now he wants to try a a gamma or whatever, whatever they call it. And, um.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:57:39) – Yeah, I’m curious to try their new pro, the new Gamma Optiflex Pro. I’m curious to try it. But when it comes down to it and at the end of the day, there’s certain things about their pump that I don’t care about.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:57:53) – Comparatively to the Wagner pump? Yeah, the Wagner pump is a block, and it’s still fucking dinosaur age technology in a sense. But the plugs, the little white plugs that go in the block for the Wagner, they’re completely movable. So the the Wagner or the the ones are they only go in one way. So they wear one way. Okay. So you’re constantly flying through them tips. You can’t wear that tip evenly. And then even though at the same thing with the GMA you got or not the GMA but the Wagner, your hose is going to kind of slouch so that that white piece will wear but.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:58:31) – Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:58:32) – That’s just the name of the game.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:58:34) – Yeah. Mean they’re not, you know, every it’s just design and how they make them and why they make them, you know? And let’s face it, they’re making them for the industrial people. They’re not making them for us. Right? We’re adapting to them again, you know, I mean.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:58:48) – It would be sweet if they would come out with like a little bit smaller scale of a gun.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:58:52) – For us custom coaters.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:58:53) – That would be a good option. Um, that would be a really good idea.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:58:58) – And even if you think about it, like when, when we get into like these custom colors and we’re recoating candies and stuff, we don’t need a gun that’s going to give us fucking 100, you know? Cves We don’t, we’re never that high. You should never be that high if you’re recoating something anyways, unless you’re doing it hot, right? But at the end of the day, it would be kind of cool to see, you know, a little scale down in a gun and maybe more aptitude to, to custom stuff. Yeah, he knows. Like maybe if a gun isn’t that aptitude to be that high of a of a power, then you’re going to see a lot more production shops using it for those colors. So it does have there’s a win win if you think about it.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:59:39) – I think that’s brilliant. You know, So, you know, my you know, it’s it’s all about trying to get through to these people and get that what you just said to them, you know, through to them and maybe get their minds thinking even.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (01:59:54) – Even though, like when I was a production painter, that was like the biggest thing that was hard for me was relaying my information, you know, like trying to trying to explain my information to somebody that’s 100 times book smarter than me, but isn’t 100 times experience smarter than me. It was like you’re just sitting there bashing heads all day. And that’s, you know, unfortunate. That’s where, like our industry has came to on the industrial side of things. But, you know, we we have the opportunity, you know, as custom coaters to break this mold, you know, and. Right. I’m excited to be a part of that.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:00:28) – As much as they want to give you that, give that information or relay that information back to the guy that matters all all they really have to do or their main part of their job is is equal to dollar sold. It’s not improving or, hey, this is a great idea. Or, you know, Ashton from, you know, over here said this or that, you know, you might want to think about it’s not about innovation.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:00:55) – And that’s the problem. Right. Innovation is from is in our industry is top down. It’s not bottom up. And this is the stuff that I’m trying to scream and shout at every chance I get. This is why we started the podcast, is to get that information. Let’s have a discussion about it. Let’s meet these guys, let’s tell them what we want and let’s get the price down lower. Let’s get the barrier to market. Let’s get, you know, something that is unique and tell our story and share a story. And by sharing it, we’re going to improve the industry. I mean.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:01:30) – At the end of the day, we’ve we’ve obviously seen China cut the Prague cut. Obviously, the quality of a gun that’s coming out of Switzerland is going to be ten times higher than the gun coming out of China. But at the end of the day, if China can figure out how to program a gun to run almost identical to the one that’s actually real.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:01:52) – Yeah. Like.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:01:54) – Why? Why? Why is there just this still this weird misconstrued of.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:01:58) – You know what I mean? Like, I’m surprised we haven’t seen.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:02:02) – It’s crazy that they’re doing that. They’re reaching out to us directly now, right? Yeah. When they speak in broken English or not. And here we have just put the nail in the head right here and just said, come up with a lower priced quality product that will buy because we’ll rather buy that. Then something from China. You know, same here.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:02:27) – Because, you know, at the end of the day, you know, how much of a pain in the ass it is for me to order tips or order any other parts for my gun. And I at the end of the day, I don’t want to pay the cost for a real tip. I don’t want to pay 200 bucks for a tip. Right? I don’t want to pay 200, 200 bucks for my in line like it’s could have.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:02:47) – They could, you know, I’m I’m all for keeping things in the United States. Me, too. I don’t think any of us are, but could be.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:02:57) – Maybe there are some people that think it’s just.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:03:00) – Crazy to me that we haven’t seen. Like it’s just crazy to me that we haven’t seen like a paint company, a liquid paint company produce a powder gun yet. Like, even like PG And how PG is so involved with so many different applications from liquid to industrial to marine to powder, they they’re pretty all over the place. And for them to not. See that there’s like this huge market for an applicable gun that’s.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:03:35) – Tell you is China’s knocking on the door. I don’t think we’re answering the door because we know it’s a vampire. Right. And we’re not going to invite the vampire in. But, you know, I mean, they’re trying and they’re eventually, you know, and there are people out there that are already buying China stuff just because they don’t realize the deeper, the deeper thing that’s going on here with that. But, you know, and it’s.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:04:04) – Mind blowing to me that we haven’t seen a lawsuit, but it’s surprising to me that we haven’t seen a lawsuit with GMA like because how many times has that that gun been knocked off? How many people are knocking that gun off? Like, if you think about at the end of the day, there’s like ten different brands with that name on on that gun to ask.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:04:25) – It’s crazy.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:04:27) – Like they rolled their eyes when I’m meeting with them next week, so I probably should be careful. But, um, you know, they, they he rolled his eyes on me the other day when I said, Yeah, we want to do a Wagner show off, you know, like comparison, because that’s the biggest question, right, that people ask, you know? And he just kind of rolled his eyes, you know, like, how many times has he heard that or, you know, whatever.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:04:52) – And it’s like at the end of the day, we all know people are going to go buy the Wagner because it’s cheaper. Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:04:57) – So, you know, but people want that video. They want that comparison. They want that review.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:05:03) – Not that in the Wagner isn’t out there. Like people don’t necessarily know about it unless you’re in the industry, like people first coming into powder coating, All they really know is because that’s all fucking people talk about, right? You know what I mean?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:05:18) – And it’s like it’s definitely more broad than Wagner and Dawson and stuff.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:05:22) – Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but I know they’re kind of rolling their eyes, but at the same time, it’s like, No, this is you’re selling.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:05:30) – You’re selling units because of people want to do this, right? You know what I mean? At the end of the day, all this talk, all it’s doing is selling their gun, you know?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:05:39) – Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, think the China thing is going to be interesting how it unfolds.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:05:45) – I think it’ll phase out. It’s not going to. I don’t. Oh yeah. Just from like my experience with vaping like a lot of the stuff from, you know, vaping is obviously manufactured in China and you see a lot of that. You see a lot of companies get knocked off from China and it’s around a little bit and then it just fizzles out. And the only reason why you’re seeing a lot of it right now is because of the high demand in garage coating and people don’t want to pay box price for cool codes and version of what they could get for.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:06:17) – Whatever else prior to having to wait for shipping. You know, it’s. Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:06:22) – I can tell you personally, like with the projects that we get here, of course, well, they call it patio furniture, probably on the mainland, but we call it Lanai furniture. And you know, we, we work with Trapattoni, a Windsor Brown. Jordan did say Coppertone, Tropic tone. These are all us made manufacturers. And I can get replacement parts from any almost any year, any, any style, any year. People call us. They got these condos. They want to redo their lanai furniture and they call me and I go, Well, where did you buy it? Oh, I bought it. It’s Martha Stewart or it’s Lowe’s or Home Depot. And I’m like, Throw it away. They’re like, What? I pay $300 for this set, you know? And it’s like the coating.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:07:16) – The coating that you see and coming on it is like literally, well, or it’s like rusted so bad because of their fucking process sucked in, like the whole chairs rotting.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:07:27) – Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:07:29) – I can’t get replacement parts. China only makes things to sell us to throw away metal or plastic or anything. They don’t make things to replace. Okay. Only in America do they make something right. Like we’ve done trapattoni furniture that is 40, 50 years old and we can find replacement parts. It still looks great and we’re going to give it a finish that’s going to last another ten years. You know, and you cannot do that with China, They don’t think.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:08:00) – Those were some of my favorite jobs to do was like when this older lady would come in and she’s like, Oh, I just want something really nice, you know, off white or some beige and you find the right color she likes, and then she’s all tickled pink about it. And then she shows up and it looks brand new and she’s like, Can’t breathe. Because, like, her patio furniture is brand new again. And now she’s telling her husband he’s got to make new cushions for it. That’s like, that’s the best day, you know, like when I could care less about my handrail customer that’s bringing me shitloads of money.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:08:29) – But that old lady that’s more tickled pink about her, you know, or her seashell chairs that she got when she was 15 and the 50s look brand new again. It’s fun.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:08:38) – And I love it, too, because I can’t wait to tell the guy that owns the vacation rental here in Maui that they bought the wrong furniture from Lowe’s or Home Depot. And now you have to throw it away even though it’s only two years old because can’t get a strap or a sling to refit to fix it. Yeah. And you’re going to throw it in our dump, you know, in our, you know, in our trash on our island and go out and buy another cheap ass set. And now you’re going to add to our trash problem because you didn’t buy us made you can’t restore it and make them feel as bad as I can and make them guilty. And, you know, and at.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:09:25) – The end of the day, like when it comes down to it, we live in such a disposable world now, you know, or we’re programmed to buy a new smartphone every fucking year or, or our flat screen TV we bought five years ago is already broken.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:09:39) – Like we live in such a disposable society now. And that’s like what? You know, it’s like had somebody asked me the other day, Well, what do you think about wrapping my truck? And I’m like, You’re asking the wrong person. And they’re like, Well, why is that? And I’m like, I’m trying to keep I’m trying to keep an art, a dying art alive. And people that are wrapping vehicles and stickers are killing my industry. You know, they’re killing the artist in me because they want to take my art and put it on a fucking sticker and not have to do anything like, you know, And that’s it boils down into a lot of things. And that’s unfortunate. But, you know, that’s why we’re here and that’s why we’re around, is to keep things alive and keep things new again.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:10:18) – And I think that that’s, you know, how powder coating just aligns so well with with how Ross and I feel about the world and and about our island.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:10:30) – And so are they are they big sticklers about like on the island or is that kind of you guys are still with in laws.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:10:38) – Yeah it’s not like Europe yeah. Yeah. No, it’s not even that. And I mean, I don’t know how much we of that we do imagine it’s majority of the powders that we use but we like you.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:10:55) – Surprised how much even you’d be surprised today of how much is people don’t use it anymore.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:11:02) – Yeah, well, I know the industry is trying to change it and go in that, you know.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:11:08) – I hope to God we still have some target 25 years from now because it’s fucking amazing. But and it’s pretty it’s pretty dangerous.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:11:16) – With the extreme conditions that we have here, it’s very hard to recommend something else, you know? What do you.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:11:24) – Guys what do you like for a question for me, for you guys is what do you guys spray a lot like what do you guys mostly spray like big box wise.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:11:32) – Brand wise?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:11:33) – Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:11:34) – Tiger. Tiger crazy. That’s what infuriated me so much last week when I talked to them because I was like.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:11:41) – Have you not sprayed much, Cardinal, or is cardinal kind of hard for you to get?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:11:45) – No, it’s not hard for me to get.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:11:47) – I have to email them. So it’s a bit of a back and forth. Uh. We have half samples here and we usually wait for the customer to request it. Right, right, right. Don’t know what that is. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that. And. Our you know, Tiger was one of the first people to reach out to us and send us brochures when we were getting going. They have an incredible line of bronzes which are very popular here. You know, we have red dirt and it gets everywhere. So like whites and light colors and stuff, other than if it’s on a rim, you know, people tend to gravitate toward the darker colors just to hide the stuff. And, you know, it just it just happened that I had a rabbit tiger at the time that was just, just very willing, we think.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:12:49) – I would think because we have a distributor like Cardinal has a distribution hub here in Washington in Woodland. So I would assume like either that or California would be they.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:13:00) – Usually shut out of California for us. And I think that, you know, I don’t know how you order this is kind of an interesting this would be a great question for our group forum, and that is, how do you guys handle your pricing? You know, how are you building in a powder pricing? Are you you know, for us, it’s like, well, if you special order for a gate or a railing, you’re going to buy that box whether I use the whole thing or not. And then if you want it, you can have it. But you know it’s going to end up on my shelf anyways, right?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:13:34) – So, yeah, so like obviously that’s, I would say that’s any, any powder coating shops like problem, you know, trying to deal with excess paint like in the industrial industrial side, any powder shop I’ve ever been to unless it’s some kid that’s like bought his own paint and brought it in.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:13:51) – Yeah, I’m not doing that anymore. Forget that. We’ve had some bad stuff happen to us.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:13:56) – Yeah. We don’t know how old it is.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:13:57) – Yeah. And that’s. I’ve had issues with that too, but that’s really like the only time that I would give the paint back. But for me coming like from my side of things, like I’m such of an abnormal coater, comparative like everybody else in the industry, I would say. So I buy colors to bring colors to market. So like what I’m doing is I’m trying to obviously I’ll do stuff on if somebody brings something, sends me something to do. It’s my job to pick their brain apart, see what they want style wise, and then I’ll be like, Suggest this, this or this. Or unless they have like a good idea, then I’ll roll with it and kind of put my twist on it. But but for mainly I just buy like I just buy by the pound. So like, ah, £2. So like I don’t really go through a lot. I’m not, I’m not having to put on a lot of mileage with what I’m doing obviously.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:14:46) – And so a pound goes a long ways for me. Yeah. At the end of the day I buy paint just to have in stock to play with, to learn. I’m, you know, I’m constantly experimenting. I’m constantly learning. I’m constantly trying to figure out which colors won’t chemically work together. You know, being that, you know, certain fluorescents don’t like to be inlaid on top of with certain other colors and they’ll just go different.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:15:11) – Going deep down the rabbit hole there, you know, because most. Yeah. That you know in.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:15:17) – A lot of it also like ties back into like with like the elaborate and like working I’m doing I’m racing against the clock of jail time. So literally you’re in laying within your gel time, but you’re also like almost on that verge of 80%. So you’re not going to get delirium issues, but you’re also not going to get like molding issues where you’re getting other colors, bonding to colors and then creating another one. You know what I mean? So you’re constantly playing this fucking window game and not trying to go too far before you’re you’re going to actually final set everything.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:15:52) – Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s one of those your items and that’s the thing you have to be so precise. There really isn’t any room for mistakes at all on your level. So if I told.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:16:02) – You when you think I do my inlay work, do you think it’s done with electricity?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:16:08) – No. Well, I can see some of it isn’t, but, um, I’m just saying, in terms of the product, like, you’ve got one shot and you cannot make a mistake at all, you know? And that’s like the.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:16:22) – Sometimes you, you’ll make a mistake and you’re like, Strip tank, Here we go. Start all over, you know? And that’s the benefit. I’m not doing like a wheel or I’m not doing, you know, somebody’s big bumper or something at the time. Like I do have that I have capable, I have like obviously my benchtop setup. And then I also have my 4×4 by six convection electric. So that’s that’s been nice because I do I get I’m contracted with a lot of these cap makers like feature from coil turret.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:16:52) – I do his caps MTurk from MTurk I do his caps I, I do a lot of big name people’s stuff. So like my background of doing, you know, production work and being in a production shop doesn’t, you know, getting right, it doesn’t stress me out when I have 400 to 1000 caps in my living room that I got a process within a week. I’m like, let’s go like money, money, money. You know, like it’s I’m not, you know, any point I’m not uncomfortable. But I think the only times when I really do get nervous is like when I’m doing one job and it’s been like a couple of days and I’m a little shaky or, you know.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:17:30) – Or you have. So you also sell like you, you’re also selling like your.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:17:36) – So like with what I do, I’m selling just a service, obviously like I’m a powder coater. But what people would do is instance they would like if they had a certain mod like these are mechanical mods. There’s no.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:17:51) – Board. There’s no electronical regulated board in these. These are all mechanical. They’re unregulated. And with that, people like to personalize them or, you know, there’s certain brands that are people are super loyal to or, you know, there’s just like anything, there’s people that like this company or that company and there’s all walks of life in this industry and they all like to personalize them. And that’s where I came in and kind of turned the industry upside down and was like, This is what I can offer. And it just kind of blew up to where, you know, now I have people all over the world sending me their setups to coat one of one for them. You know, it’s special to them. And but I’m surprised.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:18:28) – You’re not selling the you’re not selling them either. Like, so.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:18:32) – Yeah, that’s like it’s a big taboo thing. And the sense of like with my website, I don’t want to have it to be like 21 plus age, you know what I mean? So like, I don’t want to get down that rabbit hole of like having to deal with like the age restriction and you know what I mean? Like, really, like, the whole mod thing was my meal ticket to get me into the industry to be doing wheels and to be doing lift kits and doing, you know, the things that I’ve been doing for the last ten years.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:19:02) – But guess what? Like I don’t have 20 grand to go buy a big oven and buy a gun and buy a nice booth. And because if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right. And everything I’ve done, I’ve never done it. I’ve never gotten a loan. It’s all been out of pocket. Like I’ve, you know, job comes in and I get extra money. Cool. It’s going back into the business.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:19:20) – Yep.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:19:21) – That’s how you scale or, you know, obviously it pays to keep the lights on and food in my children’s tummy, right? Yeah. And you know, and that’s really at the end of the day, this is like the meal ticket to me, you know, getting a booth big enough to spray wheels and comfortably and, and that’s like, I can do it. But right now it’s like, kind of sketchy putting my cart in front of my little tiny booth, top bench booth and spraying one wheel at a time and then like, racking it over here and yeah, it’s just it’s not like it’s not doable, but I don’t want to get, you know, an hour into a wheel and then have like a little piece of debris in it.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:19:58) – And I’m like, you know, going crazy. So it’s, I’m just taking my time. And that’s I feel like, you know, with other coaters in the industry, it’s like they don’t take their time. They’re not taking their time, you know, perfecting their process. They’re not perfecting their environment. And and that’s where you’re going to run into issues like, you know, like. Certain things can’t be done correctly if you don’t have the the right environment to do it in like I have the right environment to do these little toys and all fucking day. But when it comes down to doing big stuff, I got to shut the whole shop down, clean it down, you know, and make sure a door is open. So I’m getting all my shit going in my little tiny booth and. But that’s the goal, is to to get a bigger boost and be kind of I want to get a bigger booth so where I can be doing wheels and then I can hire somebody within like the vape industry that I’m friends with and give them a job and have them kind of take over the mod coating side of things.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:21:00) – Yeah. So I can keep going. And yeah, I would like to be like a, you know, I want to give Shawn a little run for his money and you know, you see a lot of like Zach Penick and Lacey Blair, they’re doing a lot of cool work and I want, you know, I want to be up there with those names and I want to be kind of turning some heads and giving a little bit of run for their money.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:21:20) – Yeah, I’d like to have them on the show at some point. I know they’re big heavy hitters.

 

Speaker 3 (02:21:27) – Um.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:21:28) – That dude Zack does some insane work.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:21:31) – He does?

 

Speaker 3 (02:21:32) – Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:21:33) – But think he’s it’s not just that he’s at another level. I don’t know his whole story, so I’m not going to speak too much.

 

Speaker 3 (02:21:40) – Right.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:21:41) – Really, just from what I see, it’s like I see a lot of hard work went into what he’s doing and he’s obviously, you know, it’s paid off and it’s cool to see somebody stay humble, put out good content and hear no drama from it.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:21:53) – You know what I mean? Like, that’s just that’s what I’m after is good organic content and that’s what I follow. You know, I’m not going to follow a fucking fake wannabe shit and think when.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:22:03) – You’re at that level two, you’re given opportunities. Like you’re like you were saying, you know, you’re working with some of the top fake people in the industry. Yeah, I think he’s also in that on that level in his realm, right is right. He’s been given the opportunity to make the rims for, you know, a truck or this or that, you know, and that’s boosted his profile and stuff. You know, we all need inspiration for sure. I think there’s more than one person or one girl or and think I would that’s why I’d love to have lacy or any just yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:22:41) – That’s like a big thing like the the impact of women coming into this industry.

 

Speaker 3 (02:22:45) – Of women fucking.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:22:47) – Rad.

 

Speaker 3 (02:22:47) – Like it Don’t.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:22:48) – Stop. Keep going, don’t stop. Don’t let any dude with the dick between his legs tell you otherwise keep fucking kicking ass.

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RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:22:56) – Yeah I agree. And I’m really just I haven’t met the right girl yet and I’m just going to do a shout out that if you are that girl, I want to hear from you. I did email Laci, if she’s ever listening to this podcast, did email her, but I didn’t hear back from her yet. But, you know, there’s a process. You have to you know, you have to engage with them on social media. They have to know who you are before they’re going to even respond to some dorky, you know, dorky email from like, who are you? You know? But I didn’t notice that you follow the utensil guy.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:23:31) – Yeah, me and me and him are good friends, man. He’s a he’s a big inspiration to me with what he’s doing with Powder. I feel like he kind of follows the same same thing I do. He wants to see powder come to a different, you know, a different form. Like for me, I’m inspired by my brother’s airbrushing.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:23:50) – Obviously, I’m not doing stencil work. Like he is like kind of I’ve kind of stayed away from that because I don’t want to step on his toes in any way because the level of stencil work that he is bringing to this industry is like. I have so much respect for that guy, have so much love for that.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:24:08) – How he does it, I don’t know how.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:24:10) – Did you see that CP3 bottle? He did with, like five different colors and it’s got purple and stuff in it. I’m like, Dude, you’re making my hair, You’re pulling my hair out, looking at your work.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:24:20) – Here’s the thing that here’s the rub. I look at his profile and I only see like a couple hundred, few hundred people following him. And I’m like, What the fuck? Like, where? How? Oh, my God.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:24:33) – He’s using the same booth I am.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:24:36) – You know, how is he not having, like, 3000 followers? 4000 followers like you? Because I think that’s incredible what he does.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:24:44) – And anybody listening, please go over there right now.

 

Speaker 3 (02:24:48) – And yeah, the utensil guy and the utensil company.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:24:52) – I’ve noticed he hasn’t been doing much on his page. The utensil guy page much lately. He’s been really think him and his wife have been really focusing on like the company page.

 

Speaker 3 (02:25:01) – Let’s bring.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:25:01) – Him up because I want to Yeah let me okay this is your page so let’s go here and then we’ll Google.

 

Speaker 3 (02:25:11) – The name right now.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:25:12) – Here we go. Aaron Okay.

 

Speaker 3 (02:25:14) – Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:25:15) – Big shout outs to Aaron. He’s.

 

Speaker 3 (02:25:17) – Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:25:18) – This stuff is incredible. I mean, you can see this for weddings or for wedding gifts mean everything he does is just insane. It’s so puffy. And yet you can see the lines clearly. It baffles me how he does this.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:25:34) – Like the thing that the thing that gets me off about his work is when you look at the mileage between his car and you can see how much he’s stacked it and you’re like, Yeah.

 

Speaker 3 (02:25:43) – Yes, you know what I’m saying?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:25:46) – Like how oh my God, my daughter would this is like.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:25:50) – This is like Serena from. What’s that? Oh, that. Oh, my God. One of the first. I might have to buy that. It’s like one of the first anime we used to watch was the Sailor Moon. Yeah, A.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:26:03) – Lot of the Simpson donut stuff. Like all the the cups. And he’s just been killing it lately. He’s all.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:26:11) – I wanted to get that for my daughter’s fiance. He loves the Joker. I mean it just goes on and on. The creativity coming out of this guy is insane, you know?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:26:22) – Oh, yeah. And this is like this. His page isn’t really. You should go look at the utensil company page. The utensil company has more of their that one.

 

Speaker 3 (02:26:31) – Yeah that has.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:26:32) – More of their recent work. And that’s where you’re going to be able to buy his stuff and.

 

Speaker 3 (02:26:38) – Oh, here we go.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:26:39) – Okay. Yeah, Maybe I’m following the wrong Instagram. Oh, here we go.

 

Speaker 3 (02:26:43) – Hold your breath.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:26:44) – Because he’s got a bunch of new stuff that just dropped that right.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:26:47) – And sustain.

 

Speaker 3 (02:26:50) – Like the duff beer mugs.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:26:52) – How has he got all? Only 200 followers. But. Okay. It’s here. This is the main page.

 

Speaker 3 (02:26:57) – Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:26:57) – And then he’s got videos of him pulling his stencils and stuff. I messaged him the other day. I’m like, Bro, why aren’t you? Why are you sharing your secrets right now?

 

Speaker 3 (02:27:07) – I usually do that.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:27:08) – But but at the same time, Ashton, I couldn’t do that or my husband wouldn’t have the time. You know, it’s not for everybody, you know?

 

Speaker 3 (02:27:16) – Right.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:27:17) – And oh, my God, that is insane.

 

Speaker 3 (02:27:20) – Yeah, he was.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:27:22) – Is he like you? Where he. Does he sell these and you buy them.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:27:26) – So, like, they’re. I encourage you guys to go to their website, buy all their mugs, buy all their utensils, because this dude busts his ass and he is so kind.

 

Speaker 3 (02:27:36) – Does. Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:27:37) – And like. Prior like to talking to him. Like last summer he was me and him started talking quite a bit and he would have problems like he was having Faraday problems and some of the mugs he was doing.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:27:48) – And I was like, No, dude, like, drop your CV’s here, put your air here and then tell me what you think and then switch to a different tip. He messaged, he messaged me back and he’s like, I’ve been dealing with this for so long. He’s like, Thank you so much. And then he like, kind of taught me some of his tricks. And he was actually supposed to come up here and we were supposed to do some stuff together, but with Covid happening and so on and so forth, they didn’t end up making it up this way this year.

 

Speaker 3 (02:28:14) – So that’s insane.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:28:16) – Yeah, the the freaking Iron Man one is nuts.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:28:21) – And where is he based out of?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:28:23) – I want to say they’re like RV. They’re like an RV couple. So they, like, travel all over the place.

 

Speaker 3 (02:28:29) – You’re kidding.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:28:30) – Yeah. So I don’t know. The last time I talked to him, he was telling me he was in Texas somewhere. And then I think I seen them that they were in California or something.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:28:39) – But.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:28:40) – Wow. Talk about crafting a life.

 

Speaker 3 (02:28:42) – That’s great.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:28:43) – Well, they what they did, what they were doing is they were chasing all these, like, you know, art festivals and stuff. And like, up here in the Northwest, we have like, art on the green and we have a lot of car shows and stuff. So I could see them going to a lot of these shows and really selling out in my opinion, like they would kill it.

 

Speaker 3 (02:29:02) – This is look at that.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:29:04) – Yeah. His Mandela work is insane.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:29:09) – Oh, my goodness.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:29:12) – A lot of he taught me that white technique to. So some of the work that you see, I use a little bit of his technique and then he uses some technique that I use that I’ve taught him how to use to. Just from talking. And that’s like kind of the thing is like I’ve kept a lot of. What I do to myself. But when somebody is doing work like this, I’m like, bro.

 

Speaker 3 (02:29:36) – So.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:29:39) – I mean, so he’s. So you pay for the tumbler. Let’s just.

 

Speaker 3 (02:29:44) – Pick that. Add it to the cart.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:29:47) – Okay. So 115 that’s.

 

Speaker 3 (02:29:49) – Still like.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:29:50) – Such a good price for the amount of.

 

Speaker 3 (02:29:53) – Dirt cheap.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:29:54) – That’s so cheap.

 

Speaker 3 (02:29:56) – I can’t.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:29:58) – Like, even my mugs, like I charge for a mug like this that’s like faded and galaxy. This even has glow in the dark. Clear on it? Yeah. I charge, like, 50 bucks for that.

 

Speaker 3 (02:30:10) – For the work part, not the.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:30:12) – Know for the mug and everything, because this is just the cheaper Arctic trail.

 

Speaker 3 (02:30:16) – Ones.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:30:17) – Or those arc trail or whatever. Not the Yeti. That’s when it starts getting spendy is when you start doing this stuff on Yeti mugs.

 

Speaker 3 (02:30:24) – Right.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:30:25) – Yeah, because it’s such an expensive product. But they’re popular, right? So.

 

Speaker 3 (02:30:30) – Yeah, this.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:30:31) – Is. Everybody needs to go check that guy out. I’ve been following them for at least a year or so. But I’m glad you rerouted me to the correct one.

 

Speaker 3 (02:30:41) – Because, yeah, he was.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:30:41) – I was kind of worried about him for a minute because I didn’t see much work coming out of him and I’m like, What the heck? Where’s all this work at? And then my wife was like, No, he’s been posting stuff on like the, the business page lately. And I’m like, Oh, okay. That makes sense.

 

Speaker 3 (02:30:54) – Right? Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:30:56) – Because I was thinking, what’s why does he not, you know, saw his posts and he’s using hashtags and stuff, but I’m like, how come?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:31:03) – Well, even for the longest time I had a lot of good work out there, too. And up until I got plugged into the right community with people and people started shouting me out. And, you know, it takes time, you know, like I didn’t reach a thousand followers. It took me like seven years to get to 1000 followers. And then once you hit 1000, it’s like overnight you’re. Yeah, you know, it’s nothing like everything seems so simple beyond that point.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:31:28) – And yeah, like, to be honest with you, that’s not why I’m here. That’s not. That’s not what I do. What I do. It’s not, you know, I’m not here for the followers. I’m not here for to be famous, you know, I’m just here to. To be happy. And that was, like, really my main goal of starting my own business is to be able to wake up and be happy, to be able to be there at any given chance for my children, you know, and to really think the thing of just seeing being in the industry for, you know, a good ten years. And seeing that me as a production painter, you know, a lot of people wanted my work, but at the end of the day, you know, people either didn’t want to wait for, you know, the over, you know, the time of me getting to their jobs, you know, being in a big production shop, you know, how long stuff takes to get done.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:32:12) – And, you know, after being through three different shops dealing with three different, you know, employers, three different formats of how to run a powder shop, I felt like I had a good enough idea of where I wanted to go. And I just I wanted to be able to cater towards the mom and pop people. I wanted to be able to cater towards those people that they actually want to pay you a little extra money to get that better. You know, that better finish. They don’t want some white, you know, handrail with black in it or, you know, like they’re going to come to me for my experience in my time. And I kind of pride myself in that. I run my shop off of time and materials, so like my shop rate is 65 bucks an hour and I’ll run time and materials and I can pretty much tell you if like you bring me four wheels, they’re going to take me like four hours.

 

Speaker 3 (02:32:57) – Five hours at least, you know. Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:33:00) – Exactly.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:33:01) – And, you know, give or take, if I have to strip them and blast them and then they have to be in the oven for an hour or two to to thermal clean correctly, then you know, that’s what it is. But, you know, I’m going to explain that to you. And the shop down the road isn’t going to explain that to you. And the shop down the road isn’t going to show you how clean the inside of their sandblast cabinet or their sandblast booth is. You know, and and that’s the thing is people don’t understand that 90% of the work. Is your sandblasting and the material you’re using. Like I go the extra length and I use Garnet. I use expensive material because for one, it doesn’t create too much dust too. It doesn’t break down as fast. And three, the profile you get from Garnet is next to nothing. Yeah, in my opinion.

 

Speaker 3 (02:33:47) – So just have.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:33:49) – That last week on the one last week, but the last episode we talked about that.

 

Speaker 3 (02:33:54) – I’ve used a.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:33:54) – Lot. I’ve used Clean Blast, I’ve used Green Diamond, they all, you know, copper, slag, they all work good. They all do. They all have their right place. But I got spoiled with using Garnet at the last shop I was at and I was like, I am. I’m not going to switch to anything else or back to anything else. It’s worth the money, in my opinion.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:34:12) – Yes, totally. Yeah. And mean, he said on the podcast, You know, that’s Jeff Taylor and I’m actually going to interview him tomorrow. No, Monday, we’re going for another another round. Um, and that, you know. You know, the benefits of Garnet and, you know, it’s more expensive. But then he was saying, oh, you need to change it out like 4 to 5, every 4 to 5 times. And I’m like, now we’re stretching it a little longer than that. That’s how much you would want us to replace it.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:34:48) – Yeah, but, you know, we’re stretching it out just a little bit longer than that.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:34:53) – It’s just the the severity of the the cleanliness of it that I like the most about Garnet. And it’s just at the end of the day, if I don’t have to stress about, you know, what’s in my broken down material. Then I’m not stressing when it comes to putting paint on this wheel or whatever it may be, you know. And I think that’s one thing that people don’t stress enough on, is like if you go to a production shop and you have a set of aluminum wheels for your roadster or something that you’ve spent your hard earned money on, the last thing I want is some coating shop to sandblast a bunch of carbon steel before they did my aluminum wheels and then impregnate my aluminum wheels with a bunch of carbon. You know, and that’s that’s the thing. Like we’re I learned a lot to where almost as a coater, it makes you like second guess yourself almost, you know, And it almost sucks to be the coater that knows too much because then you’re just always constantly worried about what’s going to go wrong, you know, and.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:35:57) – I think if you just kind of take a breath, take your time and and just make sure every step of your process is foolproof from even washing to to even cleaning to hanging your product. Like that’s that’s the big thing that even, you know, ten years down the road that drives me nuts is when I see hanging points. Yeah. Like hang marks.

 

Speaker 3 (02:36:18) – And it’s.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:36:18) – Constantly like that is the challenge, right? When you’re given something, it’s like, what’s going to give you the least amount?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:36:25) – And. But still give you great ground. Yeah, right. You know, and that’s we’re constantly fighting between that and.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:36:32) – And it’s not easy to teach that to. We, you know, we had that going on with our employee where we were like, okay, think this through. You know, what are you how are you going to do this?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:36:42) – And that was like the that’s one thing I preach on, especially when you’re doing big, big fucking admits is like. I’ve already in my head prior to even going into that sandblast building, I’ve already up and down that thing 20 times and I’ve already come up with a process of where I’m going and what I’m doing because, you know, a lot of the stuff I would paint hot, you know, like when you’re in a production shop, you’re doing stuff hot to get the mileage on there and to get the product in the oven faster, you know? And that’s really the goal.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:37:11) – And like, I don’t I miss the days of the hustle and bustle. But then again, I realize, you know, like I don’t miss coming home with £300 of zinc and black in my hair.

 

Speaker 3 (02:37:24) – Oh, gosh, yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:37:25) – I mean.

 

Speaker 3 (02:37:27) – Uh.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:37:28) – Yeah. Some of the things that we’re doing with this new shop is sort of hybrid our ovens right now.

 

Speaker 3 (02:37:36) – That’s rad.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:37:37) – Uh, so, yeah, we’ve got a little bit of a small little Frankenstein back behind this wall here. And, you know, it’s small enough that if we made the mistake or miscalculated or whatever, but so far, it has improved. Uh, cure times or just production times on rims and everything else so much faster. I can’t even believe it. Like, it’s like lightning speed and it’s just, you know, don’t want to give too much away because think Ross wants to talk about it soon, and he’s just in the middle of building the big oven now. But, um, I think someday soon we’re going to, we’re going to kind of reveal and take some video of it and stuff to see what the reaction will be.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:38:25) – But so far, so good. It’s it’s kept the temp no problem. And it gets to temp faster because that’s also an issue.

