On this epsiode, host Megan Simmons is joined in studio by Emily Reest, co-founder of My Handyma'am, to share how her team is helping women gain confidence through hands-on, home repair education. From workshops to podcasts, they teach practical skills like plumbing, drywall repair, and tool safety, empowering homeowners to save money, build independence, and feel more confident caring for their homes. Additionally, a weekend intensive workshop is taking place Saturday, August 22, 2026.

Event Information:

• Date: Saturday, August 22, 2026
• Time: 7:00 AM – 5:30 PM (Please arrive 15 minutes early for check-in and breakfast!)
• Location: Acme Home Exteriors | Lansing, MI

Event: How to Handyma'am Weekend Intensive

Podcast: How to Handyma'am (A Home Improvement Comedy Podcast)

Website: My Handyma'am

Welcome to Community Convos, a podcast and radio program from LCC Connect with conversations about what's happening in Lansing and around mid Michigan.

All right, hello everyone and welcome back to Community Convos. I am Megan, your host today and I'm super excited to have Emily as my guest from the Handyman.

And if you are from Lansing and have not heard of the Handymans, please go to Facebook and check it out. One thing that caught my eye right away is your name and your logo.

So I'm actually going to ask you to start us out by introducing yourself and explaining a little bit about your business name and logo and all the things that are grabbing Lansing's attention. Can you give us some backstory on that Emily?

Yes.

Hello, I'm Emily Pearl Reest and I am the director of Creative services and Business development at my handymam and my personal favorite also how to Handy Mam so we started six years ago. My mom and I started this company knowing nothing, literally nothing.

So we joked that my mom and I should not be left alone and all because I said I bet there's brick behind the fireplace. Six years later I'm like uh duh, there's brick behind the fireplace because that's how fireplaces are built. But we kind of got the bug.

We ripped apart the house, couldn't find anyone during COVID to put it back together. So we were like how hard can it be? Boys do it. And we put the house back together and six years later Samantha is a licensed builder. I am as well.

We both are out of the field now running the construction company with six field crew.

And over the last six years we've heard over and over and over again from women who we've serviced about a thousand women now who we've who've been our clientele and they have told us I don't feel confident in my own home. I don't feel comfortable taking care of stuff in my own home. I'm worried I'm going to wreck it. And so enter how to Handy Ma'.

Am.

Our new line of business, we have a podcast, we have short form videos going out every day. We're starting long form YouTube tutorials soon. But most importantly we're doing in person, hands on Education for women.

And so a little bit about our first logo is my mom, who isn't a graphic designer, Samantha Pearl was like, I have this vision in my head for what I want the my handyman logo to be. I want it to be a woman in a circle. And that's what our construction won't. And then for how to handy ma'.

Am.

Our main logo is a little truck drawing with the three of us gals. So it's Samantha, me, Emily and Arlie. All of us are in the little truck in the background. Samantha's driving it cause she's the chief of the chaos.

And then Arlie and I are hanging out in the back of the truck. And that is just kind of our vibe. A little bit free, a little bit crazy, but we're doing it all, so that's great.

And how long. And Arli, so there's three of you.

Yep.

There's your mom, Samantha Pearl, and you and Arlie. Yep. And really you're kind of running two different things under one big company. Right.

So you're still, you're still going into homes and taking care of construction projects.

Yep.

Right?

Yep.

Are you mainly interior for that exterior? What does that look like on that side?

Interior. So we do do decks and fences like refinish and full builds. But we really love focusing on true handyman work or handyman for us.

So like one to four day projects are kind of our bread and butter.

And one of the reasons we started our company is because there isn't reliable trades, women specifically, but just who are licensed and insured to do the little things. So I like to say we do stuff as small as change light bulbs that people can't reach all the way up to kitchen and bath remodels.

So we do, we run the full gambit. But it's hard to find people who are willing to come fix one cabinet or fix smaller things. And so we really wanted to fulfill that need.

Our main clientele is single women over the age of 60. And a lot of times they don't feel safe or comfortable having untrustworthy contractors in their house.

