 Hello, good evening. My name is Eric Munson and I am a professor for entrepreneurship here at University of Vermont. And I'd like you to welcome you to tonight's Vermont Pitch Challenge Exchange on Business Model. So let me just share my screen with you all. All right. So what are we talking about tonight? We are talking about, we are talking about first, what is entrepreneurship doing a quick review. We've talked about it quite a bit over the past couple of exchanges in September and October. And in particular, we're talking about how entrepreneurship is related to value creation. Then we'll move on to talking about the main theme of the night that is what is a business model? What are the key parts? What do business model patterns look like and what makes for a good business model? Now, to make this a little different than your typical college lecture, we'll be doing this more in a fireside chat format. And my amazing and awesome guest tonight is a graduate of the University of Vermont of Class of 2023, Zach Dunn, who was even before he left and graduated from UVM started an amazing socially conscious painting business called Painting with Purpose. So to kick things off, Zach, do you want to tell us all how you actually came about starting and creating painting with purpose? Yeah, so thank you guys for being here. I'm Zach Dunn. I graduated at UVM in May with a degree in sustainable business. And Painting with Purpose came about when I was a junior year. There was an internship that came to the school. I'm sure most of you folks are probably familiar with it because they probably came to your class too. It was called Collegiate Entrepreneurs or Student Painters. There's a couple of different names. And they proposed the idea of learning entrepreneurship through painting. Before that internship ever came about, me and my brother started a little mobile auto detailing business. So cleaning cars for people. We would drive to their house to clean their cars. So I had a little bit of experience with entrepreneurship, but that internship came in. I was interested. I put my name down for the next month. I attended the meetings and I was interested in the idea until I learned that they were going to take 50% of the profits to pay for payroll and taxes and do things that I thought that I could do achievably myself. So by that time I was sold on the idea of painting. At the same time, since being a freshman, I graduated in Middlebury High School. I've seen homelessness get worse in Burlington. So there was something that I wanted to try to fix with my business. The president of CVOEO came to one of my classes. It was organizational behaviors and leadership taught by Marion Fritz. And he spoke to our class and his message really resonated with me and his organization that he runs really resonated with me. So I decided, okay, I'm going to learn how to paint. So I started working for a painting company. I'm going to start this business. I'm going to get the insurance and I'm going to create a socially conscious painting business. So that was the idea. That's where it started. And I then met my business partner who's my business partner still to this day, Josh, who is the form and the one with all the experience. He pretty much taught me everything I know. I worked at that painting company for like a month. I was like, hey, Josh, have this idea. We can start a painting business on our own. He was not in favor of the idea. It took a lot of convincing, but I eventually did convince him. And then ever since we've grown and it's now my full-time job. All right. Well, thank you very much. Now I have a few, as I said, to start a few basic definitions to cover here. First and foremost, what is entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurship for me to can take many different forms. I define it as the pursuit of new opportunities to create new value. And I'm a visual thinker here. So you have a person, could be a man, could be a woman, just someone with short hair. Who's pursuing that butterfly of an opportunity. And around this opportunity, there's generally a window of opportunity because someone else might come along and do it before you. So you want to do it either first or potentially second. Now, unfortunately, the earlier you do this idea before anyone else is no one else to pattern your business after, there's going to be a lot of uncertainty. So this is going to be what a typical Vermont fall or winter day would look like. When you look out the window, you'll see a lot of trees and a lot of fog and snow coming down from the air. This is what it looks like and feels like some kind of startup business. But with the right tools, the right support that we try and give you here at the University of Vermont and in the greater Vermont community, we think you can make it through to the point where you're not only creating financial value in terms of the money to pay the bills and pay your employees and to earn a little bit of a profit, but also to have a social mission and environmental mission as well. Because data shows time and time again that in good economic time, socially conscious, sustainable businesses do just as well as traditional businesses and quite amazingly do even better in harsh economic times. So with that in mind with that broad big 10 definition of entrepreneurship, let's move on to what is dive a little bit deeper to this idea of value creation. I know I'm speaking to Zach here because we have drills and holes here. And so I'd like to first talk a little bit about the one tendency a lot of entrepreneurs have is we tend to focus on features and performance. We tend to focus on the drills, how many RPMs those drills have, if they can go through concrete or steel or hardwood. In the end, though, customers will have needs that need holes in the wall. If you're moving from one house to the other or one apartment to another, you're putting up a new set of shelves, new paintings like it behind me. I think that once these needs are met, value is created. So I'm thinking, Zach, how are different ways that you create value for your customers? So one of them is the obvious way, which is you have a house that needs to be painted paint is like the skin to the house. So it's that first protective layer for everything underneath. So if your skin's flaking off, then you need to repair it. If your paint's flaking off, you need to repair it in order to protect the wood underneath the wood. You have the sheathing or maybe there's paper and then the sheathing and then the studs, which all that stuff can rot and will rot if you don't have the proper paint and primer applied to it. So that's the most basic way. People a lot of times contact us right before they're selling a home because they actually want to literally raise the value. So we create value in the fact that we're able to raise the value of the home before it gets on the market. Another way you were able to create value is we're able to create a space that can then have curb appeal to let's say a tenant or an Airbnb. So we can create a place that is, I would say, comfortable. We can give a caller consultation and create a place that's comfortable for people to want to stay or want to live in. And then in turns, they're able to have a place where they can actually make money off of as well in another way. So I think those are the two basic ways. The other way is that people now have a little bit more peace of mind that the money is not only going to a painting business, but it's a painting business that's actually reinvesting into the community. So people feel good about their purchase and