 

Speaker 3 (02:38:32) – Right.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:38:33) – And and and maintaining that temp stronger but the production time it’s like oh man the wheel is just getting done so much faster you know.

 

Speaker 3 (02:38:46) – Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:38:46) – That was like the big thing that you know, went from. I left a shop that was, you know, the Taj Mahal, 50 foot, you know, Booth and a rapid fire oven. And it’s all cool and dandy. But once you get to that size, you don’t understand the stress of like. Shit has to be perfect when it’s going in that oven like it’s in. I almost like I lived for that, you know, I lived for that, you know, being at the forefront and hustling and busing. And I was very prideful and prideful of that. But at the end of the day, it’s like, I think I have more fun taking my time and just breathing and calming down and just taking in everything and just enjoying the moment, you know? And like that was like when I got to do those two tone wheels, like I dreamed for years and years.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:39:36) – Like I remember watching like, really the only information that you could find on YouTube back in the day was the guy from ADC Powder Coating, and that’s how I figured out how to do a two tone wheel because he showed like the whole vacuuming and the whole wiping technique. And that’s all that that’s all that took is him showing me how to wipe something. Five, six years ago. And that’s it literally every day repeated in my head. And then like, you know, if you put your gun on the on the stand again and then it dropped like right out of the gun and it hits the ground and it splatters everywhere. That’s how I figured out, like, oh, I could make these galaxies look splatters. Yeah. And it was just weird things that kind of popped up in my head over the production side for so many years that, you know, once I.

 

Speaker 3 (02:40:20) – Got.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:40:21) – coatings on YouTube has some stuff on there too, right? I think. Is it them or.

 

Speaker 3 (02:40:28) – I don’t know.

 

Speaker 3 (02:40:28) – I haven’t.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:40:29) – Seen his.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:40:30) – Yeah envy and is a Nancy is in Victor.

 

Speaker 3 (02:40:34) – And it’s.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:40:35) – Pretty crazy I started powder coating in 2012 for Lake City powder coating here in Coeur d’Alene. And I worked I worked for Larry for about eight years. And then I got a wild hair up my ass and I was going to go back and spray it liquid. So I went and worked for a roller coaster company called Rocky Mountain Roller Coasters here in Idaho. I worked for them for two.

 

Speaker 3 (02:40:57) – Weeks.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:40:58) – And I was like, Fuck, liquid, I can’t. I can’t stand liquid. And just the the differences between bosses, it was like, holy cow, these guys are crazy. I can’t deal with it.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:41:10) – Well, good thing for you, because Ross is allergic to polyurethane now. Oil based polyurethane. Yeah. Allergic to it.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:41:20) – Yeah. And then. So I got sick of that. Walked down the street to my competitor powder coating shop at the time. And I walked in there and he was like, Oh, I’m looking for a new manager right now.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:41:31) – And I was like, Well, I guess I’d probably be your best bet in this town. Like I put money on it and that ended up being not so well. And, you know, it was just kind of like it was a family run business. And the son was kind of, you know, a bad person and didn’t we really didn’t see eye to eye. And I figured out really soon that he wasn’t going to leave and I wasn’t going to get that manager spot and I was just going to be the little grunt that knew everything, right? So during this time, I knew there was a shop being built out in after him, and at the time that was going to be, you know, the biggest shop, the biggest oven, the biggest everything, the newest equipment this side of Mississippi, pretty much to like California or southern Washington. So I was like, Heck yeah. Like I had I’d had all this experience from, you know. The the Nordson versus Bray two. And, you know, being able to lay gloss black like it was glass with that gun.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:42:27) – And then I went to to Spectrum and I learned how to use the GMA and they never let me spray hot So I like pretty much went backwards and just taught myself how to spray cold again, you know, and learn a newer ish gun. And then I walked into they told me to leave and go like apply for unemployment one day. And I was like, all right, like, cool. Like you just told me what I wanted to hear. So I left and I had like some side jobs at home because I had my little craftsman gun in my little convection toaster oven that I was doing mods with. So at that time, I was literally covering my rent with my side work. So I like got a wild hair at my ass, went into that shop that was being built and that guy that owned that shop was in there painting like a full cart, a handrail. And he’s got a dude behind him with a flashlight and he’s in this huge that booth that I just showed you that’s all lit up and beautiful.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:43:24) – And he’s got this nice gun. And I’m like, What are you doing? He’s like, Oh, he’s my QC guy. And I’m just like, Your QC guy shouldn’t be here. You should be outside checking your stuff. That’s like getting ready to be leaving. And he’s like looking at me like, Who the fuck are you? And I’m like, Dude, you you need a painter. And he’s like, Oh, yeah, I know. And he’s like, Can you be here at seven tomorrow? And I’m like, Sure. So I wake up and I get ready to leave and he’s like, I was up till like five spray. And he’s like, Come in at 11. So then I walked in at like 11. They didn’t have anything racked up. They didn’t have anything ready for me to paint. And this is like you would probably have a heart attack seeing like how nice this building like you could eat off the floors in this building like it’s nothing powder coating has ever seen at this point, you know? Right.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:44:14) – And I’m just like. Holy crap. So they rack me up all this stuff and I put my headphones on and I go in the booth and I’m dancing and I’m painting and I’m doing my thing, and I’m like, Are you guys going to load up another? Like, I’m yelling, like, keep going. Like, this is what a powder shop is like. Do I have to teach you how to do this? Like this dude spent millions of dollars building this shop and he had no idea how to run it. Yeah. So then, you know, I go in and I helped them turn and burn, you know, and he started to get the idea like, Holy shit, this kid knows what he’s doing. And you know, then reps started coming in and reps were telling me like, Do you probably have the most style I’ve seen on a gun? Like, you look like a liquid painter when you paint. I’m like, Well, that’s what I came from originally and I just wanted to be, you know, if a painter came in here, I’d want him to see what a you know, it’s a painter.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:45:04) – Like you shouldn’t be shaking your gun like a crazy man. Like this isn’t the 1950s anymore. And that was just something I took pride in and I ran with it. And I think like the biggest realization is I turned this job with like all these awnings that I had. I had to spray all this paint from Mexico. I can’t remember the company, what it was called. There’s a bunch of powder that we bought from Mexico and we had like did this huge equation on all the surface area and how much, you know, like a mil covers so much. So we did all this math and we ordered all this paint and stuff. So I had to like. I had to calculate certain pounds per, you know, per awning, and I had to dump that much on set awning and said cart. So like I would have certain bags weighed up or I’d, you know, I’d weigh throughout the whole thing. And I would, I would have to obviously weigh, but then I would have to calculate and I’d have to write everything down.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:46:01) – So, like I.

 

Speaker 3 (02:46:02) – Said, monitor.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:46:03) – How many years? How many? Yeah. Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:46:05) – So I don’t run out of this green or I don’t run out of this red or I don’t run out of this beige because I had all these awnings to do for like this extended stay hotel in Mexico, but in Arizona somewhere. Long story short, it was like. Over a $500,000 job and I turned it in five days. Obviously, I had like the best sand blaster, this kid that I had. He’s no longer with us, but he was this younger kid, that fucking amazing sand blaster. He walked in, had no idea what he was doing, and we taught him how to do what we wanted to do. And that’s what we got from this kid. But, you know, thankfully we had, you know, a good crew that was sandblasting. We had a good hanging crew, and I was the only painter. Nobody would at this time had the gumption to get on the other gun.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:46:50) – I had two pumps in this room and nobody would use the other pump. I can’t use both pumps like. So I was I turned this job in like a week was like seven days, watched it all get loaded up and taken out. And it was, you know, like seven days of, like non-stop, like there at 5:00 in the morning till 4:00 in the morning, like sleeping an hour or not sleeping at all. And, you know, I’m not the kind of person that’s like, hey, give me my money or anything. But it would have been nice to have been like, Here’s a bonus. You just made me half $1 million in five days, you know, like and that’s when I knew I was like. You know. I’ve obviously taught this guy how to make a lot of money. I’ve showed him a lot of my tricks, which a lot of my prior bosses would probably be mad about because I probably took a lot of work from them after leaving their shops, you know? And it’s just like a I got I got really tired.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:47:45) – I got really complacent. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t I got excited at first because I got to paint with all this cool stuff, but. Then, you know, after a year or two years goes by, you’re like. It’s never ending that. You know, he’s biting off more than he can chew every day. You know, he’s expecting you to do this, this and this. And then he would hire another painter to come in and the other painter would supposedly have 15 years, like they all say. And then the funniest thing I’ll never forget, this guy is like, you know, talking himself up like, oh, yeah, yeah. I’ve been painting this and this for so many years. And I worked at this shop and that shop and I’m like, okay, cool. I was like, That gun behind you, He’s ready. You got a new mask right there. I was like, You ready to do a hot coat? And the dude looks at me and he goes, What’s a hot coat? You’ve been painting, you’ve been powder coating for 15 years and you don’t know what a hot coat is.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:48:38) – That’s the stuff that I had to deal with, you know? And then, you know, like every painter, you know, give or take.

 

Speaker 3 (02:48:43) – Something.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:48:44) – That didn’t even happen by accident.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:48:46) – Yeah, right, exactly. Like, how were you not preheating anything and getting away with it.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:48:53) – And just, you know, like, by chance.

 

Speaker 3 (02:48:56) – I mean, we even.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:48:56) – Have guns that are called hot coats today. Like, I mean, wasn’t that like the trick back in the 50s and they couldn’t get stuff to stick. They’d just heat it up and like, yeah, you know, like that was, that’s how I got taught from a dude that had 30 years of experience, you know, and. It was just it’s kind of crazy. And, you know, I hear through the grapevine that they’ve gone through ten plus painters since or, you know, and that’s not I’m not here to to say or do that. You know, it’s like I just wanted to be happy and to be able to provide my family with the things I want to give my family and.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:49:31) – And this area, there’s nobody that can do what I can do.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:49:34) – So to me, just see you.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:49:36) – I just rolled my dice.

 

Speaker 3 (02:49:38) – I just.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:49:40) – Hopefully that’s the goal. You know, like is the barrier.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:49:44) – You found a product that you can be global with.

 

Speaker 3 (02:49:47) – That’s amazing.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:49:48) – I think like the main thing though is like what I would like to do is like to be able to travel to shops and help people like with problems or, you know, just help them figure out what they’re they’re, they’re trying to troubleshoot, you know, like because a lot of. You know, having somebody else around or having somebody else that has like a like, you know, mine that kind of thinks the same, you might be able to see something that they’re not seeing or, you know, just help somebody troubleshoot a problem that they’ve had, you know, a hell of a time with. And I don’t feel like there’s people in this industry that want to do that. But, you know, it’d be pretty cool to be able to fly out to you guys and help you guys for a couple of days or show you a couple tricks of how to paint a huge walk in gate and, you know, and to be right, you know, and that’s the thing.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:50:36) – Like, I don’t that’s what I would I wish of like I wish you know, reps would come in and put their suit on and get in the booth with me and spray with me. Like I would have loved to have a pissing match with a rep. You know what I mean? Like those things, those, those are what these painters need, you know, like painters need somebody to come in and like. You know, ruffle their feathers a little bit and like ask them questions and make them think. Because at the end of the day, like, I’m sure, you know, people deal with it, too. Like, I’m sure Kaser deals with, you know, having good people that come in that are applicators that he’s got a babysit or that, you know, like that. He has to make sure that he’s probably got a lot of money invested into his applicators, you know, to know what So something doesn’t go wrong.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:51:22) – Yeah. And inevitably he just posted the other day about how.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:51:26) – Just even using the wrong hook. Yeah, he kind of messed up his whole operation, you know, and, you know, and it’s just a. Such an everyday occurrence. And how he goes about explaining it is just, you know, and the process and the way he writes or, you know, like helpers, but.

 

Speaker 3 (02:51:46) – Like he’s like.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:51:48) – He’s like the the perfect advocate for our industry.

 

Speaker 3 (02:51:52) – Yes. Yeah, you know what I mean?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:51:53) – I’m going to have him on the directory and we’re working out like his blog. We’re going to try to put a feed in there of his blog because although he’s speaking to coaters, not all of his posts are out there to the consumer as well. Like how what to expect on a rainy day. You know I mean love that post.

 

Speaker 3 (02:52:12) – That’s see and.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:52:12) – That’s the stuff that I oversee. You know, that’s the stuff that I had to deal with as a lead coater. Guess what? I was the dude that had to run the forklift and I had to package everything up.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:52:21) – They had to bubble everything up.

 

Speaker 3 (02:52:23) – Oh, my God.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:52:24) – Oh, so long.

 

Speaker 3 (02:52:25) – You know, stacking.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:52:26) – Handrail correctly and padding it correctly. Like, those are the things that like, I would just go a wall over and to have somebody in the industry that’s actually explaining that stuff for consumers is like, why didn’t we think of this?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:52:40) – Yeah. Think he’s you know, it’s just he’s just sharing his journey. But the way he writes is towards like a consumer or someone he can write either way.

 

Speaker 3 (02:52:52) – Right?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:52:53) – You know.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:52:54) – And I think that’s.

 

Speaker 3 (02:52:54) – Kind of like a.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:52:55) – Guy I’m hoping to interview soon. He just started a YouTube channel, um, and thought, should I reach out to him as soon, you know, because he’s really just kind of growing a channel and I’m so glad I did. I hope to have him on the show, but his angle is so unique. Well, I don’t know what his angle is. I’m trying to figure it out. But what I saw was someone that could actually be perfectly placed on the directory front and center because it’s it’s almost like this one one video I was watching was him talking about a small project, just a garage project.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:53:38) – This is ideal. This is what we need to inspire consumers to get to why they want to go with a powder coater versus a painter, you know, And it’s just a small little job shop. It was, you know, it’s a DIY project that probably was more advanced than the average and why you’d want to set it to a powder coater because they’ve got this extra knowledge that, you know, a DIY or wouldn’t have, but you could totally direct that whole that whole YouTube channel to just the consumer market and doing small projects and featuring, you know, like those little things that you the, the circus stuff, you know, the restoring of the old stuff and rims, whatever, you could just make it towards a consumer the angle, you know. So we’ll see how he develops this channel because a lot of the people that we’re watching now are, you know, like unknown who’s just giving you DIY because you’re already in you’ve already been powder coating for a while and you just want this question answer.

 

Speaker 3 (02:54:44) – He’s like.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:54:45) – He’s. He’s pretty much like the cookie cutter of knowledge. For people that want the knowledge fast, that have obviously jumped through loopholes, figured out, you know, that this gun really isn’t going to do this for me. And they’re already beyond that point. These are the people that are having. Problems or, you know, in the sense of just kind of looking where they’re going to go next, of what they want to try to do. And I think that’s a lot of unfortunate. That’s a lot of things that we deal with in this industry is a lot of monkey see monkey do and not a monkey get off your ass and do what you want to do. You know, like and I feel like that’s what I tried as myself, as I try to put out as much organic and as much raw me as myself because I don’t want to have to deal with some different persona of me, you know, like I don’t want to put on some fake face of this or like I want I want people to have real knowledge and I want to have people to like me for who I am and not, you know, just think I’m some dude that’s just a painter like.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:55:47) – You know, and that’s that’s unfortunate. Like I think that’s what Sean Sean puts forward a lot of organic contact like Sean is Sean and the Sean’s raw and if you don’t like Sean then.

 

Speaker 3 (02:55:58) – It’s. Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:55:59) – Go somewhere else, you know, like.

 

Speaker 3 (02:56:01) – Right. Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:56:02) – And he’s pretty. He’s pretty right on with his, you know, like with what he’s telling you. And that’s kind of something I’ve tried to relay in what I’m doing in my live feeds is kind of explain, you know, this is this powder and this is what I have this set at. You know, even though a lot of my people that are viewing me don’t come to me for that information. But I feel like it’s my job and my duty to to be professional and to explain certain things. So like, let’s say a powder coater does show up on my life feed. I don’t look like some dumb ass that doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

 

Speaker 3 (02:56:33) – Right?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:56:34) – You know what I mean? And that’s just being professional and what you do.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:56:37) – And that’s obviously, you know, it’s going to that’s the passion showing to, you know.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:56:42) – Well, you know, and the thing is, is everybody wants to be everywhere. But, you know, how where are you going to be good at? Right. So you can.

 

Speaker 3 (02:56:50) – Have.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:56:51) – Being everywhere. That’s all I got to say. I deal with Facebook and Instagram and I have my own website and that that is enough to drive me crazy. Like I’ve finally gotten to this point to where, like, my wife was like working a job that she really didn’t like and she was getting really stressed out and I was just like, Fuck it, just quit. And you can work for me. Like you can come in. And she’s been sandblasting for me. She’s been hanging parts for me. Like there’s nothing that. Like she won’t get on the gun just yet. Like, I’m, like, trying to, like. Come on, just try it. You know, like, it’s fun, you know? And.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:57:26) – And like, she’ll sit there and stand stuff with me. And a lot of. I do a lot of trick stuff. So, like, I don’t like tape. I try to avoid tape at any given moment. And you’d be amazed what you could do with an air hose or like, an air blower. Yeah, right. And obviously these tubes and stuff, you can blow them out and wipe and and do a lot of clean, cool stuff. And she’s pretty talented at that. You know, I’ve showed her how to do it. And she started, you know, we’ve dropped a few things here and there together, but she’s she’s getting good at it and she holds me accountable, you know, And it’s it makes.

 

Speaker 3 (02:57:59) – Me like Jennifer.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:58:00) – Hate, you know, she’s the main coater at Black Label.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:58:04) – That’s crazy. That’s cool.

 

Speaker 3 (02:58:06) – She does.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:58:07) – A lot of it herself, you know, And.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:58:09) – That’s like something that I want to bring, you know, I want her to maybe get on the gun someday because women are a little.

 

Speaker 3 (02:58:15) – Bit more know.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:58:16) – What they’re good at until you.

 

Speaker 3 (02:58:17) – Give them. That can be.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:58:18) – Better than us. They could be way better than us. So that’s the that’s the thing, You know, I’d like it to be able to, you know, if something happens, she knows what to do and she can provide for herself or for my kids and her kids. And and that’s the thing, you know, and but main reason why I brought her on is to deal with like my business page on Facebook. Obviously, I have a group, but that’s more towards like the vape side community, things of what I do. And she deals with that. She helps me with like the booking and and all that great stuff. And she’s actually the reason why I got the big oven. She invested into me to get the big oven and to do wheels. And it takes a, takes a pretty strong woman to, uh, you know, take that big of an investment and throw it at me.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:59:04) – But she’s obviously had to deal with me and listen to me talk like this every night. So I think she believes in me a little bit.

 

Speaker 3 (02:59:12) – Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (02:59:13) – Yeah. I think for me, it was just when I started to go and want knowledge or seek knowledge, I couldn’t find any, you know, it’s like where, you know, I guess I’d come from a different industry. So it seemed like it was just more prevalent. You know, it was interior design and construction contract, everything.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (02:59:35) – I feel like everything is so much more explanatory, you know, like everything everybody’s kind of sees like the okay, what’s the catch in it, you know, being that it’s shoes or clothes or fashion or or whatever it may be. But then it kind of comes down to like these industrial things that, you know, you got to go to a special shop for. You got to go to this special someone for. And it’s just kept out. I honestly think it’s been like the demise of our industry.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:00:00) – It’s kept our industry so quiet. You know, it’s like and that’s the unfortunate part, is that that’s why there’s no information out there because, no, nobody wants to share their information. Because if you look at the East Coast side of things, it’s a lot of these manufacturing and huge powder coating shops, you know, that you may do manufacture inside and have a powder coating operation or you have like the Sherwin-Williams plant, you know, that obviously paint stuff for a lot of people. So a lot of stuff’s like in-house or it’s a lot of secrets or, you know, like obviously companies don’t want this company coming up with a match. Like if you’ve ever sprayed BK eight from Cardinal, I swear to God, everybody in the industry has a match to BK Cardinal that doesn’t match, you know, like and that’s kind of like the thing I would, I would just really like to see everybody get along, come together, do their thing, but also, you know, stay in their lane.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:00:56) – You know, it’s like find out what you’re good at and just run with it. And that’s kind of what I did. I just found something I was passionate about and what I was good at, and I didn’t give up. You know, it’s like there may have been some days where it was, you know, a little bit rougher than others. And, you know, you just wanted to quit and give up and maybe go get a real job again. But at the end of the day, the the smell of melting powder, you know, like just there’s just something about it that gets me excited, you know, and. There was nothing about liquid or sanding Bondo or doing metal work or any of the things that I did prior to this as a kid growing up with my brother, it was like. This is kind of my thing and I feel like I fit here and I’m not going to go anywhere, you know? Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:01:40) – That’s how Ross and I feel like I know Ross when he discovered powder coating it.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:01:48) – It was that feeling like I finally found my place, you know, kind of thing.

 

Speaker 3 (03:01:52) – Yeah, like a million years.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:01:54) – Things born, a million hats, done a million things prior to this. This is, you know, we’re older. We’re not your age. We’re older. And so we had a lot of. And it’s funny because when you look back at your life, you look back and you see, Oh, wow, all these things that I did prior to this has led me to this moment, you know? Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:02:13) – When it’s like I’m like sitting here before this podcast, like, nervous. Like, I’m, like, shaking. I’m like, freaking out. And it’s just like, I felt like, you know, every aspect of me powder coating everything that I’ve done has led me to this point and given me all this knowledge that I can’t contain. You know, like you couldn’t contain all my knowledge in one episode or five. Like we’re all still learning, we’re all still experimenting.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:02:38) – And that’s the thing is, it’s like once you get that bug and once you figure out, you know, it’s just like a light bulb goes off and it’s just like everything powder coating lives just kind of becomes effortless. And like, you just become one with your gun and you become one with your oven and everything just starts flowing and stuff. And it. That’s like something it’s hard to come by, you know, like I grew up racing BMX and motocross, and those were the things that I was very passionate about for a long time. And I’m still a big fan of today, but I get a lot of those, you know, feelings and those emotions when I pull out a hot load of something and I turn the music on and I’m just jamming and I’m in my own element, I get those same endorphins running through my body as I would, you know, if I was racing a big national when I was a kid or, you know, and.

 

Speaker 3 (03:03:27) – I feel like.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:03:28) – That’s the one thing that worries me about all the new people coming out and.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:03:32) – They don’t know the supper part. They don’t know.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:03:35) – Well, they don’t know, but.

 

Speaker 3 (03:03:37) – We’re.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:03:37) – All on our own journey there. But but I think that it’s like they’re just starting to be starting. But there’s no. Uh, there’s no story yet. There’s no journey.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:03:51) – Nothing’s really sparked them yet.

 

Speaker 3 (03:03:52) – It’s.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:03:53) – And it’s like, well, where what are you going to say about your, your website? Well, I’m not going to get that well, but, you know, I’m like, no, you don’t understand. There are certain things that you have to craft to make a brand. You know, nobody’s just going to go to you because you’re just around the corner from the other guy. You got to give them a reason.

[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.22.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:04:13) – This thing right here, this signature, believe it or not, that was the signature. I got sick and tired of signing my full name on invoices and my paint booth because a job come in and you got an invoice and you got to sign off.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:04:26) – And I you know, there’s a little note section that I would write, you know, how many passes or I would write equations just in case I came back to it, you know. And after a while, I got so tired of signing my full name, I just started doing the AP thing. And then it’s turn into like the little star AP thing. And then I just kept daydreaming about that and daydream about that and daydream about that. And then I was just like, you know, things kind of molded into another thing. And I had my other logo with my face on it and stuff and that kind of that put me out there, that put my face to my product, that gave me brand recognition. And then I was like, okay, I got to bring this in. We brought this in and kind of put it on shirts, and then now it’s on my mod.

 

Speaker 3 (03:05:10) – Right?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:05:12) – And that’s kind of like a, you know, it’s, it’s cool like to. To see like your signature, your seal of approval, you know, like kind of become a thing, kind of in a household name kind of way, you know? And that’s kind of what I’m trying to do with powder coating.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:05:27) – I don’t want to just be a painter, you know what I mean? I don’t want you to look at. Oh, Palmer’s powders as a powder coater. Yeah, I might be a powder cutter, but I want to bring other things to powder coating. I would like to, you know, maybe make tools, you know, and, you know, in certain aspects, you know, like certain tools for certain applications depending on what you’re painting, you know, like. And that’s where you got to kind of go. You got to like, for me, I’m not thinking about what’s the next thing I’m going to be coating. I’m kind of thinking on like, what’s the next collaborative thing I can be doing that not only, you know, it puts my name out there, but it’s also putting somebody else’s name out there. Kind of like this whole podcast you’re bringing me on to build me up. And then also in return you’re going to be surprised of what I do once I leave here.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:06:13) – I have this whole other. You know, platform that I can speak upon, that I can say, you know, for my powder coating people or I can recommend people that are having problems, I can tell them to come listen to you now because you have a lot of information to relay. You have to deal with Ros. You have to deal with all the books and and you order the paint. So at the end of the day, it comes down to you’ve learned a lot of knowledge to tell him to pass on to him, you know, and if it’s like at this point we have such this base to start growing on and it’s going to take you and Ros to bigger places and to learn other experiences and and other things. And that’s just the cool part of, you know, people that are open to this is it’s it’s going to fucking blow up quick.

 

Speaker 3 (03:07:01) – I hope.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:07:02) – So. I mean, I really want that to happen. I think the industry is ripe for it.

 

Speaker 3 (03:07:08) – And hopefully it blows up it.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:07:10) – We just we deserve it. You deserve it. I deserve it. Ros deserves it.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:07:16) – Well, and and if you think about it, your community deserves it. You know what I mean? Like Hawaii, the community you guys are serving, you’re not only serving to look cool, you guys have to preach corrosion protection. There’s there’s so much more that you guys know than just looking cool. Then, you know, you guys have to deal with salt in your air. You have to deal with humidity. Like there’s so much shit that us mainland people, you know, yeah, we deal with, but we don’t deal with island like conditions. We don’t deal with tropic conditions like. And you guys in the sense are on the forefront of making that product better in that environment, you know what I mean? And you’re bringing it to your community to where your community thrives off of that. And that’s one thing that, you know, I feel like we need to preach is, yeah, I may be a separate person in my community, but I’m going to offer you a better product.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:08:09) – You’re going to get your money’s worth. You’re going to feel better walking out my door. You’re not going to feel jaded. And if you do, I’m going to try to make it feel it make you feel better about it, you know? Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:08:18) – Well, this, you know, we’re scaling again because we kind of got hit back down from the Covid thing and rebuilding our shop and all of that with the new location and, you know, just we’re just doing like we did before, which is we waited for a job to help pay for this oven to be built. I’m not going to go and just buy, you know, we we have the the knowledge to build it. It’s not even that anymore.

 

Speaker 3 (03:08:44) – Yeah. It’s the.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:08:44) – Time and the money that you got to fall.

 

Speaker 3 (03:08:46) – Into change.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:08:47) – Right? So we waited and sure enough, you know, this railing that we’re doing next week is has been a nightmare for this construction company where they ordered it from the mainland. It came out of Pennsylvania.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:09:01) – They sent the first one over and it had all these different weird angles. And, you know, of course, they didn’t weld it. Right. And it doesn’t doesn’t meet the wall. And I mean, it’s just when, you know, aside from that, that’s crazy.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:09:14) – You guys don’t have any good like.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:09:16) – Oh no, no, no. They we do. They just decided to order it from Pennsylvania because it was cheaper. That was six months ago.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:09:25) – It gives me like, Yeah, that freaks me out.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:09:27) – It’s the classic thing that people do here. It really is.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:09:31) – They it’s like it sounds like classic fucking handrail builders here that would bring me a rail, not test fit it and then bring it back the next day and be like, Hey, can you recode this? Because I had to fix it. And you’re like.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:09:44) – How can I?

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:09:45) – Five days from now, I can.

 

Speaker 3 (03:09:47) – Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:09:48) – Can I fix it.

 

Speaker 3 (03:09:48) – On the wall?

 

Speaker 4 (03:09:49) – The code inspectors come in at, like, 5:00, and I said it’d be done.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:09:54) – Yeah, I’ve been there.

 

Speaker 3 (03:09:56) – Done that.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:09:56) – Because we’re so far away from the mainland. But, you know, like, I went to this.

 

Speaker 3 (03:10:00) – You know, she could only imagine.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:10:02) – Got it from right where she originally bought it from. And on this website is everything you need to know about a gate. Except for the coating. Like they say, they’re powder coating it and that’s all they say. There’s no spec, there’s no nothing anything about the kind of finishes you’re going to get or how we do it or anything. Like what kind of weird website is this? So I realized the gig was up then, you know, and then so now they’re trying to just satisfy the homeowner at this point because the homeowner is holding back the last payment. Right. And so this is dragging on. And I’m sure it’s like tens of thousands of dollars that they’re waiting on for this, you know, $3,000 gate, you know, railing. So they finally went and got it done locally. And we’re getting it next week.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:10:49) – And what.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:10:49) – Color is it.

 

Speaker 3 (03:10:50) – Going?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:10:50) – Oh, so the thing is, is you should see the horrendous photos they sent us. It looks like a chrome, but the chrome isn’t done well at all. Like it’s like a prismatic chrome. Or it could be chrome, but or even a Columbia Chrome. But it’s milky, you know, it’s kind of weird in some places. It just. Oh, it’s awful. It’s awful.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:11:15) – So to think that somebody wants to put that outside scares me.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:11:20) – No, it’s an inside railing.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:11:21) – Oh, it is?

 

Speaker 3 (03:11:22) – Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:11:25) – It makes it even more, you know, like if.

 

Speaker 3 (03:11:29) – Eyes are.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:11:29) – Way more on.

 

Speaker 3 (03:11:30) – It. Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:11:31) – You know, and I’m looking at the coating and just looking at how crappy this coating is, if they were trying to attempt some kind of a, a chrome or reflective look or any kind of like silver, even, it didn’t even come out right. I don’t even know what they shot. And they wouldn’t tell.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:11:48) – They wouldn’t tell us. Said, well, find out what powder because obviously that’s the powder that they picked. So I got to go in order that whether it’s Columbia or prison or.

 

Speaker 3 (03:11:58) – Yeah. Or wherever.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:12:00) – Right, wherever. And they wouldn’t tell me. And then on top of that, you know, they were about ready to send. So they made it again. They, they, they made a new one again. And this time we discovered that they were mixing aluminum with steel.

 

Speaker 3 (03:12:19) – Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:12:21) – So the top rail was aluminum, but the but this. Oh, my God, it’s just a Frankenstein thing. And I’m like, how is that you already having like, dissimilar metals? Do you think that’s going to last here in Hawaii with.

 

Speaker 3 (03:12:34) – I’m so.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:12:35) – Picky, even to the point of like, on all your like all your bases to where your, your handrail is going to get bolted to all those plates all go in and bevel all those edges so you can’t get any bulge. Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:12:47) – Yeah I’ll go in and I’ll scrape all the freaking little babies and clean everything up.

 

Speaker 3 (03:12:53) – So they ordered.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:12:53) – An aluminum railing, but they really didn’t get an aluminum. The top rail is aluminum, but the other stuff is all made out of steel because it’s cheap ass or whatever. And. And I gave this lady a whole education. Just the fact that I, you know, helped her kind of think through this thing, you know, like with the pictures and what I was seeing. And I’m like, This isn’t what you’re ordering this, this isn’t what you’re getting, you know? Now, far be it for me to tell this manufacturer in this powder coater, so sure enough, they powder coated and they’re ready to ship it out. But they realized that the coating isn’t right. It’s a little messy and it’s not passing their inspection. And they’re wondering, should we spend another week sending it back to the powder coated so they’re not even doing in-house powder coating, which means they have no control over the quality of what they’re getting once they send it out on top of the.

 

Speaker 3 (03:13:44) – On the device.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:13:46) – On top of the fact that they built it wrong in the first place. And this is the second railing that they’re having to do. And. Yeah, it was one of those, but yay, it came our way. We were able to build our big oven. We’re able to, you know, finally that’s.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:13:59) – Usually, that’s usually how it is. It’s like it’s always some crazy, convoluted, stressful job that, you know, that ends up, you know, you get to the end of it, you can wipe your hands clean and then it works out, you know?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:14:12) – Yeah. And they know do it local and get it done right with Maui Powder works right now. They know they’re not going to make that mistake again, you know So yeah it’s you know, it’s it’s good. We’re almost like it’s almost for us, it’s like starting over again or starting again.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:14:30) – It’s that was the big thing. Even I did like a big change just with inside my shop.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:14:37) – I had my bench in one area and I moved it to a different area. And then we got the bigger oven in and there was a lot of changing of where my, you know, my area was going to be. And even for like a good month, it kind of threw me off mentally. Because I wasn’t, you know, used to not being in that one spot, you know, And it was just kind of it’s kind of weird what, you know, little things can kind of affect you or kind of throw you off of your flow and kind of disrupt you. But I think at the end of the day. As a good powder coater. We’re always contradicting ourselves or we’re always second guessing ourselves. So, like, I feel like if we can all kind of learn how to just bite our tongue, believe in ourselves and just get over certain humps, like we would just be better off, you know? But that’s not how you know, that’s not how Murphy’s Law works or.

 

Speaker 3 (03:15:27) – Yeah. Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:15:28) – Habit.

 

Speaker 3 (03:15:29) – Yeah. Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:15:32) – Well, what do you think we should ask the listeners? Like I always try to end with some kind of a thought provoking question. Don’t be quiet now.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:15:46) – A thought provoking question.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:15:48) – Well, like, you know.

 

Speaker 3 (03:15:51) – Yeah, I.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:15:52) – Mean, it just usually surrounds yourself or, you know, around this subject or topic that we’ve been talking about, you know, like I’m always about brand and, you know, I have that marketing edge. And so, you know. You know, I guess. What do you think of the directory? That’s a good one. Kind of just soft, softly disclosed what we’re doing. I want to do another, you know, maybe get Ross on or somebody just kind of introduce it more formally. But, you know, it’s just we’re in a soft launch right now and we’re going to start advertising. And I think, I mean, what do you think of the directory? You kind of got a little peep show on it.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:16:33) – I think you guys are going to all have to kind of fucking hold on because. We’re getting shot into outer space, in my opinion. You know, it’s like a this is a big thing. And, you know, like a lot of people don’t think they’re going to understand the severity of it or they’re not going to understand it at the beginning. But then there’s going to be a lot of things that come from it that make people understand. And it’s kind of like, I don’t know, kind of go back to like what the buff says about like being casted by Spielberg, you know, like he was ready to be casted by Spielberg, but he wasn’t ready to be stuck in that rocket ship and shot out into orbit. And then, you know, okay, you’re out in orbit. What do I do now? You know, and I think there’s going to be a lot of this will either make or break people. It’s going to put people out there that are actually doing real, honest, true work.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:17:22) – And then it’s going to decipher you from the people that are kind of blowing smoke up your ass.

