Today we’d like to introduce you to Mike Bailey.
Hi Mike, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Mike Bailey By Caleb Jackson Contributing Writer Mar 22, 2022
“The story of my life is, I’ve always been going up when the trends are going down,” Mike Bailey remarked when reminiscing about his business ventures of days gone by. “It seems like I’ve never been quite positioned properly to catch the wave,” he added. But these are the words of a man who has seen both successes and failures. Words like these can only be uttered by someone who is willing to go out on a limb, someone who isn’t afraid to try new things. Someone who likes to test their own mettle. Someone like Bailey, who, over the course of his life has built three separate houses and three businesses from the ground up. Bailey was born in Petoskey, Mich. in 1959 and grew up there before moving to Negaunee sometime around the fifth or sixth grade. His family lived in Negaunee for a few years while his father attended college and his mother worked as the executive secretary for Michigan Bell Telephone. Upon completion of his college education, Bailey’s father took a job as a teacher and moved the family down to Hart. It was here that Bailey got his first job as an asparagus picker at the age of 11. By the time he was 18, he had saved up $9,500 and borrowed an additional $6,250 from his grandmother to purchase 40 acres of land. “I started out with a little shack that I built with a two-pound hammer and a chainsaw,” Bailey said of the property, even commenting that he dug his own well by hand. The second house was a truss-frame house built from reclaimed lumber. While passing through Muskegon one day, Bailey saw a man tearing down an old school. He offered the man all of the money in his pocket and bought the lumber on the spot for a total of $250. Unsure of what to do with it, his neighbor suggested he build a house. “How in the world am I going to do that?” Bailey asked. “I don’t have any electricity and I’m quite far off the road.” So, his neighbor suggested a truss-frame house. The result was a 24-by-36 foot house, sided in shiplapped hemlock that he bought from a local sawmill. By this time, Bailey was running a fairly successful screen printing business. After finishing his high school education in Hart, Bailey attended Western Michigan University and then Michigan State University, where he studied agricultural distribution, but at some point, in his academic education, he received a phone call from his mother. She was buying an arcade and wondered if he wanted in. Bailey, who was feeling “disillusioned” with college at the time, decided to pitch in and it ended up being rather successful, “but we could tell it was going to be short lived,” Bailey said. The popularity of video games continued to increase and arcade cabinets started cropping up in stores all over the country. The writing was on the wall, and Bailey knew that they needed something else. “So, I grabbed a book and taught myself how to screen print,” Bailey said. He ended up working with different artists across the U.S. and even secured a contract with the post office, by which he printed T-shirts with images of postage stamps on them. After building his truss-frame 2/5 house, he got married and his daughter, Morgan, was born in 1981. A few years after that Bailey would get divorced, and a few more years after that, his business began to flounder and flop, eventually leading to his first bankruptcy. Following the demise of his first business, Bailey got a job at a foundry. Well, he was “not happy with that,” so he decided he would start driving trucks for a living instead. This led to Bailey buying his first truck and leasing it to a company with a childhood friend of his, the start of his second business venture, which he would run for 30 years, from 1997 to 2007. “They were throwing money away back then,” Bailey said, “but it was all at 14 percent interest.” As the business grew, he purchased more trucks. “Then when ’01 hit, I was paying these huge payments on these trucks… I went down to Huntington National and was going to check into a refinance, they said ‘Sorry sir, we’ve closed the commercial loan department and converted them to personal loans.’” It was the beginning of the recession in America, foreshadowing Bailey’s second bankruptcy. Lucky for him though, he had managed to make a serious upgrade in his life before that happened. Sadly, Bailey’s truss-frame house had burned down. He collected $90,000 from the insurance on that and used it to put together a 3,000 square foot Tudor house, again building it with his own hands, although this time he did have the help of power tools and a buddy of his. He also purchased an additional 10 acres from his neighbor for the sake of selling gravel. Later, he sold the new house and the 50 acres in order to pay off his remaining balance, after which he bought one acre of land in Shelby, only three-quarters of a mile away from the previous property. “I have all kinds of berries and I garden,” Bailey said. “I use the one acre so much more than I ever used that 50.” But those who know Bailey now know him as a blacksmith, not as a truck driver or a screen printer, and how he got there is another interesting story. After losing his trucking business in 2007, Bailey went to work driving trucks for a local farm. One day in 2012, he got knocked off the top of his truck while unloading it and fractured several vertebrae in his lower back. “I finally got an MRI from the neurosurgeon,” Bailey recalled. “The next day I got a call from his office saying that they needed to move my follow-up appointment up.” Bailey came in the day after that, and the doctor told him he needed surgery. He had an unstable fracture in the fourth vertebrae in his neck. “Your next step may be your last,” the doctor told him. The day after that he had his surgery and the day after that he was back home again. The rest is history. While recovering from his injuries, Bailey paid a visit to some friends of his at a forge in Hart, where he f inally got to dabble in a lifelong curiosity of his — blacksmithing. This of course spawned his current business, the Leprechaun Lair Forge (or LLForge), which he views as more of a hobby than anything else. In 2017, he even competed in a forging competition on the History Channel for the television show “Forged in Fire.” He can be found in episode 13 of season five, where his railroad spike knife brought him to the finals in the competition. These days he teaches lessons in forging and offers six different experiences through Airbnb. Details for those can be found on his website at llforge.com. “ But what advice does someone as hardworking and multi-talented as Mike Bailey have to give the world? After all he has built, and after the business he has lost, what advice would he give to others? I always tell people,” Bailey said, “it’s not how much you make, it’s how much you have to spend to live.” Bailey says he finally got his own expenses close to zero, and when he wants to go to work in the morning, he just walks into the shed in his backyard. He describes his own life in two simple sentences, “No bills, no problems. Life is good.”
