CARIBOU, Maine — If you order a pizza in northern Aroostook County, odds are pretty decent that it’ll be cooked on a pizza pan crafted right here in Caribou.
“And everyone has their own style they want, some want them thin, some want them crimped, some want them thicker — it all depends on how they want their crust to come out,” explained Jeff Baker, owner of JB Sheet Metal.
Baker has 30 years’ experience with sheet metal work and light welding. His thorough knowledge of all things sheet metal are extensive enough to describe how specific measurements affect a pizza crust, but despite an encyclopedic knowledge of the business, he’d never thought about becoming an entrepreneur.
He had a good job as a project manager, he was happy — and then he received a call last Veterans Day, informing him that the company was closing immediately.
Baker was six weeks shy of the 25-year milestone when it happened.
For two weeks, Baker admitted he moped about a bit … until someone named Bryan Thompson started calling him.
Baker played phone tag with the stranger for a couple of days until they finally connected — and Baker’s life hasn’t been the same since.
When he lost his job, Baker knew he had three choices: re-open the business, get someone else to re-open the business, or move … and the Aroostook native wasn’t keen on going anywhere.
In addition to being an associate at Thompson and Hamel LLC in Presque Isle and a former Caribou city councilor, Thompson is a member of the Caribou Economic Growth Council (CECG) and he was instrumental in helping Baker become an entrepreneur — never mind the fact that they’d never met.
“Bryan was the instigator in all of this,” Baker said, gesturing to his office and the sheet metal workspace at his South Main Street business. “He really pointed me in the right directions, showed me where to go.”
Thompson also introduced Baker to a whole new world of businesspeople right here in Caribou, and those people worked together to get JB Sheet Metal up and running.
One morning, for instance, Baker was discouraged after a bank turned him down for a business loan.
“I went to see Bryan that same morning — I was really down in the dumps,” Baker recalled. “By 2:30 in the afternoon, John Swanberg (of Aroostook Savings and Loan), who I’d never met, called me and said ‘Jeff, are you willing to come in and talk?’ and from there it was all straightforward.”
About three months after Baker received that shocking phone call last November, he opened the doors of his new business … and business is very good. In fact, it’s beyond anything Baker anticipated in his business plan.
Spring isn’t known for being a particularly busy time in the sheet metal business, but Baker’s been pleasantly surprised to greet the six to 10 customers that come walking through his doors every day. As much as he loves working with sheet metal, Baker enjoys his new duties as a boss.
“It’s more of a responsibility than I’ve ever had — I have people counting on me for a paycheck, and that’s a big deal … but it’s also very rewarding,” he said, joking that he can’t call in sick anymore. When he was a project manager with his prior employer, he was only in charge of operations until a certain point. “But here, it’s the whole gamut,” he said.
Baker says his wife of 35 years, Phyllis Baker, has been incredibly supportive of the new business. Phyllis is actually the reason Jeff got into sheet metal in the first place. Phyllis was taking a course at the Northern Maine Community College about non-traditional programs, and for two weeks she studied sheet metal. She came home with the tools of the trade and projects she was working on … and it caught Jeff’s attention so much that he attended NMCC for sheet metal himself.
It’s a profession that comes naturally for Baker — he can see the angles, the cuts and the math behind everything he does.
“If it’s sheet metal, I can make it,” he said.
At this point, Baker has hired back one of the five co-workers from his last job, but he hopes to expand the Caribou sheet metal business.
“My goal is to bring back all my employees who want to come back, I want to grow,” Baker said. “It’s not going to happen overnight, but I think it can happen.”
Baker was overwhelmed at how supportive the greater Caribou community has been of his business venture, which has been growing steadily through word-of-mouth alone.
“I’m surprised with how helpful everyone was, and how quickly everything happened. February 27 is when I signed my paperwork, and Nov. 11 is when I lost my job,” Baker emphasized. “That’s an unbelievably quick turnaround.”
