The LoCo Experience
The LoCo Experience is produced and sponsored by LoCo Think Tank - and sometimes others! Our mission is to uncover as much business education as possible while getting to know the founders and leaders of amazing organizations. You'll feel like you really know our guests after each episode, and if we're doing our job well, you'll learn business principles and tips from them along the journey and be both inspired and entertained. Episodes feature a range of local and regional business and community leaders as guests in a conversational interview format. The more interesting the journey, the better the experience!
The LoCo Experience
EXPERIENCE 170 | Cockroach Problem Leads to Launch of a High-Growth National Signing Agency - Autumn Fleck, Founder & CEO of Precision Signing Agency
A few years into their marriage, Autumn Fleck and her husband, Trevor, made the decision that they wanted to budget well, save hard, and retire early so they could travel the world and live a life set apart. And then one day - she had a cockroach run down her arm! - and the next day she found a cockroach in her daughter’s bed! - and of course informed her husband they needed to call for pest control. “What are we going to cut from our spend so we can fit that in the budget?” was hubby’s response. “I dunno - but we need pest control - stat!”
Autumn had been working in the wine industry for years, and enjoyed it - but Covid changed her job and industry dramatically, and she had been furloughed to two days per week during the pandemic. She took a loan signing course, got her Notary Public, and marketed herself to 50 local real estate, mortgage, and title offices. It was the height of the refinance boom, and in her first month - working 3 days a week at around $100 per loan closing - she made $10,000! The next month, she made $17,000! Pest control budget solved! - and wine career officially over!
Autumn founded Precision Signing Agency in November of 2020, and within 12 months she transformed the business from herself as an Independent LSA (Loan Signing Agent) to the CEO of a high-growth national signing agency! In 2023, Autumn and Trevor moved their family to Fort Collins (which she had dreamed of for years) and she has continued to grow her client base and HQ team and her network of professional loan signing agents nationwide. She’s had quite a journey - at one point losing over 50% of their revenue overnight - but has grown herself and her company to become one of the fastest growing in her industry and in our region!
She’s also smart, sassy, funny, and overall - my kinda people. So please enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Autumn Fleck.
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Speaker 3:A few years into their marriage, Autumn Fleck and her husband Trevor made the decision that they wanted to budget well, save hard, and retire early so they could travel the world and live a life set apart. And then one day, she had a cockroach run down her arm. And the next day she found a cockroach in her daughter's bed. And of course, informed her husband, they needed to call for pest control. What are we going to cut from our spend so we can fit that in the budget? Was hubby's response. I don't know, but we need pest control stat. Autumn had been working in the wine industry for years and enjoyed it, but COVID changed her job and industry dramatically, and she had been furloughed to two days a week during the pandemic. She took a loan signing course, got her notary public and marketed herself to 50 local real estate mortgage and title offices. It was the height of the refinance boom, and in her first month, working three days a week at around 100 per loan closing, she made 10, 000. The next month she made 17, 000. Pest control budget solved, and wine career officially over. Autumn founded Precision Signing Agency in November of 2020, and within 12 months she transformed the business from herself as an independent LSA Loan signing agent to the CEO of a high growth national signing agency. In 2023, Autumn and Trevor moved their family to Fort Collins, which she had dreamed of for years. And she has continued to grow her client base and HQ team and her network of professional loan signing agents nationwide. She's had quite a journey at one point, losing over 50 percent of the revenue overnight, but has grown herself and her company to become one of the fastest growing in our industry. She's also smart, sassy, funny, and overall, my kind of people. So please enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Autumn Fleck.
Speaker 2:Let's have some fun. Welcome to the Low Cove Experience podcast. On this show, you'll get to know business and community leaders from all around northern Colorado and beyond. Our guests share their stories, business stories, life stories, stories of triumph and of tragedy. And through it all, you'll be inspired and entertained. These conversations are real and raw, and no topics are off limits. So pop in a breath mint and get ready to meet our latest guest.
Speaker 4:Welcome back to the local experience podcast. My guest today is Autumn Fleck and Autumn is the founder CEO of precision signing agency or PSA for sure. For short, that's also short for public service announcement. It is just, you know,
Speaker 5:it's on reason for a reason. I have a newsletter called my PSA for LSAs. LSAs being? Loan signing agents.
Speaker 4:Oh, I like it. So, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Nice to, uh, have another, like, person coming to this city of choice here in Northern Colorado.
Speaker 5:It is that.
Speaker 4:Because you're about two years in? Just a year into your?
Speaker 5:Just a little over a year. Okay. To be fair. I wanted to move here 17 years ago. Oh, wow. I wish I would have. Yeah, certainly would have bought a house then.
Speaker 4:Would you have met your husband?
Speaker 5:Well, I did. I met my husband. Oh, you already had him. Yeah, he's the reason we ended up moving to North Carolina first instead.
Speaker 4:Okay. Okay. All right. Yeah, that's cool. So tell our listeners, uh, what does a precision signing agency do?
Speaker 5:Yeah, we, Precision Signing Agency is a nationwide loan signing service. So, think of us as a staffing agency for, uh, title companies, escrow, lenders, real estate attorneys.
Speaker 6:Okay.
Speaker 5:We provide the remote notaries across the country for our clients. So we service all 50 states and we extend internationally with, uh, RON or Remote Online Notarization.
Speaker 4:Ooh. So, basically, if a title company needs to close a loan or whatever, uh, we'll be able They might be short or overvolumed, or they just don't staff that and they can just outsource it instead?
Speaker 5:Correct. I like to call it the Amazon effect. Everybody wants someone to come to their door in two days or less. And so we provide that option. And these
Speaker 4:five person title offices are like, we don't really have staffing to like run around the office.
Speaker 5:Well, correct. Region. Correct. And, and some, you know, when people are purchasing a home, a lot of times they might be in the area. Sometimes they're moving from out of state, selling homes. Most people don't live in those areas, certainly investors. And so unless you're actually physically in that particular city, then you've got to use a remote notary in order to close that loan to make sure that it's done properly to prevent fraud. So we're providing that opportunity.
Speaker 4:That's where the precision comes in is like not doing it wrong.
Speaker 5:Exactly. That is the goal.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. What, uh, tell me about your team, like, uh, do you have kind of mostly just people that are, are these remote notary public loan signing agents? Is that who your employees are?
Speaker 5:No, so those are our 1099 contractors. Oh, okay. So none of those work directly for us. Well, yes, I end up hiring some of them sometimes to work on our team, our scheduling team directly, but. But we're nationwide, we are all remote, and so we're dispersed throughout the US. And so I have people that have worked in title, escrow, or as a loan signing agent that are our schedulers. And they do the day to day.
Speaker 4:Okay, so you're kind of a logistics company in addition to staffing kind of?
Speaker 5:In a sense, yes. Absolutely. Making sure that we're making, uh. The right decision in choosing which loan signing agent to send out. They're not created equally, making sure they're credentialed, making sure that they're going to represent us and our clients in a professional manner. They're really high stakes transactions. Sometimes the most amount of money, most amount of money most people have ever spent in their life and it can be frustrating and, uh, tedious up until that point. And so our goal is to kind of close out the client experience on a positive note.
Speaker 4:And how old is. PSA.
Speaker 5:Two and a half years.
Speaker 4:Only two and a half years old. Only
Speaker 5:two and a half.
Speaker 4:And you're in like, ten states or eight states or something? I forget what you told me. We're in all fifty states. You're in fifty states.
Speaker 5:Yes.
Speaker 4:How does that grow so fast? Like, how do people find you so fast?
Speaker 5:Well, so do you want me to get back into the backstory of how this even started?
Speaker 4:I guess so. Yeah, let's do it. Let's
Speaker 5:do it. That would, that would probably give context of how we, how we grew up. Do you want to take us back
Speaker 4:to North Carolina?
Speaker 5:Yeah, we'll go back to North Carolina. So, um, I had been in North Carolina On and off for the last 15 years. And I had been working in the wine industry. Yes. Wine.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Um, was a really great, fun industry for a long time. COVID hit and it started not being so fun. Our travel and entertainment budget were cut. We weren't allowed to go out and see our accounts anymore. Host events. And that's really what made it fun. And it's really hard to sell wine when you can't actually taste wine at all. Well,
Speaker 4:and why do they hire people with great smiles if you've got to be covered with a mask?
Speaker 5:Right. Or do all of your, like, meetings via Zoom and it just became I had already started to get a little, I like to call it itchy, a little itchy and ready to, to change and move about the year prior to COVID. And so this provided or presented an opportunity to kind of pivot. And so I didn't know the year prior exactly what I was going to do and what I remember distinctly telling my husband that I was done. He goes, well, what are you going to do? I said, I have no idea, but I know that I'm done and I'm going to move on. So, I'm going to figure out an exit plan. So, fast forward, a few months later, COVID hit. Our team was, a vast majority of our team was laid off at the company I was working for. And then I was furloughed, like I was only allowed to work two days a week, which is this really weird You had like
Speaker 4:low pay but they kept your benefits in place kind of thing.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So,
Speaker 4:Then you had three days a week to work on your business plan or something. Well,
Speaker 5:no, I didn't actually have a business plan. I actually started with a cockroach. Did I tell you that story? I
Speaker 4:don't think so. We had a short lunch.
Speaker 5:So, um, my husband and I have very different spending habits. And this comes into, I promise, I'll go full circle here. So, to make both of us more comfortable, we come up with a personal budget every year. And so, in that budget, there, obviously, there's sometimes for, you know, there's room for, Right, you got some miscellaneous stuff. Right, right. However,
Speaker 4:Some contingency.
Speaker 5:Some contingency. There was not a contingency for a bug man, and this is important. So, I had a cockroach run down my, Arm in the middle of the night
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 5:And I hate cockroaches pretty much more than anything on Earth. I know they're not dangerous, but they're just, they're disgusting. Yeah. No, really don't like them.
Speaker 4:I think they're like the worst one. Just about They're so bad
Speaker 5:and they fly. I found out hard. Right. They're huge. They, they fly in Africa, well, in other places too, but we lived over in Africa for a bit and they like flew across the room and they're terrifying. So, uh, the next day, my daughter at the time was three years old and she had a cockroach in her bed. Mm.
Speaker 7:And
Speaker 5:so I came to my husband and I said. We need pest control. He goes, okay, so what are we going to do to offset that in the budget? Or what are you going to do to earn additional money to pay for this? I looked at him just with these like devil eyes. I was like, are you serious right now? And he goes, yeah. I said, oh, okay. Well, that loan signing course you told me about a couple of years ago, I'll, I'll just take that loan signing course you told me about. I'll get my notary public, and I'll just go out and sign some loans. He goes, okay, great. So I fully intended on doing like two of these. Okay. So, it was Because you get paid a hundred, a couple hundred bucks. You get paid, yeah. A hundred, you know, anywhere from fifty to a hundred fifty, depending if you're working direct. And so, I got my notary license. I went out marketed myself to 50 of the local real estate attorneys in the Raleigh area, and that first month, I made almost 10, 000. What? Yeah, as a side hustle. And
Speaker 4:how many, so that's like Like at a hundred bucks a pop on average, that's what? That's like a thousand? No, just a hundred. A hundred. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But that's a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 5:I was doing a little less than that because I was getting direct work. So they pay a little bit more because you're not paying the signing service. Sure. A fee. And so, It was obviously historically low interest rates. People were refinancing sometimes for the third time that year, I jumped in. And so I kind of jumped in at this like sweet spot. And so from then on, it went from 10, 000 to 14, 000 to 17, 000. And this was still my side hustle. I could tell no one about this. I was like living this double life. Did you tell your husband?
Speaker 7:Yes. Okay. He knew about it. Okay.
Speaker 5:My, my family. But it was still the middle of COVID. I was the only person entering these people's homes. And in 10 months, I did 1200 loans. And so I realized, wow, I'm making more money doing this than at my full time. So, um, I'm going to be talking about the benefits of a job. And I love it. Like, I get to go out and meet people and have these 20, 30 minute conversations and then leave.
Speaker 4:Right. You
Speaker 5:know, and they're
Speaker 4:happy because they're buying a house or selling a house. Refinancing at this point. Refinancing in many cases. And getting this
Speaker 5:like 3 percent or sub 3 percent interest rate. And so, So, I had finally figured out, like, that out, although I wasn't going to start a nationwide loan signing service. I had a completely different business plan that I had put together, completely unrelated to this. And I remember calling my mentor, Mark, who, um, started, uh,
Speaker 4:This was just supposed to be like a bridge.
Speaker 5:Yeah, this was just a bridge. And so, you know, I had basically made double the income, you know, that I had earned. And so, we had this runway where I could do something else. Right. And so, I called Mark and I said, Mark, this is Halloween weekend, 2021. Right. 2021. I said, I have this great idea. Here's my business plan. And this is what it's about. And I'd already created the website and I'd worked a lot of time on this. And he goes, no, you're not. And I, you know, just, excuse me. And who is this? So Mark, Mark Wills started the Loan Signing System. He's the one I took the course from to learn how to be a great Loan Signings, um, agent. So I said, Oh, what? You know, it kind of burst my bubble. He goes, well, you haven't dug your well deep enough. And
Speaker 4:can you share what this other business was going to be? Yeah.
Speaker 5:Um. Or
Speaker 4:do you? Are you still planning to do it someday? I
Speaker 5:might do it someday. It has to do with wanderlust and financial independence.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 5:So that's another passion of mine, global travel and reaching financial independence at an earlier age. Okay. So, uh, yeah. I might do are sometimes
Speaker 4:at odds with each other. They are. Yeah.
Speaker 5:And certainly the way I prefer to travel, uh, absolutely. So.
Speaker 4:So Mark's like, rain and water on your parade?
Speaker 5:This is literally a ten minute conversation and he goes, no you're not. You haven't dug your well deep enough. You are. Going to start your own nationwide loan signing service.
Speaker 7:I
Speaker 5:said, Mark, that's not very sexy. Like, I don't know if like that's something I really want to do. And what do I know about title and escrow? He's like, you have all these amazing relationships on a hyper local level. Now go back to them. You've already gained their trust. They love you. Go back and tell them you started your own nationwide loan signing service. I'm like literally overnight. He's like, yeah. So, I sat there and I pondered and I decided to get online and start researching logos, come up with a name, created a website, and literally November 1st, I set out and said, hey y'all, guess what? I started a nationwide loan signing service.
Speaker 4:And is there like a Craigslist or a Fiverr or something where you can find all these signing agents that? Like, if you get a loan signing in Arizona, like, you can actually do it?
Speaker 5:Yeah, so there's a few major platforms, and I use one of the three major platforms, uh, where it's kind of like an aggregator. So when people get into the loan signing, when they go through specialized loan signing, uh, they are, uh, Okay. And so, they can work with hundreds of signing services. Gotcha. But they can all find them in one central spot. And so, it's great. They text out a message as soon as, like, say, we have one in Gilbert, Arizona, and we need it this time on this date, and here's the pay. And they can either accept it, reject it, or counteroffer.
Speaker 4:And do they have to, like, upload their certifications or something as part of that, too?
Speaker 5:Yep. And then, so we have access to 100, 000 Loan Signing Agents. Wow. That's a lot of people. We probably work with about 1, 200 on a regular basis. And, um, through that, we've obviously have our favorites panel, and we're able to mark them as preferred.
Speaker 7:Right. And
Speaker 5:leave reviews, see other people's reviews. And so, It's sort of like, yeah, not like Craigslist, but it's this internal rating system. Right, right. So you can kind of calibrate. Like
Speaker 4:Uber or whatever. Yeah. How good did they do? Did they give you the right document pack the first time?
Speaker 5:Were they kind? And you know, you can block list them too. And so it's kind of.
Speaker 4:How wild. So you literally have hundreds and hundreds of contractors that have done some work for you. Thousands of contractors. And then what's your, to go back to today. What's your internal team or your headquarters type team?
Speaker 5:Yeah, our headquarters. Our headquarters are here in Fort Collins now. Yeah, we have our main scheduling team lead, Justin. He's out in North Carolina. Okay. He actually was one of my best loan signing agents and so I poached him.
Speaker 7:Right.
Speaker 5:And I said, Hey, you do a fantastic job and you would really understand this. And he was looking for more work too because the interest rates had gone up. And so he poached me. Joined me. And then we've had a few additional hires throughout the country. Um, Caitlin is based here in Fort Collins. Uh, Rigo's fantastic. He's our newest, uh, addition. He, uh, is completely bilingual. He's a native Spanish speaker, which has been great to grow our business. And we're onboarding, uh, one additional person right now. And then my husband's our fractional CFO.
Speaker 4:So I think that's one thing that's really interesting about your businesses, like during this time, as you've grown your team, grown your base gone nationwide, interest rates have risen, you know, way up high. And so, uh, was that like, it feels like you had to almost grow to maintain that income from before, but also has it been hard in a shrinking market or like, what are you doing better than your competitors to get that? Volume.
