Pam and Paul - Tintwork
Pam and Paul of Tintwork are automotive window tint experts. They also happen to be marketing and software experts as well. This is a great combination, since many people that want to start window tinting companies are struggling with brining in clients.
So what is an automotive window tint entrepreneur supposed to do in order to bring business in the door, or even on-site?
Enter Tintwork. With Tintwork, jobs come to the entrepreneur without lifting a finger. They just need to do what they do best.
Listen as Pam and Paul explain the automotive window tinting industry and what it takes to be successful.
Enjoy!
Visit Pam and Paul at: TintWork.com
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You have found
Authentic Business Adventures,
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the business program that brings you
the struggles stories and triumphant
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successes of business
owners across the land.
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Past episodes
of the Authentic Business Adventures
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podcast can be found on the podcast link
found at drawincustomers.com.
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We're locally underwritten
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.
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My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur,
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author, speaker and helpful coach to small
business owners across the country.
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Today we're welcoming/preparing
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to learn from Pam and Paul Alix
at Tintwork over in California.
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So Pam and Paul, how are
you guys doing today?
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Good, great.
Thanks for having us.
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Thank you.
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I'm excited, I met you guys at this auto
glass trade show where windshields and tint
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were just flying around like mad.
Yeah.
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So you guys have a tint business
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in California, which I imagine has to be
a hotbed for people interested in tinting
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their windows to keep the sun out and the,
I suppose, the prying eyes out.
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Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
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It's a very busy industry out here.
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We can never get enough help.
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You know, there's never enough
tinters to beat the demand out here.
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Yeah.
So is tinting, tinting windows
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is it a relatively new thing like
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in the past decade or two, or has
that been going on since..
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I've been tinting for 33
years already.
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Have you really? I've been tinting forever.
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So, tinting been around a long time.
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Every time they produce new cars,
every time they have cars with no tint I
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mean is it'll never run out unless we
just get rid of all the cars.
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I don't see it happening to soon.
That isn't going no where no time soon.
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We not going back to buggies, no.
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Horses are too grumpy in the teleportation
thing I'm working on.
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It's not going to happen.
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Yeah, interesting.
Interesting.
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So tell me, when did you guys
start this business. Tintwork?
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Well, we've had several different
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businesses, so. Oh really? Ok. Yeah, so Tintwork started about three years ago. Ok.
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And it's it's an app and the Tintwork is
a network of professional window tint
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installers that all share
work with each other.
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Oh, very cool.
So, that spawned from our individual
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tint businesses because Paul's
been doing it forever.
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All right.
So we have Tint LA and Add Outlook,
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Window Tinting Services,
Santa Clarita Window Tinting.
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We even have Tint Vegas.
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So we have all these locations
of mobile window tinting.
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And it got to the point where we're like,
wow, we need help, you know?
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All right.
Like, let's start an app.
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And I'm like, well,
I don't think anybody's going to download
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an app just to, like,
get their car tinted and then not use
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the app for three years, you know,
I mean, until they change it.
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I said, but if we do kind of like Uber
for the window tinting industry, now,
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you're on to something, you know,
so we just started bouncing ideas off of each other.
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We're like, you know, we get so much work,
there doesn't need to be any competition.
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Why don't we just share
the work with each other?
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Because some days our friends were crazy
busy and we were dead and vice versa.
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Other days were like turning
down customers left and right.
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And, you know, somebody is like,
I was dead yesterday.
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But the thing is,
you have to change the mindset of old, oh,
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guys, that's in the window tinting
business, you know.
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You know, they had a shop.
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They won't if they don't get
the work they don't want to send it no where else.
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Sure. You got so so we just
trying to bring new technology
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in and starting off in California.
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Then we hit Vegas and we trying
to franchise around the United States,
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but with the mindset of making money
without you even doing the work.
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And so so we're we're in a slow process.
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But so far we've been
successful out of here.
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Yeah.
Out in L.A. So this is doing really well.
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So you so how many tint shops did you have
or do you have right now?
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Well, we have we have like we have
like satellite locations now.
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We had a tint shop.
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A physical tint shop.
Yeah.
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In El Monte.
But the thing what happened,
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people start calling and saying,
can you come to my house?
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Can you come can you come to my job?
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Can you come to my office?
Like wait a minute here.
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We wasted money at the shop.
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The shop is good
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because you can you can you can monitor,
you know, the dust and everything.
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But we have a technique.
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I have a technique because I'm
a professional mobile window tinter
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that you can use and still
have the same quality work.
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And that's that's that's my goal is
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to teach tinters how to have the same
quality work as you do in a shop.
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All right.
It's the way to do that.
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OK. You see, you can create you
can create the car itself as a shop.
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All right, so so that's that's
that's what we try to do.
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We try to get to right now.
We'll be there soon.
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All right.
It's interesting because I live
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in Wisconsin where weather's a little
bit different in California.
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Yeah.
Eleven and a half months out of the year,
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there's about a two week period
where we're like, this is nice.
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Yeah.
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Seasons, winter seasons.
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And then reality kicks
in and it's thirty below.
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And you don't want to be tinting outside.
No, not at all.
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You don't want to be doing anything
outside. You can, but you know you can.
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in that kind of weather
cut the heat on in a car.
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You can cut.
Yeah.
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You can cut the heat on in the car and
it's a technique
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you can use just tinting inside the car.
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You don't have to really get out the car.
Wow.
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OK, that's that has skill. Other than when
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you just shrink in the back window,
but everything else can be in the car.
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And that's what I figured
out by doing trucks.
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I can take a roll of film, get in now,
cut the heat off and I could hit the whole
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truck along as everyone
to flatten and get out.
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And the one is done.
All done is done.
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Well, you have to do stuff to be
able to know it can happen.
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They they they stuck in a certain pattern
so they don't try that different.
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We would never have the California roll.
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We wouldn't have Absaroka roll
back window to shrink it down.
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If somebody's going to try
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to cut into strips
first for a back window.
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Oh, I remember.
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Those are the purple
in the bubbles.
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Exactly.
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So so if somebody says wait a minute
let me try to shrink this
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in here and it worked
and they molded and it works.
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So you have to continue on being innovative.
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All right.
Oh yeah.
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Paul's fearless.
Yeah.
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This is also tried, but I thought if I
mess up a car, I just pay for a customer.
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You go
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get the back with a break the back one.
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OK, I'll get a new one back one, you know,
because I got the money to do it right.
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But I can understand people who don't have
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the money to actually experiment,
you know, but I imagine that's rare.
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Breaking a window when
you're tenten though.
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You well you can't do it.
You can't do it.
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I have to do it.
Before I broke up I broke the window on a.
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On a BMW in a one at a time
when I was heating it up.
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Oh, God, it is.
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It's broken.
Come on.
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Oh, no.
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That's the same temperature.
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Do you want me?
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I said, don't worry, Carmen.
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Last guy, he came to put it in.
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I took care of the customer,
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gave a customer some extra
and the customers was happy.
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Yeah.
All right.
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