As a solely labor-based small business in a white glove niche market, adapting to the economic changes for the past 25 years has been incredibly challenging. From the very beginning, we have always strived to provide a high end product for our clients while maintaining a responsible level of low debt and overhead. The “product” Level One Art Installation sells is more than just what your typical single entity art installer can provide. From the moment a client contacts us until a project is completed we provide a seamless platform to ensure we cover every aspect of their project and anticipate where things could get bogged down. This requires staff to manage the communication, coordination and logistics of each job, allowing our installers to approach each project with the highest level of preparation. We’ve configured our company Sprinter vans to be outfitted with just about every possible installation scenario in mind in order to complete any given job efficiently and effectively. Our goal is that no matter which of our installers is doing any given project, the end result has the same look and feel for the client each and every time. As such, we have to keep our margins in line with what the market will bear, which is the price of aspiring to be the best in our industry.

We’ve been in business for over 25 years, and have been very protective of our reputation as a company that clients can rely on for creative solutions to their art installation projects of any size and scope. I started this company as one of those single entity art installers, slowly and steadily growing it client by client as the opportunities and larger contracts presented themselves. By keeping the overhead and debt low, we’ve managed to survive the economic highs and lows, but The Great Recession was one of the toughest periods we had to go through until the COVID crisis. At the end of 2009 the outlook for the following year looked pretty bleak. All of the momentum and growth that we had experienced up till then had dried up and we were drifting as a company. Fortunately, at the very start of 2010 one of our longtime medical interior design clients came through with an entire hospital installation in Dayton, OH. That kicked off a steady recovery into our biggest period of growth. After the Great Recession our market influence gradually consolidated and we were on track for year on year success with less competition in our market.

In 2014 we’d gone from myself and my assistant installer to a staff of 4 installers and I finally handed off payroll responsibilities to my accountant. We were taking on bigger and more complex projects, with one of our proudest accomplishments in managing and completing nearly all of the commissioned art installation for the $1b rebuild of the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, CA. This opportunity launched us forward into being able to offer more project management for clients. As such we finally created an HR Dept to take over the payroll and accounting of the company as we leveled up for the next phase.

That 5 year period from 2014 to 2019 was exciting and aspiring. We have always managed to do a lot with very little, relying on hiring exceptional people who have creative freedom to make an impact and express their artistic talent. We had a steady staff of 4 installers, including myself, and 2 back of house staff taking care of HR, billing and scheduling. But as the COVID pandemic spread in 2020, all of that momentum and optimism came to a screeching halt. Strangely, the work was still there for many months into the crisis. A lot of our clients had ongoing large scale projects with firm completion deadlines, and things were still uncertain as how to address working in this new environment. We were on the verge of starting a huge government art and display installation contract for the new Navy HQ in downtown San Diego, so when construction projects were deemed “essential” we had a way to keep the doors open, albeit with much tighter OSHA guidelines. However, the biggest hurdle at the beginning of that uncertain time was giving employees confidence that it was safe to go to work with all of our safety preparations. Morale was at an all time low understandably, and keeping people healthy, motivated and employed was a massive challenge. Some of our staff were furloughed while we muscled through the first several months of the pandemic. Fortunately by having a great HR Dept, we were able to navigate the personnel minefield COVID presented, and get into both rounds of PPP loans, which thankfully kept the business afloat while we staggered from job to job until 2022.

Today we are a smaller company as a result of the scars of the pandemic, still recovering and aspiring to keep our place in this niche market. We’re not as large in staff, but what we’ve learned from that traumatic two years has made us even more efficient and effective in the way we approach our daily operations and incoming projects. With that in mind, the challenges this current economic climate presents are unprecedented. The cost of running a white glove labor based business in California is daunting, to say the least. Hiring and retaining high quality staff requires employers of small businesses like ours to pay a commensurate living wage, with heath care and 401k funding a must to remain competitive in the labor pool. However, we’re still here, proudly serving one client at a time, always bringing our best to each opportunity.

I started Level One when it didn’t look like I had any other options for gainful employment in 1999. I had dropped out of college several years earlier, disillusioned with my education in getting an Industrial Design degree. I had wanted to be a car designer ever since I was a teenager, with the skills to draw and paint pretty much anything I laid my eyes on or imagined. But computers were taking over the design industry, and in its infancy, began phasing out young aspiring artists like myself not interested in adopting the technology when I felt I could do it better with my hands and natural abilities.

