Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Glynn Rosenberg . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Glynn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

The question of happiness as a business owner comes around every season for me. My industry is very seasonal. From January-April this year, I had very little interest in my work even though I was doing tons and tons of sales outreach. Approaches that had worked in the past weren’t working and I thought a lot about picking up a more traditional job. When push came to shove, I actually did pick up some hourly gig work to cover my bills. Mid April, I landed a huge mural on the outside of a building that ended up taking 5 weeks. I barely had a day off. The question of happiness in my wok arose again, but this time in a completely different way. My work is physically exhausting. My clients can expect a lot. Some projects have really high costs and really short deadlines. It’s easy to wonder if it’s worth it. But I have never had a 9-5 job that I could stick with longer than 3 years. I get bored easily doing the same thing every day. I love how varied my mural business is. I love traveling and meeting cool people and bringing their visions to life. Maybe happiness doesn’t necessarily have to come from a job. There are moments of pure bliss in my work, and I soak those up. But at the end of the day, having time to rest and spend time with loved ones makes the work feel worth it. My goal is always to work less, and that’s when my business feels most rewarding.

Glynn , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I run a mural and art services business. During the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020, artists were invited to paint the outside of boarded up buildings. At that time, I was working as a paraeducator in a special education classroom, but I was always looking for a way to go full time with my artwork. The pandemic murals gave me a ton of experience and exposure, and in 2021 I decided to take the leap and not return to my 9-5. The past 3 years have been a whirlwind. When I started out, I got some really cool jobs, including designing an alternate Jersey for Seattle’s new expansion hockey team, The Kraken, and making a surface design for the viral 40oz Stanley Quencher. In 2023, I started reaching out to short term rentals and painted murals in CA, AZ, and FL. These murals really helped me hone in on the purpose of my work. In the vacation rental industry, my murals became a way to help businesses stand out in saturated markets, attract visitors to unique homes, and highlight the special natural features of each place. For instance, my Joshua Tree mural features plants from the desert, mountains in the distance, and a beautiful coyote under a starry sky. My artwork has continued to follow this theme and clients most often want to work with me because of my treatment of local landscapes. Murals help visitors feel at peace in a space.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I just finished a huge wall for a dispensary that had a ton of challenges. The building itself was really old and required a ton of rehab before I could even start painting. The first week, I stayed on the wall for 12 hours each day, cleaning the wall, fixing cracks and holes, and slapping peel bond on everything to prep for the artwork. The hardest day of the project was the power wash day. I spent hours soaking the building in Simple Green, and then I took my power washer hose up in my lift and blasted the grime off the building. I was soaked from head to toe. The dirt from the building would splash all over me and my lift. By the end of the day, I was completely exhausted, and I hadn’t even started to put the artwork on the wall. I kept pushing though, and eventually the artwork started to come to life and it all felt worth it. Another challenge arose when the client called me to tell me they didn’t like the mural. I was shocked, because this had never happened before, and the mural was only half finished, so I was sure they would like it when they saw the final results. Through many conversations with the client, we finally got to a place where we were both happy with the mural at the end. I learned a lot of new skills for managing difficult conversations with clients while being in the middle of a physically demanding project.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

In the last year, almost all of my projects have come from doing email outreach. In fact, the huge dispensary mural came about from an email I sent in 2022. Sometimes clients don’t need your work when you first reach out, but they then email you years later when they are ready to work together. I had to get over the idea that work would just magically come to me. I spend hundreds of hours building spreadsheets with business contacts and then use CRM software to email examples of my work and requests to set up meeting times. The most important part of this work is targeting industries who have problems that murals and artwork can solve, and who have the capital to invest in artwork, which can seem frivolous and expensive to clients in some industries. I’ve had great success targeting the short term rental industry, and I’ve also begun to reach out to shopping centers around the country. People always ask me how clients find me. And while sometimes they find me on social media or through word of mouth, more often than not, I reach out to them. It can be scary and sometimes you get rude responses (which is honestly fair, cold emails can be annoying). But perseverance pays off. Waiting around for clients to find you does not.

Contact Info:

• Website: Glynnrosenberg.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glynn.rosenberg?igsh=MTNzazRsdjVremszNw%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

Image Credits
Kelsey Early