Today we’d like to introduce you to Ben O’Sullivan-Pierce.
Ben, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Co-Owning Fresh Start is the only real job I have ever had. My childhood best friend (Nick Stamos) and I started the company while we were in college. We did not go to the same school, he was at Northeastern University and I went to Bentley College, but we always talked about business and dreamed about creating something big! We grew up together playing little league in Cambridge, MA and both worked on construction sites when we were teenagers; him for his dad and me for my uncle. While, I appreciated a hard day’s work on a job site I wanted to do more than just drive the dump truck and be a laborer. Fresh Start began as a very small operation; we had one truck and mostly did painting or odd jobs for people. We dropped off flyers, made tee shirts and even went door to door cold calling just to get some business! My partner and I worked on every job from the time we sold it to the time we completed it and collected the final payment. We started hiring people to work for us like carpenters and painters and slowly our business and our quality began to improve. We hired people who had been doing this work for as long as we had been alive! This taught us a lot about the construction trade and we used our education to help us manage and grow the business. We understood one simple thing about the home improvement business: people want to hire people who they like and trust. We have built that trust and reputation over the years by being honest, fair and providing people with a high quality product.
Today, we have been in business for 12 years and we have close to 30 full-time employees ranging from Carpenters, Laborers to Project Managers and Office Staff. We have had the opportunity to renovate historic buildings, build custom homes and work in some of the most beautiful areas all over Massachusetts. Our projects have been featured in newspapers & magazines and our company had taken on a life of its own. Throughout this journey, every single year was another learning step in understanding what makes a business work. We focus on doing right by our clients and our employees even when it’s hard. We don’t want to be known as the company that grew the fastest or made the most money in a year, but the company that did it the right way and was built on a solid foundation for long term success.
Has it been a smooth road?
When you are in business long enough, you see that there are many struggles long the way. First off, we started a company when we were 20 years old and people doubted us. We struggled to find good help or clients who believed in us because of our lack of experience. To get through this, we just did a great job on the projects that were given no matter the size! Eventually, more opportunities came along and the feelings of doubt went away when we knew we were on to something.
Managing people is still one of the biggest challenges of being an employer. As a boss you are responsible for these people’s careers and having enough work for everyone. At the same time when you deal with managing emotions, hiring, terminating and salary negotiations things get tricky and you are not always perfect. The best thing you can do is learn from experience and keep inspiring people by staying committed to the vision of being a great company.
Customer satisfaction is very difficult, especially in construction. It takes patience, skill and great humility to kick someone out of their house for 6 months (or more) and renovate it for them all while managing their expectations. Sometimes you do a great job and things go smooth and sometimes they do not. When you do make a mistake, you need to own up to it and pay for it. This way you never lose the client’s trust or respect and you retain their business. Being a team player and honest is the best way to keep your clients’ coming back to you and not looking elsewhere.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Fresh Start Contracting story. Tell us more about the business.
We are a General Contractor and focus on residential construction. HGTV is great and all, but we are not house “flippers”. We focus on high quality renovations for homeowners that they can appreciate for many years. We frequently build additions, dormers and finish basements so that people can better use their homes and they don’t have to move. Renovating kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms is an everyday task for us as well. We focus on Project Management as this is what most construction companies do not do well. Our projects all are have an assigned Project Manager (PM) whose responsibility is to manage the schedule, the budget our employees and sub-contractors. The middle management at Fresh Start allows us to work on both small and large scale projects in an organized way. We team up with architects, interior designers and great sub-contractors so that our clients get the full package of our experience and network.
We are extremely proud that many architects call us to introduce us to their client. They trust us to do an amazing job bringing their designs to life and managing their client’s expectations and budgets. We are consistently praised for our management techniques as much as we are for our high quality. We are just as proud of the people who work for us, as we have seen their careers grow while being part of the Fresh Start family.
What were you like growing up?
Growing up I was always the creative and entrepreneurial type. I grew up in a diverse and fun community in Cambridge, MA along with my 2 brothers. My brothers, friends and I loved sports and being outside every single day we could. In the summer we played street hockey or baseball and in the winter we shoveled snow to make some money.
As a kid, I always felt the most comfortable creating something. I was a decent artist and created a line of comic characters that I drew and made playing cards for. At school or outside of our house I would sell my drawings to anyone and everyone I could! I employed my next door neighbors at well below minimum wage and would make $8 or $10 in a day sometimes. I was hooked on being an entrepreneur from an early age. I also loved movies, and wrote, directed and acted in 3 movies that I made along with my brothers and neighborhood friends. These were all gangster movies with violence and swearing in which most of the characters were deceased by the end. Overall, my parents were a little shocked by this but supported my creativity nonetheless.
Lastly, for better or worse I was a sensitive kid and really cared about what people thought about me and what I was doing. I think this still lends itself to my advantage in customer service today, because I try to put myself in my client’s shoes and think how I might feel if I were them.
Contact Info:
- Address: 30 B Street. Burlington, MA 01803
- Website: www.freshstartcorp.net
- Phone: 617-833-9202
- Email: estimates@freshstartcorp.net
- Instagram: freshstartcorp
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/FreshStartContractingCorp/
- Other: www.houzz.com/pro/webuser-4698194/fresh-start-contracting-company
Image Credit:
Eric Roth, Ryan Maheu, Bethany Versoy
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