Mixing Family & Business
One of the unanticipated joys of starting my painting business 20 years ago was that I had more time with my son as he was growing up. In some ways that seems counter-intuitive because during the early years of my business I was constantly working. But when I wasn’t driving around checking in on work sites or doing estimates I was working out of my home office.
When my son Gabriel came home from school at the end of the day, he would drop off his book bag, shout a “hi, mom” to Cynthia, and then run to the back office where I would typically be typing up an estimate or sorting receipts. We would often head to the backyard to jump on the trampoline together, put on our baseball gloves and play catch, or go out to our cul-de-sac street with our badminton rackets and hit the birdie back and forth as high as we could into the air.
It might have been no more than a half hour before I needed to get back to work and Gabriel onto his homework or having some time with Cynthia, but it afforded us some special connection time.
Sometimes I would need to clock in again in the evenings and on Saturdays, which wasn’t ideal. However, my office door was always, literally, open and I never established a policy that this is my work time so don’t bother me. Gabriel knew he could lean on my doorway anytime to check in about something, or he might ask me to come to his room so he could show me something he was doing.
In the early days I also drove Greenleaf’s one and only van at that time since I was doing all the job starts and closes and all the estimating. On the occasions when I picked up Gabe after school I could tell he was pretty psyched about getting to ride in the big van. He would hop up onto the front seat, roll down the window, turn up the radio just a bit louder, and then proudly nod to his friends waiting for their rides in lowly cars.
Cynthia was also working from home during this time in public relations and writing so she could be more present to Gabe as he was growing up too. And she and I would help each other problem-solve various challenges in our work. After some years Greenleaf hired Cynthia as a paid consultant, and she continues to provide invaluable insights and guidance as Greenleaf continues to improve and excel as a company.
Gabriel worked off and on for Greenleaf for a few years, once during a high school summer and then for a year immediately after college when he also supported the management team checking in on sites and developing social media posts. Now that he is a teacher and also an entrepreneur in his own right as the leader of indie rock band (Sonoa), he attributes some of his leadership and management skills to being in close proximity to me as I built Greenleaf from the ground up.
We didn’t know it at the time but the three of us have gained so much from each other over the years as we mixed business and family, stressful times and fun times. We continue to enjoy seeking out insights and counsel from one another in our pursuit of more excellent ways of being leaders, entrepreneurs, communicators, and good friends and family to each other and beyond.
Oh the Places You’ll Go
We’ve had the privilege of painting homes and gathering spaces for twenty years, and we wanted to give you some highlights of unusual projects! Fun facts: when Ryan Munn joined Greenleaf in 2013, he began to track project data more closely. Over those 13 years alone, we completed over 2.8K projects, most of them houses!
Below we highlight some of the unusual features and sites we’ve enjoyed working on:
On the Isles Mill One social profit center in Hamilton, we painted the top rows of new brick to faux match the multi-layered painting appearance of the historic building to adhere to historic preservation guidance. We also painted the renovated interior, the flagpole with the top finial ball painted in gold metallic paint, exterior window frames, and other exterior fixtures.
We preserved the stressed look on the Updike Farmstead / Historic Society barn. Plein air painters love to capture this destination wedding spot.
We painted the full exterior and interior of this historic Princeton home, which included refinishing the winding staircase railings to the 3rd floor where you could lean over and see all the way to the ground floor. 
We also applied acoustic paint to the sanctuary ceiling of the historic Friends Meetinghouse in Trenton and restored their pews, along with painting their entire sanctuary and exterior. 
We scaled some high ladders to hidden windows at a chapel at Nassau Presbyterian Church. We restore the windows you can’t see from the floor, as part of a major interior re-paint for that church. The windows provide beautiful ambient lighting for the chapel.
We’ve spent the past two decades painting and renovating homes and businesses throughout the region, and we THANK YOU for supporting our small, family-owned business!
This year, we marked Greenleaf’s 20th Anniversary of serving the Princeton and Central New
Jersey regions and parts of Bucks County, PA.
I was taught that it’s important to stay humble, and I stick to that gameplan, but 20 years in any business means you are doing something right—and I’d like to take a moment to share my thoughts on how and why Greenleaf Painters has been able to reach this important milestone.
There’s no “I” in “Greenleaf”
When my wife, Cynthia, and I founded Greenleaf Painters back in 2006, it was teamwork that allowed us to get our business squarely off the ground. Since Day One, when we operated out
of our West Windsor home and I would stack painting ladders in our backyard each night, Greenleaf has thrived and grown as a result of our teamwork.
In those early days, Cynthia and I would discuss our plans at the kitchen table, and my wonderful wife, also a published author and writing coach, has contributed mightily over the
years to our ongoing efforts in public relations, marketing, social media, and strategic planning.
The two of us have worked together to set a positive and productive tone, eventually bringing on stellar managers and painters. We can now proudly look back on 20 years of completed projects, lifetime memories, and new friendships and partnerships that will never be forgotten.
Then, now, and further on down the road.
To all of our customers, and to all who have appreciated the work we’ve done over the years, Cynthia and I—along with Operations Manager Ryan and Project Managers Frank and Daniel, and the entire team—want to thank you for believing in us and for giving us and our team so many wonderful opportunities to show how much we care about a job well done.
We hope to keep doing things this way for years to come! In the meantime, we wish you peace and prosperity for your family, friends, and loved ones.
-Jonathan Shenk
