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