P3 STORY
Founder Background
- Raised on a small farm in Woodinville WA
- Farm work came before homework or play
- Learned strong work ethic from a young age
- Had a 3.5 year-old older brother, so I was always trying to keep up with him
- My older brother used to use me to sell his soccer candy door to door. He carried it, I talked.
- I took any odd job I could get outside of farm chores and school.
- I often weeded neighbor’s yards, mowed grass, cleaned, worked as a clown to make a buck.
- My dad did not believe in allowance, if we wanted money to buy things we had to go make it.
- When I was 11, I took over my brother’s paper route, as he got a bigger route.
- “My” route stayed under his name because you had to be at least 12 Y.O. to legally work
- That first route was 65 papers, by the time I graduated high school, it was about 300.
- I learned a lot about customer service, discipline, money and collections in that job.
- I also worked construction in high school, and on a dairy farm as a milk processor.
- Paid for college at Shoreline CC with a AA in Business, by working construction.
- Paid for college at UW, by working construction.
- Worked as QC Manager and Production Manager at Clearwater Spas, after graduating.
- Disappointed with company, I went back to construction for a year
The Foundation of P3
- After subbing out some striping work for the company, I had an idea.
- Shortly after getting married, broke and hungry for success, I started a business striping parking lots, while still working full time at my construction job.
- As part of my regular job, started striping the parking lots owned by the construction company I worked for over the last 11 years, with a 4” roller.
- Then I decided I could also do that on my off work time. My first company name was Striping Technology.
- I started cold calling and striping other parking lots on my off hours for $150 each.
- I bought a striping machine, from Keith Antonius, who would later become my business partner at P3, 6 years later. Keith took me out to a few of his jobs to show me how to run the machine in exchange for some free labor.
- Went to National Pavement Show in fall of 1998, and met Bob Hansen from Edmonds WA
- We decided to open a business, which for a time operated under Striping Technology, then Bayview Seal Coat, then Nexpave International, Inc.
- I spent the next 4 years behind a jack hammer during the day, and bidding at night and on the weekends. This schedule took 4 years to build a wedge between me and my business partner.
P3 is born
- I called up Gerry Guertin at Pacific Coatings – a seal coat material supplier in Seattle (where our office is today). He had supplied Nexpave with Seal Coat material over the years. He and I had conducted many conversations about him getting back into the contracting business. So when Nexpave dissolved, I called him up.
- At the time, he and Keith Antonius had been meeting about starting a new contracting business, and I joined in as the third partner – and P3 was born. P3 originally stood for three partners, and then we built a name that consisted of three P’s. I designed the logo.
- We incorporated in March of 2004. I put in $80K in cash, Keith put in $80k in equipment, and Gerry gave us a third of the stock in the Manufacturing Company (Pacific Coatings) he owned, as his contribution to P3. So we were all 1/3 partners in two businesses.
- Over the next three years P3 doubled sales every year, while the manufacturing company stayed stagnant.
- Keith and I replaced the entire fleet of trucks over the next two years, to get ready for the economy to rebound. Many seasonable employees would say that our equipment was the best of any company they had worked for.
- 2014 and 2015 P3 made strides to grow sales, and add staff.
- 2016 is a new year, where we look to expand marketing, sales and production efforts to build a company that will continue to grow by introducing a higher level of marketing, technology and leadership to a low tech industry.
- P3 built and has maintained a very strong reputation with key customers over the years. P3 has also built a good reputation among our competitors.
- P3 has also been pushed hard by me over the years, as a hard driving individual that has not taken enough time to celebrate the wins, amongst people, customers or jobs.
