SideQuest 08: Who the Heck Are We? (The Origin Story)

We realized recently that we’ve been hanging out in your earbuds, telling you how to use power tools and fix your homes, but we haven't properly introduced ourselves!

In this SideQuest, we’re hitting pause on the tutorials to answer the question: Who are the women behind "How to Handyma'am"?

Spoiler alert: We didn't start as experts. We started as an artist, a biology major, and a mom with "unrealistic optimism" and a house falling down around her ears.

The "Accidental" Beginning

The story of My Handyma'am (our renovation business) starts with a house from 1856.

Samantha (Emily’s mom) and her husband bought a historic home that needed... well, everything. Emily, fresh out of art school and unsure of her next career move, came home for spring break to help out.

One day, while unsupervised, Emily decided she bet there was a brick chimney behind a plaster wall. With zero PPE (don't do this at home!) and a hammer, she went at the wall. The plaster came down, the brick was revealed, and the "renovation bug" bit hard.

What was supposed to be a spring break project turned into a complete career pivot.

The 9-Month "Master Class"

After cutting their teeth on their own home (and living in construction dust for months), Samantha and Emily decided to try flipping a house.

They spent nine months in that house, treating it like a university degree in construction. They taught themselves how to tile, how to mill custom trim to match 100-year-old woodwork, and how to paint properly.

They realized two things:

1. Flipping houses wasn't profitable the way they were doing it (too much perfectionism!).

2. They loved the work.

Word got out. A friend (shoutout to Sue T!) asked for a shed door. Then her friend asked for a repair. Suddenly, "My Handyma'am" was born.

Enter Arly: The Biology Major

So where does Arly fit in?

Arly was a biology student working through the pandemic who saw a Facebook post that Samantha and Emily were looking for help. Despite having no formal construction background (other than growing up with handy parents), she joined the team as "Employee #1."

Two and a half years later, she’s still here—proof that you don't need a background in construction to thrive in the trades. You just need curiosity and a willingness to learn.

The Mission: Why We Podcast

Today, My Handyma'am has grown into a team of 12 (11 of whom are women) serving nearly 900 clients. But we aren't just here to fix sinks.

We started this podcast to build a community large enough to support our bigger dream: Affordable, accessible trade education for women.

We currently run a paid apprenticeship program that has trained six women, but we want to do more. We want to normalize women in the trades so that seeing a female contractor isn't a novelty—it's just normal.

The Bottom Line

If you are sitting in your house staring at a hole in the drywall thinking, "I can't fix that," we are here to tell you that you can. We started with YouTube, a hammer, and a lot of mistakes. If we can do it, you can do it.

