Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast. The show created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over one million and annual revenue. I’m your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of Painter Marketing Pros and creator of the popular PCA educational series, Learn, Do, Grow Marketing for Painters. In each episode, I’ll be sharing proven tips, strategies and processes from leading experts in the industry on how they found success in their painting business. We will be interviewing owners of the most successful painting companies in North America and learning from their experiences.

In this series titled Ignite your Passion, Michael Chaney of no drip painting will be discussing her journey from part time hustle to over $2 million painting company. The amazing opportunities she sees for other entrepreneurs to succeed in the painting industry and the powerful purpose she has developed while scaling no drip painting. In this episode. Episode one, Michael will be discussing why she got into the painting industry. What her initial journey looked like as a side hustle. In episode two, Michael will lay out the roadmap of how she initially surpassed $230 million in annual revenue In episode three, Michael will dive into the path to $219 million in annual revenue and how that is entirely different from the first million.

In episode four, Michael unveils her powerful why and the intense purpose she has found since launching no drip painting. And in episode five, the final episode, Michael will lay out the very exciting opportunities she sees in the painting industry today that other entrepreneurs should be capitalizing on. If you wanna ask Michael questions related to anything in this podcast series, you can do. So in our exclusive painter marketing mastermind podcast form on Facebook, just search for painter, marketing mastermind podcast form on Facebook and request to join the group or type in the URL, facebook.com/groups/painter marketing mastermind. Again that URL is facebook. com/groups/painter marketing mastermind. There, you can ask Michael questions directly by tagging her with your question. So you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company, Michael. What’s going on? You’re a pro, you’re a pro Brandon. It is not what you have as we were talking about before the launch. You have the, the Beyonce countdown. It got me super pumped up. I have the uh hey, I’m gonna, I’m gonna just kind of read something for like 225 seconds.

You go ahead and take a nap and then we’ll launch, you know what one of the hard lessons I’ve learned being an entrepreneur is that you shouldn’t compare yourself to others, right? Um So I think you’re nailing it with just the way you do it. I need the Beyonce, uh you know, spark in there to get me going. Fair enough. Fair enough. It definitely got me going, Michael. I’m so excited. We’re doing this series together. I, I’m just gonna, you know, one of the things I try to do on the podcast is be very transparent.

Uh I’ve been continuing to run it how I started it, even though the, uh you know, we’ve kind of been doing it for some time now. You and I were set to book, we were set to shoot just one episode today. And then we, we kind of met and we started talking about it and we realized that would be a mistake because you have a lot to share. Uh So I would, I would love to just start with your background, kind of who you are. A lot of people know you from the podcast.

I’d love to hear about your podcast, everything you’re doing today just to get just to kind of get our bearings. Yeah, right on. So, uh I’m the owner of no Drip painting, which over the years has become, uh you know, a real source of passion for me because I think we’re doing some amazing things in the industry. I think we’re doing some really cool things for our team and for our clients. Um And then, you know, from that opportunity, I got some other things coming my way.

I do the uh podcast for Women in Paint, which is a new group to the PC A. Uh It’s absolutely amazing. It is uh founded, you know, to get women inspired and motivated about this industry and let women specifically know all the amazing things that you can do under the name of paint. As you know, we had our first ever women and paint event in Nashville just this last year. And it was quite amazing to see everyone come together. So, uh fortunately, I’m, I’m involved in women and paint in a big way and I get to do the podcast other than that, uh you know, I kind of eat, breathe live my business right now.

I know, I know they say you’re supposed to have some sort of balance. Uh But I’m kind of a believer of when you really love something, you just do it and you dive all in. And that’s kind of what I’ve been doing for the last five or six years. I love it. So I like Alex Tra Moi a lot. I think I bring him up a lot eventually. I’m gonna ask him for some kind of payment, but he runs the, the podcast, uh the game, you know, he, he found a gym launch and it’s a very successful entrepreneur.

But he, he would be what many people would define as a workaholic works all the time. But he says he enjoys it. So, who is someone else to judge him for? You know, that he should be doing XY or Z if this is actually the stuff that he enjoys. So, I think it, it all comes down to what you want to do. That’s right. I’m, I’m right there with you. Yeah. So, the, the women at paint conference was amazing. I snuck in. Nigel said I can’t come but I did because the, uh, the commercial paint was great too.

I just, I wanted to go to them both. They were next side by side and I listened to you speak Michael. And one of the things that really surprised me a lot was number one, you had one slide. It was an interesting kind of an intro slide. And then you, you spoke for about 2100 minutes without changing slides, which I found very impressive because I tend to have about 280 slides for every presentation I give. So I thought that was really, really impressive. And then the other thing that was surprising and very impressive was that you said you, you suffer from uh public speaking.

How did you define that as I call it an extreme case of social anxiety. And it really showed up when I was young and it’s, it’s a real thing basically speaking in front of people. Even when I was young, going into a restaurant and ordering, there was just something extremely uncomfortable about that. And I kind of created a life for myself where I didn’t have to do much of that as a matter of fact. Uh So when I was young, I often tell the story of, you know, if you, if you remember being in like English class or reading class and the teacher would make everyone in the class read. Right.

