In this insightful episode of The People at LIME, we sit down with Bethany Broughton, the esteemed bid support team lead at LIME Painting. Bethany delves into her transformative journey over the past three years at LIME, highlighting the personal growth and professional milestones she has achieved. Emphasizing the core LIME values of Love Integrity Mission and Excellence, she shares the critical importance of these traits in navigating the challenging yet rewarding path of entrepreneurship. Bethany offers a behind-the-scenes look at the meticulous process involved in crafting proposals, discussing the fast-paced environment her team operates to meet tight deadlines.
This conversation is not just about the nuts and bolts of proposal writing; it’s an inspiring narrative of dedication, leadership, and the relentless pursuit of excellence. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, Bethany’s insights are bound to motivate and enlighten you. Tune in to learn how to elevate your career and embrace the challenges that come with significant growth opportunities.
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We have another special episode of The People at LIME. We are certainly going to level up with our guest. I am excited about this conversation. Bethany Broughton, welcome to the show.
I’m happy to be here and excited to share my thoughts with you.
What do you do for LIME?
I am the support team lead. I work under Jessica Smith. We call her my work wife. I’m the appendages. She’s the head. We’re a fantastic team, and we handle general support, a little bit of tech, and mainly proposals and help support our partners with those.
Critical aspects of the business and support.
It’s the business. Money is important. Also, the clients are important. I handle two of those things. It’s a little bit of a backbone of the company, but I take great pride in how far we’ve come with it and the feedback that we get from people with it.
How long has it been now that you’ve been at LIME? Are we over three years now?
January 20th was three years. We are three years and almost one month.
Things have probably changed a little bit.
It was a big concierge role that I started in, which is the role that I’m over now, which I think is a rare and fantastic opportunity to be able to guide people in that way. One thing I have noticed is the growth and the consideration that is put into LIME and putting the right people in the right places. That’s also one of the things that has kept me here, recognizing that entrepreneurship is hard, but it’s rewarding, and it takes a certain tenacity and discipline to become a successful one. We want people to succeed, period. We put the right people in the right places to do just that. The processes around hiring and onboarding are more succinct and clear.
From a support point of view, the training and the general support that we offer is world-class, it is thorough, and we are very knowledgeable. I think that with the group of people that we have, that growth is just exponential at this point. That’s what I’ve noticed the most. It is our ability to change, adapt, and grow.
When you talk about the past three years that you’ve been at LIME, we’re now at the top of 2024. COVID, supply chain issues in the paint industry, social unrest, and everything that is going on around the world had quite a bit of change. When you’re a high-growth organization, it becomes important, it becomes critical to get the right people in the right places, especially in a franchise organization where at home office we’re future-proofing the business. We’re strategizing and adapting to those changes so that our franchise partners can appropriately grow their territory within their market and focus on growing and supporting their teams, which then support their customers. It’s critical.
One of the most important parts of that is the recommendations that we make to clients out in the field, being able to thoroughly build a proposal. Our average number of line items on a proposal is probably seven different scopes, and each scope has preparation and application and products and steps for each one of those with the grouped price, and that’s just one line. If you’re in the field and you’re providing expertise to clients and consulting them on these different projects, it’s a lot of work to stop what you’re doing in the field and build a world-class proposal, one that’s detailed and matches the level of expertise that we bring to our clients. You’ve seen early iterations of that support to where we are now. I want to hear from you about how have you leveled up at LIME over the past three years.
That falls in line very exactly with my timeline. I came in at a time when we were switching CRMs. We were in a big growth phase. I came in and I helped reorganize it. I also learned the platform that we were moving into, which put me in an excellent position to provide support for people because I knew the platform for them, and I could lead them about it. We’ve started with residential. I also learned new build, and I also learned commercial, which led into the commercial space as well, which was a very exciting time to move from just residential to things with blueprints. That was a whole new venture. It was very exciting. After that, we continued to build our training. We have LEA fully fleshed out over the span of time I’ve been there. It’s very exciting to see everything evolve in that way while I’ve been here.
Everything gets more thorough and more detailed, and it’s fantastic the training and the proposals as well. The current iteration of proposals is so detailed, and we get such good feedback. We have smart and successful clients. We have a smart and good-looking proposal if I say so myself. I believe that what you’re putting out there to the client is bright and aligned with their values and that’s the thing that LIME does beautifully.
