Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here is another CEO you should know on iHeartRadio. Meet
Paula Blankenship, CEO and founder of Heirloom Traditions Paint.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I am from a little town called I'm not a Tennessee,
a little small town of oh gosh, tiny little place
right on the Kentucky border, and grew up there and
moved to Louisville about thirteen years ago.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Well, I'm looking forward to talking to you about Heirloom
Traditions Paint. And it's such an amazing story. You know,
it sounds so simple, and when our listeners and our
entrepreneurs and our future entrepreneurs hear it, I think they're
going to be kind of blown away by how cool
and simple was. But I know it was nothing but
not simple about starting a company and where you've taken
it right now. But I do want to ask you
(00:42):
about this about as a young person, about what you
wanted to do. I know you've always been very entrepreneurial
and an inventor, but as you were growing up, what
did you want to do before you came up with
this company about twelve years ago.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Well, you know, I had an unusual upbringing. I had
a very non traditional parents. I would say both of
them entrepreneurial, but my mother especially was and she never
told me no to anything, and probably not a great
way to raise your children, but it was also very
fueling for us to realize we could dream way outside
of what we could see. And she also traveled with us.
(01:18):
She made a point to take me and my sister
on a world trip somewhere every year since I was
in the first grade. We always went to exotic places,
not beach places, but actually places we could see things
bigger than ourselves. I look back at that and go, wow,
what a small what a small town woman. My mother
was born and raised in Tennessee all over days and
(01:40):
never moved. But what a big dreamer she was. And
she also wanted us to know she wanted us to
broaden our horizons. So that was very insightful looking back
and made me appreciate home. It also inspired me to really,
like I say, never ever look at something and say
I can do that. I would dream about I'd say
(02:02):
crazy things to her. I remember in the fourth grade
I came home one day and said, Mom, I want
to be the president. Of course, I'd like to retract
that statement now, but yes, I did dream of crazy things.
You know, I knew I was doing something in my
mind always different than most people. And I didn't really
have a lot of friends, a lot of great friends,
but I really didn't depend on that. I was always
(02:24):
kind of a loner, just a little bit because I
was struggling with dyslexia in school. But I was a
great reader. How could that be? That seems like such
a dichotomy there, the way I learned things, I was
a visual learner and I wasn't really I didn't care
one thing about anything that was abstract learning. So if
it was something that I felt like was busy work,
(02:46):
my mind would not let me do it. It just would not.
I try to get through it. And I'll make this statement,
I've never read a book cover to cover in my life,
whether it be fiction or even from school. I've never
read a book. And I read all the time, and
I read different things that I'm interested in on the
daily like everybody else on their phone. But I have
(03:07):
never read any kind of a fictional story in any form.
So I've done a lot of fake book reports in
my life. So I wasn't a great student. And I've
also never written a business proposal, never ever written one
of those to where I had to extrapolate out what
I thought the future looked like, and mine would be
probably way over the top. I remember bankers saying, hey,
(03:30):
well you need to make a business plan. That seemed
like such a daunting task to me to have to
lay out all of these things that were again, they
weren't reality in my mind. So I think a lot
of people get hung up on that right there. They
think they've got to be able to put this into writing,
put this into this plan, anything they're dreaming of. The
(03:50):
The truth of the matter is you truly don't. If
you've got to see it through this and you've got
to wherewithal and you're willing to grind, and you're willing
to sell something off the back of a truck. Bo
can hustle, You can make anything work.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I think it's great advice. And yet here we are
with this great, incredible company that you have, that you
started over a decade ago, and when it comes to
heirloom traditions, Pain, I do want to do this. I
want to ask you in just a few minutes about
Mission Steam and of course the products and what you do,
and it's so cool, but you have to tell the
origin story. As I was reading up about you, I
(04:24):
was just touched by this story because I'm a paired too,
and I know what happens to be with your kitchen
and your son and maybe teaching some entrepreneur schools. Can
you take it from there? It really is truly an
explory or explory that our listeners have to hear.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yes, well, going back to my hometown, you know, I
was born in that little town, and I kind of
always said I don't want to do what my parents did,
but obviously they had a wealth of buildings and warehousing
and all those things that my sister and I ultimately
started taking over as my parents decided to retire and
step away. And in twenty thirteen, after running a furniture
store for twenty three years, the economy turned off like
(05:00):
a water faucet. Sorry. In two thousand and eight, I
took a job with a man from New York City.
He just blew in my door one day whom I
had decorated a property that he bought, so he heard
my name, and anyway, I took this job with him
and started working in Manhattan, and still was playing back
and forth, and my parents were keeping my son at
that time, and they both passed away within a year
(05:21):
of each other. So all the time that I had
decided that, oh night, it was never going to be
a town I would leave, all of a sudden, now
that anker I could leave. So I started thinking, Wow,
my son is just like me. He's a dreamer, and
he also believes he can hammer a living out here
in this town. And if I could ever do anything
(05:41):
to help him launch this arrow out of this box
we're in, time is now. He's in the eighth grade.
I just ironically went on a blind date. I was single,
you know, kind of my whole life fell apart there
when my parents died. I was in a terrible marriage
and decided to look up something. I had gone on
a blind date with a fellow from Louisville, and he
(06:02):
told me about a great school in Louisville, Kentucky, and
I thought, Wow, too bad. I couldn't put my son
in that school. And I then thought about it, why
can't I I've let this home, I've built anchor me
to this little town, and my business is I'm no
longer working in this city. I'm not depending on this,
So what is stopping me my own being scared myself.
(06:22):
You know, I was fifty years old, and I thought,
why not, I'd have to sell my home. Well, there's
another big question mark. There was no way I could
get what I had in this home. And then I thought,
what am I willing to lose? What am I willing
to give up? Here? I'm going to focus just everything
on my son. Sorry. So doing that, I thought I'm
(06:44):
going to get online. Look at this school. It was
a Catholic school. I thought, so, we're not Catholics. But
I thought, let me look, and I found out it
was non denominational. I tested or took him for a
shadowing event in Louisville, and he came out of there
with fly that he passed and into their honors program.
So now I'm leaving going wow, this boy never cracked
(07:04):
a book like me. This dude tested into their honors program.
I can't unsee this. I've got to do this. I've
got to do whatever it takes. So anyway, I made
the move against his will. You know, this boy six
foot three in the eighth grade, he always was the
man of the house. In my opinion, he thought he
was my boss. So you could imagine what I was
going through at home, at least a great child, never
(07:28):
giving me a day's worth of problem. But I decided
I'm going to go for this, and we moved there.
And I just think, as miserable as he is, let
me start something that he and I can kind of
get on a good level. We need to be doing
some FaceTime here and talking and getting another off on
a different subject, you know, So what can we do?
So I said, let's start a business, and let's start
(07:49):
this little company. And of course, me being a designer,
all I knew was paint, and I'd always watch my
mother paint things, and paint's always been a vehicle for me.
I'd always say, if it didn't work, we'll paint it.
Always an avenue I went toward. And a designer that
you know, that's the biggest crayon in my box is paint.
So I've said, that's what let's do. Let's start a
(08:10):
paint company. And I actually wasn't starting an actual paint company.
I wanted to paint furniture because that's my other wheelhouse.
I said, let's buy furniture that's in a box that's unassembled,
let's paint it in a la carte colors, and then
we'll put it back into the box, back into the
wrappings that it was in, and send it to people
and let them pick the color of the chair, of
the table, whatever it is, whatever these pieces are. They
(08:33):
picked the colors, and we'll show colors available on the
internet and let them choose. That. That was really the
original thought. So I developed a little color card fifty
colors on this made a beautiful little color card. And
I'm not a digital or a graphic designer, but I
put this together in a program I had for Microsoft
on a CD ROM and made this pretty card, put
it on Facebook. Facebook was in its infancy and they
(08:58):
only had images on their no videos, nothing. So I
posted that and a girl from my hometown said, Hey,
can I buy some of that? Is that paint? So
I said to her reluctantly, I said yes. So anyway,
she said, let me call you. I'll call you on Tuesday.
So sure enough she calls me and I see that
Tennessee phone number ring through on my phone. I'm thinking, oh, heavens,
(09:19):
I hope she says she don't want this. Why is
she call me? So I'm praying that she doesn't want it.
Because I don't know what to say at this point.
So she calls to say, yes, I've decided I do
want it. I'd like to buy some of it. How
much do I get? And I said the opening orders
twelve hundred dollars. Had done little research between then and
looked at other paint companies, and she said, so twelve
hundred dollars. How much paint do I get for twelve
(09:41):
hundred dollars? Now this is pure trust when somebody trusts
you that much. And so anyway, she says, okay, I'll
take it, and I'm like, oh, now I really got
to do something. So I was in a new relationship
Craig and I, who is my husband now, But he
and I had moved in together, trying to consolidate and
(10:01):
save money and all the things that you shouldn't do,
but we did anyway, and so he was kind of
just getting to know me. We've been together about five
or six months, and I remember the day he walked
out the door that this call had came into me.
