Jonathan of Smooth Coatings on Growing From Garages to Commercial Floors in Virginia

Jonathan and his partners always planned to do commercial work one day. They just expected it to take longer.

The plan was to start with residential floors and slowly move into commercial. Instead, the residential jobs kept coming, then a few commercial ones, then some very large commercial projects.

“We just ended up being able to do both,” he says.

Today Jonathan is one of the owners of Smooth Coatings in Virginia. He is also the salesperson and an installer.

A crew that can do both

Many companies keep commercial and residential crews separate. Commercial crews, Jonathan says, are often “more of an in and out kind of people and not as tidy and neat as we can be.”

Smooth Coatings has a crew skilled enough to handle both. The long term plan is still to split into a commercial side and a residential side. For now, one diverse crew does it all.

The first call

When a homeowner calls, Jonathan wants three answers before he decides whether to go out for an estimate.

“The very first thing I try to figure out is what kind of floor do they need? Why do they need it? Have they ever had a professional one before?” he says. He wants to know whether they have had a real coating, “not just a painter or something like that.”

Because he installs floors himself, he can often price a job over the phone from the square footage. Then he sees the floor in person to confirm.

Real and raw beats pretty

On Instagram, every coatings company posts before and after shots. Jonathan says the way to stand out starts long before the camera comes out.

“Standing out always meant you gotta do good work first,” he says.

He does not chase followers. His customers, he says, want to see someone they can trust. “They want to see the nitty-gritty. They want to see the work that’s behind, they want to see how clean you are on job sites,” he says.

So Smooth Coatings posts whole jobs, not just the best snapshots. “If I wanted to become famous on Instagram, I might only post the best parts,” he says. “But for our business we’ve had the most success by: this is us, this is everything.”

“I encourage people to get other quotes”

Many contractors panic when a customer says they are getting other estimates. Jonathan calls it “a really easy question.”

“I’ve done it since day one,” he says. “I encourage people to get other quotes.”

He could try a pressure tactic and offer a lower price on the spot. He chooses not to. Instead, he offers to help.

“I encourage you to. If you have any other questions, even if you don’t go with us, if you have any questions about their bid, let us know. I’d love to talk you through it,” he says. “So I just try to become their friend.”

“

“I encourage people to get other quotes.”

For homeowners, that is a good sign to look for. A contractor who is happy to explain a competitor’s bid is confident in their own.

When to build a team

Jonathan’s advice on hiring starts with honesty about what kind of business you want.

Do you want a small, family style company where you are on every job for 30 years? Or do you want to work very hard as an entrepreneur and build something bigger?

For his part, the trigger is simple. When he finds himself overextended, missing calls or missing meetings, the company grows again. And each step up means someone on the team gets to step up too, which he says gives “a really good opportunity for our employees and the family that we created.”

Starting from zero

If he had to start a coatings company in Virginia from scratch today, Jonathan says he would not change a thing. Smooth Coatings started with zero reputation.

“I would do really, really good work. I would be there for the customer,” he says. He would also be honest about the early months. “It’s gonna be hard in the beginning, you’re not gonna have work every day. So figure that part out. Get a part time job if you need that for your family.”

They kept going until, eventually, they were six to twelve weeks booked out.

Real installers, real floors

Jonathan describes himself as newer to the industry, and he and his team travel to almost every event they can. “When you stop learning, you stop growing,” he says.

He supports the Golden Pour Awards because it puts the spotlight on real installers doing real floors. He hopes it changes how people see epoxy, from “is it gonna peel up?” to something they have seen in magazines and think of as a luxury.

He is less sure about answering services and AI. As Smooth Coatings grows, he knows it will need help on the phones. But he would rather have a trained person, ideally someone who has spent time on the floors, than a machine.

The advice he lives by

The best advice Jonathan shares comes from his business partner, and he credits it as one reason the company has grown.

“Wake up, do the right thing every single day, and eventually your luck is no longer luck,” he says. “Do right by people, and people will do right by you.”