There are a lot of different CRM options out there clearly, and we’ve partnered with platforms that fit our business. As a result, you’re able to learn it and then train to it, but we don’t want it to be complicated. Simple is key from a user experience standpoint. Can you speak to the certifications and the process for a franchise owner or a sales rep, anybody in the field, how they can easily submit a proposal? How long does it take to get that proposal back?
First, we start, before you even submit anything, we have a course to show you exactly the information that we need to be as accurate as possible for you. We also offer marketing adjustment meetings, which is where we will talk about your specific location and tailor the build and the price to your specific location. We start you off right on track for success. We also have certifications for building and pricing to where you can learn that process, make sure that you are doing it the LIME way, and make sure that across the nation, we all look the same and all have the same high standards.
We will walk you through that every step of the way. The timeline is 24 to 48 hours. Once you submit one to us, which is a simple form, you submit a Google Drive link, who the client is, and we handle the rest. You get to go out there, focus on your lead, and we can handle the legwork for you and we are there every step of the way to answer questions.
Something that you mentioned over these past three years, it’s probably been two and a half years now, but we created infrastructure to support our franchise partners at scale nationally on the commercial side. Sourcing commercial projects locally and submitting those proposals in a responsive fashion. Our partners are in-market, making the relationships, confirming scope, and doing the contracting side, but we are able to facilitate those commercial opportunities. As you mentioned, you started a residential luxury, residential interior, exterior into new builds and onto commercial. Those iterations have leveled up over the years. Although we’re taking sophisticated recommendations and scopes, those are thorough, much like the thorough work that we do, we’re meticulous and detailed.
We work with artisans who are capable of doing that because our clients are the type of clients who want to pay more to get more. We’re like Uber Black. We’re pairing those folks who want to upgrade to high-grade products and artisan craftsmen on their custom homes. By doing the due diligence and standardizing national solutions, we work with national suppliers.
You, Jessica, and the rest of the team have worked with our suppliers to integrate that pricing into the system so that everything is in sync. If you’re out in the field, all that you’re doing is taking a five-minute video and uploading it to a form, and you’re getting a detailed proposal built into your CRM within 24 to 48 hours. That’s on the commercial side and the residential side. How many proposals have you done?
I have done, I believe, thousands at this point. I know last year, just alone by myself, not the entire team, but I did around 800.
You’ve seen a thing or two around the country. We are speaking to somebody who is committed to our values, excellence being one but is very humble. Bethany, you help franchise partners standardize their pricing in their local market. Can you share what it’s like helping locations all around the country with different pricing? Is that pure chaos, or what is your experience, and what is the process like from that standpoint?
Not chaos, thankfully. We have a nice system built out that we approach each owner with because we recognize that every location has its own wants and needs. You will go and do what we call a market test, which will be a video and information that you will send to multiple vendors to see what the market is like in your area. You will send those to us, and we’ll have a meeting. We will go over the breakdown hours and explain everything to you.
We will see what the other people, all the older companies have given, compare those, and see where you fall within them. We will price you not at the top. We’ll probably hit one or two. That is usually where we’ll want to put you with the price adjustment because the clientele were paying for that quality and were paying for that luxury experience. We want to make sure we put you in the right place if you will.
It’s crazy when you work with a client who might not accept your proposal because the price is too low. Positioning in the market is important where we’re putting the pricing. You’re making a sophisticated process simple. You’re helping franchise partners index the pricing in their market.
It falls back to support. We’re here to support you in setting up your business for success. We have the knowledge to share, and being able to do that and provide that support is vital, especially when you’re first starting up to have that guidance, which is a great part of buying into LIME branches.
The pricing is standardized. The recommendations are standardized. The scopes and how the proposals are built out are standardized, but the proposal is certainly a sales tool. If it’s all templated, that gets us on the same page in terms of the scope. As the individual advising the homeowner, the customer, you’re going to know those specific conversation points and recommendations along those different scopes.