So you knew, you know, you were after your neighbor and when those times would, would pop up, I would do everything I possibly could to get out of the class, right? If I needed to go to the bathroom, whatever it was, I was gonna try and get out of that class. And if I could not get out of, then I would look ahead. I would try to predict where I would be reading and I would do my best to memorize as much as I possibly could make sure that uh you know, I could say all the words and all that and it was, it was a real fear and, and, and honestly, Brandon, as, as I’ve grown up, I think I, in some capacity, it trails back to the fear of, of judgment, which, you know, is a tough thing for many of us.

I have just realized that that fear had, had shown up in this social anxiety way. Uh My mom still to this day will joke with me and say, you know, my best friend Laurie had to go to the concession stand and get my coke when I was young. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. Um, but yeah, I mean, it, it’s a real thing and what happens to me often is, I literally can’t breathe. I know it sounds crazy. But I will get on stage and, and let me say that this business has forced me out of this comfort zone.

I’ve also, you know, been a varsity basketball coach and things like that that have forced me to have to be in front of people, have to talk. But I’ve taken it on as a challenge. And really one reason I’ve done that is because the love that I have for this business and, and what we’re doing in the industry and you know, other opportunities that I wanna pursue, require me to be able to get in front of people and talk. But I have this issue where I literally can’t breathe and what I’ve had to do over the years is learn how to breathe.

And I’ve had to, I’ve taken me, I have a meditation teacher that I see that helps with my breathing. I’ve done other things in life to force me into the most uncomfortable situations like cold plunges, like scuba diving, all with the purpose of teaching me how to breathe so that I can overcome this social anxiety. Man. That’s intense. Yeah, the, the cold plungers will definitely definitely force you to focus on the breathing. Yeah, you know, I’ll tell you just real quick about cold plunges because I know they’re, they’re kind of a, a fad now is what I’ll call it.

They’re popular. Everyone’s done it on Instagram. But here’s what cold plunges have done for me. The moment I get into a cold plunge and I’m usually talking about 2100 degrees or below the moment I get in there. What I’ve discovered is all my negative self talk comes to the surface. It’s kind of crazy, right? So I will make a goal of myself. Actually, what I did in December, I said for the month of December, I’m gonna do 213 cold plunges. I’m not gonna miss a day and I just kind of created this challenge for myself.

And the moment I started getting into the water, I would start to renegotiate that agreement that I made with myself. And I would say, why are you doing this? This is so dumb. You don’t need to even be doing this. And long story short, this negative self talk and this process of trying to renegotiate with myself really opened my eyes to other areas of my life that I was doing that. So I have been strategically using these cold plunges to create some mental strength for myself. And I think it’s helping and I think it shows up in different parts of my life.

And I’m kind of on this mission of seeking things that put me out of my comfort zone. So that I can get more tries at that so I can get better at all. This crazy stuff. Yeah, it’s incredible. You’re forcing yourself to confront limiting factors so that you can grow your business and, and grow in other ways that are not directly necessarily related to what you’re actually doing, but it’s enabling you to grow in these areas that you want to grow in. That is exactly right. And scuba diving has done the exact same thing for me.

Uh because as good of an athlete as I’ve always been, I’ve never been a good swimmer. And uh when I get in that water, I essentially have a mini panic attack. And what I learned about scuba diving is it’s a mental sport. So, you know, going, you know, uh 221 ft under, which is what I’m uh certified to do it, it’s, it’s been a real challenge uh and forced me to learn how to breathe and control my thoughts in a situation that is very dangerous if you don’t learn how to control your thoughts and, and you know, breathe in the way that you need to breathe to, to complete the, the dive. Yeah. Amazing.

Yeah, I was uh I was scuba diving when I was, I think I was a kid. I think we were somewhere around 222 ft and I ran out of oxygen because I wasn’t paying attention as I should have been. So I literally was sucking in and then there was no more, but that’s why you have the buddy system. And so I was very fortunate that we were following that and that I was near my dad and I was able to get, you know, the, the auxiliary um in inhalation, whatever you call it inhaler that you, I was able to pop that in.

But yeah, you just gave me, you just gave me anxiety. I make sure you check, make sure you’re checking. That’s great. The uh yeah, the cold plunges too, man. I love those. My, my wife, Ariel who, you know, bought me, uh this book called What Doesn’t Kill Us by Scott Carney. And he, he was this uh journalist maybe still is, I don’t know, I don’t follow him but he, he went around and he would basically disproved gurus. So these guys out in Arizona, you know, all these random gurus who, who preach all this stuff, he would basically go out try their program and then kind of crap talk him, I guess, you know, basically disprove it in his, his view.

So he went out and he tried a guy named Wim Hof, but I think was one of the, the kind of leaders in, in making this fad currently popular. Uh My wife bought me the book. I read it, made it, made it through the first half of the intro. So I hadn’t gotten to chapter one, asked her if she would be willing to do this. So he was offering a program in Poland. She said yes, I didn’t, we didn’t have a ton of money at that time.