Speaker 5:Oh, absolutely. So, uh, going back to when I started, so I started November 1st, 2021, literally had zero signings, you know, at the beginning of that month. I think I did around 40, uh, within six months, we were doing a thousand transactions a month.
Speaker 4:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 5:So we went from, I think I told you, I felt like I was, you know, building and constructing the plane in the air, like mid flight. Right. I did not. I mean, it was crazy to go from. Nothing. The way that we had to staff up, we actually had seven people. All of a sudden, we were hiring two people a month. And how do I train these people? My husband quit his job. Um, he was a contractor anyway, so it was a good, like, segue. So he, he quit his job. He was our HR. A director of operations and CFO. And that was interesting. We've been together for 16 years now, but we'd never worked together. Right. We'd worked from home. And we
Speaker 4:already know he's the kind of guy that won't let you call an exterminator without
Speaker 5:I, I shouldn't say that. He just, you know, he, it's not what we agree to. Yeah,
Speaker 4:exactly. He was reinforcing the new budget. And
Speaker 5:I appreciate everything, you know, we're, we're in a fantastic financial position in part thanks to his efforts and his, you know, his investments and, um, you know, kind of bringing in the, the reins a little bit to, to spending. Well, I
Speaker 4:imagine there must be some, like, element of software integrations and things so that you're invoicing the right people and paying the right people the right amount and
Speaker 7:all these dynamics. Yes, and you holding
Speaker 4:money? No, you don't. No, I'm not. You don't actually have to hold the wires and stuff, that's the banks and title companies that contract you, so those numbers don't have to, money has to be there though, that's part of your thing too, I suppose.
Speaker 5:Our accounts receivable is ridiculous, and so is our accounts payable, and so making sure, you know, we've made a commitment to pay our loan signing agents by the 15th of every month. And a lot of times we haven't been paid by our clients. So making sure that we have enough in reserve to make sure that our loan signing agents are paid, because a lot of times these are single parents. Sometimes it's a side hustle. Sometimes it's a full, full deal, but that a hundred, 200, 300 that we owe them makes a really big difference. And so that's been kind of an interesting dynamic, but back to kind of scaling. I'll chase some squirrels as we go. So we scaled very quickly in part to one client that I had earned at an industry conference. And it was really funny. I remember the, uh, director of operations had kind of pulled me aside. He goes, I'm just so impressed. You've been in business for, you've only been in business for like four years. I literally have no idea where he got that, that like four years. I had been in business for three and a half months, but I certainly was not going to tell him that because, Hey, he thought I had only been in business for four years and he was very impressed by that. So I wasn't going to delegitimize myself. I actually earned their business, and they had never outsourced their signings. They had always had like an internal panel that they had dealt with, and some title companies do that. And so they were increasingly becoming this massive goose egg in our basket of chicken eggs. They were a large part of our business, and as we saw the interest rates climbing, we I knew this wasn't going to be great, because if we lost them, then we were going to have to lay off a decent part of our staff. And we were going to have to kind of restructure. So that happened. We did have in our contract that we'd have a 30 day notice. We did not. It was a single day notice. And so we had to turn around and lay off a good portion of our staff.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:And that was incredibly hard.
Speaker 4:That was like, 40 percent of your revenues or something silly.
Speaker 5:Yes. I think it was 60 percent of the time. Oh, wow.
Speaker 4:So,
Speaker 5:that was a real gut punch, especially because it wasn't something that we had done incorrectly. Right. It was market dependent. And it was something largely I didn't have control over. And so, I, honestly, I wallowed for like Now, did
Speaker 4:they just not have any volume to to share anyway? Like it wouldn't really matter that much? They
Speaker 5:laid off a hundred of a hundred and fifty people in a single day. Right,
Speaker 4:right. So they weren't having any fun with their decision tree either?
Speaker 5:Absolutely not. And they had to bring, um, the service back in house just to retain the employees that they have. Right. And so it was self preservation for them. And I don't blame them for that, but it was, uh, It was a tough hell to swallow, especially as a new business owner. Right. And having this, like, meteoric rise. Right. What
Speaker 4:was the span between like the first clients for that customer and the last one?
Speaker 5:Uh, the span,
Speaker 4:like, how long were they with you, that big goose egg?
Speaker 5:Um, about five months. Okay. Yeah, five, six months. So
Speaker 4:it's like, all hands on deck, building and building and building, we got so much to do, and then just a cliff in that revenue and those transactions.
Speaker 5:Weekly meetings, all these crazy asks because they, you know, had, you know, so much volume that we decided to kind of shift and change the way we did things for them and then just Nothing, and so I I did I like I wallowed for about six weeks and I was like, I don't know if I can do this I'm not really sure this is for me like this sucks and you know These were people I cared about that worked for us And so I don't know really what what lit a fire under my ass to get like back into it It was like your
Speaker 4:nature. I suspect.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it was like a shape up or ship out sort of moment Like just you know, put your big girl pants back on and get back out there Yeah, and so it was tough for a couple of months And I still wasn't sure. Did you have
Speaker 4:to lay off your husband too?
Speaker 5:I think he laid himself off.
Speaker 4:What's his name by the way? Trevor. Trevor.
Speaker 5:Hey Trevor. Um, yeah. He actually like quit on me actually at one point. That's a different story. Maybe we'll get to that. Maybe not.
Speaker 4:So, um, What happened when you put your big girl pants on?
Speaker 5:So, I actually reached out to the Small Business Administration and their SCORE program. Sure. And, uh, that's a free mentorship program for those of you that aren't aware of that. And I was so lucky to be partnered with someone who actually had worked in the title industry, and so had worked in my industry. Had been highly successful. He actually started, uh, housing wire, which was one of the biggest stories, the biggest title. You're like,
Speaker 4:I could meet with you
Speaker 5:for
Speaker 4:free?
Speaker 5:He's awesome. He's still a fantastic mentor of mine. Of course, I moved away from Raleigh, so I don't get to see him in person as much anymore, but he's really just like this no nonsense, tell you exactly like it is, and even if it's maybe harsh and abrasive sometimes, and I think that's what I need. And so, um, I definitely have shiny object syndrome. And so I would come to him with all these other business ideas coming up and he's like, Autumn, stop. Focus on the bird in hand right now. Like, what are you doing? Grow this business. Get your head back in the game. Get back out there and grow this business. And what he said to me at the end of last year was, if you can manage to grow your business now in this housing market with interest rates As high as they are right now, granted historically over 30, 40 years, they're actually not that high. But right now, if you can grow the business, you're going to be 100 percent fine. You're going to make a ton of gravy
Speaker 4:when you get, when the market turns back around. It's going to be exciting.
Speaker 5:So I took that and I said, you know what, Richard, you're right. Like, I know how to market. I know how to cold call. That is where I gain my business. Literally walk into these title, escrow, or real estate attorney's offices and have 20 seconds max to make my bid for why they should talk to me and not kick me out of their office.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:So that's what I do. Even if
Speaker 4:they're rocking a no solicitation sign? Um,
Speaker 5:they're always rocking a no solicitation sign. Are you kidding me? I just ignore those, they say that on the office building, they say it everywhere. But the funny thing is, they're title companies, they're soliciting to other people all the time. Right, totally. They're gaining business from realtors. I was
Speaker 4:a banker forever. Title companies would come in there and schmooze us all the time.
Speaker 5:So they understand the game. Right. They get it. So I don't think I've actually, Ever had anyone say, Oh, did you see the no solicitation sign? And think about it. When I first started the business, it was the middle of COVID. These offices were closed, right? Like, no one was allowed in these offices. It was like slip this package underneath the, you know, the door. And so I devised a plan to, I love to make scones. I love to make scones, and they're pretty darn good, and I was like, if I show up with like this handmade, hand baked, homemade good, these people are for sure gonna let me in, and it works. Perfect. Better than anything. I have fancy mugs, I have, you know, all sorts of swag, but people like the scones. Nice. So, I still do it to this day. The personal touch. Yep, that personal touch. Well, it
Speaker 4:seems to be kind of part of your theme, is trying to have that, you know, Kind people, personal touch, uh, you know, not just done right, but done friendly.
Speaker 5:Exactly. And that's part of what sets us apart. That's sort of, you know, part of our value proposition. So much of this industry, I found out, is not friendly. It's not a very fun thing. Industry always. Hmm. Again, there's just so much high pressure. That shit rolls downhill. right? We're usually at the bottom of that hill. And so, uh, you know, people can be short and, you know, things are timely. There's a lot of pressure to get documents back and, you know, checks and, well, the pressure's
Speaker 4:probably higher than normal. Right now too.
Speaker 5:Yes, absolutely. Or if someone missed, you know, FedEx or UPS drop, where are our documents? How did, how, you know, now that's got a delay funding, you know, our job is to prevent all of that. That's part of why they're hiring us. And so, um, yeah, having that personal touch in their relationships. That's That's really what I built the business on, and so when I go to a new market, I'll target a market based on, you know, maybe where I have family, or where I go on vacation, or where I just know a lot of people are buying and selling a lot of homes. Right. I'll fly in, and I'll see 60 accounts in three days. Wow. It's exhausting.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 5:But also exhilarating. And
Speaker 4:Trevor and your business. Daughter on the beach somewhere. No,
Speaker 5:that sounds, I mean, he would love that. So I have a daughter and a son, I have a five and a six year old. Um, they were three and two when I started this company, which is also crazy. I have no idea what I was doing with all my time before they were born. Cause that would have been the best time to start this business. But you know, that motivation wasn't there, that drive. So now he's at home taking care of the home front. So
Speaker 4:you're just out there kind of calling on these different marketplaces where you can really get Make gravy. Anybody could hire you if they just like find your website and contact you.
Speaker 5:And that's starting to happen. You know, my, I have people working on my SEO and that's been fantastic cause I am starting to get that referrals. Um, are the lifeblood of my business. Um, people who already do business that, you know, are fanatics of precision and, uh, that's been great. And so I just, I go there where that low hanging fruit is. If I have someone that's like, Hey, I have this person to introduce you to, or industry conferences.
Speaker 4:Sure.
Speaker 5:So, yeah, that's.
Speaker 4:Now, in the title industry, there's like only a handful of big brands anymore, right? There's a, uh, whatever. And then, then there's a bunch of kind of small offices, but they all kind of hang on the same knowledge infrastructure or tell me, tell me, tell our listeners and me like more about the title industry. And I'm assuming that like each office kind of gets to decide how they do closings and stuff. So it can't just be. It's like, bag one big fish and you get the whole platter.
Speaker 5:Yes and no. Um, so yes, there are about six or seven major underwriters. Okay. So when you buy a house, you need title insurance for your house, right, to make sure that the title's free and clear. So there's these major title underwriters. They then have either satellite offices or what they call agency operations where someone, maybe a real estate attorney is doing the business, but they still need to be underwritten by one of these six or seven underwriters. Okay. Gotcha. Title underwriters.
Speaker 4:And what are some of the familiar names in that?
Speaker 5:Fidelity National Financial, Stewart, WFG, you know, these are some of the big names. Old Republic Title. Yep. Takes me
Speaker 4:back to my banking days.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So, so, uh, they're out there and then, uh, like I said, they have direct operations. So like, you know, here in Colorado, we'll see Fidelity or Chicago Title. Those are all Fidelity underwritten. Right. Um, our old Chicago Title offices, but there's
Speaker 4:almost like company stores.
Speaker 5:Exactly. But all, there's a lot of mom and pop.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Pop style. Guaranteed title or guardian title or whatever. A ton. They buy stuff from these other places.
Speaker 5:Exactly. Okay. So there's thousands of these. Like
Speaker 4:an insurance broker.
Speaker 5:Almost. A title insurance. Instead
Speaker 4:of an agency model.
Speaker 5:And then in certain states, it's real estate, uh, attorney based. So in North Carolina, where I got my start, the real estate attorney is making this decision. So for me, it was really uncovering who is making the buying decision. Who is influencing, who is closing this loan? And it's not always clear. And so really unearthing that. For me, working in attorney states has been really great because they're the owners, they're the real estate attorneys. I know how to talk to them. I know what they're thinking. They're the business owners themselves. Escrow and title can be a little bit trickier because they're not usually the stakeholders. They're not the ones owning the company. Sometimes it's, oh, it's someone far off in Texas that's making this decision. Like, oh man, how am I going to get through this? I don't even know
Speaker 4:who makes this decision. Exactly. Or
Speaker 5:like, I'm not sure. I think we have a contract, but do we? You know, those sorts of questions of like, who's your signing service? You know, so and and certainly they're encouraged to go a certain direction depending on who the underwriter is and so again It's another thing that information for me going to these industry conferences are really important Because I can be in a room with hundreds of the decision makers right one time, right
Speaker 4:if you're getting good with Somebody at one of these majors, they can potentially introduce you to some of their operators in different markets, things like that. That's correct. Cool. It's fun, uh, learning about different industries. Like, as a banker, I dealt with title a lot. You know, I knew what it was. Um, I don't know how much it was for, how much it cost, uh, all this, but like really understanding the dynamics behind the industry is kind of interesting to me.
Speaker 5:Well, and two and a half years ago, I had no idea how this works. I sold wine. Like, this is the funniest part, is like most people have been in this industry for so long, or you know, 20 plus years, they've moved around, worked for all the other writers, and I'm coming in as this, you know, outsider, but I think that brings a different perspective and this fresh perspective, because I'm not jaded. I haven't, you know, worked. Yeah. It's not an old stagnant industry for you. It's a
Speaker 4:high growth startup. And it's so
Speaker 5:similar to what I was doing, but you know, it's just a different product, but for me, I also, it's me that I'm selling too. It's something, it's my product. And I have such a passion for what we've built and I know that we do it better than everybody else in the industry. So as far as signing services is concerned. And so I think that people can see that. And I've never worked harder than I do now in my life, but I also have more freedom.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Than I've ever had.
Speaker 4:Did you, uh, did you have trouble selling wine that you didn't really like?
Speaker 5:Uh, yeah. So. Cause that's
Speaker 4:why I heard you say it, that I could really sell this cause I know we're the best, you know?
Speaker 5:So, I did work for some great brands. I will say that. I, I personally love a certain type of wine, so if I, you know, if it was a white wine You could still sell Chardonnay. Absolutely. Absolutely. Even if you didn't want to drink it. But I had more passion. Yeah, right. I'm an ABC, I told you earlier. Anything but Chardonnay. Um, but you know, but I never got a chance to sell sparkling rosé or, you know, I love sparkling wine and champagne, but, but absolutely, you know, I didn't have trouble selling it by any means. Okay. But I Because, you know,
Speaker 4:wine is different taste for different appetites.
Speaker 5:Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. But having something that I started, that I believe in, and that, you know, we're really Investing in our people and treating them with kindness and kind of changing the way that our loan signing agents or LSAs are treated Yeah, there's nothing better. Pretty proud of that. Yeah, I never thought I'd be in this industry.
Speaker 4:So, um And we'll go back to your your wine journey here. But Have you, uh, managed people extensively in your, in your previous career chapters?
Speaker 5:Not extensively. I did have a team. I was a regional director of sales. Um, and so I did have a team underneath me. So I managed a couple of different personalities, territories, et cetera. So I had, I had, you know, knew how to onboard. I had worked in lean process improvement and led teams within our company as well. So, tangentially.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel like you've, uh, learned anything in the owner's seat here?
Speaker 5:I, I, I feel like I've had the best real world MBA education that one could ever get. I didn't pay for it, which was great. Right. You know, um, I don't think, there's so many lessons learned that you can't teach people until you actually go through it. And I have such a profound respect for owners and founders of companies because, you know, We do it all, you know, things that I'm not even good at. And this is the funny part when I talk to my team. You know, they come to me with a lot of questions. I'm like, y'all, I don't know the answer to that. I can make one up for you. But you know, I think having that grit and resiliency and that drive to like, figure out the answer and unearth it is really what It makes entrepreneurs special and successful.
Speaker 4:I'd agree with that. Yeah. Um, any, uh, major blenders so far that you'd like to own?
Speaker 5:Major blenders? I think some of the best advice I have heard is to hire slow and fire fast. Yeah. And I think that, that is so true. I think trusting my instinct and, and intuition and making, Making sure that I follow through with that, especially in hiring decisions. Um, you know, I, I don't regret those decisions because I learned. Right, right. Um, I think major blender, I, I talked about our, our larger, um, but nothing you can really
Speaker 4:do there.
Speaker 5:No, but, but I think, or
Speaker 4:maybe just getting that big of a customer in the first place, taking so much, so much.