Transcript: SideQuest 08

Samantha: Welcome to the Side Quest. Arly: Welcome to the Side Quest. Emily: Where we sing and we don't even feel bad about it. Samantha: No we do not. Arly: Because this is the Side Quest where we follow our bunny trails. Samantha: Also I'm Samantha. Arly: I'm Arly. Emily: I'm Emily. Samantha: And this is the little bonus episode we give you every week for How to Handyma'am where we don't put as many restrictions on ourselves about how we behave and what we say and getting off track. Emily: It's a treat to get them through the whole seven days without a main episode. Arly: I know. It's like a punishment to really make people wait a whole week. Emily: I mean where are they going to get their dose of insanity if it's not here? Arly: I don't know. Enjoy. Samantha: So this episode we are going to take a little bit of time just to tell you who we are. Because we had someone who said "Hey I might have missed it but was it early episode where you said who you actually are and what you do?" And we realized... Arly: And friend you didn't miss it. Samantha: No well actually the first episode we actually recorded we did talk about who we are and why we're doing this. But that episode was very insane so we did not publish it. So... Emily: Um yeah there would have been a lot of bleeping. Samantha: We've reigned in the cussing. Arly: Yeah you didn't know this was way better than before. Emily: And if you uh like the cussing or like the craziness maybe eventually on Patreon or something like that... Arly: How to Handyma'am After Dark. Dun dun dun. Emily: We'll unleash our inner beasts. Samantha: But for now we're going to keep these Side Quests to a reasonable amount of time. So we're just going to dive right in and talk about why we're doing this in the first place. So we own a business called My Handyma'am. Arly: Woo woo! Emily: Lansing area hit us up. Samantha: Yeah. We do home repairs and renovations. We are a business of 12 people. 11 of us are women. And we are passionate about women in the trades in a variety of ways. So we're passionate about women having access to trustworthy tradespeople. We're passionate about creating a pathway for women to enter the trades as a career. And we're passionate about women being able to take care of their own homes. Samantha: So our podcast has a purpose. The reason we started the podcast is to build a community that's large enough to attract sponsors and partners who will help us put on in-person education in ways that are affordable and accessible for women. Arly: Yes. Samantha: So uh yeah that's the business that we do and that's why we're in this. But let's talk a little bit about who we are as individuals and why we're passionate about it. So let's start with you Emily. Emily: Hi. I'm Emily. Arly: Yeah why do you do this? Emily: I was born in the 1900s. Arly: Arly was not. Arly: I was not. No. Samantha: Why are you doing this Em? Emily: Um well to say it briefly I didn't know... Arly: Nepotism. Emily: Just kidding. Emily: Yeah nepotism except the nepotism is just craziness that I inherited from her. Samantha: Yeah. Emily: Um I'm an artist by trade and I didn't know what I wanted to do out of college. And at my tail end of college my dad was crazy and was like "I'm having a career change and we're moving here." And then my mom was like "Hey guess what? Me too." Emily: Um and so they bought this lovely house that is from the 1890s. We're not quite sure the city doesn't... Samantha: 1856. Emily: 1856. The city does not track prior to 1900. Samantha: But we do have the original deed. Emily: But they have the original deed. And I went to University of Michigan Go Blue and I came home one spring break to have a lovely fun super tropical spring break of helping my parents renovate their brand new house that they bought. Arly: Tropical. Emily: Uh there was quite a bit of sand. Arly: That's true. Emily: So they uh my dad left us alone for a hot second which he maybe shouldn't have. And I said "You know what? I bet there's a brick on your fireplace wall." And so uh we... Samantha: Which duh now looking back it's a chimney. Of course there's brick. Emily: But we knew nothing at this point. And without PPE do not recommend we went at the wall with a hammer. And we caught the bug from there because then the rest of the plaster walls came down in the house. And then poof COVID hits. And no contractor wants to finish the house. So we figured it all out. Samantha: Mainly our fearless leader Samantha. But I tagged along. And five and a half years later and here we are. Emily: I caught the bug. She tried to escape. Samantha: Nothing makes you a better do-it-yourselfer than if you have no other options. Emily: Yeah yeah we like legitimately had no other options. And so um we're finally getting to fixing the mistakes we made at Samantha's house. But we made mistakes on our own properties so that we didn't make them at other people's houses. Emily: And so here I am. Now I am really passionate about providing good service to our clients. I'm our main estimator my title is Business Development Manager. But we also I have acquired some fun certifications that aid me in doing that. So I'm a licensed residential builder in the state of Michigan. The youngest one in the state of Michigan which is fun. Arly: Eeee! Emily: And then I'm also a Certified Aging in Place Specialist because we serve primarily seniors. Um and that was really important to me because home is really important to me and aging in place is really important for... Arly: That's a straight up flex that you have that certification. I kind of wish that I would have gotten it. Maybe one day. Samantha: It's never too late. Emily: Yeah so. Samantha: Arly what's your passion for women in the trades? Arly: Um let's see. And how did you come at this? Arly: Well I obviously duh have a degree in biology. Which... Emily: I mean biology. Arly: Aids me every single day. Um no my parents were super DIY people. I mean my dad was just always fixing things because he was like "I can figure this out. I'm not gonna pay somebody else to do it." Or he was like "Well I broke it so I have to fix it." And then my mom was you know she grew up not having a lot of money so she had to fix things. She had to learn how to sew to fix her pants if she you know ripped them. And she just is very frugal and she's like "You know what? I can figure this out