She said yes. I went on a book like a $2614 trip before I got to chapter one because she said yes. And she was going to say no, you know, if we sat down and gave it any reasonable thought, the answer would, it didn’t make sense. It was expensive. We didn’t really have the time. It, it was a totally ludicrous thing to do, but I knew that. So I went and I booked it before we could think about it. I was like, I really hope I like this book and I did and it was a life changing experience.

But sometimes you have to, you have to be sort of in, you can’t do everything irrational for you. It’s, it’s kind of irrational to run a podcast when you have extreme social anxiety. It’s kind of irrational to go do a scuba diving as a regular activity when it’s supposed to be enjoyable and it presents you with a ton of anxiety. You have to do a rational things sometimes to break limits. I’m with you on that. I’m with you on that. Totally. Yeah. And for people listening, it doesn’t have to be social anxiety.

It can be anything but just find your weakness and attack it. Yeah. Absolutely. And, and like I said, I mean, I think uh you know, I’ve, I’ve put myself in situations to recreate that anxiety. But I really think that the thread of the social anxiety when I was young, I, I think it, it trailed back to the fear of judgment, you know, which I think is something that many of us can relate to. Uh, you know, if we really think about it. Yeah, 100%. There’s uh another book that, that I recommend people read called The Top five Regrets of the dying.

There was someone who uh I don’t remember the author but worked in a a hospice and as people who were gonna pass away and then collected all this data from spending all this time with these people of their top five regrets. And then number one was not taking enough risk because they feared what other people would think about them, right? But yeah, a huge phobia of what other people think about us. Yeah. And I think when you’re an entrepreneur, being a business owner like that forces you to face some of these things, right?

Um Because, you know, my experience is that, that judgment can paralyze you and keep you from making decisions or even sharing things with people that are close to you because you’re ultimately afraid of that judgment. And so, you know, one of the the things that I’ve been working on is shedding, that fear getting rid of that so that I’m not putting my own lid on my potential based on what I think other people might say or think right? When you say it out loud, it sounds so crazy to even be afraid of that.

It does. And the uh uh important part of what you said too, there was what you think. They so often we think we project our own beliefs or our own insecurities on other people. We walk in and we think if you feel a little like, like you look silly like, oh, everyone thinks, I look silly. Probably no one’s thinking that but you’re thinking it and you’re projecting it. Yeah. No, because you know what people are actually thinking about Brandon, they’re thinking about themselves and they’re thinking, oh my gosh.

I hope no one else is judging me. Right. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s like, really everyone is just thinking about themselves and we’re all worried if, if someone else is judging us and if you remember that you might, you might just say, you know what, forget it. I’m not gonna care what anyone else thinks. Yeah. That’s really, really powerful. All right. So let’s get into the meat and potatoes here. Your start in the painting industry. How’d it go? Yeah. So I did not have a father that had a painting business.

Uh You know, I had no real ambitions of being a painter. As a matter of fact, I often say that my mom kind of got me in the business. Uh Now I don’t know if she would agree with that. But, uh, what, what took place is that I grew up with a single mom and we were always doing things in the house. The thing that my mom did and instilled in me was how important your space is. You know, we had some tough times when I was young, but she created a space that I was really proud of and I felt safe in and she did a lot of that with things like paint and wallpaper and making throw pillows and window treatment.

She was a great sewer. She was uh she had a sewing machine and she could literally sew anything together. And so really, I got my start and painting and in our house. And uh years later when I was looking for a side hustle, I was in a completely different industry. I was a personal finance blog blogger. No one probably knows what that is. But you were a personal finance blogger. Personal finance blogger. I know it sounds crazy. I uh wrote articles for like us news. Yahoo Finance.

I’m pretty big online. Yeah. Publication. I feel like we’re kind of just glazing over that. That’s a pretty cool thing. Yeah. Some of the top blogs out there like dough roller and I was always writing about folks having a side hustle. So at this time, I was like, you know, I need a side hustle. I need a second stream of income. And I had a, uh, you know, my daughter at that time was young and I really needed to be able to pay for soccer and all the things that you have to do.

And so I said, you know what, I, I painted a lot when I was young, I’m gonna reach out to some real estate investors. I know and see if they need any painting. Well, lo and behold, they did. So I started painting these rental units. I quickly found out, I didn’t really know how to paint a little different painting for someone that it is your mom, right? But I started, you know, painting in these rental units and then I got so busy. I, I brought on someone to help me who really knew how to paint, kind of taught me how to paint.

But that was really my start. And, uh, you know, years later, of course, it’s morphed into something else. Eventually, I fell in love with business and strategy and decided to give it a try through, through painting to see if I could do something. Um But I will tell you, you know, one thing I did early on that I often think about when I kinda started to get busy and I was able to keep me and one other person busy. I would often say to myself, I don’t really wanna have a big company.

I just wanna have a little business and, and I’ll be the painter and maybe I’ll always have a helper. And that was totally fine with me. And what I realized later on after I discovered there was more potential and there was more, there were, there were more, there was more that I personally could do under the name of paint. I realized that that was actually me dimming my own light. That was me putting the lid on what was possible. And I say that because I often hear people say exactly what I used to tell myself, which is I don’t want a big painting business.