He was working in Seattle getting ready to leave, and
for several days I said, well, I have a paint
line when you come back, and he laughed like a
(10:22):
very unknowing of me, and when he came back, I
had reached out to an old paint manufacturer. My sister
and I in our store in Tennessee, we'd sold floor
covering and paint, and I remember paying one of the
invoices to a company in Louisville called Progress Paint. So
I looked them up on the internet, called the number
(10:42):
and it said they'd been bought out by a company
in California called California Coatings. I dialed that number. Lady
on the phone was kind and said, no, you know,
we did buy the Progress Paint company. And so she's
telling me by on the phone, and then she said,
but you know what, she said, you should call us
this company that's part of that family business and they're
in Louisville. She said they may toll make paint for you,
(11:05):
and I said sure, and she gave me the number
and I dialed them up and get a young man
on the phone. Started telling him who I was, and
I said, I used to be a retailer for your
product called Gray Seal and on that at Tendessee. He said, yes,
I said, a salesman that used to call on me
and call on my store, wore taps on his shoes,
pretty memorable, and I said his name was Charles. He
(11:26):
said that was my dad's best friend. So on the phone,
I already get this kind of a connection and he said,
come down and meet us. So here I am driving
down with, you know, not having a clue where I'm going, thinking,
I'm going in my mind to this stainless steel paint factory. Deal.
Pull into quite the opposite of that, more like a
(11:46):
black painted guard shah kind of a deal, kind of
the opposite. Get in there and meet those guys. Tell
them what I'm trying to do. I think, well, here's
where this will change. They're going to ask me for
some fifty thousand dollars chemical analogy or whatever. And when
I walk in, I had a can of paint in
my hand. Out from the back walks this little fellow
(12:08):
and he said, this is my dad. He's the chemist
here and Nick Lanning, and I think, well, all right,
come on, hit me with this number. So I walk
out of here and get out of this place. And
Nick takes the lid off the paint. And this was
a competitor, competitor's brand, And I said, do you know
what chalk paint. Is this kind of chalk and mineral paint?
He says, Oh, that's just house paint. Flattened off. I said,
(12:30):
you can tell what it is. He said, oh, yeah,
you've been in business long as I can. You can
smell what's in it. I said, oh great. So I
leave still thinking that I don't ever hear from these
guys again. In about two weeks he called to tell
me that he had the paint made up for me,
and I could go out to their retail store and
his brother would tint it for me in the colors
I wanted. So they made up bases. I go out
(12:52):
and I get these colors together for this girl that
had wanted the paint on Facebook, put it in cans,
go to the label store and get a labels. Print
it off. I'd already created me a label print all
that off, put it together, take it down to her,
and of course walk in on a Sunday morning, and
she I told her to get through four little tables together.
(13:12):
First off, I'd ask her, I said, do you paint furniture?
She said no, I've never gotten anything but rattle can
meaning spring. So I'm just telling you all this so
you realize none of this was meant to be in
any normal form. Could you imagine putting this on the
business plan? But still yet, I sit down with her,
paying out these pieces of furniture and tell her she
(13:34):
brings me twelve hundred dollars in cash. Knowing this was
about tax time, I said to Charlotte, if you can't
sell all this, I will buy this back from you.
I know this is a big jump for you. I said,
listen that this is the first bit of this I've
ever sold, and I wish you the best luck. And
she said, I'm going to put it in my booth.
So she had a ten by ten booth in my hometown,
in the little antique mall. And in about a week
(13:55):
she called me and she said, hey, I've got a reorder.
I was like, reorder, how much for two hundred and
fifty eight dollars reorder? And I said, really, who bought it?
She said, oh, they love it. They love your paint.
Down here they love it. So you know, I'm thinking hometown.
They like it. So I go down and take my
son down to see his father and take the paint
to her. And then I think, well, well, maybe it
(14:17):
does work, and believe me. At this moment, I've not
even put a brush in this paint yet. I've not
even tried it myself. I put it on eBay, and
I think, how could I get a website really quick
to share it with people? So eBay great. Put it
up there, put every one of the colors on there,
and at the bottom on the description, I write at
the bottom at that moment, you could they weren't too
strict on this I put on there. If you're interested
(14:37):
in becoming a retailer, reach out to me at this email.
So next couple of weeks after I put it on there,
the sales were pretty brisk. My goal was to sell
one hundred dollars a day in product, just to replenish
pay my son a little money. I'd pick him up
at three in the afternoon and get him something to eat,
and we'd feel paint all day. And that was just
kind of my thoughts, that'll help me. Everybody else stay
(15:00):
afload here. And all of a sudden, this was never
anything for me. This was always for him. And the
next thing you know is people are giving it wonderful
reviews on eBay and I'm like, wow, maybe this stuff
is good. So then I start trying it and I think,
my goodness, this stuff is amazing and I love it.
And now all of a sudden, I have too many
(15:22):
orders for the USPS woman to pick up at my house,
and she says, listen, you got to take this post office.
I'm tired of filling up my truck. You've got to
have to take it. So there you go. That was
the beginning of how we transition then into a flex space.
We moved from our home then out to a little building,
the Jefferson Trade Center, and rented twelve hundred square feet
(15:43):
I believe, the little offices in the front and the
warehouse in the back. And I remember buying the first
one hundred gallons of this paint from these folks, thinking, man, oh,
when I'm going to have some circus paint colors around
here to use up all this hundred gallons of bank,
I'll never sell this pink and orange and yellow and blue.
You know, you'd have a whole myriad of colors to
have a real line. Of course, white and black sell
(16:05):
the best. Nevertheless, I did it, and just kept putting
one foot in front of the other and taking daily
successes posting it on the internet, one by one. Retailer
after retailer came along. And my husband at the time,
like I said, we were just dating men. He was
still working out in Seattle. He'd come home and help
me put furniture in this building. I didn't have tables
(16:26):
to work on. I had a guy build me some
big wooden tables I met on Craigslist, and that was
my work table. And I'd come in and set up
that paint, and we made us all kinds of homemade
apparatuses to fill the paint to keep from getting it
onto the chimes of the can, and all kinds of
unique things we did. My son was pretty inventive in
those days. We used a plunger, like an old fashioned
(16:47):
one of those red rubber plungers that we took the
piece that screws into the end of the wooden stick there,
cut that out and used that to protect upside down.
Made a bowl that was kind of heavy because those
are pretty solid, set that down into the court and
poor paint in that so it would not get on
the external external ring. You know how that if it
gets in there, it's impossible to get that out. So
(17:10):
just little things like that, you know, we just learned
and walk the walk and kept on trucking. In about
a year's time, I had three hundred and thirty retailers,
I believe, and began to do some YouTube and never
been on a video like that, and my husband decided
he'd be the director and we'd set up a little
set and start painting things and showing people how to
(17:30):
use our paint and put it out there. And again,
never knew one thing about YouTube or any of any
of those terms, but we did it anyway and got
a little traction there. People started seeing it. Next thing,
you know, Facebook's beginning to change and doing videos and
then doing lives, and when the live proponent came along,
that was perfect for me because Live then let me
(17:50):
be my own QVC and I could turn that camera
on and tell people how to use the product, send
them to a link, show them how to get a sample,
take them to our rait group on Facebook. And you
know that began growing our business to where it is today.
So that's it, and that show you got it all well?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
You know, the stars that had to align in so
many different areas. And then you know, we live in
a world of user reviews and early in your days,
you know word of mouth right that there's so many
businesses that say, hey, I got this great customer service,
so I got this great product and it just bubbled
up for you. It's just truly incredible. So I have
so many questions, but I do want to start with
this too, so we can give kind of good grass
(18:30):
for people beside about the products that you offer. About
your mission statement, because I know everybody has one, and
some people you know, even though they know what you
do and what you offer. What is the company's mission statement, Paula.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
My mission statement has evolved to be honest with you
as I've learned what my product, what the value is
it brings to our customers. Is you know today there's
more than one avenue here because of the green aspect
of our product, because we help people keep the things
that they have that are probably better furniture and better
cabinets than they can go by in today's world. You
(19:04):
probably have a better set of cabinets that are in
your home built out of wood versus what you might
go get something that's MVF covered over with a sticker.
And same for furniture. A lot of the old great
furniture lines out there have turned into non solid materials
as hardwoods disappear from this country and others. But my
(19:24):
mission statement is really to help anyone update their home
inside and out with one simple product, not a whole
myriad of products, not six things. You have to understand
the chemistry and what works here and what don't. Simplifying
that message, giving people the power of the brush and
letting them then be able to change and transforming update
(19:46):
surfaces that would cost some thousands otherwise. So if you
can't touch a counter, take out countertops, I've got a
solution for that. One product, The All in One Paint
paints countertops, it paints a bathtub, it paints your front door,
it'll paint your cabinets, it'll paint your shutters, your front
whatever it is you need to paint. You don't have
to guess. You've got one product that does it all.
So that's kind of the mission statement, is giving people
(20:08):
that power of the brush and letting them choose to
redo anything in their home.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I love that. I love that that's all thought out
and simple but makes a lot of sense. I did
want to ask you about the name of the company.
You know, when I see a name of a company
that attracts me and say, well, that's interesting. I wonder
where that came from. So where did the name of
the company come from.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Well, whenever I started this, of course, never dreaming it
was going to be anything that people would have to
remember or choose to, the word heirloom came into play,
thinking most people have some great furniture pieces in their home,
and they've even got their grandmother's china cabinet, or they've
got something beautiful she's given them, but they really don't
want to display it because it doesn't fit their aesthetic today,
(20:50):
and they've probably pushed that in the garage or in
the basementder what have you. So I want people to
realize that that heirloom that they gave them can be
reused simply by putting on a to paint, changing the hardware.