whether or not it's something that's able to be measured and how good they feel about it. People oftentimes just, you know, they're happy to use us because they're happy that that's where their money is being spent. And I think having multiple layers of value in your pitch, in your plan, in your business is critical. Because on the one hand, there will be many people who are just purely concerned about going to that online real estate site and seeing the estimated value of their house going up. That said, being able to deliver peace of mind, especially in times of turbulent real estate markets like we have in Vermont right now where prices are going up, maybe they'll be going down, but they're probably going to keep on going up, but you're not sure enough and you have peace of mind. It's critical for delivering packages through, you know, FedEx, for example, also peace of mind when Zach delivers on the quality to their home, to your homes. This comfort that the money you're spending is not only going to raise the value of the home, but also help people get their own homes. These multiple layers of value are really critical to selling really strong and impactful businesses. Now, when I talk about a business, the next step going from entrepreneurship and value, the next step is to think about what is a business model. Now, a business model kind of like the layers of an onion and, you know, the layers of a tree is in between what the one end is that initial business idea. That is something you'll sketch out on a napkin. You'll just tell a quick story to somebody, I had this idea. And at the other end of the spectrum, you have the business plan. This is that 30 page single space document which goes into detail and declaring how is everything is done? What are you doing? Which people are doing? Who is doing what, where, when and how? Now, this you might need for a bank loan. You might need if you have an investor. That said, initially, when I'm talking to venture capitalists and other investors here, either in California, Colorado, Germany, Vermont, wherever I've lived, or Scotland, I've lived in many places. What they really want is that slide deck. They really want to know either on a poster or in a slide deck, what is your business? How does the strategy structure and systems come together to create and deliver value? Now, so what a business model is in more detail, it is the template around which the business is built. It's how these pieces, these puzzle pieces and parts fit together. And beyond that, kind of like how Zach is delivering value, not only in terms of increasing the physical beauty and the physical value of the house. He's also increasing the story value, the image, the reputational value of the house when neighbors or future people, other friends and family look at the house and go, wow, that's really cool. How he's increased the value on multiple levels. So what are the key features of a business model? If we're going to break down those key puzzle pieces, there's four key puzzle pieces. And we're going to ask in a moment Zach to go through each of these four puzzle pieces for his business. We've already talked a little bit about the value proposition for his business. We will go into that in a little bit more depth. In addition, we're talking about who are the customers? Who are the competitors? What market is he getting into? We're talking about not only about what the customer sees at the front end of the business, we're also talking about the back end of the business. How does the operations, the people, the painters, the paint, all the trucks, the lifts, how do all the pieces in part fit together so that the customer gets in the end of beautiful, well-painted home? And last but not least, what is that financial model? How does the business deliver value in a way that it returns value to Zach as the owner and the founder of his business and to the employees in a profitable way? And last but not least, that fifth overarching element is that strategic vision which pulls everything together into a business model pattern. So now we'll step through each of these pieces. I will explain each piece in a little bit more depth. And then Zach will come in with his story to really add some flair to paint a picture, so to speak. And he's great at painting. So I'm certainly looking forward to his stories. So first, as I said, this is a tool that we teach here at UVM. It's actually taught in many schools across the US and around the world. It was developed by a Swiss PhD student back in 2010 called Alex Osterweiler. It's called a business model canvas. Maybe you've heard about it in your high school entrepreneurship courses. If not, here is the book link. There's a link to the website for the book as well. I do recommend you take a look at it. It is a wonderful book and it outlines these four elements. It says, you know, what is the value? It puts at the center the value delivered to the customers, the customers on the right-hand side talks about the channels, the relationships and the customer segments. You're delivering this value too. It talks about the key partners, activities and resources that are behind your operations and the financials which link the costs at the back end to the revenues at the front end. And if you're in the classroom here, I'd ask who of you are involved either in working in theater or working at a restaurant? I mean, Zach, have you ever worked in a theater or a restaurant? I've worked in a restaurant, a couple of restaurants. Did you work in the front end or the back end of the restaurant? Were you a server, a dishwasher, a cook? I did a little bit. Well, I definitely wasn't a cook. I guess I worked in the front. Yeah. Okay. And this is what the customer sees when they order the food. But at the same time, Zach wouldn't have been able to get your food to your table unless there were cooks in the kitchen and people washing and cleaning dishes. This is what's really critical. But as we get so wrapped up in the front end of the business, what the customer sees, I forget there's a lot of work going on to make it possible for that business to actually function and deliver on their promises in a profitable way. So let's begin with the front end, the front stage, so to speak, to borrow this theater metaphor, the customer model. This customer model includes several key elements. It includes the customer segments. Who are you creating value for? And who are your most important customers? It talks about the channels. That is, how do you get your product to customers with Zach? It's definitely in person. If you're coming up with a product, it could be that you're selling the product in a store. It could be that you're selling the product online. Or you might be selling your product if you're selling on Etsy or on Amazon. You might be selling through multiple channels. So it's thinking about what channel works best for you. And likewise, once you've established those customer relationships, how do you maintain those good customer relationships over time? And so what's very important here is thinking about what does your typical customer look like? What does the customer do? What challenges do they face? And what benefits do they want? Now, this character here you see is actually a customer profile students made of me about a dozen years ago back in Germany. That yellow tie there, that's my teaching tie that I like to wear. I'm not wearing it tonight. But you know, this is a South Park inspired character they made to represent what a customer profile of me as a teacher might look like. But with that little comedy aside, Zach, can you