College students enjoy color-filled summer job

Today’s college students have a lucrative option for making money. College Pro Painters, a local franchise that employs college students to paint home exteriors, is always hiring.

“It beats McDonald’s,” says Jeremiah Broz, district general manager of College Pro Painters in Westminster. “Starting out they can make a minimum of $7 an hour and move up well beyond that.”

Three years ago, Colorado had just nine franchise owners. Last year it had 26. “It’s growing quickly in Colorado,” Broz says. “House painting is a multibillion-dollar-a year industry. There’s just so much painting to be done.”

Brandon Risk, a senior at the University of Colorado in Boulder, has worked his way up in the College Pro ranks. This summer will be the mechanical engineer major’s third year with College Pro. He has been a painter, a job-site manager and a franchise manager. This coming summer his franchise territory will be East Boulder.

Last summer Risk worked primarily in the Greeley area where his crew of 13 painters completed 35 homes. “This has worked well for me. I needed a summer job. Now it’s worked into something more substantial,” he said.

Risk said College Pro sets a revenue target, in his case last summer it was $80,000, and the company takes 20 percent of that. Once the target is met, College Pro’s cut is 15 percent. Risk said the company helps with direct-mail to target customers. Risk said a lot of the jobs his crew gets come from word-of-mouth referrals. Last year, Risk’s franchise grossed $98,000. It’s up to the franchise manager to conduct cost-estimates, buy paint and materials and pay the painters, Risk said.

Broz says students can learn key business principles firsthand.

“There’s only so much you can learn from books,” says Broz, who began with CPP as a sophomore while studying at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. “When you’re actually applying what you learn in school, it eventually turns into wisdom. I know I’m remembering more about what I learned in classes.”
Broz and others in the company say CPP sees itself as a teacher – sharing business management and customer service skills to students.

“College Pro believes students, management and homeowners are all part of a community of transformation, one they turn to at different times – whether transforming homes with color, shaping a student’s life or challenging students with a summer job,” says Virginia Newman, a spokeswoman for the company. “An internship with College Pro extends a business opportunity to students and helps them gain what matters most in the world today – hands-on experience.”

The company offers three primary jobs: franchise managers, job-site managers and, of course, painters. Franchise managers actually run CPP as their own business in a specified geographical area, and they supervise job sites and all painting jobs in their region. CPP recruits franchise managers from September to February for the following summer.

Broz says franchise owners pay “anywhere from 14 percent to 20 percent of revenues” in fees to CPP. However, he says there’s no upfront buy-in fee to get a franchise.

A job-site manager helps with the painting, supervises painters and works directly with customers – the homeowners. According to company literature, CPP hires “hundreds of job-site managers” annually.
And for painters, the company’s Web site promotes the business by telling prospects they can “spend the summer outdoors doing work that keeps you physically active; forge new friendships in a team atmosphere; enjoy the pride and satisfaction of gauging your progress and seeing results.”

Broz says painters often get tips, too. The company hires more than 7,000 student painters a year. “Many of our college students stay on with the company two and three years after they graduate,” Broz says.

The company offers jobs beyond the three primary roles. Broz, for example, is a district general manager who oversees about 40 franchise owners in Colorado, 20 of whom are in Denver, six in Boulder County. Above district general managers are vice presidents who report to the president.

Broz, who is 25, says when he first learned of the business, it didn’t sound like a real option. “I thought you had to be Donald Trump to own your own business.”

Greig Clark, a Canadian college student who attended the University of Western Ontario, started the company 1971 after painting homes during summer breaks.

Within five years, he was franchising to other students. While many of the first franchisees worked their way up from being painters on his staff to running their own franchise businesses, he realized he needed to standardize his training programs to make it even more successful.

For his efforts, Clark won the 1979 Canadian entrepreneur of the year award. And by 1980, CPP had expanded its business into upper New York State and Western Canada. During the 1980s, it expanded throughout the Midwest and reached the West Coast by the end of the decade. Today it operates in several communities across the northern half of the U.S. and Canada. Its headquarters’ full-time staff is made up of former student franchisees.

Broz says it’s one of the largest internship opportunities and summertime employers among college students in the two countries.

on Facebook on LinkedIn