Small Business 101 - Acton

Hi! My name is Matt Tower and I am a nineteen year old freshman at Amherst College. I have lived in Acton for the past twelve years and graduated from Lawrence Academy in 2011. This summer I am running my own franchise of the Collegiate Entrepreneurs painting company in Acton, Boxborough, and other surrounding towns. 

I’m starting this blog as a means to give some insight into how I am approaching the growth of my business. To be clear, this blog is not a success story about how to run a small business. I titled the blog “Small Business 101” because it is essentially my fifth course at school and is essentially a crash course in how businesses operate and how the painting industry functions. To give an idea of what exactly I am doing as branch manager, I am responsible for the hiring of employees, local marketing of the Collegiate Entrepreneurs brand, estimating and selling of paint jobs (we paint residential exteriors and interiors, stain decks, power wash houses, and might do one or two commercial jobs), and, once summer begins, manage the job sites where we will be doing the actual painting. 

As you can see, I certainly have a lot on my plate this spring and summer! I am fortunate to have the help and support of the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Company, which has been existence for fifteen years, and, more specifically, my executive mentor Stephen Miller who was a branch manager himself five years ago in Lancaster and was so successful that they moved him into an executive capacity to help teach the younger branch managers. However, as awesome as Steve has been for me in learning the in’s and out’s of business in general and the paint industry specifically, I don’t think there is such a thing as too much good advice. 

I am writing this blog in the hopes that I can reach out to the readers. My goal is not to have it serve as a form of advertising for my business, but rather to give some of my own experiences to the community and hopefully receive thoughtful opinions and advice back from the readers. I know that there are tons of successful small business owners in Acton as well as many more who have been involved in small businesses in some capacity and I can’t wait to get some dialogue going with them over the coming months! 

To give you an idea of how I’m approaching this blog, I’m trying to use this post as a way to give you a general idea of who I am and what I’m going to be doing this summer. In the following posts, I’m going to describe some of my experiences thus far with the company and what I have done to establish my business.

Out of respect for others privacy, I will not be using any of the names my clients, painters, or other members of the company (besides Steve, who I have talked to about this and is okay with my talking about him), but I will definitely share some stories.

After this, I’m going to have a column ready every week to talk about the past week’s trials and tribulations! As I mentioned before, I really appreciate each reader’s time and encourage comments and thoughts!  I can’t express how excited to do some work this summer and I hope you will bear with me through the ups and downs!