tell us more about your customer segments? How you deliver a product or your services to the customers? And how do you maintain relationships from potentially before starting with the estimates all the way through after the paint job is done? Yeah. So to start off with our customer segments are pretty much segmented in these three ways. You have your homeowners. So the people that literally own the home, they want you to paint inside or out. You have the landlords slash property managers. So they own a home or they manage a place and they want you to come in and paint it with people living there or between renters or whatever it may be. So just normally that's more of a maintenance situation. And then you have your contractors. So it might be new construction. It might be a complete renovation. And so they're more operating to see who can do it and who can do it on our timeline and who can do it. Honestly, most cost effectively for most of these contractors, they're looking to see if they can keep the prices down. And so we've worked with all three and there's some people that fall into different segments. Like I would say that you have things like we've done work for churches and they're kind of in their own. Yes, there's a property manager, but it's kind of not falling into those three segments or you have somebody who doesn't own the house and it's just like something for their parents. Or we did a work for St. Michael's College doing the president's house. So that was a different situation where we didn't we didn't even interact with the person that was going to be in there, but we painted the walls before they moved in. So there's three segments that I could say that it boils down to but there's other smaller sub segments that we work with anybody that calls us or puts an email in. So immediately we get that contact in our phone first and last name, and we put it in a database. So that information is immediately stored. If they ever call us or email, email us again, we will make sure that there's a record of it so we don't lose contact. It's never who is this again. We know who what their name is when we're calling them, which is actually really important and people are very happy about that. I keep track of information like I keep track of information pretty much on our estimates, like what their dog's name is or what their kid's name is like or, you know, like something interesting that I can bring up when I'm actually sending the estimate to them in a PDF form, just so I can mention it and build a little bit more rapport than any other painter that's fitting on the job. So that ultimately can get us to build more trust and bid our job at a higher price. So that's how we do it. And then once the job is underway, or be even before that when we want to schedule it, we can give them like a ballpark time of when we're able to schedule it. Once the job begins, I exchange the contact of my form and my business partner with the homeowner. I give the homeowners contact to my business partner so they can interact and I pretty much let the conversation take place between them during the job. And then towards the end, I normally I'm keeping in and or keeping in touch and seeing how things are going and I'm on the job too. So I might be talking to them face to face and then by the end of the job. Sum it up any touch ups we need to do. And then I send over the bill, wish them well, and then I might follow up and say, how are things going so I pretty much followed up with all of our customers that we did work for last summer. Just to make sure that there's nothing that we need to go back and fix because one of the things that we separate ourselves with is by offering a one year warranty, which most painting companies don't do. So that's another way that we're able to create value is by them knowing, okay, well if anything fails, they're going to come back and fix it. Oh, that sounds like a great all around and you know this is the concept that which is becoming more important these days, especially when a lot of products are becoming services, is that you really have to create value like Zach was talking about from the very start even when you're, before you even are giving, you know, once he's giving his estimates he's making sure that's very professional. When the job is being performed that the customer is very happy with the crew that's on site. And that not only right after the job is done, but also a year out to make sure that everything's working fine. You know this is something that a lot of painters don't do. So this is, I think, excellent customer service all around. Now is any of this hard to do. If I can probe a little bit deeper you know what what are the easy bits and what are the hard bits. Honestly, the hardest thing for me is just trying to keep track of all the information there's just so much to keep track of and you feel like you're just making another spreadsheet for another thing. And sometimes you, I mean I definitely miss things. I can't lie. It's not a perfect model. It's not a perfect job. I'm not doing, you know, 100% of fixing everything and doing everything that I could possibly get. But I would say just keeping track is like a difficult thing. I have a lot of to do list. Oftentimes I have a to do list and a follow up list and they're completely separate and they're just as long as each other. And I have to do that in order to keep track of like what I'm trying to do here. So I would say just trying to keep track of everything like it's it's it's definitely been difficult and I'm trying to build systems to either delegate that or make it easier to track and slowly but surely it's becoming easier. And then with a little bit of office help that we've hired in the last month that's reduced the burden off of my shoulders, which has been nice. Yeah, and I think these are these are two excellent points because when things get busy and hard, there's two things which you can do and Zach's doing both of them. What is leveraging technology to keep track of all the records so that it looks like he's he's remembering all these things but he's just has wonderful spread. He remembers most of his good spreadsheets remember the dogs names the cast names the kids names. At the same time, there's no shame in hiring people actually, you know, local communities love it when you hire new people. So if either leverage technology and additional employees to keep track of things to make your customer experience wonderful and delightful, please do so. Remember to keep all these things you put together your pitches for the competition. The next element that I want to move on to and we've already alluded to it once. And this is where I've gone ahead and pulled up some pictures from the painting with purpose website is the value proposition. This is, you know, what value do we deliver, you know what problems are we solving. What are the key parts of our you know the key products and service parts components and features. Not only that but a little bit deeper what bundles of products and services are we offering because often these days you're not just offering a product but a service on top of that. And Zach does add some complimentary features which are he can recognize the pictures on the screen right now, which he offers, you know, which are very important to owners in addition to just that basic paint job such as lead testing we'll get to that in a moment. And what needs are we satisfying what customer needs are out there which we're satisfying with our particular unique value proposition. And not only that, what problem beyond what problems are we