 

Speaker 3 (03:17:27) – Yeah. You know, and.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:17:28) – That’s that’s honestly that, that’s what you do need in this industry and you know, it’s. Not to to badmouth people. But, you know, if there’s people out there that are doing stuff and spreading wrong information about what we’re doing, it really kind of sends an echo throughout the whole industry. And this industry is quite a big echo chamber. And it is you know, you’ve experienced that quite a bit. And I try to I honestly try to avoid it, you know what I mean? I try not to to be in anybody’s drama or, you know, I’m out here doing my own thing. And that’s kind of like the benefit I’m in Idaho. I don’t I don’t have any of my big vape friends that are around me, you know, distracting me with what I’m doing. I don’t have a lot of people ha people in the industry that are buy my shop a lot, you know, fucking bugging me or anything.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:18:12) – So I really just get a go and shut myself off from the world and then come out of my shell and, and post it on social media. And I’m glad that this is coming out because this is giving me more of a chance to break out of my shell, you know, as a powder coater and as a custom coater myself. And, you know, to be able to bring my skill set to wheels and to other things instead of just doing little, little mods.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:18:38) – Yeah. Think you know it’s and you know the world we live in is is sometimes derived by influencers in the market. It’s just the nature of our society now thanks to Instagram and stuff like that.

 

Speaker 3 (03:18:56) – That’s like another thing.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:18:57) – I really don’t want to be an influencer.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:19:00) – Well, but in a sense, you know, a lot of people don’t. I’m not saying, you know, unless you’re Kim Kardashian or whatever, whoever.

 

Speaker 3 (03:19:10) – Exactly.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:19:11) – Or Kylie, Kylie Jenner or whatever. I mean, that’s not what I’m I’m not talking about that.

 

Speaker 3 (03:19:16) – No, I totally.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:19:16) – Get what you mean. But you got to look at it in the aspect of like there is influencers in this industry, like certain people influence certain products and obviously that’s how they make their money. I’m not knocking that, but I’m not going to be, you know, like I’m I would like people to, you know, endorse me maybe or, or endorse Maui Powder Works. I would like to see endorsements, but I don’t want to see like this whole influencer bullshit because then it kind of gets it kind of gets misconstrued and kind of like how we’re talking, you know, what’s kind of like irritating all of us, you know, people that have been here for years and that are, you know, working our hard asses off for this, you know, these things like.

 

Speaker 3 (03:19:56) – Maybe.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:19:56) – Maybe influencer isn’t the right word, but it’s it’s leadership in in some sense of the word like, you know, you’re not necessarily. Um, looking at other powder code, you know, like.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:20:10) – Guess you’re certainly doing something way, way different than everybody else. You may not look at yourself as a leader in that sense, but you are in the sense that you’re doing something so, so different and then.

 

Speaker 3 (03:20:24) – Trying to.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:20:25) – I guess it’s like I’m really trying to bring something to powder coating to just really open to open up everybody’s eyes. Like, you know, when people say, you can’t do that, like, okay, yeah, you may be not able to do certain things chemically. We understand that and on a chemistry basis. But there’s things that, you know, our industry hasn’t allowed our coaters to take the time to figure out what I’ve done, you know what I mean? Like, and that’s the thing is like, I want people to just. Fucking shut the clock off for ten minutes or an hour and just let your mind go crazy, you know, like, yes, we get it. Bills have to be paid. And. Trust me, I’m on that same train.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:21:03) – I have bills. I have to pay two. But there is still common ground. Like you said, you can bring the price down to a certain point to where still everybody is fucking happy. You know, you’re still making your money. They’re still making you’re making your customer happy. Or in my instance, like certain things, I have to chop my price down. But yeah, I still make money. But then that product can still get in the hands of consumers at a at a reasonable price, you know what I mean? Yeah. And that’s the thing. Like, okay, if my brother can do airbrush work or car paint work at the same rate I can, what’s the difference between us? There really isn’t other than the chemical, you know, things that are dividing us, you know, And that’s the thing. It’s like I’ve just taken the time and realized that, you know, an hour of your time you can actually. Figure out a lot of shit that people told us we couldn’t do with powder, right? You know what I mean? And it’s like, no, it’s just because I wasn’t in the area or the environment that allowed me to do that.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:22:01) – Yeah, you know what I mean? Remember, I tried to do a set of two tone wheels for my boss one time and I blew their all their minds once I started wiping this wheel and got halfway through it and he was like, Oh, blow it off. This is taking too long.

 

Speaker 3 (03:22:14) – So.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:22:14) – Okay, get the tech rag out. You can clean it off, you know, And it’s just those and that’s just the thing, you know, like, I feel like obviously our industry has to cost a lot to get into. It costs a lot to take your time to, to fuck with it. And you know, once stuff starts flying through the gun, you can’t get that back.

 

Speaker 3 (03:22:33) – You know? Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:22:37) – By. And that’s why I’m so into people’s stories, you know, and as it’s not like as in influencing or myth building. But but there is a story behind every powder coater and but there are some that are doing something so different that it intrigues me to have them on the podcast, to to get their story out more and to get that exposure.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:23:03) – And what is, you know, the question to our listeners is what makes you different? What’s your differential? You know, what’s your what’s your story? What is what’s your uniqueness? That’s a big thing that they’re talking about in all these seminars that I’m attending and stuff like that, you know, with Covid 19 and how are you different, you know, and what are you going to bring to the industry? You know, I want to connect everybody. It’s like herding cats right now. I think the.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:23:35) – Difference I think for me is like, what I bring is just open your mind. Like, stop, stop holding yourself back so much. Stop, Stop being so scared. Like, don’t be scared. Like, figure it out. It’s all, it’s all about learning and it’s all about having that knowledge. So when that person does come in your door and they want something, guess what? Maybe two years ago somebody wanted something and I could have been honest with them and be like, I don’t know how to do that.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:24:00) – Yeah, but now I’ve done so many different kinds of things that I can think of that I don’t have any ideas anymore, but I know certain things are possible and I know things aren’t. So it’s like what I can bring to the industry or what I can bring to companies or whatever it may be, or even just coaters that have questions. It’s like, just stop being scared at the end of the day and just go with it, you know? Like, yeah, nothing ever happened from just sitting by like, you know, got sick and tired of watching videos of Shaun and all these powder coat guys and all these guys on Instagram got so fucking tired of seeing all this cool shit and not being a part of it. So did something about it, you know, it’s like and that’s just really, you know, we live in such a society today where everybody wants everything fucking handed to them. And that’s in this industry. It kind of, you know, you nothing comes handed to you.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:24:52) – You’re sweating your ass off. You’re always in a hot environment or it’s, you know, it stinks or it burns or you’ve hit your hand with a sand blaster or or something, you know, it’s like it’s not for the the kind hearted. No, you know what I mean?

 

Speaker 3 (03:25:08) – And for the faint of heart.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:25:09) – Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:25:09) – Think, you know, that’s my benefit of, you know, growing up, race and dirt bikes and BMX enjoyed suffering, you know what I mean? I enjoyed the whole. The whole just the the grinding, just grit, you know, to get to the point of winning, you know? And I think that’s one thing about powder coating that, you know, you got to suffer just a little bit. But once you’re done suffering that instant gratification of that product coming out of the oven, you know, you can’t match it.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:25:37) – Yeah. And it’s, um, you know, people that think that’s another quality is they love a challenge, you know, because how they really realize accepting the challenge could they could fail or they could be in over their heads, but they’re not going to allow themselves to do that and they’re going to stick through it until they get it right.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:26:02) – Stuff, you know? So there is that, too, that you should have in order to to succeed or have in your brand, you know, that, you know, because at some point somebody’s going to ask you that question Can you do this rim or can you do this part like this? And you’re going to have you’re going to be.

 

Speaker 3 (03:26:24) – Either you’re a good coat reader, good.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:26:27) – Applicator, or you’re an applicator that doesn’t know. You know, not to say that you’re not a good applicator. It’s not saying that. But certain certain powders, you know, have certain you have to have certain skill sets for them. Like you have to know how to set your gun up to spray a hammered correctly or spray a vein correctly. You know, and and you know, certain colors. You know, I can tell you straight up like certain colors I I’m scared to death of it because I’ve had bad experiences with you know. But it takes you time and experience, time and experience to get over those hurdles, you know, and.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:27:02) – It’s just certain things, you know, certain powder coaters will say no to things because they just don’t know how to or they’re, you know, they’re just scared of messing something up, you know, like.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:27:14) – Yeah, I think that that’s where, like, you know, people get worried. There’s so many people coming into this market, they don’t know what they’re doing. And I’m like, Just relax. They’re there either. Of course, when, you know, like, let them, you know, they’re going to get burned or they’re going to run out of money or or.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:27:31) – You’re going to be fixing their work six months from.

 

Speaker 3 (03:27:34) – Now or you’re.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:27:34) – Going to be fixing their work or, you know, it’s you just need to kind of let it happen. And I know it’s harder because you’re, you know, you might be in more of a competitive area of the country. And there definitely are some areas we’re actually doing like I just kind of scraped a lot of data just to help with building the directory and working through.

 

Speaker 3 (03:27:59) – Yeah, you got.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:27:59) – Like the biggest custom coater close to me is forever powder coating. It’s a Washington and those guys do some killer work.

 

Speaker 3 (03:28:09) – Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:28:11) – Um, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t survive either.

 

Speaker 3 (03:28:14) – No, I’m.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:28:14) – Doing just fine. I figured out my own little niche, you know, I’m doing just fine. And that’s the thing, you know, it’s not. I’m not here to be scared of, you know, people taking work for me or vice versa that, you know, I’ve figured out my own way. And I think at this point, you know, if I’m ten, 11 years into powder coating and I’m a year over a year now being self-employed with Palmer’s powders, you know, think at this point if I’m scared about people taking my work. You know, I feel like I’m probably in the wrong industry, you know, to have those two to be second guessing yourself like that. And, you know, like, if you’re worried about that kind of stuff, then your work obviously doesn’t speak for itself enough, you know, and that’s that’s really kind of what it goes from, you know, and.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:28:55) – I couldn’t say it better. Yeah, you just said it. It’s so well said there.

 

Speaker 3 (03:28:59) – Yeah.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:28:59) – I started in the dirtiest dingy powder coating shop in this area. But guess what? Still to this day, that shop pumps out some of the best work probably in the world, you know, from just solid colors, you know, And I got to learn from that. And I got to take what I liked from that process and mix it with other processes and to see what didn’t really work and what did work the best, you know? And I feel like in the Northwest, besides certain people that are still obviously coating industrial wise and on the gun, you know, ten hours a day, I feel like in this area I could. I could be, you know. One of the top painters for just knowledge for people, you know, to help. And and that’s just kind of like the thing it’s just time and experience and just being humble about it, you know, like not being cocky about what you’re doing and just let let your work talk.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:29:52) – Yeah. And don’t think, you know, the community can’t grow unless we do kind of just stop and have conversations like this and have you share that information or share that knowledge because that’s how we’re all really going to grow and make make it better because it’s like.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:30:09) – Every shop I’ve ever been in at this shop talks shit about that shop and that shop talks shit about that shop. And guess what? None of those guys know each other. They don’t know each other’s names. They don’t. They don’t know who they are, you know? And that’s the funny thing about it, you know, it’s like you all, you all can run your fucking mouths. But at the end of the day, I’ve been a lead painter in all three of these shops, and none of you guys know each other, you know, it’s like. And that’s the thing that, you know, cracks you up at the end of the day is it’s like, guess what? Not Not one shop in this town can deal with every manufacturer, every handrail guy, every dude wanting to fucking do his car.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:30:46) – There’s enough work for you all to deal with, you know? And that’s why I got away from it and started my own shop. And didn’t want to fight over contract jobs. You know, like if I’d never have to see a handrail again a day in my life, I did something right, you know, like. And that’s just like where I’m at, you know? I feel like I’m probably one of the younger dudes in the industry. But I started when I was 17 and I walked away from it when I was 26, and now I’m 29 rolling on to 30 this year. And you know that my future is bright. And I you know, it’s it only things only keep coming and that’s the way I want it to be. Yeah.

 

Speaker 3 (03:31:26) – Yeah.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:31:27) – Awesome. Well, it’s been great talking to you. We could talk all day, right? Geez, I’ll have to turn this into one, 2 or 3 parter here.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:31:38) – Heck, yeah. Well, whenever you guys need help or anything, you guys have questions about anything.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:31:44) – Or if you guys want to get in touch with Cardinal, I can get you guys in touch with Cardinal. Really? Well, and.

 

Speaker 3 (03:31:49) – And it would be.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:31:50) – Nice to have some powder suppliers on the show. We haven’t had success with that yet and I don’t know what that is. I think there’s a shyness of some sort of or maybe not understanding of what it is.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:32:06) – It’s more of like a. I think it’s just more of like, they’re just so. Their desk driven jobs, you know what I mean? They’re so yeah, they’re in their offices, you know what I mean? And it’s like even Alex, like Alex from Cardinal, he would be a rep to have on your show because he’s so full of knowledge and he’s the dude that can get movement going in and within cardinal, you know, and making other people maybe follow.

 

Speaker 3 (03:32:33) – Right?

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:32:33) – Yeah.

 

Speaker 3 (03:32:35) – That’s all it takes.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:32:35) – Is it takes one little duckling for everybody else to be like, Oh, we got to hop on this train, right? That’s why I’m here.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:32:42) – I seen Sean the other day on here and I was like, I got to go talk to her and reach out to Ross and go blow their minds. So.

 

Speaker 3 (03:32:49) – Well, thank.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:32:50) – You. It’s been a pleasure having you. And I’m so glad to know you and have you be a part of helping build what we’re doing. You know.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:32:59) – It’s been an absolute honor, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for everybody. It’s been a it’s been an awesome conversation.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:33:06) – Yeah, awesome. Okay.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:33:09) – Right on. You guys have an awesome night. And tell Ross and everybody else I said hi.

 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (03:33:13) – Okay. Aloha.

 

Palmer’s Powders (Ashton Palmer) (03:33:15) – Yeah, aloha.

 

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About us

RossKote is committed to sharing their experience in metal coatings, painting, and restoration so customers & powder coaters can navigate the process of powder coating and make the best choices for getting their projects done.

RossKote regularly contributes helpful videos on his blog and YouTube channel.

Join us.  As we build a powder coating community online to share our passion for performance finishes by subscribing to RossKote’s Powder Coater Podcast

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Filed Under: All Posts, Podcast Tagged With: artist, custom coaters, myth busting, powder coater podcast, powder coating

Powder Coating Horror Stories: How to Handle Nightmare Customers

August 1, 2023 by pcnearme

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Have you ever had a nightmare customer? In this episode, Sean Shreve and his guest speakers discuss their experiences with difficult customers and how they learned to handle them. They emphasize the importance of doing the right thing while also not being a pushover in the business world. They also talk about the changing powder coating industry and the importance of providing value to the audience. They encourage listeners to share their horror stories and what they learned from them. Tune in to learn more about the challenges of managing online communities and the potential downsides of social media.  

 

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtTLdVr1_ak[/embedyt]  

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:00:03) – And we’re back with more blood and gore, just like a vengeful psycho killer sequel. Trust me, I’ve got him right where I want him, as he confesses his true crime past. On how his reputation became a victim of unscrupulous acts despite his efforts in part two of going places unknown with Sean Shreve. Get ready to level up your powder coater game. So yeah. And I think that. I mean, in describing the Internet culture today. You’ve got two kinds of influencers. You know, the kind that just have have that reach or followership or.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) – (00:01:17) – I think what you have is naturally likable people.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:01:22) – Organic reach or it’s not organic reach, but like that organic ness that they don’t care how many followers they have versus, you know, because they’re being authentic, they’re just being themselves on whatever platform they’re on. Um, and versus the. I guess that the fiery or, you know the fiery fellowship really fast, hard and fast but have nothing behind it. You know what mean? There’s just nothing behind it.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:01:54) – And there’s lots of celebrities out there that we could compare to, but mean, you know. Me personally, I’m all about organic reach versus paid or any other kind of viral type stuff because yeah, you’re not really going to get the followership in that. I kind of want to go back to this point that was made a little while ago actually about, um, you know, growing your YouTube channel and, you know, at some point it’s going to have so much reach, you know, just so much that you can, you know, and that’s okay because the guy with the the you notice that there’s the other kind of viral or powdered highly clicked on powder coating is videos out there are the guy that has the automotive channel that, you know, does all kinds of things. Automotive, of course, it’s a much broader audience, right. Um, and it’s got one video that’s powder coats. Yeah. Like truck, you know, here’s my powder coated tracker, my whatever, and it goes crazy and stuff.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:03:06) – But there isn’t what a lot of what you’re doing out there where the how to videos even this podcast you know we reached a couple milestones with just the getting into the top 200 of how to podcasts. I mean that’s for a niche market that’s you know and that’s what I’m getting at is that powder coating is niche and you shouldn’t expect a million followers out of it because even if you could get a million followers out of it, how many of those are actually going to continue to come back and engage in your lives or engage with, you know, comments, likes and shares? Yeah. How many are those? And I’d rather have those people every day coming to my blog or to my podcast or whatever, my YouTube channel, um, because I know they’re going to come back every week. And that’s to me more important than how many not how many followers do not engage, you know, that are not engaging.  [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Listen Now” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ global_module=”20170″ saved_tabs=”all” global_colors_info=”{}”]

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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:04:09) – Yeah. And that’s my biggest thing is, you know, I’m, I’m not ever pretending that I’m going to hit a million followers.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:04:15) – I’m not going to pretend I’m going to hit like, even I mean, I’m at 25 something now, 2500 something now, which to me is ridiculous. You know, like, I didn’t think I would get anywhere near that. So like the idea of 10,000, I guess now is a little more reasonable. But even then, like, I don’t care if I even get to 10,000 followers, it’s, you know, having the goal of having followers is like having the goal of having a bunch of fake friends around you, you know, like, I’d rather have like two cool friends that I know are honest with me, for better or worse every time than have a bunch of fake people who just want to like big me up and, you know, like on my videos or leave fake positive comments and things like that. And it’s the big thing with me is, you know, I don’t need a million followers. If I can teach 100 people some dumb trick on powder coating, I’m way happier doing that way, happy doing that.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:05:04) – And it’s, you know, there’s all these people are like, you know, I’ll give these. I guess, you know, I don’t see them as like secret tips and tricks, but I guess either I came up with them or I got them. Somebody would never showed up to other people or whatever. But I’ll show people how to like mask a valve cover. Like, I don’t know if you’ve seen my video about masking the backside of a valve cover for powder. I use tinfoil. I don’t tape the whole back thing.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:05:27) – Ross has done that a few times. Yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:05:29) – Tin foil, tin foil and binder clips on the backside.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:05:31) – Well, it’s cheap.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:05:32) – Too fast. It’s incredibly fast. Like, that’s the biggest thing, you know, Tape sucks, tapes expensive. It sucks to deal with most of the time, especially on multi coat stuff. The foil thing is quick and easy and do it and you know, it’s it works every time. It’s not like it doesn’t work on certain types of outcome every time.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:05:52) – And when I started posting that, I started seeing all these, you know, pictures of people’s work done and hanging and all of a sudden now everybody’s using binder foil on the back. And I’m like, That’s awesome. And people are like, Oh, how come you don’t give unknown credit? You know, Unknown coatings credit. Like, they’re not gonna give me credit for that. I don’t care. You know, it’s not like it’s not like I invented some crazy new way of doing something. It’s just like, I’m glad that now somebody else has found an easier way of doing something cool. Yeah, good enough for me, you know? Or the, you know, putting clay when I sandblast valve covers. You know, if you have a customer who doesn’t want you to remove the baffles which. I don’t know why anybody would ever want that, but it happens. You know, I came up with the idea of using modeling clay to plug all of the openings in the baffles because it’s sticky, right? So it’ll stick to everything during the blasting process.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:06:43) – And I’ve tested it 4 or 5 times to make sure that the only way that you can even get into it, as if you tried to blast media into it, even then, it doesn’t really work. Um, before I ever told anybody else about it, But I’ve been using that way of doing it for six years now, seven years now. And now I see people like, Hey, where can I get modeling clay from? You know, Like I was like, Hey, you just go to Walmart, you know, like, it’s crazy. And and that to me is way more that I’m way more proud of being able to help ten people than I would ever be of having 10,000 followers.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:07:18) – And because that’s what it’s about.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:07:20) – Yeah. And having the having the channel grow as well as it has has been awesome. I mean the opportunities now, I mean I’ve, I’m getting contacted by powder coating companies that sell powder like big name companies, um, offering me, you know, real sponsorships, not, Hey, can you mention our name once in a while? You know, these are we’ll pay you to put our logo in every video, use our product for everything.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:07:45) – And, you know, because.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:07:48) – They need help. Yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:07:49) – Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:07:50) – And it’s they’ve been they’ve been in the industrial world for so long, they don’t even know how to handle a, you know, how to handle custom coaters. Yeah. And I’ve been preaching that since way before. You know, I’m not going to name names, but like, you know, I can’t believe they’ve ignored this for so long, you know?

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:08:13) – And you see you see them trying to jump into it now, but you can tell they’re really far behind. Like prismatic is the only one that ever catered.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:08:19) – I mean, but they they cater to just us, you know.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:08:22) – Well, that’s what I’m saying. So Prismatic has done that. I mean Columbia and like powder by the pound. Some of those guys who I you know I think initially we’re taking big box out or repackaging it and selling it off.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:08:33) – We understand that now.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:08:34) – Yeah but it’s you know, prismatic has always been there and then all these other companies are now playing catch up like in a big way.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:08:41) – I mean I, I don’t we’re still in some negotiations with two companies, so I don’t want to say anything name wise, but I’ve been contacted now by three big box powder companies who try to sponsor the channel. And I’m just like, I gotta be honest with you guys. I’ve never even used your powder before.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:08:57) – So I’m telling you, this is the beauty of what you and this podcast is doing is it’s disrupting the market. Yeah. And it’s I was talking to Ross about this yesterday or think this morning, I don’t know. I’m 50. I forget when I talked to my husband now but you know we’re now, you know we’re making some noise. Yeah. Um, and they’re starting to kind of turn their head a little bit and realize, you know, there’s an army of us, literally. I mean, I know that’s what you call the Facebook group and stuff, you know, mean I’ve been preaching that to them for. For, for years even before, you know, uh, to anybody that would hear me, um.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:09:45) – And, you know, ironically, the interesting thing about Prismatic is their problem is the opposite. They want to get more industrial customers.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:09:55) – And that was always my problem. That was my problem with Prismatic forever. It’s like, well, why don’t you guys, if I want to buy a £55 box of your clear, why do I why am I still paying almost full price that you would be charged me per pound? Yeah. And but the more that I stepped back and looked at it, I was like. It makes sense though. This is actually your market like. You know, if you mention powder like, hey, where’s the best place to get powder? It’s prismatic every time. On any hobby form. Any hobby form.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:10:23) – And they own the market.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:10:25) – Yeah, right. And that’s the thing, you know, that’s what I always go back to is that brand recognition, you know, like it doesn’t. You can say all you want about the fact that they don’t do big box pricing, but I guarantee you they’re doing more business.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:10:36) – Anybody else? I mean, I’ve seen I’ve seen their trucks. I’ve been to the prismatic. You know, I just I actually used to live in Oregon where Prismatic is like the same city that it’s in. And when I went back there to visit some friends, I actually stopped by Prismatic or, you know, Nick Industries technically. And, you know, I’ve seen the three ups trucks there that they’re loading up every day. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, I know how much business they’re doing. Like it’s not I’m sure that big box companies are doing just fine as well. It’s not like, you know, Prismatic has taken a big bite of what they want, but now it’s the big box. Companies are coming back after Prismatic customers saying like, Hey, why don’t you guys try to buy some of our powder? And you know, the number of companies now that have sent me, I probably have gotten. £300 of powder for free from companies that are just trying to get me.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:11:26) – Hey, why don’t you come over to us? Why don’t you mention us on your, you know, your YouTube channel? And I’m just like, I mean, I could but if you’re, you know, the downside of me is if I don’t like your powder, you’re going to know about it on the YouTube channel, you know? And yeah, it’s like the risk worth it to you, you know, like, is the risk really there? That’s one of the big things with, you know, I love ifs powder the a bunch of the colors that I’ve gotten from them. I love love they’re super wet black, although they’re matte black. Two silver, one of the best silvers I’ve ever used. There’s a bunch of colors that I absolutely love, but they have atrocious customer service. If you’re not a company ordering $1,055 boxers and when I say atrocious, I mean I can’t email, call or text my rep and get a response for weeks, you know, and it’s like or I could just get a hold of say.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:12:17) – It’s ever been that bad for me. But I would like to order their powders more and, and think that that’s kind of more or less where think I want to make this you know this point is that. I think it’s good that we’re that we’re maybe possibly being influencers or disruptors or, you know, and finally having a voice either on YouTube or somewhere else where we can actually say, this is kind of lame and you need to make it better. Mean, uh, you know, remember when the whole tiger thing kind of came on in the groups and stuff and everybody’s like, Well, how do I get an account or how do I order and stuff? And I’m thinking rolling my eyes, you know, like, Come on, tiger, get an automated system there where we could just we don’t have to call.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:13:10) – Tell your web guy to spend ten minutes of his day to make this possible.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:13:14) – Yeah, I think that, to be honest with you, I think their problem is a little harder to solve than that.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:13:18) – But but it’s important that we do speak out and that we do say this could be better or this is messed up or whatever. And I think it is going to change. And, you know, when I had I wish I hope today’s people that are listening to this podcast go back and listen to the Thrush 99 podcast because this is exactly what Russell was talking about, that if we get we’re big enough that if we get together, we can change this industry and it’s going to come. It’s not going to come from the industrial coaters people, it’s going to come from you and me and everybody listening to this podcast about what it is that we want out of the industry. And I get really my voice is going up and I’m getting excited and, you know, whatever, But it’s so freaking true. And we need to this is why we want to build the community in a positive way and and cheer everybody on. Not, you know, block them on Facebook groups or bash them in conversations on about posts and stuff.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:14:37) – It’s one of the reasons why I started the podcast is to make a more positive. Uh, experience for people that are trying to go to these places and get information. And I love I love your channel because I’m always attracted to. Powder coaters or industry people that are. Providing a valuable resource, right? Your channel is a resource blast Coatings blog is a resource for when you’re down in the dumps and you want to hear so, you know, like don’t know or you want to get positive about how to manage your business. Jace has got an incredible you got to go there guys, to go check it out because it’s just such a great you get so uplifted when you go there because you realize you’re not the only one with this problem and this guy is trying to help you solve it or get a better grasp of it. Right. I am dying to get on there. Why? Because they have a library. People of videos, how to videos in from a technical expert. Uh, and it they’ve got they’ve got the same problem.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:15:55) – I have too much content all over the place and not promoting it enough. Right. Uh, you know, it’s good that you’re just mainly focusing on the YouTube channel because when you create as much content as I do, I get boggled down with putting it everywhere all over the place. And they literally swear they got the the freaking powder coating library of Alexandria in there on their website. But how can you freaking find it? You know what mean? I had to actually have them tell me where to go to get all these. And it’s the way he talks and it’s like somebody like me who’s non-technical and not a powder coater. I could literally get all of those videos that I watched and I’m like, Oh, I have a better understanding of this now, and where is it hidden in somewhere in deep and down in their website somewhere.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:16:46) – No. Nine pages of links. Yeah, it’s, it’s pretty rough finding that stuff on there.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:16:51) – Yeah. So it’s not just about ordering from, it’s also just trying to find because it just seems like it’s a freaking maze on their website that they could just simplify for users so much better and give a better customer experience.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:17:04) – But anyways, hopefully they’re listening.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:17:07) – I think touching on the one thing where you’re saying like you like pages or people or whatever that are willing to help other people is I think that. When you’re authentic, it’s really easy to want to help other people, and it’s really easy to help other authentic people. You know what I mean? Because you see what they’re doing and you’re like, Oh, I want to help that person. You know, like I want to help them grow at, you know, I’ll help other people grow it. No benefit to me. I mean, I shout people out of my YouTube or Instagram, whatever. I don’t care if they ever shout me back out, you know, like, that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing it because I’d like to see them grow. But whatever the reason might be, you know, and it’s, um, there’s a I was going to say, kid, you might even be my age. I actually have no idea idea how old he is, but he’s been doing work with, uh, I want to say, like a redline easy 50 gun, I think, which I’ve no experience of any kind with.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:18:00) – So I know very little about them, but I know that they’re not like they’re a hobby level gun. They’re not like a, you know, high end gun by any means. And he bought one of my units and looking at the work that he had been putting out with this easy 50, like I was floored. Like over the top impressed. I think I’ve mentioned him now in like 2 or 3 different YouTube. I think I met him on a two different YouTube Q&A and then just a regular video I shout out because like, you know, and I think I’m only sort of shouting out like his Instagram and his Snapchat, remember correctly. But it’s like the work that he’s putting out with this. You know, I don’t want to say like low end equipment, but in scale, low end equipment. Um, was incredible. You know, it’s like I’m way more interested in seeing that person grow than trying to push down somebody who’s doing good work. You know, it’s like more people to see that you don’t have to buy $1,000, $2,000, $4,000, $8,000 gun to put out good work.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:18:56) – You just have to be dedicated and committed to what you want to put out, you know, And it’s it’s pretty much.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:19:01) – Out for his competition because when he does go and buy that $5,000 game or Wagner or Yeah, Nordson or whatever, look out, He’s going to be amazing. You know, can you get to be that good on a on a on a hobby and you know.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:19:15) – Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:19:16) – If he ever gets, you know, if that’s what he wants but you know. Yeah. It is all about the progressing of the industry and the industry is people. Yeah, it always has been.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) – (00:19:27) – That was one of the reasons I, you know, I left most of the powder coating groups on, on Facebook. Just seemed like there was a lot of drama in them that I just and not even entertaining drama. It was just like grown men arguing about dumb stuff, you know, basically what it was. And I, you know, I can get that anywhere on Facebook. I don’t need to be in a powder coating group to find that.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:19:49) – Um, but there was, you know, I remember seeing one of the You.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:19:53) – Should try the lightworkers group. Oh, my God. Some of those. Oh, my God. Some of those groups are just like. It’s like the more ascended this subject matter and the lower the vibration can be.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:20:12) – But, uh. It was you know, I left those groups and I think it’s kind of funny to me now. I don’t know. You know, I’m sure you’ve seen enough of my videos that have a sticker on the side of my the video. The gun that I use in all my videos is a hyper smooth oh two, right. That I purchased in 2008. And I remember seeing a post that was talking crap about the fact that I was using, you know, I’m giving people advice and tell them how to do things, but I’m still using this hobby gun. And. I’ll be super honest. The only reason I’ve continued to use that in all my videos is because I know it bothers people, which is the wrong reason to do it.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:20:52) – But there’s a sticker now on the side of my gun because he’s like, Oh, how could he be telling anybody how to do anything? He’s using a 20 year old gun. So that’s why on the side of my gun now, there’s actually a sticker that says 20 year old gun in quotes. And then I saw that.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:21:04) – I saw that and was wondering what that meant because I didn’t understand. Yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:21:09) – The best part of that is I later went back and found that guy’s business. His business closed down this year. He said, due to Covid. You know, it is what it is. I don’t know.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:21:23) – Well, there are some powder coaters out there that including us, that are struggling, but that’s our state.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:21:29) – Yeah, I’m just saying, like looking at the quality of work, I would say that a global pandemic was not his problem. That’s great. Um, but it was funny because, you know, he’s using I think he was using like a Wagner, you know, he’s using like a $4,600 gun, whatever it was.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:21:46) – And I’m just like, So wait a minute. You’re mad at me for using this gun that I think when I bought my gun, it was $700 and it came with like a whole kit of startup stuff. It was on sale. I remember it being on sale. It’s the why ordered of the day did. And I was like, So you’re mad at me for using this gun and being able to put out, you know, clearly good results? Like anybody who’s seen my stuff, like not bragging, but like you can see that the work is there, like the quality is there. And I was like, so you’re mad about that, but you’re using this gun that cost, you know, five, six, seven times more than mine. And and you can’t keep it. You can’t keep your business going. But I’m doing just fine, you know, And it’s that’s not, you know, it’s not a shot. Maybe it’s not a slap in the face, but it’s like your focus is in the wrong place if it’s an observation.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:22:29) – Yeah, Yeah. I did have that feeling when I was watching that video last night. Like, what brand is that? You know, what brand is using? Because it was like colored, like a Wagner. And I’m like Adele Wagner on there. And I’m like, Yeah, that’s.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:22:45) – That is it is a I.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:22:47) – Don’t know what it is. It’s it’s an industry thing, too, don’t you think? Like, think it comes from, um, like a top level kind of thing or where, you know, it’s all, you know, there are these industrial coaters, man. It’s all about who is your guy, you know?