I don’t want this, I don’t want that and some of that might be true. But the invitation that I would put out there is really examine what you say and why you’re saying it at the time. I think I was just saying it out of not knowing what was possible and probably out of a little bit of fear and when I could eliminate some of those thoughts and, and some of the things I would say to myself, that’s when really I discovered there was a different meaning behind all of the painting that I was doing.

Um But yeah, I mean, that’s the shortest that I took it on is, is a little side hustle just to make some extra money. And, you know, it’s morphed into something much greater than I could have anticipated at that time. And that’s cool. So those points are so good. So, so the idea that you might, you might be unintentionally sabotaging or limiting yourself saying you want one thing and, and you might want that thing so that we’re not saying, you know, as you said, you want that thing, some people want, hey, I don’t want the, the headache of running a multimillion dollar company.

I want profitability just really focus on that. I enjoy the painting. I enjoy the craft of it. That might be fine. It might be what you want, but make sure it’s actually what you want and why you want it that it’s not just because you are doubting yourself or being your own worst skeptic. That’s right. And you know what I have found from my own experience and really from talking to others is I think it really starts for all of us to figure out what we want just in life.

What do we want our life to look like? Right. And I found that I didn’t know the answer to that for, for a long time, you know, in, in, in all my years, I did not really have an answer to that. And I think for most people that is a question that we don’t have clear, a clear understanding of. And I would encourage people to spend time figuring that out. I don’t think it’s something that just pops in your mind. You know, the answer, I think you really have to feel into it.

You have to lean into it. You have to do some work around who you are and what kind of life you wanna live. And then I think you get the opportunity to figure out how to create that life. And for me that’s this business. So let’s dive into that for a second. I think a lot of people don’t know what they’re, it’s basically the per their why right in their life. That’s a tough thing. I think very few people actually know that. How, how do you go about finding that?

So I’ll tell you what, that’s something I’ve struggled with my whole life when I was younger and I was in college and even after college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. And that created a lot of um anxiety, a lot of uh self doubt. It created uh an unclear path for me and it, it, it was a very difficult time in my life because I just didn’t know what direction to go. So I, I, at one point hired um like a career advisor and, and, you know, folks, you know, even a counselor at school, you know, I was looking for anything and everything to help me figure out what it is.

I wanted. Now when I was younger, my, uh you know, perception on life was a lot different than now that I’m in my mid forties. Um But I think there’s two pieces of this. There’s what do you want your life to look like. And then there’s the why and the things in life that create a spark for you, you know, we call it our passion, right? And, and I think that you end up discovering what your passion is and you end up discovering what, what fuels your fire and life.

I think when you like I did when I was young and I was so trying to come up with the answer through a career or, you know, through, you know, whatever it was, I couldn’t find the answer. It was years later when I decided, you know what, I’m gonna just work hard. I’m gonna expose myself to different opportunities. My passion ended up finding me and now that I, and I think I’m lucky because I’m, I’m, you know, so into what I’m doing. I mean, I it’s true, you can wake up every day and be excited about what you’re doing.

That that is a real way to live your life, but that wasn’t always the case, right? So I feel very lucky and fortunate that I am where I am now and I’ve only scratched the surface with it. But you know, uh what I, I guess what I would, the advice I would give to my younger self. Why don’t we say that is to be patient, take care of yourself, right? I think when you pour into yourself and you understand what taking care of yourself means and looks like it gives you the power and the resources and the drive to help others around you.

But you can’t do it until you take care of yourself first. And that is where I would tell anyone to start, take really, really good care of yourself, be open to trying new things. Uh But I think when you figure out how to align yourself with, you know, you could call it anything God, the universe, some spiritual being. I think that’s where some of the magic happens. And that’s when you get to discover this deeper piece that, that lies within you. And I know I’m getting a little woo here, but for me, you’re about it, it, it has to do with something deeper that’s within you.

And the challenge is how do you align with that? So you can start to understand your path? Yeah. How, how would you define take care of yourself? How would someone do that? So I have learned some hard lessons in this exact thing over the last couple of years and let’s just take the word self care and put it to the side because it’s not about what we often think, which is massages and, and things like that. Although that might be part of it. Here’s what here’s I was forced to learn how to take care of myself because about 2.5, 3 years ago, I suffered from chronic back pain and still doing some capacities.

I do have some torn discs and, and, and things in my back from probably all the years of playing sports. But I was literally, and I’m gonna say, suffering from this back pain and it started to shoot up through my neck. I was miserable. I mean, I was probably £40 overweight. Um, and I was at this breaking point and the question that I was asking myself was, do I still want this business? Ok. And so I hired a coach, an amazing coach. She calls herself a transformational business coach.

And I hired her specifically to help me answer the question. But what I discovered over working with her for a year and a half is that it really wasn’t about if I wanted this business. It was about how, how this business was impacting my life and my health. So it wasn’t necessarily do I want the business. It was how do I take care of myself? So the business can flourish in the way that I really think that it could. And so that was the start of me learning about how to take care of myself and, and what that looks like today, you know, I talked about scuba diving.

Uh even though scuba diving started as me addressing a fear and trying to recreate this anxiety so that I could get better at certain aspects of my life. It actually turned into a passion and now I absolutely love scuba diving and I spent a total of 12 weeks in Mexico last year. Not all consecutively. My longest stint was six weeks, but I spent 12 entire weeks scuba diving in Mexico. And that is something I never thought I’d be able to do in my life, right to think that I could step away for 21 entire weeks.

