We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Donald Kimbler Olson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Donnie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

Risk is such a personal thing, whether big or small, it’s certainly not a one-size-fits-all.

I sometimes think when people tell you it’s ok to take a risk, maybe we think that it’s only going happen once or twice in a life time.

You know, taking a risk wasn’t my problem; I was charmed, you could say. Risk seemed to find me. I found four ways to knock out my teeth, I lost an eye from a childhood kerfuffle then It didn’t really avoid me as I grew older.

Risk is mostly uncertainty and discomfort, nervousness and it’s mixed up with adrenaline, excitement and doubt; it can be joy and fear simultaneously.

When I started my business, Brushed Monkey, it wasn’t like many that start from a place of stability and predictability. Most spent years specializing or developing a passion for something, perhaps they research, write a business plan, tap into life savings, decide to sell an investment. For me planning was not present.

I was living in a Van, working temp construction labor and waiting tables on the weekends in Yuma AZ. I decided to return to Minneapolis and start being part of the world again with my family and to start one of my own. I was given an amazing opportunity to custom paint an interior of a new build in Orono. This was a different risk to me. It meant a schedule, commitment and responsibility. You could say the risk in front of me now was going to be discipline, predictability, dependability and consistency. Everything it takes to start and maintain a company.

It will be 19 years next February since I started my risky business,, It helped that I had also fallen in love with Painting a white wall,, Very Well. – Contending with old texture, nail pops, an irregular seam, and a wavy ceiling Line,, how the Baseboard, window and door casings,, how do these fit & finish to the wall,, all of this had my attention: it brought to me usefulness, beyond just another paint color on the wall,., there is a physical preservation with my craft,.,.

As an artist, one who would have loved nothing more than throwing color, design, energy, and paint- around a room or a home—in my early days- I would get it on the Carpet, Trim, furniture– places paint didn’t belong. But ,If you want to get paid,, you can’t do that!

Doing it well with real planning, prep, strategy, and coating applications that are clean with accuracy in consistency, and precision. I love finding the straight line in projects that can go bad to worse simultaneously while progressing in refresh, refinement and care. Since the Risk- – I have worked on over 3500 Projects inside Peoples homes with an amazing team of Painters, Plasters, Decorators and Artists. We have brought quality improvements, creative solutions and imaginative refresh to classic spaces and homes.

I think sometimes people tell you it’s ok to take a risk. People seem to encourage risk, like it’s a fun good thing. Maybe people think risk just happens once or twice in a lifetime.

My risk has also given me all the opportunities of those who have granted me with the opportunity to do something with it.

For me, risk created obligation, this was my fuel. It would form my purpose. My business formed around and under me as long as I was willing to just stay centered and focus.

Risk stops, when we are in a client’s home.
It’s their universe, children, pets, furniture, art, their time. Their dollar, their satisfaction and their project. There is nothing to risk here. From here, Brushed Monkey turns risk into care.

Do I still take risks in my craft, absolutely. You wouldn’t believe how much experience and insight comes from screwing things up. It would be a shame to not put these to use. I provide solutions to things my clients call problems. I think the pursuit of solutions will always involve risk.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I love to organize and reorganize. I love to problem solve. I am an artist and not always

with a canvas, a wall or on a leather jacket, my art becomes about the care of other things.

I have always been creating, and doing something. My personality does best when I am creating for or with someone, something. I think my personal creativity is starting to gain independence again and looking forward to the journey.

I spent over 20 years in Restaurant/Hospitality work; simultaneously working in construction trades for 15 years. Hospitality offered great flexibility, and construction was project-related and again, flexible.

So,, What’s a Brushed Monkey? I hear a lot,
I say it’s more creative & intentional than a Handy Man.

At Brushed Monkey, we are Painters, Plasterers, Decorators, and Artists who provide care, repair, and resolve to new and old finishes to the interiors of homes. But that’s not all. This has also brought a collaboration with many other craftsperson professionals: Carpenters, Tile setters, contractors and designers and other trades.

The key qualities that describe us best is that we find purpose in being helpful, useful and flexible. Amazing things happen in our world when we can all orient around the same goal. Prioritize client care, blended with our own self-care.
Having the time, budget, and space to plan, attend, and complete projects efficiently is important. It’s also helpful to be able to communicate effectively with confidence and trust.

What I am most proud of is our incredible ability to work both independently and as a team being helpful and useful with each other. You have to remain flexible. I have 3-7 Projects going on at any one time. From small 1-2 day projects to 3-4 weeks, then we have some that take our time for months.

But we show up every day with a degree of flexibility expected of us, or built into our team structure.
Our team has been trained in many finishing sequences needed to provide great care of all things that need to fit and finish nicely and cleanly.

As well, each employee has unique capabilities and specialties to provide solutions to all the multi-surface and multi-finishes we encounter. Our range of finish ability is expansive

Another thing, if you have heard that painting is really about the prep, it is, but there is something about a new suit that’s been fitted well to your frame. It feels good and it looks great. Finishing the painting in a home is the same for me.

