Love Painting

Rick Lockhart has been in the painting and restoration business for 25 years, but he recently decided it would be nice to have a professional website on hand for potential clients. He used the CV SBDC’s online portal to apply for assistance.

“I was shocked I got a response so fast. Everything moved really fast once I was approved,” he said.

Rick heard about the SBDC through an email, as well as a friend who received help from the Center during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“She needed funds. She was going to lose her shop and she had loans she was going to default on. That was not me. I didn’t have that kind of overhead, but the website idea was very appealing to me,” he said.

Rick worked with Alexandra Littlehales to create a website for Love Painting and Restoration that exceeded his expectations.

“Alexandra put the website together and did a phenomenal job. Fortunately, I save a lot of photographs, so it was a match made in Heaven. The website turned out much better than I ever expected. It’s brought me several jobs, but more importantly it’s a calling card that’s always there and available. Even if I don’t have a business card, I can give them the website and people look at it and say ‘Oh, now I understand what you’re talking about. Now I see.’ It’s been so helpful,” he said.

Rick was able to combine his expertise about his business with Alexandra’s expertise about website building to create a site he was proud of.

“I know a lot about color and design and how the mind is attracted to certain colors and turned off by different things, so Alexandra was very accommodating and we worked together to come up with some great ideas. I’m very pleased,” he shared.

Rick has a particular affinity for working on historic homes, and it’s important to preserve character when working on such structures. He plays close attention to detail in his work, so it was only natural that he had specific ideas for his website as well.

“I can’t say enough about the whole process. It was so smooth and easy to work with everybody. My personality type is a little bit on the skeptical side, and I can be hard to please—I just have a high level of expectation, and my clients expect the same thing from me. So I had this big expectation, and I was blown away by how well the whole operation worked,” he said.