Um And the only reason I could do that is because I learned what taking care of myself was. Some of that travel is, you know, I, I travel by myself. That is me taking care of myself, that’s tuning out the noise, that’s me getting alone time with me with myself. Um I have a meditation teacher in Mexico that I would see. She spent 20 years in a Buddhist monastery and she went in there when she was 25. And now that she decided to take another path in life, she’s a meditation teacher.

So I got to literally work with like the ninja of meditation. And that to me is me taking care of myself. I have a business coach, right? Um I, you know, now my days I, I work out with a trainer three days a week at five in the morning. And that is me taking care of myself, right? So it’s a lot of different things, the cold plunges, you could throw it in that category and I don’t always do it perfectly, but I understand that there’s a way that I have to care for myself.

So that I can show up for the people in my life, for the, my business and all of those things. So it’s unique to each person. Right? I, I’ll tell you another thing and I would throw this into me taking care of myself this year is I have a, uh, a Spanish tutor, you know, 90% of my team is not bilingual, you know. Um I love my Spanish speakers. I love, uh you know, all the different cultures that come with my Spanish speakers and spend a lot of time in Mexico, as I just told you, Costa Rica, all the places and I’m OK with Spanish, but this year is my year to fully dedicate myself.

And so that is me taking care of myself. It’s been one of the items on my bucket list that I wanna accomplish and when I get to check that off at the end of the year and I get to say, you know what I am now fluent in Spanish that is taking care of me. That is a confidence booster. It enhances my skill set. It allows me to connect more with my team. Um I don’t wanna get too off track here, Brandon, but you open, you opened up this camp.

Um But so it’s like it looks different for each person, but these are things, these are ways in which I take care of myself. This is gonna be a fun series, Michael. Yeah, we, we talked about. So I was fortunate enough to be on your women and paint podcast. How many men have you had on it at this point? I think only three. Ok. I was the first. You were the first and I mean, no one’s ever gonna go to take that, take it away. You might come on multiple times.

They might do a better job. But I was the first. That’s right. That’s right. I very much enjoyed it. So we’ve already had the, the podcast experience together. You run a podcast. So when we decided to do this series, uh basically 30 minutes ago, we knew that it would go well. Right. But we talked about how, how sometimes if, if you go with, with another guest who maybe isn’t as experienced in conducting podcasts, you might not want to conduct a series with, I guess until you edit it because it might be kind of difficult.

You are going to make this an awesome series. I don’t know, you’re gonna be like, listen Michael, we got, we got a stopping point. No, I, I love it. This is what we do. This is the name of the game. It’s always, hey, we have, we have an agenda, we’ll make sure we hit the items on that agenda. But I’m always looking to deviate. That’s the name of the game is where we, so the, you gave me just so much stuff. So the, the, and, and again, a lot of times my focus is OK, these ideas, the these really profound um concepts, how do we make them real, right for other people, how can they actually implement these things?

So when we talk about uh a business coach, a meditation coach seems like I’m, I’m gonna quickly drop a nugget here uh to summarize something you do. You, you consistently push yourself to learn new things. So entrepreneurs, business owners, you should be doing that. You’re learning scuba diving, you’re learning Spanish, you’re learning meditation, you’re learning all these different things, push yourself out of your comfort zone and continue to continue the self growth. But for someone who wants a business coach who wants maybe a meditation coach, maybe a different kind of coach.

How do you go about finding good mentors? Yeah. So there, there’s something that I’ve kind of really zoned in on and, and I kind of just start start to call this like my, my resources, I wanna think of me as being resourced. And what I mean by that, who are my resources? They’re kind of like almost an accentuation of my family. So it’s like my trainer, right? My trainer who’s also an entrepreneur. I work directly with him and I want to work with him because he’s an entrepreneur and he gets it.

He has an amazing gym here in Columbus, Ohio. I wanted him, I found him on Instagram and I said he’s the one that I want I followed him. I, I admire uh what he says and who he is. And so I found him on Instagram and I, I said, you know, I don’t care how much it costs. You’re, you’re my guy. I respect what you do. You tell me what it costs and I’ll figure out how to pay it and, and I do and I pay him more than I’ve ever paid any trainer ever, but he’s absolutely worth it.

So I found him on Instagram, but I have this idea that I want to be resourced. So my trainer is a resource for me, my meditation teacher in Mexico who I actually found through another coach who recommended. So it’s always great to check with folks that, you know, for recommendations. Right. Um, I think of even just my physician here in Columbus as part of my team. Right. This is the, the team that takes care of Michael. And there was a time I’m kind of embarrassed to say, but I didn’t really keep up with my medical stuff. Right.

I didn’t really get blood work done on a regular basis. And, you know, as you get older, obviously, those things become more important, but even my physicians here, that’s part of, of my team. Um, I, I, I’ve had multiple different business coaches and most of them have come from referrals from other people. I think that, you know, if, if you can reach out to friends and you know, especially if you’re looking for a therapist. You know, I think, uh, you know, therapy, I think has become more popular because probably even because of COVID and the mental health crisis that we’re really in and, and how mental health isn’t as taboo as it used to be.

