June 21, 2022 • 20 mins
Jessica Rowland started her own painting business without really knowing it. A champion of the gig economy, her new venture has thrived during the pandemic and shows no signs of stopping.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to On the Job. This season, we're focusing on
how people and businesses are getting back to work. Let's
call it a great transformation, a change in the way
workers are thinking. Employers need people to work more than ever,
putting laborers in a sort of position of power. We'll
be hearing from people navigating this new normal for themselves
as they find their life's work to end. This season,
(00:32):
we're going to Minneapolis to meet Jessica. She's a go getter,
an eternal yes person, and a champion of the gig economy.
Without a college degree, She's hopped around a lot of
jobs over the years, trying to find what works for her,
but never really settling down. And then, amidst the chaos
of the pandemic, she had a thriving painting business kind
of before she knew it. I'm just gonna have you
(00:56):
introduce yourself to say your name, who you are, what
you do. I've literally have done this for other things
that it's like the worst. I'm like so bad at it.
I wasn't good in school. This is Jessica Roland. She's
thirty seven, lives in South Minneapolis. Whole job title like, yeah,
what you do? Founder and CEO of Rollin I'm still
(01:16):
get to use to that new title. She is the
CEO of her own company, rolland Paint and All Women
Paint Crew. It's probably hard for her to get used
to that title because it happened fast. She started painting
houses just a few years ago, and now she's got
an LLC employees, an amazing website, and to squash some
of the misconceptions she gets about what she does. She
(01:38):
is not a decorator. People have a vision. You are
the person who comes in and executes the vision. Right,
I'm setting up the actual process, the operation of painting
your house. Okay, so you never you never stop people
from making horrible color decisions. No, because first of all,
you don't know you don't know what they like. Some people,
(01:59):
I mean, you can put up colors that you would
never do and they just they love it. And that's
that's what matters. I'm not living there they are. I
want to tell you how much money it's going to be,
and then I want to do that in that price
and have you be happy about it. Each day at
work for Jessica can look very different. She's got four
(02:20):
painters and a communications manager. Now if they're on a
new job. We'll meet in the morning, talk over the project.
The girls will start packing up the truck, and then
we'll call in the paint order. They head out to
wherever the project is. Jessica make sure everyone's set up.
Then I just read around like crazy and try to
try to knock things off my to do list. But
to do list pretty much keeps growing, and they do wallpapering,
(02:44):
rolling paints grew really fast and it's continuing to grow fast.
So Jessica is currently in a transition period where she's
setting her team up with everything they need to work
without her on site. So I'm trying to step out
of the day to day. So that's that's why it's
so crazy. Right now, I won't have to be there
to like go over the project every morning and talk
(03:05):
to the girls. I won't have to be on the project.
We'd have all those systems set up where I can
just go right doing estimates or meeting with whoever networking.
This moment of gross she's in after one of the
most insane economic periods we've seen. Jessica has been in
that mode for a while. She started on her own.
She got too much work she brought help on. Then
she got more work and had to bring more people on,
(03:27):
so on and so forth. It was building and I realized, like,
it's going faster than I can Then I can do
estimating and invoicing and all these other tasks. So before
I realized I had a business, I had a business.
So now I'm trying to build the business while owning
a business. Jessica's a restless entrepreneur, she told me. Her
(03:50):
mantra has generally been ready fire. Aim says she's always
been that way, even when she was a kid. Absolutely,
I'm actually a lot like my dad. I realized very social.
I know, like everyone on the block. I knew everyone
in every class. That's a big thing growing up in Minneapolis.
She says, it's a big place, but everyone knows each other.
(04:11):
And she loved that. I cared for it obviously because
that's where that's like where my strengths were. We're connecting
with people and knowing people, and so I guess I
always knew that I was in this like rich city
of connections. She had older brothers, had a lot of
independence as a kid, played a lot of sports. It
was school that was tough. I hated school. You know,
people might have like mommy and daddy issues. I have
(04:32):
like teacher issues. I liked going, I didn't mind, like
I had friends, but I just could not like the
work was just so like I didn't understand why we
were doing most of it. That might seem like par
for the course for a young kid. It's not liking school,
but it didn't go away for Jessica. Middle school started
to become a problem and the stress was there. I mean,
(04:55):
you know, you've been in a job that you've hated before,
and how it wears on you and your relationship us
breakdown outside of that work because you're you know, you're crabby.