Speaker 5:I would do that again in a heartbeat. I would just do it differently. Okay. I think, you know, we, we've had people ask us to change the way we do things for them and I'm less willing to do so because we have a system and we have a process that works. Back then I was brand new and I was like, yeah, sure we can do that. We can do that. And we were spread so thin. Our team did not have a good rapport with them. They were not treated kindly from, from this client. And so I'm not willing to do that again. I'm not. sacrificing our ethos and our values to serve someone else. You gotta
Speaker 4:be willing to fire any client. And
Speaker 5:honestly, the clients, the small handful of clients that we have lost, I don't regret for a second. They were the most high maintenance and the ones that just really didn't get it, and it wasn't a great partnership. And that's what I like to tell my clients. I know that I'm a vendor at the end of the day, but I truly want to be a partner. I don't want to be looked at as a vendor. I want you to be invested. Yeah,
Speaker 4:and if you have other things that you really need, that we could do, you know, let's talk about it. Don't just like
Speaker 5:Don't just go find someone else and, and you know, like I had a client and I said, Oh, well, I found someone that had better pricing. I'm like, did you talk to me about that? To be fair, I'm not the Dollar Tree. I'm not the Walmart option. That is not what we're providing here. So it wasn't a good fit in the long term, but just have that conversation with me. Right. I
Speaker 4:wanted to know, don't just surprise me. Yeah, I agree with that. What, uh, what are you trying to achieve from here? Um, and I know there's probably some market dependencies and interest rates and stuff, but what, uh, what would you like PSA to turn into over the next? Two, three, four years.
Speaker 5:Oh, great question. So right now we're, we're growing very steadily and it's faster than we've grown since the interest rates where they were, which is substantial given the fact that that constitutes almost zero refinances. So we're just talking purchases and seller packages. So, um, that's huge. I've diversified our client base. For me, that's what I'm working on. It's, So, um, we're just making sure that we have a diversified client base in the sense that we don't have all of our eggs in one basket. We have clients all around the country. We have real estate attorneys. We have escrow and title. You know, being smart about who we partner with.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Um, I'd like to grow to a couple thousand signings per month.
Speaker 7:Okay.
Speaker 5:Um, and we're steadily each month, like I said. Where are you at now? Uh, we're at just shy of a thousand. Okay. So.
Speaker 4:So double over the next couple, couple years or so, but triple even. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Triple in the next 18 months, would be my goal. Oh wow, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Buckle up, buttercup. Yeah. Um, and is there like additional things that PSA could do, should do, or is it really just get bigger doing the things that you're doing now?
Speaker 5:So I, I always talk about, um, Um, uh, what is the word I'm looking for? Scaling sustainably. Okay. It's a phrase I like to use. Yeah. I don't ever want to sacrifice what has set us apart in this industry. And that's that personal attention, that communication, that care, that connection. And so it's this delicate balance, this seesaw, right, of like bringing people on as we increase us. Our client base and just making sure that we're scaling at a point that it doesn't make our employees overwhelmed or schedulers overwhelmed And so I think that that that balance is tough one to find but yeah, I think diversifying that base and getting us to a point where I Have a director of operations and I can pull myself out of the day to day Which I largely have of scheduling, but I'm still the fixer. Sure. You know, when things go wrong.
Speaker 4:Well, and you're still the rainmaker too, sounds like. Right. As far as business development. Right,
Speaker 5:yeah. And hiring someone for inside, uh, sales. I think you and I had talked about that. And having someone help with inside sales. You know, so I definitely have a list of kind of my strategic next hires. And then what to do. Order I can hire them.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 5:really do love the going out and having the client relationships because that's the part again That's the bread and butter. It's what we're built on
Speaker 7:right?
Speaker 5:And so I don't think I ever want to fully extract myself from that But I would love to have some more time freedom to spend more time with my family and right I'll have to travel as much as I do and We'd love to travel internationally, so that's my goal in the next couple of years. Well,
Speaker 4:and probably if you travel with your family for work, then there's tax benefits or something too, right?
Speaker 5:There are, and you know, I don't have to ask permission of anybody. If I want to go to Costa Rica for a month, I don't have to ask anyone. Because guess what? I already asked myself. She said yes.
Speaker 4:Is Trevor, uh, still with the company now, or back on the team in a
Speaker 5:Yeah, he is our fractional CFO, so he is helping with that. We actually are bringing our, kind of repurposing one of our team members internally to help once a month with that, because as a technology forward, as this industry has become, we um, still receive hundreds and hundreds of checks every month, and so it's so laborious. The amount of time it takes to scan those in and record them in two different places. Um, but back to your original question of like, kind of what's like next or the vision, we do provide ID verification for employers. That's something that's really important, especially now with AI, people creating avatars of themselves that aren't actually themselves, ID verification. We part of the reason we moved to Colorado was because the remote online notarization center. law.
Speaker 7:Okay.
Speaker 5:Ron, as I mentioned before. So we actually are like a one stop shop, full service. We provide remote online notarization in house in addition to in person signings.
Speaker 6:Okay.
Speaker 5:And so in the states where that's law and big, like in Texas, Virginia and in Florida, And in Colorado, we're able to provide that service to our clients.
Speaker 4:So talk to me about this. Is this like a, a zoom meeting basically where you're like, here, hold up your driver's license and show me the document. It's
Speaker 5:way more secure than that, but yes, ish. Um, you know, so it started 10 years ago in Virginia was the first state that this, um, was established. Ron law passed and most of the states save North Carolina, which is part of the reason we left Georgia, South Carolina, those kind of, you know, little boys, southern states have not quite gotten on board yet. And so, you know, definitely during COVID, we thought it was going to take off, oh, everybody's going to do this remote online notarization. We've all known about digital signatures and DocuSign for years, right? Yeah,
Speaker 4:but the notarization hasn't caught up yet. Not, not, not
Speaker 5:quite so much, but, um, you, there are secure platforms. There's something called knowledge based authentication or KBA that you have to go through. So it's, let's pretend you're, you're sign, doing signing with me, right? So we're online. Can I be Mr. Smith? You can be Mr. Smith. So Mr. Smith, you're signing on to one of these secure platforms that is not Zoom, by the way.
Speaker 4:Which is not secure, Mary.
Speaker 5:You're going to, you know, hold up your license next to your face to verify that it's you. And then you're going to have to upload the ID via, you know, a secure, um, QR code. Okay. And then once you do that, there's going to be five questions based on your entire credit history from age 18. Okay. It's going to spit out, so only you know the answers to that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:Some people fail it.
Speaker 4:Right. You can only Well, because sometimes I can't remember the street I lived on in 2004.
Speaker 5:And for someone like me who's had 32 different addresses, doing KBA is a little bit of a nightmare. Yeah. Because we also had, you know, real estate investments. So one time I was doing KBA because I just wanted to go through it to see what it was like.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 5:And it asked me about a zip code in Cleveland, Ohio. My husband and I invested in a property there like in our early 20s. I don't know that answer So it can be a little cumbersome, especially for those that are, you know, a little bit older older generation Maybe not as technologically savvy. It can be a little bit of a nightmare. So we've kind of been Come up with this litmus test of like, Hey, if you're going to send us a remote online transaction, please make sure your person knows how to use technology. Because it can end up taking twice as long as it's like an in person signing. But it is great when say the spouses are traveling or in two different places, or maybe we have a client that's overseas. We're able to also offer that for international sellers. And that's been a really big game changer in the last six months for our business.
Speaker 4:So it seems like. Like, if there was a baddie out there that was trying to impersonate somebody, it's possible that they would even, like, have a copy of your credit report there.
Speaker 5:That would be virtually impossible for them to pass KBA.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 5:It asks about your addresses, colors of your car.
Speaker 4:I know, but if they could pull your credit report, then you'd have a lot of that. I guess you wouldn't have the car colors. I guess that's insurance agency stuff instead.
Speaker 5:Your ID would have to be forged, like that ID there. I mean, honestly, I feel like remote online notarization. is almost more secure than signing in person. Because you could show me a fake ID, Mr. Smith. Right, right. I wouldn't know.
Speaker 4:Totally. And my driver's license photo is like nine years old now. Right. But the system I was
Speaker 5:a lot prettier back then. No. Still pretty. Um, but the ID verification software that these, um, companies are using are, is very secure and, um, there's really no way to fool the system.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, honestly, you're probably right. But it would be easier for people to Some batty to forge my driver's license and walk into first bank where they wouldn't care. Well,
Speaker 5:and that's what's happening. So I had clients that would send me, you know, all their purchase packages. So you're, you're now buying a house, Mr. Smith. So you're buying a house, um, and you know, you definitely have to use a notary for seller packages. Now you're selling the house, you know, that's quick, quick turnaround. You should have waited two years so you don't get those cap, cap gain, but, um, but I made a hundred grand. Great. Alright. You don't care about the capital gains now, so you're now selling the house. There are only a handful of notarizations and the package is a lot smaller. There's not a loan involved or you're paying off a loan. And so a lot of our clients have been allowing them to just find their own notary. But what's happening is there's an increasing amount of seller fraud and so Right, right. So their seller impersonation, they're pre Right. They're pretending just wire. They don't Mr. Smith. Exactly. Or they're finding a notary friend or family member, and they're falsifying this information and Wow. Wow. So, that's been a really great opportunity for me to come in and say, why aren't you using us for all of your transactions? Right. And so, several of our clients, if not most of them, have said, we mandate you now use Precision Signing Agency for any of your authorizations because it helps mitigate fraud.
Speaker 4:Well, I, I was a notary in my past, actually. I did not know this about I was in the banking industry. I even had a medallion signature guarantee stamped for a while.
Speaker 5:I've been asked to get one of those, but I can't because I don't work for a bank.
Speaker 4:But, uh, I took it as seriously as most bankers did, probably, which wasn't that seriously. It was like, look at an ID and sign the thingy and make sure you write it down in the notary book, which is where again, where did we put the notary book? Anyway, just an observation.
Speaker 5:Yeah. No. And I think that's what differentiates, differentiates loan signing agents. And that's why I call them LSAs is because they've been specialized. This is your job. Yeah. They have. They've been certified. They have their errors and omissions insurance. They've got.
Speaker 4:My job was to make business loans. Right. You know, and build relationships with business owners, but, whatever, you need a notary? Sure. Oh, yeah, I forgot to ask for your ID. Right. Bob.
Speaker 5:Everybody needs a notary. People find out in my neighborhood and they like perk up, oh, you're a notary? I'm like, oh, yes. Well, not that, not that kind. I mean, yes, of course. Any friends and family, yes, I will notarize for you.
Speaker 4:So are you trying to create a lifestyle business with this, Autumn, or are you looking for an exit at some point when it gets big enough, or what's your, you got a bunch of pocket full of ideas for, uh, what's that, uh,
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I
Speaker 5:think an exit for sure. Again, I, you know, my husband and I have been together for a long time. Our original plan, he wanted to retire at 40. If I retire, I say loosely, he's still going to do something. I'm still going to do something. But to financially be independent and not ever have to work again if we didn't want
Speaker 4:So you're like super savers, kind of. Or you plan to be soon. And investors and,
Speaker 5:yeah, no, absolutely. And so because I, a little bit more comfort playing offense and also have more comfort spending money. You know, we've agreed that for him, this is your
Speaker 4:project.
Speaker 5:This is my project and I've got this, you know, finite amount of time to really kick this off and make it work. He'd like to be retired at 45 now. He just turned 40. So I've got like a five year runway of saying like, Hey, let's do this. And then we really want the freedom just to, Go about, travel the world, experience life with our kids and, you know, they're not getting Will you
Speaker 4:homeschool or something?
Speaker 5:We might. There's a lot of great world schools out there, um, especially some that are like based off the Socratic method and we've, um, we almost moved to Portugal a few years ago, so we were pretty steeped in understanding kind of what our options were, but I really want them to be a part of that decision. As they get older, I moved so much growing up and while I was playing I think it was definitely a lot harder on my brother. And I want to make sure that they also want that sort of life.
Speaker 4:And uh, is Trevor excited about this? Kind of some of the characteristics you describe are more of like a homebody type or a less adventurous, but he's loves the idea of. World traveling. Oh, that's
Speaker 5:him. Oh it is. Okay. That's totally him. Yeah. All right. Absolutely. I mean, I like to travel, but like when I say travel, I'm good being gone for like 10 days to two weeks. Right. He wants to slow travel. He is like, no, we gotta spend a month here and really get to know like Right. And then
Speaker 4:go a month there. A month
Speaker 5:there. Exactly. So that's kind of the agreement we've made in the meantime is like, we're gonna spend a month or two out the country right now while we can. You know, once in the winter, once in the summer, kind of get our kids exposed. Um, we, we did it a couple of years ago in Mexico and it was not, not super fun. They were not the best ages and we were in Tulum. And if you've been to Tulum recently, that's a
Speaker 4:pretty hectic,
Speaker 5:it's fun. If you're like, if you're single or you're, you're just there as a couple, it is not a kid friendly place. You know, kids like to ride their bikes and go to parks and libraries and none of that was available. No,
Speaker 4:it's, uh, it's kind of like Not, it's not the party zone, but kinda is. Man, I, the, uh, we were there in May of 2021, actually, in Tulum, and the outfits that some of the ladies wear, did that
Speaker 5:Oh, the Instagram influencers. Were you down on the beach? I
Speaker 4:don't even know. The amount of
Speaker 5:times I I know
Speaker 4:I had to look away a lot to keep from Getting a ri uh, elbow to the ribs.
Speaker 5:The, the amount of TikTok influencer husbands or boyfriends that I'd see down on the beach. It's like, you know, the same shot. This, like, yeah. It was kind of ridiculous and funny at the same time, but it was definitely a six week, like, relocation. We did that right before we moved here to Colorado. Okay. And it was, it was rough. I wouldn't say that that was like, hey, we're ready to do this again.
Speaker 4:Right, sign me up. And I don't,
Speaker 5:I don't think we're going back to Mexico anytime soon.
Speaker 4:So talk to me a little bit more. You've hinted toward kind of this change in regulation, the notary service, remote notary services as part of that move to Colorado, but can you set the stage a little bit there?
Speaker 5:As to why we moved to Colorado? Yeah,
Speaker 4:yeah. And did you, Pick Fort Collins right away. Did you, yeah. Talk to me about that overall topic.
Speaker 5:Great question. So I've alluded to that. I've moved many times. I've lived in six different States. I've lived out of the country. I've had 32 addresses over my life. And I know this cause I've had to put them in a spreadsheet before.
Speaker 4:I know it because I've read your credit report.
Speaker 5:So, um, we were in North Carolina off and on for the last 15 years. So I, when I graduated from UC Santa Barbara, uh, it was 2008, not a great time to graduate. Um, you know, I had plans actually to move here to Fort Collins. I had dated someone that went to CSU and I fell in love with Fort Collins. Thankfully that relationship did not work out, but I was still going to move here. Um, and I had, you know, started networking. I was actually thinking about grad school and then I went on eHarmony, just kind of on a fluke and met my now husband. Okay. Okay. Okay. The first day I was on there, so in a matter of basically a day, my world changed and my life changed. We met three weeks later, and we met in Napa for our first date. Um, that would be fitting that I later worked in wine, kind of fell in love and fell in love with wine at the same time. And he said, you know, I'm going to go to law school or grad school in the southeast. Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina. Which state do you want to move to?
Speaker 6:You're like, not Georgia. I said, I'm moving to Fort
Speaker 5:Collins, what are you talking about? He goes, well I didn't apply to school there. So, um, that's where I honestly, this is as ridiculous as my 21 year old self, I said, well I had a Tar Heel sweatshirt. from Swapmeet growing up, and I think we should go there. I think it's a sign. Like, who didn't have a Tar Heel sweatshirt, right? Or some sort of paraphernalia over the years. So, that's where we landed, and it was, it was great. It treated us well. I think living in the South in the Bible Belt was, you know, eye opening, um, for me, especially coming from the Midwest. It's in the West Coast. Uh, racial tensions, that sort of stuff is, it's very different. And
Speaker 4:where are you at in North Carolina? Where are you? We're in Raleigh. In more like
Speaker 5:progressive area for sure. But it's still the South. Yeah. And I think that, you know, the schools are not nearly as great as they are here, the public schools. Mm. We never intended to have our kids in, in private school. And so that's when we actually started planning our exit to Portugal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We made the mistake of not actually going to Portugal before we made the decision to move there. Okay. And so I think Portugal is fantastic. I think it's a great place. There's a ton of expats. I just don't think it was the right fit for the right time in our life. Right. The age of our kids and the thought of being so far from family. It just didn't sit Well, plus
Speaker 4:you're rocking this business and stuff too, right? And thank
Speaker 5:goodness I didn't make that decision. At this time, the business was a little bit slower. Sure. And I wasn't like 100 percent sure, like, I was Were
Speaker 4:you kind of in your funk mode there after losing the goose egg? Yeah,
Speaker 5:I was in my funk mode during that time. That's a good way to put it. And so, um, we went over there and we both looked at each other and we're like, this just isn't, This isn't a good fit right now,
Speaker 7:right?