Going in and putting in specific nuances that show that you’re customizing this on a personal level, now you’re making that proposal a sales tool. It is tailored and customized to that customer. That’s the yin and yang of working with the bid team as they are providing standardized, responsive, detailed proposals that are client-facing. You’re going in and tailoring them for that customer.
I remember being in the field and handwriting proposals. Our hands would cramp because we were very detailed back then. We knew that if we had a ton of handwriting across the proposal, it was a reflection of how much we cared, how much we were invested, how thorough we were going to be, and we did care about the details. In our line of work, that’s important.
How do you create that detailed proposal, that detailed experience, and be able to do it in mass? There are a lot of proprietary components to that infrastructure, but at the end of the day, I used to dream about the day where one day we’re going to take a video and have to find a spot to get on a laptop.
Get out of a state of mind where I’m working with clients in sales mode, and serving customers. Get into detailed mode and build a proposal. It is constant gas and break. It doesn’t mean that you bypass obligations just because you don’t want to, but it sure does feel great to know that I’m going to have this important component of my business supported by experts in the home office.
We are very detailed and organized people at our core, and it is very much reflected in the work that we do. Detail and organization are exactly what you get with the proposals.
You can say that again, Bethany. LIME is values-driven. What is your favorite LIME value and why?
I know that every time I’ve asked this, it’s still the same. I’m waiting for it to change because sometimes they do, depending on what phase you are in. Mine is excellence, and I’ve always said excellence because I think it also embodies love, which is my other favorite. Excellence comes from loving yourself enough to do what is right for yourself. Loving yourself is not always nice. You push those you care about to be excellent because of the love that you have for them. I believe that they’re intertwined in that way. I do my best and aim for excellence, and I want the same for those around me. I want those people to have that mindset as well, and to work for excellence for yourself and others is to love yourself and others.
I’m curious. Something has to be brewing there in the bid support department. If you wouldn’t mind sharing, how do you guys keep doing it? How are you leveling up at a high level, and how do you contribute to the team in leveling up?
We hold ourselves to a very high standard. As we said before, right people, right place, and the team members that we bring on also share those same values. We are detailed and organized, which if you have ever been in any administrative space, those are the two keys to being successful. I bring a lot of support. I support our director, Jessica Smith, who is a fantastic, very humble person. Within a team, you find your role, especially when you’ve spent as much time together as Jessica and I have been. It’s been over two years now, and you see where other people lack, and you can pick that up. We know we have each other’s backs, we have support, and we have that safety within the support team.
I believe that our drive on a personal level is we’re ambitious. We want good things for ourselves and we make goals. They say goals without a plan are just dreams. You have to plan, you have to execute those things. We’re both very much like that in and out of work. It shows in the work that we do and the training and attentiveness that we give to everything. I think that my personal drive to better yourself is probably a big factor that I bring in.
When you talk about the past three years, embodying our values of love, integrity, mission, and excellence, future-proofing the business, being adaptive and not just having ideas but executing on those ideas, being consistent, doing it at a high level, it sure has been an honor, having you on the team at LIME and providing that support to our organization. I don’t think there’s a person at LIME that you’ve interacted with that when they walk away, they don’t feel like, “She has every intent to support me.” I must ask, what is your superhuman power?
I believe that my superhuman power is empathy. I’ve always been able to realize that each person is their own person. To respect that is to understand that person, and that falls right into support. Right person, right position, it falls right into that to be able to see someone, not just have a conversation but see them and know what they need. Sometimes, that’s going to be a softer approach. Sometimes, that’s more of a direct approach. You have to be able to read that and be able to communicate in a way that that person can digest for them to be able to take the next steps that they need.
My ability to communicate and have that personable approach in the professional is a skill that I have honed. I like to say I love communication so much that I got a degree in it. The communication aspect and seeing a person and knowing how to speak to them, that empathy is what I believe is my superhuman power.
I have certainly seen that lived out firsthand. Thank you, Bethany, for your leadership. LIME does things differently. I’m just curious, from your perspective, what thoughts would you share regarding the way that LIME does business?
You hear people say that things aren’t made how they used to be. I believe the guidance of quality over quantity has been lost to a large degree. There is reliability, even charm, and stability to a business or a service when you apply the value that LIME has. The love, integrity, mission, and excellence drive such a rare customer experience in a business climate.