You're crabby all the time. It's taking all of your
energy away from you, and everything else seems difficult. Eventually,
she dropped out of public school. I just didn't show up.
I didn't have a plan. I mean, it's crazy, Like
(05:16):
looking back, I realized, like, oh my gosh, like what
was I thinking? I wasn't I had like no future,
I had no future plans. She did find an alternative
high school that worked for and after high school, she traveled.
She spent some time in London, backpack around Europe. And
New Zealand and Australia. She'd come back and serve tables
in the US for a bit just to make enough
(05:37):
cash and then buy and plane ticket. There was one
moment when I realized, like I wanted to stop doing that.
So Jessica was backpacking, living the hostile life, and she'd
already been fantasizing about what it would be like to
not put her name on food that she had in
the fridge. And one day someone had stole ham that
(05:57):
I I splurged on for like a sandwich because he
eat a lot of like potatoes and beans, you know
when you backpack. And I had splurged on like sliced
ham for some sandwiches and someone stole it out of
the fridge, and I thought it was going to break me.
So I was like, I think it's I think it's time,
or and you thought I need to go home. Yeah,
you know, like you go to put like something in
(06:18):
like the toaster, and there's somebody else's food in there
that had been left for like how long, and you're like, oh,
I don't want to share a toaster anymore. After the
ham incident, Jessica switched gears. She wanted to make some
real money. She didn't have much of a plan, but
(06:38):
she knew that she wanted to eventually stop serving tables
and that she had to be scrappy. I knew that
people were not going to hire me because I don't
have a college degree, and so I had to find
places that we're going to listen to me, that I
could get in front of and make them understand that
I'm still a very capable employee. I knew I was
(06:59):
way better than what a degree could prove. So she
worked for a lot of small businesses, and she dove
headfirst into the gig economy, just doing lots of different
jobs and getting in front of lots of different people.
I wanted to find a career. I just didn't know
what it was going to be. So I think it
was just it was finding out what's out there. She
tried some corporate stuff, loved that there was a lot
(07:21):
of people, but couldn't do the bureaucracy. She worked as
a PA, organizing crazy things for Red Bull events, and
she did keep serving tables on the side for a while.
I mean, I was just doing whatever I could to
make money, and then the opportunities grew, but not enough
to quite be full time after a lot of years
(07:45):
of piecing things together. She was working for a local
real estate team as a transactions coordinator, and somebody in
the office had asked me to paint a couple of
rooms for their client who had a an atrocious color
on their walls and was reluctantly changing them to a
realtor gray. The thing was, Jessica had never done that before.
(08:08):
The person who asked her just knew that Jessica's dad
had a small construction business, so I think she just
trusted that I was handy enough. So Jessica went to
her dad and said, I've never done this. Should I
do this? And He's like, well, yeah, of course, like
why wouldn't you? And I'm like, oh, I don't know.
He's like, somebody's like offering you work, you take it
(08:30):
like not everyone gets that. We're not always offered things
like that. So so yeah, I did it. We'll be
right back with Jessica's story after the break. A strong
work ethic takes pride in a job well done, sweats
(08:52):
over the details. This is you. But to get an
honest day's work, you need a response. You need a callback,
You need a job. Express employment professionals can help because
we understand what it takes to get a job. It
takes more than just online searches to land a job.
(09:12):
It takes someone who will identify your talents, a person
invested in your success. At Express, we can even complete
your application with you over the phone, will prepare you
for interviews, and will connect you to the right company. Plus,
we'll never charge a fee to find you a job.