Speaker 5:And so then we came back. Okay, we're gonna be here. We're here in North Carolina. And then like a month later, we both look to each other. And I was like, I'm too itchy still like we've got it's I'm ready for a change. Like we'd lived in the same neighborhood for almost 10 years, which for me, after moving as much as I did was unheard of. It was comfortable. And we had this lovely neighborhood, Trevor, everybody
Speaker 4:in Fort Collins.
Speaker 5:No, and so, one of my lifelong best friends, who you actually interviewed, Oh yeah, Katie. Katie, um, had moved to Timnath four years ago. Actually, I remember distinctly having the conversation. I've known her since I was six. We met when we lived in Reno, Sparks, Nevada. We, uh, actually were in first grade together. We got separated because we used to talk too much. So anyway, when she was finishing up her residency to be a pediatric dentist, she said, Hey, I have an opportunity to move to Seattle or to Fort Collins. And I was like, Fort Collins. And she goes, Why are you so like, because I'm never moving to Seattle, but someday it's possible I can move to Fort Collins. And so obviously it wasn't just me. So
Speaker 4:your selfish reasons that you recommended.
Speaker 5:I was like, yeah, you'll love it. And so thankfully they ended up moving here. And then my other lifelong best friend who I've known since I was 13 has been back living back in Parker, Colorado. We met, um, when I went to middle school in Colorado Springs, we were college roommates in Southern California. She stayed in Orange County and then she moved back here probably about 10 years ago. And so I hadn't been around my lifelong best friends in a very long time. Right. And so. Because they
Speaker 4:never came out Southeast. Like that's the part. No,
Speaker 5:it's so far away. I never go
Speaker 4:East of the Mississippi, frankly. And what for what purpose? Like I travel all around the American West, but I never
Speaker 5:Exactly. I mean, some people go to Florida, but I guess I do go to Florida. Yeah. It's the
Speaker 4:only other place I go. Or, or
Speaker 5:Charleston, you know, for a wedding maybe. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Savannah. So, um I had this great idea, it was October, uh, which was right around my, no, I had gone in January. I came to visit Katie and I kind of started plotting, I was like, oh, maybe, he, he grew up in Minnesota, my husband did, and he swears he's never in love anywhere with snow. And so he's like, I'm not living north of the Mason Dixon line. This was like a hard line in our relationship and I was like, oh. He
Speaker 4:didn't know this was Banana Belt out here?
Speaker 5:What's the Banana Belt?
Speaker 4:That's kind of the stripe from Fort Collins down to. Pueblo.
Speaker 7:Oh.
Speaker 4:You know, where it's Colorado, it's mountains, we get snow, but you also get 10 riding days on your motorcycle every month. If you want them.
Speaker 5:I like that. No, and so I, so we, we brought him out here. October was fabulous. Right. And he, I was like, hey, can you just come check it out? And he just, he fell in love. Oh wow. Like, it was one of those days where you have to wear three different outfits because, or, you know, figures, as I've learned now. Where, you know, we're sweating by the afternoon, but he's like, this place is amazing. We were looking for somewhere smaller. Raleigh, we were living in Cary, which is a beautiful suburb, but it had gotten so big, so fast. There's still community
Speaker 4:here. There's
Speaker 5:community. You
Speaker 4:run into people that you'd know, random places.
Speaker 5:I have, you know, he's met more people from Minnesota in a year of living here than he did in 15 years in North Carolina. Like I feel like the cool, like adventurous Midwesterners settle here.
Speaker 4:Totally. Totally.
Speaker 5:And so. I'm from North Dakota. Yeah, exactly. That's why we're friends, right? Is he from
Speaker 4:a city? The city in Minnesota? No. Or a country?
Speaker 5:He's from, um, he actually grew up on a farm in a town of 32 people. Oh, wow. In southwest Minnesota. Oh, nice. Yeah. I grew up in a
Speaker 4:town of like a hundred. How big was his high school class?
Speaker 5:So, he had to go into town. Real town. In real town. A town of 10, 000 people. Okay. So, yeah, it was a little bit bigger. You know. So, how big was yours?
Speaker 4:I graduated with five. Me, plus four.
Speaker 5:Did you like those people?
Speaker 4:I mean Mostly, you know, there wasn't a lot of options. Do you still talk to
Speaker 7:them?
Speaker 4:Um, I was home for, uh, they have all school reunions every five years. So everybody that's ever graduated from this high school comes every five years. Yeah. And yeah, I spent time and had good relationships with them. Two of my high school graduation classmates, but no, I don't talk to them like on a regular basis.
Speaker 5:Well, that's like one of the unique parts of being from a small town. So I was actually born in a very small town in western Kansas, town of a thousand people. Okay. And my parents both graduated with like 23, 25 people in their class. And they also have all school reunions every five years. And they still go back and they stay in touch with these people. I graduated in a class of 700 people. Oh, yeah. And I Maybe talk to one of them. So,
Speaker 4:you
Speaker 5:know, I, these lifelong friendships that I mentioned with the, the friends that live here were huge, you know, draw to this area. So luckily he fell in love with it and he came and in a matter of three and a half months, we had moved out here. Nice. So we, uh, just, our kids are at that age where they were starting. So that was
Speaker 4:like. January February of It was
Speaker 5:March of last year.
Speaker 4:March of last year, okay. March
Speaker 5:1st, yep. Uh, drove across the country. Our kids are, you know, our daughter's in first grade, our son is in pre K. Um, school year's almost over. So, I wanted them, because I didn't have that stability growing up, I really wanted them to have like a sense of home. Yeah. And so for me, this is home for the next at least 15 years, at least part of the year. Right. Trevor's still not sold on winter, even though it's pretty mild. I tried to sell him on skiing this year, and both kids are in. He's a little wishy washy. We got him as his epic pass, but yeah, he could take it or leave it, where I just, I love it. Just don't
Speaker 4:take him out when it's below zero, because that will sometimes ruin people.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's not, it's not usually that cold here, though. And that's like the funniest part of, like, people don't understand about Colorado. Like, it's, it's so beautiful, and I hate to even, like, tell people about Fort Collins, because it's like It's already exploded in population. And you know, like I want to keep it small.
Speaker 4:Yeah. NIMBY.
Speaker 5:There's not a lot of room to grow in Fort Collins to be fair. I mean, it's all happening out in Timnitz.
Speaker 4:Where, uh, where did, I don't want to assume you're in Fort Collins, but where did you settle? Where did you choose to move to?
Speaker 5:That was one of my non negotiable. If we're moving to Fort Collins, we're living in Fort Collins. In what part
Speaker 4:of town?
Speaker 5:We're right by Fossil Creek Park.
Speaker 4:Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 5:So we So Fossil
Speaker 4:Ranch right over there or whatever. Uh, Huntington Hills. Okay. Great. Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 5:So we heard they're putting, there, there, there's a proposal to put pickleball courts in. Oh!
Speaker 4:And we are part of the
Speaker 5:FOCO Pickleball League and I could not be more excited to maybe be able to walk and play pickleball.
Speaker 4:I'll look forward to, uh, pickleballing with you sometime. Actually I have an email in my inbox from Yeah. A young man that's a, he's a kind of a luxury realtor in town, Greg Rader, he was on my podcast as well. And uh, he's got a, uh, recurring pickleball kind of business people's pickleball thing, so.
Speaker 5:I, I might need an input. Yeah, yeah. I need to get better. Do I know
Speaker 4:if girls are invited? I'm not sure. It was pretty much a sausage party the couple times I went last year, but maybe there's girls invited. There should be. I would assume so. Only,
Speaker 5:only women who actually now have a playlist. There wasn't anything
Speaker 4:on the flyer about no girls. So I'm assuming. Assuming so. I
Speaker 5:hope not. I
Speaker 4:don't know.
Speaker 5:well, we play on a ladder. I'll check before
Speaker 4:I invite
Speaker 5:you, we play on a later league. Do you know what that is? I don't. Uhuh. It's kind of intense. I'm a newbie.
Speaker 4:I've only played like three times in my life.
Speaker 5:Okay. So, but
Speaker 4:I'm really pretty good. Are you pretty good? Surprisingly. You need to join. Yeah. The Foco po. All right. So
Speaker 5:the problem is Fort Collins Pickleball League has about 2000. Um, members. Yeah. Right? But the Ladder Leagues have 44 spots every month, and they only have like three or four Ladder Leagues. And so, do the math, that's not a very large percentage of people. Yeah. And so the demand is insane. It's like Hunger Games. You have to wake up at midnight, once a month, to get a spot in the Ladder League. I gotcha. So you sign up, and we're on Wednesday night Ladder League, and you go and you basically, you play six games. You play three games, you play with all, all those people on the court, and So you switch partners each game. The best one moves down a court, the worst one moves up a court. If that makes sense. And so you play with people that are in your duper rating, or that's how they rate your pickleball score. You have to play 24 games before you even get your duper rating. It's pretty serious. Isn't it
Speaker 4:only like 25 bucks a year or something silly? Yeah, it's something silly. I'll sign up for it. And then
Speaker 5:you get access to the swift nets that you can put up at the tennis courts. Oh, sweet. Okay, cool.
Speaker 4:Cool.
Speaker 5:Totally off track.
Speaker 4:So, I feel like we've kind of talked about Business to the extent that we normally do. Do you want to just jump in the time machine with me and we'll get to know, uh, Little Autumn?
Speaker 5:Let's jump in.
Speaker 4:Um,
Speaker 5:you know,
Speaker 4:you've had so many moves and things like that. I actually want to go back to like, baby, baby, like just popped out. What, what was your first move? Family doing, we're, we're, military? What are we talking here?
Speaker 5:That would be easier to explain. I like to tell people I'm an American Nomad. I used to say Gypsy, but that has a negative connotation to it, so, I'm a Nomad now. Yeah, we used to call it Gypped. Uh, anyway. Yeah. Oh, that's where I try not to use that anymore.
Speaker 4:Yeah, totally. I never really thought about that. I used to think negotiating was bad. I don't know if I'm just chewing you down, you know, too, but whatever. I don't say that anymore, either, except for on podcast conversations.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so I was born, I mentioned, far western Kansas, a little tiny town called Syracuse, Kansas. And my parents, neither of them went to college. They had met in high school, kind of high school sweethearts. My mom was actually 13 when they met. Okay. So, yeah, that was like the only thing she'd ever did. And how old was your dad? He was 13. Oh, okay.
Speaker 4:Well, it's better than, like, 1902. No, gosh,
Speaker 5:no. No, no, no. They graduated two years apart. Alright. And, uh, they're in their, uh, early 60s now. Um, so, they, I think my dad, my dad was always a hustler. Like, he always had
Speaker 4:Gypsy type. Sorry.
Speaker 5:He just like, he had that entrepreneurial zeal and like that work ethic. I definitely credit him with at least providing that example. He always liked to work and he worked really hard. And so he was a bricklayer at the time I was born and there was more opportunity in Tahoe actually at the time. Um, all these luxury mansions were going up with the stone and, and brick. And so we moved out to Reno or Sparks actually. Okay. Nevada. So what was he
Speaker 4:doing? And. In Kansas, anyway. Bricklaying. Yeah, just that. Roofing. Whatever. Yeah. But how does a person land there?
Speaker 5:In Reno? No, in Western Kansas. Oh, his parents. Oh, I see. That was like, grew up there. Yeah. And then my mom's from Iowa, Lake Spencer, Iowa. Gotcha. And her dad owned a rendering plant. Mm. And so, he had worked in that space. He actually went to CSU, I found out. Okay. And he came here for some medical treatment. So anyway, sorry to come back to
Speaker 4:that. But, so you, Hall up and move to Reno, where you mostly grew up.
Speaker 5:Mostly ish. So, I was three when we moved. We lived there until just after sixth grade, so I was twelve. Okay. So, I was there for elementary school. It's really easy to think about my life, like, parsed into years of school, because I was in a different state. So And
Speaker 4:just you as a little Nope.
Speaker 5:Uh, my brother. My brother's three years older than me. Okay. Uh, Tyler, and so he, um, moved, so when we were told we had to move from Reno, we were told we were moving to Colorado Springs, and, um, my aunt and uncle had lived, yeah, lived there at the time, and my cousins, and so we moved. My brother had just finished his freshman year of high school. And then my dad was working in a car dealership and he was working like 80 hours a week and my mom said, this is not working. Like you need to work less, be more present. And so he had an opportunity to go start selling timeshares in Palm Desert.
Speaker 4:Oh, from Colorado Springs. From Colorado Springs. Okay. I want to, um, I'm going to take a time out on the, on the journey, but let's go back to like. Third grade autumn. Describe yourself to the best of your recollection during those years.
Speaker 5:Hmm, probably a little bossy.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:No, probably, definitely. Um, leader of the pack. I had such a great, like, idyllic elementary school. That's why you like Katie
Speaker 4:so much. She was like, I like you, but you're not my boss.
Speaker 5:Katie and I, like, are so similar in so many ways, it's funny. Um, you know, we've, yeah, I think we can butthead sometimes because of that, but we like, like the same person a lot, you know, but she's, I'm like her biggest fan too, so. Um, yeah, it's been an interesting kind of, kind of journey, but yeah, so, um, I was super active, played all sorts of sports, um, still love to do that. I just sent this idea like, like elementary school, like, I remember our friend group was so tight like I have such fond memories of them to this day. Cool. Um, and so, yeah, I'm just, uh, Good grades too? Yeah, I was, I was a little bit older. The cutoff was October 1st and I was born on October 4th and, Okay. My parents, unfortunately, like, made the decision to not fight that.
Speaker 4:Right. And so, And plus you're tall, you probably were tall early. I was, and so,
Speaker 5:It, like, I was always pulled out for, like, the special spelling list or this because I was ahead of, like, my peers, and we didn't have, like, advanced placement, obviously, in elementary school, or we didn't have a gifted and talented program, and so I always felt a little, like, out of place, at least with, uh, that. You almost
Speaker 4:had an advantage in that. Yeah and
Speaker 5:Katie, you know it's funny, Katie too. Katie is a month and a day younger than me. Okay, so she was
Speaker 4:also the old one in comparison. I was a really young one actually, I was an August baby and so Was that
Speaker 5:hard?
Speaker 4:I turned 18 just before I started college, like two days before.
Speaker 5:Right?
Speaker 4:Um, no, because I was still smarter than everybody else. but I was little, like I was super tiny. I was five foot one at the end of my 10th grade year.
Speaker 5:You were? Okay. See, and I was five six this high. The height I am now at 12. Oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Uh, my first, uh, high school dance was with Leanne Albright. I think was her name and she was like 5'9 and 6th grade and I was 5'1 and this was in like 9th grade or 8th grade or something like that so like she was literally a whole head taller than me and it was so awkward. Do you have a picture of this? No, thank god. I hope nobody does. But thank you, Leigh Anne, it made me feel at least better than just standing there by myself. Because I was pretty dorky. I didn't get too much action in middle school. Well, I hope not in,
Speaker 5:I was like, I was like not in high school. Well, our high school for that matter. Okay, alright. Um, no. Well, not
Speaker 4:just not action, just interest, whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 5:I
Speaker 4:wasn't the suave, handsome gentleman that you see before you today.
Speaker 5:Oh, I was for sure awkward. I had these like, at this, like from like, so my mom, for whatever reason, I think she threatened to cut off my hair because I wouldn't let her comb it. Like I have a sensitive head and like she threatened, she was going to cut it off. And I remember we had these glamour shots. Do you remember glamour shots? Sure. So we've had these glamour shots done and I have this beautiful curly blonde hair and I still have this picture. And then the next week she cut my hair. My hair off or she took me to get my hair cut off and it was shorter than your hair
Speaker 6:And
Speaker 5:I remember just like I had to get my ears pierced because people would ask me if I was a boy
Speaker 4:And you're like 12 or something at this time. I was like, no,
Speaker 5:I was like seven or eight. Oh Oh, I was traumatized. I will not have short hair to this day I was traumatized Um, but yeah, I remember being at the park and like are you a boy or a girl?
Speaker 4:Oh gosh
Speaker 5:This is terrible. So, anyway, I don't know how we got on that topic. No, that's okay, because I told an embarrassing story, so you felt
Speaker 4:like you needed to match me.
Speaker 5:Yeah, kind of is embarrassing. But yeah, I went through this very awkward time then. Fair enough. Definitely, like, you know, I don't know what I was wearing. I had the bangs that went upwards and downwards and like spray, spray bangs, you know, like, just this really awkward phase. That's what all the
Speaker 4:upper classmen were rocking, too. So your, your dad and mom pick you up and took you off to Colorado Springs. How did you like that in comparison to Reno?
