Joseph Enghaus hopes to be busy wielding a paintbrush this summer.And he won’t be alone: As a regional manager for College Works Painting, he’ll be assembling a team of painters. And they will have to pass what he calls his grandma test ó “meaning if they couldn’t be around my grandma, then I don’t want them on the job site,” he said.Through College Works, students get a chance to run their own house-painting business, giving them real-world business experience and a way to earn money for college. Enghaus, 19, is in charge of two zones ñ- one in Falcon and the other near Garden of the Gods, which means a lot of legwork. He has been going door to door asking people if they need any painting done and offering free estimates for the work.”The biggest thing with College Works is most painters wait for the business to come to them,” he said. “With us, we’re going to the people.”Going to the people, though, has meant hitting the pavement on some chilly days. “I’ve been running door to door just to keep warm. Ö I think the biggest problem is with the snow, it’s hard for people to look out and think of summer and painting. But I’ve run into a lot of nice people.”Enghaus graduated last spring from Falcon High School. He has two younger sisters, 17 and 15; his mother is an assistant manager at Farmers State Bank in Falcon and his dad runs his own business, Adept Plumbing and Heating. For the past several years, he worked for his dad during the summer and other breaks from school; now he works at Noodles & Company in Fort Collins, where he is in his freshman year at Colorado State University. He is majoring in business management, with a minor in computer sciences.”Tech is the field to go into if you want to change the world,” Enghaus said. He is working on building his resume with the goal of applying for an internship with Google.He jumped at the chance to add some management experience to that resume by working for College Works.”I was in theater in high school all the way through, so I know how to talk to people and talk in front of people, but the management side of everything is very different. So that’s why I hopped on it, because whether painting or a tech business or what have you, you still have to have those management skills in order to be successful.”But before working on those management skills, he has to learn all about paint. Enghaus has already been through a College Works program on painting and also will attend a training program led by Sherwin Williams,”where they will teach me everything,î he said. ìThen, everyone we hire has to go through the same training course. That way, the homeowner can feel confident it’s not some random person who’s painting their house.îHis two closest friends are attending CSU as well; and, when he can, he hangs out with them to “just relax, play video games, watch Netflix, all the regular college kid stuff.”But Enghaus acknowledged that free time these days is a rarity; during the week he has classes and his job at Noodles & Company; on the weekends, he is back in Falcon working to drum up College Works business; painting will begin once he is done with the school year in mid-May.ìI’m working seven days a week and trying to keep up with school,” he said. “I think my favorite quote is that if you want something done, you want to hand it to a busy person because a busy person will find a way to fit it in. I don’t mind losing a little bit of sleep if it means I’m going to be successful in the end.”(To contact Joseph Enghaus, call 719-694-6066. To learn more about College Works Painting, go to http://www.collegeworks.com.)