A cabinet is a cabinet, a dresser is a dresser.
There's just so many shapes of furniture that people want
to live with, so our minds tell us, oh, that's outdated. Well, truly,
(21:12):
it's maybe just the leg that's outdated. It's just a
box with drawers within that kind of thing. So once
we start seeing it in that way that nothing is
not usable today. So that heirloom and that tradition of
that both of those words were in my mind when
I name this company, how to help people realize the
furniture they have is really something they should hang on to.
(21:33):
So I wanted that name to convey that.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah, No, I think it's cool. It's different, it's unique,
and obviously you put a lot of thought behind it.
And I'm sure that people notice that and ask, like
I do, Hey, what's what the company names? So I
think that's very cool. Well, I did want to ask
you this because without assuming, I have a feeling that
it's a very competitive field of what you do and
what you offer with that set, how would you say
(21:55):
that you differentiate yourself from any kind of competition that
does what you do out there?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Well, I think I do one great thing and something
you touched on just a moment ago. I give people
a free sample of my product. I don't want them
to believe me. I want them to trust me after
they try it. So I say, hey, so much that
I believe in this so much, I'm going to put
this eight ounce sample in your hand. All you do
is pay the shipping. It's a sixteen dollars ninety nine
(22:21):
cent sample and also comes with our spread on color card,
so that way you can shop from home. Once you
do like it, you'll try it that way, you know,
And if it didn't work, then we would be underwater
overnight because I'm paying for you to receive that sample.
Sixty nine nine doesn't pay the shipping alone in most states.
Now occasionally it'll pay it if we're local or close,
(22:41):
but most of the time I'm out money, and plus
I had to run an ad for you to see it.
So the customer acquisition costs there are pretty high. But
fifty five percent of those people come back in our
long term users of our products. And I believe there's
another good thirty percent of them that haven't even opened
the jar yet. I believe they're sitting there going well,
eventually I'll open, you know, that kind of mindset. So
(23:01):
if those others would use it, I believe that number
would be much greater.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Right. I want to ask you about COVID because a
lot of businesses either shut down and some prosper. Now
for me, like everybody else, besides doing yourself and becoming
a really good cook, even though I was Okay, beforehand,
and all the other things that I did during the pandemic, I imagine,
and once again I don't want to assume, but I'm
(23:25):
hoping that business continued. Did it prosper or did you
have to shift shift your dynamic of what you were doing?
And how was business during and after the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Well, this is kind of a really pivotal moment for us,
and not just because of COVID, but as COVID having
no idea it was on the horizon. We had just
really started feeling the momentum in our business and decided
to go down in an industrial park and purchase a
building and it was ten thousand square feet and I'd
(23:58):
also purchased a filling that would fill our cans in
an automation process. So that was coming in, this big
piece of equipment, a big purchase for us, and all
of that was happening, and we moved into this remodeled
building in February about the same time that was happening,
embracing ourselves for this growth that we were feeling. All
(24:19):
of a sudden, we start hearing that the world is
beginning to shut down in China and moving this way,
and I was like, Oh, that'll never happen here, blah
blah blah. You know, I kept telling myself this wasn't
going to impact us like we felt, and it would
be over and surely, the goodness this was just a
passing fad. But lo and behold, it did happen, and
pretty quickly it ramped up from there. We got deemed
essential simply because we were helping people stay centered and
(24:42):
on track and trying to keep give people something to
do with their you know, the idle hands moment is
not good for any of us, so giving people something
to do, the governor deemed essential during that time, so
we never shut down a day. We had all kinds
of catastrophic things happening to them to getting goods, getting
our containers. Obviously, containers were being sent to people who
(25:05):
wanted to put hand sanitizer in them, taking them away
from people like us who were buying them on truckload.
And now all of a sudden, those people were allocating
that to something essential, which it was you that had
to be. But all that said, everything was breaking, from
our shipping channels to ups usps. They were inundated FedEx.
They just had boxes piled up and they couldn't even
(25:27):
move them. That were so crushed by everybody buying everything
on the internet. So we'd always been on the internet,
but now all of a sudden, everybody's on the internet.
So that kind of crumbled and fell. When I went
down and moved into this building, I had one person
in customer service one Our business was very small, thinking
(25:48):
it was growing, it had it had really quadrupled in
just a very short time. But moving in there, we
had one customer service agent. At one point, this girl
had ten thousand unopened emails. I sat down to try
to help her, and I realized, there's just absolutely we
didn't have it pulling into one place to where if
you emailed ten times, it would be in one place.
It was just coming you to have I'd see ten
(26:11):
open emails from you. So we hadn't gotten all of
those things. Even in order that none of those things
had we had in place. And of course now we
have all of that to filter some of those things,
and we have several people in customer service. But that
was a really rough time for us, but the business
grew exponential during that time. It was just straight up
for us. And we also used Facebook as a way
(26:33):
to encourage people. We gave money away, we did fun things,
we talked, we chatted a lot, and we did it
for the right reasons. And I think we did it
for wanting to help people, give them something to think
about other than the ugly news out there and worrying,
and just made it a point to get online and
really encourage people and say, hey, do something fun, get
out and do this. Let's give money away. We wore
(26:53):
crazy hats, glasses, anything we could do to keep people
kind of keeping their mind off from the ugly that
was around us that we couldn't change. So for all that,
just putting that good out there, IRO believe it just
came back a hundredfold. And I didn't do it for
those reasons. But today I look at that and I go,
(27:15):
you know it is you report you?
Speaker 3 (27:16):
So yeah, yeah, So you know, speaking of sayings, my
wife and parted one on me a long time ago
that we've given to our daughter. And you've done it
several times about turning a scar into a star, and
you certainly have done that many many times, including through
the pandemic. I didn't want to ask you this because
I know things are going well and the company is ascending,
and it's really a truly a remarkable start in a
(27:39):
marketing story and starting from nothing into where it is now.
You know, I'm curious because I always tell our entrepreneurs,
especially the young ones coming up and starting businesses, and
it's not always unicorns and rainbows all the time. When
you have a business, there are challenges. Are there currently
any challenges in your business right now?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Oh? Daily challenges. I think people have this placebo to
think that, oh, you're the CEO, you don't know of
any bad and they roll out a red carpet for
me every day and all that. The truth of the
matter is, there's none of that that's true. The only
thing you get at my level is all the things
that are unsolvable by the people underneath you. And or
(28:18):
it's not all bad. I shouldn't act like it's horrible,
but I certainly enjoy my job. But you have to
be a problem solver by nature, and if you're not,
you can't be in this role. But if problems bring
you down and makes you want to crawl in a hole,
this is not your role. This trust me, you'll never
make it as an entrepreneur. There's no guarantee of a
paycheck on this side of the fence. So I have
to get up every day and figure out how do
(28:38):
we make this thing work? And if we do have
a challenge, how do we get around it. What is
of all the bad we see, what is the next
step forward? And you can't get paralyzed by negative because
it's coming at you in every direction. Competition's coming at
you in every direction. You just have to always be
able to kind of get above it. I always say
(28:59):
I like to operate my business from the trees, not
on boots on the ground. Get hung up in the
daily grind of all the employees and the gossip and
the this and that. You know, that's a churn that
never stops. So you have to remove yourself at this
level and look back down on the business and see
what you bring to the business to help me out
in front of the business, not down in the daily
(29:19):
grind of the business. Because if you are trying to
run your business and do both, you will never grow
the business the right direction. So I'm up here trying
to make connections, reach out to the people that are
helping us move forward and helping us take the next steps.
There is no book out there to tell you how
to run your business. There. You know, I think, I'm
(29:42):
sure you're going to touch on this, but I will
already because the EY Award, the Ernstein Young Entrepreneur Award.
During the interviews to this, one of the questions they
asked that was so amazing actually is they asked me,
had I ever read a book on other entrepreneurs that
maybe that I follow answer to that was no, I
never have, And she has smiled when I said no.
(30:05):
And they were tape recording this, and then she came
back after it was over. She said, ironically, we asked
that question to all entrepreneurs and most of them say no.
And she said, can I ask you why you say no?
And I said, the reason I don't read books. First
of all, I don't think that's my experience. My experience
is an evolution on every single day as a build.
I couldn't read someone's book to tell me what to
(30:28):
do in their journey because that's not in my journey.
My journey is impacted by things that happened to us
every single day, and no one's journey is going to
help me figure that out. It's just something I have
to be open and in tune with and listening and
watching every single thing from the economy to people that
I do idolize and look at and who are those figures?
(30:51):
You know, what would they do in these situations? Martha
Stewart's always been a great beacon for me, even though
there's things she'd done I would never do, But I
do like to look at her because she's able to
iterate and change and make herself important and no matter
what has taken place in her own world from all
the ugly in her world, that she manages to evolve.
(31:14):
And you know, she's a Madonna of entrepreneurialism. In my world,
she's pretty amazing. And I watch her and, like I said,
not everything she does is what I would do, but
I like to watch what she does because she's super
smart and she's been able to figure it out for
her and as an aging female doing business, she's an icon.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
But yeah, she has a lot of good advice in there.