At Express. We can put you to work with companies
of all sizes and industries, from the production floor to
(09:35):
the front office. Express Nose Jobs, get to no Express,
find your location at expresspros dot com or on the
Express Jobs app. Back to Jessica. She did her first
painting job for the real estate agency, and then she
got offered more, and each year they just kind of
they multiplied. So I thought I'd have a few to
(09:57):
go back to, but then it was like a few
more than that, and then a few more than that
in each season increased a little bit. She was doing
other gigs this whole time too, because she didn't really
see this as a full time thing. It took it
took a long time, I think to feel very confident
in what I do. I never advertised, or I didn't
have a logo or an Instagram account or anything. I
(10:18):
guess I'd still thought that I was going to be
doing something else at some point. Even when she was
getting consistent work and getting lots of jobs through word
of mouth, she didn't see herself as a business. So
it was just like making enough money so I can
like go on vacations and eat out and drink or
you know, just live my life. It was always still
(10:39):
just a means to an end. Yeah, you know. It
was just like, how like I have enough money to
make rent great, and then everything else is for you know,
a plane ticket, running a solo business, setting the right rates,
asking people for money. It was all a really big shift.
But eventually she had enough work where she couldn't do
(11:02):
it alone. The first person who came on my team,
I think that's when a lot of things clipped for me.
Is when you're explaining something to a new person and
you can finally see the gap between beginner and where
you are, you can see everything in between. Her first
employee actually came on right as COVID started. They were
shut down for a couple of weeks, but then were
(11:22):
deemed an essential service and got back to work. There
were lots of homes being sold with the real estate
agency and a lot of people stuck at home wanting
to finally remodel, so pretty quickly she was bringing on
more employees to keep up. So do you have a
secret to growing more quickly? Yeah? I kept saying, yes, Yeah,
that's really good. I just you know, I take things on.
(11:45):
They're like, do you do this? Like, yeah, we do that.
Do you do this? Yeah, sure, we do that. They
started doing wallpaper, going out of their comfort zone, and
because Jessica knew everyone in town, all of the friends
that she grew up with were now buying homes and
calling her, opening businesses and asking her to paint their
new spaces. All this work was coming in and she
(12:05):
was on site every single day. That was. That was exhausting.
That was probably the one of the hardest parts because
our projects were moving so fast, and so to keep
estimates going and do all that work and invoice, I mean,
that was it was a lot. At what point did
you accept that you had a business. I think at
that point she had two women working for full time
(12:27):
as contractors, had more work than she can handle. So
she started an LLC. I knew I needed structure. I
knew that I wanted to keep these people. I knew
that I wanted I wanted to get paid well, and
it was important that they got paid well too. So
I thought, Okay, we're doing this, We're going to build it.
Let's build it right. Wow, Okay, so you you just
(12:52):
accidentally have a full fledged business. Now, Yes, it does
feel accidental. It really does, though, But I know I've
been working so hard, so it's nice to know that.
It's nice to have something that represents all your hard work,
which I think is our team. My team is fantastic,
And just over a couple of years, Jessica now has
(13:14):
four full time painters as employees and just hired a
communications manager to run their web presence and social media. So,
as we heard in the beginning of the show, she's
trying to get to a place where she can handle
the business and not be on site every day doing
a million things. You're in growing pains phase. Yeah, I
give it one more year. This is the sum where
(13:36):
everything comes together. Really yeah, Jessica says sales have never
been an issue since she started painting, and now that
they've made a name for themselves. They have a ton
of return clients. They've still got more work than they
could do even with the employees she has. Now that's
because Jessica's always said yes, go go, go to everything,
(13:56):
and now she's trying to decide how big she actually
wants to be. I think we're I want to read
it as we go. It's important to me that the
people who are on my team now have careers, have
job stability, and they can make enough money to buy
homes and have families if they want go on vacation.
(14:17):
So I want to make sure that we build it
in a way that takes care of who we have now.
As a really professional all women team, rolland Paint has
definitely stood out with clients. They stand out in the
field because not all painting crews are as put together
as they are. I think about that sometimes and I so,
(14:40):
you don't need any certification or license to paint, and
would it be better for the trade to have that?