While in college, to make ends meet I’d been doing custom picture framing at The Frame Maker in San Diego and was eventually trained as an Art Installer, since they offered that as a service to their clients. Over time, as my interest in college began to wane, I focused more and more on getting proficient at Art Installation. My boss gave me a bit of freedom to run this part of his business, and I enjoyed the instant creative input I could have on our clients. Seeing how satisfied they were with someone taking something so personal as their artwork and giving a place in their home or work gave me a buzz. After several years of running the Installation Dept at TFM I begin building up a client base separate from the picture framing they offered, and clients were looking to hire “me” for my reputation as a reliable talent. However, I wasn’t making a lot of money, seeing what my boss was charging for my labor, and after awhile things came to a head. He gave me a choice, I could either take over that part of the business entirely, with him helping me get on my feet for a year. Or I was fired, and I could figure it out on my own. Either way, he didn’t want to hear any more of my complaining (to put it nicely). After some negotiations on the start up percentage that we would split, my company was born and I became my own boss. It was the most thrilling and scary period of my life. On top of it all, in the exact same timeframe, I met and married my wife, who’s been my biggest supporter and foundation throughout this journey for the past 25 years.

As I ran the business over the next several years, what was becoming apparent to me was that I couldn’t continue to do it alone. I was beginning to experience severe burnout from the physical and metal toll of the job. I had been working continuously as an Art Installer for nearly 10 years by the time I was 31, but had no formal business background to lean into to help me figure out how to grow the company and hire people. So what did I do? I quit. Well, not entirely. I got an offer from a client of mine at the time who owned a company that did light construction and interior design. I was hired to do art installation in house for them, bringing my client list with me. It was a step down financially, but for me the draw was to learn a new skill in construction methods in order to become a supervisor. I signed a year contract on the promise of advancement after my internship. Needless to say, it was the most difficult time of my young career to date. I had the direct ear of the owner of the company, and thought I was hired to bring a fresh perspective to his company. But I spent the year being told “no” time and time again whenever I had anything outside their normal procedures to suggest. When my year was up, it was mutually agreed we would part ways, and after taking some time to reflect, I started my company back up again. I was a much stronger person, having had to fight so hard against a company culture that didn’t align with my core values of saying what your going to do, do it, and stand by it. I also had a new database of construction knowledge that could help me grow my company. To my surprise, nearly all of my clients welcomed me back and immediately wanted to renew ties. That was gratifying, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of failure until several more years into running the business, when my wife turned me onto authors like Simon Sinek and Mike Robbins. Learning about failure, and being able to contextualize it both personally and professionally in a healthy way helped me see the value of decisions we make in the moment, and how to separate our ego from the story. This path eventually led me to my WHY, and finally an outline to give my business the purpose it deserved and was always there in front of me, I just had to stop and look at it without the lens of judgment.

In isolation, art installation in its theory isn’t a difficult task. Pick a location, decide on a height, knock a couple of picture hooks in the wall, and hang the picture. Done. Not so hard. Maybe it’s straight, maybe it’s where you wanted it, maybe it’ll stay on the wall. Maybe you hired a handyman to hang it, and all of the above is maybe good enough. Lots of “maybes” but no certainty.

From the outset I wanted the WHY of Level One Art Installation to provide a level of creative service to its clients that exceeds their expectations and take the Maybe out of the dialogue. I’ve always loved art, and have had a deep emotional connection with the art I identify with. That’s not unique. The way we see “Art” in its basic purpose to us as human beings is to enrich our lives and give it meaning and definition. We use art to decorate our lives, be it in the workplace, public spaces, or our homes. The artwork a business chooses to install in the workplace can be a reflection of its outlook or mission. Just as the artwork someone chooses to install in their homes can be a reflection of the way they see the world, or would like to see the world or themselves. It’s the one thing (along with politics) we as humans all have an unfiltered opinion about, thereby making it one of the most personal and subjective things in our day to day existence. And because of that personal connection to it, it can be hard for clients to know how to approach how their artwork should be handled or installed to look its best in their private or public domain.

To some this may sound esoteric, but the theory we aspire to achieve that directs this company is one I learned in college while studying the Greek philosophers. Pythagoras discovered in nature that there are repeating geometric patterns across the spectrum of plants, animals and landscape that we as humans find naturally beautiful. He even applied a mathematical equation to it, calling it the Golden Ratio. This observation struck me to the core then, and has always been as the driving motivation behind Level One Art Installation: That everything has it’s natural “place” in our world, and we know it when we see it, and when it feels right to us.

This is where the dialogue begins at Level One with our clients. Our sole purpose is to take the uncertainty out of the Art Installation process and make it finite. Giving our clients the support and confidence their artwork will be handled and respected in the manner they would most like to see it, and in a way that gives them assurance that they are in capable hands. What we strive for is perfection in our process from when the client contacts us, right up until we leave the jobsite from another successfully finished project. Across our field from homeowners and Interior Designers, to architects, Art Consultants, corporations and construction supervisors, our goal is to give them the certainty that their project will be handled and completed correctly the first time, every time. That takes experience, a dedication to getting the details right each step of the process, and not letting problems take over the narrative. My favorite truism for our company is “work the problem, don’t let the problem work you”. For that to happen, you have to take your ego out of it in order to see the opportunities that arise within situations that aren’t going the way you’d planned. This is how we’re different from other companies. Where others will run away from a project or problem, we run towards it to find the solution. In everything we strive for at Level One, we are supporting our motto “The Art of Installation”.