But I always tell folks start with your friends, if they’ve had a good experience with a therapist, go that route. Um, other people that I would consider now part of my resource really are some of the ladies I met through women in pain. I mean, being a business owner is lonely, it can be, uh it can really feel like a solo journey. I know it has for me. And now that I’ve kind of opened myself up to some of these connections, I’ve made some, um you know, great friends who I could call if I need help.

And, uh you know, they’re part of my team. I consider them part of my team. So, you know, the first thing I would say is check with your, your friends, check with people that, you know, and your trust, give it a shot on uh social media. I mean, that’s the great thing about social media. If you use it in the right way, it can be a powerful tool for you. Uh I found a business coach. I’ll tell you a quick story about my business coach. She’s absolutely amazing.

I’ve worked with her off and on she is an entrepreneur. She calls herself a location, independent entrepreneur. She travels the entire world. Uh I think she’s in Thailand right now and she does all of her business coaching via Zoom. And she has helped me tremendously. One of the things that she has helped me with is that I see the life that she lives. Uh Now, I don’t really have the desire to travel the world all the time, right? I like my space and, and uh you know, my mom taught me how important space is.

So I wanna have that nice space for myself, but even being exposed to someone like her who has created this great life for herself that involves travel and being an entrepreneur and, and conducting her business in the way that she does that alone, having that interaction has expanded. What I have discovered is possible for myself, right? And I found her on Instagram. And uh so, yeah, I mean, th those, those are two ways to find folks and, and I think it’s important to like, you know, hear stories like we’re talking about this now, Brandon, like just hearing this and knowing that this is what people do.

And, you know, I’ve, I’ve got this team that I it’s, it’s Michael’s team that helps me, you know, thrive and survive even at times just knowing that that that’s how some folks operate might be enough to, you know, turn the light bulb on in your own mind and get you to think about what your own team looks like. And there are concepts that are transferable so that there’s this idea of abundance versus scarcity mindset with your business, you know, and a lot of painters suffer from the scarcity mindset.

Hey, there are competitors. I can’t share secrets. I never went that way with them, right? Because, because your way of painting is so much better than their way of painting. God forbid you ever talk to him, right? But the having an abundance mindset in that instance would be collaboration. There’s room for all, you know, we all grow together, but you can also have an abundance mindset with just opportunities and personal growth. And when you start to think that way you start to look for, hey, who, who do I maybe want to emulate, who do I look up to who the PC A?

For example, a lot of really successful business owners, maybe I should go to the PC A expo, you know, every year and go network with people. Maybe I should go to some local networking events, networking doesn’t have to be this dirty word. Like you go because you’re trying to get something out of people. Maybe you go because you’re trying to learn, meet interesting people, kind of interesting people know interesting people. And over time you end up with a, with a really cool network of, as you’re saying, sort of resources for you o of people that you can be a resource to and they can be a resource toward you.

Uh and just kind of expanding your own bubble if you will. That’s exactly right. And when, when I think about anything that has to do with success and what that means to me, we really don’t have to re invent the wheel, right? Like the reason I am trying cold plunges is because all so many successful people I follow are doing it and they’re singing its praises, right? I didn’t, I didn’t have to make that up. I’m like, well, hey, if it works with it, let, let me try it.

And I think that that’s, that’s, yeah, like just, just find people that you admire, that have probably similar value values to you. You know, a character that, that uh you know, aligns with who you are and do what they do. You’re gonna put your own, spin your own flair on it anyway. But the, the blueprint has already been laid for us and try different things. See what works for you. Yeah. And so the, the other thing that I’ve learned and it was actually through the cold plunges, it was through the, the Wim hof retreat.

So I went to Poland and then I did it again in Iceland and that was, that was the, supposedly the advanced one. It was basically just a repeat. And when I showed up, I had a similar reaction to, to you in December, the first coal experience. I was like, why the heck did you do? You’re an idiot. Like, why did you show up to this thing again? Then you learn your lesson the first time. But the uh but the people that I met in Poland, so I met, I think, I don’t know how you quantify this, but I think it was the third most respected researcher in the world on water conservation.

And I met just all these crazy. I met this high up Israeli military guy. I met just the craziest people from 19 different countries and there were only about 25 people there because interesting people do interesting things. And then when I went to Iceland, I met a, an entrepreneur who’s now a mentor of mine who’s, I don’t know what he’s worth, but he’s, I think it’s well north of 100 million. He’s friends with Emmanuel Macron. You know, he’s the president of France and, and I went out and I, I studied under him and took mentorship.

I met all these insane entrepreneurs because it happened, there were just two big groups of entrepreneurs that went. But I didn’t meet a boring person because I did a crazy thing. If you do crazy things. If you do neat things you meet neat people. Well, brand, I’m coming down to Florida. I’m gonna hang out with you. Let’s do it. Well, I’m not that neat but that I’ll definitely wanna hang out. Yeah. Uh, hopefully I’ll become neat one day, you know, hang out with enough of you. Sound pretty neat to me.