Like probably, you mean, but getting into it. I mean
for me that was essential is the fact that I
didn't have to have any formal training or work with
another team. So I feel both ways about how how
(15:01):
low that bar is or the barrier for entry, and
once you get into an industry like this, the sky's
the limit with how far you can take it. Jessica
is proof of that. It's really a perfect place for
someone like her who didn't fit in the traditional mold
is still go get her thrives in the gig economy,
but want stability. It's good for people who need quick
(15:24):
turnaround on feeling the success of something. If you need
people who need instant gratification. Yeah, your beginning, middle, and
end is you know, only like a couple days away. Yeah,
it's all there. I am one of those people, And
to be honest, I relate to Jessica a lot. I
spent a while bopping around doing a hundred different things, restless,
(15:48):
full of ideas, and eventually I did crave roots and
stability because the hustle is exhausting. But even when I
have settled down a little bit more, that restlessness is
really hard to shake. And I sometimes still feel that
I'm faded to just keep moving all the time, that
like I, oh, maybe I don't belong like anywhere? Did
(16:12):
you did you ever feel that? I guess being able
to connect with people socially, I never felt like I
was completely out of place. But I guess I didn't
feel like I was finished, or I guess maybe I
didn't dwell too much on feeling like I didn't fit
in because I hadn't even like sat there long enough
to consider it. It was kind of like, well, this
(16:33):
isn't serving me by, and they're like, where did Jessica go?
She laughed. I've always felt that it's kind of cool
to be that person, kind of the wild card who
gets stuff done, but you never know when they're coming
or when they're going. But it really makes it hard
to feel like you have a plan at all. Even
(16:54):
now that Jessica is established, she's still feeling things out,
you know, kind of a no plan plan. I told
you I did not have a plan. I've never had
a plan. Do you prefer that. I don't think it's
a preference thing. I think it's just how I'm built.
I'm convinced that it's just that is just who I am.
This is something new that she's come to accept this
(17:15):
year while talking with a therapist, looking at who she is,
why she's always been go, go go, and seeing it
as a strength. You look back on everything you've ever
done and you're like, oh, yeah, I've always been doing that.
That's true. So I have traction. I'm an activator. I
(17:36):
start things, and that can be seen as being a
negative in your life. You know, so many people tell
you that it's wrong or that you need to need
to stop and think about it, and that's what they
need it. That's not what I needed. I think I'm
just one of many people who needs to hear this
(17:57):
because there are just so many of us out there
that don't fit perfectly into the way that things work.
There's so many people who aren't built for regular school
and tests or college. So many people who don't want
to work in one place for five days a week,
or people who would rather work one job for a
(18:18):
couple of years than half to the next because we're
just curious. So many people who could never afford the
absurd price tag of the degrees you need to get
a quote good job. And there's a stigma against being
one of those people, seeing all those things as shortcomings.
But those people are forced to be hustlers because they
(18:40):
don't fit in. They don't see things that work for them,
so they start things. You know, and for people who
can't start things like I'm essential. You know, that's I
need to be doing this. I need to use what
I'm good at for all of us, right, it's you know,
we all have different different strengths and it's important that
they vary, like it's an ecosystem. We need to be
(19:02):
balanced that way. As we wrap up this season, a
big takeaway for me is just do what you want
to do. Just do it works. If the last few
years have proven anything, it's that there aren't many rules,
nothing is certain, anything can happen, and the way things
are done are not the way you need to do things.
(19:24):
If Jessica and her business are a proof of anything,
it's that if you are just relentlessly yourself, maybe, just
maybe you'll accidentally end up exactly where you want to be.
And so to look back at everything I've ever done
and knowing that that's who I've always been feels good.