Speaker 5:You know, it was a change, and it was very abrupt. We had like a week's notice that we were moving. Um, so that was tough. Um, I think especially tough on my brother who had just finished freshman year. Like, that's a very pivotal time. Um, I kind of leaned into it. I went to really, it was a brand new middle school when we moved there, Mountain Ridge. Um, I know it's a little bit older now, but, um, in Colorado Springs, and it was beautiful. What
Speaker 4:part of town is that? I lived there too for like three years. It's
Speaker 5:over by where Rampart is. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what part of town that is anymore.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I guess it's west side over there ish.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and so it was great and I actually met some really great friends and it was a beautiful middle school. We had a football field and zipline. We did archery, like it was amazing.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Um, but then Two years in, my dad had this opportunity and my brother looked at my parents and said, Nope, absolutely not. You're not doing this to her. You're not doing it to me. If you're going, you're not waiting till I graduate. You're going now. So she doesn't start high school and then, you know, have to leave. Okay. And my aunt, uncle lived there, my cousins. So he actually moved in with my aunt, uncle and cousins. Oh, wow. Senior year. Oh, wow. He stayed behind and then we moved. And so we were only there for two years.
Speaker 4:I've, I've been to Palm Desert a couple times actually, uh, that was where my wife finally got COVID for the first time, uh, well, and then I got it from her on the drive home cause we didn't fly home because she had COVID. Like we could have, whatever, but, but we didn't. Um,
Speaker 5:I had this romantic fantasy of California, I think as most people that maybe didn't grow up there or like know California have. And so especially like living in Reno, a budding California, like I just like, Oh, I just want to live in California. Well, a lot
Speaker 4:of California is pretty cool, but Palm Desert ain't it? Well, I
Speaker 5:mean, it was an interesting place to grow up. It's resorty
Speaker 4:cool. Like, I like going there. I might go there again, but it's pretty cool. Like, that's all it really is. There's not, I mean, there's art shops and different things, I guess. But
Speaker 5:as a kid, like, we had parties out in the desert or, you know, run around on the golf carts at night or we'd go ice blocking. Do you know what ice blocking is? No. You probably don't because there's snow here and it's silly to anyone that lives in an area that snows. But basically you get a block of ice and you like sled down it on the grass. Oh, hell
Speaker 4:yeah. That sounds super cool. Yeah.
Speaker 5:So, I mean, there were fun things, but I will tell you moving to California a week before your start of freshman year of high school as a girl, not a fun thing to do. Had you
Speaker 4:come into your body yet a little bit? Yeah.
Speaker 5:And that was part of the problem. I was friends with the seniors when I was a freshman. I dated a senior when I was a freshman, which pissed a whole lot of people off. Right. I know exactly. I'm from
Speaker 4:North Dakota. That's just how we did it there, frankly, but, um, anyway.
Speaker 5:The girls were really cruel. Oh. They were really cruel. I, um, I'm just, I'm a nice person and I'm anti confrontational. I'm less so now and I wish I would have stuck up for myself more. The bullying was intense. Like, I wanted my mom to pull me out. Because you were the new
Speaker 4:girl that got noticed by the older guys.
Speaker 5:And I had, like Plus you
Speaker 4:were smart, athletic.
Speaker 5:I was in the IB program, I played sports, and so it just, like, I never really quite found my space. Like, I, since I was in the international baccalaureate program, I had these, like, nerdy friends. Right. But they kind of stuck together, and I didn't really fit with that. I had my sporty friends, but I didn't really fit with that. And so, I kind of just floated around. My freshman year, all my friends were seniors, and then they left.
Speaker 4:Right. And I had no one. Start over. I had
Speaker 5:to start over. And the same thing happened the next year. All the seniors then, my sophomore year, and so You
Speaker 4:started dating another senior after that? No, you know what? After After the girls started
Speaker 5:writing on the bathroom walls and threatening to kick my ass in the parking lot. Yes, I know exactly who you are. It's funny. They like to be Instagram friends with me now. Do you want to say your name? No. There's a few of them and they're like trying to friend me on Instagram. I'm like, seriously? Do you know how much hell you raised in my life? You're like the
Speaker 4:meanest person to me. Please
Speaker 5:don't raise your kids to be that way. Um, anyway, that's my PSA. Don't bully. Don't teach your kids to bully. Um, anyway, I decided I was never going to date someone in, like, my geographical region ever again. And so I went on this, like, that's how I dated from then on out. I'd have to date someone that lived in, like, a different city or a different state because I needed no one to know that they were. Yes. Interesting. Yes. It was that traumatic.
Speaker 4:Okay. That's, uh.
Speaker 5:Yeah. My next boyfriend lived in Redondo Beach. He lived in LA. And so, like, at 16, I would drive to LA.
Speaker 4:Like, twice a month or something. For a couple days. And your moms were like. Your parents are like sleepovers. I mean,
Speaker 5:well, questionable. I don't think I'll be doing that with my children, but
Speaker 4:yeah. Well, sometimes you, when you raise them in kind of free range, it works great. And sometimes, you know, they learn some things. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, and so did you move away from Palm desert again? Is that what I heard? Acute? No, you stayed there through high school.
Speaker 5:We did. So I went to Lequinta high school. So we actually lived in Lequinta and we moved every year. We were there like to a different rental house. Goodness knows why. I don't know why we have to do that. Your dad's slinging
Speaker 4:timeshares for Weston or whatever. I mean, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 5:both Weston, Marriott, everybody. You know, the resales. So, we've um, yeah, finally I graduated. I had plans to go to UCLA or Stanford. And that particular year, I graduated with a 4. 4 GPA and I did not get into either.
Speaker 4:Top up your wine here.
Speaker 5:So that was pretty disappointing. I, you know, worked my ass off, you know, and had this great GPA. I also worked throughout high school. So, um, but then I didn't get into, you know, my choice schools. I did get into UC Santa Barbara originally, but I also didn't have the money. Like, my parents, my parents ended up telling me probably a year or two before I graduated that, um, college funds were no longer existing. And then unfortunately, my dad made the most money he'd ever made the year I had to fill out the FAFSA. Oh, so you didn't get any Pell grants or nothing? I got nothing. Wow. And so I made the tough decision. I think like as a last minute, I applied to Cal State Fullerton and because that's where my brother was going and my best friend, Kristen, that I mentioned down in Parker. Yeah. And I ended up going there.
Speaker 7:Okay.
Speaker 5:So that was like not on my radar at all. Interesting. Um, it was a commuter school, so I didn't really love my experience because nobody would live on campus. I really never got that quintessential college experience. Right. Um, I didn't There's no
Speaker 4:dorms. No. There's a student union. It's pretty lame. Because everybody's in and out just grabbing lunch at Subway.
Speaker 5:Right. And some people had, you know, they joined Greek Life. I didn't have time for that. I was working. I was working 30 hours a week. Right. So I was stacking my classes. I was in the honors program, so at least that gave me priority registration to stack my classes. Two days a week so I could work the other three. And so I would drive down to Laguna Beach on the weekend and I would work at a really fancy high end restaurant down there. And I also worked for a real estate developer, uh, on Newport Coast. Okay. So.
Speaker 4:Like, representing homes or something? You
Speaker 5:know, it was so weird. So he actually came into that fancy restaurant. It was called Hush. It was on PCH in Laguna Beach. This was at the time that, like, uh, OC was being filmed and, you know, so, you know, those people actually came in there.
Speaker 7:Right.
Speaker 5:It was an interesting place, and I remember this gentleman coming in, his name's Frank, and he came in and he's like, do you have any friends that know QuickBooks and Excel, you know, really well? I'm like 19. I was like, well, I could do that job, Frank. Like, what? He's like, I can learn. Um, and so, you know, I, I, if you would teach it to me, I'll learn it. And so he goes, okay, let's go have lunch. We'll have a conversation. I remember sitting down with him and he's like, how much do you want to get paid? I threw out 20 an hour and he said, yes, I'm like 19. Right.
Speaker 4:And this is about 10 years ago or? No, 10 years. 20 years ago almost. So this is
Speaker 5:20 years ago.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you're older than I think. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah. That was 18 years ago. And so I, you know, lo and behold, he took that and it was such a great experience working for him. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I worked for him part time and he taught me, you know, QuickBooks and Excel and he was a real estate developer. He had a partner. It was a small, you know, a little small shop. And so, um, then I either had the choice to study abroad and I was going to go to South Africa or to transfer. And I always felt like I'd missed out on my college experience. So I said, let's go ahead. I'm going to transfer to Santa Barbara. Okay. So I transferred, I got there, and realized, I was like, two years too late. Like, the, the college experience for me had, had sailed.
Speaker 4:Oh.
Speaker 5:Yeah, a lot of people You were too grown up
Speaker 4:by now. Too
Speaker 5:grown up. You're like, you people are a bunch of idiots. Nobody else is working. People are taking five, six years to graduate because mom and dad are paying for it. Right. You know, UCSB is called the University of Casual Sex and Beer for a reason. Like, it is insane. There's 20, 000 college students that live in one square mile. Next to campus on the ocean. It's crazy. If you've never been to the campus, it's gorgeous, but it's, um, it's a hard place. My
Speaker 4:nephew wants to go there.
Speaker 5:It's a hard place. Beautiful. I think I saw the beach three times that year. It was terrible. So, um, terrible in that sense of like, I was again, working for a different real estate developer. He owned a gym as well. Um, Ian, shout out to Ian. He taught me so much of what I know about entrepreneurship before I was well, before I started. And, um, I. I went to my counselor, my college counselor, and I had to get approval to take 23 credit units a quarter to graduate, because that's an insane amount of credit. Right. And I wasn't working. With a full
Speaker 4:time job. Or with a near full time. Yeah. So
Speaker 5:luckily Ian would let me study if we weren't super busy in between. And so I told, so I started at UCSB and graduated nine months later. Wow. So I graduated in three years. Wow. So, I, thank you, I finally kind of, well, I couldn't afford to live there. I was sharing a bedroom and our rent was like 1, 300 a month, it was stupid. So, yeah, I got out of there and then met my now husband, kind of the last quarter, and uh, Oh,
Speaker 4:he was out there too?
Speaker 5:No, we met on eHarmony. So, Oh,
Speaker 4:you only date people out of town.
Speaker 5:That's right, he lived in Minnesota.
Speaker 4:Why in the hell were you looking at a girl? guy from Minnesota when you were hanging out on the beach in California. I wasn't.
Speaker 5:I wasn't. I swore off dating. And I remember, so my good friend Kelly at the time, I told Kelly. How did it even hit
Speaker 4:your algorithm?
Speaker 5:So here's the deal. I went, I told Kelly, I was like, I need a break. Like I did not have trouble meeting people. It was like, I needed a filter. I needed to filter out these people. Right. There's a lot of pretty guys in Southern California, but there's not a lot else going on. Your filter for the
Speaker 4:good substance was not. Oh my God.
Speaker 5:It was not working. So I told Kelly, I was like, Kelly, I'm done. I'm swearing off dating for six months. I'm moving to Fort Collins and just, I'm gonna figure out my life. She's like, okay, Autumn, I think that's a good plan. So then a commercial comes on for eHarmony like two days later for like free communication weekend and I was like, you know, maybe I'll just meet a nice guy that like makes me believe that like, good guys exist in this world. Because I had lost all hope. And so I went on and um, I actually didn't pay for it because I didn't have the money to. It was like 60 bucks a month. I'm like, that's a lot of money as a college student. Um, and so I was matched with Trevor and a few other people and I couldn't see his picture. But we went through this like guided communication process and I really Loved what he had to say. So it's like free
Speaker 4:without, if you don't pay anything then it's free. Yes, it was at the time. But you don't get
Speaker 5:much. Yeah, and so I kind of freaked out by the end of the weekend. Could he see you? Yes. And he thought I could see him. And so I sent him this like encrypted message and it was like, send me pictures, I don't know what you look like, they're gonna close my account down tomorrow. And he goes, what are you talking about? Like, he didn't tell me that, but he thought he passed this test this whole time that I knew what he looked like. Sure. You know, so he sent me pictures. I'm like, yeah, yeah, he's super cute, fine, we can talk. And so, yeah. I mean, three weeks later we met in person and you told me we were going to get married someday and I said, absolutely we are. Sixteen years later, here we are.
Speaker 4:You know, it's uh, it's funny how you just know sometimes.
Speaker 5:I just knew.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. Um. So then, you move to North Carolina, cause he wants to He
Speaker 5:went to grad school. Be
Speaker 4:in grad school, and Went
Speaker 5:to grad school, and Bada
Speaker 4:bing, bada boom, you guys spent Oh, we didn't talk yet about wine industry.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so Like,
Speaker 4:is that your first big girl job, kinda? Yeah, well, I
Speaker 5:mean, I'd worked for the real estate industry. Sure, but you're still in school at the time and stuff, whatever. 2008, graduation, terrible time. Real estate's not a great
Speaker 4:marketplace especially.
Speaker 5:No, so I end up, we end up moving to a state I hadn't been doing any, you know, prospecting Bada bing. For and so I ended up bartending at Ruth's Chris, which was definitely not my life plan. It worked I mean that had some flexibility and certainly got to chat with people and that was fine I worked for another real estate developer and that did not go well I did not enjoy their office at all in like downtown Durham and then We had met in Napa for our first date. Yeah, and so I really started to fall in love with wine I actually had a gentleman that came in and That was an owner of a restaurant, and he said, Hey, I actually have someone coming in to do a wine dinner. I'd love to pay for you and your husband to come. Like, he was a fairly regular to come in. I was like, that's really generous. But I also was thinking, I didn't know people, like, worked in wine. Like, there's someone coming in to pour wine and do a wine. That sounds fancy. So I remember going, and I was like, wow, that's a job. And he had worked for the supplier, not the distributor. So he worked for the wine distributor. Yeah. I was like, that's kind of cool. So I kind of started getting this like bug in, you know, my ear that like, this would be really cool. And so we'd go all these wine tastings at these wine shops, et cetera. And so my husband got a post grad fellowship after he graduated.
Speaker 4:What's he, what's he studying by the way? He got
Speaker 5:his master's in public administration. Okay. But he actually never worked in local government. A government stooge,
Speaker 4:right? Is that It's training for that.
Speaker 5:And then he got his, um, uh, the post grad fellowship was with any of the federal government agencies. And so most of them, of course, are located in D. C. He went to Georgetown, so he didn't really want to go back to D. C. Yeah. He's not a big city person. Of course, a lot in Atlanta with the CDC. But I said, hey, we've kind of jumped around for your job. All these, you know, the past couple of years, there were two jobs in Northern California, one of them at the VA and on Mare Island, which is just south of Napa. And one was in Palo Alto. So he applied for both. I think he really wanted the Palo Alto gig, but it wasn't close enough to wine country for me. So he took the Mare Island option. And so we moved. Oh, okay. Before we moved though, I started researching, um, you know, the top wineries in Napa. And I Um, the position that I took was for a really prestigious winery in Stag's Leap and I bugged the heck out of the director of sales. I made up, you know, all the different emails. This is before you could search on like rocket reach for people's email, but so I made up all the iterations I thought his email could be right and sent these emails and he finally Bonded and we had a call and he is like, you live in North Carolina? Do you know how many people call and say like, Hey, I wanna move to Napa. And you know, like, he's like, but you're like, I'm actually moving there though. My husband has a job. Yeah. And he is like, I've already interviewed three people. You've never worked in the wine industry. Like, yeah, you, you've worked in the, you know, restaurant industry, but you know, I don't know. And I was like, just gimme a chance. He was like, you know, once you get moved out here, just contact me. And I was like, ah. That's not going to work. So I went home and like kind of defeated, told my husband, I went to a wine tasting that night and I came home and I was like, I have an idea. And mind you, we were grad school poor at this point. Right. And he's like, what's your idea? I said, well, I looked on the website and he's going to be in LA next week. Or maybe it was later that week and he goes, Oh, okay, where are you going with this? I was like, what if I tell him I'm going to be in LA and we just serendipitously meet? Do you think that's actually going to work? I said, but I, you know what I do know? He's going to hire
Speaker 4:somebody else before he meets me otherwise.
Speaker 5:I said, I do know if I don't do this, I'm not going to get the job. Tickets were 700. Oh shit. They were so expensive. It was so less. Did you go by yourself or with your husband? No, it was by myself. And so I remember calling him back and I called and I was like, Hey Andrew, um, you know, You know, I just, I totally forgot to tell you I'm going to be in L. A. next week. He's like, no way, me too. I was like, oh, no way. He was like, what time's your flight? I was like, I don't know. Uh, yeah, I, I don't know what time's your flight because I was going to buy mine based on his flight and literally just meet him at the airport and fly back home.
Speaker 7:Right.