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:23:08) – Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s like, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk always talks about he’s like, I want to build the biggest building in town. And I can do that two ways. I can either build the biggest building or I can tear down everybody around me. And it seems like most of those guys have a way bigger interest in tearing everybody down around them.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:23:23) – And just like going out and trying to put in the work, like make things happen. And it’s like, I don’t I don’t know how anybody could live in that mindset. Like that’s so far removed from how I think about anything. You know, it’s not to sit here and say that I don’t have negative thoughts about people in the industry necessarily, but you’re not going to see me all over the Internet blasting them, making fun of the gun that they’re using. You know, that’s the last thing. If they’re putting out work, if it’s good work, don’t care. Don’t care if they’re using a harbor freight gun. You know, if you’re they’re throwing glass out of it with a harbor break. I’m cool, you know. Right. I’m not going to.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:23:57) – Maybe they’re trying to forget how they started themselves or something. I don’t know. Like I don’t you know, I do see that sometimes, too, in the in the chats and stuff and and stuff. It’s even. Yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:24:10) – Even trying to compare I mean, industrial coaters comparing themselves to me is ridiculous.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:24:15) – It’s like I know that they’re industrial coaters who I’m sure put out great work, but we all know that most industrial coating doesn’t have to look that great. You know, it’s not like it has to be amazing. You’re talking matte black on probably 80% of your jobs or architectural bronze. You know, it’s like it’s like we’re not too worried about it. And most of it, you know, fencing, railings, all that that’s going to be installed before the customer even sees it, has a problem with it. It doesn’t even matter. You know, it’s like it’s like to compare that versus when I have somebody come here and pick up a set of wheels and they pick up a wheel and they’re going like this and flipping it all around. Like, I know for a fact that my quality is probably better than most industrial coaters just by default, because it has to be not. I’m not saying they can’t put out the work, I’m just saying that they don’t have to put out that level of work because they’re an industrial coater, you know? And so to compare the two is just ridiculous.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:25:05) – You know, it’s.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:25:05) – Funny because I ordered this right next to me here. You can’t see it on the camera, but I ordered a pro quote or no pro pro form or something from Home Depot. It’s just a slab wall. It’s plastic. Right. Um, but the hooks that come with it are powder coated.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:25:24) – Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:25:25) – And I was inspecting the powder coating, and I’m like, Who’s got this account? You know, whatever.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:25:31) – But it’s funny, looking at the coat.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:25:33) – I mean, overall, it’s a good coating, but, you know, you can see you can see debris from the weld and, you know, it’s not cleaned up and stuff. And I’m like, Do I want to put this on my wall? You know, like but, you know, yeah, it’s amazing how much they get away with those line coaters and those industrial coaters get away with it, you know, because for them, it’s all about margins, right? It’s all about making the most amount of money.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:25:59) – And it’s a different problem that they’re solving versus what we’re solving. Right. Exactly. So I do want to talk about because on your. Yeah. Getting back to your search results on that first page. Okay. You type in unknown coatings, right. Um, and there is. And the reason why I’m bringing this up is I’m on the advisory committee for the state of Hawaii. So get into you know where I’m going now.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:26:33) – Yeah, I think I know where you’re going, but yeah, go ahead. Well, I.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:26:37) – Guess the point is, is that, you know, the I notice that you don’t necessarily have an accreditation, although it seemed like maybe you should, uh, I’m not sure why the is ranking. You guess if that’s where the complaint came from. There’s a complaint in there. Didn’t really click into your profile. You don’t really have a profile, actually.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:27:01) – But my my thing has changed in the last 12 years. It is literally it goes like a s, c, a b, s constantly.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:27:12) – And I’ve my the only response. I mean, I guess I feel weird telling you this is because now you just said that you’re part of a BBVA thing but.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:27:20) – Don’t work for them. I’m just an advisory board.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:27:23) – I’ll tell you the same thing I tell them. And actually the same you know, I talked to my parents. I had gotten a negative, you know, whatever it is, a complaint or whatever. And I talked to my parents and they, of course, thought it was a big deal. You know, you know, my parents are 69 and 71, you know, so old. I guess we’ll say I’m closer than that than I want to be, but.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:27:46) – Different from a different age.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:27:48) – Right. And, you know, to them, the BBVA was everything because that was the only person that was the only thing you could turn to to get any information about anybody. And, you know, luckily, I’m I’m just on the edge of, you know, I had Internet when it first came out kind of a thing.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:28:04) – You know, I had AOL when it was on three floppy disks kind of at the store, you know, and. For me. You know, what I tell the Better Business Bureau is they have no value to not only myself, but to anybody. Actually, if you’re not old, there’s no value in the BPB, in my opinion. Now, the reason I say that is only because of the Internet. You know, if people want reviews and they want to know things. The Web doesn’t provide enough information for that to even be a thing that people can look up, you know, mean they can look up, oh, this person’s had X amount of complaints and they resolved X amount of complaints, which is great, I guess. Um, but there’s nobody, there’s no 25 year old that’s going to look at the BBC that’s not even close to a reality. And that’s the same thing I’ve told them the first time I ever got a complaint. I remember I hemmed and hawed about how I wanted to respond to it now.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:29:00) – I should preface this by saying that the complaint that happened, I had already taken care of it before the DVD. So, you know, I was already kind of a step ahead of what they were trying to accomplish. Right. But when I started looking into the web a little bit more, I realized that it’s essentially a private company who makes money off people paying for accreditation. I mean, it has government ties. I’m not going to say that it’s a guy just making a bunch of money off people buying their A-plus ratings, but. I noticed when I had gotten negative comments on it, a couple of months went by and I got a letter and an email from the web asking if I would like accreditation. Then I could pay $5,000 and I could get via accredited business and get a sticker for my door and get put on some nonsense website. I think it’s.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:29:51) – 5000. That’s not what I pay. But yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:29:54) – Mine was five -$5,000. Wow. Actually, I printed I think I actually posted on Facebook because I was like.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:30:00) – I was like, so let me get this straight. Me, who I assume only has negative things because like, nobody contacts them when it’s positive because it’s not how that works. I was like, I only have negative things with the BPP who every time they’ve messaged me, I’ve told them that like, stop sending me these letters. You’re wasting your money. I don’t care what any of you say. Your opinion is of no value to me or really anybody else. And now you’re willing to let me buy an accreditation? I was like, So you’re basically just a fraud? Like, you’re just mean. Imagine any sort of thing where I can pay to get a better grade, you know?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:30:33) – Yeah. I mean, well, it’s, it’s, it’s it’s more or less sort of taking an oath, I guess, if you want to call it that, which might even infuriate you more that, you know, you’re going to uphold a certain type of value, you know, to legitimize think that.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:30:55) – But it’s a value created by old people for old people. We’re not created for the generation I live in.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:30:59) – Listen, this is why they’re asking. They’ve asked me to be on the advisory committee for the state because they are having an identity crisis and finding and sort of trying to find their relevancy in this new world, the people that are running the BPP. Um, Tyler is the president of the for the Western. We’re called the north northwest Pacific region. And I’m not sure if Utah is included in the Northwest Pacific. Think it’s. Yeah, but it’s like California, Hawaii, uh, Seattle or Seattle. Washington and Oregon think Idaho, maybe Nevada as well. But. Yeah. Mean this is the reason why they have advisory committee members that are business owners that are on this, you know, so that they can get this feedback from us on. Right. You know, obviously now it’s all about when we meet. But um, I think that the thing is, is that in terms of Google search results.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_shop posts_number=”3″ _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_shop][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:32:12) – Okay, let’s just talk about Google for a second. And going back to that is, you know, if I saw anything in today’s search results for your company, the one that was most relevant to me or most disruptive or negative was actually the one because the other ones, you could just read through and realize that that was, you know, that was a silly situation or it got resolved or it was something else or this guy had a penchant for you or whatever, you know, to whatever, to nail you, whatever. But the one is important because it’s even though, um, it, the, the baby is sort of struggling with its own identity crisis and stuff. Like we said, it’s still a trustworthy site. You know it regardless of the 25 year old going there or not, which I agree with you 100%. He’s not going there. He’s going to go to Facebook or Yelp first before they go anywhere. Exactly. Um, in terms of like having a profile or a backlink to the baby is actually So like if you’re, you know, I know you have a website and it looks like you’re in the middle of building it out and stuff like that.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:33:36) – Yeah, well, well, let’s just talk websites for a minute because like, that’s the thing, you know, like if you want this, if you want to stay, you know, if the website was now your mission, right, you’ve got your YouTube channel going or you’re okay on Instagram and your gram game is good. Uh, if you were to focus then in on your website, then then having a solid backlink to the baby actually helps your website. And that’s all I want to say. Um, there’s, there are other relative websites in getting a legitimate backlink to, to build your reputation, to build your Google algorithm research results and stuff like that. And that’s, that was to me the only thing that I saw in terms of what I know about. A website building and blogging and, and social media and, and marketing and stuff like that was to me that the thing was actually more a negative than any of the other forum stuff.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:34:41) – Shenanigan.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:34:42) – Yeah. Just yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:34:44) – My whole issue I guess with the has always been.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:34:48) – You know, pretty straightforward. It’s the. It’s the market that they are talking to, right, as like a grand spectrum of things. Not, you know, I understand there are some positives that you could get in in having a positive. You know, having to think positive things about you no matter what that might be. I think I just looked it up online. It just says I have no rating, whatever, whatever that might mean.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:35:11) – No accreditation.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:35:13) – Right. But looking at it, I also it says I’ve only been in business for nine years. It says that I’m a detailer in a city that I haven’t lived in in almost ten. So it’s like. That information. I didn’t put any of that information there. They put it all there and it’s apparently all wrong. And what I told my parents, I actually remembered while you were talking, the thing that I had told my parents was the is important to people who would look up the phone number in a phone book. And that’s how I saw it, like.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:35:40) – The people who still wait for that phone book to come and will flip through it and find that number. That’s the people who care about that. And they’re not mine. They’re never going to even be close to my market now. To be fair, I did just have yesterday a guy that told me he was 98 years old and dropped something off here. But technically speaking, that is not my market. Um.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:36:00) – Yeah, it’s hard to say really, for especially for businesses like ours, where where can the help us or any large site like that. Um, you know, to me and one of the reasons why want to get somebody maybe you can pull some strings from me over at Prismatic. I’ve been begging for a few days now. Uh, is to get them on the, get them on the podcast because their website is an authoritative site where we can post our content. Uh, get get valuable. Very, very valuable. If I could show you my results on the value I get out of that website by posting every possible job I can that uses the prismatic powders.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:36:49) – Uh, I don’t see why a if they knew what I know. I mean, not I’m not saying prismatic. I’m pretty sure prismatic knows what, but if every powder coater knew what I know about prismatic platform, you would be posting there every fricking day, getting a review and stuff you could get in just the this last year that I have posted on it and our work and the the and started looking at all of that value I’m getting out of that site it’s unbelievable and I still think prismatic is under utilizing the site the platform.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:37:30) – Yeah absolutely which is hilarious because I mean you type in powder coat anything in prismatic comes up for me the first, the first three results pretty much you know, they have their paid ad and they have, you know, link straight to their site and then they’ll have some, you know, some other link that follows that. And it’s. Prismatic does a ton that. I’m sure they know what they’re doing after they understand the analytics side of it and how it helps other people.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:37:57) – Um, but because their focus has always been on the hobby coater, I think that, you know, I don’t know if they went out of their way to try to help hobby coaters in that regard, but they did kind of by default, you know, just in the presence that they created. And I mean, you look at and there’s no other site that even comes close to that mean powder code wise. I mean, there’s there’s nobody you can look at, you know, powder by the pound and Columbia and all those. Yeah. You can post pictures of your stuff on some of those. And I’ve never had a single person say, Oh, I saw your stuff on such and such website, but they’ve seen it on prismatic, you know, it’s like, I mean it is what calls.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:38:33) – Where they found us on prismatic and then called us and I’m like, How did that happen? You know? But yeah, exactly. You know, And do I want to let’s talk about this.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:38:46) – Search results again but in a different way. And that is um. You know, coming up, counting how much, you know, guess the average business and don’t know what the stat is exactly but did some did some kind of research on search results. Okay. When you’re typing in and I hope every powder code coater listening in will do this, especially if you have a website. But even if you didn’t because did I did ro row two on this search. So what you do is you put in quotation marks and then you type in your business name. So for you I put in a quotation mark unknown coating quotation marks, and then hit the search button because that’s how you get the most valid because when you just type in unknown coatings, you know, obviously they could talk about the results, could be either coatings or unknown or combination of all kinds of things. Right? Yeah. Um. So unknown Coatings got 83,600 results in the search. That’s awesome. That is amazing. It’s it’s YouTube.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:40:00) – Is it to YouTube?

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:40:01) – It’s there to all over it That that was you know going back to the analytics like my understanding of how Google Analytics worked. I got pretty early on, kind of unintentionally, right? I had read a I had actually listened to a lecture that led me to a book that led me to another book about just the analytics of Google and how and this was, I mean. 2012. You know, it was a while ago.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:40:28) – Really?

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:40:29) – Yeah. And so, you know, like I said before, that that’s the reason that you’ll never catch me mentioning another name, especially in my area. It’s more when I say I don’t mention other characters. Names mean in the area. And, um. It’s it’s my understanding of it that has allowed that growth because mean, ultimately if you come you know, if you’re in Utah and you type powder or Utah powder coating or anything like that, mine is the first result every time. And mine as a first result, mine is actually the first three results are two results, I think.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:41:00) – And then like if you keep going, there’s a negative one about me, of course, But I’m in there with, you know, I’m a one man show. You know, my my girlfriend does a lot of sandblasting and other stuff around the shop and is amazing at that. But like, I’m a one man show and I’m being mentioned with shops that have 13, 20 employees. 35 employees. Yeah. And it’s like realistically, we shouldn’t even be being compared, you know, like. Right.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:41:24) – Or because I. What’s the one near you? Um, um, I had thought I’d written it down.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:41:34) – Armor or there’s one that’s right by me called a powder keg is. RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:41:39) – Like no, not powder. I did look at powder keg. What’s the blast? No, Um.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:41:44) – Oh, wait, You’re thinking of the one that I can never remember the name of?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:41:47) – Yeah, they have an ATV on there. They. It looked like they do it a lot.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:41:52) – Wait, is it powder? Extreme coatings?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:41:54) – Not powder.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:41:55) – Extreme. But did Look at them.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:41:57) – I always want to call them bullseye coatings. But that’s not who you’re talking about.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:41:59) – Oh, but it’s that. Yeah. What is? Yeah, whatever. Okay. I’m never.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:42:04) – I’m gonna look. I’m gonna look.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:42:05) – Okay. Yeah, I’m going to look, too. Because here’s the thing. Um. I guess I want to put in perspective about search results versus a business search result, right? So obviously, when you type in just unknown coatings and hit search results, you get about 15 million hits. But it could be anything from like, you know, a cream that you put on your body to, you know, yeah, the real deal. So you have to use the quotation marks and. So, for instance, I typed in black label. Uh huh. Uh, coatings and not black label powder because wanted to exclude that. So put in black label and they get about they got about 4320 results which is good for business. But then he has a lot of followers on Instagram and stuff.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:43:02) – So that plays a part in in the, in the algorithm. Um, I typed in Jase Kaser blasting and coatings only 733 results. Yeah. And you know, for a business that’s actually really good for a business though, because I mean and it just goes to show you how, um, how important social media is or being on a platform like YouTube is or doing anything and doing more of it is important. Um.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:43:30) – And talking about the particular that you’re talking about near me is not armor coatings, right?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:43:34) – No, it’s not. It was. And I think the reason why that one. Um. Let me just type in unknown coating, literally.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:43:44) – What’s funny is I used to be able to find the people that I’m talking about, and now they’re not coming up at all. So. Bulls. Is it bulls eye powder?

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:43:53) – Well, yes. Bullseye.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:43:55) – Bullseye. And something like that.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:43:59) – Yeah, it’s. Think it is. Yes, it is. It is. That. It is that.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:44:05) – And it’s funny because when I saw that bull’s I think.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:44:08) – It’s full blown powder coating. Full blown. That’s it. That’s the one. I never remember it. I never remember that, man. It’s full blown coating, right? Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:44:18) – I mean, they, you know, they didn’t really have think they have like 1400, you know, I’d have to look to see what it was, but it wasn’t that big for a business or even maybe it was more than that. It was more like 7 or 8000. That was pretty good. You know, look like they, you know, look like they were pretty well established and that they, you know, that they had they were more than just a single sole proprietorship that they were a full on business. No. Yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:44:46) – One of my buddies actually worked there. Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:44:49) – And like it was a fairly they did industrial like lines. Yeah. Okay. Uh, RoRo no website which I called him out on, you know, and he was like, nope, don’t want a website, too much work.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:45:01) – And I’m like, okay.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:45:03) – To be fair, I haven’t had a website until the last probably seven months. I didn’t have one for the last like seven years. So I had one for the first, probably five now.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:45:14) – But yeah, but so neither does Ro ro and he’s got 13,000 in the search results. That’s pretty good. But then he’s on it every day. So how many of us are that good, you know. Right. Um, and mean his is pretty big too. And I think he’s on a couple of videos on YouTube and and podcasts and stuff, but, uh, Maui Powder Works 19,800. But we have a really good block that gets a lot of consumers hitting it and stuff. Unknown Coatings 83,600. That’s pretty good.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:45:58) – Shawn Recognition that was it’s. RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:46:02) – For it’s the good, the bad and the ugly, you know?

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:46:05) – Yeah, it’s the it’s the old idea of there’s no such thing as bad publicity, which I don’t know if I’d necessarily agree with that as like a whole thing.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:46:15) – But no, it’s not what you would have wanted.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:46:17) – Just I’ve never seen the amount of worry that people have tried to put in me about negative feedback. I’ve never seen any of the results that they were worried about. So it’s like for me, it’s very easy to dismiss it, you know? Right. Going back to I know what I have and haven’t done and I know what people have said about me, and they’re welcome to say whatever they need to, you know? Yeah, doesn’t matter.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:46:39) – Videos are paying off. Think even despite the fact that your website probably isn’t ranking very high. Yeah. And despite the fact that you’re, you know, your Google you know Zen page one isn’t exactly perfect either You’re still doing really good and think that that’s something that people really need to, I hope getting out of this, you know, as we wrap up here, we can wrap up or keep talking, whatever. After this, we can do it after the show. Sometimes those are really, you know, could be something different.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:47:16) – But, um. You know you do. You do need to be aware of it. You need to know how to be aware of it. Right? Like what we just did and see how how, you know, you’re just one guy doing this stuff for other people or building it, doing stuff for yourself, doing stuff for other people, and how how you can affect the world or how you can affect your community around you and stuff like that. So. Um, think it’s a great way to end the show, um, and stuff, you know, I mean, we could ask a lot more questions. I didn’t want to put you too much on the spot with too many questions and stuff because we really just wanted.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:47:58) – Wasn’t worried about it.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:47:59) – So kind of just wanted to ramble around and along as we went. We didn’t really have to, you know, to too much of a specific thing. I think we’ve talked about a lot of different things. Some some are more specific to how to help or how to improve your business through your experience and good, bad or indifferent and how to how to survive when it is bad.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:48:29) – And how bad is it when it’s that bad, You know, I mean that’s certainly you know.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:48:33) – That there is. Let me let me tell you one little story just real quick, because I think this will be helpful to some people who maybe get in a situation where somebody gives them, you know, puts them in a position where they’re dumping a bunch of negative feedback at them. Um, I had a situation pretty early on, I would guess maybe two years into powder coating. Um, I took on a job. Now this is a repeat customer. This is a customer. By then I think this was the third or fourth set of wheels I had done for this customer. He had loved every other cent, everything else had been perfect. Um, he asked me to do something that was. Even now, I don’t know that I would take the job. You know, it’s a it’s a it was a combination of colors. It was basically I was going to do two wheels, candy red on the face of the wheel and fluorescent yellow on the back.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:49:22) – And then, um, the other two were going to be candy blue on the face of the wheel and fluorescent orange on the back. Right? So a bunch of things that there’s a lot of potential for problems. Um, it’s a bunch of colors that don’t go well together.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:49:37) – The orange, orange and blue go together. They’re complementary colors. No, no, no. **Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) ** (00:49:42) – When say don’t I say they’re not friends with each other from a chemical standpoint.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:49:46) – Oh, okay.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:49:48) – So, you know, fluorescence and candies are almost never friends. They touch this problem. Right. Um, but, you know. RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:49:55) – But you were going to go down that trail.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:49:58) – And I made I did the job, but I had, you know, based most of my building as a business was based on the fact that I was willing to do the jobs, that other people were scared. And I was like, I’ll figure out how to do it. You know, when I got told that you couldn’t do, uh, I remember what it was Now, I had done like a gradient with think like seven different candy colors and on forums that I was on and I had asked about it and they’re like, You could never do that with powder.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:50:25) – And I was like, I was like, Why? Like, you know, in my head I’m still new, but so I don’t know. But then I’m like, Well, but the concept is pretty simple, right? Like, why couldn’t you do it? And I remember I spent I think 8 or 9 hours one day just try to figure out the right way to do it, to make it all work. And so, like, my big thing was I was doing the kind of wild stuff that nobody else is willing to do. Even early on, I was ordering colors from prismatic that people were like, That’s powder coat. I didn’t even know you could get powder coat that color, you know, that kind of thing. I had a situation where the guy brought me the wheels. He wanted that color and. I said, okay, it’s going to take me, you know, a week or whatever to figure out exactly how to do this. And, you know, I’m only two years in.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:51:05) – I’m still learning things. I still learn things now 12 years in. But I gave it a whirl and. Aesthetically, it was fine. It looked how it needed to look. But I. I cheated a little bit in the way that I was trying to accomplish things. And I, you know, essentially I did things not the right way, but in a way that would make them appear to be good. Um, what, that, you know, the negative of that is adhesion and impact resistance were basically nonexistent. Um, and what ended up happening is, you know, he liked the wheels. He had them on the car for a couple of months and everything was fine. Um, he sold them to a gentleman here local, and that guy took his car through a drive through car wash. Oh, God. They kind of pulled it on rails, you know, the kind of drops down and the little things push it forward, and it’s on rails. 10.5in wide wheel. Oh, my God.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:52:00) – It’s dragging on the inside of this, right? And it starts chipping away the powder. Now, to be fair, I didn’t do the wheels the right way. I did them in a way that would be as medically pleasing. And I knew that the impact resistance would be minimized because of the way that I did it. Um, it started tipping the powder off and. He contacted? No, he didn’t contact me. He posted about it on a Subaru group talking crap about me and the crap work that I put out and now keep mine. He bought the secondary buyer? Yeah, Secondary buyer. He bought the wheel, so. Oh, that was the other thing because I wasn’t happy with how I had done the wheels. I actually didn’t charge the initial customers right. I never charged him. I was like, I hope this works out all right. I just.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:52:54) – Don’t.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:52:54) – Know. Like, good luck, Jason, you know? Sorry. Sorry. Ahead of time kind of a thing.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:52:58) – Yeah, and do that, too. You just can’t take chances like that, you know? You just. It’s better just to give it away, right?

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:53:05) – And then so he posted on a Subaru page, um, made a big stink about it. He was showing how he was flaking away pieces of powder with his fingers on the back of the barrel. All this keep in mind all this initiated by the fact that it was drug on a metal rail to start breaking the powder away. It wasn’t like this just. Just failed. One day, um, I said, Hey, man, I reached out to him, I was super nice. And I said, Hey, I see you have problem with these wheels. I saw that you were also looking on getting them redone. How about just bring them to me? I’ll just refinish them for you for free. Right. Just. I wasn’t happy with the work being out there anyway, but the situation kind of, you know, I had my hands tied by it a little bit.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:53:48) – He wanted them for a car show. I got them done for the car show. It is what it is. And I said, But hey, you know, you’re just you want them like matte black. I think. I think he picked solar black or something like that. And I was like, Just bring it to me. I’ll do them for you for free. No big deal. You know? Um, he said, okay, I need them by no later than this date. Okay? Like, I have to have them by this date. I said, okay, that’s like a week from now. It’s not a problem. Whatever. Um. He brought the wheels to me. I cleaned up the curb rash and stuff that he had put in in the time that he owned them. Stripped them all down, um, powder coated in black, got the tires back on them for him and delivered them on the day that he needed them by. He needed them on that day. He said, I have to have them this day.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Become a patron” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ global_module=”20171″ saved_tabs=”all” global_colors_info=”{}”]

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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:54:32) – They were ready the day he said he had to have them. Didn’t charge him a dime, did all that for free. Now in my head, now I don’t do anything with the expectation of anything of anybody. I’ve given up on expecting things from people. It just is what it is. I do it. And if something good comes from it, cool. If not, that sucks. Whatever. Um. To this day, this customer still brings up the fact that the powder on wheels that he bought from somebody else failed. Now I redid the wheels form for free, delivered them on the day that he said he needed them. I did everything I could for this. This customer or not customer. This person. Um, and he continued to just be an ass. And so that was the thing that taught me really early on that like. Looking at it now. I would never do that. There’s no way I would ever cater to that situation now. I probably wouldn’t put myself in the initial situation anyway.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:55:29) – Right? Right. But it should it come up some other way. I never in my life would do that because I know that in my heart I would not want to and I’m not going to convince myself to do it because I’m going to have to be the person sitting there mulling over the fact that I’m redoing these wheels for free. And I shouldn’t have ever had to do that. You know, I didn’t have to warranty anything. I didn’t I told the guy I wasn’t warranting his wheels because I didn’t charge him. And then I still did this other guy’s wheels for free, you know, after he made the purchase of the initial set and think that was the thing that taught me really early on, like, you know, stick to what you want to be doing. Stick to your true, authentic self, handle things, how you think they should be handled. And if somebody doesn’t agree with you, somebody doesn’t agree with you. It’s not kind of everybody kind of.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:56:10) – Hard, though, because at some point, you know, it was those risky jobs that you took that got you to the level that you’re at.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:56:19) – Right. Right. But then at some point, it kind of falls back in on itself. When you when you are you you know, at some point there’s a turning point, doesn’t that it falls back on itself. But you turn a point where you’re like, I don’t ever want to be doing that again or I know who I am and I don’t know where that part is or, you know, obviously every guy’s journey is different, right? But yeah, like you got some point. You have to be that. You have to know when that turning point is right.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:56:50) – Be really careful to never shoot yourself in the foot, basically. You know, it’s like you can do whatever you need to, but ultimately, shooting yourself in the foot is never going to benefit you, you know, and it’s and so you can take the risks that you need to take as far especially as far as growing your business, because that’s what was doing at the time. I was doing these wild projects because they got a ton of attention and it would help me grow the business, you know? But it was like it came back to sort of bite me in the ass.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:57:15) – And my thinking at the time is like, Well, I’m a growing business. I should try to fix this problem in this way and mean ultimately I did everything I could have done for that customer. I mean, I had a deadline. I did his wheels for free. I didn’t charge the initial guy. I never in my life had to warranty any of their work for this kid. And I still did it and he still managed to complain. And it’s like that that allowed me at some point, like release that mindset of me where I’m just like, I’m not going to sit and work to do the absolute right thing by everybody, by their standards, right? Do it by mind it Looking back, I should have been like, Yeah, I’ll redo them, I’ll charge you half price and I’ll still deliver them on the date you want. That’s not any better. You know, he’s going to now have to pay money to get me to do these. And my guess is, had he done that, he would still complain.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:58:08) – You know, the only thing that I could have done basically is bought his negative feedback away and don’t care. I mean we you know well established now we’ve been talking for a couple hours. Right. I don’t care about negative feedback. You know, I’m not going to buy that aspect. But it was. You know, you get in those situations where you learn from you know, I don’t want to say mistakes because I think ultimately I was doing the right thing at the time. But you look back at it now, you’re like, oh, that was a mistake. Do you even try to? That guy. And Right. And I think. If we can get more people into the mindset of. You know, doing the right thing, but on your terms, not somebody else’s. I think it makes a big difference in. And how people perceive you mean. Because ultimately the flip side of that is he could have posted a lot of really positive things about me and that would have been great.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:58:58) – But then people might have seen me as a pushover just the same. And I’m not saying that being a pushover is necessarily bad, but in the business world. You don’t want to be known for being a pushover. You know that the last. And I just think that those like those little lessons over time. I mean, that’s something. I mean, to this day, if there’s somebody recommends me on Facebook in a, you know, Subaru group which he’s mostly in Subaru groups um, he’ll always bring this story up about oh he did these wheels for this guy that I bought and they were crap and blah blah blah. And it’s like no, like you drove on the, the wheels that I made black for like seven years and then sold them and the guy still is driving on them to this day and they’re perfectly fine. Like, how is this complaint even real in your head at this point? You know? But right. Some people like to dwell on stuff like that. And that goes back to the you know, some people’s lives are so great that they have to focus on problems that don’t really exist because they need something to, like put their energy towards.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:59:50) – And it’s like. You know, I hope one day my life is that simple. Hope one day I can basically make up problems in my head to concern myself.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:59:58) – I think sometimes it’s like, you know, not that people are mental or that customer’s mental or has a mental disease, but mean we work for customers that have serious issues. And I’m starting to recognize it now because we’ve had a few of these type of customers.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:00:18) – Many and you’re getting to the point where you can turn them away before they’re a customer.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:00:21) – Yeah, well, yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, right. We haven’t quite gotten that far. But, uh, but you know, and to the point where they call us out and say. You know, if we post something on Instagram with a color that is similar to their, you know, like basically they made a promise never to use that color ever again, that prismatic, whatever color or whatever. And then we’ll buy something like Columbia Coatings that has something similar, whatever, and make it, you know, it’s a great thing.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:00:50) – And he’ll call us up and say. Did you use my color? Is that my color? And I’m like, No, there are a million other colors. Not all of them are going to, you know, like, it’s kind of funny.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:01:02) – I can’t believe that you have a customer that would have the audacity to say nobody else can ever use this color.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:01:07) – But we’re on a small island. So they all drive around and they see each other stuff and they all know each other. And now, you know, like, let me tell you, there have been more than one customer that has we’ve had think they’re up to like three or 4 or 5 of them now that we cannot we’re not supposed to use that color ever again. And they make a promise that I’m like, every time I tell them, I’m like, What do you mean you make a promise? I’m, you know, I’m always yelling at them. If you tried.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:01:32) – That with me, that would definitely land you in the F off category.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:01:35) – B was like, Yeah, bro, I only ordered enough powder to just your job and I’m never going to spray it again. Okay. You know, like was like. But you know, when.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:01:43) – You live on an island. **Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) ** (01:01:45) – Island, that’s, you know, we’re in a different world, obviously. Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:01:49) – Yeah. I mean, it it is kind of cool though. And don’t know if you do this when it’s something I kind of picked up and even Ross does it and didn’t know he was doing it. But like when you’re driving across town and you see somebody rolling by you and you’re like, Oh shit, that’s our work. You know? Like, it’s pretty cool.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:02:08) – I see that a lot. And I get tagged in photos like people, you know, post on Instagram or Snapchat or car that they know that I did the work on. And it’s most, you know, most of the kind of wild colored wheels around here. Yeah, those.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:02:21) – Are the easier ones.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:02:22) – Yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:02:23) – And so I get a lot of that, you know, it’s like and it’s cool. It’s cool to see your own stuff out there. It’s mean. It’s even cooler is one of the things that I always kind of fall back on when people talk about me being a one man shop or some of the, you know, like armor coatings. It’s kind of, you know, I guess my competition out here, it’s all relative, but, um, they’re the only one that gets mentioned. Um, when somebody somebody’s like, Hey, who should I go to? It’s myself and armor coatings. Like, those are the two. And it’s super funny when people try to like, you know, they’ll kind of try to throw shade at me being like a one man show or whatever. And people are really quick to point out. It’s like, Yeah, but look at the winners of every single car show. It’s always my customers and it’s there was think want to say it was 2018.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:03:10) – Um I was associated with 118 trophies in Utah alone for car shows which it sounds stupid that I know that number, but I was, I was keeping the tally for a very specific reason because somebody said that there’s no way he has that much affiliation with people who win at car shows. And I was like, Well, almost every single class of this car show, first place is my customer. Usually second and third are my customers as well, you know, And it’s like that type of stuff, you know, like going mean guess, sort of going back to like being able to brand yourself, tying yourself to cars that get a ton of attention and win car shows is much better than doing a bunch of work for a bunch of people who are not going to get any attention. And it’s not to say that they are not valued customers, but I can look, I can go out at a car show and walk through a car show and be like, oh, these are all, you know, like 18 or, you know, 30 out of 50 cars.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:04:05) – Here are my customer. And and that matters. I mean, that matters. You know, word of mouth the the, the chat, the group chat that I’m in with a bunch of powder coaters I’ve been showing them screenshot like videos, screen recorded videos of somebody would be like, hey, who should I powder coat my wheels, you know, so kind of knew or knew to powder coating maybe, um. You know, armor coatings gets there, mention 1 or 2 people, but then it will be like 30 of me. And that type of marketing like that is absolutely the best type of marketing that you will ever get. You know that that word of mouth thing. Um, but with that being said, you can’t always focus on like all the negative, you know, or any of the negative stuff that gets thrown your way. Because ultimately if you’re not successful, there’s no negative that’s going to come your way. You know, like if you’re a business that’s not growing and isn’t big and well known, people aren’t going to care to talk about you.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:04:56) – They only talk about businesses that are showing any level of success. And so you can throw all the shade at me that you you, but people can throw all the shade of me that they need to. But it’s like at the end of the day, if I wasn’t relevant, you wouldn’t care one bit what I was doing. You know.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:05:12) – You’re obviously breaking, you’re breaking the mold, so to speak, on some level, you know? Um, and who cares if you are counting? Don’t care. It’s a milestone moment that you should be counting, that it’s fricking 2020. The year sucks. Yeah, you know what I mean? It’s like if it wasn’t for us paying attention to all the awesome good stuff we we’ve been doing, you know, like the podcast, the, the patent that the, um, the patina, the, you know, all the other good stuff. That’s mean. It’s been a rough year for us otherwise, you know, And you have to, you know, just to try to get through this year and think people keep thinking, okay, how many more days left? 20, 20, you know? But the thing is, is it might last a little longer than that because of Covid and things like it.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:06:04) – Yeah, whatever. You know, we might get into 2021 a little bit before and get comfortable with it before it get really gets all over and stuff. But to hang in there and start thinking about those positive things because you cannot let the Internet or people on the internet rip you apart and rip you to shreds. Um, and you know, think, well, you know, think we should put a question out there to the viewers, your viewers, my viewers, whoever is you know, I want to end this with something for them to think about. You know, have they had issues with, uh, with reputation, Um, have they had hard times with acknowledging their success or dealing with difficult customers? What do you think? You throw it out there, you’re what do you think we should ask for comments and engagement.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:06:59) – I guess the one that I’m always curious about because I know I know the way that I deal with customers is not. At grand scale is not ideal in most people dive.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:07:09) – Right. And so I want to know. I want to know people, I guess. Horror stories. To some degree. I want to know that customer that they had and how they dealt with it. Because I’m always curious. You know, I have friends. I have local friends that I’d be like, how would you have dealt with this? And and they’ll tell me. And it’s, you know, very different than how I deal with anything. And so I’m always curious to hear like, people’s input, especially on like when I say haunt or something like that nightmare customer and how people deal with it. And and not I guess I want to know kind of the base of why they dealt with it that way. You know, like, I know why I handle situations the way I do. You know, going back to the whole self-awareness thing, like, I get why I do things the way I do, but sometimes I’ll see people do, you know, handle a negative situation. And I’m like, Why would you do that? You know, like, why are you doing that? And and I’m not saying it in a negative way.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:08:03) – Like, I’m legitimately wondering, like, what goes on in your head that makes you think that’s the best approach there, because I’m looking at it. And if I’m in that position, like I’m doing almost the exact opposite of what you’re doing, you know, it’s like so I’m always curious, you know, from like a, I guess like a psychological standpoint, like what is driving.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:08:20) – Absolutely right.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:08:21) – That response in that situation. Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:08:25) – And think think that’s a great question to ask. Um, you know, for me it’s all about preventative, you know, measures like having a lock tight, uh, policy, you know, and we put it on our estimate. I’ll show you. I don’t know how you use. How you write up jobs and stuff like that. But we have form here actually, we’re this is our old form with our old logo, but I’m getting a new one, which maybe and we at the bottom we’ve got C, we’ve got all this right. Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:09:02) – And so, you know, we tear it off and give them the yellow sheet. They go home with that and they can read it to their heart’s content and if they don’t read it, too bad.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:09:13) – Yeah, I’m I will tell you right now that the way that I input data from a customer varies drastically depending on the type of customer. I don’t I don’t know, probably like a skipping way of saying that, but if it’s a customer I’ve dealt with numerous times, I don’t make them fill out anything. I already have their information. I know what color they want. Everything’s going to be pretty straightforward. It’s never really been a problem for me, honestly. But if I get a customer in here, that’s, you know, I call them tire kickers kind of as a joke, but it’s the ones that are asking a ton of questions or how many? About two nearly identical colors for an hour. It’s like, okay, we’re going to we’re going to cover all our bases with you, you know, because yeah, no intention to be that negative, you know, interaction later down the road because you’re.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:09:57) – Oh, well, I picked this teal and it looks more like this deal. It’s like, well, you’re looking at my swatches, you know, like it’s. You’re like a prismatic, you know? Prismatic obviously does that thing where they spray over brushed aluminum, which I.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:10:09) – Hate that.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:10:11) – Blue and I’m that color doesn’t matter at all, you know, and it’s.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:10:14) – If you’re doing a metric that’ll be carried on a trailer around the fricking country and never driven, you know come on, I know someday I’m going to write a blog post about that. But yeah, you know, I don’t want you know what? I think that that actually could be a whole nother show, you know? So let’s okay, so we’re going to say to our viewers, you know, what has been give us your horror stories. It is the month of October and Halloween is coming up. Right? Right. Give us your horror stories. How did you handle it and what did you learn from it? That that that actually is probably a good way to end the show and put it in the comments and like and share Maybe we when we post this video we can put it in the groups and see what the responses are.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:11:08) – People can put them there, they can put them on the Podbean platform and they can put them on the YouTube. And especially if Sean’s on the YouTube, that might actually Do you follow my channel? Can you follow my channel?

