[ BUSINESS PROFILE ]
By the time Dan Brady entered Central Michigan University, he had already worked as an apprentice under a master painter. BY SALLY J. CLASEN
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inPAINT | Dec 2015/Jan 2016
So it made sense to tap into those skills and start his own company during college to pay for his education. What he wasn’t so knowledgeable about at the time, however, was finances. “As a student, I would have to give myself a C-minus grade,” says Brady, who is the owner and president of Dan Brady Painting & Wood Restoration in Traverse City, MI. After earning a degree in business administration in 1995, Brady’s ability to grasp and manage numbers improved dramatically. He set out on a successful corporate career as an account executive in the computing industry, first working in Detroit and then Grand Rapids. “I was making great money, but that came at a price of being moved farther and farther away from home. I came to a fork in the road,” he says. After five years, Brady left the suit-and-tie world and took the route back home to northern Michigan for the drop cloth business. Once there, he started a kitchen and bath resurfacing company with his brother in 2000, Brady Specialty Coatings. Three years later, Brady began to rethink the family venture. “I realized that we were
not good partners. I thought it was best that we remained brothers and not business associates, so I started my own painting company.” His new career path combined his newfound experience in coatings with his painting acumen. At first, Brady did cookie-cutter repaint house jobs, but eventually expanded into reviving wood structures and surfaces. Today, his company offers interior and exterior painting, staining, wood restoration of commercial and residential buildings, and also drywall repair. A star is born Though Brady lives in a city with 15,000 residents, it hasn’t stopped him from looking for unique opportunities to promote his services and expertise, both locally and nationally. He’s appeared on the HGTV show Carter Can and TLC’s Trading Spaces, an experience that motivated him to see what type of amateur video advice was available for consumers on the Internet. What he discovered was basic and fragmented resources. “When I tried to find videos on the best way to tackle jobs, there was nothing good out there,” he says. “From techniques to the best products to use, no one was putting the advice all together.” So, in 2007, Brady hired a video and editing team and developed Tricks of the Trade, his signature series of painting videos and DVDs that help homeowners get professional results in any painting or wallpapering project. In his 17-chapter DVD, Learn How to Paint a Room Like a Pro Today!, Brady doesn’t just teach viewers how to tape a room or use a brush properly; he provides start-to-finish instruction in an HGTV-style format that covers the entire painting process, from color selection to interior design. Though the initial target audience for Tricks of the Trade videos and DVDs, which are shipped throughout the United States and Canada, was the DIY crowd, they have become an effective training tool for others in the industry as well, according to Brady.