by myself." And she's really creative so she kind of picks up things. And once you learn something we talk about this sometimes but once you learn a little bit of something it's easy to apply that skill to another thing. So that's what my mom was really good at. Emily: And your mom doesn't just fix stuff she makes it better than it was originally. Arly: I know she really does she really does. And she has a very strong uh love for like repurposing things. So you know taking old clothes and making them new again or taking old like antique things and putting them into like a design or you know something useful or whatever. And honestly I just grew up kind of just thinking that that was normal. Like not really knowing that like a lot of people hire other people to like build a deck and like make Christmas presents and whatever you know. So I just always had that mentality. Arly: And then in COVID when I was in college I got to spend a lot of time on Pinterest. And uh thankfully my dad was on board for all of it because he was retired and kind of bored. And um we didn't really have anything else going on so we spent a lot of time working on stuff and um the skills that I had developed since I was like a young kid like my dad taught me how to use like a drill and a table saw and all that stuff when I was pretty young. Uh I really got to kind of like get creative with it and have like more hands on like long uh you know like days and days of using that kind of stuff on the daily. Arly: Um and then I saw your guys' Facebook post that you wanted somebody to come work for you and I was like "I'll do that." And then I you know I already had like caught the bug I guess but I had caught the cult infection that I call... I call us a cult because like we just we acquire people and then they just stay with us. So which is kind of like what a cult does I guess. Once you're in you're in. Samantha: Only you're still allowed to see your family and eat whatever you want. Arly: Yes yes you are. There's you know it's not a strict cult. We're kind of loosey goosey but. Emily: It's more of like a revolution than a cult. Arly: Yes. And now we're kind of starting a movement in for lack of a better word of helping women take a little bit more control of who's coming into their home how their home is being uh fixed and managed and um what you know what options they have. Giving them some control and a couple more options which is uh hard to do and especially because there's a lot of lack of information for women about like taking care of your home cause for a long time women weren't really supposed to have to worry about that. But a lot of women are living on their own or their husbands have died and we have... Emily: Or they just want to. Arly: Yeah or they just are living alone because they want to. And um I think it's important to give all all of the information to women so they have access to it and they get to make informed decisions about... Samantha: Yeah I think choice is yeah choices matter. Arly: Yes choices is what are important to us. Samantha: Yeah. Well for me my story probably speak to those of you out there who have gotten to the middle of your life or somewhere near there or your kids have gone off to college and you're like "Now what?" I was 44 years old when we moved here and tore our house apart. And then I was in the kitchen so COVID had COVID shutdowns had started and I was in the kitchen. We hadn't been tearing the house apart. Not the kitchen. Everything else. I opened the kitchen cabinet and there's plaster dust on the food. Arly: Yummy. Samantha: And it was at that point I was like "However long we have to wait for contractors to work again is going to be too long." Yeah. So we began to put the house back together ourselves. And then really fell in love with it. I mean we did some serious consumption of HGTV for a good 14 or 15 months. I feel like we watched every episode of every show there was. Arly: Hometown is your favorite. Samantha: Yeah. And then YouTube and Google and you can tell like we laugh about if you go around my house you can tell it's where we learned how to do everything. Emily: Well we're getting it. We're slowly fixing that. Samantha: We're totally fixing that. But I mean it's a great example of it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful. Emily: No your house is so cute. Samantha: Our house is very beautiful. So when we finished this house we thought I had been thinking you know now I live in this new town I'm too far away from my old job to drive there what will I do. And I thought I want to do this. I did not ever want to quit doing it after we had done it. So we bought a house to flip. And Emily and I spent nine months in that house basically our master class in learning how to do things. We learned I can not believe some of the things that we did in that house. Emily: I learned how to paint there. How to properly paint. Samantha: I learned how to paint. We learned how to make custom trim molding like to match the 100 year old trim that was broken. We learned tile. So like you spent your whole life learning we were like "Well sh*t we gotta learn this right now." Emily: Yep. We took nine months. Samantha: So we learned how to do everything there. And we found that at least the way we do it flipping houses is not profitable. Emily: Or super like to get houses that people have like defaulted on taxes and stuff it feels icky. Samantha: Yeah it didn't feel good. But we I didn't even really know that being a handy person could be a job. Didn't even like know it could be an official business. But we had been posting our before and afters on Facebook because we're just like talk about enthusiasm. I feel like we lived on enthusiasm for like well all of it. We live on enthusiasm. Arly: Still. Samantha: Yeah unrealistic optimism also. Um but we had been posting before and afters. And so one of our friends Sue T shout out to Sue T is basically the matriarch of our entire business. Yeah. She asked us to build a shed door for her. And I remember being incredibly nervous like "What am I doing I'm building this for somebody else I don't know what I'm doing." Emily: You didn't even pay me. Samantha: I never told Sue this story but I was like "Ahhh!" But we built it and it was really adorable and it worked. It was beautiful and it was functional. And then Sue told everybody she knew about us. And then