(19:46):
I don't have to feel ashamed for being the wrong
kind of student or the wrong kind of employee. You know,
I just I wasn't in the right spaces for on
(20:08):
the job. I'm otis gray. To see some of Jessica
and her team's work, go to Roland Paint Dot com
Welcome to On the Job. This season, we're focusing on
how people and businesses are getting back to work. Let's
call it a great transformation, a change in the way
workers are thinking. Employers need people to work more than ever,
putting laborers in a sort of position of power. We'll
be hearing from people navigating this new normal for themselves
as they find their life's work to end. This season,
(00:32):
we're going to Minneapolis to meet Jessica. She's a go getter,
an eternal yes person, and a champion of the gig economy.
Without a college degree, She's hopped around a lot of
jobs over the years, trying to find what works for her,
but never really settling down. And then, amidst the chaos
of the pandemic, she had a thriving painting business kind
of before she knew it. I'm just gonna have you
(00:56):
introduce yourself to say your name, who you are, what
you do. I've literally have done this for other things
that it's like the worst. I'm like so bad at it.
I wasn't good in school. This is Jessica Roland. She's
thirty seven, lives in South Minneapolis. Whole job title like, yeah,
what you do? Founder and CEO of Rollin I'm still
(01:16):
get to use to that new title. She is the
CEO of her own company, rolland Paint and All Women
Paint Crew. It's probably hard for her to get used
to that title because it happened fast. She started painting
houses just a few years ago, and now she's got
an LLC employees, an amazing website, and to squash some
of the misconceptions she gets about what she does. She
(01:38):
is not a decorator. People have a vision. You are
the person who comes in and executes the vision. Right,
I'm setting up the actual process, the operation of painting
your house. Okay, so you never you never stop people
from making horrible color decisions. No, because first of all,
you don't know you don't know what they like. Some people,
(01:59):
I mean, you can put up colors that you would
never do and they just they love it. And that's
that's what matters. I'm not living there they are. I
want to tell you how much money it's going to be,
and then I want to do that in that price
and have you be happy about it. Each day at
work for Jessica can look very different. She's got four
(02:20):
painters and a communications manager. Now if they're on a
new job. We'll meet in the morning, talk over the project.
The girls will start packing up the truck, and then
we'll call in the paint order. They head out to
wherever the project is. Jessica make sure everyone's set up.
Then I just read around like crazy and try to
try to knock things off my to do list. But
to do list pretty much keeps growing, and they do wallpapering,
(02:44):
rolling paints grew really fast and it's continuing to grow fast.
So Jessica is currently in a transition period where she's
setting her team up with everything they need to work
without her on site. So I'm trying to step out
of the day to day. So that's that's why it's
so crazy. Right now, I won't have to be there
to like go over the project every morning and talk
(03:05):
to the girls. I won't have to be on the project.
We'd have all those systems set up where I can
just go right doing estimates or meeting with whoever networking.
This moment of gross she's in after one of the
most insane economic periods we've seen. Jessica has been in
that mode for a while. She started on her own.
She got too much work she brought help on. Then
she got more work and had to bring more people on,
(03:27):
so on and so forth. It was building and I realized, like,
it's going faster than I can Then I can do
estimating and invoicing and all these other tasks. So before
I realized I had a business, I had a business.
So now I'm trying to build the business while owning
a business. Jessica's a restless entrepreneur, she told me. Her
(03:50):
mantra has generally been ready fire. Aim says she's always
been that way, even when she was a kid. Absolutely,
I'm actually a lot like my dad. I realized very social.
I know, like everyone on the block. I knew everyone
in every class. That's a big thing growing up in Minneapolis.
She says, it's a big place, but everyone knows each other.
(04:11):
And she loved that. I cared for it obviously because
that's where that's like where my strengths were. We're connecting
with people and knowing people, and so I guess I
always knew that I was in this like rich city
of connections. She had older brothers, had a lot of
independence as a kid, played a lot of sports. It
was school that was tough. I hated school. You know,
people might have like mommy and daddy issues. I have
(04:32):
like teacher issues. I liked going, I didn't mind, like
I had friends, but I just could not like the
work was just so like I didn't understand why we
were doing most of it. That might seem like par
for the course for a young kid. It's not liking school,
but it didn't go away for Jessica. Middle school started
to become a problem and the stress was there. I mean,
(04:55):
you know, you've been in a job that you've hated before,
and how it wears on you and your relationship us
breakdown outside of that work because you're you know, you're crabby.
