It was winter and our washing machine was broken.
This was not long after the water moccasin situation, which is its own story for another day.
We were living in a trailer we had borrowed $6,000 to buy. It was far from perfect. The place had holes in it from mice. It could not hold heat to save its life.
So here was our system. We turned on the water bed heater, set up a space heater in one room, and we shut every other door in the place and hoped for the best.
I would wake up to a freezing house. The dish soap in the kitchen was frozen solid. Actually frozen.
I would grab what I needed and drive to my mother in law’s house before work.
I took my shower there, watched her TV, did my laundry there with her Tide detergent, I ate their Tostitos chips, and drank my father in law’s Ensure like I owned the place.
And I remember standing in that warm house thinking, THIS IS THE LIFE.
I also remember thinking something else.
One day, I am going to be able to afford Tide detergent and Tostitos chips. The name brands.
That was it. That was my definition of success.
And honestly? It still mostly is.
Why I Am Telling You This
Because I think a lot of women are waiting to feel successful, and they have picked a finish line that is way too far away.
You are not going to feel successful when you hit six figures.
I promise you that. You will hit it and then immediately start looking at the next number, because that is what brains do.
You feel successful when a specific thing you have been going without shows up in your house.
For me it was laundry detergent.
Not a car. Not a purse. Detergent.
If your list feels small or silly, good. Small and specific is how you actually know you got there.
Money Isn’t Everything Unless You Don’t Have Any
My mom used to say that. She said it as a joke and I feel it in my bones.
I grew up the middle kid with three brothers and a sister. Five kids and one bathroom in a small house. Constant, beautiful chaos.
We shared rooms. We slept wherever we landed. Half the time we grabbed a blanket and slept on the floor.
Here is one thing that will tell you everything. I did not know there was a top sheet AND a bottom sheet until I got married.
I found out as a grown woman. From a bed.
My favorite restaurant growing up was Long John Silver’s. I had never been to a Chili’s in my life until I started dating Bobby. I had not even heard of it.
That’s not a sad story. It was a fun life. But it did teach me something specific, which is that nobody was going to hand me a different life. If I wanted one, I had to go get it.
The Note In The Closet
Years later, Pixie was helping me clean out my closet.
We found a note I had written back when things were tight. It said:
When this happens, I will feel successful:
- Groceries in the fridge
- Massage every month
- Debt free
- Tide detergent and Tostitos chips
- Someone to help clean the house
- Traveling every year
That is the whole list.
Look at what is not on it.
No private jet. Not any designer bags. No fancy shoes.
Just groceries in the fridge.
I stood there holding a piece of notebook paper that a broke, tired version of me had written, and almost every line on it had come true. Not because I got lucky. Because I got specific.
You cannot hit a target you never wrote down.
The Night I Almost Went Back To Teaching
Now I want to tell you about the part where I nearly quit.
This was years AFTER I left my full time teaching job. Years after I was supposedly all in.
I was burned out. Not tired. Burned out. There is a difference and you know it if you have been there.
It felt like no matter how hard I pushed, I was not getting anywhere. I was burning the candle at both ends and the results were not showing up.
So one afternoon I sat down and started filling out an application for a local high school art teacher position.
I am typing and crying at the same time. Tears are running down my face and I am still filling in the boxes. Name. Address. Certification.
The salary would have been $47,000 a year. Dependable. Consistent. A real paycheck that shows up whether or not anybody books a party.
That number looked so SAFE.
Bobby comes home and finds me like that.
He doesn’t lecture me, or tell me to calm down. He sits down on the floor next to me and says, “You can’t stop.”
That day, my husband believed in me more than I believed in myself. I do not think I would be doing this today if he had not sat on that floor.
The Posterboard
Here is what we did next, and this is the part I want you to steal.
We decided to track every single cent we spent for one month.
Bobby is a digital guy. He would have happily done it in an app.
I needed it on a posterboard. Big. On the wall. Where I had to look at it.
We agreed to meet once a week and write down everything coming into our account and everything going out. All of it. Nothing rounded. Nothing skipped.