Speaker 5:And so, um, yeah, I get him to tell me his flight information. I book a flight. And so we meet at the Starbucks at L. A. X. And we have this fantastic conversation. And he's like, I'm Yeah, I think that, you know, there could be something here. Like, I definitely have to come back out and meet, uh, you know, the owners of the winery. I was like, okay. So I remember I happened to be back out in California for a completely different reason like the following week and I remember him calling me and giving me this Complete like quiz about why like, what are the five Bordeaux grapes? And you know, what are the Napa Valley? And
Speaker 4:you knew some of this stuff from your time in restaurants. Not really. I
Speaker 5:did miserable. I failed miserably and my heart sank Literally, we're sitting at brunch and I'm like, I just cost myself the job. Right. And Trevor's like, no you didn't You know what you're going to do? Is you're going to go back, you're going to write him an email, and you're going to give him all the answers to the questions, because now, I knew them, I was writing them down. And you're going to show him that you have the skills to learn, but he's going to hire you for all the reasons that he can't teach you. Yeah. And I said, you're right. You're right. So, that's what I wrote to him. I said, you know, these are all the reasons you're going that test,
Speaker 4:but. Here's
Speaker 5:all my answers, but here's my point. Is that you're going to hire me because I can do this.
Speaker 4:Oh.
Speaker 5:And so, um, yeah, I ended up getting hired.
Speaker 4:So, what has Trevor been doing with his career, aside from jumping into CFO for your business here and there and different operations?
Speaker 5:He's now director of operations for a national, uh, a group, um, that does government consulting now. Okay. So, from his experience, he was, um, uh, what does he has, his Lean Six Sigma, uh, project manager, planner, that sort of stuff. So, he's
Speaker 4:a person that's trying to make government work more efficiently?
Speaker 5:Ish. Um, but now he's, he's, he's, now he's director of operations internally for this, um, uh, group that does subcontract with the VA. So he's not actually really working for the VA. But his skills, he really, he learned through working with Precision Signing Agency that like, he really loves that director of ops type of job. Interesting,
Speaker 4:yeah.
Speaker 5:So yeah, that's kind of roundabout, long story short with wrapping up my wine industry.
Speaker 4:No, I want to get back to there. I didn't. I'm just curious about this interesting person that I haven't met yet. Yeah, you need to meet
Speaker 5:him. Um, I actually didn't tell Andrew who was my boss at the time at the winery Like what I had done to get that job I think I told him about three months later when a supplier was visiting he looked at me and he said you did what?
Speaker 7:And
Speaker 5:I was like, dude, you wouldn't have hired me. He goes I never would have hired you if you'd known that. I'm like, this is like, you know, you talk about like the loco experience. That's like one of the craziest things I've ever done because I, I just, you have to put yourself out there and I, I believe that I could do it and I did. And to get a job at that type of winery with no experience in wine industry was unheard of, and it literally was a catalyst for my future career.
Speaker 4:It's really cool. I'm going to call it a short break, um, because I need to go potty. We'll be back.
Speaker 7:Sounds good.
Speaker 4:Uh, and we're back. Um, So we dropped off, you scammed your way, not scammed your way, earned your way into this job at Stone something winery? No, I didn't
Speaker 5:name it.
Speaker 4:Oh, you didn't? I
Speaker 5:didn't name it. No, at a prestigious Stag's Leap winery. Okay. But not Stag's Leap Wine Cellars or Stag's Leap Winery, uh, cause there's two of those. But yes, located in Stag's Leap. So I had worked there. Oh,
Speaker 4:I see. Okay.
Speaker 5:So. I was enjoying it. It was definitely not well paid. I think that's one of the harder parts about working in the wine industry, especially in wine country, is like, everybody wants to do it. Right, right. And so they just don't pay well. It's just
Speaker 4:like vet techs here in Fort Collins. Yeah. It's just like All these, they got all these vet graduate. Yeah. And, or, yeah, and they're like, Well, you can stay here in Fort Collins, but you can't make any money. You
Speaker 5:can't, like, live here. It's so expensive, and this was before California got so expensive. So, um, my husband with his post grad fellowship, it was a two year fellowship, he had an opportunity to do a detail for three months anywhere else in the federal government. Since Trevor likes to travel and he likes international, he wanted to be a foreign service officer growing up and, um, you know, move every two years and work as a diplomat. He had an opportunity to work in West Africa in Cote d'Ivoire. And so I said, no way, no, how are you going to Africa without me? Right. So I knew that my job wasn't going to give me the time off. You
Speaker 4:were married? We were married. Yeah, we were
Speaker 5:just newly married. I knew they weren't going to give me the time off, even though it would have been. Smart too, because I would have just come back. I was just going to be gone for like six weeks, but they wouldn't give me the leave of absence, so I had to quit. And we went over to Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, and that was an experience.
Speaker 4:Better than, less than. Good. I don't know, Mexico, Portugal,
Speaker 5:Mexico and Portugal are definitely better. Um, he, he had diplomatic privileges because he was working at the embassy, but I did not because he was not a full diplomat. He was only on detail. And so they were one or two years post civil war. Oh, wow. So not safe. Right? Everything's behind gates, armed guards, guarding everything 24 seven compounds, apartments. And so all
Speaker 4:beautiful white women are like,
Speaker 5:You know, I actually felt safer there than I do on streets in America, and I'll tell you why in a minute. I never got leered at, jeered at, inappropriate comments. Maybe from a deli, you know, worker at the grocery store once. But besides that, like, I would walk around without Protection and I felt safer there. Hmm. Like they're just more respectful.
Speaker 7:Yeah. Fair.
Speaker 5:Um, so, and I sometimes might've been the only white person or blonde person they've ever seen in their life. Right. Um, I
Speaker 4:imagine that's what I was thinking about is you just stuck out like a sore thumb. Oh,
Speaker 5:for sure. Did. And I wasn't fluent in French, my husband is. And so, um, that was difficult. And it's a different, like, dialect of French too.
Speaker 7:Right.
Speaker 5:And so I, um, it was lonely. I was largely stuck inside most of the day. I was 95. Did you have
Speaker 4:any, like your husband's. Diplomat friends wives or anything? So, a few
Speaker 5:of them, but some of them, like, worked. And some were 65,
Speaker 4:or something. I
Speaker 5:actually befriended the domestiques. And so, in these countries, it's so inexpensive to have housekeepers and, um, live in people who cook for you. And so I would go over to our friends in the embassy and Just like befriend their domestique and we'd cook together. Teach me how to cook that. She'd take me to like the open air market that I definitely should never go to by myself and it was such an eye opening experience. Like I remember our guards were Ivis and Ebay and these guys worked 24 hours on, 24 hours off making 50 cents an hour.
Speaker 7:Whoa.
Speaker 5:Unemployment was 50 percent in this country and you talk about winning the lottery, living and being born in the United States, people have no idea. Like they're just waiting and wishing to get like the money. The, the green card lottery, because there's just no opportunity. So this whole mentality of like, pick yourself up from the bootstraps, that doesn't apply in these countries. These people literally have no way to get out of this.
Speaker 4:Well, and, and there isn't frankly a culture of entrepreneurism. Nobody does that very much, you know, and so there isn't like this example we have in America of. You know, starting a loan signing business in the middle of COVID nation and growing it during a declining marketplace. No, that just doesn't, nobody even knows what that means. And they don't have
Speaker 5:the resources and because the 50 percent unemployment, like Ivis and eBay were taking care of their entire family on like this. And to be fair, the living expenses are extremely high. We were living in like an okay apartment. It was 2300 US a month and they're making 50 cents US per hour. And so there's just, I mean they're shanty towns. They live in like. like that we're not covered and it's ninety five percent humidity, it's awful. So,
Speaker 4:like, you said it was kind of terrible It was terrible. the loneliness and just, kind of, the Yeah. being around all that. Poverty of spirit kind of and stuff, or what? I got sick too. Oh, Uhhuh. I got
Speaker 5:sick and I didn't know what was going on and so I wasn't feeling well and you know, I'm sure it was, you know, based off of something I had eaten. Right. You know, like you'd go to a quote unquote restaurant, some para, did
Speaker 4:you take Ivermectin?
Speaker 5:No, I actually got C Difficile, if you know what c diff is, I don't have any idea. Hot. Great. A lot of people in like, um, rest homes, you know, assisted livings or in. Hospital with like that are immunocompromised, get it and people die from it. Oh wow. Like it can be really intense. And so thankfully I was not immunocompromised, but I didn't know and there's no way to get tested for it over there. Yeah. I thought I had tape worm. Is it
Speaker 4:parasite? Yeah. I thought I had had tapeworm.
Speaker 5:Okay, so it's not a parasite, it's um, bacteria. Okay. Um, so anyway, I'm sick and I have all this time on my hands. I'm like, oh, what are we gonna do? So I told Trevor, I said, we can't go back to Napa. Like, it's so hard to live there. You're done with your fellowship. I really miss North Carolina. You moved us all the way to Africa, let's move back to North Carolina. I was like, okay, I can agree to that. So I started looking for jobs. I'm like, how am I going to work in wine in North Carolina? So serendipitously, um, at the time, the, the company I ended up working for, for, um, eight years had a position that covered, um, North and South Carolina.
Speaker 4:Oh, like a widened distribution business? No, a
Speaker 5:supplier job. So working directly for the wineries. Okay. And so I, um, applied for that position, and again, like, I can't tell them I'm in West Africa, because that's weird. Right. Or that I'm sick. Or that I'm sick. Or that I
Speaker 4:might die. Hardly,
Speaker 5:hardly sit in front of my computer for longer than ten minutes without running to the bathroom. Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, I lost 17 pounds. Oh
Speaker 4:my.
Speaker 5:Yeah, three months. Were
Speaker 4:you
Speaker 5:Your size now and
Speaker 4:then you lost 17 pounds? So you were, like, all elbows and
Speaker 5:I was not doing well. vertebrae
Speaker 4:and stuff?
Speaker 5:So, I applied for this position, I did all this market research. I was one of 20 candidates that were interviewed, the only person that did not interview in person. I remember the recruiter calling. He's like, hey, can you come to Charlotte for an interview next week? I was like, no. He goes, no I said, yeah. I'm in Africa. He said, I'm sorry, what? You're in Africa? I said, yeah, the country, Africa. He's like, you're talking to me from Africa. It's a continent, actually.
Speaker 4:Yeah,
Speaker 5:you're right. It's the wine. The continent of Africa. Um, and I said, yeah, like I, I've been here for a month. He goes, well, hold on. Like, when are you coming back? I was like, well, I'll come back whenever I need to. Like, if I get this job, I'll come back sooner. Right. And so it was an uphill battle just like trying to then get the interview because he has to explain this to the hiring manager that I'm in Africa and I'm not coming With your
Speaker 4:husband but ready to leave him at any time. Right, but I'm not, I'm not
Speaker 5:coming in person and so, you know, I, I, again, because I had all this time on my hand, I, you know, I had come up with this target list of how I was going to do my job. Nice. You know, so I got the job.
Speaker 4:You are so focused. Like, that's one thing I've really, So what I've learned from this conversation is like these new chapters and even the, the loan document, like I'm kind of the opposite, like I'm a 30, 000 foot guy. I don't focus on much. I have a lot of interesting conversations with a ton of different people. When you focus on something, you just grind on it and really, yeah, no, that's awesome. Like that's a compliment for sure. Again, it just shows, you know, where preparation and perspiration meet, success occurs.
Speaker 5:Well, that, and I like to call it ruthless efficiency. I think I mentioned during our chat that like, people ask, like, how are you able to achieve as much as you do in a day? And I said, I am ruthlessly efficient with my time. Even when I was working still in wine, before I started my company, I never worked 40 hours a week. I worked less, far less, because I had figured out a way to optimize what I was doing. And, you know, to be fair, I had other interests. So, you know, I'd be able to go and, and do things that interested me in that time. I'd go grocery shopping during the day. I'm sure I probably wasn't supposed to be doing that, but, you know, there's less people
Speaker 4:out grocery shopping. I'm optimizing my time. If I go shopping
Speaker 5:And so, um, I've really figured that out, um, kind of in my time working in the wine industry and then parlayed that into now my own company. It's, it's funny. There's so many like coaches that like try to tell you like, this is what you should be focusing on. And this is what, you know, you know, I mentioned you have imposter syndrome or this, and I'm like, I don't struggle with that. Like I know exactly what I need to do to grow this business. And that's what I focus on.
Speaker 7:And
Speaker 5:I think for me, it. It took a little bit longer to get to a point where I was able to start delegating that. But now I've really hit that groove of, um, you know, my newest hire has been fantastic. He's a great utility player and he, um, helps out with the scheduling, but any task I give him, he's on it. And he takes so much off my plate. It's been so nice. Isn't that
Speaker 4:wonderful? It's so nice. Um, We'll just kind of flash forward to this last chapter of this, so you get this job, I guess, at the winery from Africa, and they decide you're the best candidate anyway.
Speaker 5:I move over there, I have zero idea what I'm doing. It's not at all like my last job at the winery, because I'm not actually working at the winery. I had done national sales with that winery. It's like it's like a coffee shop in Napa, but it was like on a high level there were only five wines only two of them are really like not allocated. It was like a very cush job.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 5:Um and very expensive wines. Now you're hustling. Now I'm like, okay, and I honestly had no training in that first month. I didn't even have a computer the first week. And I never, never I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. And so, I just kind of made it up. Well,
Speaker 4:nobody could hold you accountable then.
Speaker 5:No, but I was like, I literally feel so lost. Like, so I really had to like, scrounge and just figure out for myself. So I really felt like an entrepreneur that was like, being paid by someone else. I'm creating a job
Speaker 4:Um,
Speaker 5:and so I guess I figured it out in the right way, and, you know, they were pretty happy with me, and, um, you know, I never really got that guidance that I, like, needed to kick that off. And so I think I, that's one of my, like, downfalls or pitfalls as a, CEO, owner, founder. I'm not great at training people because I have this attitude of like, dude, I figured it out. You figured it out. Yeah. Yeah. Here's what
Speaker 4:needs to happen. You figure out how to do it. I'll tell
Speaker 5:you once, but if you don't know after that, I mean, just look it up. Google it. I don't know. I figured it out. So I think that's probably where I get, I get, I definitely am a little impatient. Um, because I, again, I have a 5, 000 moving parts. And I've got one chance to tell it to you, so luckily I now have my team training other people. So now I don't have to do that. Here's what
Speaker 4:needs to be trained. Yeah. That's the best.
Speaker 5:And I'll jump in when I need to, but.
Speaker 4:What, uh, what would your team agree, uh, is, uh, one of their favorite things about you?
Speaker 5:Hmm. Like, if they
Speaker 4:were all together in a room talking about you, what were some of the words they would use?
Speaker 5:Gosh, that's a great question. I think I need to ask them that. Um, I don't know. I think above all, I'm kind, I'm understanding, um, you know, for, for me, work life balance is important. I think that being, uh, flexible and nimble and knowing that this isn't their entire life is super important and just like getting to know them as humans and treating them fairly. Um, I hope they enjoy what they do. It's crazy. It's a crazy issue, but I hope that they look forward to it and don't dread it. I mean, that wouldn't be great for anybody,
Speaker 4:right?
Speaker 5:You know, so yeah,
Speaker 4:nobody wants to have a job or I don't have employees that dread the work, you know?
Speaker 5:No, I think, I think overall, I think just being, being flexible and nimble and just having that human element and recognizing them for, for people and not just employees. A big good
Speaker 4:answer. Yeah. I hope my employees would say the same. Yeah. I think they might.
Speaker 5:Have you ever asked them? Oh, yeah.
Speaker 4:Maybe not in so many words, yeah, go ask all of them down here. I'm going to go do that now. I'm going to
Speaker 5:send them a Teams message.
Speaker 4:They don't use Teams.
Speaker 5:Well, we're all virtual, so we, I didn't actually meet. Oh,
Speaker 4:right, so you don't ever get to spend time around.
Speaker 5:Sometimes. Um, our employee that's here in Fort Collins, I chose I chose that because I could actually see her every now and again. And then Justin, our main, um, scheduler. Is she,
Speaker 4:this person in Fort Collins, is that kind of like your right hand person or assistant of some sort? She's
Speaker 5:a scheduling, like she's our, one of our schedulers and she's helping with the bookkeeping now. Um, so she's here and she helps with the remote online notarization. She's stellar at that. And then Justin, Justin's a little bit of an introvert, not a little bit, I'll tell you he's a lot of an introvert. So we finally have, um, I think I've seen him twice, met him twice, but yeah, we don't Um, we see each other on stream. He just gets his job done. He does. You tell him
Speaker 4:when he needs to get done and he gets it done. Yep. That's how he likes it. Um, are you ready to jump into our shall not talk about segment? Let's
Speaker 5:do it.
Speaker 4:Faith, family politics, do you, uh, have a preference on where you start in that trio?
Speaker 5:We'll just go in order. So faith. Okay. Um, I'm not religious. Okay. Um, definitely, uh, spiritual. My religion is going out and being in nature. Um, I definitely am a fan of don't be an asshole. Um, as my religion.
Speaker 4:I want to back it up a little bit. Like, no experience, never been to church, your parents never did it. No, no, I've been to church.
Speaker 5:My parents were CEOs. Do you know what that is?
Speaker 4:No.