You know, I kind of take it. You know, in
my industry, I did play by play sports for a
long time, and as I was trying to invent myself,
I was listening to all these different people do their
style of broadcasting. I took that in, but I made
everything my own. That's kind of what you've done as
(31:53):
you look at people too, And I think that's really
good advice for a lot of entrepreneurs out there.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Take it in. But there is like I said, there's
no Bible, there's no book, there's no anything you're going
to say. Here's exactly what you need to do, and
everybody's writing one today. I've noticed that everybody's right. Now,
here's how you do it book. And I promise you
that will not be your journey no matter what it
is you're doing, if you're doing, even if it was
exactly what the person did, it will not be how
yours will unfold and learn from it. Like you said,
take all that in. Listen to all these talking heads
(32:19):
and listen. Listen. Keep your ear to the your nose
to the gross on your ear. Listening out here to
figure out what's getting ready to take place. Look at
people that are evolving in the landscape. Look at the
Amazons and the Walmarts of the world. See where retail
is headed. Is that something you want to be on?
You want to be on that soul crushing ride, or
you want to get over here and join the Amazon folks. Well,
(32:41):
I'm going to join the Amazon folks anyway.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
That's kind of how that's good advice. It's very good advice.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
You know.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
You mentioned ernstin Young, and I know that when I
talk to most founder, CEOs and entrepreneurs at awards or
awards and I'm busy working and I'm trying to make
my company. You send and I'm grinding out there. But
this one's a special one. Talk to a few other
people in this series that have been recognized by ernstin Young,
and I know that's pretty special to you. Can you
elaborate for us why it is so special?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Oh? Sure? Like you said, glass awards are a diamodism.
There's everybody trying to give you an award and charge
you for it and join their group so you can
get another glass award. And that's an ego stroke. And
if you need glass awards to put on a bookshelf,
go for it. But the truth of the matter is
there's very few awards that really wanted anything to do.
(33:28):
After you've gotten the award and paid the money to
get the award, that'll be the last you hear of them.
They make a post on LinkedIn and social media and
it's gone. So but the arnstin Young Award is a
little bit different than that because they are a global
network of people. They're highly recognized. People know them and
other businesses either use them for their services or they
are looking at their pages and the financial pages of
(33:51):
the world and wherever they may find them. But Ernst
and Young definitely vets out anyone who is in this competition.
So what that means is if you have you have
to have audited books, and third party audits have to
happen to your books, So we're not going to come
in an audit for you. If you have an audited
set of books and you get accepted into the Entrepreneurial
(34:14):
Program to win this award, they will come to you
and do interviews with you. They brought actually five people
to my office and sit down and they had our
books already, but they actually did live interviews with me
and made sure I was what I had represented on paper.
And then from there went on to another long series.
I had to go up to Cleveland and go through
(34:37):
another I think there was twelve different interviews there, personal
one on one interviews, and all of it's very real.
So when you win this award. It's a different level.
It's not just a piece of glass. It's actually something.
I said this to you before we came live, just
because I think it's important for folks to know if
(34:57):
you get to that level, this is something always I
would recommend if you can enter into this, if you've
done something spectacular in your business, you've got great growth,
you've got profits, you have eve it to enter in
because it will bring to the table, flesh out the
people you are hoping to flush out. So it will
bring big spotlights to you and your business, whatever that
(35:19):
goal might be. If you're looking to maybe sell your
business in the future, whatever those goals are that you
have set for yourself and your business, you will find those.
They will come to the table after this award.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Yeah, well said. And I see why it's a big deal,
because the recognition is a big deal in the industry.
So I'm very happy for you, and I know that
I can tell between your passion and the company and
excited about that. That kind of recognition is a really
big deal. So thanks for that. We only have a
couple of minutes left, but I did want to talk
to you and just put a pin in the company
just for a second, but I have a feeling it's
(35:51):
going to be part of the company. When it comes
to philanthropic and sharity work, when you do have time,
and I know how busy you are, is there anything
philanthropic you like to be a part of.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Well, absolutely, I like to help people as much as
we can, and I like to help people that I
can get to see their face and those kind of things,
and I know there's a lot of big things out
there that you can work toward. Of course, Habitat for Humanity.
I was their keynote speaker this year, and we want
to become a national sponsor with Habitat. There's some other
paint companies in the channel at this moment, but when
(36:21):
that is available, we'll certainly be doing that. But I
like to help my folks right here at home. You know,
I'm in a rural community in Kentucky. And in twenty
twenty one we became an ESOP where I gave forty
nine percent of the company to the people who work
for us. And it's nothing that costs them any money.
If you know anything about ESOPs, it is crewed by
(36:43):
how much of their salary that they make, and it
goes into an account that will give them something to
fall back on, and so many people working here in
this environment don't have that, and this it just gives
them a reason to want to see the business success.
It's full it's a win win for everybody, and of
course change ownership. They all get paid and looking at
(37:06):
our age, my husband, myself, that's a good that's a
great one for them that if they start thinking about
that in the terms of her age, they go eventually
she's gonna sell this sing or die one of the other.
It's a pretty good idea to hang on here. So
I guess that's how they look at it. Every day
they're checking my health.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Yeah no, but I think that's huge of you, and
you're kind of paying it forward to to the community.
Not a lot of people do that, especially in rural
communities and where you live. I think it's wonderful that
you're doing that and very generous too. I know you're
also looking out for yourself, you know, to take care
of your family and to create a business. But in
this series, i've there's one big common theme besides being
(37:45):
passionate for what you do, is that they surround themselves
with great people and they talk about their team members.
They're not just staff. You know their family and they
mean a lot to them and I know they do
for you too. I did want to finish up with
one final thing and get some final thoughts from you
and also maybe some advice. In this series, there's a
lot of CEOs that listen to it because it's a
(38:06):
great listen. But there's a lot of future entrepreneurs and
people that would like to run their own company, whether
it's woman owned or anybody that wants to start a company.
But You've been fortuitous at the time, a single woman
with a son starting this company in your kitchen, and
it's truly an incredible story and I'm glad that you
shared it with us. But I just want to give
the floor to you for some final thoughts and maybe
(38:26):
a little advice for our future entrepreneurs out there on
this series. The floor is yours, Paul, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
I'd like to just leave you with one overarching thought here,
and that I believe would encourage anyone that's an entrepreneur
out there. No matter who, or what or how much money, education,
none of those factors truly matter. Again, I started this
business at fifty tons of failures as most people would
view them under my belt. But I look at those
all those failures as just little stepping stones to help
(38:57):
me not make those same mistakes again. And a lot
of successful businesses, but I'd close them all. And a
lot of people see closure as a way as a negative,
but in truth, I was just ready for the next
step in my life. So you have to look at
things like that. Don't deem all those things in your
past as failures. Take all that information and all that
knowledge you've learned, and in today's world, that's something let's
(39:19):
pause there for a minute. In this environment, there's no
better time to be in business. I could not have
done a single piece of what I have done in
this business if it was a traditional way of having
to start a business and advertise and put a magazine
ad together for one hundred grand and do all the
things that would have had to have normally been done
in a business years ago. It was only in this
(39:40):
timing that I was able to launch this business on
a shoe stream, take what money I was making, and
keep reinvesting it back into the business. There's no way
I could have done it without it being in today's environment.
Being able to use my phone. Nobody was going to
prevent me from using my phone to teach people about
my products. And you have the same exact organic ability
to do that. You can turn it on on and
(40:01):
drive people to your products. Just went out to Amazon Accelerate,
and this is something I want to be sure and
tell you guys, because if you did attend that event,
you know this. But they highlighted a lot of businesses
similar to mine. And they talked about a lady who
had started a dog food company, dog and cat food
company that she called the products organic and she vetted
all that out and put that on the stickers and
(40:22):
so people know they're feeding their animals something that's tried
and tested and all the things. And the lady had
grown her business to one hundred million dollars in sales
on Amazon. Started in her kitchen too. She was much
younger than I, of course. But again, those things can
happen in today's world simply because of companies like Amazon
and like building your own website and all those things.
(40:43):
But I would definitely say to you today, I started
mind building my own website and using Facebook as a
way to drive traffic to my website. Those things don't
even need to happen. You just need to go straight
to Amazon and learn Amazon. Because today, if you're like
me and everyone else in the world, you're turning your
phone on, there's only one place you go other than
probably social media, and that's Amazon. And Amazon has already
(41:05):
has your eyeballs and you're already going right there to
purchase something. So if you if I've already gotten you
that far, you're already on there. There's no point in
me spending money to try to drive you from a
Facebook ad to a website, and then you've got to
trust that and do all the things. Just got to
put your put your mindset focus on Amazon and you
can build anything you want right there.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Great advice, Great advice. Well, I know a lot of
our Savagy listeners have already googled your your URL and
your website, but let's give it to everybody so they
can see about all the incredible products that you have.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
What is that it's all in one paint dot Com
All in one paint. Just go there and get yourself
that free sample I talked about.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Outstanding, Paul, this is truly an incredible story. I'm so
happy for you and your family, and I think it's
a great testament about there's no age that you can't
start your own business and succeed. Grind it out, be passionate,
and you know, roll the dice and how you do
out there. But it's such a neat story. I'm so
happy for you and your team members, and of course
(42:07):
all your clients too that are so happy with your product.
I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much, continued success,
and thank you so much for joining us on CEOs.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
You should know I certainly appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Thank you, Dennis, that's another CEO you should know. Thanks
for being a part of our community, and thank you
for listening to this iHeartRadio station.