solving are we creating additional benefits are we creating additional opportunities, which make that customer even happier than they could have imagined. So, Zach, let's break down what are some of the key elements as highlighted you already mentioned that you've done some church painting some house painting. I mentioned you do some blood testing why don't you go into the pieces and parts of your business in more detail and talk about how they contribute to delivering value to the customer. So, with the exceptional quality, you made the point earlier that I'm a decent painter, I'm a decent painter, and one of the things that I've done is hire people that are better than me at painting, which is the best decision you can ever make as a business No shame in that whatsoever. No, exactly no shame in that and that's what you need to do if you want to build a business you don't have to be the best trader if you own a financial firm you don't need to be the best chef if you own a restaurant you need to hire and find the people and help keep those people happy in order for them to do the right work that you need them to do and do it in a timely manner and show up on time. And that's part of that trust and respect, which is the next thing is that trusting that we show up on time, trusting that we're not taking anything from the customers there's some really wild stories about other painters which ends up helping us and also hurting us at the same time because you have people that underbid you by three times four times twice as much as you and people think that you're overpriced, but I always say we may be on the higher side but we're worth every penny and here's why. And so, building the trust between the customer for me and all those bullet points is the most important, because if you don't have trust between you and your customer. You're not going to end up going well, it's just not, you know, they're going to be now you can't use my bathroom now you got to get a porta potting that costs extra money. So it's little things like that zero cleanup stress that's also part of the stress are the trust thing. So, you wouldn't believe how many painters just scrape a wall and then just leave all the chips on the ground, even if it's led it's just it's it's insane, but being able to clean up and be a full service painting company we can move the furniture for you will take a video before we even move anything just so we can put everything back in the same spot, which is the little things like that that people really appreciate that there's no cleanup that they had to do. We came in we painted we left it was like nothing ever happened except the color change, and then effective communication so just here's an update at the end of the day. So here's what we got done, we're on, we're on schedule, we're a day behind schedule, we might actually finish early so things like that. People always are appreciative about if you bring it up as things are happening rather than man I thought you guys are going to be done three days ago. Oh, well, you know, you know, if you tell him like oh we had two people that were sick, or you know, we need to get to another job to be able to finish you know friends and family whatever it may be or you just tell him straight up. Listen, we're not going to finish this on time because we thought we're going to finish it this time turns out it's going to take longer. So it is basically just being upfront being honest with your communication and people understand it's not like people are, you know, blind to the fact that somebody's going to make a mistake everybody makes mistakes so just communicate your mistakes and give updates as things happen. All right now there's some painters who all they do is paint, but you do more than that. So what are the things you offer customers to make it a more all around enjoyable exceptional experience. So you're talking about the other services. Yes, beyond painting like lead testing. Yeah, so in Burlington, you have a lot of tenants right so in between being a tenant for every year, your landlord should they may not but they should get the place tested for a visual lead inspection to see if there's any flaking lead paint on the inside or outside of your home and how you might know if your house is eligible or needs to be tested for something like that was if it's built before 1978 well pretty much every home is built before 1978 and Burlington so pretty much all the homes need a lead inspection at least every year and Burlington is becoming more they're keeping on it a little bit more than they used to us which is a good thing. We also do gutter cleaning so it's simple every fall and spring will take out the leaves from the gutters and keep all the dispose of all of it properly. We do pressure washing so that's normally just a preemptive to painting some houses. We do rot repair now as of this summer and minor carpentry so we can build stairs, we can fix rotting siding, we can install a window if need be so stuff like that. And then we also do staining which is painting but it's mainly for decks and you know, would that people want a more wood grain finish instead of a paint finish. And then we hang doors sometimes so sometimes people will be like, can we fix this door a little bit and we have somebody who is fortunately very very handy so he can take a look at it and fix your doors. Now this is really I think really nice that you offer more all around service because customers these days, if you have to go for a painter to one thing to a carpentry with another that's so much of a hassle and you're saving people time money energy just by able to offer this and you ended up having some really powerful customer testimonials. I know this blue house one of the first paintings, one of the first houses you painted I believe you had some really happy customers there as well. Yeah, no they, I know they give us a five star review they were five star customers they would bring us coffee they brought us cookies they brought us lunch sometimes I mean if you're a good painter they will the customers will treat you right which is something that I've learned. And it overall just makes the job go better and quicker when the customers treat you well but it starts with you as the painter treating your customer well for sure. So do we have your local church that you've been painting these past couple of years. Yep, that's the Middlebury congregational church right downtown we've been painting it one wall at a time. And they chose us because of our mission. That was it. So that was a customer who's, you know, if you're analyzing customers based on psychographics that was a customer that wanted to choose a painter based on the social mission. The painters weren't able to do that job, or they weren't chose on that job because they didn't have the same mission as our company does and that's a reason that we're able to stand out and sell to a certain customer like that. And it's just, you know, a good piece of mind for that church knowing that part of their money is going straight to charity which churches are very charitable and very community oriented. And this is very integrated and this begins the integration of the type of customers you're painting for with the value you deliver. It makes things so much easier and so much more valuable for all people concerned. Now to make this possible and these were some of the I think more interesting and more, more lively pictures on the painting with purpose website. So that's why I physically wrote the amount here is that this is what it looks like when a house is getting painted. And it