We were lucky to catch up with Benny & Cat Butrim recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Benny & Cat, thanks for joining us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
As a small husband and wife venture, we feel that the success of Benny B’s Painting is not measured in the number of projects we complete each year (or the balance in our bank account either!) but in the quality and excellence of the work we provide and the happiness expressed by each and every client at the end of a project. We treat every design project with the same care and meticulous attention to detail we would demand if the project were in our own home.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Benny began painting over 35 years ago while working for a family member’s concern. When that business closed, he continued to work in the field of painting, all the while honing his skills to become a top-shelf painter in his field. After Benny and I were married in 2012, I encouraged him to start his own business after witnessing his frustration in working for painting businesses who were more concerned with completing their projects as quickly as possible to maximize their bottom line and get on the next job on the schedule. That often resulting in important corners being cut. So I encouraged him to take the leap and make his own business a reality. Since its inception in 2014, Benny B’s Painting LLC has filled a void in Harford County, Maryland and the surrounding area with professional high-end and custom interior painting, expert drywall repair and cabinet and furniture refinishing experience, Benny and I are both committed to bringing his top-flight talent and each client’s personal vision together to make their living space or commercial venture a showplace that will make an unforgettable visual impact. One of the things I am very insistent on is that clients and potential clients understand that we are not a painting business but a design business. Although our primary skills are in prepping and painting interiors and refinishing cabinetry and furniture, the first step in every project is to ensure that there is a design aesthetic to everything we do. Before we even begin a project, our first objective is to get our interior design partner, Adrianne Hanyok of WPS Paint and Decorating Center, to meet with our clients and work out colors for their space and even other design aspects unrelated to our business such as flooring and/or backsplashes, countertops and wallpaper, too! Although our business is concerned with painting, Benny and I are committed to providing a full-service consultation to ensure that the project is going to come together completely and bring a unified and aesthetically beautiful visual to fruition when all renovations or updates are complete.
The project we are most proud of would be the recent updates we completed at Rockfield Manor, a special events venue that was recently voted the best special event venue in Harford County by the readers of Harford Magazine. This venue, located in the heart of our hometown of Bel Air, Maryland, holds a special place in our hearts because we first were chosen to freshen up the venue early in our business venture in 2016 and then entrusted once again at the end of 2022 to complete a complete update of the interior of this extremely popular venue in Harford County. Rockfield Manor holds a special place in our hearts because it has played such a great role not only in our professional lives but in our personal lives as well with many happy memories made at events there. And many more to come!
How’d you meet your business partner?
That’s a fun story! Benny and I actually met each other as babies practically. We grew up in the same neighborhood in Baltimore County, Maryland when our parents moved in in the early seventies.. We lived in a townhome community where all the children congregated in the alley behind the homes everyday in the warmer months and played from sun up until the street lights came on at night. Benny and I bonded and became childhood sweethearts over the preteen years of playing tag, tin can alley, hide and seek and bike riding our way through the small blue-collar town of Dundalk. Our teen years took us in different directions. Benny was a bit wild and started early with a party lifestyle while I conformed to the nerdy bookworm stereotype of the Catholic high school girl. Never the twain shall meet, right? But we did. After losing touch, we reconnected more than 25 years later on, you guessed it, Facebook. It all began when I sent the friend request to him and promptly welcomed him to “Club 4-0” on his birthday in 2010. Two years later, we embarked on life as a married couple, and in 2014, our baby, Benny B’s Painting LLC, was born. We’ve been nurturing our wonderful relationship and our business creation, ever since. When Benny B’s Painting was created, I had no inkling that we would both play such integral roles in the success of the business. But we have found that his commitment to excellence in painting and my knowledge and expertise in communications and customer service have combined to be a match made in heaven.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
Honestly, with my background in communications and social media management, you would think it would be through digital marketing and social media channels. That, however, is not the key for Benny B’s Painting. Our greatest source of clientele has come from word of mouth and networking and connecting personally with people. Many of the painters Benny has worked for and partnered with have been critical of Benny’s willingness to converse on a personal level with clients. They adhere to the philosophy that everything should be kept on a strictly professional basis. But a great deal of the success of Benny B’s Painting largely lies in Benny’s proverbial gift of gab. No matter how diverse the client base is, he always finds a factor of commonality and connection with the people he is working for. This engenders not only a trust in who he is as person but also in who he is as a professional. Not only will Benny bond with clients over personal stories of overcoming obstacles (or just his love of every pet he’s ever met!), he also is willing to explain and demonstrate how the process of drywall repairs, painting and cabinet refinishing works to the point that every client is comfortable and completely as ease with how every project unfolds. It’s truly a gift that has not only given both of us many repeat customers but also many treasured friends who started off as business clients.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://bennybspainting.blogspot.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bennybspaintingllc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BennyBsPainting