Here is another CEO you should know on iHeartRadio. Meet
Paula Blankenship, CEO and founder of Heirloom Traditions Paint.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I am from a little town called I'm not a Tennessee,
a little small town of oh gosh, tiny little place
right on the Kentucky border, and grew up there and
moved to Louisville about thirteen years ago.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Well, I'm looking forward to talking to you about Heirloom
Traditions Paint. And it's such an amazing story. You know,
it sounds so simple, and when our listeners and our
entrepreneurs and our future entrepreneurs hear it, I think they're
going to be kind of blown away by how cool
and simple was. But I know it was nothing but
not simple about starting a company and where you've taken
it right now. But I do want to ask you
(00:42):
about this about as a young person, about what you
wanted to do. I know you've always been very entrepreneurial
and an inventor, but as you were growing up, what
did you want to do before you came up with
this company about twelve years ago.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Well, you know, I had an unusual upbringing. I had
a very non traditional parents. I would say both of
them entrepreneurial, but my mother especially was and she never
told me no to anything, and probably not a great
way to raise your children, but it was also very
fueling for us to realize we could dream way outside
of what we could see. And she also traveled with us.
(01:18):
She made a point to take me and my sister
on a world trip somewhere every year since I was
in the first grade. We always went to exotic places,
not beach places, but actually places we could see things
bigger than ourselves. I look back at that and go, wow,
what a small what a small town woman. My mother
was born and raised in Tennessee all over days and
(01:40):
never moved. But what a big dreamer she was. And
she also wanted us to know she wanted us to
broaden our horizons. So that was very insightful looking back
and made me appreciate home. It also inspired me to really,
like I say, never ever look at something and say
I can do that. I would dream about I'd say
(02:02):
crazy things to her. I remember in the fourth grade
I came home one day and said, Mom, I want
to be the president. Of course, I'd like to retract
that statement now, but yes, I did dream of crazy things.
You know, I knew I was doing something in my
mind always different than most people. And I didn't really
have a lot of friends, a lot of great friends,
but I really didn't depend on that. I was always
(02:24):
kind of a loner, just a little bit because I
was struggling with dyslexia in school. But I was a
great reader. How could that be? That seems like such
a dichotomy there, the way I learned things, I was
a visual learner and I wasn't really I didn't care
one thing about anything that was abstract learning. So if
it was something that I felt like was busy work,
(02:46):
my mind would not let me do it. It just would not.
I try to get through it. And I'll make this statement,
I've never read a book cover to cover in my life,
whether it be fiction or even from school. I've never
read a book. And I read all the time, and
I read different things that I'm interested in on the
daily like everybody else on their phone. But I have
(03:07):
never read any kind of a fictional story in any form.
So I've done a lot of fake book reports in
my life. So I wasn't a great student. And I've
also never written a business proposal, never ever written one
of those to where I had to extrapolate out what
I thought the future looked like, and mine would be
probably way over the top. I remember bankers saying, hey,
(03:30):
well you need to make a business plan. That seemed
like such a daunting task to me to have to
lay out all of these things that were again, they
weren't reality in my mind. So I think a lot
of people get hung up on that right there. They
think they've got to be able to put this into writing,
put this into this plan, anything they're dreaming of. The
(03:50):
The truth of the matter is you truly don't. If
you've got to see it through this and you've got
to wherewithal and you're willing to grind, and you're willing
to sell something off the back of a truck. Bo
can hustle, You can make anything work.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I think it's great advice. And yet here we are
with this great, incredible company that you have, that you
started over a decade ago, and when it comes to
heirloom traditions, Pain, I do want to do this. I
want to ask you in just a few minutes about
Mission Steam and of course the products and what you do,
and it's so cool, but you have to tell the
origin story. As I was reading up about you, I
(04:24):
was just touched by this story because I'm a paired too,
and I know what happens to be with your kitchen
and your son and maybe teaching some entrepreneur schools. Can
you take it from there? It really is truly an
explory or explory that our listeners have to hear.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yes, well, going back to my hometown, you know, I
was born in that little town, and I kind of
always said I don't want to do what my parents did,
but obviously they had a wealth of buildings and warehousing
and all those things that my sister and I ultimately
started taking over as my parents decided to retire and
step away. And in twenty thirteen, after running a furniture
store for twenty three years, the economy turned off like
(05:00):
a water faucet. Sorry. In two thousand and eight, I
took a job with a man from New York City.
He just blew in my door one day whom I
had decorated a property that he bought, so he heard
my name, and anyway, I took this job with him
and started working in Manhattan, and still was playing back
and forth, and my parents were keeping my son at
that time, and they both passed away within a year
(05:21):
of each other. So all the time that I had
decided that, oh night, it was never going to be
a town I would leave, all of a sudden, now
that anker I could leave. So I started thinking, Wow,
my son is just like me. He's a dreamer, and
he also believes he can hammer a living out here
in this town. And if I could ever do anything
(05:41):
to help him launch this arrow out of this box
we're in, time is now. He's in the eighth grade.
I just ironically went on a blind date. I was single,
you know, kind of my whole life fell apart there
when my parents died. I was in a terrible marriage
and decided to look up something. I had gone on
a blind date with a fellow from Louisville, and he
(06:02):
told me about a great school in Louisville, Kentucky, and
I thought, Wow, too bad. I couldn't put my son
in that school. And I then thought about it, why
can't I I've let this home, I've built anchor me
to this little town, and my business is I'm no
longer working in this city. I'm not depending on this,
So what is stopping me my own being scared myself.
(06:22):
You know, I was fifty years old, and I thought,
why not, I'd have to sell my home. Well, there's
another big question mark. There was no way I could
get what I had in this home. And then I thought,
what am I willing to lose? What am I willing
to give up? Here? I'm going to focus just everything
on my son. Sorry. So doing that, I thought I'm
(06:44):
going to get online. Look at this school. It was
a Catholic school. I thought, so, we're not Catholics. But
I thought, let me look, and I found out it
was non denominational. I tested or took him for a
shadowing event in Louisville, and he came out of there
with fly that he passed and into their honors program.
So now I'm leaving going wow, this boy never cracked
(07:04):
a book like me. This dude tested into their honors program.
I can't unsee this. I've got to do this. I've
got to do whatever it takes. So anyway, I made
the move against his will. You know, this boy six
foot three in the eighth grade, he always was the
man of the house. In my opinion, he thought he
was my boss. So you could imagine what I was
going through at home, at least a great child, never
(07:28):
giving me a day's worth of problem. But I decided
I'm going to go for this, and we moved there.
And I just think, as miserable as he is, let
me start something that he and I can kind of
get on a good level. We need to be doing
some FaceTime here and talking and getting another off on
a different subject, you know, So what can we do?
So I said, let's start a business, and let's start
(07:49):
this little company. And of course, me being a designer,
all I knew was paint, and I'd always watch my
mother paint things, and paint's always been a vehicle for me.
I'd always say, if it didn't work, we'll paint it.
Always an avenue I went toward. And a designer that
you know, that's the biggest crayon in my box is paint.
So I've said, that's what let's do. Let's start a
(08:10):
paint company. And I actually wasn't starting an actual paint company.
I wanted to paint furniture because that's my other wheelhouse.
I said, let's buy furniture that's in a box that's unassembled,
let's paint it in a la carte colors, and then
we'll put it back into the box, back into the
wrappings that it was in, and send it to people
and let them pick the color of the chair, of
the table, whatever it is, whatever these pieces are. They
(08:33):
picked the colors, and we'll show colors available on the
internet and let them choose. That. That was really the
original thought. So I developed a little color card fifty
colors on this made a beautiful little color card. And
I'm not a digital or a graphic designer, but I
put this together in a program I had for Microsoft
on a CD ROM and made this pretty card, put
it on Facebook. Facebook was in its infancy and they
(08:58):
only had images on their no videos, nothing. So I
posted that and a girl from my hometown said, Hey,
can I buy some of that? Is that paint? So
I said to her reluctantly, I said yes. So anyway,
she said, let me call you. I'll call you on Tuesday.
So sure enough she calls me and I see that
Tennessee phone number ring through on my phone. I'm thinking, oh, heavens,
(09:19):
I hope she says she don't want this. Why is
she call me? So I'm praying that she doesn't want it.
Because I don't know what to say at this point.
So she calls to say, yes, I've decided I do
want it. I'd like to buy some of it. How
much do I get? And I said the opening orders
twelve hundred dollars. Had done little research between then and
looked at other paint companies, and she said, so twelve
hundred dollars. How much paint do I get for twelve
(09:41):
hundred dollars? Now this is pure trust when somebody trusts
you that much. And so anyway, she says, okay, I'll
take it, and I'm like, oh, now I really got
to do something. So I was in a new relationship
Craig and I, who is my husband now, But he
and I had moved in together, trying to consolidate and
(10:01):
save money and all the things that you shouldn't do,
but we did anyway, and so he was kind of
just getting to know me. We've been together about five
or six months, and I remember the day he walked
out the door that this call had came into me.