involves a number of key, it involves the key activities, you know, the painting, the equipment, the setting up the tear down the cleanup. It involves, you know, partners that is your employees, your suppliers, the customers run away sort of a partner, but also key resources. In this case, we see a lot of stairs in the prior picture of the church we saw a lift. So how do you manage the back end not only the physical aspect of the back end of a painting job but also the human aspect of the back end of a painting job. Can you read what do you mean by, can you read how do you make sure one that all the pieces and parts that you need are in place for the painting job, you know, the paint, the ladders the lifts. That's part one of my question and part two of my question is how do you manage your teams. What are some of the unique things that you do to make sure you have very enthusiastic and engaged team members here that follow that same set of values that deliver on those four painting with purpose points that you do personally. Consistent positive attitude, you know, whenever I'm on the job, I'm always upbeat, I'm trying to, you know, create conversation among the guys see how they're doing see what they're going to do during this weekend. And what's coming up for them what they're doing during the holidays are just being personable and most of the painters actually are my friends, they're actually people that were great friends of mine, and they wanted a job, and they either still have a job or they had a job this summer my younger brother worked for me, my friends from high school work for me and still work for me. And we're young, which is another thing so painters, the average age of a painter I think it's like 4749 and the average age of people on in our company is 22, and that's a spread among 10 different people. So, I think just having young energy creates, you know, a better, well, I can't say that because they're probably our great older companies with people have lots of experience but I definitely think our youth is actually a great plus for our company to keep everything in order. That's a difficult thing. We constantly don't have a tool here we constantly don't have a tool there. It's difficult because we don't have a brick and mortar spot yet. But my business partner mainly takes care of the tools. We have a checklist that we go through to try to get everything in line we have pack out kits. So these are the things that carry all your tools I'm trying to see if in that picture is any of those red boxes if you can see any of those those are label it'll say prep kit that needs the scrapers and the cocking and the gloves and whatever, whatever it be. Ladders, you know, I always on an estimate I always take a video. So by the time Josh is going to do a job that's going to start in a week I'm like hey here's what's coming up. You're going to need a 28 we're going to need to lift this, but we always try to get most that stuff done ahead of time, or the paint ahead of time. And then at our home base at headquarters. We have things labeled on the shelf so here's our exterior paint. Here's our interior paint. Here's specific colors. Here's paint that can be used on every job and here's all your prime. So we try to keep things organized as best we can. But that what is one of the things is I'm trying to get better at how, how can we not have. How can we always have all the tools we need. So beyond beyond at the job site how do you keep your employees motivated between jobs between jobs. It seems like our crew really likes moving from one job to the next. So if we have a job that's going to take a long time. It's nice to have maybe a couple jobs going at once and we can shuffle some people over here for a few days just so they get a breath of fresh air from the job that they've been working on for two weeks straight. Or something like that we had a job that took us I think five weeks this summer. It was a big old parsonage. It was massive it took us. I think over 40, maybe 50 ounce of paint six different colors it was crazy and the crew is getting tired I could tell I mean and I can't blame them. But what I ended up doing was had a few smaller jobs that the crew could go to and just a couple guys at a time to go to so we can try to sprint as best we could to the finish and when I can sense that people are getting tired. That's when I try to step in and be on the job as much as I can because they need that energy. Cool, well this is all very important. Now, let's get down to what we sometimes call brass tacks here this is, you know, to make this link that front end of the business, you know the customer side to the back end the operations. There's the financial model which links the front of the, you know, which links the front to the backstage. On the one hand, there's costs. There's you know you have paint to buy ladders employees to pay at the same time you're trying to bring in enough revenue to cover those costs and hopefully you know pay salaries and get some money in your pocket as well. So. And there's different ways you can set up these these models will talk about different business models in a moment. What are some of the major, you know, probably to make the longs to question short, how do you make enough money. So, you know, you study the market first you see what's the market rate for a painter. And you kind of figure out exactly what your costs per day are per hour are you figure out what you're going to need to make for the week. And, you know, if you have a baseline of what you're going to need to make for the week, your job should tell you whether or not you'd be able to do these jobs. I, for the first year, we always were making we were doing jobs that we were making a little bit of money here and there, and then we ended up getting a lot of support and we've gained traction and now more people know about us we have more reviews we have like hey we did this, and now there's this much demand, and there's this much supply of our labor and supply of paying labor in general. So, we're honestly in a point where we can bid high. And that's a luxury to be able to do so we did jobs to try to reach a certain profit margin that wind up being able to reinvest into the business and keep on growing that's the mode we're in. We're pretty much just trying to reinvest everything we can into the business now so it's well oiled machine five years from now. And that's where I'm very, very happy that me and my business partner are aligned, and we're in this for a long term goal. But also, you know, I've asked multiple I've met painters I've met contractors, we've tried different rates, you know where we've tried to charge people X amount and X amount for the same service just really just shooting in the dark. I'll be honest, like, a lot of this stuff, we didn't know we were just experimenting we're trying things we're seeing what would stick. Now that we've kind of figured out we have our rates that are pretty much set. You know, the only thing that really depends on whether or not we're going to change the rate is, are we painting a closet or are we painting, you know, a 20, you know, put ceiling with a chandelier and a foyer that everybody's going to walk into. It's mainly just kind of knowing what the scope of the job is going to be but we're, we're affordable. We're not all, you know, we're not something that the average person can afford and the fact that we can finish things quickly also helps us remain profitable throughout the whole process. Yeah, I think what's really important here is that what you were saying was now that you've been in a