Two things happened fast.
One, we found out we were overspending. Not in some dramatic way. Just in the normal, quiet way that happens when nobody is watching the numbers.
Two, and this is the big one, I found out I would have LOST money by going back to teaching.
I was already making double what that teaching job would have paid me.
Double.
I had been sitting there crying over an application for a job that would have cut my income in half, and I did not know it. Because I was not tracking it.
Once I saw those numbers written out plain as day, going back was not an option anymore.
It was game on.
The Part Nobody Says Out Loud
There is a specific kind of quiet that comes with being broke while you are building something.
You stop telling people how it’s going.
Somebody asks how the business is doing and you say “good, busy!” in a bright voice, and then you change the subject, because the honest answer is complicated and you do not want to see their face while you explain it.
You start doing math in the grocery store. You know exactly what is in your account without checking.
And the worst part is the shame, because you PICKED this. Nobody made you start a business. So it feels like you are not allowed to complain about it.
I want to say something to that version of you.
Being broke while you build is not the same as failing.
They look identical from the outside. They feel identical at 11 p.m. But one of them is a stage and one of them is an ending, and you usually cannot tell which one you are in until later.
I was doing laundry at my mother in law’s house in a season that turned out to be the beginning of everything. It sure did not feel like a beginning. It felt like the bottom.
The dish soap was frozen and the mice had chewed holes in the walls and I was still going to work and still dreaming about detergent.
That season was not wasted. It was just early.
Why This Matters For Your Paint Party Business
Let me bring this all the way down to what you are doing right now.
You are probably guessing about your numbers. Most hosts are. Not because you are bad at business, but because nobody ever made you sit down and look.
Here is what guessing costs you.
You do not know what a party actually makes you. My parties are $35 per painter. That is the number. So a party of twelve is $420 coming in. Then you subtract what you actually spent on canvases, paint, brushes, and anything else. Do that once, honestly, and you will know your real number per party for the first time.
You do not know what your time is worth. Add up the prep, the drive, the setup, the two hours of teaching, and the cleanup. Divide the money by those hours. That number will either make you feel amazing or make you change something. Both are useful.
You are comparing your business to a job that pays you nothing extra. A salary feels safe because it is one number that shows up on one day. Your business income is scattered across bookings and kits, so it FEELS smaller than it is. Scattered money always feels smaller than it is.
You might be like me, sitting there feeling behind, when the real story is written on a page you have not made yet.
Make Your Posterboard
You do not need software or a bookkeeper yet. You need one piece of poster board and a marker.
Two columns. Money in. Money out.
Write down every single thing for thirty days. Every party, kit, trip to the craft store. Every “it’s only $12” purchase, because those are the ones that get you.
Then sit down with whoever you share money with and look at it out loud.
We still do this. We slide back into old habits like everybody else, and when we do, the posterboard comes back out.
There are apps that do this too if you are a digital person. Use whatever you will actually keep up with, because the tool does not matter and the habit does.
Your List Is Allowed To Be Small
That list in my closet was written by a woman doing her laundry at her mother in law’s house because her own house was too cold to stand in.
She did not write “become a millionaire.”
She wrote groceries in the fridge.
And here is the thing about a small, specific list. You can actually reach it. And when you do, you get to FEEL it, instead of moving the goalposts and feeling nothing.
So if your dream right now is to cover the car payment with paint parties, that is a real dream. Write it down.
If it is to buy the good paint instead of the cheap paint, write it down.
If it is Tide detergent, I understand you completely.
Let’s Take Action
Two things this week. Both small.
One. Write your list. Finish this sentence six times: “When this happens, I will feel successful.”
Be specific and be honest. Nobody is grading it. Nothing is too small to make the list. Put it somewhere you will find it again in five years, because finding it again is half the point.
Two. Start your posterboard. Today. Money in on one side, money out on the other.
Give it thirty days.
You may find out you are further along than you thought.
I did. I just had to write it down before I could see it.
Are You Ready to Take the First Step in Your Paint Party Business?
