By Paul Post

The Go Two Guys have one thing in mind when it comes to growing their new home improvement business.

Show up, on time, and do a good job.

“We’re going to show up when we say we’re going to be there and we’re going to do quality work,” co-owner Kevin Higgins said. “We had a lady who gave us a job just because we answered the phone.”

“That’s the model we try to have with this business,” said Brian Bayle, his partner. “It’s very important. One customer said, You guys are awesome! But I said, We haven’t done anything yet. They said, That’s okay. You called back number one, you said you were going to be here and then you confirmed to make sure we’d be home.”

Two Guys specialize in all kinds of repair and renovation projects from windows, doors and floors to interior and exterior painting, drywall work and kitchen and bathroom remodeling.

“We want to do things the big buys can’t or don’t want to do,” Bayle said. “It doesn’t matter the size of the job. Just call us up.”

By Paul Post

Ed Moore’s business suit is jeans and a flannel shirt, a bit atypical perhaps for a prestigious hotel owner and prominent civic leader.

It’s a simple reflection of his mindset for achieving success in both work and life. 

“I still get my hands dirty, get in there and do what I have to do,” he said. “My father used to say a job worth doing is worth doing right. Whatever you do, do it good. When you do that, you lift people up.”

Moore has been a driving force in downtown Glens Falls’ revitalization since moving to Warren County full time from Staten Island in 1987.

“My wife, Linda, and I passed through here on our way back from Niagara Falls on our honeymoon in 1966,” he said. “We came back up in ’68 for a weekend and in 1975 I bought a piece of property and built a cabin on Schroon Lake, 50 years ago this coming September.”

Moore had a lucrative downstate career as an excavating contractor, but left it behind to make Warren County his permanent home.  

“I was smitten with the area, the mountains, all the lakes, just the beautiful calming environment,” he said. “I decided to make a life change. I wanted to get out of that rat race down there, come up here and have a change of life. It’s worked out amazingly well.

To say the least.

He owns French Mountain Commons and Log Jam Outlet Centers on the Route 9 Million-Dollar Half Mile; Fairfield Inn & Suites near Exit 18; and the Sawyer’s building (leased to Sawyer’s Kitchen & Bath) on Glen Street hill opposite Cool Insuring Arena.

But the property he’s most visibly linked to is Queensbury Hotel, which he purchased in 2016 from a Connecticut-based investment group, bringing it back under local ownership for the first time since 2001.

By Susan Elise Campbell

White Glove Janitorial Service invites area businesses to enjoy much more than a dirt-free, healthier workplace. According to founder Kris Brunelle, his “grime fighters are cleaning up the community and making a difference.” 

The veteran-owned company opened in October 2022 and now has seven staff cleaning offices and medical facilities, as well as manufacturing spaces, dealerships, and gyms. Brunelle also offers post-construction cleaning services and residential cleanup for homeowners moving in or out.

Brunelle is a former Seabee who has “built things around the world,” he said. His career as a carpenter for the Navy’s construction battalion took him to Spain, Croatia, Africa, Afghanistan, and Japan. 

After the Navy, Brunelle sold solar systems and then insurance, and while he enjoyed selling and relationship building, he said he needed something different to sustain his family. At the time that included two foster children in addition to their daughter.

“I saw in sales that companies could not always deliver what they promise and that I had no control over the product,” he said. 

The way to fix that problem was to start his own business and he chose cleaning services. After all, “there is always going to be dirt,”  he said.

Brunelle scoured the web for tutorials about commercial cleaning and watched every video. He also located a company nearby offering a master class that taught him all he “needed to know from the business side of things.”

By Rod Bacon

For millennia the cannabis plant has been valued for its use for fiber and rope, food and medicine, and for its psychoactive properties for religious and recreational use. It has also gone through periods of being accepted and being banned by countries throughout the world.

Currently, cannabis use is legal in 24 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and Guam for recreational use and in 39 states for medical use. It became legal for medical use in New York state in 2016 when the Medical Cannabis Program was implemented and for recreational use in 2021 when the Marihuana Regulation & Taxation Act (MRTA) was signed into law.

There are 285 adult-use cannabis dispensaries in New York state that recently surpassed $1 billion in retail sales generating nearly $150 million in tax, fee and fine revenue. 

For those who don’t want to use cannabis with a high THC content there is cannabidiol (CBD), a chemical found in the cannabis plant that is non-impairing. It can be used to treat a variety of medical conditions without giving the user a “high” and running the risk of developing physical cravings.

By Paul Post

A family-run Warren County firm has parlayed robust Christmas tree sales into a booming maple products business.

River Bend Christmas Tree Farm in Lake Luzerne provides fresh-cut trees to nearly 1,000 customers each year.

But starting in late winter, 78-year-old Bruce Carpenter and his wife, Rosann, spend several weeks producing maple syrup on land they own in Minerva.

Their son, Jim, 43, puts his RPI business degree to good use by marketing trees and maple with a variety of social media platforms.

“Trees are a higher ticket item, but maple because it’s consumable can be sold year round,” Jim said. “During COVID we had a lot of syrup and not a lot of places to sell it so we trademarked the name, Saratoga Maple, and built a mail-order business where we ship gifts all over the country.”

In addition to traditional syrup flavors, the Carpenters age maple in a bourbon barrel to make bourbon maple syrup and a bourbon maple cream. They also make a maple walnut topping, maple jelly, hard and soft candy and a gourmet pancake mix that comes in a breakfast gift basket with bags of mix and Adirondack maple syrup.