You're crabby all the time. It's taking all of your
energy away from you, and everything else seems difficult. Eventually,
she dropped out of public school. I just didn't show up.
I didn't have a plan. I mean, it's crazy, Like
(05:16):
looking back, I realized, like, oh my gosh, like what
was I thinking? I wasn't I had like no future,
I had no future plans. She did find an alternative
high school that worked for and after high school, she traveled.
She spent some time in London, backpack around Europe. And
New Zealand and Australia. She'd come back and serve tables
in the US for a bit just to make enough
(05:37):
cash and then buy and plane ticket. There was one
moment when I realized, like I wanted to stop doing that.
So Jessica was backpacking, living the hostile life, and she'd
already been fantasizing about what it would be like to
not put her name on food that she had in
the fridge. And one day someone had stole ham that
(05:57):
I I splurged on for like a sandwich because he
eat a lot of like potatoes and beans, you know
when you backpack. And I had splurged on like sliced
ham for some sandwiches and someone stole it out of
the fridge, and I thought it was going to break me.
So I was like, I think it's I think it's time,
or and you thought I need to go home. Yeah,
you know, like you go to put like something in
(06:18):
like the toaster, and there's somebody else's food in there
that had been left for like how long, and you're like, oh,
I don't want to share a toaster anymore. After the
ham incident, Jessica switched gears. She wanted to make some
real money. She didn't have much of a plan, but
(06:38):
she knew that she wanted to eventually stop serving tables
and that she had to be scrappy. I knew that
people were not going to hire me because I don't
have a college degree, and so I had to find
places that we're going to listen to me, that I
could get in front of and make them understand that
I'm still a very capable employee. I knew I was
(06:59):
way better than what a degree could prove. So she
worked for a lot of small businesses, and she dove
headfirst into the gig economy, just doing lots of different
jobs and getting in front of lots of different people.
I wanted to find a career. I just didn't know
what it was going to be. So I think it
was just it was finding out what's out there. She
tried some corporate stuff, loved that there was a lot
(07:21):
of people, but couldn't do the bureaucracy. She worked as
a PA, organizing crazy things for Red Bull events, and
she did keep serving tables on the side for a while.
I mean, I was just doing whatever I could to
make money, and then the opportunities grew, but not enough
to quite be full time after a lot of years
(07:45):
of piecing things together. She was working for a local
real estate team as a transactions coordinator, and somebody in
the office had asked me to paint a couple of
rooms for their client who had a an atrocious color
on their walls and was reluctantly changing them to a
realtor gray. The thing was, Jessica had never done that before.
(08:08):
The person who asked her just knew that Jessica's dad
had a small construction business, so I think she just
trusted that I was handy enough. So Jessica went to
her dad and said, I've never done this. Should I
do this? And He's like, well, yeah, of course, like
why wouldn't you? And I'm like, oh, I don't know.
He's like, somebody's like offering you work, you take it
(08:30):
like not everyone gets that. We're not always offered things
like that. So so yeah, I did it. We'll be
right back with Jessica's story after the break. A strong
work ethic takes pride in a job well done, sweats
(08:52):
over the details. This is you. But to get an
honest day's work, you need a response. You need a callback,
You need a job. Express employment professionals can help because
we understand what it takes to get a job. It
takes more than just online searches to land a job.
(09:12):
It takes someone who will identify your talents, a person
invested in your success. At Express, we can even complete
your application with you over the phone, will prepare you
for interviews, and will connect you to the right company. Plus,
we'll never charge a fee to find you a job.