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:11:20) – Thank you.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:11:21) – Okay.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:11:22) – I think I looked up some of your videos earlier and I was like, Oh, I don’t even follow this yet. Hold on. Let me. I’m sure I. RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:11:26) – Do. Me too. I just joined your channel too, so. Yeah. Okay. Give a shout out. Just since we’re on the subject, what is your YouTube channel? For those that don’t know, how do they get a hold of you?

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:11:38) – It’s just if you just type in unknown coatings on YouTube, it comes right up space or no space. I don’t know how that part works actually on YouTube, but they both work. Um.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:11:48) – Instagram too. You’re on the gram.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:11:50) – And I’m just literally unknown coatings everywhere, including Twitter that don’t even use. So I’m just to get ahead of time.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:11:57) – Okay I’ll never see it.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:11:59) – Just just erased like a month’s worth of crap when, when they closed down the other day they.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:12:06) – I literally if a new social media platform comes up, I go in and I register and I make the name just so nobody else has it. I mean, so there’s, there’s a bunch that I don’t use. I use Snapchat a little bit at unknown coatings. Um, mostly, honestly, I would say 98% of my interaction on there is with powder coaters, you know, just people who found YouTube. Yeah, I’ll be on that. Yeah. Don’t know. Don’t.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:12:31) – Wait. What about your group page there and then what that. Yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:12:35) – There’s a UK army page which is just UK Space Army on Facebook. Um, that group initially I kind of had the idea of just like all these people that actively support my channel on YouTube, I was like, Maybe I can get a bunch of them together and they can help each other. Um, you know, I’ve kind of mentioned in some of the Q and A is how awesome it is.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”be our guest” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ background_color=”#D6D6D6″ global_module=”20173″ saved_tabs=”all” global_colors_info=”{}”]

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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:12:58) – Now, like you can go in there and ask a question and there has been no drama on this page, which I’m, you know, we’re only, I think we’re like 300 subs or 300 members or whatever. Um, there hasn’t been any drama yet. I’ll mitigate any drama that there is just because, but, um, it’s been really cool because people have been able to go in and ask questions and, you know, I go in a couple of times a day and I try to answer as many questions as I can. Yeah. Um, but now it’s to the point where there’s enough, you know, there’s enough people in there that know what they’re talking about, um, especially on specific topics that they’re providing answers, you know, before I even get in there and I’ll go like, Oh, I’ll answer this question and I’ll scroll down and four people have already given them a good response, you know, So it’s, it’s a great place for, you know, start up. coaters anybody want to learn about powder coating? I and there’s all sorts of you know I don’t want to say noob because that has such a negative connotation, but there’s a bunch of very new people asking questions that a lot of powder coaters that I’ve seen would roll their eyes at, you know, before they ever answered it.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:14:03) – And that’s not happening here, that, you know, people are providing actual answers, given real input. And, you know, people that are only six months into it be like, well, I started this way, you know, And I think those people don’t get enough credit for how much they’re helping a brand new person because, I mean, six months, only six months. But it’s like that six months matter, you know, like that six months was like where you’ve had to fight through all the new stuff you had to learn. And maybe you can tell them what they don’t.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:14:28) – Sometimes we forget to, right? Remember, like, you know, like you forget all those things that you had to go through.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:14:35) – And even mean, you know, I said before, I’m 12 years into this. I still learn stuff constantly. So. Right. You know, I’ve I’ve made a point of saying on multiple videos and and A’s and stuff that I’m not an expert. You know, I’m here providing as much information as I can because I feel like the people that were doing it prior to me making how to videos and things like that, we’re providing a lot of misinformation, you know, And I want to be able to be a guy who knows what he’s talking about, who has done this for, you know, 12 years into it, be able to put my information to input.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:15:08) – And and the advantage that I have is you get to see all that in real time. A lot of the time, you know, I’m making a how to video showing you the whole process start to finish. I’m not sitting there just talking about some things that I’m doing. And, um. I think that that group is just, you know, it turned into a little bit of something that I didn’t expect it to. But it’s in a much more positive way. You know, it’s become something that’s real positive and it’s.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:15:31) – And it’s about engagement, too, because who cares how many? Like like said, you know, we said earlier about how many people will end up being on the channel. It doesn’t matter how many people are on the channel, it’s how many people are engaging on the channel. Yeah, that’s how you know, you know, and we have yet to release this. I just did a recording with a social media expert, which I hope to publish this week, and she she’s like, You don’t want a you don’t want a group with 10,000 members.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:16:04) – You’ll be it’ll be a nightmare for you because you’ll that’s all you’ll be doing is putting fires out or settling this person or cutting that person out or whatever.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:16:17) – Run a group of 20,000 right now that is specific to high end meals. And I will tell you right now, if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve added moderators to this, I would go insane because it’s the amount of nonsense that I have to deal with in that group alone. And this is literally just people selling expensive wheels, right? This should be a pretty cut and dry, easy to deal with. Group. Um, I can’t even imagine a group of people who are just there to give their opinion at a rate of 10,000 people or 20,000 people. You know, it’s like, don’t want anything to do with that.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:16:46) – Yeah, you know. Yeah, exactly. More of the same on the Internet. What, what, what you can do on the internet today and how it’s changing our lives. Yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:16:56) – That’s why I thought don’t need a group of I don’t need to find a Facebook group.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:16:59) – I can do that anywhere. You know, like, that’s not like a bunch of grown men arguing about dumb topics can do that. Just on my Facebook page. I can find that or my wall or whatever it’s called.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (01:17:09) – Yeah. All right, peeps. Well, remember to share your horror stories. And how did you handle it and what did you learn from it? And here you go. Sean, Thanks for coming on the podcast today.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (01:17:22) – Thanks for having me. [/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”2022 blog wrap up” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ global_module=”18725″ saved_tabs=”all” global_colors_info=”{}”]

About us

RossKote is committed to sharing their experience in metal coatings, painting, and restoration so customers & powder coaters can navigate the process of powder coating and make the best choices for getting their projects done.

RossKote regularly contributes helpful videos on his blog and YouTube channel.

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Filed Under: All Posts, Podcast Tagged With: audience, authenticity, Better Business Bureau, Bullseye Coatings, challenging jobs, Columbia, community, custom coders, customer care, customer experience, engagement, Google Analytics, influencers, internet, Maui Powder Works, moderators, negative feedback, niche market, nightmare customers, online communities, organic reach, Powder by the Pound, powder coating, prismatic, Reputation, social media, sponsorships, tips, tricks, Unknown Coatings, value, website, YouTube Channel

How important is reputation management in the powder coating industry?

July 14, 2023 by pcnearme

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]Have you ever thought about starting your own powder coating business? In episode 12 of RossKote’s Powder Coater Podcast, guest Sean Shreve shares his journey into the industry and offers valuable insights on reputation management, outsourcing, and profitability. Sean emphasizes the importance of being honest with customers and building relationships with other businesses in the industry. He also advises those interested in starting a business to first try it out as a hobby and outsource their blasting needs to save on equipment costs. Tune in to learn more about the risks and rewards of starting a powder coating business and how to succeed in the industry.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19nDjOxLF4E[/embedyt]

RossKote (Kim Scott (00:00:05) – Just like a good old American slasher movie, your company’s hard earned profile can get axed on social media. Yep. Say one thing wrong, and you could be that guy who gets it first in the thriller. How can you come back from a murderous reputation in this two part episode of the Powder Coater podcast? We’re talking about what happens when a bad reputation follows you home and climbs into bed with you. Our featured guest has crawled through some of the worst things that can happen on the World Wide Web and live to tell about it. Not all of what you think you know is as bad as it seems. Find out when we go to places unknown and cover reputation, reviews, results and rankings on our continued series about publicity and branding featuring a famously unknown custom coater. Get ready to level up your powder coater game. Welcome to RossKote’s Powder Coater podcast. I’m your host, Kim Scott. And this is episode 12. Yes. I can’t believe we’ve made 12 episodes. This weekly podcast interviews influencers and industry people and covers trending topics in Powder so powder coders can effectively learn and grow their businesses.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:01:54) – Last week we featured an episode with Jace Kaser, of Kaser blasting and coating, who takes a kaleidoscope view or rather a 30,000 foot view of approaches to coating. Today’s guest gives you a practical manual to the finer details of powder coating and running a shop. The Daily Grind. He’s fond of dogs and runs a successful YouTube channel and business known as known as being mad, famous for being unknown. Please welcome Sean Shreve from Unknown Coatings to the show. Hi Sean. How’s it going?

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:02:36) – It’s wonderful.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:02:37) – Did I mess up your last name? I forgot to ask for the show.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:02:40) – No, it’s Shreve.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:02:41) – So it is. Okay, good. I said it right. Okay, good. Well, now, how long have you been coding? And what compelled you to be a powder coater?

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:02:56) – I technically started December. Actually, I got my big oven or the, you know, my 4×4 by six oven. So that’s not really started in my opinion. Um, December 22nd of 2008. I remember it for a completely ridiculous reason, but do remember that that’s the date for some reason.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:03:15) – Um, as far as why I started was. There was a couple of things. I was building a car. I worked. I was working as a contractor. I did used to do commercial sign design. I was working out of state on a job that we were doing, and I was building a car in Utah when I had just recently moved to Utah. I think I had only been here for a couple of months before I took off to California for almost a year. So, um, once we did that, I started building a car here. I was trying to get parts powder coated. Um. Called around to the couple of people that I could call here, and there was nobody willing to give me any sort of reasonable pricing. And when I say a reasonable pricing, I didn’t know what the pricing would even be, but most people wouldn’t even quote me. They wouldn’t give me any sort of quote. And I wasn’t asking for anything. Be wild. I didn’t think or especially now, knowing what I know now, um, I had just looked.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:04:08) – I wanted an intake manifold for a four cylinder car, a valve cover, and for a four cylinder and four brake calipers. So nothing in my world now, nothing too crazy. And I think out of the four places that I called on, they one would give me a quote and he would only quote the valve cover. And he told me $400. Wow. And I was just like and I you know, I had no idea what the price would be for, you know, I was completely new to it all. And, um, you know, I wasn’t happy, I guess, with the answers that I was getting or not getting, mostly not getting. And I just like, this can’t be this hard, you know, like I’m a mechanical, you know, I’ve done mechanical things since I was a little kid. And I was like, I’m sure I can figure all this stuff out. It can’t be that hard. And I bought I think I bought a harbor freight gun. I only had that for about three days before I threw it away.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:04:58) – Um, but I think I started technically powder coating my own stuff for myself with a craftsman gun, which I don’t think they have them around anymore. Um, craftsman didn’t actually make them. They were rebranded craftsman guns. But, um, there’s if you go to summit racing, you can still buy that exact style of gun now. And it’s like this. It doesn’t use an air compressor. It’s got a fan inside. It works like a hairdryer. Oh, wow. A little cup underneath it that holds. If I said it holds a quarter pound of powder, that would probably be pushing it. It’s literally like the epitome of hobby gun. And I bought a couple of those because I knew that they were going to discontinue them. So I bought a few and then I was able to order the replacement cups for them so that I didn’t have to keep stopping and refilling them. I would just like, you know, like a gun would just change the clip and the gun basically, and keep going so I can do full parts.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:05:53) – And, um. Even the first little bit that I was working, I was I didn’t want to work for anybody else. I didn’t want a powder coat for anybody else. I was working in a pretty good job at the time. That paid really well, gave me quite a bit of free time. And you know, it was more or less a hobby for myself. I was, you know, when I first got the systems, I was powder coating anything metal in my garage. There was nothing saved at that point. And. Just finally, I think it was about six months in, I finally agreed to powder coat for somebody else. Um, the first set of wheels I ever did were in a house oven. There were 16 inch wheels in the house of it. And knowing what I know now, I have no idea how they came out. And the weird part is I still have those wheels and they’re still in great shape, which makes even less sense knowing everything I know now.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Listen Now” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ global_module=”20170″ saved_tabs=”all” global_colors_info=”{}”]

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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:06:40) – It’s it’s one of those things that makes you question all the things that you’ve learned and heard stories about as far as like adhesion and cure times. And I mean, these wheels have held up great and there’s a 0% chance that they were cured correctly. So…

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:06:54) – Yeah, I know sometimes it’s like that first time you nail it and then it all goes downhill from there and you’re like, Wait, what? Was I just lucky? Or did I actually what did I do right? And why can’t I replicate that? That’s a common, common thing. But go ahead, continue your story. It’s it’s it’s interesting.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:07:13) – Uh, you know, I did some wheels. I was very much into dodge neons at the time. First generation dodge neons. The one that nobody liked. And I had some really crazy sparkly gold. You know, there’s anything anybody knows about me. It’s the sparkles. Anything sparkly. I’m into it. I don’t know why. I’ve no idea. It’s always how it’s been. Um, had these crazy, just high metallic gold. 

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:07:35) – Um. Wheels that I did. And that was the first set of wheels I did before the next set of wheels that. Did were for a customer that I reluctantly took on. It was my very first customer, um, a gentleman. And I was posting my build information. I was on a bunch of local forums at the time. This was before Facebook. Was that cool? Um, and I had my, you know, my project Cars, I had kind of listed on forums and one of them was a Nissan Forum was pretty active in Utah. Nissan’s because of a G35 Infiniti G35 that I was driving. And um. A guy contacted me just kind of out of nowhere and said, Hey, I saw that you had a Go Wheels. And I said, Well, not no, not really. You know, and at this point, I’m not even part of coating for my friends. Friends are asking me and I’m saying I’m saying no. And. I tell him basically no. And then he’s like, Well, you know, I see that you live in Harriman. 

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:08:36) – That was the city I was living in at the time here in Salt Lake, just south of Salt Lake. And he said, Do you mind if I at least come by and show them to you? And I was like, Sure, man. You know, like whatever. Like, I’m just going to say no in person, but I’ll meet somebody new, you know, Like, it’s whatever. He he showed up and he pulls up in a brand new Gt-r. Now, this is 2008, so a brand new Gt-r is literally a brand new Gt-r. We had just got him here that year. And, you know, I think he I later found out he was one of the first people in the state to have one. And it was like $140,000 to get this particular car, um, way above sticker price just because they were so desirable. Right. And he pulls up super nice guy. I mean, just I mean, he’s still a customer to this day but I mean super, super nice guy.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:09:25) – And he said, you know, we talked back and forth a little bit, just, you know, small talk about whatever. And he came in and was checking out one of the cars that I’d had been working on and, um. I said, All right, well, you know, did you want to show me these wheels? Thinking like all at least look, you know, he was nice enough guy. He explained his situation. His situation was kind of unique. He was visiting his brother’s restaurant, and next door is a large wheel company here called Wheel Works. They’re kind of the the go to for high end wheel stuff here. Um, or at the time they were and. He said that he had gone into wheel works, who he had dealt with countless times, and they weren’t able to help him because they’re the powder cutter that they have been outsourcing work to. Had become pretty flaky and they didn’t want to take on new jobs. Um, so he explained that situation to me a little bit. 

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:10:18) – I said, okay. I said, Well, do you want to show me the wheels? You know, like, I’ll at least take a look at them. Maybe I can help you out, whatever. And he’s like, Oh, it’s these ones. And he points to the Gt-r, and I’m just like, I was like, Oh, no, no, absolutely not. Like, there’s a 0% chance that I’m gonna touch those wheels. And he’s like, Dude, I’ll tell you what, I’ll bring you just the wheels. I’ll hand you $400 to do them. And I don’t care what they look like. I just want them matte black. And I was like. And, you know, it wasn’t a money thing to me at the time at all. It was more just like a I could step out and try to do this and see how it goes. But I didn’t have a ton of confidence. I mean, I’ve been doing it for six months at that point, but I, I had never dealt with anything that big.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:11:02) – I think there were 20s from the factory and my oven wouldn’t even compensate for those. But I had just ordered a new oven. I knew that it was coming from Ted’s fab and would be here, I think, within a couple of weeks. And so I explained to him the situation, said, Hey, if you can wait till the oven gets here, I’ll, I’ll do it. And I wasn’t sandblasting any of my own parts. I had like a harbor freight cabinet. But I hate sandblasting even to this day. I hate it. And, you know, I lucked out. I have a girlfriend who seems to enjoy sandblasting almost. I mean, she definitely does it. Yeah. So I’ve lucked out quite a bit in that regard.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:11:36) – I better get Ross another girlfriend. 

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:11:40) – It’s pretty great, honestly.  

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:11:41) – One for sandblasting, one for doing social media.  

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:11:45) – All the things. And then. You know, he eventually he brought the wheels. And, you know, it’s once again, knowing what I know now. 

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:11:53) – I don’t know how they turned out as well as they did. Um, but he was and they they came out flawless, you know, and. And I. I thought that that would be a one time thing and I was going to keep just kind of doing my own thing. And, you know, maybe now I’ll let friends bring their stuff over or something. Well, it turned out the restaurant that he was visiting, his family owns all of it around here. It’s like a burger joint around here. And he owns a bunch. His brother owns a bunch of his dad owns the bunch. And the one that’s next door to We’ll Works. He’s down there all the time because that’s where they have their meetings. And so the owner of Wheel Works walked out and said, Hey, I saw you got your wheels powder coated. Um, you know who did them for you because they look nice or whatever. And, um. He said, Oh, it’s some guy in his house in Harriman.  

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:12:44) – You know, I was working out of a think my garage was a little over 1800 square feet. It was a huge garage, to be fair, but it was just a garage. You know, I was legitimately still just working out of home. And he he said, Well, do you mind if I get his phone number? And so he called me and asked if it was okay to get my number out. And I said sure, thinking there’s no way that this company that, you know, every time you drive by, they have nothing but $100,000 plus vehicle In my parking lot, I was like, There’s no way they’re going to deal with that. Why would they? You know, they have so many other options that they could go with and. Right. Um, he called me the owner. It was super nice. He said, Hey, I want to send you up four wheels, four completely different wheels. I want to pick four colors to have you powder coat them, you know, one of each color.  

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:13:26) – And I just want to see the quality and make sure the color is what we need. And if those were, he’s like, I’ll pay you for them, you know, no matter what. And then if if they’re nice, maybe we can send you some work. And I said, okay. You know, I mean, what can really go wrong at that point? You know? I mean, they’re going to pay for him no matter what. They’re picking the colors. I don’t have to stress about like, you know, matching anything or anything at the time. Right. Uh, you know, once again, I’m not sandblasting, so I actually, I was outsourcing all my sandblasting. I actually outsourced all of my sandblasting for the first eight years, I think was busy. Yeah, really.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:14:01) – Risky. I mean.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:14:03) – I lucked out. I’ve only had one really bad experience, which we can all get to that. But I had a really, really bad experience with the same blaster cost me.  

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:14:15) – I want to say about $50,000 in the end, which sounds outrageous from a sound blaster, but, um, we had, you know, I took them over and I had them sandblasted. I explained. I was like, Look, guys. And they always did good work for me. But I gave them the speech. I was like, Look, I really want these to be perfect, you know? And they’re like a big industrial blaster. They do mostly giant things constantly. So wheels isn’t really their thing. Um, but they had the media for it and, you know, the equipment to do it. And I said, This is what I need. I got them done for me that day because that was kind of their thing. They would always turn my stuff around pretty much the same day and I coated them. I think they brought them to me on a Thursday and I delivered them to them Saturday. Wow. Which is still something I tend to try to do. I’m not going to pretend that I always make a 48 hour deadline, but, um, in this area, I’m definitely the one that flips the wheels fast. 

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:15:08) – Um, I did the wheels. They were happy with it, and that led to within three months, I think I quit my job my full time. My full time job was. Very cushy, you know, So it was it took a lot to get me to quit. I mean, I knew that this was going to be the thing was, I’m going to have to dedicate a lot of time to this. But I have this job where I don’t have to dedicate hardly any time to every day and get paid pretty well. You know, like, do I really want to give that up? Um, but I’ve always had a thing where I disliked working for other people. Even as cushy as my job was. I mean, I worked from home, you know, it wasn’t like I had to go deal with a boss. I had to answer to somebody probably once every couple of weeks. But it was still like somebody telling me what to do, which I’ve. Yeah, I’ve always struggled with, for whatever the reason is. 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:15:53) – I think a lot of us do you know why we’ve been doing it for so long to It’s. You know. Yeah, it’s long hours, but they’re mine. Yeah. Yeah.   

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:16:05) – And if they’re long, it’s my fault. They’re long, you know, like. 

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:16:08) – Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, that reminds me of, um. Victor Pate from Black Label. Same thing. He. Him and his wife were coming from really good jobs and then just decided to jump off a cliff. You know.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:16:24) – Think I’ve known Victor or, like, you know, talk to Victor since. Right when he first started. He was in I think he got dumped into I don’t even know if it’s still there. I might not even just be in the group anymore. There was a powder coating group that was just custom powder coaters, and it was a pretty tight knit group of people. And I remember somebody invited him in and I think he’s military, right? He’s ex-military, if I remember correctly. 

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:16:46) – And he had that kind of vibe to him when he was posting. And I was like, Oh, I like this guy. Like, you know, like he’s not as, you know, some of the guys in the group, I didn’t I didn’t have a problem with him. We just, you know, we looked at life a little differently, think. And so there was somebody, I think, a little closer to to how I look at things, I guess. So I kind of sided with him a lot of things. And yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:17:07) – Yeah, I can certainly relate to him and his story, but also his attitude towards life to, um, and for a lot of guys that are just getting started out there, you know, that maybe are on the fence about being a coater or whatever, I mean. I guess that’s kind of what I’m, I’m really on this podcast and stuff and what I’m trying to find is sort of there’s this element or this essence of what makes a great powder coating company or a powder coater attitude or a mantra or something.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_shop posts_number=”3″ _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_shop][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:17:42) – And so I’ll probably end up asking you that question towards the end. But um, you know, you do have this YouTube channel. Um, it’s taking off.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:17:53) – Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it’s growing much faster, much faster than I ever could have imagined. And I know that most of my audience is powder coaters, so I know that at some point there’s kind of a threshold that that will hit to where there’s not more people to grow. Um, but. A lot of the people coming onto my channel are people that have never powder coated in their life and they’re now looking at doing it. So I guess I guess it’s a thing that I can help that growth a little bit. Um, but yeah, I mean, it’s when I was making videos for Instagram just because I thought they were fun. They’re more fun than boring pictures on Instagram. Right. And, um. It ended up being a thing where I was like, Well, you know, I watched a couple videos on YouTube.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:18:40) – There’s not a ton of powder coating videos on YouTube, especially. There’s definitely people powder coating on YouTube. There’s tons of that Just, you know, you see them spraying down a wheel or whatever, but there’s not a lot of construction. There’s not a lot of there’s not a lot of there’s basically a lot of people from what I could see in the comments, a lot of people not willing to give up information.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:19:01) – Um, yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:19:02) – I can’t even imagine a world where I’m going to be secretive about information for something that’s I figured it out on my own, you know what I mean? So it’s like it’s not like it’s that hard. And if somebody has a question, I’m happy to help them with it, you know? And that’s that’s kind of where the channel grew to. And it. It was kind of funny. I, I, I had done a couple of how to’s that people had asked me about. Um, I had basically no issue at all. Um. And I would explain it like I had no no issue at all, just putting out random powder coating videos.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:19:38) – Then a couple people ask me for how tos and I was like, Sure, yeah, I’ll show you how I do it. And then I went back to just putting out powder coating content. You know, it’s not that easy. The thing that’s like how tos’ are a little bit hard for me just because although I don’t, you know, I don’t. I don’t know everything. Um, when somebody asked me how to do a how to I already know all the information that I’m going to tell them, but I don’t. I’m always uncomfortable because I don’t know if I’m explaining it in a way that somebody who doesn’t know powder coating will understand, right? Because I already know all the questions. So it’s like, you know, I was telling my girlfriend, I was like, I want to start making these videos that has her powder coating with no experience and she can ask me the questions that she needs to know because I don’t know if I’m asking myself the right questions to answer on a on a how to or a tutorial or right.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:20:27) – Because you’re coming from that other side. And yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:20:31) – And I just assume like, you know, I already know all these other little things, so I skip over stuff all the time. I see myself after I’ve edited a video and uploaded it. I’m like, Oh, I probably should mention this and this, but in my head I was like, Why did he know all that? You know, And so everybody else did too. But I know that that’s not real. Um, but when I had went back to just putting out just powder coating content, you know, with no how tos everybody is like, well, where are the how tos? Like, can you do more? How tos, you know, like more, more tutorials? Can you show us how to do this or this? Then I started, you know, I got a bunch of videos that were a bunch of comments on videos that were like, Can you show us all your equipment? And I was like, Yeah, I mean, I guess I don’t know how that could be even moderately interesting video to anybody.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:21:13) – But sure, I think it’s one of my best view or highest view.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:21:17) – I almost clicked on that one. Yeah. Last night. When was looking at your, your channel. Yeah. And stuff. Yeah. You know, um. It’s funny how it’s gone from just ten years ago to everything being in the forums to Facebook groups and Instagram and YouTube where people want it now, you know, and they don’t necessarily want to participate in some conversation about it. I mean, aside from groups, yeah, they just either want to watch it and be done and move on or, you know, it could just be the nature of Internet itself or just. Yeah, that’s how busy people are.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:22:01) – That’s how we are in life now. I think in general, I think I mean, yeah, I’m, I’m legitimately mad if I look something up online and I can’t find how to do it or fix it or assemble it or whatever, I’m like, nobody’s ever put this online before, you know, that was that real idea.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:22:16) – Let me blog about that or let me let me write it, you know, and that’s for us, you know, because we’re content drivers and we’re resource drivers, you know, that’s a cue for us to say, hey, maybe somebody could be looking at something for that, you know, or needing a video on that and stuff. So it’s amazing how much it’s changed in ten years. And I think it’s only mean. Where do you see yourself or your channel or business going in the next 5 to 10 years? So I’m kind of curious.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:22:48) – If I tell you you’re going to think it’s a terrible answer. Um, my whole goal since I was 22 years old was to retire at 40. Oh, and that’s a good that’s.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:22:59) – A good goal.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:23:01) – Kind of. Everything I have done, um, in that time has been geared towards that. Like I. Yeah, I make, you know, pretty okay money. Um, I don’t spend money. I don’t have any dumb toys or I shouldn’t say dumb toys.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:23:17) – I don’t people like all their fun stuff, but, um, do any of that stuff. I have one expensive hobby, which is golf. Um, and that’s about it, you know, like, I just all my money just kind of goes away. And I’ve done some investing safe, very safe investing in a few things and, you know, lucked out on a few other opportunities. And um, so ultimately, like in ten years there won’t be an unknown coatings, I’m sure, um, I doubt there will be in five years, but. I don’t know. I mean, there’s a lot that changes. I have a bunch of rare Japanese wheels in storage that my plan was to. Move back to Seattle, where I’m from, and then one set a week, I would restore a set of wheels and put them up for sale just to keep my sanity basically. Right. I have a really hard time. I don’t know how much, you know, I just. I recently just had surgery on my wrist.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:24:11) – It wasn’t able to work. Um, it’s from a car accident back in 2017. And not being able to, like, do things for a month was much harder on me than even I expected. And I knew it was going to be rough. So I can’t imagine going to a world where I’m retired and don’t have to do anything. I just like I mean, even vacations, you know, day three of a vacation, I’m like, Well, maybe we could go back a little early, you know, like, like to work. And and that.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:24:37) – Happened to Mister Clarity, too. Same thing.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:24:40) – He don’t know.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:24:41) – Yeah. I mean, the guy that does all the breaks and brake calipers and stuff think the same thing happened to him too. Yeah. Um, with that, he was in an accident. Um, which is how he. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, yeah. Mean that’s hard. I can’t imagine a setback like that. I’m always worried about, you know, with the chemical burns from, you know, 17 and.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:25:06) – Yeah, yeah. No, but, uh, you know, just, you know. Yeah, it’s always but that then that’s a really. I like what you just said about your goal because I think, I mean, I don’t know, uh, powder coaters in general, what they’re, what they’re thinking when they get into this. Obviously, not having a boss is really important. I mean, you and I both agreed on that a moment ago, but like, having something outside of just being a powder coater or what your ultimate goal is, is what you should always be having in the back of your mind. Yeah. And stuff. And think that if you can bootstrap this business, the profitability on it is is ideal. It’s it’s probably why most most a lot of people don’t know do you think a lot of guys are just getting into coating today because it’s cool or do you really think they are thinking about um you know the the the profitability to be made in powder coating mean it is all labor.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:26:12) – I mean it’s probably a pretty mixed bag honestly. I mean, you have people that are, you know, they’ve seen the the cost of equipment has dropped significantly mean you can get pretty decent equipment now. I mean you can you can have a full setup for well under $5,000 at this point. You know, if you’re willing to cut corners in a few little areas and still be able to do stuff in your garage with no effort, you know, stuff out for yourself all day. Um, but I think it’s, you know, it’s like any, it’s like any hobby in that regard, like somebody might get into themselves, like I did maybe like, oh, I guess I could make this a business. But then you also have the people that jump into it and it’s just going to be a business like that’s all they want, you know? And honestly, I think the people who jump into it like you have to have. A pretty ridiculous work ethic to jump into a business that’s this labor intensive and.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Become a patron” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ global_module=”20171″ saved_tabs=”all” global_colors_info=”{}”]

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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:27:06) – True.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:27:07) – And can be this volatile in regards to I mean, you’re in an environment that’s not exactly friendly most of the time you’re around blast media, chemical, hot ovens. You know, it’s you have to really yeah, you really have to be able to work like work past that stuff. And I don’t I’m not saying anything negative about people today versus years ago. I just I don’t know how many people are really willing to put themselves through that. Um, so to jump into it as a business to me seems way riskier than jumping into a hobby and then taking it to a business. And that’s, you know, I’ve told people countless times like, Oh, I’m going to go buy the best of the best of the best for all my equipment and start doing this. I was like, Wait, you better make sure you don’t hate it before you do all that, you know? And it’s it’s kind of funny that that advice actually comes from my dad with golf clubs, of all things.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:27:56) – Because, you know, golf is golf can be very expensive as far as the clubs go. And, you know, he would always. I. It’s kind of weird. You know, I’m a I’m a pretty good golfer. I’ve golf since I was a child, two and a half years old is when I started and played junior golf tournaments all growing up and was successful at that. But I was naturally good at golf. So I don’t know much about the teaching aspect of golf. Like I’ve had friends and girlfriends and stuff like, Oh, can you teach me how to golf? And I’m like, Not really, because I don’t like, I don’t know how to explain it to you, you know, Like I just I’ve been able to do it forever, right? With no, I’ve had three lessons in my life and they were all putting lessons, you know, So it’s like don’t have the ability to teach that. And they’re like, Well, what equipment should I buy? And, you know, I want to buy this and this and this.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:28:40) – And my dad was always like, Why don’t you tell him to go rent some clubs and make sure they don’t hate golf before they go out and do it? Because, I mean, you know, you can loading a bag with even kind of middle of the road equipment, you’re going to be 1500 to $2000 into a golf bag. And what if you do that and then go hate it? And, you know, I’m going to tell you right now, the resale on golf clubs is not great. You know, it’s like a car. It’s like an expensive car. It goes down really fast. So and that advice is always kind of like.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:29:09) – Worse than that. You could buy the you could buy the $500 club and then hate it tomorrow. You know, I mean, you know, there’s.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:29:18) – People I actually just had this conversation with a buddy of mine yesterday, I guess it was I was like he was like, hey, can I borrow your driver? And I was like, sure, you know? And he’s like, Well, I’ve been looking at buying this club.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:29:29) – And this guy was like, Bro, go buy a set of used clubs. There’s a place near us called Uinta Golf. They sell used clubs and new clubs, but they have a really great exchange program where you can buy clubs used, and if you don’t like them, you get the full price back within 30 days to put towards another set of clubs there. You can try you could try 20 sets of clubs, you know, over and over and over. And I was like, Go do that. And then he’s like, you know, can I borrow your driver? And he’s a pretty. He’s a very novice golfer. I know some of the issues that he has with his swing. And I’m like, you can borrow my driver, but you’re not going to love it. You know, like you’re going to hate it probably the entire time because my driver is not forgiving. You know, it’s like if you miss hit it at all, it’s a real problem because it’s designed for somebody who’s played, you know, forever like myself.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:30:14) – So it’s just one of those things like, you know, I try to give people advice about equipment as best I can. And my big thing is I think I had this weird advantage where I had a good blaster near me and I didn’t have to buy equipment for that. So in my head I’m always like, just outsource your blasting for now. Like take that completely out. Because if you can get out of a $2,000 blasting cabinet, you know, a $2,000 compressor, get away from all that stuff, and you find somebody reliable near you who can do it. Um, sure. You got to pay somebody to do it every time, but you don’t have to sandblast, which is, you know, like I said, I hate. And then it’s less work for you overall. You need less space if you’re doing it, especially in your garage, less space. And um, so I, you know, I tend to push people kind of that way a little bit. Some people listen, some people don’t.   Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:31:04) – It’s, it’s all about.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:31:05) – I think that’s really solid advice. I mean it even though you, you know, you may not have. Uh, come. You know, started with sandblasting. A full setup like that. Mean? Yeah. Mean it. Even though you didn’t, you still were giving out good advice because it really is a huge part of the business. But then it doesn’t necessarily have to. You can price it in, you know that’s an easy cost to price in. Yeah.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:31:35) – And the price set, I mean it’s, you know, I was paying $20 a wheel to get blasted, you know, which is right. And that’s not stripped and blasted and that’s me bringing them a wheel. They’d blast it for 20 bucks and give it back to me and be completely bare ready to go. And so, like, I can charge, you know, I think at the time it was $300 for a set of wheels. Like, sure, I have that $80 expense. I might have $20 in powder.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:31:58) – I’m coming out of this. Okay. You know, for a couple of hours of work that I’m putting into it, it’s definitely going well. So I don’t know.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:32:05) – It’s a lot of people don’t think about it that way. And that’s some of the things they should be thinking about, because it seems like every day on these group, uh, pages and group forums and stuff on Facebook that the same question gets asked over and over again How do I get into it? How what do I buy? What’s give me the setup? And it. Kind of floors me. I don’t know what to think about those kind of guys. What do you think of them? The guys.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”be our guest” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ background_color=”#D6D6D6″ global_module=”20173″ saved_tabs=”all” global_colors_info=”{}”]

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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:32:34) – The guys that are very willing to just go out and blow money on something are somebody that I like. I can’t relate to it at all. And I, you know, I have the money to spend on it and I still can’t relate to it. And like, you know, like I look at these people, I’m like, you’re going to go out right now and you’re going to spend $10,000 on equipment to, like, put you in this place.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:32:54) – And you literally have never powder coated a thing in your life, you know, and just like, what are you doing? You know.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:33:01) – I know.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:33:02) – I was like, go hang out at a powder coating shop for one day and then try to make that decision. You know, it’s like there’s a lot of things that I think people just don’t understand about it. And it’s not, you know, I’m not special in any way, shape or form. I don’t think I’m better than other people, but I know that my friends think I’m ridiculous for the job that I do. You know, they’re like, oh, it’s 110 degrees in your shop and you’re in and out of a 400 degree oven all day, you know, And it’s like and you can’t get away from it mean that, you know, once you’re, once you’re around powder coating at all like the heat to the heat is an element, you know, like it’s playing a role in your life no matter what you do. And, um, the shop that I’m in now, I actually had a shower put in this shop specifically because I was getting too hot in the shop.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:33:43) – The Oh, I know.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:33:45) – Shower.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:33:46) – Yeah. The way the sun comes around this building, it’s on all three sides of my building the whole day. And you know, it’ll be a 95 degree day outside is 110 degrees in my shop. Like my wall. My brick wall that faces south is hot by the end of the day. And it’s just like, you know, you you have to be willing to put yourself through some pretty ridiculous stuff. And, you know, I’m sure there’s tons of other jobs that are just as crappy to, you know, I’m not discrediting that at all. I just the people that just want to jump in with both feet and hope for the best, I’m like, Man, have you ever done anything outside of an office? You know, like, have you ever gone outside when you didn’t have to come back into for a while? You know? And I mean, it is what it is. Like I, I know that my work ethic is pretty ridiculous and I have always just kind of been like, that’s the reason I do this is my, you know, I have a good work ethic.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:34:36) – You know, I convince myself, basically, and, you know, even my my really good friends that would see me working 16 hour days, we’re like, Dude, what are you doing? Or before car shows where I don’t sleep for 2 or 3 nights straight and I’m a, you know, by the fourth day I’m like a full on zombie, you know, like, even I know that the things I’m saying or doing don’t make any sense. But I’m like, Well, I got to finish this stuff for this car show. You know, it’s countless times where I’ve been caught asleep under my table at my booth at car shows because I hadn’t slept in days. And luckily I’ve had, you know, good friends and girlfriends in the past and stuff that have done really well working in booths and stuff. And I’m like, Oh, I’m just going to sleep under here with my dog for two hours or whatever. And right to catch back up.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:35:21) – You can’t even enjoy the car show. No.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:35:23) – Well.