business for a while you have a good idea of what your price point is what your costs are. Early on when you were just starting it was a lot of experimentation it was a lot of shooting in the dark, but it was more than that you were also just saying that there's a lot of data gathering you did you looked at you you cost it out what the paints cost. You looked at what what are typical market rates for painters. You looked at what typical market rates for what prices are. So it's not that you were completely shooting in the dark or completely you yes we were experimenting, but you're doing this based on data. And I think the strongest business plans, especially these early days at the very start while it's still an idea and wants, you know, an early stage businesses, try and educate and guesstimate as much as you can find some comparable out there. Another business another painting business maybe another carpentry business a plumbing business to be able to get a feel for what customers are willing to pay for, so that you're not charging too much or too little. Likewise, asking other people you know for estimates, let's say your parents have a home, they can call in some painters through an estimate they're sneaky ways of honestly getting market data, and we encourage creativity here. I, I'll say one more thing so I used to, at the beginning, we lose a bit and I'd be like, What was the other painters bit, and then sometimes they would be like, I'm not going to share that information with you, or other times they're like, Well, we got a few bids and they would tell us what they were sometimes that even send us over the bid and I'm like, Wow. So being able to see another painting companies bid also helped me improve my own estimates and see that we could create a competitive advantage by having a nicer estimate that has more information other than yeah it's going to be 1000 bucks and you know, I can do it in 2024, you know, like, and there's no follow up or doesn't show you how many hours it's going to be and what kind of paint they're going to use and what sheen they're going to use and you know, are they going to clean up after themselves what services are they going to call the baseboards like all these things so we try to keep it our estimate one of the ways in which we're able to get a higher bid value that stands strong against other bid. It's just by giving more information about what it's going to be like to work with us. Yeah, so it's interesting you know better customer service leads to you being able to charge higher prices. Indeed. This is not rocket science here. Now the last part here is how does all these pieces these four pieces and parts of of the business model fit together. And there are a couple of different angles you can take and developing a business model. And I'm just going to run through a few here and then ask Zach if any of these that are on the slide and the screen now actually reflect how he does business. One it could be a customer focused model it could be what we call B2B or B2C so business to business or business to customer. It could also be the multi sided or peer to peer model for those of you who are doing trading on eBay or Amazon or other online services. This is where you're trading you know where there's a platform like eBay, which is making it possible for you to sell your stuff to someone else in the marketplace so there's actually two customers involved. It could depend on what you're selling are you selling a product, or you're selling the service, or is you taking a product and selling it like a service. You know, you know this is kind of where if you go to a coffee shop they're selling both that they're selling a cup of coffee as well as the atmosphere. Now are you selling a standardized product where everyone gets the same exact thing. Or are you customized that when you go to that sandwich shop are they just giving you the you know you taking a piece of the plastic wrap sandwich off the shelf, or are they making it fresh for you as you like it. It also depends, you know, and you could also be there on selling a product but you're selling an insurance just to prevent something bad from going wrong. What is your price or your lower versus a high price strategy or using demand based pricing which changes based on changing market conditions. One of the oldest business models out there is an auction where the customers actually help to set the price. Or you could have a subscription or a lease model where people are paying in bits and pieces over time. It also depends also where you're selling it you're selling it a store online or in person someone's home, who owns it. Do you own everything from you know, if you're talking about coffee from their plantation to the to the barista, or you franchising this your business out. And who sometimes there's a lot of businesses and particularly here in Vermont where employees and members are owners of the business, you know, we have a local food court whether it's member owned. We have other companies in Vermont which are owned by their employees not the founder. And then also who does the work normally you think of employees doing work. A lot of times these days you're open sourcing your crowds sourcing you're providing self service, you know self service checkouts at stores. Interesting model. Likewise, there's other ways if you want to generate even more revenues. So popular terms you've probably heard about a freemium models you offer something free to attract people and make them think about buying a premium service many of you who are doing online gaming. Start up by playing the game for free and then you're buying add on services. Sometimes you go to fast food stores and they're saying do you want to super super size that it's another way of making more money. Sometimes there's loss leader models you sell one product like bananas in the grocery store to get people in the door to buy other products. Or you're selling someone like a laser printer or a razor holder and then that's cheap but the pieces and parts they need to keep on using that laser printer expensive. That's one end of the spectrum the other end of the spectrum is you could be trying to be more sustainable. You could be doing a buy one give one model, you know, which is often the case with shoes or other bits of clothing. It could be like Zach is doing probably we'll talk about in a moment that you're giving some percentage of revenues or profits to a charitable source. Likewise, you could have a model which involves sharing cars or bicycles among multiple people. It could involve recycling old products out cycling old, you know, turning trash into treasure bio memory. I think it's one of the most interesting we're trying to look to nature to see how nature has done something and you turn this into a business. So Zach, of these different elements of pictured here. Well, how would you phrase your business model what ties the customers the value proposition the operations the finance all together into an overall strategic vision for your company. What's kind of central to your business and your business model. I like the bullet point standard versus customized. Because I think you could see painting as like oh it's just a standard thing, but I think we go above and beyond to actually customize it. So do you want these cabinets as a spray finish or brush pen estimate for you to see. Say that spray finish is going to be more expensive, but it's going to look nicer. Things like, you know, we get we can do this estimate with an accent wall, or we can do without an accent wall, or, you know, we can price this