Canadian Contractor - July-August 2015

PROFILE
and we’ve exceeded many of our goals and we’re having fun
doing it. We’re excited to see where our team can take the
business, but there’s still so much to learn.”
Simplicity, Reliability, Courtesy and Quality
The Urban Painter does 50 per cent residential and 50 per cent
commercial jobs, “with the odd new construction project if we
like the contractor,” smiles Jon. “A total crew of eight keeps up
with work in the winter, with about 25 painters employed during
busy summer months.” The company structure revolves around
key crew leaders who manage two or three people in each crew.
“We’ve had crew leaders manage up to three crews at once on
simple jobs,” says Jon.
On the surface, all this sounds fairly typical for any small
painting business, but there’s more than a few things that are
quite different about The Urban Painter. And most of them
spring from the fact that Jon isn’t your average “painter-turnedbusiness
owner”.
“It’s never crossed my mind to paint on my own,” says Jon.
“I believe strongly that a good team will always out-perform me
or any other single person. A great parable taught to me by a
business mentor is this: one man alone will be killed by a lion,
but several men working together can kill that lion.”
Jon earned a bachelor’s degree in commerce in finance from
the University of Calgary, and he’s carried this experience
through to The Urban Painter. “The main thing I learned at school
is that an understanding of the finances of a business matters
a lot,” explains Jon. “Especially cash flow. But even with my
background, starting out was hard. It took us three years of work
to be profitable. No major financial problems, it just took time.”
It’s no surprise that an ongoing challenge for The Urban
Painter is the same challenge faced by any painting company:
44 July/August 2015 www.canadiancontractor.ca