At Express. We can put you to work with companies
of all sizes and industries, from the production floor to
(09:35):
the front office. Express Nose Jobs, get to no Express,
find your location at expresspros dot com or on the
Express Jobs app. Back to Jessica. She did her first
painting job for the real estate agency, and then she
got offered more, and each year they just kind of
they multiplied. So I thought I'd have a few to
(09:57):
go back to, but then it was like a few
more than that, and then a few more than that
in each season increased a little bit. She was doing
other gigs this whole time too, because she didn't really
see this as a full time thing. It took it
took a long time, I think to feel very confident
in what I do. I never advertised, or I didn't
have a logo or an Instagram account or anything. I
(10:18):
guess I'd still thought that I was going to be
doing something else at some point. Even when she was
getting consistent work and getting lots of jobs through word
of mouth, she didn't see herself as a business. So
it was just like making enough money so I can
like go on vacations and eat out and drink or
you know, just live my life. It was always still
(10:39):
just a means to an end. Yeah, you know. It
was just like, how like I have enough money to
make rent great, and then everything else is for you know,
a plane ticket, running a solo business, setting the right rates,
asking people for money. It was all a really big shift.
But eventually she had enough work where she couldn't do
(11:02):
it alone. The first person who came on my team,
I think that's when a lot of things clipped for me.
Is when you're explaining something to a new person and
you can finally see the gap between beginner and where
you are, you can see everything in between. Her first
employee actually came on right as COVID started. They were
shut down for a couple of weeks, but then were
(11:22):
deemed an essential service and got back to work. There
were lots of homes being sold with the real estate
agency and a lot of people stuck at home wanting
to finally remodel, so pretty quickly she was bringing on
more employees to keep up. So do you have a
secret to growing more quickly? Yeah? I kept saying, yes, Yeah,
that's really good. I just you know, I take things on.
(11:45):
They're like, do you do this? Like, yeah, we do that.
Do you do this? Yeah, sure, we do that. They
started doing wallpaper, going out of their comfort zone, and
because Jessica knew everyone in town, all of the friends
that she grew up with were now buying homes and
calling her, opening businesses and asking her to paint their
new spaces. All this work was coming in and she
(12:05):
was on site every single day. That was. That was exhausting.
That was probably the one of the hardest parts because
our projects were moving so fast, and so to keep
estimates going and do all that work and invoice, I mean,
that was it was a lot. At what point did
you accept that you had a business. I think at
that point she had two women working for full time
(12:27):
as contractors, had more work than she can handle. So
she started an LLC. I knew I needed structure. I
knew that I wanted to keep these people. I knew
that I wanted I wanted to get paid well, and
it was important that they got paid well too. So
I thought, Okay, we're doing this, We're going to build it.
Let's build it right. Wow, Okay, so you you just
(12:52):
accidentally have a full fledged business. Now, Yes, it does
feel accidental. It really does, though, But I know I've
been working so hard, so it's nice to know that.
It's nice to have something that represents all your hard work,
which I think is our team. My team is fantastic,
And just over a couple of years, Jessica now has
(13:14):
four full time painters as employees and just hired a
communications manager to run their web presence and social media. So,
as we heard in the beginning of the show, she's
trying to get to a place where she can handle
the business and not be on site every day doing
a million things. You're in growing pains phase. Yeah, I
give it one more year. This is the sum where
(13:36):
everything comes together. Really yeah, Jessica says sales have never
been an issue since she started painting, and now that
they've made a name for themselves. They have a ton
of return clients. They've still got more work than they
could do even with the employees she has. Now that's
because Jessica's always said yes, go go, go to everything,
(13:56):
and now she's trying to decide how big she actually
wants to be. I think we're I want to read
it as we go. It's important to me that the
people who are on my team now have careers, have
job stability, and they can make enough money to buy
homes and have families if they want go on vacation.
(14:17):
So I want to make sure that we build it
in a way that takes care of who we have now.
As a really professional all women team, rolland Paint has
definitely stood out with clients. They stand out in the
field because not all painting crews are as put together
as they are. I think about that sometimes and I so,
(14:40):
you don't need any certification or license to paint, and
would it be better for the trade to have that?
