Calgary, AB
I'm Maximo Slisko — a first-year business student at SAIT and the founder of Union Paint, a residential painting company serving homeowners across Calgary. Most of what I know about running a business I learned the direct way: quoting the job, doing the work, sending the invoice, and working out what I'd charge differently next time.
Alongside the painting business I work as a designer. I've spent years in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop building logos, branding and marketing material, and more recently I've been teaching myself web design — this site is built by hand, without a framework, partly because I wanted to understand what was actually happening underneath it.
The two halves feed each other more than I expected them to. Designing a brand for my own company taught me what a small business actually needs from a designer, and running a trade taught me why clear pricing and plain language beat clever copy almost every time.
I grew up around it. My dad built and ran businesses, and watching what that actually took — the hours, the responsibility, the days it doesn't go your way — is most of the reason I wanted to try it myself rather than wait until after school. I'd rather learn it by being responsible for the outcome.
If you're a homeowner in Calgary looking for a painter, a small business that needs branding or a site built, or you just want to compare notes on starting something early, you can reach me on the contact page. I write up what I'm learning as I go in the journal below — the mistakes included, since those are usually the useful part.
A residential painting company serving homeowners throughout Calgary — interior and exterior painting, fences, concrete sealing and colour consulting. It's my first real business, and every estimate and finished room teaches me something about pricing, scheduling, and earning a customer's trust before the first coat goes on.
Logos, branding and marketing material in Illustrator and Photoshop, plus web design and the front-end work to go with it. Most of it starts with a small business that needs to look like it knows what it's doing well before it has a portfolio to prove it.
I'm in my first year of business at SAIT, putting formal names to things I had already been learning by running a company. The plan is to graduate while the business keeps growing, then give it everything full-time.
Why the business is called Union Paint, and the shortlist of names I'm glad didn't make the cut.