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
My path has not always been a smooth road. Throughout my life and business ventures, I often felt like I was moving forward when economic trends were moving the opposite direction. I experienced major setbacks including the failure and bankruptcy of two businesses—first a screen-printing company and later a trucking business that collapsed during the early 2000s recession when financing options suddenly disappeared. In addition to business challenges, I suffered a serious accident in 2012 when I was knocked off the top of a truck and fractured vertebrae in my back and neck, requiring emergency surgery. In 2022, I survived a propane explosion that caused burns over 50% of my body. Although I recovered remarkably well, I was left with tight skin, reduced dexterity in my hands, and the loss of the little finger on my right hand. Despite these setbacks, I continue to work and run my forge at nearly full steam, rebuilding and moving forward as I have many times before.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I have been self-employed for much of my life and have always enjoyed building businesses from the ground up. In the early 1980s I helped operate an arcade, but realizing that the arcade industry was likely a passing trend, I began teaching myself screen printing. I developed a line of environmental and nature-themed T-shirt designs and became one of the early printers producing four-color process images on T-shirts.
My first breakthrough came from an image I saw advertised in Smithsonian Magazine. I contacted the manufacturer and asked for permission to reproduce the image on T-shirts. They were surprised it could even be done. I sent them a sample, they loved it, and that experience launched my effort to license artwork from nationally and internationally known artists. I worked with artists such as Paul Brent, Suzanne Duranceau, and Dennis Logsdon, and was licensed by the U.S. Postal Service to reproduce postage stamp designs on apparel. I was also licensed by the State of Michigan to produce shirts celebrating the Michigan Sesquicentennial. My products were sold through catalogs such as the National Wildlife Federation and Wireless & Signals gift catalogs, and I worked with gift representatives in many merchandise marts across the country.
Later I expanded into large-format digital printing. One of the first major clients I lined up was Ball Seed Company. Using new digital printing technology, I could produce posters up to 36 inches wide and 60 feet long at a fraction of the cost of traditional color printing.
Eventually that business failed and I filed my first bankruptcy. I briefly worked at a foundry but quickly realized it was not for me. Determined to start over again, I became a truck driver. I later bought my first truck, which eventually grew into a fleet of 13 trucks operating out of a shop in the industrial park. I started as an owner-operator and eventually obtained my own trucking authority.
When the 2001 recession hit and fuel prices skyrocketed, the trucking business collapsed and I experienced my second bankruptcy. Somewhere along the way I also owned and operated a hydroponic greenhouse where I raised and sold tomatoes.
Throughout my life I have always been willing to learn new skills, adapt to changing circumstances, and start over when necessary. That mindset eventually led me to blacksmithing and the creation of my current forge business, where I continue to create, teach, and build with my hands.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I think I was a pretty regular kid growing up in Petoskey, Michigan. My mother worked for Michigan Bell Telephone—“Ma Bell”—and my father was a cost accountant. From an early age I was always building or making something. I made hand-punched rugs, sewed my own pajamas, and did repairs and small remodeling projects around the house. I also worked on farms, starting at age eleven picking asparagus.
By my early teens I had become interested in self-sufficiency and spent a lot of time reading Mother Earth News magazine. I liked the idea of building things for myself and living independently. By the time I was seventeen I had saved $9,500 from farm jobs and decided I wanted to buy land of my own. I found a beautiful 40-acre parcel priced at $15,750 and borrowed the remaining balance from my grandmother’s trust.
I still remember walking into Manistee Bank and Trust to meet with Nathan Williams, the trust officer who handled the loan. He made it very clear that the money was not a gift and that there would be real consequences if I didn’t repay it. That conversation made a lasting impression on me and taught me an early lesson about responsibility, hard work, and honoring your commitments.
Pricing:
- Hands-on Forge and Metal Sculpting Experiences $95-$575
- Custom made High-Carbon Steel and Damascus Knives $125-$1500
- Plasma Cut Wall Art $50 and up
- Powder Coating Services, 20″ X 48″ Capability
- Traditional Blacksmithing Services, $50 and up
Contact Info:
- Website: https://llforge.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leprechaunlairforge/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LLForge/
- Twitter: https://x.com/LLF40574271
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LLForge