out if we are sanding it, or you just want us to switch the color of the wall so creating some customization within the estimate being sustainable in a social way. Obviously, we are the only painting company that does it the way we do it. So that makes us stand out from all the rest of the one, all the rest of the companies right off the bat. And for Vermont, and people that care about the community that they live in and the businesses that operate within it. It's a huge sell for a lot of people, and it makes everybody on our crew I think feel a little bit better about the job that they're doing because they know that part of the money is going towards an active cause and their community. What is the price low versus premium price. You have to be careful because you have to know your customer in this instance. I always ask the question my number one question. Are the factors that are going to contribute to the painting company that you choose right there. You're able to tell exactly how you should bid this one out. Are you dealing with somebody who just wants to get these things done tomorrow. Are they going to be making the decision because you're the best painter. Are they going to make the decision because, you know, you're related to them or they, you know, they know you so You got to understand your customer and what they're looking for in a painting company and that'll help dictate what kind of price you can put on it. And that'll dictate type of person that you send over there obviously we have 10 people so if there's a scale of, you know, a ranking list of who's the best painter, then you'll know who to send over to the most difficult job. Not everybody on our crew can spray cabinet, but we have about two people that can do it. So, that's, I think, three bullet points the low versus premium price. That's a question that you have to ask your customer standard versus customized. We try to customize the painting process so it feels like we're trying to figure out what's the best painting job for you. And then just being a sustainable company that has a social mission that wants to help out the community that wants to stick in Vermont and help Vermont. So that definitely resonates with a lot of people around here. Now what I really like about your story here is that a lot of these things cross boundaries like your social mission is not only important for the customers it's important for your employees. You're also talking about the customization about what you're offering, but you also highlighted to offer that to customers you have to have the right people on board. And you have to schedule them appropriately so that all these pieces and parts are highly interrelated and this is why it's important to you can't just think about the price you have to think about your vision your mission. You have to think about what products you're selling and who and why, so that all these pieces and so actually when the customer is happy in the end. So it's very important that when you think about your business model you think about how all these four different aspects, the customer the value the operations the finances all hanging together. Now, getting to the end of, we have another 10 minutes left in this hour I'm getting to the final bit, which actually you got a two for here two for the price of one. One, when you have a business model the last time I wanted to talk about was how do you make both an impactful and a sustainable business model. At the same time, these also helps you to build a more impactful and sustainable pitch, when you actually pitch your idea in this Vermont pitch company challenge. So the first part, and this relates in part to Zach's origin story is what I call the narrative test, you know what is your story, how are you pulling on a hard strings, how are you attracting people to say, Oh, I want to hear more. So Zach will talk about the class he took and about the, the chair, you know, the fellow who came into talking to him about homelessness and how this got him going. This is why I started with this origin story because it drags you it pulls you and it gets you interested to hear how he actually is going to deliver on what sounds like a very hard promise how can you in painting which I imagine is relatively thin more than still deliver an excellent product and have money left over to donate to charity. And then we've gone through the different parts of the business model this is what I call the numbers test this where you see that little brain scratching itself to say how do we, how do we make this work is the market big enough are the operations feasible. Can I be profitable enough. Soon enough note that I'm saying profitable enough soon enough nothing as fast as possible no matter what the cost because a lot of times, especially here in Vermont we're a little bit more reserved. And we want to make sure things work, not only for ourselves but for employees and for the market. So it might take a little bit more time and that's perfectly fine. Third part and this is what investors are really interested in is the people test is the team unique is the team special. Does the team have passion. Can you believe that they're actually deliver on their goal especially if you have a younger team like Zach has. How can, how can he tell his story such that they believe that they have the enthusiasm the passion and the skill to deliver on this. Now beyond these three basic tests which all investors and venture capitalists are looking at for in when they invest in business models. I have two more which I picked up over time which are also critical. First two investors and that the first one is the product to test. That is how you develop an organization that's not just one product because people typically, especially if you're looking for outside investment they want a second product they want a second service. Now the nice thing about having a second product or service is the first one might not work out fortunately painting for Zach is working out quite nicely. That said there are other companies companies you're quite familiar with Google Google started as a search engine company search did not make them money. That was their plan a actually their plan D was AdWords was selling advertising services that's what's making that's what made Google money from the start. It wasn't the search the search enabled the making money through ads, but that wasn't their first plan. Last but not least in particular in Vermont and very much in particular at the University of Vermont. I like to add what I call the planet test. And this is what I talked about the start of the talk you see the smiling faces you see the environmental hands there, saying that creating social environmental value on top of your basic business is critical. So, please, if you're talking especially for this competition think about how is your business venture embedded in your local community, the planet how is it giving back to the community beyond just making profit for you and your employees and delivering a good product to customers. How does it maintain a regenerate resource that as opposed as opposed to using them up. How does it create value for multiple stakeholders, not only the customers but maybe their families and friends and the people in the neighbors. Likewise, how does it honor seasonality and what I call bio regionality that is probably the longest word in this presentation. And that is how you in tune with the local environment. So when you're developing a good business model and making your pitches for this competition. Think about first the narrative test how you're