We were lucky to catch up with Mark Heeke recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Mark, thanks for joining us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Anything worth while takes a lot of work and time. Success doesn’t happen over night. It takes being dedicated and disciplined in your actions and giving 100% of your efforts whether you’re at your best or your worst. You need to do this day after day and be okay with not seeing results right away. Delayed gratification is a term that comes with success and is something you have to be okay with. In the end if you wake up, do what you say you’re going to do, do it day in day out, and give everything you have, you will one day be successful.

I have applied this to my business. I set goals and apply the process. My business might be growing slower than what I would like but I know it’s going in a positive direction and I have been able to hit goals along the way. I need to be patient and just keep pushing forward. Reminding myself of delayed gratification and in the end all the work will be worth it.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Just over 5 years ago I was sitting around with a friend and I listened to his complaints about not having a reliable powder coater in the Lansing area. Through a few discussions, looking at the current market, and looking at powder coating as a whole, I decided to start my business. That’s when Clock Work Powder Coating LLC was born. We opened our doors Jan 2019 and have been growing ever since.

We provide powder coating services. Powder coating is like paint but a lot more durable and longer lasting. It is applied to metal parts through a unique process. We start off sandblasting the parts down to raw metal. This removes all old coatings, rust, and dirt so we have a clean surface to work with. We then hang the parts on racks, clean them with denatured alcohol, pre bake the parts in a 400 degree oven, and then pull them out to cool. After the parts are cooled, we will mask off or plug any holes, threads, or surfaces that don’t need or can’t have powder coating. The parts now are ready for powder and we use a specially designed gun to apply. After the powder is applied, it goes into the oven to cure the powder turning it into a thermoset plastic. The finish comes out looking like paint would. We can do everything from solid tone, metallic, transparent, candy, or textured colors with all different sheen levels.

We also provide sandblasting services. Sandblasting is where you take an abrasive material and use compressed air to shoot it through a sandblasting machine. The abrasive comes out of a nozzle at high speeds to remove old coatings, rust, dirt, etc. This creates a clean surface to work with.

We take on all types of projects. Everything from automotive parts, to patio sets, to manufactured parts, to railings, to metal signs/art work, etc. Pretty much anything that fits into our 5ftx5ftx11ft oven., we will try to do!

The one thing we try to do our best at is providing a high quality finish and a great customer experience. The feed back that we get back from our customers makes all the hard work worth it. So…. we’re always trying to improve to make sure the customer is always taken care of.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

It’s all about making your employees/teammates feel valued and appreciated. At the end of the day without your team, the business can only go so far and you can only get so much done. There are a few ways to accomplish this. Listen empathetically to your team. Really try to understand where they’re coming from, their frustrations/concerns, their ideas, and don’t just undermine them. Create a process improvement meeting once a month. This will allow everyone to get together and brainstorm on how to make the work flow better, safer, and how to find solutions to current problems. Reinforce teamwork. If everyone is trying to help everyone out and everyone is on the same page, there will be a common bond between the workers and yourself. Almost like a brotherhood. One big thing, don’t let negative attitudes exist. Remain positive and push positivity onto your team. It’s easy to be negative and it spreads FAST! Always be uplifting. Make sure to let you team know they’re doing a great job, that you’re thankful for that, and treat them to a lunch/dinner or some type of reward. Make it meaningful and not something generic. Show how much you care!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

We built our reputation on honesty, treating every customer with the upmost respect, giving the best customer service possible, providing a quality service/experience, and fixing our mistakes whenever one occurs. We also are always growing and learning how to become better for our customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.clockworkpowdercoating.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cwpc.lansing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clockworkpowdercoating

Image Credits
Mark Heeke