A brush with real life

Do you sit in your cubicle and fantasize about running your own business? Do you wonder if you have what it takes to start a company, hire its employees, oversee their work, market their services and take responsibility for their ultimate success or failure? Do you wish all those finance and marketing courses you took in college had been less abut corporate strategy and organizational behavior and more about how to strike out on your own. As a parent, if you ever do take the plunge into entrepreneurship, you might have only trial and error to depend on. But your college-age son or daughter has another option; an internship. Naperville resident Brian Fencl, 23, a student at Northern Illinois University, recently began a rather unique, paid internship with College Works Painting. This summer, he will participate in the company’s Management Adventure program, which is designed to teach real-world skills by having interns run all aspects of a small business. College Works generates revenue by taking a portion of the payment for each home painted by its interns. In turn, the interns gain the kind of hands-on experience they can’t get in the classroom. “I’m doin to to learn,” Fencl said. “I’m going to learn if I like running my own business.” Fencl learned about College Works when its representatives visited one of his college business classes. He was impressed by the program because it goes “beyond the spread sheet” and right into the nitty gritty of being a small business owner. After being accepted, he went through three consecutive weekends of intensive training classes in which he learned how to overcome objections, estimate costs, close a sale, recruit and train employees and manage a budget. Before school let out, Fencl spent evenings and weekends prospecting for customers and giving estimates on painting jobs. Next, he hired a crew of experienced painters for the jobs he lined up. College works gives its interns an initial line of credit at paint and supply stores to get them started, which they are expected to pay back at the end of summer. Fencl’s earnings will be contingent on the number of painting jobs he sells and completes before he heads back into school in the fall. For Fencl, a finance major who will be a senior at Northern next year, hard work is nothing new. Ever since he was a student at Naperville Central High School, he has held down a job. “(My parents) always told me to earn my own money….to stand on my own two feet,” he said. “I’m kind of glad that they’re (like that) because I think I have a very good work ethic.” Students like Fencl are exactly who College Works are geared toward. “(Our programs) is basically designed for the classic overachiever – people who want to go out there and conquer the world,” said 24-year-old- Sean Miller, Fencl’s district manager. “People come out of the program with tremendous work experience.” Miller was a college works intern himself when he was a student. “It changed everything for me,” he said. “I had high ambitions and lofty goals but I didn’t know what it would take to achieve those goals. The biggest thing (I learned) is, life is what you put into it.” “It really makes you be proactive. You plan for the worst and hope it never happens, he said. For example, Fencl plans to pay his crew $10 to $15 per hour. His own salary comes out of the profit margin added into the estimates he gives his customers. Though he will be acting as an on-site manager for the crew he hires, he might have to pitch in on a job if one of his painters calls in sick or decides to quit. And he will have to figure out how to stay within his budget if rain forces him to cancel work for a day or two. He will be like a real-life Tom Sawyer – except instead of recruiting his friends to paint a fence for Aunt Polly, he will be recruiting skilled laborers to paint several Naperville houses. And it is solely up to him t keep bringing in more work Fencl has marketed his business by passing out fliers, going door to door in his neighborhood, putting up signs on the lawns of people who have already contracted with him, and just spreading the word. ”He dropped some fliers off in my office,” said Naperville Realtor Scott Gerami, who asked Fencl to give him an estimate on his own house after reading one of his fliers. “He walked around (my house) and after a half hour, he gave me a quote. He said he would call me in a week and he did. I was really impressed because a lot of people say they’re going to call back and they never do.” Gerami said at first he was concerned because College Works’ parent company, the National Services Group is based in California. But finding out Fencl is from Naperville put his mind at ease, so he hired him. “It’s good to know I’m not dealing with someone whizzing through town,” Gerami said.