In LIME, everyone from an intern to your client gets the quality, attentiveness, and guidance that is so hard to find in the business world. LIME is built on a system that gave rise to so many millionaires and billionaires in decades past in the country. It is a model that works to focus on the customer, to focus on the experience, and to cater. At LIME, we have not lost sight of that. We’ve created millionaires, and we’ll go on to create billionaires because we have kept true to that guiding principle that the treatment of a person, employee, or client is the key to success.
It is certainly about the people. The wonderful thing about for-profit organizations is that they directly impact communities, and they are built by the folks in the communities. I appreciate you saying that because it is all about the people. I guess it’s different. I guess I assume that’s how it’s supposed to be done, but it goes back to my days in college. I’ve always said that the industry’s wooed me to it, and one of those ways that it wooed me was that I was always hearing from clients, “Thanks for showing up. Thanks for doing a good job. Thanks for answering your phone.”
Those basic things and a focus on people and doing things in a values-based manner, it’s incredible how they’re not just a differentiator for me as a college student painting homes but it would go on to even be a differentiator in franchising. Knowing that those values and that approach and that way of doing business is also a differentiator in this industry, this space. Back then, it was as simple as just showing up and doing a good job. I guess that’s a different way of doing business.
Holding yourself to a high standard and making those things be actions that you don’t even think about. The client feedback, it doesn’t even occur to you not to do that, to not give that treatment to people. That’s a huge aspect of LIME that I’ve loved.
One of my favorite areas is our subcontractors. It’s a differentiator for our customers, it’s refreshing, and we talk about working with LIME being easy, enjoyable, and refreshing. That luxury customer, that’s what we’re delivering. It’s not just different for them. It’s different for our subcontractors. They’re used to the industry being very price-driven, and generally, it’s taking a while to get paid, and they’re not being treated ethically along the way, and that is not enjoyable for anybody.
Just doing basic things like loving and serving your artisans. By the way, we do a bunch of other great things, like manage the account and provide you with jobs consistently. They happen to be in the luxury segment, and we’re going to pay you right when the job is done. Those very basic things show up as a differentiator. It sure is fun doing life and business with other individuals who are committed to creating a lot of value in the high-end home improvement space and doing it in a way that reflects values that focus on people.
Everything else falls into place. It’s fun doing it with folks that are aligned with those core values. Bethany, it’s an honor. Thank you so much. I know you are super busy supporting all of our owners. Thanks for making time out of your busy schedule and supporting me throughout this episode. I have certainly leveled up. I can’t even count the amount of times where I was inspired by quotes that you shared. I’m inspired by who you are and the way you show up. Thank you for all of your support, and everything that you do for LIME. If anybody would like to get in touch with you, how can they do that?
We’ll throw out my LIME email. It’s bbroughton@limepainting.com. Like I tell anyone who talks to me, if you have any questions, I’m happy to help.
Bethany, thanks for helping me level up. Thanks for helping LIME level up in such a critical area of the business. I know our franchise partners couldn’t do it without you and the folks on your team. If you like this episode, please hit the like and subscribe to the channel so that we can continue to grow and bring thought leaders like Jessica onto the show. Drop a comment down below and contribute and help us continue to level up. Bethany, thanks for being on. As always, level up.
Bethany Broughton is a seasoned professional in customer support, currently marking her third year with LIME. With a career that spans over diverse fields, Bethany brings a unique set of skills and insights to her role.
Her journey began in the legal and government sector, where she dedicated her expertise to social security disability, showcasing her compassion and understanding towards client needs. Bethany’s versatility extends into the beauty industry, where she honed her skills in both management and customer engagement, blending her knack for communication with her passion for empowering others.
Her extensive experience is not limited to traditional settings; Bethany has thrived in both online and brick-and-mortar retail environments, navigating the complexities of modern commerce with ease and efficiency. This exposure has enabled her to cultivate a deep understanding of consumer behavior and expectations, further enhancing her capability to provide exceptional support and service.
Bethany has demonstrated her proficiency in crafting clear and compelling messages, a skill that has been invaluable in her current role at LIME. Her ability to connect with clients, understand their needs, and provide tailored solutions speaks volumes of her professional prowess.