Or nothing against men, sometimes they don't feel comfortable having men in their house. And so we really filled that niche in the area and it's grown into this now.

I love it. I love it. And I have to tell you, I agree with you 100%.

Just working with Acme, who is a construction company for residential and now even working for commercial, we do find that a lot these people were going into your homes a lot of people are doing hybrid things. So they're also working there. So it's their work environment.

For some people, their children are there and for some it is really difficult to find the small things and it's really hard to find to learn to do them as well. Which I love. The other part of your business and how you've grown in that.

Cause I remember going to Home Depot with my kids and going into those days where you could take the small little workshops. Oh yeah. And they went away and I was like, no, I want to practice somewhere else and not on my home or have someone walk me through it.

So you were bold enough to just go for it. But so explain how the construction came first, right? And then this branched from there. Can you bring us through that? How did that come about?

So mainly women kept telling us we don't want to do it ourselves. But we didn't go to trade school. We learned all of this.

We jokingly say YouTube University, but really practical, hands on experience, messing up a bunch and learning everything the hardest possible way. So now we're kind of trying to circumvent that and tailor education towards women.

So one thing we've noticed is like a, a lot of the trades guys we chat with, they've been doing this since they were like 5 years old. Like their dad was in the trades and his dad was in the trades.

And so that really base level of knowledge, like what this fastener does and what this drill does, like those are like innate to them. For a lot of women, we haven't been taught that at any point in our life.

And we've also gotten a lot of feedback that some men haven't been taught to be handy either. But so we're really focusing on that base level of knowledge, not creating your Pinterest dreams or your diy, but how to take care of your own home.

So you feel agency in that. And that's the main thing. Like on estimates all the time. I'm our main estimator. I'll be like, you can really fix that yourself.

Like I don't want you, like if you want to pay us to do it, absolutely. But you just need a Phillips head screwdriver to tighten your door handle. You don't need a whole new door handle.

And so it's really like that knowledge that unlocks, like you can save money on this. Or the biggest thing that had really mainly got Arlie, our, one of our co hosts into this is she worked at Eve Shelter here in Lansing.

And a lot of the women told Us that the men who they had been abused by were withholding this information from them. So they felt like they. They couldn't leave because they didn't know how to take care of their own house. They felt like they couldn't be a homeowner.

They couldn't like build that equity because it was also overwhelming. And we realized we have the knowledge and the know how and the passion to bridge that gap for women. And so that's what we're doing.

The in person, the all of the stuff we do online is to fund the in person education. Because really when you get a room of women together who are like all going to the same goal to learn, it is incredible what happens.

We did kind of our first pilot series in our workshop just on Saturday mornings, very low key. Our workshop's in a basement. We were like, come down this creepy set of steps and learn how to do things with us.

And just like the aha moments that like, for me, six years ago, it was an aha moment. But like, oh my God, that tool does that. Oh, that does that. Oh, that's been in my tools that I inherited from my dad that I haven't known.

It's just like unlocking those little bits of knowledge and just confidence builds more confidence in the trades. So it's been really awesome.

That's so empowering. So you're really building more than just skills for them.

You're really building this empowerment and this confidence to just be able to maintain things on their own and just giving them the abilities and the tools and the skills that they need. That's just really empowering. So you and your workshops have been filling, right? I mean, they've been full the Saturdays that you've tried.

Yep.

Do they fill up often?

So our first ones, they filled up almost immediately. This one a little less so because it is more expensive. And I can talk about why this workshop is the way it is.

But our first ones were only an hour and a half. This one is an eight hour day. So you are with us all day.

We just finished building a recirculating toilet so they can really learn how to identify leaks and everything. So you will go to each station. We're doing tool competency, drywall and plumbing.

And at end of the day, you will know how to use almost any tool in your house, unless you have some strange, weird, obscure tool that we haven't seen before. You will know how to patch your own drywall and you will know how to change your own faucet, install a toilet or anything.

