The Flippin Society

Well hello there lovelies!

It is a gorgeous, cold winter day here in Illinois today!

I need to be packing to go to a business Mastermind this weekend, but I felt like I wanted to make a blog post first. 🙂

I want to be in here more often.  January was a rough but good month.  Full of stress and learning, teaching, and hopefully figuring out ways to avoid these stresses the next time.

I’m not necessarily bringing you a project today.

Nothing about farming today.

No cattle today.

But this is something that is completely lighting me up these days!

Have you heard about my private furniture painting group?  It is called ‘The Flippin Society.’ 

I started this group for several reasons.  One of them was having people reach out to me multiple times a day, most days, asking me about furniture painting.  I was spending hours a day trying to help them.  And those hours were keeping me from getting anything else done.

I love to help, but I just couldn’t answer them all and work on my own furniture and my own business like I needed to.

So, in July of 2020, the year of the pandemic, ‘The Flippin Society’ was born!

We started slow.  I wondered if anyone would even join. 

I opened the brand new group and stated that they would be my founding members, paying a very low monthly fee that would only be available that one time.  They would be helping me mold the group into what it would become.

I do not know how this happened, but we ended up with 55 members!  I was ecstatic.

If you remember, I had previously had a brick and mortar and had closed it about 6 months before this.  I had suffered major burnout in several areas.  Furniture painting being pretty close to the top of that list.

In the initial start-up, I had said that I would be doing mixed media, repurposing, crafting, and furniture painting and techniques.  And I secretly did not want to do the furniture part of it.  Like at all.

We got started, and I did do a piece of furniture with them from start to finish.  It didn’t kill me.  But it didn’t thrill me either. 

I did minimal furniture in there.  No one complained, but I felt like I was letting them down.  I know, I know, ‘that’s on me,’ lol.

Anyway, months come and go, and I am still not catching the furniture bug again until about November.  I can’t even explain how or why. 

But that didn’t matter.  I was back!  Back into all things furniture!  I wanted to try new techniques and teach others EVERYTHING I know about furniture!  But I hadn’t wholeheartedly realized this.

I knew that I wanted to paint again and was so excited.  I felt like I so totally escaped complete furniture painting burnout by the hair on my chin.  I am so thankful that that wasn’t the case!

At the urging of a friend of mine, she said I should do a private coaching call with someone she knows.  That she thought she could help me.  It wasn’t cheap, but I trusted my friend, and I was already Facebook friends with the person she was talking about. 

After that one-hour coaching call, I have realized that I need to niche down.  What am I known for?  Painting furniture, right?  I mean, after all, this is my business name.

So much clarity was gained in that one hour.  I will forever be grateful. 

I still have so much to learn and tweak, but I really feel I am on the right path.

My message is clear now.  And having my message be clear helped people understand what my group was about.

I have been teaching more furniture related classes.  I have taught prep, decoupage, and a tabletop technique.  Planning a couple more coming up in April and May.  One of them will be on painting, distressing, and antiquing/glazing.  The latter one will be all about decoupage, stenciling, and transfers.  At least that is what I am thinking at this point.

So guess how many members are on this furniture flippin journey with me now?  Keep in mind that some people will come and go.  But as of 11AM this morning, we hit 189 members. This was just a milestone I wanted to eventually reach and today is the day.  I know it’s a strange number to land on, but that is a story for another day.

If you have made it this far in my ramblings, you are amazing!

I will pop the info of my private group in here, ya know, just in case you are looking for a beautiful group of furniture painters (some brand new!) who are so supportive and uplifting of each other.

I just could not love this bunch more!  Oh, and we recently, last night, in fact, had our very first ‘live’ Q&A call through zoom!  They get to see and hear me all the time, but it is a treat for me to get to see and hear them!  Makes me so happy!  And this is something that I think we will do monthly moving forward!  So I definitely need to add that to the list of things we accomplish in the group!