We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Savannah Kusak a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Savannah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the toughest things about entrepreneurship is that there is almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?

I like to say that when you are self taught, you don’t know what it is that you don’t know. Let me explain. Painting involves chemistry and how you mix your paint and lay it down affects the chemical reaction. What I didn’t know when I first started was what I was doing wrong to create not so great chemical reactions. I didn’t go to school for auto body but I would imagine there is a course that explains if your paint looks like this…then you did this wrong…
But when you teach yourself unfortunately you have to make those mistakes, to get those bad reactions, to then learn how to avoid them and do better in the future. And then you find out what it is you didn’t know! I’ve heard, online, different terms for these stages of your career. An applicator versus a painter. An applicator applies paint but stops there. They don’t know how to fix it or make it better. A painter on the other hand, has learned what the applicator hasn’t. Sometimes, the hard way.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am co owner of Cult Classics LLC along side my husband. I am the paint and body half of our shop. He is the mechanical and fabrication side. It’s just the two of us so we only get through 2-3 cars a year since the majority of our work is restoration. I equally love really crazy custom paint with metal flake and candy, as I do a simple black paint job that requires laser straight panels and months of body work.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I left my previous job in 2022 to go full time as a painter. This was two years in to us building our new shop and house and at time when I really thought our shop would be getting close to the finish line. Unfortunately, I was very wrong. We started building in 2020 and every single disaster imaginable happened, much of which was caused by Covid and material issues. Fast forward to 2024 and we were anxious to sell our house and shop while the market was good and so we did but that left me without anywhere to work until the new shop was ready in 2025. I spent a year saying “no” to every job that came my way and there was a time I didn’t think we would recover from that and be able to build back up a clientele.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Yes, I started out by learning to pinstripe. This is something anyone can learn without needing a shop, a paint booth, a compressor, etc. I pinstriped and did hand lettering for years before we built our first shop. While it is very different than painting cars, it was a step in the right direction to get in the custom paint world.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cultclassicsllc.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100083165747320