He was working in Seattle getting ready to leave, and
for several days I said, well, I have a paint
line when you come back, and he laughed like a
(10:22):
very unknowing of me, and when he came back, I
had reached out to an old paint manufacturer. My sister
and I in our store in Tennessee, we'd sold floor
covering and paint, and I remember paying one of the
invoices to a company in Louisville called Progress Paint. So
I looked them up on the internet, called the number
(10:42):
and it said they'd been bought out by a company
in California called California Coatings. I dialed that number. Lady
on the phone was kind and said, no, you know,
we did buy the Progress Paint company. And so she's
telling me by on the phone, and then she said,
but you know what, she said, you should call us
this company that's part of that family business and they're
in Louisville. She said they may toll make paint for you,
(11:05):
and I said sure, and she gave me the number
and I dialed them up and get a young man
on the phone. Started telling him who I was, and
I said, I used to be a retailer for your
product called Gray Seal and on that at Tendessee. He said, yes,
I said, a salesman that used to call on me
and call on my store, wore taps on his shoes,
pretty memorable, and I said his name was Charles. He
(11:26):
said that was my dad's best friend. So on the phone,
I already get this kind of a connection and he said,
come down and meet us. So here I am driving
down with, you know, not having a clue where I'm going, thinking,
I'm going in my mind to this stainless steel paint factory. Deal.
Pull into quite the opposite of that, more like a
(11:46):
black painted guard shah kind of a deal, kind of
the opposite. Get in there and meet those guys. Tell
them what I'm trying to do. I think, well, here's
where this will change. They're going to ask me for
some fifty thousand dollars chemical analogy or whatever. And when
I walk in, I had a can of paint in
my hand. Out from the back walks this little fellow
(12:08):
and he said, this is my dad. He's the chemist
here and Nick Lanning, and I think, well, all right,
come on, hit me with this number. So I walk
out of here and get out of this place. And
Nick takes the lid off the paint. And this was
a competitor, competitor's brand, And I said, do you know
what chalk paint. Is this kind of chalk and mineral paint?
He says, Oh, that's just house paint. Flattened off. I said,
(12:30):
you can tell what it is. He said, oh, yeah,
you've been in business long as I can. You can
smell what's in it. I said, oh great. So I
leave still thinking that I don't ever hear from these
guys again. In about two weeks he called to tell
me that he had the paint made up for me,
and I could go out to their retail store and
his brother would tint it for me in the colors
I wanted. So they made up bases. I go out
(12:52):
and I get these colors together for this girl that
had wanted the paint on Facebook, put it in cans,
go to the label store and get a labels. Print
it off. I'd already created me a label print all
that off, put it together, take it down to her,
and of course walk in on a Sunday morning, and
she I told her to get through four little tables together.
(13:12):
First off, I'd ask her, I said, do you paint furniture?
She said no, I've never gotten anything but rattle can
meaning spring. So I'm just telling you all this so
you realize none of this was meant to be in
any normal form. Could you imagine putting this on the
business plan? But still yet, I sit down with her,
paying out these pieces of furniture and tell her she
(13:34):
brings me twelve hundred dollars in cash. Knowing this was
about tax time, I said to Charlotte, if you can't
sell all this, I will buy this back from you.
I know this is a big jump for you. I said,
listen that this is the first bit of this I've
ever sold, and I wish you the best luck. And
she said, I'm going to put it in my booth.
So she had a ten by ten booth in my hometown,
in the little antique mall. And in about a week
(13:55):
she called me and she said, hey, I've got a reorder.
I was like, reorder, how much for two hundred and
fifty eight dollars reorder? And I said, really, who bought it?
She said, oh, they love it. They love your paint.
Down here they love it. So you know, I'm thinking hometown.
They like it. So I go down and take my
son down to see his father and take the paint
to her. And then I think, well, well, maybe it
(14:17):
does work, and believe me. At this moment, I've not
even put a brush in this paint yet. I've not
even tried it myself. I put it on eBay, and
I think, how could I get a website really quick
to share it with people? So eBay great. Put it
up there, put every one of the colors on there,
and at the bottom on the description, I write at
the bottom at that moment, you could they weren't too
strict on this I put on there. If you're interested
(14:37):
in becoming a retailer, reach out to me at this email.
So next couple of weeks after I put it on there,
the sales were pretty brisk. My goal was to sell
one hundred dollars a day in product, just to replenish
pay my son a little money. I'd pick him up
at three in the afternoon and get him something to eat,
and we'd feel paint all day. And that was just
kind of my thoughts, that'll help me. Everybody else stay
(15:00):
afload here. And all of a sudden, this was never
anything for me. This was always for him. And the
next thing you know is people are giving it wonderful
reviews on eBay and I'm like, wow, maybe this stuff
is good. So then I start trying it and I think,
my goodness, this stuff is amazing and I love it.
And now all of a sudden, I have too many
(15:22):
orders for the USPS woman to pick up at my house,
and she says, listen, you got to take this post office.
I'm tired of filling up my truck. You've got to
have to take it. So there you go. That was
the beginning of how we transition then into a flex space.
We moved from our home then out to a little building,
the Jefferson Trade Center, and rented twelve hundred square feet
(15:43):
I believe, the little offices in the front and the
warehouse in the back. And I remember buying the first
one hundred gallons of this paint from these folks, thinking, man, oh,
when I'm going to have some circus paint colors around
here to use up all this hundred gallons of bank,
I'll never sell this pink and orange and yellow and blue.
You know, you'd have a whole myriad of colors to
have a real line. Of course, white and black sell
(16:05):
the best. Nevertheless, I did it, and just kept putting
one foot in front of the other and taking daily
successes posting it on the internet, one by one. Retailer
after retailer came along. And my husband at the time,
like I said, we were just dating men. He was
still working out in Seattle. He'd come home and help
me put furniture in this building. I didn't have tables
(16:26):
to work on. I had a guy build me some
big wooden tables I met on Craigslist, and that was
my work table. And I'd come in and set up
that paint, and we made us all kinds of homemade
apparatuses to fill the paint to keep from getting it
onto the chimes of the can, and all kinds of
unique things we did. My son was pretty inventive in
those days. We used a plunger, like an old fashioned
(16:47):
one of those red rubber plungers that we took the
piece that screws into the end of the wooden stick there,
cut that out and used that to protect upside down.
Made a bowl that was kind of heavy because those
are pretty solid, set that down into the court and
poor paint in that so it would not get on
the external external ring. You know how that if it
gets in there, it's impossible to get that out. So
(17:10):
just little things like that, you know, we just learned
and walk the walk and kept on trucking. In about
a year's time, I had three hundred and thirty retailers,
I believe, and began to do some YouTube and never
been on a video like that, and my husband decided
he'd be the director and we'd set up a little
set and start painting things and showing people how to
(17:30):
use our paint and put it out there. And again,
never knew one thing about YouTube or any of any
of those terms, but we did it anyway and got
a little traction there. People started seeing it. Next thing,
you know, Facebook's beginning to change and doing videos and
then doing lives, and when the live proponent came along,
that was perfect for me because Live then let me
(17:50):
be my own QVC and I could turn that camera
on and tell people how to use the product, send
them to a link, show them how to get a sample,
take them to our rait group on Facebook. And you
know that began growing our business to where it is today.
So that's it, and that show you got it all well?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
You know, the stars that had to align in so
many different areas. And then you know, we live in
a world of user reviews and early in your days,
you know word of mouth right that there's so many
businesses that say, hey, I got this great customer service,
so I got this great product and it just bubbled
up for you. It's just truly incredible. So I have
so many questions, but I do want to start with
this too, so we can give kind of good grass
(18:30):
for people beside about the products that you offer. About
your mission statement, because I know everybody has one, and
some people you know, even though they know what you
do and what you offer. What is the company's mission statement, Paula.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
My mission statement has evolved to be honest with you
as I've learned what my product, what the value is
it brings to our customers. Is you know today there's
more than one avenue here because of the green aspect
of our product, because we help people keep the things
that they have that are probably better furniture and better
cabinets than they can go by in today's world. You
(19:04):
probably have a better set of cabinets that are in
your home built out of wood versus what you might
go get something that's MVF covered over with a sticker.
And same for furniture. A lot of the old great
furniture lines out there have turned into non solid materials
as hardwoods disappear from this country and others. But my
(19:24):
mission statement is really to help anyone update their home
inside and out with one simple product, not a whole
myriad of products, not six things. You have to understand
the chemistry and what works here and what don't. Simplifying
that message, giving people the power of the brush and
letting them then be able to change and transforming update
(19:46):
surfaces that would cost some thousands otherwise. So if you
can't touch a counter, take out countertops, I've got a
solution for that. One product, The All in One Paint
paints countertops, it paints a bathtub, it paints your front door,
it'll paint your cabinets, it'll paint your shutters, your front
whatever it is you need to paint. You don't have
to guess. You've got one product that does it all.
So that's kind of the mission statement, is giving people
(20:08):
that power of the brush and letting them choose to
redo anything in their home.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I love that. I love that that's all thought out
and simple but makes a lot of sense. I did
want to ask you about the name of the company.
You know, when I see a name of a company
that attracts me and say, well, that's interesting. I wonder
where that came from. So where did the name of
the company come from.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Well, whenever I started this, of course, never dreaming it
was going to be anything that people would have to
remember or choose to, the word heirloom came into play,
thinking most people have some great furniture pieces in their home,
and they've even got their grandmother's china cabinet, or they've
got something beautiful she's given them, but they really don't
want to display it because it doesn't fit their aesthetic today,
(20:50):
and they've probably pushed that in the garage or in
the basementder what have you. So I want people to
realize that that heirloom that they gave them can be
reused simply by putting on a to paint, changing the hardware.
