May 9, 2017—In an effort to better connect and improve the refinisher community in the collision repair industry, an industry painter has started a weekly live streaming show on Instagram entitled “Booth Talk.”
Jeremy Winters, a past FenderBender subject, started the channel three months ago under his Instagram username “that_painter_fella” (soon the stream will move to the username “boothtalk”). The stream starts every Saturday at 8 p.m. EST.
“I’ve noticed that people have not been using social media for good. For a while, it was just calling people ‘hacks’ and a lot of arguing,” Winters said. “So I wanted to start something that could help people out tech-wise. Because that’s what I enjoy. I enjoy how things work and becoming better at what I do.”
In its third month, the Booth Talk audience—which is partly fueled by another social community Winters heads, “Ask the Painter”, which has grown to over 1,000 members on Facebook—has increased from roughly 30 to over 250 industry professionals. Users can open the stream, ask questions and add comments in the comment box, and create a dialogue about any subject that sparks discussion.
The social media communities (both Instagram and Facebook) have covered a range of subjects, from improving paint booth efficiency to writing better SOPs to crafting a more effective color matching system.
“There’s no bashing. Nobody is better than anyone else. We’re just explaining how to get better results,” Winter said. “And now with the stream, there’s this live conversation going. People who couldn’t always find answers to problems in their shop suddenly have all these ideas to go off of.”
