Today we’d like to introduce you to Neil Vanides.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Neil. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
To pay for college, I had no assistance, so I had to set out for odd jobs and that meant doing a little bit of everything. I was accepted into the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Acting BFA program which only admitted 12 students a year. This was a huge honor and I knew I would have to sacrifice having a social life and even getting a car until I had enough money saved up for school.
Now I grew up with divorced parents and two older siblings, so usually I was accustomed to working for something if I needed it. Add to that the fact that my mother has a disability and reason would dictate that I understood from a young age that nothing worth having in life comes easy. My mother introduced me to odd jobs when I was in elementary school. She signed me up to be a paper-boy for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, so everyday I would wake up at 3am, go to the presses, load up my Mom’s old Dodge Ares station wagon, as high as I could, and Mom would drive while I would run out and deliver each and every paper in town. (Mind you it snows where I’m from so this was a life-lesson building experience) -Then I’d go to school.
So, the summer before college I had three jobs: I worked as a Marketing Research Associate, sold cars for Ford at a dealership, and started painting houses. I slept 6 hours a day, ate twice, and rode my bicycle everywhere. By the time college rolled around, I had saved $8,752.00 and some odd cents, and with my newly established credit was able to take out a partial student loan as well. That Summer taught me a lot, and while I went to school to be an Actor, I also obtained an associates degree in Television Production & Broadcast Journalism from Strive Media Institute and started a small business soon after with a friend I met in college that would change the way I saw money forever.
I met this kid named Andrew, he was a trip. He had long hair, a beard, and everyone called him Jesus. The guy was a total character and loved playing hackee sack with me during our breaks at school. Well, one day Andrew asked me what I did as a side job and I had no answer because my classes started at 8am and went until 5pm, then we had rehearsals from 6-9. Andrew just asked, “What about weekends?” -I had nothing. So he asked me to join him sanding and resurfacing hardwood floors for a guy he knew.. Now the guy was a slum-lord, no questioning that, but Andrew was not. Andrew was an artist and he always wanted to know more than anyone in the room. So one day after another Andrew would have a new technique he wanted to try, a new stain, a new application pad until we wound up being the best flooring guys in town. Andrew and I made a lot of money, but we didn’t spend it on flashy cars or parties.. well okay maybe a little, but FIRST, we re-invested the money we made into the business. We would buy better tools, extra materials, rent storage facilities, barns and even renovate our basements to become warehouses until we expanded into painting, roofing, window installation, decking, tile, and you name it.
The business was great and we eventually merged with another company, but that was when things slowly started falling apart. I finished college, Had been working part-time jobs between client bookings, and decided I wanted to try for a big push here in California towards actually pursuing my acting career. I had booked a series of commercials with Ragu Spaghetti Sauce and was invited to come to Pasadena and be featured on a float during the Rose Bowl Parade. -How could I say “no” to that?! So I flew here, did the parade, and fell in love with California.
I never thought I would lift a paintbrush or sand a floor, or design a custom piece of furniture again.. but I moved to UP(st)ART in Koreatown and my manager at the time wasn’t getting me any introductions so I realized quickly that I could make a lot of money here while waiting for my acting career to pick up. I started Laying concrete, then replaced old windows, and eventually helped design and build around 150 sleeping pods for shared-space dwelling. At that point, I was approached by an interior design business that asked if I was interested in installing lighting fixtures and building furniture, cleaning out their old location and helping them organize their new one… I realized I needed to self incorporate again, and so I started hiring my friends and training them as they would fall in and out of acting work, and together, we made a lot of beautiful properties into wonderful homes.
I’m proud to say that I have employed four of my dearest friends, all of whom come from the Midwest, and I have loved watching them learn the industry approved methods, seeing them grow in confidence, watching them shift how they view their worth and believing in themselves more with the passing of each day. I love what I do, and I treasure doing it with my friends whom I believe in.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Oh, there were a ton of obstacles… The first time I built a house from the ground up the property was undeveloped, so we had to drive huge 2X8X16″ boards up a muddy hill until the trucks couldn’t go any further, and then manually carry them for about three blocks up the hill while avoiding toads and snakes and bees flying all around us. It was a monstrous experience, the boards were extremely heavy, and I only weighed about 160 lbs at the time so by the end of each day I was more cut and shredded than tony hawk’s skateboard!