Speaker 5:Christmas, Easter only. Okay,
Speaker 4:gotcha. Yep. Yep.
Speaker 5:Uh, see you then. In a
Speaker 4:particular brand?
Speaker 5:Just non denominational Christian. Whatever, yeah. Um, yeah. And then my husband grew up Catholic. Okay. So a very different experience than I had. And, uh, he actually studied theology at Georgetown. Oh, interesting. So he, like, went full circle. Yeah. And, um, yeah, neither of us are, are particularly religious. I think. We definitely miss the community aspect that I think that religion brings, but we're trying to build that in a way that like makes sense for us. I think I get frustrated when people say, Oh, how, how can you raise your children to, you know, be good people without religion? I'm like, some of the worst people I know are like devoutly religious. Like, uh,
Speaker 4:Well, supposedly. Supposedly. Actually, I would argue that they're just wolves in sheep's clothing and they're not religious. Well, so, that's why I use the word faith instead of religion. I actually think of religion as being kind of a gross, sticky substance that sticks to people and makes them yucky sometimes. Yes! But having faith Faith in something is what drives people.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And
Speaker 4:whatever that faith is, that's important.
Speaker 5:And look, I don't, I don't know what I don't know. Do I, do I, do I envision as God for me? No, I don't. And I think that was one of the challenges of living in the South.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm sure. Because
Speaker 5:it was incessant. It was, what church do you go to? There was judgment. There was praying before community meals. It was like, there was no tolerance for Well, I think
Speaker 4:I'm kind of okay with, with that. Like a prayer before a Boy Scout luncheon or whatever, I think that's kind of
Speaker 5:neat, but Not for like our, our, just our community, where everybody believes different things, or, or when we blatantly tell a neighbor, that, hey, I'm not religious, my husband, who studied theology under the Jesuit priests, and is gonna tell you his justification as to where he's at, spiritually, and you still come and prophetize to us. Right. And disrespect what we just said. Right, you already
Speaker 4:know, right. Yeah, that's a tough pill to swallow. So, talk to me about, um, I mean, not in his words, but, like, he obviously had a lot of intrigue on it and at some point decided not to plug in there, or, like, what do you do with the Jesus person thing?
Speaker 5:I feel like Not to
Speaker 4:challenge you directly, but I think that's part of our theme here.
Speaker 5:No, of course. So, I actually dated someone who was black. Baha'i? Are you familiar? Yeah.
Speaker 4:I am. Yeah. Somebody that cut my hair for a long time in Colorado Springs was Baha'i.
Speaker 5:And I, I actually loved that concept. They don't have a clergy. They do what they call fireside chats, and they get together, you know, whether you're Baha'i, you're Muslim, you're Christian, you're atheist, you're non denominational, and they get together and have conversations about what's happening in the world and what's important.
Speaker 4:Interesting. And
Speaker 5:it's not necessarily based in religion.
Speaker 4:Tell me, do you know what they're Authority figure? Yes. Or their divinity figure, I guess, if you will.
Speaker 5:So they believed that all the previous prophets existed and had a message that was relevant for the time. So Muhammad,
Speaker 4:Jesus, Moses, Abraham.
Speaker 5:But they also believe in another prophet named Baha'u'llah,
Speaker 4:who
Speaker 5:was alive in the 1800s in Persia. Oh
Speaker 4:yeah, and now I'm remembering my wiki page, surfing.
Speaker 5:So, that was part of it. And so, they were severely persecuted by the Muslims. Yeah, yeah. Because there's no one that exists after Muhammad. Right. Um, in the Muslim faith, uh, in Islam. So, it was an interesting, it really opened up my eyes, and some of the best people I know are Baha'i. Um, for me, it was But still, too, like, hey, you can't have sex before marriage. You can't drink alcohol. Like, I mean, these just like antiquated, like, I don't know. Like, I feel like people sometimes like to, to do the buffet lunch when it comes to, like, religion. Sure. Sure. And choose the good parts and leave out the bad parts. Sure. And I'm like, that's not how this works. Yeah, yeah. And so, for me, I'm kind of like an all or nothing person. If I'm like, okay, this doesn't make sense, and I don't believe in this, then it's nothing for me. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know. If you
Speaker 4:can't buy the whole portion A package.
Speaker 5:Right.
Speaker 4:Then you're kind of out.
Speaker 5:Right. And I staunchly believe in evolution and science. And for me those two are at odds. And I know they're not always for people but like for me you have one or the other.
Speaker 7:Hmmm. Interesting. And
Speaker 5:so, um, yeah, I, like I said, I'm definitely teaching our kids to be kind, ethical human beings, to treat everything and everyone with respect. Yeah, yeah. And, um, yeah. I would challenge anyone to, to tell me that my kids are not growing up to be fantastic humans without Yeah. So.
Speaker 4:I, uh, I'm trying to remember the title of my blog. I, I address a lot of these kind of topics, but I, I, I, I reframed basically the Ten Commandments as the ten principles for your best good.
Speaker 7:Oh, I love that. In
Speaker 4:a very secular way, because like, for the most part, the Ten Commandments are all, it's better for you. Yes. You know, when I, when I first agreed to go to church with my now wife. Yeah. Before I was a Christian, because I was, I was 27, 28 or something like that before I came to faith, I told my father, now father in law, uh, you know, I'll go, cause I had studied ethics, I had studied metaphysics, I wanted to know how to be a better person. I was like, well, probably if I, at least if I find a good church, I'll, even if this Jesus story is a big scam, I'll still be a better person, kind of, for studying this thing. Yeah. And, and that's, I guess that was my gateway to Christianity in some weird ways, and then pretty soon I was like, Oh yeah, this is totally true, because I studied the prophecies from the Old Testament and some of the lines up, and I was like, no, pretty much true.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and you know, we're trying to teach our kids too, we took them to church actually, recently, a couple weeks ago. Oh. We went to the universalist church. Unitarian. Yeah. Yeah. Um, that seemed like the most up
Speaker 4:north side of town or Yeah. It seemed
Speaker 5:like the easiest like transition from like not going to church to like Right. Never heard of it. No, no. We had talk to our kids about it because they, they know kids that go to church. Sure. Of course. And they talk about it at school. And
Speaker 4:there's six and eight now they're five and six. Five and six. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 5:And so that was an interesting experience. Um, our son hated it. He didn't really know what was going on. He just, is he older? No, he's the younger one. He didn't want to go to, like, the, the Sunday school and, you know, he didn't want to be separated from us. He was like, I'm so confused why I'm going through this. Um, it was interesting. Like, it definitely had, like, you know, I think, again, missing out on that community of like minded, but again, I don't want to feel like an imposter or an impersonator. Like, if I don't believe something, it's really hard for me. Like, I'm not going to sit there and take it. Right. Totally. That's been an interesting
Speaker 4:I totally resonate. I mean, honestly, I was in a lot of the same place at times in my life. So
Speaker 5:yeah, so I, you know, we tried it. Um, I don't think it's the best fit for us, but we're still, we're still searching.
Speaker 7:Okay. Yeah. Still open
Speaker 5:to it. I'm sure, you know, I know it's hard on my in laws who grew up in Catholicism and Catholic, the Catholic faith is a whole different animal. Totally. Oh my gosh. A lot of shame, a lot of guilts, a lot of very staunch opinions. And so, um, yeah, that's been interesting. I've definitely learned a lot more about. Like that through my in laws.
Speaker 4:My, uh, if I have like a core philosophy, it's that power corrupts, you know? And so I've like sought out the least dogmatic, the least corrupt. It's the least powerful churches that I could be a member of and stuff just cause it, so for example, our church has like three paid and two unpaid pastors.
Speaker 7:Okay.
Speaker 4:Nobody's like a big stick, the big,
Speaker 7:whatever,
Speaker 4:right? Nobody's making a ton of money. It's a servant's kind of a role for sure. And it just, it's good for the church to have more than one person that's like the decider of all these things. Cause no matter who it is, somebody that gets, you know, Very much power ends up potentially getting corrupted if they're not surrounded That's part of the peer advisory thing that loco think tank does it's like let somebody look into your life Look into your person a little bit so you can make sure you're not fucking yourself up accidentally And
Speaker 5:that's one of the parts of the Baha'i faith that also resonated. Yeah, that's a credit I don't have a clergy. They don't have I mean they still have Kind of leadership positions and etc. But it's not in the same way. Not the bosses, kind of. They're not the bosses. Yeah, that's intriguing. So. I might have
Speaker 4:to go on another Wikipedia thread, which, although I shouldn't say that because like, who the hell knows if anything's true if it's on Wikipedia.
Speaker 5:That's true. It's true. Go on Reddit, go on Reddit. And Reddit
Speaker 4:is better, yeah. Twitter or X, whatever. Yeah. So yeah. I think that checks faith pretty good. Family. We've talked a bit about Trevor, but, uh, let's talk a little bit more, uh, if we may, what, uh, was it that made you so sure so soon that he was the guy for you?
Speaker 5:Well, first I like to say family is everything. Um, the reason I do what I do is for my family. And, um, the reason I'm building this and eventually I, you know, my exit plan is to spend more time with them. Uh, time is the most precious currency on earth. And, um, from believer in that. For me, getting to a means of an end as far as financial independence allows us that time that we really want. And so, Trevor, Trevor just understood me. He got me. It was a tough time in my life. My parents were going through a divorce at the time that we met, and he was so kind. He is so kind. Um, the conversations. Plus you
Speaker 4:dated a bunch of boys that sucked. I did.
Speaker 5:I did. Yeah. He just, like, I trusted him implicitly, and I do to this day. Like, I never question whether he would be unfaithful or he would hurt me. Like, it's just not in his DNA. He's so, like, faithful and dedicated. Yeah, and the conversations we have, like, I never had the intellectual conversations with anybody that I have with him. And I love that. I love our talks and our walks. He's deep a lot, like very deep, and I'm like, sometimes can we just talk about the weather? Right. But I love that part of him, I like, I really adore that, and, and we're best friends. At the end of the day, like, you know, he's Is he funny too? Sometimes.
Speaker 4:Not as funny as you are. No, I'm not funny. I wouldn't really call either of us
Speaker 5:funny. Um, yeah, we have our, like, little own humor, but, um, yeah, he puts up with my My crazy? I mean, I, I'm a lot. Like, I'm pretty dominant. Oh yeah. I definitely am dominant. No doubt. So, so trying to, you know, having that balance, like, it was funny, I was telling your son the other day, he's like, you know, why is mom the boss? She's like, you ask her, she's always the boss. Right. Like, are you the boss of her? Well,
Speaker 4:a man that can be calm and self assured. And the vicinity of that. Yeah, because you are, you're a boss babe. For sure. Yeah. Like you're growing this thing, crushing it, you know, you're, you're been a whirlwind of activity I'm sure your whole marriage.
Speaker 5:Uh, my whole life. Yeah. Your whole life. He calls me the badass boss bitch. Right.
Speaker 4:BBB Baby
Speaker 5:So I try my best to, to yield a little bit to that. I don't know how good I'm doing that in, in our relationship'cause it's a lot, it's a lot for me to be that at work, to then be that at home. Yeah. And in a relationship. So, um, well.
Speaker 4:Honestly, that you feel secure in him like you've discussed is, that's big praise. There's
Speaker 5:nothing, I mean, you know, I, my personal family background, uh, you know, didn't lead me a lot of faith in, in relationships and marriage, and my brother doesn't ever want to get married and doesn't want to have kids, and a lot of that comes from the example that we had. I think it's interesting how differently we interpreted that. Yeah. I think that I certainly, again, until I met Trevor, I didn't have that experience of knowing that I was the transcript. I was going to be safe. I was taken care of. He respected me in a way that I knew that he would never, never do that to me. That's
Speaker 4:cool. Yeah. Um, we always do one word descriptions of the children. Hmm. Would you like to try that with yours?
Speaker 5:Hmm. Vivian, well, can I do two words?
Speaker 4:Yes, you can hyphenate or you can do two separate if you want, whatever.
Speaker 5:We call her Sweet and Salty.
Speaker 4:Sweet and Salty, I like it. Sweet and
Speaker 5:Salty, or better, for Vivian and Kipton, so Vivian's the older, she's six and a half, she's almost seven, and then Kipton, they're seventeen months apart. Okay. So very close. And, um, she's our cat and he's our puppy dog.
Speaker 4:That's interesting. The, uh, The sweet and salty applies to cats very nicely, actually. 100%.
Speaker 5:When she is, like, happy and in a good mood, like, Purring, curl up against you. Oh, she is lovely, but man, can she be a little salty sometimes. She's actually grown out of that a little bit. Like, I, this, like, six, almost seven, has been such a sweet age for her. She's got such a kind heart. She's so wicked smart. She's so incredibly smart and she has been like she was talking before she turned one and she just has I mean She's want to be a cardiologist and she was two and she still does to this day she just gets it and she she has the Dedication she practices she can sing and play the piano at the same time. She just started learning You know Whatever she chooses to do and apply herself to, she does well, but because she has that focus.
Speaker 7:Right.
Speaker 5:You know, and our son, Kipton, we're still kind of unwrapping him, you know, for the first two years of his life, he was, I shouldn't say boring, that's not a good word to describe your child. Hmm. He just was really, like, just kind of observing. Yeah, yeah. You know, and we're like, does this kid have any personality? And now he's hilarious. Like, he, he is the comedian in the family and he says the most ridiculous things and he spews facts about animals all day long. He loves learning about animals and, um, you know, it's hard to live in the shadow of a very capable, smart, older sister who knows everything. Sure. And, you know, I think we're just starting to realize that, that like, it's hard because she's always correcting him because he's doing something wrong because she knows better. And so, um, they love each other dearly. They are best friends about 95 percent of the time, which I'm so thankful for. And I hope that we've done a good job of helping cultivate because those sibling relationships are so important. And they don't have cousins. Um, they may eventually, both of our brothers don't ever want to have kids. And so his sister's getting married shortly, my husband's sister, and so I think she'll eventually have kids, but our kids are going to be so much older. So they've kind of just got each other.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. Well, at least they have each other. They do.
Speaker 5:They do.
Speaker 4:Um, anything else you want to say about family while we're in that category?
Speaker 5:Yes, they're, they're, they're my life. I mean, we, we fought hard. Your littles.
Speaker 4:How, how, how's your relationship with, Your folks, his, your, your husband's folks.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so my mom, I'm super close with her. We talk every single day Maybe more than once a day. Sometimes I call her two or three times a day She's like the only one in my life that wants to hear about all the mundane things that are happening Right,
Speaker 4:the regular stuff.
Speaker 5:All the ridiculous stuff that you know, like maybe Trevor hears about it, too You know, my dad and I, you know, I'm trying to meet my dad where he is Um, we're not super close, never really have been. Um, there's a lot of tumultuous kind of history there. And, um, I love him and I only want the best for him. We talk sparingly. Yeah. He still lives back in the desert. Gotcha. So we don't see him that much, maybe once a year, maybe twice a year. Um, and then my in laws are, are fantastic. I mean, they raised a fantastic human being that I'm so thankful for. And, um, they live out in Florida and we get to see them a couple times a year. They're coming to visit soon.
Speaker 4:Awesome. We're in Minnesota, by the way. I think I started to ask Southwest,
Speaker 5:like New Ulm, New Ulm. Yeah, they're from New Ulm. They're a
Speaker 4:big cow.
Speaker 5:There's a big
Speaker 4:statue of a big cow in New Ulm, I believe. There's,
Speaker 5:uh, Herman the German. Oh,
Speaker 4:wait. No, that's not New Ulm. They have
Speaker 5:Herman the German.
Speaker 4:I, I, I spent a year in Worthington, Minnesota, uh, which is basically an hour east of Sioux Falls. South Dakota? Okay. You said Southwest, right? Southwest, yep. It's not too far away. It's outside of Mankato. Yeah, by Austin. Okay, yep. Yeah, by Austin. Yep. Okay. Very cool. It's actually
Speaker 5:from Esseg, which is what that is. They know it. The Carl's Corner is what they're known for. Okay. It's like Little Podunk Restaurant.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Well, if I go through there again anytime soon, I'll stop at Carl's. Um, politics. Yeah. Who do you like in the 2024 election?
Speaker 5:I do not know how we got to this place. These are our two options. Three
Speaker 4:options.
Speaker 5:Basically, two.
Speaker 4:Basically. Basically, two. I just I vote away every year, so I always look at least past the first two.
Speaker 5:I just, I don't understand how in a country of 300 million plus, this is where we're at. Yeah. Um, that we have two very, uh, Old and somewhat senile, both of them. Um, I'm certainly not Republican. Um, I, I think I definitely fall somewhere in the middle. I like to say that I'm socially liberal, fiscally conservative.
