FINDING HER HAPPY PLACE

Dee Clemmons was excited to open a Painting with a Twist franchise…and then the pandemic hit. She opened anyway, and still feels good.

- STEPHANIE SCHOMER

Dee Clemmons is never not working. The serial entrepreneur has spent nearly 30 years operating a combination of childcare facilities, a business consultancy, and a janitorial supplies company. And in 2016, she joined the Board of Commissioners in Henry County, Ga., where she recently won a reelection campaign. So in 2019, when her two daughters took her to Painting with a Twist on Mother’s Day, Clemmons was shocked to find herself ignoring the outside world for two hours of escape. She put her phone down, focused on her painting and her kids, and had an experience she calls “magical.” Before she left the studio, she’d googled the business to find out how she could get involved; one year later, she was ready to open her own location in McDonough, Ga. COVID-19 interrupted her opening, but she says it’s still been one of her most rewarding entrepreneurial experiences yet.

You opened your studio on Mother’s Day weekend last year. Was that always your plan?