Like that it costs about four to six hundred dollars to have a plumber come reinstall your toilet.

Absolutely.

It's $5 for a wax ring if that's the problem. It's really, I don't want to say easy, but it's, it's very attainable knowledge to know how to do that yourself.

And so for $500 in one day you kind of unlock like thousands of dollars of savings. And we kept it a really low teacher to student ratio. So it's about five students to one teacher.

So you will, you will actually have the drill in your hand. You will actually be the one turning off the shutoff valve.

Seeing what it feels like when a shutoff valve doesn't work, unscrewing like your faucet, seeing like how that really feels, feeling what it feels like to put plumber's tape around the threads of your thing or have an instructor tell you, oh, that drywall you just put on, that's too thick and you're not going to want to sand that for 30 minutes later. And so really those things that YouTube can't tell you, oh, you did that too heavy handed.

But that in person you have an instructor telling you, like, this is going to make your life a lot harder if you do it this way.

No, that's great.

And let's, let's bring that back because I'm glad that you switched over to the event because that's why we have you today on the podcast is to talk about the upcoming event that will be happening at Acme Home Exteriors Training Facility. So in our parking lot, which we're so excited to be able to host that. And do you want to go ahead and talk to us about that? What it is the date time.

So it's coming up quickly here, August 22nd and it's going to be from 7am in the morning, bright and early till 5:30 at night. So at the end of the day you will truly feel like you've worked a day in the trades. But we are doing the two hours at each station.

We also have a podcast, so we're doing a live Q and A at lunch that'll go up on our pod feed. And then we also just have fun stuff like we're having a DJ come and really creating that community atmosphere for women.

And so yeah, that's what we're doing.

Tell me a little bit more about the podcast. What do you guys usually talk about and what's the approach?

So we do two episodes a week. We have our main episode which besides a segment we call Three Minutes of Chaos, which is where we get to talk about whatever we want.

Feedback from the beginning of the podcast was y' all banter too much, which I love talking.

So.

Yes, we did. And then we do some teaching segments. So, like, this week, we have an episode coming out on measuring tools.

So, like, I framed it as buy, borrow, or bury. Like, do you actually need this measuring tool? Yes. You need a torpedo level. No, you probably don't need a laser level as a homeowner.

So our podcast is geared towards homeowners. And then we have. My personal favorite are side quests that come out on Tuesday, which is where we kind of do whatever we want.

So we play games, like who's more likely to. Or just so you can get to know us as the host. Better people.

Yeah.

Yep. But we also do sometimes, like, short segments. We did a side quest on how garbage disposals work and things like that. So love it.

Do you have people giving you feedback and things like that, giving you ideas of what to put out every week?

Yeah.

But then, so now I still kind of go back to there to get ideas or feedback. And, like, we're filming some TikToks tomorrow. And so I asked, what do you want to learn about?

And I got 10 responses that were like, I want to learn about this and this and this. So we do get feedback, and we try to tailor our content towards that. But the main thing we've started with is trying to do that base foundation.

So, like, last Friday's episode was Fasteners 101, and we talked about what a machine screw does versus a drywall screw. How do you hang something in concrete? How do you hang something in plaster? And.

And so we do take community feedback, but we're also trying to be like, you also need to know these things. It's a little less glamorous and a little less fun, but you should know these things.

No, that's great.

And I know that for a lot of people, when they go to do these projects, they don't even know what skills or tools they would need for something like that.

So at this event on the 22nd, when we're using tools, do you find that it is important that they're using specific tools relative to women because of the smaller hand size and things like that? Are you going to be talking about like actually how to purchase tools if it is something that they need to do?

And do you feel that there is a difference between the two? I get that. I get questions like that a lot.

So, unfortunately, a lot of tools geared towards women are poorly made. So, like the pink and purple stuff, I love pink and purple. Purple is our main branding.

That stuff is not well made and it's not going to hold up over time. And so we recommend using like the main brands like DeWalt, Ryobi, Milwaukee.

But also it's kind of a thing where you just think about, how often am I going to use this?