Sound pretty neat to me. Uh, all right. I have another, another big question and this is something I’ve personally struggled with. So I’m really interested in your answer. Here we talked about you were, you were grinding in the business. Business is a grind. It’s, it, it just is, you know, it kind of sucks in the beginning a lot of times. So you were grinding, you’re overweight. You found a lot of uh some health issues, back pain, things like this. You got a, a business coach and you started to understand the importance of self care.

But I know at some point early on in the journey, it kind of seems like self care is maybe a luxury that you don’t have, right? Because you just kind of have to, there’s just so much to be done. You just sort of have to grind it out. How do you differentiate between? Hey, I just have to grind it out. It, you just have to go through this ring of fire versus OK. Now I’m not being smart and I need to back up because I’ll actually go a lot farther if I start taking care of myself. Yeah.

So let’s first just say that as you progress in life. Uh and part of this has to do financially, the things you can do for yourself look different right there. I, there four or five years ago, I could never go to Mexico like I, like I have done. So let’s just acknowledge that when you are financially more secure, you do have some different options. But self care can look like spending five minutes in silence in your chair. Right? Um You know, don’t overlook things like that, that, that is, you know, tuning the voices out, spending some quiet time.

We’re so inundated with distractions and technology and all of the things. A lot of people I know that are close to me, can’t sit in a chair for five minutes without creating a distraction for themselves. Um I think that that is probably one of the most valuable things you can do is literally sit in silence and I do that often. Um So like it, it doesn’t have to look like some, some grand thing, you know, um, stretching, you know, I mentioned my back problems like stretching is a big thing for me.

I, I need to do that uh, multiple times throughout the week. I really should be doing it daily. Um But that doesn’t cost any money, right? You can sit on your floor and do that. Don’t overlook things like that. That is a piece of all this that is taking care of yourself. Um And I’m not sure if I’m really answering your question, Brandon. So, um but, but yeah, I mean, what, what my life looks like today is not what it’s always looked like. And you have to find what works for you.

But there’s, there’s many options. Yeah, we, we’ve all heard the stories, 80 100 100 plus hour weeks, you know, starting for X number of time. But you can still take five minutes. You can still sit, you can still stretch. There’s, it might be small, uh, quantitatively in terms of time. It, it might be small financially, maybe it’s free. But don’t just completely ignore yourself because then you, you’re gonna start to spiral over time. That’s right. And, you know, one thing that I do often, I, I read a book called Do Walk and walking has become a big, a big thing for me and walking.

I like to walk. But now I walk with, with my wife and it’s, um, it’s a real therapeutic thing to do for yourself. And, you know, I mean, look, I was an athlete so I’m like, well, I’m not gonna go for a walk, right? Like I’m gonna be, I don’t wanna be jogging or, you know, buzz getting a sweat on or something. But actually there is something really magical about walking and being out in nature. And, uh, when I go specifically go to Mexico, I have this walking path that I do every day and it’s so peaceful.

It’s one of the things I look forward to most when I go there. And even here in Columbus, you know, um, I’ve got some great walking path along the water, even out in the woods. And I do that also is a way to take care of myself. And again that, that doesn’t cost anything. Yeah. Time. It costs time. Sure. Yeah. The walking, I think it’s the, I think I read somewhere. It, it’s basically the best exercise you can do for life. Longevity is to consistently walk because it’s not too hard on your joints and it’s a very healthy thing to do every day. Yeah.

And for me, you know, walking like that, I, I get a lot of clarity. It’s like it gets, it gets me, it gets me moving it, you know, at a, at a pace that works well for where I’m at in life. Um But it really allows me sign up kind of some space from whatever it is that I’m doing and it’s a great time to get some clarity. I love it. So let’s quickly make sure that we hit this. What I said the episode was about. So when you started this, this company?

No drip paint was it called No Drip painting in the beginning? Well, I had a couple of different names and I don’t know if you want to delve into that, but I ended up, I’ll tell you quickly. I said I was a personal finance blogger when I picked the name. No, Dir Painting, I actually just picked it out to be a blog, I was just gonna blog about painting and, and so I bought the domain and then years later I was like, you know what, I got the domain nor painting.

I’m gonna go for that. So it kind of just happened. Um But now I actually like the name because it has a little bit of a ring to it. People seem to remember it pretty well. Yeah, that’s a cool name. So the, when you started, what did that look like? It, it sounds like it was you or you and a helper? What was your life like at that point? Yeah. Um, I think I was probably scraping together quarters to buy gas. Um, you know, I mean, living there, I was living the dream, you know, completely random.

I mean, listen, I was, you know, I was a single mom. I mean, you know, I know, you know, you’re not, you try not to repeat the patterns of your parents. Um, but I actually did that. I, I had my daughter when I was 21 years old, I was on a basketball scholarship. I couldn’t complete my scholarship because I became a mom and, and I raised her really by myself with the help of my mom. Uh, and then this whole process of being, being a mother allowed me to figure out who, who I really was and gave me some direction in life.

Um, but I mean, uh, you know, II I was on a state supported insurance. There was a time when I, you know, got government assistance, you know, I mean, I was 22 years old, I was trying to finish college when I had, I was going to college and I was taking a baby with me. Sometimes I had a professor that would let me bring her in her little carrier to his class. Um, so, I mean, I didn’t have any money. I, I had student loans and I lived with my mom for a period of time.

