FROM BEAUTY TO CONSTRUCTION: HOW LAURA GARRATT BUILT PAINTER BROS OF FORT LAUDERDALE
“Sometimes you need to slow down to speed up.”
“Nothing is handed to you. Nothing is built with one – it’s built with many.”
What happens when a high-energy New York corporate executive trades the boardroom for a paint brush and bets everything on a new industry in a new city? For Laura Garratt, owner of Painter Bros of Fort Lauderdale, the answer is three years of grit, growth, and a business that is thriving across residential, commercial, and national accounts.
In this second appearance on Kind of a Big Deal, Laura returns with even more insight into what it truly takes to build a service business in South Florida. She and host Alejandro Larrazabal dive deep into emotional intelligence – what it looks like in practice when you are sitting at a homeowner’s kitchen table, presenting to a property management board, or leading a team across multiple business entities. Laura’s approach is rooted in one simple but powerful principle: meet people where they are.
She also gets personal about the challenges of managing two businesses while raising a family, the lessons she carries from her immigrant Italian family, and why she believes no entrepreneur is truly self-made. From going digital with AI agent Scarlett to scheduling even her sleep, Laura’s story is a masterclass in how to stay human while building something big.
Her message to entrepreneurs is clear: brush your shoulders off, straighten your back, and keep walking. Because sometimes the trash being thrown at you is exactly what you need to climb out of the hole.
This is a story about resilience, reinvention, and what it means to build something that matters – right here in South Florida.
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