Because we need Milwaukee and DeWalt drills because they're made for tradespeople with the intention that everyday use for years and years and years, this tool is going to last. But as a homeowner, a Ryobi drill is going to last you a good long while.

It doesn't really matter, but there are like, Milwaukee makes some smaller tools with smaller batteries, but they fit better in women's hands. But we teach you how to hold the tools correctly. So even if you have a standard size tool, you're gonna feel like you know how to use it.

Okay, and when for this event, can you go through again all the different things they're gonna be learning? You mentioned drywall and what else?

So we took the feedback from our female clients and then the people we've talked to on the podcast about what they wanna learn and what'll save them the most money in home repair. So we're talking about drywall repair, so how to repair the holes in your walls. We're talking about plumbing basics.

So a lot of plumbing, you can kind of apply what you know about, like how a toilet runs, how a sink runs to a lot of your plumbing. So we're going to teach how to do plumbing, doing your own faucet, your toilet, and then basic tool competency.

So we'll have a table of hand tools and tell you these are what these hand tools do. And then we're actually going to get into how to run your table saw, how to run your miter saw multi tool.

So like really kind of the intimidating power tools and show that with some safety knowledge, it's absolutely an accessible tool for you to use.

Okay, what would you say is the top projects, I guess, or the most popular project that you have found, people, are these Days trying to do at home. And if they had those skills, they would be able to do that.

Like, I understand the skill itself, but what are some of the common projects that people are trying to do that they now can do? Because they're taking your workshops or they're listening or they're gonna come to the event.

Can you talk to me a little bit about some good examples of that?

Yeah.

My favorite example is we did like a mini plumbing course in June and one of our participants went home that day and identified a leak after the class from her toilet water line and was like, oh, now I know how a toilet works. And now I understand where that leak is coming from and was able to fix it for $5 instead of calling a plumber.

And so it's really like those practical things that until you know you need them, you don't need them. And that's kind of where we're starting. Like, we could teach you how to do beautiful trim projects and paint really well.

We love those things, but we want people to be able to fix the things that are like, physically necessary for your house to run. And like having a hole in your drywall, that is something we hear a lot about.

It's something that, because of the multiple return trips you have to do as the contractor, is pretty expensive to have someone even come fix like a 3 inch hole in your wall because they have to keep returning and then prime it and paint it. If you can do that yourself, you're at home all the time, you can keep going back for return coat. Yeah, so, yeah, those kinds of things.

So when people leave and they talk about your event, maybe the next couple of days after they go, what do you want them to be saying about it?

I would hope they feel empowered, but also that they had a blast. That was the main feedback from our first event, is not to brag, but a lot of people were like, you guys are so fun. And I feel like I learned a lot.

And so we really want that community aspect and also for you to meet other women who are trying to learn the same thing. And so now you have someone to contact if you're like, I tried to fix this drywall thing. I don't know why it's bubbling.

I don't know why my tape isn't sticking. And so creating that community base of getting help when you need it.

Yeah, no, that's great. And they're going to be. You're going to be in the small groups. Right. So you're going to be able to get to know everybody. That's fantastic.

So if people are interested to learn more, where should they go to find out more either about the event or even about your services?

Yeah. So if you want us to be your handyman, you can go to my handyman.com.

But if you want to be your own handyman, howtohandymam.com just head to that website. You'll find everything. You'll find where to get our podcast, our socials, and also information about our event. So, yeah, that's great.

I'm so excited for this event coming up. And I'm assuming your podcast is everywhere?

Yes, everywhere. Just search how to Handyman wherever you get podcasts or on YouTube and you.

Will find us and I'll even put it in the show notes for you.

That's great. Thank you.

You're welcome.

I appreciate that. I appreciate that.

You've been listening to Community Convos, a podcast from LCC Connect. Listen to this episode and others at LCCconnect.com or wherever you get your podcasts. If you or someone you know would like to feature an event on Community convos, email us [email protected] and thanks for joining The Convo.