Small Business 101- Acton

With my , I tried to fill in the readers on what exactly I’m going to be doing this summer and some general information about myself.  For this blog post, my goal is to fill in some of the details of how I found this job and what I have been doing since February (when I was hired) to prepare for this summer!

Just for the record, my past employment history does not include any painting whatsoever. My room has remained a stark eggshell white with sports posters interspersed since second grade when I moved in (same posters too: Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, Mike Piazza, Troy Brown, Tedy Bruschi among others).  Despite my lack of experience, I was very intrigued when I heard about this job from a friend.  While it will definitely be a large amount of responsibility, I’m really excited by all the different areas I will have experience in after this summer.  From marketing to sales to hiring to job site management, I’m going to be involved in so many different facets of business.  It’s not like these skills will only be applicable in a painting business either, I know they will come in handy later in life as I begin a career (scary thought).  Hopefully in the future I will also be able to show employers references from my customers, showing my hard work and diligence.

To be honest, I’m really excited about the potential of my business; I have been since the day I was hired.  But I am also fully aware that there will be pitfalls. In fact, several have already happened!  I will start with our sales training weekend.  We spent two full days (8am-6pm) at the end of February receiving tons of information regarding sales and building a company. I took copious notes that I’m looking at as I write this post.  One of my favorite points was about how to set a company culture. It was kind of a bizarre thought at first, how much culture does a company of six people need? But as I thought about it, it made more sense.  If I constantly show up to my job sites unorganized and/or in a bad mood, what kind of a message am I sending my employees?  It seems only logical that the harder they see me working to do my absolute best, the more likely they are to work hard themselves.  Even more than that, the executive team leading this training seminar told me to put every effort in to making my company FUN.  At that point, I was really lost.  How do I make a company fun and efficient? I wasn’t planning on any sort of draconian rules, but going out of my way to ensure funness?  I had already deemed it true that my own attitude would be reflected on my business.  The more organized and thoughtful I was the more successful and better image I would present to my employees as well as customers. So it would seem to make sense that my employees would serve a similar function, the more organized and happy they are, the more satisfied my client will be.  And thus, my company had culture! Sort of…I still didn’t have any painters employed at that point(hiring is a subject for another post).  But the thought was there and I continue to assess my business to ensure I am still meeting my company values.

Some of the other takeaways I got from that training weekend were suggestions on effective ways of marketing (going door to door, taping flyers, and NETWORKING (another topic I want to devote an entire post to), ways of engaging potential leads so both parties are on the same page(focused, honest communication between the customer and myself was stressed probably one thousand times and, honestly, it probably should have been stressed at least one thousand and one times.),  resources available to Branch Managers, that you can paint over stain(but don’t ever stain over paint), and, most importantly, all the different areas past managers have struggled in!

It makes me laugh to think of this final section because I still fell in to half of these traps!  The first time I rang someone’s doorbell who I didn’t know, I literally stood their staring at the guy for about twenty seconds with my mouth open before mumbling something about painting, leaving a flyer, and walking briskly away(the guy was very nice, he smiled the whole time and didn’t even laugh).  Far be it from me to stick to the cold calling plan my executive Steve and I put together, that was designed specifically to get me past this awkward first hurdle of talking to the customer and to the more important parts.  This sounds somewhat cynical as I write it, but I am laughing about it now upon reflection. I guess that was a lesson I needed to learn the hard way!

Anyways, coming out of training weekend I had one very solid thought: I have a lot more learning to do!  I learned that I needed to invest myself fully into learning every possible piece of information I could about the painting business.  How can I expect a customer to choose my company if I don’t even know everything about painting?  That would be a terrible choice for them.  So far, I have used three different avenues to rectify this situation.  The first is I have committed myself to basically memorizing the company’s operations manual.  It has fifteen years’ worth of technical painting knowledge and is a fountain of wealth if used properly.  To this end, I have also started questioning my executive, Steve, unceasingly about everything he knows. We had our weekly meeting yesterday afternoon and the sticky notes app I have on my laptop already has filled up half my screen with new things I want to ask him and this is a month later!  Also, I put together a list of family friends who I felt comfortable calling and talking to about my business.  This wasn’t designed to get them to choose me to paint their house, but rather to ask if there was anything about previous contractors they had had that differentiated them from the pack, whether it was in a good way or a bad way.  As we head towards May and the beginning of production, I know my notes on these phone calls will be come in handy (that whole keeping the customer happy thing again).  This is also where I am hoping you guys can come in and help as well.  I’ve never had my house painted before (largely because I don’t own a house) so I don’t have firsthand experience about what other contractors do well/not so well.  The more input I can get on how to improve my business and provide a quality experience, the better!  Finally, because theoretical knowledge is great but, in the end, can only go so far, I asked (harassed) a neighbor to get in contact with his brother (who has been a successful professional painter for thirty years) to ask if I might be able to paint with him for a few days.  Hopefully in doing this I will be able to put my theoretical knowledge to work and learn some tricks of the trade that only working for an experienced contractor could provide.

While I still don’t know all the answers, I have worked very hard up to this point to learn about the painting industry and will continue to strive to learn more.  Once again, one of the best ways I can learn is by receiving input and interacting with others and I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions about what I have had to say thus far.  If you don’t like what I’ve had to say so far, I’ll do better next week! This blog thing is a learning process as well!