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:35:24) – To be fair, I think I stopped enjoying, I think being tied in the automotive industry. I stopped enjoying a lot of things. Automotive, I mean, powder coating for me is pretty much strictly automotive. I don’t do any commercial industrial. I don’t do, um, you know, uh. When I say production work, I’m thinking like line work, like I won’t do a thousand work. And so I do wheels. You know, wheels are my big thing, kind of the go to for wheels. I’m definitely in this area on the go to for multi piece wheels um you know even other powder coaters send people down to me to do multi piece of Yeah they’re tricky. Yeah it’s just been I’d much rather focus on the things that I enjoy. You know I’ve said forever. I just want to be able to enjoy my job. And the second that I have to powder coat 500 black brackets, I’m not going to enjoy my job anymore. And there’s plenty of powder cutters who are super willing to do that exact work, who don’t want to do wheels, you know? So I suggest I have, you know, people that I send work to all the time and I’m like, Hey, you know, why don’t you give these guys a call? They’re perfect for that.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]

Unknown Coatings (Shawn Shreve) (00:36:30) – You know, they do good work. Just mention that I sent you over there that care of you. Um, and then vice versa. You know, those same companies, when they get something with wheels, they just send them straight to me. So it’s worked out pretty well.

RossKote (Kim Scott) (00:36:43) – Well, kiddos. That concludes part one of going places unknown with Shawn Shreve. Join us for episode 13, Part two as we take a deeper dive into reputations, reviews, results and rankings. Until next time. Aloha.[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”2022 blog wrap up” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ global_module=”18725″ saved_tabs=”all” global_colors_info=”{}”]

About us

RossKote is committed to sharing their experience in metal coatings, painting, and restoration so customers & powder coaters can navigate the process of powder coating and make the best choices for getting their projects done.

RossKote regularly contributes helpful videos on his blog and YouTube channel.

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Filed Under: All Posts, Podcast Tagged With: Business, Deadlines, Equipment, Facebook, Hazardous Environment, Instagram, Multi-Piece Wheels, Outsourcing, powder coating, Profitability, Relationships, Reputation, Reputation Management, sandblasting, social media, Sparkly Finishes, Specialization, Tutorials, Unknown Coatings, Work Ethic, YouTube Channel

What’s working now on social media in powder coating

June 28, 2023 by pcnearme

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]In our exclusive interview with Danielle Miller, Owner of Miller Media Management, we uncover some of the strategies powder coating companies can use when posting to social media platforms like Instagram & Facebook.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vc1ertl3zQ[/embedyt]

RossKote (Kim Scott): [00:00:00] In this episode of the Powder Coater Podcast, we introduce you to Danielle Miller and welcome her as our podcast, first resident guest. She’s a media strategist who’s well versed in powder coating. Danielle has been featured in HubSpot in Huffington Post, and she’s here to talk about what’s now working in social.

Find out why using the newest features on Instagram will get you noticed and how to build a stellar profile. She explains how Pinterest can lead to website growth and why Facebook wants you to join a group. We’ll also cover how to use partnerships to gain access to more followers and clients, as well as what the must have hashtags are for powder coaters.

It’s all about building marketing strategies for your brand on social. Let’s get ready to level up your powder coater game.[00:01:00]

Welcome back to episode 11. I’m Kim Scott, your host of the Powder Coater Podcast, where you’re listening to influencers and, we’re interviewing and covering trending topics so that powder coaters can effectively learn and grow their business. And today I am super stoked. I’ve got a girl on my side who has been my partner in social media and my group, my go-to guru.

Fortunately she resides right here in Maui, Hawaii. She’s the owner of a top rated social media marketing company here. Her mission is to help entrepreneurs [00:02:00] anchor on results when it comes to marketing their businesses online. And her articles and presentations have been mentioned in HubSpot Social Media Today, and Social Media Examiner.

She’s also a prolific Pinterest producer, so to speak. So welcome aboard, Danielle Miller. How are you today?

Danielle Miller: Hey Kim. Doing great. Super stoked to be on the Powder Coat podcast today and talk about marketing. You know, that’s my, my jam. That’s where I get nerdy.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, and you and I met back in 2015 when I was struggling with social media. I had not ever tried Instagram, didn’t really know much about Facebook in, in terms of business Facebook. And you and I collaborated on a project together for another business I owned at the time and [00:03:00] really kind of sidelined Maui Powder Works. Because we hadn’t really taken ourselves too seriously and you were there for me.

You were there to review my, and give me feedback on my website, my approach to, the market, my message to the market and who my audience was. So I really do thank you and appreciate everything that you’ve done for me, and I know that you have something very valuable to share with our listeners today.

So I’m happy that you’re here.

Danielle Miller: Thanks. Yeah. We have a lot of big changes happening on social media right now and, it made for perfect timing to hop on and let all the powder coaters of the world know about what is the latest and greatest, what’s, what’s working now.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, and I think this perfectly segues with a lot of what our previous podcast was about with, Jace Kaser, from Kaser coating about how he markets his business, and does social media and how [00:04:00] he produces content on whatever platform he’s using. So I’m happy that we’re here to discuss maybe a little bit more in detail about how to. Bring a balance to your social media cuz it can get overwhelming if you don’t know where to start or how to do it.

And also how does that convert into leads and sales and new customers, without having to spend a bazillion dollars just in advertising. And we’re not gonna really address advertising today. We’re gonna talk about just the organic reach that you can do. With some of the things that we’re gonna talk about today, some of the, some of the ideas, that you can implement today in your business, Right?

Danielle Miller: Absolutely. And help you get focused, so you don’t feel overwhelmed and you know, kind of what, what are the new trendy things and what are the tried and true things that are always working?

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. [00:05:00] I think that’s kind of the problem is sometimes you can get really burnt out for those that have experience with instagram and social media and what it’s like out there already. We are gonna address some of the more advanced concepts as well in this podcast. And, you know, for the new guys out there that need to get started, I hope to maybe give you a little bit of encouragement or confidence that you can do this.

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Because, you know, if you’ve been on social media, you know, you know how exhausting it can be. And you know, sometimes you just need to take a break and it’s okay to do so. But when you take that break, how do you jump back into it, because as you know, social media changes all the time.

And so that’s what we’ve got you here for is to give us the latest, greatest on Facebook and Instagram. So let’s hop into this.

Danielle Miller: Yes, let’s dive right in. Okay, so, let’s start with Instagram. And the reason I like to start there is cuz if you’re somebody who is overwhelmed with creating content [00:06:00] for every one of your platforms, then you need to be thinking of Instagram as the top platform that you create for and let.

The content you create on Instagram, trickle down to your Facebook and trickle down to your Twitter and trickle down to your Pinterest. So let’s start with Instagram. The latest and greatest on Instagram right now is “Reels”, and that is a contender for TikTok. It’s basically, just the same way that Instagram came in and copied Snapchat and integrated the same features that Snapchat offered right into the Instagram platform.

They’ve now integrated a lot of the same features that were on TikTok, right into Instagram with reels. So reels are, at the moment, still a bit clunky, but what’s happening with them is if you’re participating in reels and creating reels, you are actually getting. A lot of preferential treatment in terms of getting your content featured on that Instagram Explorer tab.

So we talked about, you know, today’s focus really being organic reach, that unpaid [00:07:00] reach, that reach that anybody can get as long as they’re creating quality content. And the the important thing here is that if you can get your content featured in that explorer tab, then you have a very high chance of being introduced to a lot more people for free.

It’s like getting a free ad on Instagram. So the, the short and quick on reels is that they are slightly longer videos that allow you to overlay text on top of your video and also do transitions between your, videos. So you see sometimes people come in like you might be showing a rim, right?

You’re showing a before and after. Is the concept of the reel. And you might show a rim, take a little video of it. Then when it comes out of the processes and it’s completely done, and like right before you’re giving it to the customer, you can now overlay that before picture of the rim, video of the rim. Right with your brand new video of the [00:08:00] rim, and have it transition within this Instagram reels video. And overlay text that says, you know, this process took this long. But the result was amazing. And here’s what the client had to say. And you can fit all of that in as long as you can fit it in, in a short period of time.

 They’re really like the 15 second. Now you can go up to 30 seconds with your reel. Those are really, really well received these days. .

RossKote (Kim Scott): Wow. So that’s something new because I had been guessing about the reels and we kind of took a step back from Instagram and sure enough, right as we were moving into our new shop. That’s right when reels was getting launched. And of course I missed out. So it’s good that we’re talking about this. Of course I’m not on TikTok, but a lot of people are, and this is a great way to kind of learn a little bit more, and maybe you just start with reels.

I don’t know, do you have to build up your profile first? I mean, do we wanna kind of backtrack a little bit or[00:09:00] if someone wanted to get started or just maybe only has a handful of followers right now, do you suggest they go directly into reels or still continue to build up their profile?

Danielle Miller: So I think it’s great to do both simultaneously because, as long as you’re using the appropriate hashtags and whatnot in, in your post, you’re gonna end up getting that organic reach and attracting your followers. And then with the reels, Instagram’s gonna place you in that Instagram Explorer feed if you’re getting enough engagement on your reels and for the followers that you already have.

Let’s say you’ve done the thing where you’ve invited your customers, you’ve invited your friends and family, and you’ve made it up to maybe 250 followers on Instagram. You know, you’re just getting started. Now you can really develop some tight relationships with those 250 people by participating in reels, cuz Instagram is gonna show that content to those people.

You know, it’s like, it’s almost as [00:10:00] if it bypasses the algorithm, right now because it’s a new thing they really want it to take off. So I would say, yeah, you gotta get the basics right. So you have to make sure your Instagram bio is solid. That means you’re not telling people. About what you offer in terms of services and instead you’re telling people why you’re worth following on Instagram.

benco sales b17 ad

And also with your bio that you’ve got your website link in there cuz that’s the only clickable link you’re gonna have on your Instagram account until you have 10,000 followers. and that you’ve taken the initiative to go ahead and become an Instagram business profile so that you get the insights and analytics about your content, because that’s the only way you are gonna know what’s working and what’s not, so that you can focus your efforts on the things that are actually producing results.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, I think, you’re hitting on some pretty key points about Instagram that I think [00:11:00] commonly get overlooked. From when I’ve looked at other coaters profiles and stuff, is this lack of the profile or, you know, lack of information on the profile. I know we’ve kind of hashtag stuff on our profile.

We’ve kind of put in powder coating as a hashtag within the profile. Is that not valid anymore to do? Do you still recommend that?

Danielle Miller: I still recommend putting, let’s say, one to two relevant hashtags in the profile. Although, honestly, I haven’t seen the return come in. There’s no way to really track if your profile is really being featured under those hashtags.

What I have found is that if somebody tends to follow that hashtag, then you are more likely to show up in the recommended profiles after they follow somebody else who’s been using that hashtag. . So that’s kind of the benefit about putting it in your profile. But keep it short, You know, this isn’t like when you stick those 30 hashtags in [00:12:00] your caption or in your first comment.

This is one or two core hashtags. I recommend one be geographic, right? So for, for us here in Maui, you’re hashtag tagging Maui. If you’re in London, you’re gonna hashtag London, right? And the other one be industry specific. So powder coating. Something very specific to the, your style or aesthetic could also work.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Right, like if you’re just doing break calipers or, certain kinds of rims or, you know, certain kinds of customers that have like, you know, customized, race cars or something like that, that makes sense. Totally, I mean, pander to your audience, really. I mean, who is it that’s coming to your shop and who do you wanna get more business from?

Danielle Miller: Yep, definitely.

 

 

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RossKote (Kim Scott): So do the reels translate into the Facebook feed, or is it just still Instagram stories to Instagrams, to Facebook stories?

Danielle Miller: So Instagram stories to [00:13:00] Facebook stories is the flow. However, with reels, you have the ability when you’re uploading them to send them to your story. So in that way, you can put a clip of your reel into your story and send that also to Facebook.

 And that’s one way to go ahead and reuse that content. And in essence, just think of, with stories for those of you who aren’t using them yet, I wanna encourage you to get ahead of the curve now because the trend is actually to post less and less in your newsfeed and post more and more in stories.

So I’m seeing like the big influencers, the people who are really on top of their Instagram game are posting where they used to post every day in their Instagram newsfeed. They’re now posting. Maybe two or three times a week in their newsfeed and posting every day in their stories. So that’s how much more importance the big players are putting on Instagram stories right now.

And [00:14:00] reels are gonna compliment your stories because you’re able to share them directly to your stories and your feed.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Okay, well, let’s slow this roll down because now I’ve got an issue with that in a sense that it’s harder to track the analytics in stories because the analytics in stories is not as robust as it is in the profile, correct?

Danielle Miller: Oh, very true. Very true. I mean, you, you’re only getting 14 days history, first of all, so that’s tough. And you’re really just seeing about, you know, who tapped forward, who tapped back, But what you will notice is that if you’re more active in stories. Within your insights, those that count of the people who are discovering you and doing profile visits, those numbers change.

Those numbers increase. Especially the profile visits and in direct messages actually. So direct messages and profile visits are gonna increase dramatically as a result of [00:15:00] being more active in stories.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Well, that’s an interesting statistic there, you know, because that’s really where as a powder coater, that’s where you want your people to go, your audience to go.

Definitely start that conversation about rims or how much for this, or how much for that or, and also, you know, click through to my website or my, my landing page or whatever. So that’s actually interesting. So that’s what the statistics, that’s what they’re finding out now.

Danielle Miller: Yeah. That they’re definitely, they have that heightened engagement and the action that you’re taking on them is direct messages. So it instantly moves people from just being a commenter, you know, or just liking your post into starting a private direct message with them right off the bat where you can start talking to them about their needs and answering their questions.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, I hadn’t noticed that before, but I’m gonna have to start paying attention to that now because, [00:16:00] you know, I was kinda getting that organically happening just with my profile picks and stuff and my feed. But, that definitely changes the way I’m gonna approach Instagram now.

And what about Facebook’s stories? Does anybody care? Or is that just something that is just another one of those Facebook features that nobody cares about.

Danielle Miller: So the shortened skinny on Facebook stories is that they are, at this point, they’re just so easy to forward your Instagram stories to Facebook, and you’re getting featured at the top of the newsfeed.

So every time someone opens their app, if you’ve posted to your Facebook stories recently, you’re gonna be one of the four or five stories featured at the top, which is an opportunity to get your brand in front of people. So if we’re talking about easy wins. I would call Facebook stories an easy win. It’s not that you’re gonna necessarily get the direct message or get the sale from there, but it’s like if you’ve, if someone’s saying, Hey, I’m gonna give you a [00:17:00] free billboard on the highway, as long as you give me the content that you want me to put on the billboard, would you take it?

Sure. You know, so I think that Facebook stories are an opportunity just to get your brand in front of people again.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, that’s a valid point. All right, let’s move on to Facebook then. You know, we know how difficult it is to have a Facebook business page these days without having to spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in advertising every year.

Any changes on that front? I mean I see that there’s user functionality that’s changing for businesses to make it much easier to manage. Other than that, what else has changed in Facebook or is that the change?

Danielle Miller: So, yeah, let’s talk about that because that’s a big one that people might not know about.

In terms of user functionality that’s making it easier for people to manage their Facebook page, go to Google, type in Creator Studio. Facebook Creator Studio is [00:18:00] a free tool offered by Facebook that allows you to preschedule all of your Facebook posts and Instagram. From a desktop computer or they have a kind of wonky app for the phone as well.

And, it’s just really streamlines the process of getting your content posted. Plus it also keeps a record of all of your posts with their reach, their engagement, their comments, that you can quickly look at. So I’ve found that using Creator Studio is a really nice tool for kind of systemizing your social media marketing in terms of like, you’re gonna sit down once a month or once a week and schedule out your posts for Instagram and Facebook so that you know, you don’t have to babysit your Facebook account. You know, you’re just there really to monitor your notifications at that point. And to the other point, yeah, there’s a different change happening.

A lot of business owners are getting super frustrated with the limited organic reach from their Facebook page. I [00:19:00] mean, unless you’re getting shares. It’s really tough to reach people organically. You could have worked your tail off to get a following of a thousand people or 5,000 people and you’re seeing your posts reach, you know, maybe 200, 300 people, out of the thousand that have said, I really wanna see your content.

So the solution, right now, the trending thing, and the thing that I see getting hotter and hotter are Facebook groups. So it’s no longer about having a Facebook business page that puts your business and your brand first. Instead, it’s about being the admin, and being in control of a community of people interested in a topic.

So you create a Facebook group around, you know, well, you could do powder coating in, you know, London, right? So you could have a geographic region and an industry, or you could go specific and be like, you know, amazing rims spotted in [00:20:00] Massachusetts, right? And, and by being the admin of a group where people can feel like they can share content into it and contribute, you’re really building a community.

Which is stronger than just building your own Facebook page, which is all about you.

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RossKote (Kim Scott): Well, I have to tell you, it’s pretty interesting out there these days with powder coating and Facebook groups. And the reason why they’re exploding right now is because forms are, I don’t wanna say they’re dead, but they’re kind of what people used to go to for information.

But it seems. Powder coating is growing so quickly today that, it seems like the information that can come forward in a group can happen so quickly in order to get the answers to, you know, a post or like a troubleshooting post. Or, “Hey, can you help me out with this?” Or, “What should I try [00:21:00] here? Hey, check out this, project I did”.

It’s kind of an all around for powder coaters to go today, and it seems like every time I look there is a new, powder coating group started. I mean, it’s just changing weekly. I am currently, at the time of this recording, blocked on one of a fast growing powder coating, groups. I just found out. So, primarily because, you know, I think that there are some, sort of approach differences within the group. And, it sort of had been building and maybe coming to a head. And that’s the problem sometimes is you do have someone, that thinks of a group to be a certain way, and then, it maybe changes or people can disagree.

But the thing is that of the reason why I got into Facebook groups. Is not [00:22:00] just to promote my podcast or my content or any of that, it’s just that I found that so many, of the, of the existing groups could turn negative really quickly, because it’s competitive, rather than more helpful and that I felt like there needed to be some kind of a force in there to kind of just answer the questions people had without any kind of slight or agenda or, sales pitch kind of thing. Right. So…

Danielle Miller: Totally.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. I mean, you know, it can vary from group to group about what its content is. Most of the groups that are out there today are just general groups. They don’t really have one slant or the other, but you’ve certainly given us ideas on how to, focus in. Because the whole point of the groups is to be engaging and to get the questions answered or to get the help that you need, quickly.

Because the forums sometimes can take too long to get that answered because you’re based on people logging in or going [00:23:00] there, going to that site. Whereas Facebook is just, the engagement level is just huge.

Danielle Miller: Definitely. And Facebook has been pushing groups like crazy. So you know, if you start your own group, even if you’re starting kind of from scratch, if you can get that first wave of engagement and, and be posting on the regular and getting people to contribute to the discussion, they’ll start recommending your group to everybody who has similar categories and you can get your group to grow pretty fast. I mean, the other thing I wanna tell people about groups is like, you might think like, Oh, I can’t wait to have a group with like 10,000 members in it, or I can’t wait to have a group with a hundred thousand members in it.

Trust me, I’ve been an admin of a group with 10,000 members in it, and it sucks. It’s super hard to manage. So, get yourself to a hundred members, get yourself to 250 members and do a fricking celebratory dance. Because honestly, if you can get [00:24:00] really tight with a hundred or 200 people, think about the referrals that could bring you, right?

Don’t look at the group members as the people who will become your customers. Look at them as people that are going to become your friends and want to refer you business. And that’s gonna take the pressure off for the sale and really do exactly what you said, Kim, which was put your value first.

Put out the priority to answer people’s questions and just be of service first. And from there, the referrals will come in. So, Definitely, I like the idea of smaller, great groups that are, are super targeted in what they wanna talk about.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, I think that it’s definitely opened up for powder coating, subject matter, and it’s definitely working in a more positive direction.

But, not without, its pitfalls. And I’m sure that we’re working through it. Okay. So what, are there any [00:25:00] other platforms to, that we wanna talk about today that, changes are happening to?

Danielle Miller: Well after that intro, like, how could I not talk about Pinterest?

Right. So, Yeah, I freaking love Pinterest. For those of you who think Pinterest is just for housewives and, and homemakers and people looking up recipes, like you should look at the Pinterest report that most recently came out. They put out Pinterest themselves, put out their holiday guide and the amount of people that are on Pinterest with the intent to shop for things, for products or services or plan big projects like.

Updating their gate at their house or, you know, redoing their car. These things are super popular on Pinterest and all you need to have a really great Pinterest presence is a stream of high quality photos [00:26:00] and videos, which powder coaters are getting all the freaking time. Every single time you guys have a project, you’re getting sick photos of what you’re creating.

Yeah, uploading those to Pinterest, making sure that that image is linking back to your own website and then categorizing your pictures into however you like. You can do it by color, you can do it by, item, like you can have a board just about rims. You can have a board about architectural design.

That method of using Pinterest. Totally helps your SEO. Okay, so for those of you who didn’t realize, a killer Pinterest game is going to improve how you rank on Google, because every time someone’s repinning your images, it’s creating more back links to your website and telling Google your website is full of awesome content. [00:27:00] Pinterest is great.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I think one of the hardest things about Pinterest is just learning the platform and it seemed like they had just done a recent change or update the face of it or to the user experience level where I went there after a couple. I mean, it just, had happened recently.

Everybody, all the platforms are changing their game. Facebook, Instagram. And it just seems like we’re in that time period, or that pattern or that, you know, that time where things change. And I went there and it’s like even the, the app is different, and I just really had to reorient myself around it again.

And I’m like, Wait, this is like, it seemed like it was. Less user-friendly for the business poster or the, you know, and more user-friendly to the, to the pinner, I guess. And it should be, that’s what it’s there for. But, trying to find my analytics or any of that stuff, it was complex.

But I do see some, Instagrammers, [00:28:00] have Pinterest accounts. And they’re succeeding, even if they’re not necessarily selling a product like. A powder or some other related product to powder coating. They’re just posting their Instagram or they’re posting some pictures or a blog post.

And I am seeing some other people doing it pretty well out there too, and are getting that message. So, yeah, I think that’s, that’s a great way to end kind of the update on platforms and social media. It’s a learning curve on Pinterest, just like Instagram and Facebook. But, of the features you’ve mentioned or the benefits.

It’s definitely a playing out in our game for sure. So, talk about partnerships as we switch over, to the next segment here. What are partnerships? What are you talking about?

Danielle Miller: Yeah. Right on. So with partnerships, the important thing to remember is like this discussion is all about organic reach, right?

So we’re not talking about advertising and when, when you’re not dedicating money to an ad budget, you need to find other ways [00:29:00] to quickly reach audiences. And so a partnership could look like you partnering with, let’s say you have some like B2B business, like there’s another business out there that is a client of yours and you wanna talk about their business.

Like that’s a fantastic partnership. And that might look like you’re creating some posts on social media and tagging them in your posts and tagging them in your caption as well. And, Like, take it to stories, right? We talked about Instagram stories. If you are posting a picture of a product and you know, the partners that you work well with, whether it’s like the metal fabricators or it’s somebody else in the whole design process.

Maybe it’s an architect, maybe it’s a designer. You wanna be tagging their accounts in your stories about projects that you guys have worked on. Because it allows them in a single tap to reshare your story to all of their [00:30:00] followers.

So that’s a super easy win for how to get big organic reach without spending ad dollars.

RossKote (Kim Scott): We’ve actually done exactly that in our Instagram and in our blog posts and stuff, and it’s amazing. Especially on a blog post, I’ll look back at the analytics and, and it’s amazing how many people have clicked on, that restaurant website or that welder’s website.

And I can actually add up how many times people have clicked on it. It works and not to get too deep because I know we we’re short on time. But, we will be producing, top 25, ideas that you and I both have proven in powder coating, specific to powder coating.

 And how we can utilize this list of, different post types, for either Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest. And they all work fabulously. But the main takeaway for social [00:31:00] media is that you are educating your client or your audience, whether it’s something like, making an appointment or like how to make an appointment or how to book or how to drop off, rims.

When do you come in? What do I need from you? Are we full service or do you need to take your rims off and bring ’em to us? What’s the difference between someone that you know, doesn’t or does, you know? It also, I think I found that inspiration in inspiring our audience to the potentialities of color or making your rims look new or just giving people that inspiration that they need to like, “Yeah, I can get this done”.

And then also just kind of telling your story is another. Or even just talking about your services, or the backstory behind a project, sort of, you know, just, obsessing about those things. Would you [00:32:00] agree?

Danielle Miller: Oh, fully, these days on social media, it’s all about nailing the story and, and being of service, meaning answering the frequently asked questions.

One of my favorite tips. Kind of collecting those questions is, a lot of us get those questions via email. Like a customer, you know, maybe you’re talking with a customer about a product and either they’ve phoned you or they’ve emailed you and they’ve got a question like, you know, do I need to take my rims off?

Or you guys full service? You do that for me? And keep a little bank of those questions. So whether you are like BCCing another email address, like go into Gmail, create a FAQs for my company@gmail.com and just BCC that email address every time you’re answering a question for a customer that you’ve heard before, that you think other people are gonna have that same question, and all of a sudden you just go to that inbox, that FAQs for my company@gmail.com, inbox and like [00:33:00] it’s full of all of these questions and prewritten answers that you can now copy and paste into your social media content.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I’ve done that. In terms of like, especially sometimes when you have to go through a very lengthy email to explain to a customer; particularly architectural customers, cause they wanna know more about, you know, the durability or longevity of the finish that you’re giving them. And I can’t tell you how many times I have written that same paragraph over and over. And I finally got it straight and realized I should just save this and put it into a blog post, which I ended up doing on our gate post that we just put out on Pinterest about how to get your gate finished. From start to finish, do you get a pre-made gate or do you get a custom fab?

And what, you know, substrate do you use? What finish do you want? How do you do this? And it turned into like a 2000 word,[00:34:00] blog post, which was amazing. I can’t believe I actually had the time to write that thing. The landmark post, happy to have miles stoned it, and I’m ready to put that one off to the side.

So, before we wrap up, let’s talk about one last thing, and that is hashtags, because that’s where I see maybe, a lack of effort, about hashtags. Which hashtag specifically do we use for the powder coater or custom coating? And we can go through, I have a list of them that I use. Let’s talk about hashtags.

Danielle Miller: Yeah, sure. So the quick and dirty on hashtags is number one, you gotta have a strategy. That’s the thing is sometimes I don’t think it’s the lack of effort. I think it’s simply a lack of strategy. People have no idea how to use them. Here’s the, the best tip, simplest tip I can give you for hashtags is stop using hashtags that have over 2 million posts associated with them.

If you’re using hashtag rainbow and it’s got 8 million posts [00:35:00] associated with it. You are wasting one of your 30 hashtags completely wasting it because you will not show up in top posts for that. So all you’re gonna do with a hashtag like that is attract the spam commenters. Instead, what I want you to do is get a little more creative.

Like did you know that when you take a hashtag, let’s say like hashtag. Just powder coating, Right? And then you add an emoji to it that at that point, it’s actually a completely different hashtag. So, You might start to find niche hashtags that have only been used, you know, let’s say 50,000 posts or 20,000 posts, associated with them.

And those hashtags, you actually have a chance of showing up in top posts for them, and that should be your goal. Your goal should be to. Identify the hashtags for which when you use them, your post gets in top post for that hashtag. That should make [00:36:00] up like 20 of your 30 hashtags that you’re using should be ones that you wanna end up in top post for.

So, The other 10 hashtags that you’re using, you’re gonna put a branded hashtag in there. You know, so hashtag Maui Powder Works, or whatever your company is. Make sure you’re branding your hashtag. You’re also gonna do like geographic hashtags. People forget about those all the time. Like definitely for us, you know, it’s hashtag Maui, Hawaii, or it might be a town here or a town where you guys are located.

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Use your geographic hashtags. Then I want you to be thinking seasonal. Like what is in season right now? It’s Halloween, 2020, right? Start posting your orange rims and any other products that you’ve done that are black or orange. Like just start posting those pictures right now with hashtag Halloween 2020.

And that’s because right now that’s a trending seasonal hashtag. So those are my core three tips about hashtags.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Oh, you know what? As soon as we post this, [00:37:00] I cannot wait to see and go to Instagram and start to see exactly what you just said. Because I literally can see that sometimes in the groups and on Instagram is the minute we publish something on this podcast, people get right to it cuz that was a brilliant.

And it’s so overlooked, yet so easy, and so like, just like, duh, but you know, we get so wrapped up in the day to day of just even taking a picture or or doing a before and after. It’s really hard just to get that going or get that started. I know that we’ve kind of, slacked off on our Instagram game.

 I’m looking forward to getting kind of right back in. In fact, I have it right on the, my top 10 lists of things to do this week is to get out three new posts and not just rely on a podcast post to put in my Instagram feed, but to really, catch up with all the projects that Ross has done since we [00:38:00] moved into our new shop.

But it’s hard when you get off that horse, that rail line and then you gotta hop back on again. It’s hard to get back into it too once you’ve been off. So it’s, It’s just a challenge, but it’s also okay to just take a break and then listen to a podcast like this where we have an expert in social media.

Get us inspired to do more. Well that’s awesome, Danielle. I think this is a great place to just end, so tell us how do we get on hold of you? What’s your website? All that good.

Danielle Miller: Sure you can find me everywhere at mmm social media. So website mmmsocialmedia.com.

Instagram mmm, social media, Facebook, facebook.com/mmmsocialmedia. Same thing for Pinterest, mmm Social Media. So, and that’s mmm, like, Mm, it tastes really good. So, I can’t wait to see you guys there. And I do a ton of online workshops, so you know, if you guys are looking for some serious [00:39:00] training, that’s pretty dang affordable.

I’m doing livestream workshops at least once a month.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Oh, wow. That’s something new because I’ve been seeing you like locally in public spaces where you have your in class stuff, but I guess because of Covid 19, things have kind of changed up for you.

Danielle Miller: Totally. Yep. We’re doing a lot of online teaching this season.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Well, that’s good because I think your message is, so well put and so easy to grasp. I obviously saw that in a lot of the classes that I attended in, you know, in person where you have completely changed someone’s attitude towards social media. I know we all start up in these classes going, I don’t know why I’m here.

There’s nothing that this pod, you know, that this, Instagram can do for me. I’ve tried, I’ve tried this, I’ve tried that. So, I always walk away with something new and a new understanding if it’s, you know, coming from whatever you’re teaching. So thank you for that. And yes, you [00:40:00] should go check out our website.

I’ll make sure to put a link in the podcast page, so that you can click to it very easily. And we’d like to thank our supportive followers and fellow powder coaters out there. I hope you’ve learned something new about your Instagram game, and your powder coating business. Please, comment, below and, share the podcast, follow us and share it on Facebook groups.

If you have a topic you’d like to discuss, just email us at info@mauipowderworks.com. Aloha!

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About us

RossKote is committed to sharing their experience in metal coatings, painting, and restoration so customers & powder coaters can navigate the process of powder coating and make the best choices for getting their projects done.

RossKote regularly contributes helpful videos on his blog and YouTube channel.

Join us.  As we build a powder coating community online to share our passion for performance finishes by subscribing to RossKote’s Powder Coater Podcast

Connect with us. Comment below. What would you like to know more about? I love to answer everyday questions to the consumer market wants to know about powder coating.   

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Filed Under: All Posts, Podcast Tagged With: benefits of powder coating, brand, customer service, Danielle Miller, Facebook, how powder coating works, Instagram, metal coatings, Miller Media Management, powder coating, re powder coating, social media, steps to powder coating

Frustrations to Finishing with Jase Kaser

August 2, 2022 by pcnearme

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.17.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]In our exclusive interview with Jase Kaser, Owner of Kaser Blastings and Coatings, we uncover some of the everyday frustrations of running a powder coating business and how to overcome them.

