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Community Highlights: Meet Lorenzo Hawkins Iii of Luxury Painters of Nashville, LLC

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Lorenzo Hawkins Iii

Hi Lorenzo, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My story on how the business started is not as usual and somewhat complex….but has turned out to be a major blessing and a lesson on being open to changing the direction of my life. I have been fortunate over the last 20 years to work for some great Fortune 500 companies. I have had success while working as a leader within these companies, even being promoted to a director role of an entire sales department. Despite success and the enjoyment of working for these companies, I was involuntarily laid off twice due to downsizing. This made an impact on me as one of the companies I was employed for 15 years. Each lay off was shocking and I had to make life adjustments for my big family of 6. What these layoffs taught me was to never depend solely on one avenue of income. After these layoffs, I wanted to expand and become a business owner. I have had dreams of owning my own business since I was in college. The question I always had for myself was what my business can do for others and to uplift to God in the process. What sparked me to get into painting were several factors. My father grew up around construction and eventually became a painter himself. During seasonal times, painting business usually slow down. I offered to help him in creating a website for potential clients to review his work and reach out. His painting work was always phenomenal and I knew he needed to be more out there for more opportunities. At the same time, I wanted to teach my sons on how to make financial gain on your own as well. The first project I had them to do was to stain my backyard wooden deck. I taught them how to do this as I have done many times over the years. After the deck was stained, I paid them for this. They both really enjoyed doing the work and getting paid for it. After this was completed, other family members wanted to get the same work done as well. I hired my 2 sons to do several decks. They were paid for them as well. I, myself, have painted rooms from my own home and others while getting better each time I painted. From there, I decided to create a website for staining decks throughout Nashville (originally called Nashville Stain). I had a team of painters which included my father (the professional), my sons, and myself. I also created flyers and my sons and I went to multiple neighborhoods passing them out throughout the year. After these efforts, we had clients to reach out to us for potential work. This felt great as I had confidence that we could do this. Once we were hired on several projects, I decided to make this an official business. I also decided to focus on painting all internal and external areas for residential projects due to the work we were doing. The name of business was changed to Luxury Painters of Nashville. The name is unique to the type of painting that we do and the service we provide. Due to the growth of the business, I decided to have several career fairs within the city of Nashville, with the hopes of finding painters. I was able to hire 5 different painters to add to our team, which has been a blessing to them and our business. As of today, we have been responsible for at least 55 projects which has been a span of about 3 years of time. We have 5 star reviews on several platforms and can easily be found on Google, Yelp, and other sites. I am currently working at a big Fortune 500 company, which I was hired 2 year ago and enjoy working. I am still able to run my painting business and have a team that is able to paint any residence in the Middle Tennessee area. My goal is to be the BEST painting service provider for all of Tennessee and eventually throughout the USA. How….we focus on being dependable, providing a top notch customer experience, and painting everything with perfection. This is what we strive to be. Our many positive reviews will highlight this.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road has not always been smooth. One of the biggest challenges is finding the right team of painters who have that same focus as I do in being the best. I work hard to find a team that believes in giving our clients the best service from start to finish. I have had multiple painters who have had struggles with this. I have learned over a short period of time to continue to set expectations and with each completed job, I am able to learn what is acceptable or not. As well, if expectations were not being met consistently, I had to go another direction away from those painters. I also work a full-time job and raising children in this midst of running the business. This also presents challenges of time. I have learned to build a team of project managers who can lead on jobs in the midst of my absence. Another challenge is creating enough leads for my team due to the ever-changing financial market and during the slow winter months. I have had to adapt with different marketing structures to create these opportunities so that my team is continuing to be hired for multiple jobs. These obstacles have been present, but I have been up to the challenges. I have continued to understand that whatever it takes to get a smile on the customer’s face is the end goal. I have been able to have a team that has the same vision, which has helped the business tremendously and has given me time back in my day as well.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are solely a painting company for residential and commercial properties. We specialize in interior and exterior painting for these types of properties. We also do specialty painting including outside furnishing painting, limewashing, brick, and others material. We are a locally owned business and service all of Middle Tennessee. We are known for perfection on our painting jobs as well as building rapport along the process. What sets us apart is professionalism, painting until perfect, and communicating from start to finish. I am proud that we live up to our name “LUXURY”. When you think of luxury, you think of top level service. We live and breath this and our reviews shows this. We offer competitive prices and send bids very timely. We communicate and want the best for our customers.

What matters most to you?
What matters most to me is being able to be the best painting company in Nashville and Middle Tennessee. Many clients speak on the negative experiences and the unreliability of painters they have had. It matters to me that whoever decides to hire us, that when we are working with them and in the completion of our job, they are left feeling happy and the work looks great. It is important for me to have a team that can provide this. My children see the effort that I bring in all that I do, I want to be an example for them that hard work, attention to detail, kindness, my faith in God, and believing in yourself are the keys of being successful in life.

Pricing:

  • From this article, any customer that reaches out and refers to this article will receive a discount.

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