Like probably, you mean, but getting into it. I mean
for me that was essential is the fact that I
didn't have to have any formal training or work with
another team. So I feel both ways about how how
(15:01):
low that bar is or the barrier for entry, and
once you get into an industry like this, the sky's
the limit with how far you can take it. Jessica
is proof of that. It's really a perfect place for
someone like her who didn't fit in the traditional mold
is still go get her thrives in the gig economy,
but want stability. It's good for people who need quick
(15:24):
turnaround on feeling the success of something. If you need
people who need instant gratification. Yeah, your beginning, middle, and
end is you know, only like a couple days away. Yeah,
it's all there. I am one of those people, And
to be honest, I relate to Jessica a lot. I
spent a while bopping around doing a hundred different things, restless,
(15:48):
full of ideas, and eventually I did crave roots and
stability because the hustle is exhausting. But even when I
have settled down a little bit more, that restlessness is
really hard to shake. And I sometimes still feel that
I'm faded to just keep moving all the time, that
like I, oh, maybe I don't belong like anywhere? Did
(16:12):
you did you ever feel that? I guess being able
to connect with people socially, I never felt like I
was completely out of place. But I guess I didn't
feel like I was finished, or I guess maybe I
didn't dwell too much on feeling like I didn't fit
in because I hadn't even like sat there long enough
to consider it. It was kind of like, well, this
(16:33):
isn't serving me by, and they're like, where did Jessica go?
She laughed. I've always felt that it's kind of cool
to be that person, kind of the wild card who
gets stuff done, but you never know when they're coming
or when they're going. But it really makes it hard
to feel like you have a plan at all. Even
(16:54):
now that Jessica is established, she's still feeling things out,
you know, kind of a no plan plan. I told
you I did not have a plan. I've never had
a plan. Do you prefer that. I don't think it's
a preference thing. I think it's just how I'm built.
I'm convinced that it's just that is just who I am.
This is something new that she's come to accept this
(17:15):
year while talking with a therapist, looking at who she is,
why she's always been go, go go, and seeing it
as a strength. You look back on everything you've ever
done and you're like, oh, yeah, I've always been doing that.
That's true. So I have traction. I'm an activator. I
(17:36):
start things, and that can be seen as being a
negative in your life. You know, so many people tell
you that it's wrong or that you need to need
to stop and think about it, and that's what they
need it. That's not what I needed. I think I'm
just one of many people who needs to hear this
(17:57):
because there are just so many of us out there
that don't fit perfectly into the way that things work.
There's so many people who aren't built for regular school
and tests or college. So many people who don't want
to work in one place for five days a week,
or people who would rather work one job for a
(18:18):
couple of years than half to the next because we're
just curious. So many people who could never afford the
absurd price tag of the degrees you need to get
a quote good job. And there's a stigma against being
one of those people, seeing all those things as shortcomings.
But those people are forced to be hustlers because they
(18:40):
don't fit in. They don't see things that work for them,
so they start things. You know, and for people who
can't start things like I'm essential. You know, that's I
need to be doing this. I need to use what
I'm good at for all of us, right, it's you know,
we all have different different strengths and it's important that
they vary, like it's an ecosystem. We need to be
(19:02):
balanced that way. As we wrap up this season, a
big takeaway for me is just do what you want
to do. Just do it works. If the last few
years have proven anything, it's that there aren't many rules,
nothing is certain, anything can happen, and the way things
are done are not the way you need to do things.
(19:24):
If Jessica and her business are a proof of anything,
it's that if you are just relentlessly yourself, maybe, just
maybe you'll accidentally end up exactly where you want to be.
And so to look back at everything I've ever done
and knowing that that's who I've always been feels good.
(19:46):
I don't have to feel ashamed for being the wrong
kind of student or the wrong kind of employee. You know,
I just I wasn't in the right spaces for on
(20:08):
the job. I'm otis gray. To see some of Jessica
and her team's work, go to Roland Paint Dot com
Hosts And Creators
Bobby Bones
Amy Brown
Lunchbox
Eddie Garcia
Morgan Huelsman
Raymundo
Mike D
Abby Anderson
Scuba Steve
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