Alexander Daniel Weinshilboum

In one sentence, what has CW meant to you?

College Works Painting singlehandedly changed the direction of my life from normal, to extraordinary.

How did your CW experience impact your career? Immediately after graduation? Now?

It completely changed my career path. I found a passion in business and shifted from a comp-si to a sales path.

What do you want to tell your clients about what it meant to work with them and how it has helped you get to where you are today?

Steven Costarella, the most consequential project I sold and produced in 2019/2020. I remember this story perfectly despite it occurring half a decade ago. It was the height of the sales season, production had just begun. I hired my crew, comprised mainly of people I knew from high school, and I was determined to get them enough work to be full time the entirety of Summer. We had already produced a couple jobs so I decided to let my crew chief, and friend supervise the project while I went out and sold more jobs. My crew chief informed me of the progress they made that day as I was finishing up my sales prospecting. Per usual, I relayed the updates to the client. The following response I received broke me. I have the screenshot of the text Steven sent me framed on my desk to this very day. “Let’s go back to your pitch, and the focus. You walked into a program. There is paint on the porch. There is paint on the gate. There is paint on my deck. Your pitch is starting to fall apart”. Immediately I started crying. Right before I joined College Works I experienced the most difficult personal tragedies of my life all at the same time. I had family pass away, a breakup with a long time girlfriend, I was ostracized from my friend group. I was completely alone, and lost my identity. I had never felt like I accomplished anything extraordinary, College Works was my outlet to change that feeling. Seeing that text made me feel like everything was for nothing. Running 24 miles every weekend getting leads while making zero sales for 4 months while refusing to give up. Commuting 2 hours every weekend, practicing my process relentlessly every single day. In that moment I had lost. Everything felt like it was for nothing. Then I remembered Matthew Stewarts presentation about stress, and the ability to ask yourself, “will this matter in 20 years?”. I took five minutes to collect myself, then I called Steven. I promised I would fix the problem and do whatever it took, and thats exactly what I did. Six years later I can unequivocally say it was my favorite project to work on. I learned many valuable lessons.

What was the greatest lesson you learned from your CW experience?

Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.

How have the friendships and networks you built during CW affected you?

I currently work with several College Works Painting alumni and many of them have become my closest friends. I’ve known most of them for over half a decade and still continue to make memories with them to this day.

If you had to come up with a one line slogan for CW, what would it be?

Anybody can be extraordinary