I was having dinner at the Gaylord Hotel in Grapevine when a woman walked past our table dressed as Britney Spears.
Blonde. Crop top. Full early 2000s Britney.
Then another one walked by. Then another.
At some point you have to stop pretending you’re not staring and just ask somebody what is happening, so that’s what I did.
Turns out The Toxic Experience was at the hotel. It’s a Britney Spears tribute band, and they are GOOD.
My friend Gretchen and I went straight up to the room to braid our hair and put on something cute. Our group came with us. We danced and acted ridiculous and had one of those nights you don’t plan and can’t recreate.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, standing there watching a woman who was not Britney Spears absolutely own a room, I turned to Gretchen and said what if we hired one for our event.
I pulled out my phone right there and googled it.
I messaged a Britney look-alike that night. Then Gretchen and I spent the next hour talking about taking dance lessons and starting our own Toxic Experience, which tells you everything about how the evening was going.
By the next morning I had a quote. I immediately booked her.
It All Started Because I Got Up and Asked
Here’s the smallest, dumbest part of that night. I got up and asked.
I could have sat there. Watched a few more Britneys walk by, laughed about it with the table, finished my chicken and gone up to my room. That would have been a perfectly nice dinner and I would have learned exactly nothing.
Instead I stopped a stranger in a hotel and asked what in the world was going on.
That one question is where the whole thing came from. The tribute band, the night with Gretchen, the idea, the booking, all of it traces back to being willing to look a little nosy in a hotel lobby.
Curiosity is a business skill. It doesn’t feel like one because it’s fun, and most of us were raised to believe that if something is fun it doesn’t count as work.
But almost everything good in my business started with me asking about something that wasn’t my business yet. What’s that? How does that work? Who runs that? Can I do that?
The women who grow are the ones who ask.
Booked Her Before I Could Talk Myself Out of It
I didn’t sleep on it. I googled her at the hotel and messaged her that night.
Taking action fast is the thing I like most about myself. It’s also the thing that gets me into trouble, and I’ve made peace with the fact that those are the same trait.
Some of my best decisions came from moving before I had time to overthink them.
The speed matters more than people think.
An idea has a shelf life. It’s hot for about a day, maybe two, and then real life comes back in and starts making a very reasonable case for why you shouldn’t. The bills. The calendar. The one person who is definitely going to have an opinion about it.
Give an idea a week and it dies of natural causes.
Pixie and I talk about this a lot. We believe an idea comes from God, and if you sit on it long enough, it moves along to somebody else.
That part used to scare me. It doesn’t anymore.
Getting the idea doesn’t mean you were supposed to build it. It means you were supposed to hold it for a while. You are the keeper of that idea, and sometimes keeping it means running with it, and sometimes it means turning it over for a season and then handing it off to whoever is meant to finish it.
Both of those are the job.
Where I see women get stuck is thinking they have to act on every single one. They collect ideas like they’re collecting debts, and then they feel guilty about the ninety they haven’t done anything with.
That guilt is misplaced. You’re just holding a lot.
Pick the one that will not leave you alone, and move on it while it’s still hot.
I’m not saying be reckless with your money. The quote was affordable, and if it hadn’t been, I would have passed. But when something is inside your budget and inside your gut, moving fast is not impulsive.
It’s just fewer opportunities to chicken out.
The Part Where It Went Sideways
Paint Party Business LIVE is my bi-annual event where all my PPHQ members come meet in person. Three days of business and fun. My mom described it as a cross between Woodstock and an old church revival, which is the most accurate description anyone has ever given.
I had been teasing a surprise for weeks.
I booked the family-friendly version, because I’m not completely without judgment. And she was AMAZING. She looked like Britney. She sounded like Britney. Her backup dancers were perfectly in sync.
I’m out there on the dance floor having the time of my life.
Then I look up.
People are leaving.
Not everybody. But enough. Some drifted off the dance floor. Some walked out of the room entirely. And during one of the costume changes, there was a moment that read a little more like a striptease than anybody was expecting, including me.
That was cringe. I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t.
So there I am, in the middle of my own event, in front of my own members, watching my big surprise land wrong for a chunk of the room.
Nobody prepares you for that specific feeling.
The instinct is to shrink. To apologize. To grab the mic and explain yourself, or to go stand awkwardly by the wall and let the whole thing die quietly.
But instead of cowering, I danced.
I stayed out there and I finished the song, partly out of stubbornness and partly because leaving would have made it so much worse for the women who were still having fun.
What I Actually Got Wrong
The mistake was assuming everybody in a room of a hundred plus women would want the same thing I wanted.
My people are wonderful and they are also not identical. Some of them are there to connect, be creative, and have the time of their life without caring what other people think. And some of them are there for the business training.
I planned that surprise for the version of my audience that is basically me.
That’s the actual lesson, and it’s one I’ve used in a hundred places since. When you’re building something for people, check whether you’re building it for THEM or for a room full of imaginary versions of yourself.
It shows up everywhere once you start looking for it.
The painting you picked because you love it, and half the room struggles with it.
The joke that kills with your friends and confuses everybody else.
The Facebook post written for the woman you were three years ago instead of the woman reading it now.
Misreading the room is not a character flaw. It’s feedback, and it’s cheap feedback compared to most of the ways you can learn that lesson.
There’s a Reason I Wanted Her There in the First Place
Something got lost in the drama of that night, and it matters.
I did not hire her purely as a gag.
I hired her because I wanted my members to see what stage presence looks like. That woman held a room. She had confidence in her body and her voice and she committed to every second of it, and every one of my members teaches in front of a room for a living.
That’s the whole job. You stand up in front of 30 women who are nervous and convinced they can’t paint, and you have to hold them.
Stage presence is something you show people, not something you explain to them. And when it works, somebody in that audience watches a performer own a stage and thinks, oh, I could stand a little taller when I’m teaching. I could project. I could commit instead of apologizing my way through the first ten minutes.
The idea underneath the risk was solid.
The execution had a few problems.
Those are two different things, and I think a lot of women quit on good ideas because one bad execution convinced them the whole thing was stupid.
What I’d Tell You About Taking Risks Now
Most risks in this business are smaller than the one I took, and they still feel enormous.
Trying a new painting you’ve never taught. Reaching out to a venue that seems too nice for you. Adding an art kit line. Raising your hand for the corporate gig. Teaching a technique you’re only 80 percent sure of.
None of those will clear a dance floor. I’ve done that, and I’m still here.
What I know now is that the risk almost never costs what you think it will. The cost is usually a few uncomfortable minutes and a lesson you get to keep forever.
Not taking the risk will always cost more. Rather than getting a lesson, good or bad, you get a question you never answered, and those are the ones that stay with you.
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