A cabinet is a cabinet, a dresser is a dresser.
There's just so many shapes of furniture that people want
to live with, so our minds tell us, oh, that's outdated. Well, truly,
(21:12):
it's maybe just the leg that's outdated. It's just a
box with drawers within that kind of thing. So once
we start seeing it in that way that nothing is
not usable today. So that heirloom and that tradition of
that both of those words were in my mind when
I name this company, how to help people realize the
furniture they have is really something they should hang on to.
(21:33):
So I wanted that name to convey that.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah, No, I think it's cool. It's different, it's unique,
and obviously you put a lot of thought behind it.
And I'm sure that people notice that and ask, like
I do, Hey, what's what the company names? So I
think that's very cool. Well, I did want to ask
you this because without assuming, I have a feeling that
it's a very competitive field of what you do and
what you offer with that set, how would you say
(21:55):
that you differentiate yourself from any kind of competition that
does what you do out there?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Well, I think I do one great thing and something
you touched on just a moment ago. I give people
a free sample of my product. I don't want them
to believe me. I want them to trust me after
they try it. So I say, hey, so much that
I believe in this so much, I'm going to put
this eight ounce sample in your hand. All you do
is pay the shipping. It's a sixteen dollars ninety nine
(22:21):
cent sample and also comes with our spread on color card,
so that way you can shop from home. Once you
do like it, you'll try it that way, you know,
And if it didn't work, then we would be underwater
overnight because I'm paying for you to receive that sample.
Sixty nine nine doesn't pay the shipping alone in most states.
Now occasionally it'll pay it if we're local or close,
(22:41):
but most of the time I'm out money, and plus
I had to run an ad for you to see it.
So the customer acquisition costs there are pretty high. But
fifty five percent of those people come back in our
long term users of our products. And I believe there's
another good thirty percent of them that haven't even opened
the jar yet. I believe they're sitting there going well,
eventually I'll open, you know, that kind of mindset. So
(23:01):
if those others would use it, I believe that number
would be much greater.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Right. I want to ask you about COVID because a
lot of businesses either shut down and some prosper. Now
for me, like everybody else, besides doing yourself and becoming
a really good cook, even though I was Okay, beforehand,
and all the other things that I did during the pandemic, I imagine,
and once again I don't want to assume, but I'm
(23:25):
hoping that business continued. Did it prosper or did you
have to shift shift your dynamic of what you were doing?
And how was business during and after the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Well, this is kind of a really pivotal moment for us,
and not just because of COVID, but as COVID having
no idea it was on the horizon. We had just
really started feeling the momentum in our business and decided
to go down in an industrial park and purchase a
building and it was ten thousand square feet and I'd
(23:58):
also purchased a filling that would fill our cans in
an automation process. So that was coming in, this big
piece of equipment, a big purchase for us, and all
of that was happening, and we moved into this remodeled
building in February about the same time that was happening,
embracing ourselves for this growth that we were feeling. All
(24:19):
of a sudden, we start hearing that the world is
beginning to shut down in China and moving this way,
and I was like, Oh, that'll never happen here, blah
blah blah. You know, I kept telling myself this wasn't
going to impact us like we felt, and it would
be over and surely, the goodness this was just a
passing fad. But lo and behold, it did happen, and
pretty quickly it ramped up from there. We got deemed
essential simply because we were helping people stay centered and
(24:42):
on track and trying to keep give people something to
do with their you know, the idle hands moment is
not good for any of us, so giving people something
to do, the governor deemed essential during that time, so
we never shut down a day. We had all kinds
of catastrophic things happening to them to getting goods, getting
our containers. Obviously, containers were being sent to people who
(25:05):
wanted to put hand sanitizer in them, taking them away
from people like us who were buying them on truckload.
And now all of a sudden, those people were allocating
that to something essential, which it was you that had
to be. But all that said, everything was breaking, from
our shipping channels to ups usps. They were inundated FedEx.
They just had boxes piled up and they couldn't even
(25:27):
move them. That were so crushed by everybody buying everything
on the internet. So we'd always been on the internet,
but now all of a sudden, everybody's on the internet.
So that kind of crumbled and fell. When I went
down and moved into this building, I had one person
in customer service one Our business was very small, thinking
(25:48):
it was growing, it had it had really quadrupled in
just a very short time. But moving in there, we
had one customer service agent. At one point, this girl
had ten thousand unopened emails. I sat down to try
to help her, and I realized, there's just absolutely we
didn't have it pulling into one place to where if
you emailed ten times, it would be in one place.
It was just coming you to have I'd see ten
(26:11):
open emails from you. So we hadn't gotten all of
those things. Even in order that none of those things
had we had in place. And of course now we
have all of that to filter some of those things,
and we have several people in customer service. But that
was a really rough time for us, but the business
grew exponential during that time. It was just straight up
for us. And we also used Facebook as a way
(26:33):
to encourage people. We gave money away, we did fun things,
we talked, we chatted a lot, and we did it
for the right reasons. And I think we did it
for wanting to help people, give them something to think
about other than the ugly news out there and worrying,
and just made it a point to get online and
really encourage people and say, hey, do something fun, get
out and do this. Let's give money away. We wore
(26:53):
crazy hats, glasses, anything we could do to keep people
kind of keeping their mind off from the ugly that
was around us that we couldn't change. So for all that,
just putting that good out there, IRO believe it just
came back a hundredfold. And I didn't do it for
those reasons. But today I look at that and I go,
(27:15):
you know it is you report you?
Speaker 3 (27:16):
So yeah, yeah, So you know, speaking of sayings, my
wife and parted one on me a long time ago
that we've given to our daughter. And you've done it
several times about turning a scar into a star, and
you certainly have done that many many times, including through
the pandemic. I didn't want to ask you this because
I know things are going well and the company is ascending,
and it's really a truly a remarkable start in a
(27:39):
marketing story and starting from nothing into where it is now.
You know, I'm curious because I always tell our entrepreneurs,
especially the young ones coming up and starting businesses, and
it's not always unicorns and rainbows all the time. When
you have a business, there are challenges. Are there currently
any challenges in your business right now?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Oh? Daily challenges. I think people have this placebo to
think that, oh, you're the CEO, you don't know of
any bad and they roll out a red carpet for
me every day and all that. The truth of the
matter is, there's none of that that's true. The only
thing you get at my level is all the things
that are unsolvable by the people underneath you. And or
(28:18):
it's not all bad. I shouldn't act like it's horrible,
but I certainly enjoy my job. But you have to
be a problem solver by nature, and if you're not,
you can't be in this role. But if problems bring
you down and makes you want to crawl in a hole,
this is not your role. This trust me, you'll never
make it as an entrepreneur. There's no guarantee of a
paycheck on this side of the fence. So I have
to get up every day and figure out how do
(28:38):
we make this thing work? And if we do have
a challenge, how do we get around it. What is
of all the bad we see, what is the next
step forward? And you can't get paralyzed by negative because
it's coming at you in every direction. Competition's coming at
you in every direction. You just have to always be
able to kind of get above it. I always say
(28:59):
I like to operate my business from the trees, not
on boots on the ground. Get hung up in the
daily grind of all the employees and the gossip and
the this and that. You know, that's a churn that
never stops. So you have to remove yourself at this
level and look back down on the business and see
what you bring to the business to help me out
in front of the business, not down in the daily
(29:19):
grind of the business. Because if you are trying to
run your business and do both, you will never grow
the business the right direction. So I'm up here trying
to make connections, reach out to the people that are
helping us move forward and helping us take the next steps.
There is no book out there to tell you how
to run your business. There. You know, I think, I'm
(29:42):
sure you're going to touch on this, but I will
already because the EY Award, the Ernstein Young Entrepreneur Award.
During the interviews to this, one of the questions they
asked that was so amazing actually is they asked me,
had I ever read a book on other entrepreneurs that
maybe that I follow answer to that was no, I
never have, And she has smiled when I said no.
(30:05):
And they were tape recording this, and then she came
back after it was over. She said, ironically, we asked
that question to all entrepreneurs and most of them say no.
And she said, can I ask you why you say no?
And I said, the reason I don't read books. First
of all, I don't think that's my experience. My experience
is an evolution on every single day as a build.
I couldn't read someone's book to tell me what to
(30:28):
do in their journey because that's not in my journey.
My journey is impacted by things that happened to us
every single day, and no one's journey is going to
help me figure that out. It's just something I have
to be open and in tune with and listening and
watching every single thing from the economy to people that
I do idolize and look at and who are those figures?
(30:51):
You know, what would they do in these situations? Martha
Stewart's always been a great beacon for me, even though
there's things she'd done I would never do, But I
do like to look at her because she's able to
iterate and change and make herself important and no matter
what has taken place in her own world from all
the ugly in her world, that she manages to evolve.
(31:14):
And you know, she's a Madonna of entrepreneurialism. In my world,
she's pretty amazing. And I watch her and, like I said,
not everything she does is what I would do, but
I like to watch what she does because she's super
smart and she's been able to figure it out for
her and as an aging female doing business, she's an icon.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
But yeah, she has a lot of good advice in there.