Another time, I was asked to repair a cedar shingle roof in Wisconsin, the roof was pitched at 65 degrees and the repair was urgent because we were in the midst of a blizzard. The temperature was about 8 degrees Fahrenheit before subtracting the windchill and the wind was moving at about 15mph. If we miss-stepped or our harnesses failed, we would fall right down three stories onto jagged ice which rolled right into a graveyard… Did I mention this was on Halloween? -We survived, but the truck stalled three times on the way home. -I had stay in bed for a week after that one.
Here in LA, while assembling the Sleeping Pods on-site I was also tasked with assembling around 120 lockers, as well as sanding and repainting exterior doors around the compound. I was sanding the last door and this was last summer when the news reported three heat strokes and a temperature of 109 degrees Fahrenheit -Well I was heatstroke number four. I fell to the ground slowly and blacked out until I heard a loud noise about an hour later and came to. I quickly painted the door, hung it, and drank a gallon of water. I took two days off after that before returning to work. My mind wasn’t even able to make sense of simple things so it’s a miracle that I even made it home. -Stay hydrated California, you’re lives literally depend on it!
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We are a company that works for the client with what I like to call “Transparent Pricing.” I show the client every expense either via receipt or in a chart, and I do not mark any of these items up. Contractors and Handymen are known for padding their invoicing and marking up costs to give themselves a little safety cushion between gigs. -We don’t do this. I show hours worked, the working wage for each employee, the jobs that each employee performed, and then walk through everything weekly with the clients, if not more frequently should questions arise.
We do most forms of home repair and modernization. We install Tile, We Repair and Install Drywall. We do Mudding, Painting, Internal Electrical like rigging lights and replacing old out-dated fixtures and outlets and switches. We Custom Build, so you name it, we’ll take a look and if it seems like it can be done wisely and safely: we’ll do it! Currently, I’m working on converting a 100 years old Imported set of Italian Church Doors into Barn-Door Styled Room Partitions. -It’s exciting stuff!
What really sets us apart from other companies is not something that a lot of guys my age talk about openly, but here it is: I pray. I pray to my God every day and thank him for my work. I thank God for my friends, for bringing them here to share this experience with me. I thank God for my clients and I pray that he empowers me and strengthens me to be a blessing to them and to their homes. I stop sometimes and I ask myself during an easy day, “Should I charge for this?” and if I feel like I’d rather count the day as a gift, I don’t charge the clients. This is what I believe makes my business different. I’m not in it to get rich. -I’m doing this because it has power in it. If you do something you love for people you care about while empowering the people in your life, YOU ARE RICH. I want to succeed and develop my acting career, so I’m here to build an empire. I want to see my friends succeed, and I want to know that I did everything I could to help them get there.
What were you like growing up?
As a child, I was a certified gifted mind. This meant I was very smart, I could figure just about anything out if it was presented to me, BUT, experiencing my parent’s divorce was very hard because I could see the many layers that caused it. I hated seeing pain and suffering in my parents’ eyes. This shaped me differently from other kids.
I started seeking friends who seemed to understand that life isn’t perfect. I started trying to get people who wouldn’t normally hang out to be friends and eventually, I realized that what I was really doing was building a diverse network. I saw the value in each of these kids and they all thought differently, and that different thinking enriched our experiences. I wish the world could see adults the way I saw my friends as a boy.
Because my Mom moved a lot and I had to change schools several times, I was constantly thrown into culture shock and it taught me to see people’s hearts instead of their skin. To hear a person when they spoke instead of waiting for them to finish. I heard many things that resonated in me and I would think about them for weeks, and it would sometimes make me cry, while other times I’d laugh from seeing how wrong my previous understanding of the world had been. I think this is why I always loved acting. -You can be handed a world in print, read it, research it, memorize it, and then like magic, if you truly let the text dwell in you and you yourself abide in the world of the script, your understanding of the real world grows. It’s nuts and I love it!
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/neilvanideshomeservices/
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