her friends told everybody they knew about us. So like if literally if we made a family tree of our customers like 60% of our customers would lead back to Sue. Arly: Mmm hmm. Samantha: Um so yeah so we're like "Wow we can do this for other people that's super fun." And Emily and I just sort of dove in as we do with pretty much most things is like "We're doing this." Emily: We're meant to do this though because like I feel like I was meant to be here cause my husband got into grad school near where my parents lived and so it was like everything aligned. Samantha: It did. To bring us to you dear listener. Samantha: And I'm I have always been passionate about um empowering women and about helping women grow. Like it's always been important to me that the women who come to work for me you may not work for me forever and I may not be able to guarantee you employment but what I can guarantee is you'll be employable. So when you leave you will have skills you did not have when you came. So it was just a natural progression from just Emily and I to think about who's next who we bringing on board next who's gonna love this with us and help us grow this and our first non-family hire was Arly. And it's been two and a half years now and really a lot has changed. I mean Emily and I kind of trooped along for three years and then all of a sudden it was like now we have an official business where we employ people and have to file payroll taxes and worker's compensation and... Emily: Guys it's kind of scary not gonna lie. Arly: It's fun. But terrifying. Samantha: So Emily and I wanted to be able to build decks in particular which would require us to pull a permit in a lot of instances. So we got our builder's license for that specific reason but have used it for many other reasons since then. And so now here we are with this business with 12 employees and we're approaching 900 customers over the last five years. Arly: It's crazy. Samantha: Um and we have been talking the three of us have been talking for two years about teaching women how to do what we're doing. We do that in a very deep but limited way in that we have a paid apprenticeship program for women. So we have trained six women through the paid apprenticeship program. So and they are all still with us. So we do it in like I said a very deep a very limited way. Emily: That's so ominous they're all still with us. Arly: With us. Samantha: Um but we there are literally tens of thousands of women probably hundreds of thousands of women who could use even just a fraction of the skills that we have learned the hardest possible way. And the podcast is the starting point for us to begin to build that community of women that we can kind of pull back the curtain and show like "Hey this is totally doable." Emily: Yeah plus our social media presence which is really affirming that there is a place for this because some of the videos we post we don't think anything's too simple to teach or like too base of knowledge. Samantha: Well no because six years ago we didn't know any of it. Emily: Yeah. Arly might have but Emily and I didn't. Emily: So we know so like we post some stuff like here's what a drill bit versus a driver bit is and those kinds of things and we have particularly men I won't get too far into it but who comment "Who needs to know that?" Arly: A few sketchy actors. Emily: Yeah like who needs to know that or like you're the only person who thought that that worked that way. And then we also have mostly women who comment "I never knew that. Thank you so much." And like so firstly if you watch one of our videos and you're like "Duh I knew that." Well not everyone does so. Samantha: And it's not for you then. Emily: Yeah then it's not for you. Good for you that you know that. Here's a gold star. Arly: That's awesome. Yeah. Emily: But if you are like I'm embarrassed cause I don't even know how to work a drill or you look at your first uh miter saw or some people call them chop saws and you're like "How do I even start with that?" Like and yeah. Arly: Love me a good miter saw. Emily: Yes you'll get you'll get the bug quickly but this is a place where we no matter how little your knowledge is. Arly: Yeah we we will help you no matter what station you are at in your learning abilities. If you want to know as little as possible about home maintenance and you just want enough to know to hire a handyma'am or a handyman I guess uh to fix things around your house then we're here for that. If you want to completely turn your life upside down and be a framer we are also here to support you in that so. Samantha: Yeah. And I will just end by saying the other thing all three of us are passionate about is creating an environment a working environment that is the environment in which we want to work. Which is supportive co-workers and healthy conflict resolution and having a lot of fun taking good care of our customers. We have built a team of people who just show up for each other. That's the simplest way I can describe it. So that's what we want for this community as well. It's just a community of people that are like "You know what I'm on board. I'm here for you you're here for me? Let's do it." Arly: Yeah. If you want to be a part of that follow us along. We want you to be a part of our little crew. Emily: Or if you want to be hyped up Angela who just uh posted she sent us a private message and said "You inspired me to switch out my shut off valve on my toilet." Samantha: Good job Angela! Yeah! Arly: That's actually hard. Emily: Oh it's so hard. I was like whoa oof. Good job. Good job. But yeah if you just need someone who like maybe your husband's not being very nice about the renovation you're doing or you just like are feeling like yucky about it send us your before and after and we'll make you feel better. Arly: We will be your cheerleaders your girlfriends your contractors. Samantha: All right. And you can find us at How to Handyma'am on pretty much every platform and particularly our short form video content is gonna be some quick hits of helpfulness for you so on YouTube Shorts TikTok and Instagram you can find us at How to Handyma'am. And then if you have a specific question you can email us HTHM at how to at my handyma'am sorry dot com. Arly: Yes. All right. Well that's it for today's Side Quest. We'll see you for this Friday's episode. Emily: Yay! Samantha: Thanks for joining us. Bye!