We feature an up and coming coater, Jase Kaser. I stumbled upon his blog one day and discovered a fountain of inspiration, like no other. If you’re looking for solace in the life of powder coating this young man lends you a reprieve. He shares pearls of wisdom about the subtleties of coating, from a self-reliant mindset and covers everything from lessons learned in technical problem solving, to managing customers and employee expectations.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I call him the Ralph Waldo Emerson of powder coating. I hope you will call him a friend. Follow along as he melds his life experience with growing his powder coating biz, get ready to level up your powder coater game.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Welcome to episode 10, I’m Kim Scott, your host of the RossKote Powder Coater Podcast. Where we interview influencers in the industry and cover trending topics. So powder coaters can effectively learn and grow their business. Today, we’re reaching out to interview Jase Kaser from Kaser Blasting and Coating he’s out of Nebraska and I was attracted to his story.

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RossKote (Kim Scott): As a powder coater or the wife of a powder coater, because he has an approach on his blog that addresses the subtleties of coating things, the struggles with it, learning the business and addressing his customer’s expectations. And I found it very inspirational. I wanted to bring this podcast to you today because I found it’s almost like he has, it’s a training manual and a journal all in one.

RossKote (Kim Scott): So I’m happy to welcome Jase Kaser to the show. Welcome.

Jase Kaser: Thanks for having me on.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. Now I found you a Tim Pennington. So I’m just going to give a shout out to Tim Pennington of the finishings and coatings online magazine. If you don’t follow Tim, he usually is giving featured focuses and addresses all kinds of coating content in the coatings and finishing from powder coating.

RossKote (Kim Scott): So liquid coatings and beyond. So if you don’t follow Tim or you don’t get his email in your inbox go ahead and head over to his finishing and coating magazine online. Just Google it. And you will find you can sign up to get his newsletter, but recently a Kaser got featured in his magazine and I enjoyed reading it.

RossKote (Kim Scott): What was said in the magazine is just a feature of, they were just featuring you as a coater. But there was one thing that really brought an attention to me was just an introduction to your business and stuff. But I really found something that you said that was really compelling and that you’re grateful for your customers for the positive reviews and stuff.

RossKote (Kim Scott): But later on you said the more transparent and communicative, we are, the more satisfied our customers are likely to be. And that’s the one reason why I wanted to bring you on the show, because I do think that there are barriers to market and communicate. And especially when communicating.

RossKote (Kim Scott): To your customers, the subtleties of powder coating and the struggles that you have as a powder coater to educate customers or shed light on the process. But before we dive deep into that, I want to know how long have you been powder coating in the industry and or how did you get started?

RossKote (Kim Scott): Talk me through it.

Jase Kaser: Okay. My parents started Kaser painting incorporated before I was born back in 1987 and that started as a residential painting company. So it started off with my dad painting houses and then it grew from there and went into more commercial painting. Like new construction, hospitals and schools and office buildings.

Jase Kaser: In 2004, my mom and dad added a blast facility that was just adjacent to the building. If they already. And so they started blasting and then doing, I call it liquid coating. It’s still painting, but it’s just all the painting was done inside of booth. Like high-performance industrial type coatings.

Jase Kaser: And then in 2014 is when we finally started powder coating. And so when I was younger and growing up in high school, I always worked on in the summers, usually in the Kaser painting shop staining and finishing wood.And then I would also work in the blast shop a little bit like in the blast cabinet or if our main blaster was gone or on vacation, I would get in there and try to wrangle the blast hose as a young middle school or high schooler, which can be challenging.

Jase Kaser: Just because it’s, that’s probably the most physically demanding job that we have. And then when we started the powder coating, it was 2014. So I was in college at that time. I had just finished my let’s see, fourth year, it took me five years. I went to the university of Nebraska Lincoln for mechanical engineering.

Jase Kaser: So I’ve always been interested in setting up equipment and how it all works, how it goes together. And so I was interested in helping get all the powder coating stuff set up. So over that summer, between my fourth and fifth year, so going into my senior year of college, we started putting up the powder coating oven and boots.

Jase Kaser: And I sprayed our first part and then we hired one guy to help run it. And then I finished my senior year college. And then it was, I was getting right to the end of my senior year. I was trying to decide if I wanted to go to graduate school or if I wanted to just be done with school and had my bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and just go the family business.

Jase Kaser: But it was a tough decision. I was going back and forth because I had done a lot of undergraduate research and engineering. And that particular professor really wanted me to go on and be a grad student and get my master’s and get my PhD. But the powder coating was really taken off and dad really needed my help in the sense that like he was running the Kaser painting.

Jase Kaser: So the commercial, residential painting, also the blast thing, and then the powder coating and he could run all three of them, but it was like he was the limiting factor. You can’t be in three places at once, all day, every day.And so it ultimately, it was my decision, but they really needed help.

Jase Kaser: So I was like, you know what? I have powder coated or putting stuff together. And. I am getting really tired of school. I’m not sure if I will use this master’s or PhD, cause in the long run, I wanted to get into the family business someday and then hopefully take it over. So I decided that a bachelor’s degree was enough and then started helping and jumped right in and help in the powder coating right away on the floor.

Jase Kaser: And then since then it’s grown. So that was 2015 that would’ve been when I started working at full time. That’s been five years ago now, a little over five years. So the summer of 2015 and we’ve grown a lot since then, powder coating has been our fastest growing division ever since that time. And yeah, that’s where we’re at now.

Jase Kaser: Now instead of being on the floor and doing all the work, I’m mostly in the office. Trying to organize all the work and get all of the logistical stuff done. So all of our team members can focus on their craft. Everybody’s really good at what they do. And so it’s my job to get all their obstacles out the way so they can do their job.

Jase Kaser: If our sprayers can come in and spray all day washers can come in and pre-treat all day and not have to worry about equipment breaking and running on the supplies and materials, then they can do their job a lot better. So that’s what I focus on. I’m mostly scheduling an, order being a purchaser and cloning and dealing with customers.

Jase Kaser: I still like to get on the floor when I can, because that’s usually the funest part is when you can get in and work and not have any interruptions and get sweaty and stuff. That’s fun.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. Get lost in the work and just, I always was like that with painting. Let myself work without having any, distractions and stuff like that.

RossKote (Kim Scott): The logistics is hard, it’s not that easy. You have to know it all in order to understand how to logistically set something up. And it sounds like you guys do it all then like liquid and powder you’re out both sides.

Jase Kaser: Correct, yeah. So we have our blast and liquid booth, our indoor there 18 foot wide, 15 foot tall by 50foot long.

Jase Kaser: So we can do like concrete trucks and dump trucks. We do a lot of the 40 foot shipping containers. For construction companies. They don’t have to see those as job trailers. So we have that in one of our, one of our buildings and then our other building is fully powder coating.

RossKote (Kim Scott): And as a family business, are you the only family, the son or are there other siblings.

Jase Kaser: I have a younger brother. He’s not involved in the family business. He is also a mechanical engineer. And he decided to take an engineering job right out of college. It was a really good job. And so he’s still doing that right now. And I don’t know that he has much desire to come into the family business maybe someday.

Jase Kaser: But he really likes the engineering job he has right now. So that’s where he’s at, but yeah, I do have a younger brother.

RossKote (Kim Scott): So do you and your dad, I’m assuming your mom and dad are still seem like they’re young enough, they’re still involved in the business or you’re trying to get more hands-off?

Jase Kaser: So they, I would say, so they still run the Kaser painting side.

Jase Kaser: And then what I say, I run as a Kaser of blasting and coating side. So the Kaser painting as the commercial and residential painting. Like I talked about my dad’s still there every day, there from as I am from five in the morning till five at night. And so he’s doing the day today office running the painting side.

Jase Kaser: And my mom does all of the accounting and bookkeeping for all of the, all of our divisions. So they’re still there every day. They are getting them to the point where they want to slow down a little bit, but as far as the day to daywork and decisions and the blasting of powder coating I pretty much handle all that now.

Jase Kaser: And it’s been interesting. I’ve never, I haven’t thought about it much, but when I reflect on it as I’ve been, I’m surprised how quickly my mom and dad just let me run with it. As I started going but my dad is a very, he’s also very hands-on. He likes to be involved be very particular.

Jase Kaser: But he’s letting me make my own decisions. If we have a disagreement, he’s usually the one that will back down and they’ll just kinda let me learn the hard way. Sometimes other times I’ll step in and say, I know that Idid this before and this way isn’t going to work. But they do a really good job of just letting me go ahead and run with it.

Jase Kaser: And obviously there’s when there’s big, really big decisions to make. I involve them and we all three talk about it and come up with a good decision, but I’ve never felt that I was, I don’t really feel like their son when I’mat work, so when I’m at work, I call them Jay & Sherry. I don’t call it mom and dad.

Jase Kaser: Yeah. I’m just never, it doesn’t feel like it’s mom and dad watching over me at work. It just feels like we’re we have good working relationship if we work alongside each other really well and compliment each other because I look at stuff a lot differently than they do. Cause I’m younger went to engineering school.

Jase Kaser: And I’m interested in technology and every trying to do everything faster and on the cloud and more remote and either technology to help us go faster. And they’re, used to doing this. I don’t necessarily want to say old school, but you know that older way, but they have all the experience too.

Jase Kaser: So there’s, I might have a lot of new ideas that can help, but then when I run them by them, they can give me their input okay, that might work, but don’t forget about this and this, because they’re thinking about things that I don’t think about.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. That you haven’t even, because you don’t have this much experience.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. It makes you think that, what sets Kaser apart from other powder coaters in your area?

Jase Kaser: I would say our. We pay really close attention to detail. And in general, our feed back from our customers is that our quality is usually typically better than other places. And with going along with that, we’re usually more expensive.

Jase Kaser: We hear that as a lot of feedback too, but I would say definitely our quality. We’re very particular about everything that we do and from start to finish. So there’s a lot of intricacies and blasting and coatings that the general customer doesn’t necessarily realize at the surface. And then when it comes to any kind of coating everybody thinks it’s just painting.

Jase Kaser: I can do it myself. I can go to Menards and get an aerosol can and spray paint my car, parts myself, which you can, but it’s a lot different and there’s a lot more to it than people think. When it comes down to it, it’s hard to explain to customers. And that’s what we do. Our blogs started to explain to customers when they’re coming in to drop parts up or get a quote what’s all involved and all the steps that we’re taking to make sure that their coating’s going to look good, but then also have longevity.

Jase Kaser: Cause we’re all the substrates that we coat and the Kaser blasting, coating side, it’s all metal. And so we’re going for corrosion protection is what’s really important. And obviously everybody, when it comes to powder coating, we do a lot of general public stuff, the lawn furniture, car parts, and all kinds of stuff like that.

Jase Kaser: So they’re more looking for the aesthetics, but if it’s going outside, it’s really important to have, make sure the substrates craft properly with the right blast and pretreated properly with the right chemicals or you get either paint or powder coating over the top make sure that they have a good, long lasting finish.

Jase Kaser: So I think all that attention to detail sets us aside from everybody else, but that’s hard to convey to customers really hard.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. I think that’s what I found so compelling about your blog and just for the listeners, you can actually find the blog at Kaser, K-A-S-E-R blasting.com forward slash blog. (kaserblasting.com/blog)

RossKote (Kim Scott): And I feel like when I started to read it it’s a, it’s an ode to powder coating again, if I thought, wow, this could be a training manual for the subtleties of powder coating for both consumers or your customers, and your employees. It’s a journal, it’s a journey.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I don’t know your writing style intrigued me, I don’t know if you’re doing all of the writing. How do you get, how do you get inspired to write? Is it something happens with a customer or an event happens at work, and then that’s the impetus?

Jase Kaser: It’s a combination of things. But if somebody takes the time to go through and read all of our blogs, they might be able to tell that some of them are a little more passionate and ranty than others. So sometimes it’s the frustration that triggers me to record it. Other times. It’s just, I want to help educate.

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Jase Kaser: About a certain thing. We’re also, we really try to be active on social media, on all forms and blogging is this one of them that we do on our website. And and I work with we have a couple team members that helped me with that. I can’t take all the credit for writing the blogs. The content is definitely coming from me.
Jase Kaser: And typically the process that we use to do the blogs is I’ll record myself talking. It’s like we’re doing right now. And then I gave that to Chloe. I’ll give her a shout out and she’s the one who watches my videos and then she writes it out. So she’s using all of my words and contexts, but she is a very good writer.

Jase Kaser: And as a good way with words to get some of my long-winded rants down onto the page and actually make sense. So she does a very good job of that. I can’t take credit, for the physical writing, but the. Yeah, the topics just come up. There’s a lot of things that happen on a daily basis. And usually it’s just something that happened in that particular day.

Jase Kaser: I try to just, when I’m thinking about wanting to do any type of social media content, I just try to think about now what happened today, instead of trying to make up something special, that’s usually hard to do. It’s easier to just go off of what’s on my mind, what I’m dealing with, ton of customers calling in and asking the same question in a day or I feel like I’m answering the same thing over and over again, or explaining the same thing over and over. And I just feel like we need to make a blog about.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, that was, that’s pretty much how I got started. Someone suggested to me one day when we first launched our website, well, you need a blog, and I’m like, “oh God, what’s that? Like really?” And it was just quite simply put, what is the most asked question when somebody answers the phone?

RossKote (Kim Scott): What is the question they asked the most and that’s how it all started. And lo and behold, a year later after that blog post was posted, we reached number one in Google. And then it just took off from there. And that’s when I realized we were actually writing to consumer; our consumer based market rather than to other powder coaters or to any other audience, but I think what I like about what you’re doing is.

RossKote (Kim Scott): For those that have thought, “oh, I need a blog too.And, or I need a video log or a YouTube channel or where this and that”. I think what I like best about your approach is it seems simple. You’re just recording yourself. It’s you’re dealing with the day to day. Yes. You have help along the way.

RossKote (Kim Scott): You’ve got people re-crafting or redrafting the message, but it doesn’t have to be, it can be crude. It can be like crude in the sense that it non-processed and still be a great blog or a great blog in addressing to your customer or to your Instagram audience or Facebook, whatever.

RossKote (Kim Scott): It doesn’t have to be complicated. And I guess. The way that they’re writing or the blog that I just don’t feel it, that it’s pressed or not the word. That’s not the word I want to reach, but it’s not a forced thing. You know what I mean? It’s something that happens organically and it can be just that for everybody.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Because as with every job you’re creating content whether it’s a tough job or an easy job, or a shiny, pretty color job or a difficult customer job, or any of the different, that’s the beauty of powder coating is that you’re constantly creating content to write about because with every new project is content.

Jase Kaser: Yes. And the reality of the situation is, and I’m sure you can at test to this as like we’re in a small business. I have a lot of responsibilities that I have to attend to, to keep the business running. So I don’t really have time to sit there and think of these very intricate plans about what we’re going to do on social media and what I need to write a blog about.

Jase Kaser: So it just happens on the fly because I just simply don’t have that much time to dedicate to a long drawn out strategy for it. It’s just, whatever’s popped into my mind that’s all I have time to go with. So I just go with it.

RossKote (Kim Scott): And, we talked earlier about using software technology and apps. Can you break down for us? Are you using specific apps to help you, or are you just going straight to the platforms themselves to, maybe dive a little deeper in there? Is there a specific app you’re using?

Jase Kaser: Particularly? It’s, we use a lot of spreadsheets, so like Excel and Google sheets.

Jase Kaser: We just like to keep track of what we’re doing and then scheduling, you could also do that, any type of spreadsheet program. We liked the little sheets because that’s, on the internet and on the cloud. So you can access it from multiple places. You can access it from a phone or a tablet or a computer and in the powder shop with computer in my office instead of having to be at one particular place.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, I agree. We use Google a lot too. But when you’re recording, what are you recording just on your phone? Or how does that work out?

Jase Kaser: Oh, for content. Yeah, I just record them. I’m just using my phone.I’ve tried to, they have those kind of like selfie stick things. And also, I think it’s called a gimbal it’ll self balance, the phone, and I’ve used that a little bit, but it boils down to time.

Jase Kaser: So the people that helped me on social media they liked that and they want me to use it because it balances the phone better and get better video. And man, I got, it takes me 30 minutes to get that thing working. I don’t have that. So I’m just going to go with my phone. If I have a full day, like a Saturday or something that I can dedicate to it, then I’ll get out some tripod and set some stuff up and get the lighting.

Jase Kaser: But otherwise now I’m just using my cell phone. Now a days I’m used to it because I grew up with cell phones, but they can do almost everything. It’s basically like a computer in your pocket. So if you have a pretty new phone, you can pretty much take pictures, video record yourself, and all that content is good to put on social media.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I’ve struggled with the gimbal thing too. Maybe someday, it’s just one more thing to add to my list of many things. Yeah, I encourage everybody to check out some of the titles from your blog. And you’re putting out quite a bit of content.

RossKote (Kim Scott): You’ve put out something at least once or twice a week here, so you’ve got lots of content to read through and I like it because, you could be struggling with a project as a powder coater and reading your stories.Here’s one “three rules of training”. I thought that was very valuable.

RossKote (Kim Scott): That’s the most recent one that you’ve put up and, you’re a general manager at Kaser and I’m imagining you make it sound so easy, but I know it probably took you a little while to figure this stuff out. And here you are just right here. Super easy. You’ve got three different points that you’re using that other powder coaters could read to figure out how to work through some of their training issues as well.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Like, there’s never enough over explaining, figuring out the progression of a job and investing in your time wisely and stuff. And I think that’s, this is the valuable stuff that I think powder coaters should be reading on a regular basis and stuff, does it seem to help you to get it out?benco sales b17 ad

Jase Kaser: All of that’s the stuff like that last article that we wrote, that’s a little more, I would say in depth or more process oriented and less about like coating a part or something. That’s just learned, I’ve learned that over time. I definitely managed differently. I think we have a blog about pretty recently.

Jase Kaser: I don’t like it’s that one, but it’s one right for that, about how, when I first started I thought the best way to get my point across was yelling and intimidating. And I learned pretty quickly that, that wasn’t so it’s been a dry trial now really. And so throughout the years, we’ve and I know for me to say that you’re probably thinking, yeah, but you’re still super young, it’s been five years for me, so that’s a big portion of my life.

Jase Kaser: And that’s just what we’ve learned. We finally, I’ve gotten to a point where the team members that we have now have been there for a while.We used to have pretty high turnover and we still do. It seems like when you’re trying to fill a new position. You just gotta be prepared, the closer that you can keep yourself to reality and not get too high and not get too low when things are going bad, then it’s, it goes a little bit better.

Jase Kaser: So when it comes to training and hiring to try to just be realistic.And instead of, when you’re really busy and you’re hiring people, you can be really, you can get frustrated really easy, or really helps that someone’s going todo really good because he got a big project coming up and then you need a couple more, really good people that know exactly what they’re doing and have experienced.

Jase Kaser: But a lot of the time, even if they do have experience, they’re not going to do it exactly the way it, your particular team does it. Everybody has their own hands in the house. So that’s where we came up with the over explaining because when you have someone that you feel like has experienced and you just assume that they know.

Jase Kaser: Most of that, and it didn’t really come across in the article to start, but I can put it better now that we’re doing an interview in words, is that a lot of my background mechanical background comes from, I used to race when I was younger. So when I was nine years old, I started riding dirt track racing all the way until I was 25.

Jase Kaser: But it’s just recently that we stopped doing that. So I’m really mechanically inclined and used to whatever tools called and what’s the size of bolts are and this looking at something and telling if that’s gonna hold or if that’s going to break or if that’s going to work or not just because I’ve been around mechanical stuff my whole life ever sinceI was little.

Jase Kaser: And so we have some team members that come in that maybe have had a coating experience, or maybe don’t. But they, I take for granted that they don’t necessarily have that background if they haven’t used all the tools I have, they haven’t been around all the mechanical stuff I have. In the beginning, I used to not really explain that stuff and just assumed, like they knew exactly what I was talking about.

Jase Kaser: Or, if you go to hang a really heavy thing, really heavy part and you’re hanging it with a forklift because it’s too heavy for two or three people lift it. You have to get the forklift under it. It’s this natural for me to say, Hey, we’re going to need some like really big hooks, probably big chain to hang this because nobody can lift it, little tiny hooks.

Jase Kaser: Aren’t going to hold, it’s going to fall. And if someone doesn’t have experience with mechanical type stuff and being around, things like that, they just, they simply don’t know. That’s not because it’s no fault to them. They just don’t have experience with it. And so those are the little things that sometimes seem obvious to some people because of their experience.

Jase Kaser: And then, but you still got to train on it. And I, we found that it’s easier to over explain and keep saying the same thing and keep explaining stuff and let the person roll their eyes at you and be like, okay. Yeah, I know you told me, he told me, I know that. Of course, I know that it’s better to do that than assume they know something and then something goes wrong or more importantly, like someone gets hurt because the safety thing that someone’s doesn’t know.Yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I think it’s easy. I think most people think I’ve told you once, how many more times do I have to tell you? But not everybody. My, I have a daughter that has a learning issue and, it did take multiple times, but once she got it in her head, it was in there for good, it was just this over coming this learning curve. And then once she learned the task or whatever, It was just, it never leaves it. And it is hard to adapt to your training to multiple levels. And one thing that was said in this blog called “Busting the Myth of Self-Direction” the intensity level ranges from moderate flurry to fog of war.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I love that because that’s exactly what happens in a very busy powder coating shop. It can, it’s this hurry up and wait. And then once it’s in the oven, then you’re sitting there waiting for the timer to ding, kind of thing. How do you keep your people busy during that slow time?

RossKote (Kim Scott): Do they, what are some strategies there? Because I’m sure a lot of powder coaters do have this busy and then hurry up and wait. And they, what do they do with their customer?

Jase Kaser: So we were lucky enough that we have a big enough shop and we have enough equipment now that we try to keep a pretty good flow go on. And we have enough people that someone can be hanging. Someone can be in the wash bay, pre-treating someone could be spraying and then someone can be packing. And so as long as the flow is going pretty well and I do a good enough job at scheduling it, it usually can flow out and obviously you have to have enough work to be able to do that.

Jase Kaser: But if you have enough parts there, usually there’s always something for someone to be doing. We try to keep someone spraying all day long. And we usually do a good job of that. And so usually there’s, there’s always parts in the oven. There’s always parts cooling down and there’s parts that are cold enough that can actually be being packaged.

Jase Kaser: As those are being packaged and carts are being opened up, then we just hang the next job and it just keeps going in the assembly line. It doesn’t always work that smooth. The hardest probably most stressful job at across all three of our divisions is running the shop floor in the powder coating shop. Just because you have to be thinking two or three steps ahead of everybody because you’re right. All of a sudden somebody’s okay, I’m done with that. What do you want me to do now? And that it does happen, or we call it the flow. So how things are flowing through the shop, it gets backed up or messed up or turned around.

Jase Kaser: And now you’re waiting, there is stuff in the oven and there’s no carts to pack. And so now you’re sitting there waiting. We just try to keep everybody busy as best we can. And if you have if you’re super busy, you have plenty of work. Usually it’s not an issue. You can start prepping the next thing or something like that, but sometimes it does get challenging.

 

 

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Jase Kaser: I spent a lot of time scheduling, normally I’ll schedule for based on due date when the customers need it. And then I looked back and grouped by color, which most power coaters do. And then I’ll look through to try to see okay, how is this actually going to flow through our shop?Are we going to have, we can’t spray three things in a row that take three hours each to spray because obviously if we’re going to set up a guy in there spraying on one thing for three hours, eventually everything’s going to come to a standstill because, so you have to be careful that, and sometimes it just happens to get a lot of big stuff and you have to spray a lot of big stuff and it’s out on the shop floor slows down a little bit, but then all of a sudden, the next day, it’s, it’s usually, it’s funny because sometimes.
Jase Kaser: The mood on the shop floor is like kickback and relaxed a little bit. It doesn’t happen much, but when the flow gets backed up it will. And then it’s everybody thinks oh, we’re ahead finally. And we’re doing all right. And then the next by middle of the next day, it’s a war zone over there and trying to, now that you can’t get enough help on the shop floor to get that package and hung back up. So it just flips back and forth. It can be stressful, but once, it seems like the newer team members get really stressed out by it. After you’ve been there for a while, you just get used to it. You learn to appreciate the days where it gets a little bit slower because the next eight days are probably going to be super, super busy and fast. And you’re not gonna have time to sit down.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. I would agree that’s probably more of an owner’s perspective too. Like when you’re an owner or you’re a single powder-coater with maybe one or two employee, like you’re used to that just because that’s your business. But how do you convey that to make sure that you’re, that you have conveyed that thinking through your team as well. And I liked this one called scheduling backward instead of forward. And I think you were that’s what you were talking about earlier, right?

RossKote (Kim Scott): Is you have to think about the end result first before you can figure out all the different steps in between to make that deadline.

Jase Kaser: Yeah. So I’ll answer the one about our team members, trying to communicate with that with them. That, so recently we transferred a new guy into running our powder coating shop floor. The one guy that had run it has ran it since we started, he was the first person we hired. And we moved him to more of a production manager across both the blasting and powder coating shop. So he’s helping me more everywhere now, instead of just on the powder coating shop floor, as far as like overseeing things. And we’ve been training this, the other guy that’s learning how tor un the floor in the powder coating shop. He’s been with us for a couple of years. And it was really good at all the tasks hanging, backing, sprang washing. So he’s very well-versed and all that. But it was a learning curve when he first started, having to think about the schedule and look farther forward, look farther down the schedule and really his job.

Jase Kaser: Now it’s kinda think about what everybody else is doing and the powder coating shop, instead of worrying about doing the physical. And it was a learning curve after the first week, he was like, wow, I didn’t realize how much thinking that you guys do on a daily basis, thinking ahead, not thinking about what we’re actually doing today. So it’s just, it’s a lot of talking in the mornings before we get started and explain “Hey, this is how I would do this. Don’t forget about this”. If something gets backed up or something, think about a few things that can be a safety valve for you. So somebody can remember, we have this rework that we just set off the side last week, but we still got to get all that re-sanded.

Jase Kaser: So that could be something somebody can do. So to communicate it to the team it’s difficult in, they have to learn by trial and error a little bit so they’re not until they started making the mistakes themselves and realize oh, that’s why we don’t like to do don’t want to do it in that. Know, you can tell him that as much as you want, but until they experience it themselves and they really get it. And then the scheduling and backwards to forwards. So that’s, that kind of comes from my frustration of that. And I think every, you probably can attest to this and anybody in the coating or finishing industry can, is that we’re the last people in the manufacturing chain typically.

Jase Kaser: And we’re the ones that are responsible for making the parts look nice and last a long time looking nice. Yet we get the littlest amount of time to do it typically because we’re, we’re right at the very end. So we’re the last thing before the due date before the customer gets it. And so all of the mess up and extra days have already been used up by the time it got by the time it gets to us typically, or any coater it’s already past due. So you can’t get it out fast enough. And I, that frustrates me cause we have to, it has to be perfect when it leaves our shop because that’s what everybody sees right away.

Jase Kaser: The customer’s going to, if there’s a nik in the finish, are frustrated with whatever it is, even if that doesn’t necessarily mean that the part’s not functional anymore. If they’re just frustrated that there’s a scuff or you missed the weld or you missed this corner. And so my proposal and line of thinking on that is like, why don’t we schedule backwards, not forwards?

Jase Kaser: Why does it that customers go to a manual metal manufacturing place with an idea and they make the prints up and they come up with what they think it’s going to cost and how long it’s gonna take. And then, typically metal companies are contacts, quoting the powder, coating for their customers. Metal companies will ask me, Hey, can you close this? And I do. And so they add that into their quote to their customer. And my thought is like, and it’s totally different. It would be first to do that, but why doesn’t the end customer come to the powder coater first and say, Hey, this is what I want it to look like in the end.

Jase Kaser: And this is what I want, and this is my due date. So then as a coater, you’re like, okay, this is how much time we need for coating. And we start working backwards. And then I contact the metal fabrication company that we already do business with. It’s just normally they contact me to help, but nowI’m contacting them and saying, Hey, here’s a print that my customer wants. This may, this is when I need you to have it done by so I can get it powder-coated and get it to my customer, will that work? And would you have the right material? And can you get that done? And I feel like scheduling that way. You would have a better chance to hit a few days.

Jase Kaser: You’d still have difficulties, but and some of that thinking comes from my engineering background. I like building things and I’m familiar with metal manufacturing. So I feel like I could help the customer if they had questions. And maybe some power coaters don’t feel like they can do that. But I just think it would be interesting to flip it around and schedule that way. Instead of, I feel like the end customer would be happier.Cause it always seems like then customer is frustrated that it’s past due, so yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I, 100% agree with you on those two valid points, because again, it just comes down to educating the customer and growing powder coating and the powder coating experience, the powder coating marketplace.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, I think that will be the future because people will come to you for their personal projects and stuff, too. It is always, it is frustrating. I know that we’ve been in that same situation where we’re at the end and there’s, it’s just nothing but pressure, a pressure cooker situation to bring it to fruition for the end result. And then, to get back and forth between customers and the welder or the producer or whatever, I don’t know, contractor, it, it just, it can get kind of mucky. And I don’t, we’ve, I don’t know what the answer is at this moment. I guess the only future I see is just training up the customer or the consumer market that you can go to your powder coater.

RossKote (Kim Scott): First I just wrote a blog post on how to How to paint or how to coat your gate. And it’s a landmark posts, so it’s something that could be featured in an online magazine or architectural magazine, somehow it, where it just breaks it down for, if you were a homeowner what substrate do you pick? What codings do you pick? What, let me tell you about this, what is sandblasting? Why do you need it? I just walked people through, choosing a color, choosing a, a contractor, that sort of thing. And it, it really, you have to break it out, but how do you share it with everybody? That’s the key, like how do you get that out? How does your, how does the consumer find your website? That would solve a lot of problems.

Jase Kaser: Yeah, it would. And that’s why we try to post as much content as we can. Like he said we post blogs pretty regularly, but we’re, that was probably where we post the least on our website on the blog. So we post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, pretty much every single day, Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn, and we’re posting every day on and trying to as much as possible to keep the content fresh. And I always want to post more. And the people that work with me on all of our content. Always are like, yeah, but then that means you have to make more content, Jase. I’m like, yeah, I know. And I know I don’t have time, but I still want to post more. So just keep bugging me until I get you enough content post more because the more that we post, the more that it helps educate people. And then I just, hopefully in the end it makes our job easier.

Jase Kaser: And that article that Tim wrote on Tim found us because we post on a LinkedIn. So we, I think we shared like an, a blog from our website onLinkedIn, but he read that and then reached out to that, Hey, can I use that blog on my website? And this just put a link to our website in there if you could, and then a few weeks later than he asked to this, write up an article on it. So if we wouldn’t have been making any kind of content and we wouldn’t have been posted on weekends, him would have never found. So it definitely works. It takes a lot of effort and you have to put a lot of effort into it. We’ve been posting on social media for three years now, and that was the first time that someone wanted to write a magazine article on us.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, the coating’s world is huge. Everybody knows that and is, it can be noisy too. So it’s hard to tease out and find these people like you that are doing something a little trend-setting or a little different, or a little I get this as I, navigate the coatings world I find that from an industrial perspective, many of the people that work in coatings, whether they’re middle managers are pencil pushers or phone answers or.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Coders coating, liquid or powder. It’s not much happens. It’s a very slow moving animal, right? I think actually powder coatings move a little faster than just liquid coatings, because I think liquid coatings is just gigantic. We just realized that a couple of weeks ago, when we interviewed Kevin Coursin from PCI and all the, how big they found the liquid market to be and the decorator market to be, it’s just gigantic.

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RossKote (Kim Scott): But. Just because it’s big doesn’t mean it moves very fast. So it tends to be on the boring side powder coatings in general, if you’re just doing a single coat color application, that’s just single coat color application. It’s I think where the thing, the movement is happening is a lot of the creative side, whether it’s blog posts or new finishes or new application styles, or artistic level kind of stuff, that’s where there’s a lot of movement, but it’s hard when you’re in such a big industry to when you’re doing something exciting where new or refreshing, it gets hard to get people’s attention to it just because they’re, so it’s such a big place.
Jase Kaser: Right. And there’s kind of two sides of it. And so the, like Chloe, I said she helps. And now we have a new.Team member helping with social media there. They both really like the bright colors and the general public stuff that we do, or a bird bath, a lot more things like that, because those are cool. Look at people like, see those. So there’s, that’s the one side of like the artistic side, like he said, and people latch onto that then like seeing more of that. And I’m more on the side. Like I like the technical sides. So I like, why does pre-treatment work? What chemistries work better than others?And so there’s two different types of consumers of of like content or just two different, I think two different, mainly two different types of people in the coating industry. There’s the ones that are really focused on the aesthetic finishes. And those are usually the paint and pattern company, and the sales people and everybody in that world. And then there’s the surface prep guys. And I would include pretreatment with a surface prep where that’s more like nitty-gritty to underneath the coating, so nobody sees it. But it’s still really important, probably the most important part.

Jase Kaser: And, but that’s how it gets a lot more technical. And I think I liked that sidebar just because I’ve, I’ve always been hands-on and then my mechanical engineering, I understand to a degree. I understand a lot of what’s happening down on that, on a microscopic level with the chemistries and surface profiles and things like that. So I think that’s why I liked that. The other thing that I’m most familiar with. And so I liked to talk about those and take pictures of that and make content on that. Cause I think that’s the most important, one of the most important parts. And I like to communicate that to people because you don’t see that part it’s. But then, like I said, there’s the other side that everybody likes to see the nice, cool looking finish. And I liked that too, but we are more industrial than we are the general public side. And so most of what we do is industrial stuff. So if all we did was take pictures of what we were coding for one is a lot of the same thing over and over again.

Jase Kaser: Or every month we do a run up the same thing and it’s bland stuff, it’s gray and black and stuff like that. And every once in a while we have cool pieces that come through. So we, that’s why our content, I feel like it’s a pretty good mix of both. Sometimes it leans one way or the other, and depends on what platform we’re on, of what we post. And like Instagram. That’s really picturing. So you don’t easily do many blogs and stuff there but he did do bright colors and stuff.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. And you can take a portion of whatever said in the blog and use it as the script for, or the message for your Instagram. I think if you could deconstruct a blog post or a blog post, you could literally, use different portions in each piece could be optimized for whatever the platform is. LinkedIn has its own kind of, what are people wanting from you there? And Instagram is more story type telling. But yeah I like how you are able to grasp and do well with the different kinds of platforms because they are so different. Most of the custom coaters that focus in on automotive parts, of course they thrive in the Instagram realm. But when you are doing other types of jobs, how do you balance that? And you guys do seem to do it pretty well, and you highlight those personal projects that, you can maximize shock and awe on Instagram when you can, and then, and then utilize the LinkedIn for more technical stuff too. It seems it’s not an easy job to do but you seem to doit very well. And I but do you now just to wrap things up, what, is there anything you’d like to see change in the industry, or do you see any trends changing in the industry coming this way?