going to pull those heartstrings. What are the numbers test you know how what are the facts and figures to actually back up your emotional promises. And that said, who are the people involved, or how is your business growing into the future what might be your backup plans. Last but not least, how are you doing good for your local community, the society and the planet. So Zach, thinking about your business model what are some of the highlights. Now that we've seen these five tests word you fit painting with purpose in. If we had to put them in one of these five or which of those which those have been most important to you which of those have resonated the most with your customers. Has it been your origin story has it been the facts and figures has it been your team, the combination thereof. And the extra products I mean I'm probably almost half answering your questions we go along but you're offering add on services, not just painting. And that's making it possible you're also you're giving back this is why the one church took you on as a customer as opposed to other older more established painters. I think after looking at these the two that I would settle on would probably be the story and narrative tests. Our website has been a big driver of traffic, a lot of our customers look at our website first and they read the about page. And when they're submitting a request for an estimate, they actually write something about our website they say like oh the website looks nice I love your story something like that so clearly the story and the narrative helps us pull the customer in. And then the planet test, I would say that our ability to help with a social mission is very helpful painting on the other hand as something to help save the environment that's a whole another. I can't. I would say that that's something that I always think about we always have trash at the end of the day. And I'm trying to think of ways that we can limit that or recycle a little bit better. We use old painting cans. As cut cans. It's there's some lingo but we basically reuse some of our old materials over and over that other painting companies might throw out but that also helps in a profitability manner, but I would say the story and narrative is the way for us to draw that customer people care about our mission they care about what we do for the community, and then the numbers test for me as a business owner is, I think why we see so many people reach out is because we're a good painter, the market is big because the season is short, especially for exterior painting, and it was rainy this summer so even more work out pushed next year. There are a lot of people that need painting jobs and they're just not enough pain. I might be saying a lot but the one stat that I stick with is for every seven people in the trades that are retiring. There's only one person for a place. So I think while in the early part of this cycle, a lot of trades people are in their 40s and 50s. Those people are going to be in their 50s and 60s. 60s is every most people are going to be retired so there's going to be even less paint her long term. And I think that in the next 10 years 20 years, we have an amazing opportunity to just really gather a lot of market share. On that positive note, I think that's a wonderful way to end our session for tonight. I'm wondering if there's been any questions from our audience. We have two minutes left. I just wanted to highlight we've covered a lot of ground with Zach's help tonight. We talked about what is entrepreneurship and value creation. We talked about the key parts of a business model. We've talked about different business model patterns and what makes for a good business model in a pitch. If people are interested in checking out painting with purpose, there's the website is here on the screen. I'd ask everyone if you could, you know, I'd love to give Zach around or pause or being here tonight. And I'm curious for the people. Are there any questions for us before we wrap up in the next two minutes? Was it 758 here on the East Coast? We have two more minutes to go. Let me stop sharing my slides here so that you can actually see. Okay, we have a question here from Alana Wistrom. What is what makes a good goal? A good goal for a business. So I agree that it was what makes a good goal for the society and for the planet, a good goal for the business. Do you want to tackle that, Zach? A good goal for a business takes some time to create. It's not going to be something that you can think about and then make that your goal. You really have to think about what goals you're about to set. Feasibility is a huge bullet point and whether or not something is a good goal. I remember one of the first goals you set for your business back in the day before you started painting with purpose. You said after Paul Dragon gave that speech, you said, I'm going to create a business and donate 100% of my profits to charity. And what did your teacher tell you? I don't think I ever said that, to be honest. Well, okay. Or at least you were planning it and then at least the way that I remember the story was then you said, okay, the teacher said, well, maybe donate a third of the profits to charity and keep the rest. Yeah. I had some big wild ideas, for sure. In the early going, what I thought was achievable turned out to be less achievable and things that I didn't think were achievable have become achievable. So there's definitely, that's why I say feasibility. Like, make sure that it's something that you can feasibly do. Run some numbers, figure out how much sales you're going to need to make a certain amount of profit. Figure out your numbers, figure out if you have enough time to do so because everybody has a life besides their business. But yeah, I mean, find out if a goal is feasible and make some steps, start writing a little bit of a step, a little bit of a pattern to see what those steps would be in order to get to that goal. I've had many ideas and goals and I've shut them down before I've gotten too far into them because I'm just like, it's too far out. I just can't do it. And that's fine. It's fine. You got to know when to give up on something or put something on the shelf for when there's more time down the road or when you've made more connections when you've met the right people to achieve a goal. And when the goal is not within your reach until you meet somebody, and then all of a sudden, you're a little bit closer to it. You don't have to put goals and shut them down and destroy them, but you can put things on a shelf. There's a lot of things on a shelf that you can come back to. Yeah, so I think on that positive note of don't give up your dreams, just maybe put them on a shelf for a little while and pull them down later. Maybe prevent the right people, look got the right skills experience, right funding to make those dreams alive. So don't forget your dreams. Just wanted to wait for them a little while but not too long. So with that I see we're at 802 or two minutes over time so I will turn the floor back to broken to brilliant pathways for any wrap up comments at the very end. Thank you. Thank you, Zach. Thank you for your time. Thank you all for this. Thank you for joining us for all of you who are in attendance. If you have not already checked out the Vermont pitch website we encourage you to do that. It is UVM Vermont pitch challenge that's the easiest way to Google it you can find us right in that search engine. If you have any questions for us you can also email us at vtpitch at UVM.edu, and we will see you all next month. Thanks so much. Alright, thank you very much.