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