Um you know, and then, and then that ended up changing. But yeah, I mean, when I started the business again, it was because I just needed extra money, right? So there was nothing glamorous about it. It was a lot of hard work and I was willing to do it. And that’s the one thing I will say about myself is that I’ve always been a hard worker and I know in some capacity that uh has served me well. Yeah. And then the this side hustle that you were, were performing for extra money.

At what point was there? Was there something that happened that you said, hey, you know what, I’m gonna turn this into real business or did it just sort of morph on its own? Well, I mentioned how I was doing that work for a real estate investor and what would happen is I’d be in the house uh of a house painting and he would say, hey, can you go ahead and put in a new toilet? Can you go ahead and put in a new floor? And I was like, oh my God, I’ve got to learn from youtube how I can put a toilet in because I was not gonna say no.

So lo and behold, I start putting in toilets and honestly, what that did was it gave me some other opportunities. This particular real estate investor said, hey, I can tell you’re really hard worker. Do you wanna start flipping houses with me? This, this kind of gets me out of the painting business for a moment. But I started flipping houses and I would do all the painting and I would try and do as much of the work as I possibly could. I ended up going to Columbus State, which is a community college here and I got, I went through their electrical, their plumbing and their carpentry program because I was like, if I can do the work, it’ll save me money and put my money in my pocket.

So I kind of started doing that for a while and I was getting a little outside of painting and I realized that that’s, that’s a lot, right? Like doing all of these things, I slowly started to refocus on painting and just thought that I could do something with it. Although I didn’t know quite what it was. So I ventured off into some of this remodeling stuff came back to painting and when I was getting good referrals, word of mouth referrals and getting really busy. I think that’s when I discovered, you know, what if I can keep myself and someone else busy?

I think I might be able to keep more people busy at this. Um, so I, I really did kind of fall into it in some capacity, but I also know I’m right where I’m supposed to be. So I fell into it, but I was supposed to fall into it. Yeah, I think it goes back to your, your idea of upper of basically trying a lot of different things in my life. I’ve gone a lot of different ways with the career and when you figure out something doesn’t work or you don’t want to continue on that path, it’s really helpful to take a second, take more than a second, take a day a week, however long it takes and figure out what you did like about it and what you didn’t like about it and then drive toward the thing that you did like about it because usually what a job, no matter how much you hate it, usually there is something you like and you can, you can learn about yourself to doing a whole host of different things.

You can start to really figure out all the things that you like and then find an opportunity that aligns with that. That’s right. And you know, I think what, what one of the first pieces of painting that really resonated with me and kind of struck me on a deeper side was that I could pay someone to work and they could take care of their family that really felt special to me. And in the early stages, that’s really what kind of kept me going was knowing that I could find enough work so that my guy William who was with me could take care of his family and I loved that.

So I have kind of a, a weird question for you, Michael, maybe, maybe like a little bit gross, but it has to do with replacing toilets. So I figured out how to replace toilets a while back our house flooded and I put the toilets back in and there were a lot of cockroaches in the toilets. Is that a normal thing for cockroaches to be in there? I’m not sure, I’m not sure what that says about your toilet. It’s concerning, right? But then I talked with someone else and they said, well, they told me it’s normal and they say, yeah, people flush a cockroach down the toilet and they think, oh, they killed the cockroach.

But then actually a lot of cockroaches will live in the pipes. So, well, I’ll tell you what full disclosure, you know, some of these are these, these rentals that I was painting them were not in the best shape. So I came across a lot of cockroaches. I don’t specifically remember them being in the toilet flange, but I also don’t like cockroaches. So I might have like blocked that out of my memory banks. Yeah, fair enough. Ok. Now I just look like a weirdo random question. All right.

Um Cool Michael. This is, has been incredible. I like all the different directions is taken as we wrap up this uh first episode. Is there anything else you’d like to add, kind of more focused on the the entry part of your journey? How people can really discover their passion, self care in the beginning, really focused on the early stages. Yeah. You know, I think the way I like to, to sign off is is to really just give people hope like things can get difficult, man, they get so difficult.

You second guess your own ability. I like to always say that you can’t see what’s coming around the corner and I just believe wholeheartedly when you have the right intention and you’re willing to work hard if you could just stick it out, right? The part that most people can’t do is when it gets hard, right? You stick it out, right? Like when I get in the ice bath and I start telling myself what the heck are you doing this for? You stick it out. Uh There is some sort of joy and I believe success is on the other side of all of that difficult heartache.

And so my message would be like you can do it, you can do it, you can do it. You don’t know what’s coming around the corner, you stick it out and you’ve got the right intention, the right heart behind it. I think you’ve got success in your path, Michael. Where can people find your podcast if they haven’t yet listened to it? Yeah. Check out the women and paint podcast. It is on the PC A overdrive. I’m also starting to stream it live on our women paint Facebook page.

And you can also reach out to me on Instagram, which is uh Michael M IC Hal 614. You can find me on Instagram. Well, well, thank you, Michael. I appreciate you really excited for the next few episodes. This one was awesome. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.

Keep growing.