You know, I kind of take it. You know, in
my industry, I did play by play sports for a
long time, and as I was trying to invent myself,
I was listening to all these different people do their
style of broadcasting. I took that in, but I made
everything my own. That's kind of what you've done as
(31:53):
you look at people too, And I think that's really
good advice for a lot of entrepreneurs out there.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Take it in. But there is like I said, there's
no Bible, there's no book, there's no anything you're going
to say. Here's exactly what you need to do, and
everybody's writing one today. I've noticed that everybody's right. Now,
here's how you do it book. And I promise you
that will not be your journey no matter what it
is you're doing, if you're doing, even if it was
exactly what the person did, it will not be how
yours will unfold and learn from it. Like you said,
take all that in. Listen to all these talking heads
(32:19):
and listen. Listen. Keep your ear to the your nose
to the gross on your ear. Listening out here to
figure out what's getting ready to take place. Look at
people that are evolving in the landscape. Look at the
Amazons and the Walmarts of the world. See where retail
is headed. Is that something you want to be on?
You want to be on that soul crushing ride, or
you want to get over here and join the Amazon folks. Well,
(32:41):
I'm going to join the Amazon folks anyway.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
That's kind of how that's good advice. It's very good advice.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
You know.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
You mentioned ernstin Young, and I know that when I
talk to most founder, CEOs and entrepreneurs at awards or
awards and I'm busy working and I'm trying to make
my company. You send and I'm grinding out there. But
this one's a special one. Talk to a few other
people in this series that have been recognized by ernstin Young,
and I know that's pretty special to you. Can you
elaborate for us why it is so special?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Oh? Sure? Like you said, glass awards are a diamodism.
There's everybody trying to give you an award and charge
you for it and join their group so you can
get another glass award. And that's an ego stroke. And
if you need glass awards to put on a bookshelf,
go for it. But the truth of the matter is
there's very few awards that really wanted anything to do.
(33:28):
After you've gotten the award and paid the money to
get the award, that'll be the last you hear of them.
They make a post on LinkedIn and social media and
it's gone. So but the arnstin Young Award is a
little bit different than that because they are a global
network of people. They're highly recognized. People know them and
other businesses either use them for their services or they
are looking at their pages and the financial pages of
(33:51):
the world and wherever they may find them. But Ernst
and Young definitely vets out anyone who is in this competition.
So what that means is if you have you have
to have audited books, and third party audits have to
happen to your books, So we're not going to come
in an audit for you. If you have an audited
set of books and you get accepted into the Entrepreneurial
(34:14):
Program to win this award, they will come to you
and do interviews with you. They brought actually five people
to my office and sit down and they had our
books already, but they actually did live interviews with me
and made sure I was what I had represented on paper.
And then from there went on to another long series.
I had to go up to Cleveland and go through
(34:37):
another I think there was twelve different interviews there, personal
one on one interviews, and all of it's very real.
So when you win this award. It's a different level.
It's not just a piece of glass. It's actually something.
I said this to you before we came live, just
because I think it's important for folks to know if
(34:57):
you get to that level, this is something always I
would recommend if you can enter into this, if you've
done something spectacular in your business, you've got great growth,
you've got profits, you have eve it to enter in
because it will bring to the table, flesh out the
people you are hoping to flush out. So it will
bring big spotlights to you and your business, whatever that
(35:19):
goal might be. If you're looking to maybe sell your
business in the future, whatever those goals are that you
have set for yourself and your business, you will find those.
They will come to the table after this award.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Yeah, well said. And I see why it's a big deal,
because the recognition is a big deal in the industry.
So I'm very happy for you, and I know that
I can tell between your passion and the company and
excited about that. That kind of recognition is a really
big deal. So thanks for that. We only have a
couple of minutes left, but I did want to talk
to you and just put a pin in the company
just for a second, but I have a feeling it's
(35:51):
going to be part of the company. When it comes
to philanthropic and sharity work, when you do have time,
and I know how busy you are, is there anything
philanthropic you like to be a part of.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Well, absolutely, I like to help people as much as
we can, and I like to help people that I
can get to see their face and those kind of things,
and I know there's a lot of big things out
there that you can work toward. Of course, Habitat for Humanity.
I was their keynote speaker this year, and we want
to become a national sponsor with Habitat. There's some other
paint companies in the channel at this moment, but when
(36:21):
that is available, we'll certainly be doing that. But I
like to help my folks right here at home. You know,
I'm in a rural community in Kentucky. And in twenty
twenty one we became an ESOP where I gave forty
nine percent of the company to the people who work
for us. And it's nothing that costs them any money.
If you know anything about ESOPs, it is crewed by
(36:43):
how much of their salary that they make, and it
goes into an account that will give them something to
fall back on, and so many people working here in
this environment don't have that, and this it just gives
them a reason to want to see the business success.
It's full it's a win win for everybody, and of
course change ownership. They all get paid and looking at
(37:06):
our age, my husband, myself, that's a good that's a
great one for them that if they start thinking about
that in the terms of her age, they go eventually
she's gonna sell this sing or die one of the other.
It's a pretty good idea to hang on here. So
I guess that's how they look at it. Every day
they're checking my health.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Yeah no, but I think that's huge of you, and
you're kind of paying it forward to to the community.
Not a lot of people do that, especially in rural
communities and where you live. I think it's wonderful that
you're doing that and very generous too. I know you're
also looking out for yourself, you know, to take care
of your family and to create a business. But in
this series, i've there's one big common theme besides being
(37:45):
passionate for what you do, is that they surround themselves
with great people and they talk about their team members.
They're not just staff. You know their family and they
mean a lot to them and I know they do
for you too. I did want to finish up with
one final thing and get some final thoughts from you
and also maybe some advice. In this series, there's a
lot of CEOs that listen to it because it's a
(38:06):
great listen. But there's a lot of future entrepreneurs and
people that would like to run their own company, whether
it's woman owned or anybody that wants to start a company.
But You've been fortuitous at the time, a single woman
with a son starting this company in your kitchen, and
it's truly an incredible story and I'm glad that you
shared it with us. But I just want to give
the floor to you for some final thoughts and maybe
(38:26):
a little advice for our future entrepreneurs out there on
this series. The floor is yours, Paul, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
I'd like to just leave you with one overarching thought here,
and that I believe would encourage anyone that's an entrepreneur
out there. No matter who, or what or how much money, education,
none of those factors truly matter. Again, I started this
business at fifty tons of failures as most people would
view them under my belt. But I look at those
all those failures as just little stepping stones to help
(38:57):
me not make those same mistakes again. And a lot
of successful businesses, but I'd close them all. And a
lot of people see closure as a way as a negative,
but in truth, I was just ready for the next
step in my life. So you have to look at
things like that. Don't deem all those things in your
past as failures. Take all that information and all that
knowledge you've learned, and in today's world, that's something let's
(39:19):
pause there for a minute. In this environment, there's no
better time to be in business. I could not have
done a single piece of what I have done in
this business if it was a traditional way of having
to start a business and advertise and put a magazine
ad together for one hundred grand and do all the
things that would have had to have normally been done
in a business years ago. It was only in this
(39:40):
timing that I was able to launch this business on
a shoe stream, take what money I was making, and
keep reinvesting it back into the business. There's no way
I could have done it without it being in today's environment.
Being able to use my phone. Nobody was going to
prevent me from using my phone to teach people about
my products. And you have the same exact organic ability
to do that. You can turn it on on and
(40:01):
drive people to your products. Just went out to Amazon Accelerate,
and this is something I want to be sure and
tell you guys, because if you did attend that event,
you know this. But they highlighted a lot of businesses
similar to mine. And they talked about a lady who
had started a dog food company, dog and cat food
company that she called the products organic and she vetted
all that out and put that on the stickers and
(40:22):
so people know they're feeding their animals something that's tried
and tested and all the things. And the lady had
grown her business to one hundred million dollars in sales
on Amazon. Started in her kitchen too. She was much
younger than I, of course. But again, those things can
happen in today's world simply because of companies like Amazon
and like building your own website and all those things.
(40:43):
But I would definitely say to you today, I started
mind building my own website and using Facebook as a
way to drive traffic to my website. Those things don't
even need to happen. You just need to go straight
to Amazon and learn Amazon. Because today, if you're like
me and everyone else in the world, you're turning your
phone on, there's only one place you go other than
probably social media, and that's Amazon. And Amazon has already
(41:05):
has your eyeballs and you're already going right there to
purchase something. So if you if I've already gotten you
that far, you're already on there. There's no point in
me spending money to try to drive you from a
Facebook ad to a website, and then you've got to
trust that and do all the things. Just got to
put your put your mindset focus on Amazon and you
can build anything you want right there.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Great advice, Great advice. Well, I know a lot of
our Savagy listeners have already googled your your URL and
your website, but let's give it to everybody so they
can see about all the incredible products that you have.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
What is that it's all in one paint dot Com
All in one paint. Just go there and get yourself
that free sample I talked about.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Outstanding, Paul, this is truly an incredible story. I'm so
happy for you and your family, and I think it's
a great testament about there's no age that you can't
start your own business and succeed. Grind it out, be passionate,
and you know, roll the dice and how you do
out there. But it's such a neat story. I'm so
happy for you and your team members, and of course
(42:07):
all your clients too that are so happy with your product.
I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much, continued success,
and thank you so much for joining us on CEOs.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
You should know I certainly appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Thank you, Dennis, that's another CEO you should know. Thanks
for being a part of our community, and thank you
for listening to this iHeartRadio station.
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