Jase Kaser: I think that just from a reading I’ve been doing, it seems like that we will be powder coating gun metal, substrates. There’s people that do it now, but it’s not very widespread. I think that’ll eventually someday in the next five to 10 years, it’ll become pretty common that, when someone does bring in their wooden cabinet or something, that’s brand new, we’ll be able to powder coat it. So I think that’s like a technological advance that’s coming. That’ll be, it’ll be interesting. I’m excited for that. I think it’s a little ways off for for a job shop like us to do this because it’ll probably start a big factory scale first.But and then the other thing is just, I wish there were more technical reps available just in all of the things. Exactly these lasting painting and powder coating. There’s always a lot of sales reps. And you have your favorite ones that you’d like to talk to and you have the ones that you wish that they didn’t show up because they were bothering you. I’m sure everybody has their favorites and the ones they don’t like, but it usually seems like when you really have a technical question, whether it be about painting powder coating or blasting, if you’re lucky enough, you’ve met one person along the way, one rep along the way that kind of knows everything pretty good.

Jase Kaser: And so you can call them and ask them and they can be pointed in the right direction, but all your other reps, usually for whatever reason. And they’re like I’m not sure I’m going to have to call the lab or something. And I think that just comes from their sales reps. They’re not tactical reps. So I wish that there was more tactical reps in the industry. I wish it was a little more even seems like there was a lot of, a lot more sales reps than there are technical. And it’s probably hard to find people that want to be a technical rep. They’re usually actually working in production company, but I don’t know if you found that the same, but sometimes it’s hard when you’re having a problem that it’s really hard to find someone to call to even just get a little bit by pretty much, a lot of times I feel like it messed up, but we’re just going to have to try something else and figure it out ourselves, which is fine. But sometimes it’d be nice to have a wealth of information just to call on and say “Hey, we tried this three or four times. It’s not working. Do you have any ideas?”

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, I think I agree with you. I think we’re in Hawaii, so getting anybody to come out here is just nearly impossible.

RossKote (Kim Scott): We’re lucky if we get a phone call or something or two from people it’s happening now more for us email wise and people are finding the site just in terms of searches and stuff like that. So they’re finding out about what we’re doing and they’ll reach out to us that way. But I agree with you.Yeah. It’s something, maybe you’re just in a centrally located area, so it’s easy for people to drive up and, or contact you or, you’re in a hub area and stuff. I think that I think that there, there are tech people out there that could answer those questions for you, but they’re more in the consulting realm rather than working for the actual company that’s providing the equipment or the, the supplier that’s providing the powder or the liquid or whatever, the materials yeah.

RossKote (Kim Scott): They probably are more focused on sales and tech, but yeah it’s nice to know if that a company a large company that you’re  buying equipment from has, were powder is, has that. Has that tech person you can goto. Most of it, of the time that we’ve called tech people, it’s just plausible deniability.You did it wrong, okay. How did I do it wrong? Oh, you just did it wrong. Follow the directions on the application guide. Yes I did the whole time and it came out wrong, like it’s a, it can be frustrating. Cause it seems like even when you do find a tech person it just, they don’t want to, they don’t want to admit that their product failed.

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RossKote (Kim Scott):That’s been our biggest frustration, especially when we’ve got, when we’ve got a customer requesting a specific color happened to a certain year this year and it didn’t matter what we did or how we did it. It was wrong. And it’s because they’re there throughout, they probably throughout a powder. Not quite ready for public use, and it’s just, maybe they were driven to, that’s not every powder supplier, but it just, when it rarely does happen, you get frustrated because you feel like I’m buying all this from you and yet you’re not supporting me or trying to help me in any way.
Jase Kaser: You guys been in with you guys being in Hawaii, are there a powder coating manufacturers there, or when you go to order your powder is it a pretty long wait time when you want to get a box of powder ordered in like shipping lines?

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. I mean everything about our businesses based off shipping in terms of what powders we supply, what you know, who we choose and why we choose it.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Shipping and humidity. Pretty much like rules our life and it fits equipment

Jase Kaser: In the contiguous 48. It seems like if we run out of powder quick or fast, or we forgot to order something, usually like we’re, since we’re in the middle of the United States, we’re like a two day shift point for pretty much every where or just regular ground, or we could just overnight it in.

Jase Kaser: But for you guys, if you accidentally ran out of a powder or something happened or a box on a box was bad and you had to get that same seller quickly, what is it like for it’s like the capacity for days or…

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, it’s hell because you almost have to anticipate that will happen when you’re in a job, especially something like a huge Gate or railing or architectural level.

RossKote (Kim Scott): It’s it’s almost a paranoia that happens with us because.If we run out, earlier you were saying, because we’re finishers, it’s all on us to perform at the very end, despite all the failings of the, and delays of a huge job.You still have to bring that in on a deadline.

RossKote (Kim Scott): It’s there’s no, they’re not going to give you any extra days because because they brought it in five days late, kind of thing. So basically we have to almost anticipate over ordering powder or be ready to jump on it. If we know something’s going to fall short or read, be redone or something, who knows what the problem is, it’s almost like you have to be paranoid about it.

RossKote (Kim Scott): And just go ahead and, and then there is, okay, so say it’s just basic gloss black, even, I have to go to three or four different suppliers and then figure out is it faster to ship USPS from Tennessee or UPS fromIllinois or California, and there’s, it’s different for every supplier and it’s different for every shipping method.

RossKote (Kim Scott): So based on where it’s at and where it’s crazy, like some of the stuff I’ve had to do, I’ve had to order stuff. It came in faster fromTennessee than it did from California. Like in you wouldn’t, you’re like what, so yeah. Mastering logistics in Hawaii is a definite skill you have to have for running any kind of business here.

RossKote (Kim Scott): The other thing is just the cost of equipment. Whatever, usually when you’re in, the regular. Contiguous states it is always usually free shipping or very low price shipping, and it can arrive within a day or two or five days at the most it’s cost as just as much in shipping as it does for the equipment itself.

RossKote (Kim Scott): It’s absolutely crazy. I’ll never forget back in 2004, we ordered our, we were painters back then. We weren’t even, we were just getting started with powder coating and learning about it, but we ordered our open face spray booth cost 2,500 and it costs 2,500 to ship it. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

Jase Kaser: Yeah. There’s, it’s hard enough to keep up with project deadlines and customers. And then when you have that logistical wrinkle and mean that would make them a lot more difficult. I can’t imagine if we, cause I always if I have to overnight something I will I don’t want to, because it costs a lot, it cost more to ship powder than it does for the material itself, but at least we have that option, but yeah, I can definitely understand what you’re saying, where if you’ve got a big project, you’re just going to, over-order just in case we have to rework half of this, we’d better get the extra powder because I don’t have any leeway on fortunately.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Our customers are pretty understanding when it comes to charging them for powder or, including powder or, like making sure that we cover our, cover our ass on the powder expense, including shipping.

RossKote (Kim Scott): We just did a, we’re doing a project for Oprah Winfrey has been building our house here for fricken forever. I think going on three years now, and of course it’s the typical, like they, the spec calls for this or whatever, and then the designer doesn’t like it.

RossKote (Kim Scott): So then you’re having to redo it and stuff like that. But generally speaking, like if we order powder for a job like that, we have maybe a minimum order, if, even if it’s just a small thing, but they’ll buy the powder. And we’ll try to use as much as we can have it for that job, but then, pretty much it just stays here and we reuse it.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I haven’t really found any kind of way to reclaim that money back or we try to. If it then becomes an in-stock powder for us, I guess as special order, if we don’t have, if we have unused portions of it or pounds of it, and then we’ll make it an in-stock color until we have no longer an in-stock color, kind of thing. Yeah.

 
RossKote (Kim Scott): Oh, that’s good do sell that separately? I think we can order some of that today. Yeah. Okay. We missed I know that in terms of wha twe’ve used in, after burns or whatever is like the silver cream it’s like a cream that has silver nitrate in it, I guess.
 
RossKote (Kim Scott): I don’t know if it’s, I’m saying nitrate, but it does have silver in it. So that actually helps heal the skin. I ended up with a second degree burn on my hand many years ago, not from stripping. Was pouring hot water. It was one of those kitchen disasters.

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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Jase Kaser: All right. We do the same thing for different reasons, I think. But yeah we have pretty much a set stock color that we have the samples hanging on the wall. And then if someone’s oh, I don’t like any of those and I want to special order something. I’m like, okay, that’s fine.

Jase Kaser: But we buy usually 50 pounds box minimum. So you want to do that. You’re gonna have to pay for the whole box to powder. And some people are like, no problem. I’ll do that. And then that’s cost way too much. I’ll just take one of your stock colors.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, I think one of the frustrations about customers own merchandise, COM I call it COM.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Like the incident we had earlier this year, where we had a difficulty, it needed a tech rep for for the powder supplier, because we had problems with the application. Is I don’t think we will ever do that again. I get that, they bought their own, special, transparent, or illusion colored from XYZ company or whatever.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I appreciate that. That’s good for you. But I don’t knowhow old you’ve been sitting on that powder. I don’t know where you bought it from. You could have bought it on eBay from a second hand seller, a third hand seller. There’s just too many variables and I just kinda had to put it into it because there’s just too many pitfalls with that, so you pretty much have to buy powder from us.

Jase Kaser: Yeah we don’t let anybody use their own. Cause just like what you said, you don’t know how long it’s been sitting there. And usually they don’t have the data sheets with us and we try to have an SDS for everything on file just in case. And yeah, we usually don’t let people bring in their own patterns because a lot of the times, even if it’s we had one not too long ago, they brought in a really low gloss black and that’s the one they wanted. And I was like, oh, we just, we don’t spray other people’s powders.We just, we use our own, we have our own flat black, it’s going to match just saying oh, I just really want you to use ours. And I understand it looks like it’s the exact same color. So you think we might as well just use yours, but it could spray out totally differently.

Jase Kaser: For some reason it might not like, pretreatment we put underneath it. And we just know that our black blacks that hold it up here. So it is the same color. We know how we need a process, ours, what don’t fix this. We need to put it on. And what spray settings maybe. We can just give you a better product if we use what we know as long as it, and if it’s going to look the same, we’d rather just use ours.

Jase Kaser: And that’s how we try to.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, you get used to it, it’s consistency, you know how to, it’s. Yeah. You just know what you can stand behind. And I don’t know what it is about like these celebrities on Maui. I don’t know. It just seemed like all the incidents has. We have, we have this thing, we just did some stuff for Mick Fleetwood, from Fleetwood Mac.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yes he’s retired here. He owns a restaurant. Very good restaurant. Actually. It’s very popular here in Lahaina and he wanted these lights, sconces for his garden, and he ordered them from the mainland and they were powder-coated very well-made I guess they make their own light sconces, and then they powder coat them as well.

RossKote (Kim Scott): But he, so he got them done, but he, for whatever reason, they didn’t that’s right. He thought he could just order whatever color he wanted. And when we went to match the stock on this and call the lighting company to say, what color are you using? We found ourselves into a bit of a pickle because the sample that was sent from the lighting company, they use a box heater.

RossKote (Kim Scott): And instead of the, a hopper, and because this powder had a metallic flake in it, guess what all the metallic wait floated to the bottom.And so when you sprayed, when they sprayed the color, you didn’t see the metallic end. He liked that because it was less, it was more. But then when we got the same exact color from the same exact supplier and we applied it, we use it, we use the hopper, which kind of keeps the metallic floating and it came outlooking different than, so then he didn’t like that and we’re like what do you want us to do?

RossKote (Kim Scott): We just literally ordered the same exact thing that these people are doing, so it was strange. That was a new one for us, new pitfall in powder coating.

Jase Kaser: Yeah, metallics are always challenging.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. It’s been great talking to you. Thanks for joining us today. So how can coaters get ahold of you?

RossKote (Kim Scott): We talked about your blog, but would you like to throwout maybe an email or a website?

[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Jase Kaser: Our website is Kaser, K-A-S-E-R blasting.com. And then on all the social media pages, Facebook Twitter and Instagram, the search Kaser blasting and coatings will come up. And then on LinkedIn, we have a Kaser blasting and coatings, but most of it’s posted on my personal LinkedIn, Jase Kaser, K-A-S-E-R.

Jase Kaser: So you can find us there. I won’t list off my email, but I think it’s on our website somewhere. If you have a question, feel free to give us a call.We’ll try to help if you can’t you can’t figure it out from all the content that we have out there. Definitely call us.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Again, definitely head over to the Kaser website and find that blog.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I found it refreshing. I found it insightful. I found it educational for sure. And I appreciate you coming out on the show today very much and taking the time to talk with us and get to know you.

Jase Kaser: Yeah. It was nice to get to know you too. I really appreciate you have on the phone here, we’d been wanting to do some more podcast stuff we haven’t, and this is the first oneI’ve actually been on.

Jase Kaser: But we’ve been talking about it a lot, so we’re happy when you emailed us and thank you. It was, it’s an interesting to learn about the challenges that you have in Hawaii that I would never think of because when you know, just locationally, there’s a lot of differences. So it was interesting.

RossKote (Kim Scott): All right. We’d like to thank our supportive followers and fellow powder coders out there. I hope you’ve learned something new about your powder coating business. Please comment, share, follow, and like the podcast. And if you have a topic you’d like to discuss, email us at info@mauipowderworks.com. Have a great day.

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RossKote is committed to sharing their experience in metal coatings, painting, and restoration so customers & powder coaters can navigate the process of powder coating and make the best choices for getting their projects done.

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Industry Insider: Powder Coating Trends with Kevin Coursin

June 6, 2022 by pcnearme

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]In our exclusive interview with Kevin Coursin, executive director of the Powder Coating Institute, we reveal current and future trends for the global coatings market. He’s here to paint a broader outlook to the powder coating market and discuss what its like to be in this industry.

 

 

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RossKote (Kim Scott): Today. We’re talking about the state of our industry. With someone who has their hands, knee deep in it. Kevin Coursin is the executive director of the Powder Coating Institute. He’s here to share some insights and highlights from the recent annual meeting. I’d like to tease out from him, some of the broader strokes, from the data he presented. In the hopes of giving you a bigger picture of our industry and what it may mean for you.

RossKote (Kim Scott): So how long have you been working in the industry and how did you get started?

Kevin Coursin (PCI): I’ve actually been in the paint industry for 38 years now. Long time ago after I graduated from college with my engineering degree, I started working at one of the general motors assembly plants and being just a plant engineer, working on various projects.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): My boss came up to me after two years and said, Kevin, I got good news giving you a 10% raise; and I was extremely happy with that. He says, but you’re going third shift. You’re going to be the maintenance supervisor and the paint shop. And that’s how I was introduced to paint. Now it was liquid paint. It wasn’t powder back then that they had, but I learned a lot about the processes about the equipment and what it took to maintain it.

Industry insider kevin coursin on the powder coater podcastKevin Coursin (PCI): So it was quite an education for two years. After that the came up to me and said, Hey, Kevin, you’re an engineer and you’re in paint. There’s a new plant we’re building in Michigan, we would like you to transfer over there, give you a promotion and you’re going to install a new paint shop.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): And I went and took it. Then it was again, quite an education that we had put together and working with a group. And then I learned how to design, how to build and manage putting it all in and starting it up. After that the market wasn’t as good in the automotive market. So I decided to change a little bit of direction, and I went to work for one of the system houses as a project manager and worked at myself into a general manager sales, and eventually became president of KMI systems.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): So I’ve done a lot over the years. Just recently here in beginning of February, I started at the Powder Coating Institute is the executive director.

RossKote (Kim Scott): That’s quite an exciting career. And I find that most of the people that have been in it as long as, 30 plus years or more 40 y’all kind of start in late.

RossKote (Kim Scott): And it all happens with that. And then it moves into powder. Would you agree?

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Yeah, I think it depends which, which direction you, that you go into. I, again, when I first started there really that’s when powder coating was really at its infancy, so it wasn’t as much out there. And the automotive had been primary liquid, so that’s where my experience came.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Then when I came over and started working in the system’s houses. That’s where I started learning about powder and both in just regular powder paint. I learned about powder porcelain enamel but also did some liquid systems as well. Did multiple, different types of systems depending on what the customer would wanted to install at the plant.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): I had a very broad education on a lot of paint equipment.

RossKote (Kim Scott): So PCI recently had their annual meeting on the state of power coating, but is there anything that stood out to you from the data that really intrigued you the most?

 

[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Kevin Coursin (PCI): I think on the overall market data that it was there. When you see it globally the powder market itself is little over $10.4 billion.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): And it sounds like a huge number by itself, but when you compare it against all the other types of coatings that are out there, whether it’s a house paint, auto, refinish, trailers, industrial market, that type of thing; it’s only just a little under 7% of the overall coatings market.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): The largest market itself out there is really the decorative, which is really the house paint with external and internal. That liquid paint type thing is the biggest market itself. So when you compare powder to just that it sounds like, we’re only a tiny little sliver. But when you compare the powder coating to other industrial liquid coating, which is only about 8% of the market, or wood liquid coating is 7%.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): So that’s exactly the same as powder. But powder even exceeds the auto OEM original equipment suppliers or manufacturers use of it. And the auto refinish is about 6%. When you compare the powder to those other type markets, we have been growing over the years and have taken more and more of it.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): So it is still a growing market.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. I found that right off the cuff, I found that really intriguing and encouraging too. Now on slide 11. In 2019, North America and Europe had negative growth rates. And that was the automotive production, black construction market and a flat manufacturing environment is what this slide is talking about.

RossKote (Kim Scott): And I found that really intriguing because, they were seeing that we were headed for a slowdown in late 2019, but no one really knew what the news articles were referencing. And really you can say that powder was already giving us an indicator that we were heading for a slowdown. Would you agree with that?

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Yeah, I would. And what was defined there was, it was working more on the annual basis. But if you would have broken it down and the data that they had on the quarterly basis, you could see that at the beginning of 19, things were moving along pretty well, but it definitely tailed down at the end of 2019.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): You could see that on a quarterly basis. So it was a pretty good indicator of things that we’re up and coming.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, just to continue on this slide 12, and I don’t want to drill down too deep because some of the smaller coaters like ourselves, we’re not really experiencing too much of a slow down locally.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I think that the larger coaters or industrial coaters and line coaters. They are probably the ones that are being affected more on the higher points in the market. Which they’re just basically saying that we were down 1.5%. And overall the year will be down anywhere from 5 to 15%, which is pretty much in line with what national projections are for America in general for the economy.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Correct.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Yeah. And again it can vary by market and like you said, some of the markets that you’re in, you haven’t seen as large of a hit, but in some of the markets that if you were dealing directly for an automotive supplier as a tier one or tier two, and that was a bulk of your work.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): And they took a really big hit in quarter two this year because they had shut down all the assembly plants. So they definitely took a larger hit then there. But the overall average, when you take them all into account, it’s probably 10 to 15% down from the market, but again, some are doing better.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Some are not doing as well. So it really is how diversified you are or how tight you are to a single market.

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RossKote (Kim Scott): I think one of my favorite slides, is slide 20 because it really starts to dig down deeper into the overall custom coater market. And I was shocked by this figure on this slide, when it basically said that globally, there are over 42,000 custom powder coaters out there. Did that number shock you?

Kevin Coursin (PCI): It did shock me also. This was the first year that we had actually started breaking down for the custom coater market. And when I saw this slide, I had to call up the consultant company that was doing all the research for us and I questioned them on it. I said, really? And he said, yeah, that’s what they are finding.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): And in North America by itself there was over 6,000 that they had in just North America. And even that number, for just North America sounded quite large. Now what they don’t define is how large of a company it is. So that would include some of the very small, custom coater, little chop shops that are out there now.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): They might only be coating a few wheels at a time, but I think they’re included in those numbers. So sometimes that big number, you gotta take a little bit with a grain of salt and just do not dive down or, do a bigger breakdown into the size of the company. We hope to do that into next year.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): To try and get a better picture of the various sizes of custom coaters and how many there are in different markets and what the revenue in those markets would be.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. And just to note that on this slide, the definition of a custom coater, is a company that primarily custom coats. And that’s, if they are manufacturing a part and then powder coating it that part for another client, they’re not considered a custom (coater).

RossKote (Kim Scott): And they, on top of that, if they were to include those people, that number would double to the amount of custom powder coaters out there. That’s extraordinary.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Yeah, it is a big number. And it’s something, it just goes to show how large of a market it overall is. Even if you just break it down into the north America or the U S that there is quite a big group of those type companies out there.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Anybody into that market, or, you may think you have competitors, to say that you have 6,000 other ones, it can be a little bit leary. But again, we got to dig a little bit deeper into some of the numbers to break it down into size. Because there are some very large powder coaters, but there’s also some very small ones.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): So breaking that range is going to be our next step to try and get a little bit better meaningful data.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, I think that’s going to be great for us all. And I really liked slide 21 because the majority of custom coaters are using stock colors and that’s like RALs, right?

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Yeah, just the off the shelf, nothing special.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): And if you think really when you get into a lot of the custom coaters, they’re offering a slate to a bunch of companies or people, if they want something done special and they’re not going to custom and get a formulation because they’re only spraying so small amount of it.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): And I think that’s where, the stock colors are pretty much the standard for them to use.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. Now on the same side, it says, certifications play some role in the process. Are they talking about like PCI ones only, or just all kinds of certifications that are out there.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): No, there are a number of certifications that are out there.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): PCI is one of them that we have on the market. There are some others that can be done. And in fact, even some manufacturers have what they call their certification program. If you’re coating a product directly for them, they may have their spec and they’ll come in, even audit the facility to make sure that you are meeting a certification. So it can depend a little bit. There’s a lot of certification requirements out from the department of transportation in a lot of states. You have to get a certification. One might be from PCI, or it could be from one of the other areas that they may have, in order to be able to coat and provide product to them.

RossKote (Kim Scott): After this presentation was over. I started to think about what was presented on the slides and what it all meant for me, which is why I prompted to call you for an interview because I wanted to know. With powder supplies and global supply chains at risk now regarding China and the economy right now facing all nations, not just some, but all.

RossKote (Kim Scott): What does that mean for me as a powder coater? Especially a small guy. Is it going to be harder for me to get powder someday is pricing going to go up? What does that mean?

Kevin Coursin (PCI): I guess that can be always a potential issue that could have occure of getting, and it may be a particular color because there is a raw material that might be coming from China.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): And there’s a, if it’s a political dispute, there may be a short break in the action when, while they’re trying to solve it. It could be also from shipping standpoint how long it might take to be able to get some of those colors. It is an issue that’s out there. But I still think overall the world has gotten smaller and everybody has to sell to other people.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): So there may be some short term as the politicians deal with issues. But overall, we want to sell to China and China wants to sell to us so it still does everybody good to keep the commerce sorta speak flowing.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I agree with that. I hope it does mean that. And because in the end, people are just people, we all want to do and continue about our business. So now the other part of this that got me thinking was like this reshoring of manufacturing in the United States. With potentiality of shortness in the market. What does this reshoring in manufacturing, I don’t even know if you could speak on it, or if much about it.

RossKote (Kim Scott): What does it all mean for us here? If you can comment on it.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): We definitely have seen a number of companies come in to do reshoring and bringing manufacturing back to the states. I think a lot has to do that, when there were a lot of these global companies were able to bring their money that they had over back into the states.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): They’re doing more investment here. Some of the issues that you were talking about the global supply chain disruptions. They feel if they bring it back here, they have more control over it. So they’re hedging their bet a little bit to bring it here. So I think you’re going to see more of that continue.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Again, once we can get through the pandemic side that we have here, that’s put a little bit of pause on some things, but I think you’ll see it pick back up again. Bringing more manufacturing plants into the states.

RossKote (Kim Scott): I think it will be positive for both the smaller guys growing bigger and maybe some of the other guys sharing some of those jobs for us. Now at Maui Powder Works, we’ve been a member of PCI since 2017. And we joined primarily because it’s a late legislative body because we felt that it was important for us to become part of a greater community of coaters as well as to uphold, higher standards in the industry in terms of coating and what we’re bringing about in our product line. But what is PCI and why should other custom coaters care?

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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Kevin Coursin (PCI): The Powder Coating Institute, it is a group of suppliers and users that have come together.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Number one goal is that we want to grow the powder coating market itself. But in doing so we recognize that there’s steps that have to go along with it to make sure it happens. One of them is educating, PCI has a number of workshops and webinars. We work on standards. We have a events like the powder coating week that we put on again for education and where people can interact and network.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): We have our technical publications. We have the Powder Coating Tough magazine, which is exclusively published for the powder coating market itself, and lot of good articles, learning new things, how to to do some items there. We actually are working on the Fifth Edition of the Powder Coating Handbook.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): It’s in the final editorial revisions right now. And it looks like we’ll be releasing it in early January next year. And it’s upgraded with all the latest and greatest new technologies that are out there. A one-stop if your powder coater, and you want to learn something or learn, find out if you have a problem, you can go to it as a handbook.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Those are the big things that we want to work on from a PCI standpoint. The other thing we do is we do have our certification program. Again, we talked a little bit about it before, but it’s really a quality program. We want to make sure that the processes that are being used are being controlled and you’re doing what you say you’re going to do and have all the proper training and documentation.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): So you can make sure you’re very consistent going through it. But I think in, for the end users that are certified. With the quality program they do get a more consistent and better quality out. It does save them money in the long run because they have less downtime and can produce more through the system itself.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. And I think one of the most or two of the most underrated things about PCI that maybe people know or don’t know is even if you’re not a member and you have a troubleshooting question or a problem that you need help solving in your powder line, you can actually write the Powder Coating Institute.

RossKote (Kim Scott): And you will actually help try to troubleshoot that problem for that coater. That’s true right?

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Oh, yeah. We do get the inquiries in by email or there’s actually a contact us on our website and we get things in, I actually received one today and it does come to me.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): So I’m the first person that looks at it. It happened to be from an architect and he had an issue on how it is to do some touch-up for powder coating product that was out in the field. And I was able to go out to some of our powder suppliers. With this particular issue, I get back some results from them. And then I send back and say here’s something that you can do.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Just one little example of what we do. And we get a number of them throughout the year.

 

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[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]RossKote (Kim Scott): And I think the other underrated thing, or the thing that I was shocked, I learned this at the custom coater forum when I went a couple of years ago, is that you actually have this thing called, peer groups. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Oh, yeah, I am one of the facilitators for one of the groups, so I am intimately involved with it. And right now it’s jointly managed between the Powder Coating Institute and the Chemical Coaters A ssociation. But we have three groups, they’re built of up to 10 companies and we set them up so that they’re, noncompeting, they’re in different locations throughout the U.S.; different markets, but they all doing the one thing that’s common. They’re applying powder coating to products. So with that in mind, we meet twice a year, typically one of the companies hosts it and the other individuals come in there and it’s two days we’re at the plant.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): We actually do an audit. We walk around and put it into a paint term, it’s an unvarnished information back to the company of what they found and it’s meant to be informative and to help them. Likewise, when you are one of those individuals that you go to the plant and you do the audit, while you’re walking around, you may see something that you can go, that’s a great idea.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): I can take that and incorporate that back into my operation. And the individuals that have been part of this find is very good, both from a quality standpoint of learning new things, how to do it, but they also, then they come to know each other. Trust each other, so they can send out an email.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): I’ve got this kind of problem. Anybody experienced this before and get some information back from them. So it is a very good program, like I say, we have three groups right now. We are in the process of forming our fourth group. So we hoped we have several that have expressed interest and we hope to find enough more that the starting sometime in 2021, we can get that another group going.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah, I, of course everybody was trying to get me on their group because we were exceptional coaters. It was just that we were in Hawaii.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Stay with us. So they were like, oh no, you want to join my group? No, join my group.

RossKote (Kim Scott): But I really felt wow, this is this is so much more than what I had anticipated as being a member of PCI, was to have this opportunity to do that. And and get to know possibly other coaters that have been in the game a little longer than I have or bigger than me. And how can I scale my business to, it seemed intriguing to me, but also just, having that shoulder to lean on or get confident with, if they’re going to come in and take a look at what I have it keeps you on your toes, but I think it’s a great program that you guys need to maybe get out a little bit more because it seems interesting to be a member of that.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Yeah, we’ve only really got two years of it under our belt. This would have been the third year, but we’ve had to cancel both meetings the spring and the fall meetings because of the issues that we’ve had with the COVID this year. So really next year will be. I guess a repeat.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): So we’ll call it year three still. So we are trying to grow it and we are trying to figure out how we can get the word out to people and we appreciate you bringing it up because I think with your podcast again, it’s just another way of getting the information out to people and maybe they’ll get interested to be able to find out some more about it.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. So now as executive director, I know this is a new role for you. What do you hope to accomplish, with PCI in the coming years or rather, what do you want?

Kevin Coursin (PCI): I guess as the executive director, I’ve got a couple items that are, number one, then two on my list is to grow the powder coating industry and increase membership for the Powder Coating Institute.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): But that’s just the, I think the ultimate goal, if we provide the service, I think all that will we’ll come with it, but we would like to, I want to add and improve the education webinars, things like that. And updating the Powder Coating Handbook, again, getting that out to our members so that they can use that to improve their equipment and their systems.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): I would like to, as you mentioned before, the peer group. We’d like to grow those to the more groups themselves, because we really think it’s important. And it’s a really nice thing for custom coaters to do. Increase the certifications, both for the custom coaters, as well as the OEMs. We think that’s a good quality program that’s really especially made for the powder coating industry. That is, probably very cost-effective overall from a training and learning and making sure that you can do it. And a lot of them use it from a marketing standpoint because they can say that they are certified and try and get additional business. The other areas that I think we’re going to be doing some more work in and we’ve started this year on, is trying to develop more into the alternative substrates, like wood and MDF or plastic and ceramics.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): We think powder coating can really grow into those markets which primarily had been done by in the liquid. But we can do it more efficiently. And then we’ve got a committee that’s dedicated to right now that we’re working on to develop some technical data, some brochures and everything on that.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): The other areas in the architectural market for all the architecture that’s coated and all that, the specifying that comes from architects. And we’re trying to work right now with another association. That’s specifically markets to those for developing specs. But they don’t have any spec whatsoever to talk about powder coating.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): So as an industry, we’re going to work on it and hand it to them and say, insert this into your standards. And again, trying to get people to not only grow and choose powder, but also to do it right.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Now in 2021 in February 23rd through the 26th, in Orlando, Florida, you guys are going to have your custom coater forum. But incorporating in that is earlier on in the week and you guys have coating workshops. They’re powder coating 101 workshops. The basics is what this is called. And I went in 2018. I didn’t go to the workshop. I flew in as a presenter and just attended the custom coater forum.

RossKote (Kim Scott): But I was amazed at how many people were actually in that room getting and learning that powder coating 101. It was full.

 

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Kevin Coursin (PCI): Yeah we, in this past February we had 75 people that were in for that workshop alone. And it’s a two day workshop and that runs concurrent with the custom coater forum.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): And again, there, we have typically around 40 to 50 custom coaters and there’s a whole set of speakers and tracks that are dedicated to the customer coater market and companies. And then some of it is business. Some of it is, we had some round table discussions and we also have some technical presentations and for 2021, we’ve got the program pretty well all set up and have some great speakers coming in.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): And we’re going to be talking about certification and peer groups, again, just trying to educate those on there. We have someone coming in to talk about automation for custom coaters. We have another individual that’s gonna be talking about troubleshooting and different ways to do that and solve problems.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): So we’re trying to tax different areas and be helpful and very meaningful for someone that’s coming in there to spend their time. After that we do have a two days that follow, which is we call our technical conferences and there we have papers on everything from batch coating, to automation, to new technologies.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): So there’s a lot of different sessions that you can pick and choose which one you’re interested in going to, and while that’s going on, we do also have a, a tabletop exhibits that the suppliers will be there. I think we currently have 74 suppliers who hopefully gain a few more that are going to be coming in, during lunch hour, where lunch is served right among there.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): So you can eat and walk around and talk and network and learn what’s new from the various suppliers. Or if you got a problem, go see a supplier and he’d be probably more than willing to help you out.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. If you think it’s going to be boring, it’s not. I wasn’t sure what to expect that first year I went and it was amazing.

RossKote (Kim Scott): We had one speaker was from Mighty Hook. I can’t remember his name off the top of my head, but I was amazed that he had a solid hour, and it wasn’t boring at all. They went really fast and how he could talk about just hooks in an hour. He was a true expert. We’re not sponsored by Mighty Hook today, just so you know, I’m not pumping them in any way, but I was just floored, how much he could talk about hooks and all the different ways to use it.

RossKote (Kim Scott): So it’s cram packed. It’s always exciting. You get to meet the owners of the companies that are there. Steven from IFS and then they’re not just sitting up on a pedestal in their group. In the evenings, you go to the bar or the lobby and you get to have a personal conversation with them too.

RossKote (Kim Scott): It’s not cut and dry.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): And everyone that attends there, you do have the industry experts. So if you have some things or you want to learn some things, they’re there and believe me, most like myself, we all like to talk. So if you come up to them, they’ll share, they’ll help.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): They’ll do whatever you can. And come up to me and if someone’s got a problem, I can point out someone that you should probably go see and talk to, but it is a, great event. And it’s well worth the time there. And I know it’s a struggle for everybody to get out of their business to go to this.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): But believe me, it is worth while.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. And the location, the Renaissance hotel there, that was really nice. I was impressed. I really liked that hotel and it seemed like a lot of the coaters were going to meet their family later that week to go to, Disney World, Universal and SeaWorld and stuff like that.

RossKote (Kim Scott): So I think it’s a great location to have that.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Especially like individuals like myself that come from the Midwest. They have to go to Florida for a few days it’s pretty nice.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Yeah. Everybody was like, oh, don’t leave Kim. What do you mean you’re not staying for the technical conference? And I’m like, oh no, I didn’t know, there was this other thing. So I just came in for the custom coater thing, but everybody was like, no stay with us.

RossKote (Kim Scott): So I was bummed actually that I had to leave. But yeah I really enjoyed it and I look forward to next year to. It sounds like it’s might be happening. If the world doesn’t come to an end. It will happen. Thanks for joining us today, Kevin. I really learned a lot about, more about PCI, especially with the slides from the presentation. I thought it was it’s very nice of you guys to share this data. Others that may or may not be in PCI. So how can coaters get ahold of you, if they have questions?

Kevin Coursin (PCI): Probably the easiest way to get ahold of me would be to just send me an email.

Kevin Coursin (PCI): It’s kevin@powdercoating.org. Otherwise on the website, there is the office number that you can always reach me through that also.

RossKote (Kim Scott): That’s great. We’d also like to thank our supportive followers and fellow powder coaters out there. I hope you’ve learned something new about your powder coating business.

RossKote (Kim Scott): Please comment, share, or follow us on this podcast. And if you have a topic that you would like to discuss, just email us at info@mauipowderworks.com.

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About us

RossKote is committed to sharing their experience in metal coatings, painting, and restoration so customers & powder coaters can navigate the process of powder coating and make the best choices for getting their projects done.

RossKote regularly contributes helpful videos on his blog and YouTube channel.

Join us.  As we build a powder coating community online to share our passion for performance finishes by subscribing to RossKote’s Powder Coater Podcast

Connect with us. Comment below. What would you like to know more about? I love to answer everyday questions to the consumer market wants to know about powder coating.   

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Filed Under: All Posts, Podcast Tagged With: benefits of powder coating, coatings, custom coaters, how powder coating works, powder coater podcast, powder coater trends, powder coating, powder coating podcast, re powder coating, rosskote podcast, troubleshooting powder coating

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