From rags to riches

Ten years ago, Heidi Easley and her husband, Bobby, were left completely bankrupt and homeless following an unexpected job loss.

But today, Easley is a successful, millionaire entrepreneur who uses her own rags-to-riches story to encourage others to grab life by the horns and shape their perfect future.

Easley was in her 20s when her world came crashing down. As a young teacher making $22,000 a year and a new resident of Florida, she wasn’t sure how she and her husband could make ends meet.

But with an artistic talent and a burst of inspiration, Easley began painting wooden surfboards to cope with the added stress.

"I had 850 students a week come through my classroom, and every time those kids saw those surfboards, they were like, ‘Mrs. Easley, paint my name on a surfboard.’ and I'm like, 'No, I'm just doing this on my lunch break,’” Easley said. “But they just kept asking and finally, after about the 150th kid asked, I was like, ‘Oh, maybe this is something I could sell.’”

In two months, one surfboard quickly turned into 1,000, as Easley was left speechless that her new hobby had turned into a small business.

“It just changed the whole direction of my life,” she said.

The Easleys eventually moved back to Texas to live closer to family and ended up choosing Granbury as their home.

Since the surfboard business isn’t exactly booming in North Texas, Easley started hosting paint parties, where individuals get together, drink wine and learn how to paint a specific image.

"One day my mother-in-law was like, ‘What if people don't come to your paint parties?’ and I was just like, baffled. I was like, ‘Why? Why would they not?’ I didn't even think of that being a possibility,” she said. “But I’m so glad she said that because then it sent me on this direction of ‘OK, how can I safeguard our family?’ So I just started looking at how people become millionaires and how you make extra money, so it led me on this whole online adventure.”

With her former online business already set up due to COVID-19, it was easy for her to set up her current endeavor — teaching paint parties online.

"I'm almost like the teacher for them,” she said. “I provide them the paintings they can use and the step-by-step instructions, so they can almost grab and go.”

Today, Easley teaches 3,000 people all over the world how to host paint parties. Most of Easley’s students are in the U.S., but some are even as far away as Scotland, Australia and the UK.

"Paint parties are still relatively new in other parts of the world, so a lot of these people are introducing this for the first time, which is really cool,” she said.

Easley is now a million-dollar business owner with an unbelievable story — one she eventually decided to share with the world.

“My mom died a year ago, but she had always said that I needed to write a book,” she said. “It's kind of been on my radar for a long time, and then I finally just decided. I was like, ‘OK, I'm not gonna tell anybody, but I'm either going to do it and get it done, or I'm not going to do it.’”

Using old blog posts and stories she had written in the past, Easley compiled several writings together with the goal of turning them into a novel.

"My whole thing is like, trying to show people the underdog who's been trying to run a business forever and you know, the ups and downs and the roller coasters,” she said. “Anybody who's been an entrepreneur knows that it's extremely hard. It is not for the weak.”

Easley released her novel, “Your Dreams Don’t Die...They Haunt You” Feb. 6 on Amazon. In the book, she takes readers on her journey from bankruptcy to becoming a million-dollar business owner.

“I just wanted to almost write this as like, a love letter to the underdog,” she explained. “Like, if you just keep showing up, if you just keep being persistent, eventually it'll happen and that's why it's called, ‘Your Dreams Don't Die...They Haunt You,’ because if you're a true entrepreneur-type person, you can push those dreams down and go get a corporate job like I have in the past, but eventually it's going to come back.”

Filled with short chapters and takeaways at the end of each section, Easley’s book aims to guide readers on how to act through fear to create the life they desire.

"If they're struggling, they can read about all my failures and all my secrets of failing,” Easley said, chuckling. “The book is really short, so the feedback we're getting is, ‘Oh my gosh, I never read books and this one I finished in one day.’ There’s places where I have them actually write so it's like, ‘Let's take action,’ of basically taking that story and then helping pull out their own story for each section. It's almost like an interactive book to help them get to their next level.”

Easley said the goal for “Your Dreams Don’t Die...They Haunt You” is for readers to understand that real life is not what’s shown in today’s world of Instagram and Facebook — that success does not happen overnight.

"If you see anybody that has any kind of success in something, that has happened over years and years of consistency and things that they've done where nobody has seen them,” she explained. "There's all these different things that can happen where you might take two steps forward and 10 steps back. But if the pursuit is worth going for, then you need to keep going for it."

The paperback of “Your Dreams Don't Die...They Haunt You,” is available on Amazon, along with the eBook, the hardback and — more recently — the audiobook. It is also listed as an international bestseller on Amazon.

"Me and my daughter, Pixie, we actually were in Times Square (in New York City), and there was a picture of me on a billboard in Times Square with the book,” she said. “It was amazing.”

She said while her mom always encouraged her to publish a novel, she credits her husband for giving her the courage to officially take the leap.

"Bobby believes in me more than I believe in myself,” Easley said. “And then a big part of the success of all of this is because I'll think I can't do it, and he's like, ‘Yeah, you can.’ I’m very, very grateful for him.”

Recently, Easley re-released another book on Amazon called, “Paint Party Business,” in which she gives step-by-step instructions on how to host a paint party.

"If you're gonna learn how to do a paint party business, this book will show you how,” she said. “There’s no fluff; it's just straight to the point.”

While Easley now has two books published, she says she has no clue if there will be more books in the future.

“I don’t even know if I have another book in me,” she said. “But you never know what God will throw at you.”

For more information about Easley and her paint parties, visit her website at texasartandsoul.com.