About the residential painting part of the industry:

There is positive initiative in my area, locally and nationally in the effort of professionalizing an industry, an otherwise unorganized groups of painters, but it does come with some standardization that limits and diminishes the depth of the craft. This is where I want to make our distinction. We are Painters, Plasterers , Decorators and Artists.

Not all artists are equipped to be effective residential painters, not all painters are artists but it’s great when your painter is both.

I am completely moved by each and everyone I come into an awareness of. We are independent and make unique solutions to a homes problems that the home didn’t know it had.
There is value and growth to continually reimagining, reorganizing, reworking. It allows us to make better choices.

Every Human needs connection with the arts, not only through sculpture, canvas, and design, story video and sound. I believe this would be the thread count we apply to our home. The selection of the paint and finish professional you invite into your home is a way to keep this creative source within your home. Our team is creative, thoughtful, and they apply careful attention to the maintenance of surfaces and finishes in your home. They do it with a refresh of style and a new commitment to a space. Sometimes it’s blue or grey blue, sometimes a lamp or a plant, or maybe it’s a beautifully enameled built-in cabinet. This artist approach to interior finishing in a home should be the recommended standard to your selection.

I am convinced that change in a home isn’t always about the right color choice, but the project itself can create conversation about the change we wish to create within the space. Which reflect ourselves.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I am going through one now, maybe not the most significant, but the one that’s got my attention. The last three covid years have been brutal. It’s been shifting sand under your feet. I have prioritized to keep my team as employees, while the industry is numbered with subcontracting. Once we had a team of 25, now we are a focused and experienced team of 7-10, including our great administrative support.

I am about to embark on some new risk, that of FearJoy. I’m at that point with Brushed Monkey, where we need more professional collaboration. Maybe a strategic partner, maybe it’s an investor, business to partner with, or perhaps someone other than me should continue to carry on what the best of this has been and take it to where it can be.

I may have brought my love of craft into homes and advocating this is a worthwhile pursuit for investment and our souls, and the care in which we provide our homes is important and necessary in accommodating spaces with refined sophistication and new sense of purpose.

I may have had the resilience and perseverance to see us through the last 18 years, weakened a bit from Covid, but also joyfully growing and relevant.
I am able to say, I did that!

But Brushed Monkey also needs a new set of influencers. There is so much that can be imagined with the potential. We are Wow Painting at its Finest.

Lastly as an artist, I am evolving and I am hopeful and excited to see where this all goes.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I don’t know where my resilience comes from. If you know me well, you know I have it. To remind myself of the difference with perseverance, Resilience is in us and we persevere beyond us. I’m getting to the place where I really need the two to start working along the same lifeline.

I think my life is magical, therefore I am as resilient as that requires.

I could use perseverance to keep me from having to face plants as much. I’m getting slower to rebound. I also found resilience, in a biological setting, apparent to no influence of magical thinking, I want to share a story with you that I found pretty remarkable, perhaps reasonably explainable, when you get into the matter of it all, but it stuck with me. It was from a simple mouse. It was around 2017, on a Sunday and I had gone to our shop in Minneapolis just to kind of do my thing. Sundays were the day I would clean brushes and rollers and plan the details of the week.
But on that Sunday, I walked to the back door, a black bucket about 5 inches deep with pink paint water. Likely set out to dry up, it rained the day before. I saw what I thought was a leaf, twirling around somehow but it wasn’t a natural movement. I look closer and I see a little pink nose. Dang! I thought, how long, what the hell, it was a mouse continuously swimming laps around the bucket since when? Last Friday? Did it fall in the bucket yesterday? Just prior to me arriving for the day?

I can’t imagine how long that mouse was swimming laps around in this bucket? What keeps it going?

I thought my resilience comes from my DNA, my weave and doesn’t it get tangled with our stories? From being part of a loving family, feelings, memories, birthdays and great movies. Maybe it has nothing to do with being a child of God, the source of my magical life. If my resilience is just as measurable as that of a possible non-magical believing mouse, it indicates that resilience is biological unless life is magical, unless life is God.

And then this mouse laps this bucket, this crazy quest for survival, where is it coming from? Does he have memories, birthdays and good stories?

My perseverance comes from my own sense of identity within biological life and my purpose to apply it to something beneficial, and you fail when you quit.

Perseverance is the oxygen of purpose, so make perseverance magical, too then there’s beauty in the effort. I mean, really, we have gotta go through this biological drudge of a life; wouldn’t you want it to be about more than just the biological stuff.

I put the mouse on wood shelf and splashed it off. It looked crazy exhausted, but its rib cage was moving. I put a peanut butter cookie in the corner of the shelf and left.
The mouse was gone the next day.

I was completely blown away by resilience that day, This quest to hang on to life. I think resilience is woven in my life story. I think I was chosen to have this much resilience and I think I can do some good work with it.

Contact Info:

• Website: Brushedmonkey.com
• Instagram: @Brushed_Monkey
• Facebook: Brushed Monkey, Inc.
• Yelp: Brushed Monkey
• Email: interiorarts@brushedmonkey.com