About the Episode

From First Nick to Aieres: How Kosta Kritikos Finally Took the Leap

For fifteen years, Kosta Kritikos hated the name of his own company. He just never said so, not to his clients, not to his team, and for a long time, not even fully to himself. On this episode of Out of the Hourglass, Kosta sits down to share the real story of how First Nick Companies became Aieres Group: a transformation that took a year and a half to plan, decades to find the courage for, and one unexpected flight over Greece to finally set in motion.

A Name Born From Stubbornness

First Nick Companies started in the early 1980s when Kosta’s father moved the family painting business into commercial work. The name itself has an almost folkloric origin story. As Kosta tells it, his parents’ bookkeeper suggested simply calling it “Nick’s Painting” until they discovered another company already had that name. His father, unwilling to be confused with anyone else, declared himself “the first guy”, and the company became First Nick.

It stuck for decades, long after Kosta took over leadership from his father. He never loved it. But the business was built on relationships, not branding, and changing the name always felt like more trouble than it was worth.

Why Change, and Why Now

Kosta is candid about what finally pushed him to act: a growing company that needed to recruit better talent, and a name that made that harder than it should have been.

“I wanna recruit better people,” he explains in the episode, describing how he felt the name had become a quiet liability, something he’d downplay rather than lead with when talking to clients or candidates.

The idea for Aieres came together almost by accident, on a flight to Greece with his family. Looking out at the Acropolis and thinking about Greek mythology, Kosta started searching for a name that could capture both his heritage and his ambition for the business. He texted his wife, Maria, who was sitting right next to him, to ask what she thought. Her response: why didn’t you just turn and ask me?

That moment, and that name, stuck. Aieres comes from a Greek root meaning “to lift, to raise, to elevate,” and it gave Kosta a brand built to hold more than one trade under one roof: first Aieres Finishes, now Aieres Millwork, with more divisions likely to come.

The Family Conversations That Almost Didn’t Happen

Rebranding a family business isn’t only a marketing decision, it’s a family one. Kosta talks openly about the fear he carried for years about even bringing family into leadership roles, shaped by watching his own parents argue over the business at the dinner table growing up.

That fear shaped his early reluctance to involve his wife, Maria, in the company at all. It took years before he brought her in, and once he did, he describes her as instrumental to the decision to move forward with Aieres. His brother, Nick, joined the business earlier, originally as an estimator, before growing into a central leadership role as the company scaled.

Winning over his own immediate family, Kosta says, was the hardest part of the entire transition.  It was harder than the branding and harder than the strategy. He also shares a lighter, more personal moment: his eleven-year-old son Marco’s genuine excitement about the new name reminded him exactly why the change mattered in the first place.

Rolling It Out the Right Way

Once the decision was made, Kosta and his team didn’t rush the announcement. They rolled out the new brand internally first, starting with their own employees, before ever introducing it to clients. Kosta describes repeating the message monthly so it would actually stick with the team, rather than treating it as a single announcement.

When it came time to share the change with customers, the response surprised him. Far from confusion or concern, clients were enthusiastic and supportive, telling him the move felt authentic to who the company already was.

What’s Next for Aieres

Kosta isn’t shy about the scale of his ambition: a goal of $100 million in revenue within ten years, expansion into the Northeast and potentially further south, and continued growth across multiple service divisions. He’s candid that pursuing larger, more complex work has required building out leadership, project managers, a COO, a CFO.  All while finding a new kind of balance between the demands of a growing company and time with his family.

The Takeaway

“Just do it. Don’t worry about everybody else.”

If there’s one piece of advice Kosta wants other business owners to hear, it’s this: stop waiting for everyone else’s approval. He held onto the idea of changing the company’s name for fifteen years before finally acting, and looking back, his only regret is not doing it sooner.

For trades business owners sitting on a decision they’ve been putting off, Kosta’s story is a reminder that the leap rarely looks the way you expect. Sometimes it starts with a text message from 30,000 feet.