Speaker 4:It's libertarian, actually.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Well, there's some libertarian thing ish. But, but,
Speaker 4:but not enough, like the Democrats want to fix all the bad things about society with money. The libertarians are all like, You know, most of the bad things about society are, are either your imagination or something that you'll make worse by putting money on it. Do, do
Speaker 5:I think that, um, everyone should have as many guns as they're allowed to? Absolutely not. That's my personal opinion. Oh, really? No, I don't. I don't. I mean, I certainly having school age kids and growing up and understanding like what can happen and not feeling safe sending them to school, like that's not something I had to worry about growing up. Okay. Yes, do I think mental health is a huge component? Absolutely. Sure. But. And it's not because they are after guns, it's because they are not after guns.
Speaker 4:They want to be a warzone and they want to be part
Speaker 5:of the war. You know, so it's a mix of a lot of different things. I mean, you, you know, you're, you're trying to be a warzone, but it's the same word. You're trying to be a warzone. You know, but it's, it's, you know, a lot of these, that a lot of people are like, okay, I'm going to punish these people because they
Speaker 4:want to be part of war.
Speaker 5:I'm trying to say, I, I can't do that. And that doesn't
Speaker 4:mean I'm not gonna punish them. I got my guns, you suckers can just not have them. I don't have guns for
Speaker 5:the record. I don't think, but, you know, what are you going to do? Like, people are not going to relinquish their guns. Well,
Speaker 4:that's what I'm saying, like, I, I, I appreciate it. I don't want my kids to get shot or anybody else's kids to get shot or whatever, but I just, I, I guess I feel like in the situation of gun control that the The proposed cure is worse than the disease that exists. Unfortunately, like what really needs, in my opinion, my, my, my mom's brother was institutionalized from the time he was like in his early twenties until he died a few years ago, uh, which was like over 40 years and he was mentally unstable. Um, and my mom also had a paranoid schizophrenic break and there was a season when she definitely should not have ever had an access to a gun and probably the whole time I knew my uncle. Like he was just a dangerous kind of person that needed to be institutionalized. He would have spent his whole time in prison if it was today because we don't have state hospital resources. We don't have mental institutions to try to like differentiate between actual mental disease And you done bad things, go to prison because we make money from you being in prison.
Speaker 5:Well, I think I have a personal connection to this. I have a distant family member and I won't kind of call out who, who it necessarily is. Um, they're not directly related to me, but, um, who's currently in, uh, awaiting a sentence to be put in prison because of, um, possessing multiple weapons of mass destruction. Okay. And then, um, immediately got out on bond.
Speaker 7:Right.
Speaker 5:For 18 months, in which time he could have done whatever he wanted to do, and then was rearrested for felony possession of a firearm. Yeah. In multiple firearms. Wow. So, he should have never had access to that.
Speaker 4:Well, for sure. Like, I'm not saying
Speaker 5:But he easily did. And there were And there were Well, and that's
Speaker 4:what I'm saying. Like, better laws to keep Known dangerous people Right. Away from guns is important.
Speaker 5:But he thinks he's gonna be in prison for a year. And, okay, it's a year, it's three years, it's five years. What happens after that? Right. And so, I think, I don't have the solution. Yeah, no, I think having that personal connection and, and knowing, uh, you What it's done to extended family and, um, it just, it sucks.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:So, but also, like, he should absolutely be in prison or be getting mental help or both. Because he should have never had the guns in the first place.
Speaker 4:So, are you, like, in, in recent months here, we've seen a lot of stories of just, like, like, random people being attacked and thrown on subway rails. In New York, I'm not going to New York. I know you're not going to New York, but, but if I'm in New York, And I'm concerned about my personal safety. Should I be able to carry a gun?
Speaker 5:I feel like most of the time people aren't pulling them out fast enough to protect themselves. They get them used on themselves. Like, I, I don't hear that many of those stories other than, like, people entering their homes. Where, like, they're able to actually protect yourself in enough time.
Speaker 4:Well, protect yourself, yes, but also, like, you don't really see the stories because it goes against the narrative, but a lot of Like, bad guys have been stopped by random people at the church, at the school, at the whatever with a gun.
Speaker 5:Sure. Less so than the people that just mass shoot a ton of people before they die. Totally. But if more
Speaker 4:people had guns, they would stop those people sooner, is my argument. I don't want to get
Speaker 5:more people guns. Absolutely not. No? Not even good people? that. No. Alright. No.
Speaker 4:Anything else on the politics side you want to talk about?
Speaker 5:I just think we need to come up with better options. I'd, I'd vote for Pete Buttigieg if he was still running. Oh, really? Okay. You know, there's, um He did a
Speaker 4:really good job as Transportation Secretary.
Speaker 5:He is, but there's no one that I mean, unfortunately, our, our, um, country is so polarized, and the fact that he's gay, unfortunately, is Oh, I don't
Speaker 4:care about his gay. I
Speaker 5:know, I don't, and you don't, but The country, I don't think, is in a place that they're going to vote someone, like, entirely, because of that. His sexual orientation has nothing to do with him as a person and how he could be a president. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think you could do good with that, but anyway, um, no, I'm, I'm sort of disgusted about the current state. I cannot imagine another four years with Trump in office. So you'll vote
Speaker 4:for Biden to prevent that, probably? Yes. Just vote for RFK. Vote against. It would be positive.
Speaker 5:Whatever my vote is, it's against Trump because that's the worst option, in my opinion.
Speaker 4:Did you move to Colorado for the weed?
Speaker 5:That's nice. I actually love that they've legalized shrooms.
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or decriminalized anyway. Decriminalized. So you, you've enjoyed that?
Speaker 5:Uh, yeah. I've thought about it. Microdosing? I've thought about microdosing. Yeah. I definitely, I struggle with anxiety and I think that it could totally Oh? You haven't done it yet, so. No. No.
Speaker 4:Okay. Do you want to spark this up?
Speaker 5:You can go ahead.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I am, I definitely am pro that. I love that, um, I mean, part of the reason we moved to, to Colorado, yes, it's more liberal. Right? Um, you know, the laws I'm not getting pregnant
Speaker 4:or having
Speaker 5:any more children, but it's not okay for me to be taken away. It's not okay with me. I'm not getting pregnant or having any more children.
Speaker 4:Do you think there should be, like, a timeline on abortion where you can just do it all the way up until birth, basically?
Speaker 5:I think that unless the people that are fighting against abortion want to go ahead and adopt said babies, that they should not have an opinion. I think
Speaker 4:there's a lot of demand for adoption.
Speaker 5:Um, there's so many, so many babies out there that are not adopted. Just stay in the
Speaker 4:system.
Speaker 5:Just stay in the system. And again, or how about let's go ahead and provide, uh, what they said, out of the 40 richest countries, we are the only one that does not offer maternity or parental leave as a mandate. Yeah, yeah. So until we actually start supporting the moms. I mean, it was brutal. I had a very tough birth with Vivian, and I had to go back to work. I actually got a letter stating that I'd be fired if I didn't show back up to work. This was
Speaker 4:at the YNRE? Yeah,
Speaker 5:yeah. I mean, I'm sure it was standard HR issue, but I wasn't ready at 12 weeks. Absolutely not. Mentally, physically, I had a heart telemetry monitor. They thought something was wrong with my heart. I was up every three hours on the dot for six months. Wow. I was not in a position to work, but I would have lost my job.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:So, I think that we need to do a better job of supporting parents, not just moms.
Speaker 4:Well, and I guess one of my struggles, like, I've, right now I have a no limits, Vacation policy, like Alma, who you met, is full time, and she's got a lot of stuff planned this year. She's probably gonna get like four weeks off in her third year of working for me. But she's fast and efficient and capable, and so I'm happy to do that. And three or four years down the road, I, she might start having kids. She might never come back, but I'd like to support her through that. And if anybody tells me I must, I'd rather fire her.
Speaker 5:Mm, interesting.
Speaker 4:Um, that's just my personality type. Sure. Like, if there's a federal, you must do this thing, then I shall not.
Speaker 5:Well, I think that Is kind of
Speaker 4:my perspective. You're thing. You're the rarity, though. You're the rarity,
Speaker 5:though. Most people don't do the right thing. And most people don't offer. Anything and I think you know, I I could agree with you on that like you want to do your own policy And that's fantastic But I think it's for the people who choose not to offer those resources or
Speaker 7:that's fair
Speaker 5:or offer You know a part of the reason and I didn't even know when we were moving here UPK and universal pre k That was fantastic, right, you know for me
Speaker 4:Well, but there were private organizations doing that before. I feel like I should open this door because it's getting kind of
Speaker 5:spoken. I was like, where are you going? No, there were, but like to offer universal, not based on income, that you get 15 hours paid for it. Like, I love that we got 600 off every month to pay for pre K. We've been paying almost close to 35, 000 for six years for our children. To either have preschool or daycare. And that's a lot of money.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So. That's fair.
Speaker 5:I
Speaker 4:understand. It's been nice. Yeah, well, Jill and I don't have any kids at all, and we've been paying property taxes our whole lives.
Speaker 5:Did you know property taxes don't actually go to the schools? PSD just put something out about that.
Speaker 4:Well, they totally do.
Speaker 5:Hmm, tangentially.
Speaker 4:Well,
Speaker 5:I'll send you the article. They go to
Speaker 4:the county, and the county funds the schools. But, but still. But
Speaker 5:if you're increased property taxes, they're not actually getting more money. They don't get all that great. Yeah. They don't get all that great. That's fair. It's what they were saying. That's fair. Yes, yes. There's a portion of that. That
Speaker 4:was pretty smart of them to say that, too, because people are like, what the fuck, Lambert County? Why did my, my tax assessed, my, yeah, I think it went from 430 to 695 of my house. Did you appeal them? Yeah, and I sent him an appraisal. Did
Speaker 5:you get a
Speaker 4:They said fuck off. I wonder, so Even though I had two recent appraisals to show him.
Speaker 5:My husband appealed, but I don't know what they said.
Speaker 4:Well, but he's a government insider, so He's a
Speaker 5:government insider? It's different than me.
Speaker 4:I'm just a peon that talks bad things about the government, so it hurts my credibility.
Speaker 5:He sent them the, like, this is the recent house assessment, um, you know, but unfortunately Yeah,
Speaker 4:and you got it down?
Speaker 5:I don't know. Oh. I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 4:They told us to bite it.
Speaker 5:We won't let them know that we finished our basement. Anything else on your
Speaker 4:right? Oh! I'm gonna tell them. I'm in this niche economy now. I'm a fascist. I mean, it's just very basic. Uh huh. Uh, anything else you'd like to touch on in politics?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I just, we need to come up with more than a two party system.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Agreed. Well, and yet you won't vote for RFK. I could,
Speaker 5:I would vote for him. If Biden
Speaker 4:would drop out today, RFK would definitely be president because a whole bunch of his supporters are the people that think that Trump fucked up the country with the COVID lockdown, blah, blah, blah. I'm not saying I
Speaker 5:won't vote for RFK. Okay. I'm not, like, I, I am unaffiliated, so. I'm just saying if Biden
Speaker 4:should drop out because he's totally incapable of serving on the term.
Speaker 5:He is. He is.
Speaker 4:And then RFK would win.
Speaker 5:capable of doing it either. Agreed.
Speaker 4:But then RFK would win. Yeah. If Biden would drop out and concede the Democratic nomination that. RFK ran for two RFK.
Speaker 5:We need to have an upgrade because they
Speaker 4:blackballed. Do you know what happened to RFK in the democratic primaries?
Speaker 5:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 4:Go follow a, follow some threads. Not on MSN. bbc. I
Speaker 5:don't watch m They
Speaker 4:basically changed all the rules to make it so that somebody even rich and successful, like Robert Kennedy Jr. Could never possibly. Challenge the standing president for the nomination. Like they changed all the rules so that it was basically impossible. That's why he went independent. Not because he was a dark horse, but because he tried to have an honest conversation about it. They wouldn't let him.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think that
Speaker 4:And that's why we're in the challenge of being taken over by this uniparty.
Speaker 5:I feel like we also need to have upper age limits, just as we have a minimum age limit. If you have to be 35, you shouldn't be older than these people.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but that's just a symptom of the disease. The disease is, is that the corrupt state wants Biden to be the president next.
Speaker 5:Right, but I'm just, like, I don't want him to be, like I, I, most people I know don't want him to Almost nobody wants Biden to be the next
Speaker 4:president, but But, but
Speaker 5:people don't want Trump to be president, either, so Right,
Speaker 4:but they weren't given that opportunity, like, there wasn't an honest conversation about who should be the president instead of Biden.
Speaker 5:But do you think someone after the age of 70 should actually be serving as president? If
Speaker 4:they're competent, I mean, I just listened to a Well, what's a competency? I listened to a Two hour long, hour and a half long conversation that Ron Paul had on Tucker Carlson recently. He's 89. Fucking guy is smarter than I was ever.
Speaker 5:Are you proposing a competency test and what does that look like?
Speaker 4:Right. Well, no, there shouldn't be. It should just be, there should just be fair competition. There shouldn't be this corruption of process that the Democratic and the Republican parties have put in place to make sure that the people that run under their banner toe the line. It's fair. Because right now, like if you, if you're anti abortion Democrat. You're fucked. You'll never get on the ballot anywhere. You'll never get a re election. Ever. Fair. Basically. Or if you're a, uh,
Speaker 5:Pro choice. Republican.
Speaker 4:Same thing. Or, or even some of the other hot buttons, you know, like, I mean, right now the Democratic Party is in a struggle because of the whole Israel Palestine Gaza thing because they got a lot of rich Jews that have been Democrats forever. But now they also got free, free Palestine and from a river to the sea across Harvard, Columbia, USC. What's happening
Speaker 5:in Gaza is an absolute tragedy, and it is a genocide.
Speaker 4:Agreed. Well, no, I disagree with that.
Speaker 5:I have friends that are Jewish, but I also have a lot of Palestinian friends. Sure. And I, I, while I see both sides, what is happening in Palestine is incredibly absurd. Yeah. And shouldn't be happening. And we shouldn't be supporting it. Yeah. That's my belief. You asked me about politics. I think
Speaker 4:we need to let Israel do what Israel needs to do. I agree, but we should stay out of it. Right.
Speaker 5:We shouldn't be supporting one way or another.
Speaker 4:Yeah, sure. I'm game with that. It's not gonna happen. Except for the fact that many of the, like, the problem is, like, Do you know about the Abraham Accords? Are you familiar with that?
Speaker 7:I've heard the term, yeah.
Speaker 4:That was basically the peace treaties between Israel and Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates and it was working toward, like, really making progress that Trump kind of, well, Kushner brokered those deals. Everybody wanted to be friends with Israel because Israel was kind of an anchor to the Middle East. And this is kind of
Speaker 5:Fractured.
Speaker 4:Yeah, at least threaten that accord. Like, by having that accord, it agreed that Israel had the right to exist. If Israel doesn't have the right to exist, it's just going to be forever under threat. And that's what Hamas is about. And so, it's tough, but, you know, I go for national sovereignty. Like, Israel has to do what it has to do. We don't necessarily have to fund them to do it. They got enough money. Jews to do it themselves, my opinion. But yeah, I, I totally grieve for the Palestinian people as well. Like if I was them, I would just at least move to the West bank because Gaza is not a sustainable piece of territory where it's at.
Speaker 5:Sure.
Speaker 4:Um, and so like, there's nothing to build there as long as, especially as long as the people are controlled in their minds by Hamas. Cause clearly like they, they won reelection. Like by 85 percent with a stated goal of Israel must be destroyed. That's our charter. So they've obviously propagandized their people to the point where they can't. Almost can't think of anything else, and there's
Speaker 5:But have the Jewish not done the same thing? The Israeli To their own people?
Speaker 4:Um, no, I think they're pretty Western. Like, they have a pretty abundance of knowledge. Jewish people Jewish students go all over the world to study. No, but I'm
Speaker 5:just saying that they believe that they have the right to destroy and kill these people.
Speaker 4:No, they have the right to try to continue to exist, is really the conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 5:but
Speaker 4:Well, but if you want to keep existing, that might be your only choice. They have to get out of Gaza, in my opinion. Um, I don't know. It's a tough one. It is a tough one. Yeah, if you can't agree that it's a really tough one, then you're not paying enough attention. No, it
Speaker 5:is absolutely a tough one. Some of my very closest friends are from Palestine. And I've met some of the kindest people when I lived in the desert. And, seeing, again, it's not,
Speaker 4:it's not a one sided
Speaker 5:thing. Persians
Speaker 4:are my favorite. I've barely met any people that I like more than Persians. I
Speaker 5:also have great Jewish friends, too. Right. So I see, it's a complicated situation. Totally. There's not a great answer. Totally. For any of
Speaker 4:it. So anybody that, Thinks that it's not complicated.
Speaker 5:It's not paying enough attention. Exactly.
Speaker 4:Um, do you want to share your loco experience?
Speaker 5:Hmm, I feel like I might have shared it earlier. Yeah, was that the one? That was a
Speaker 4:crazy experience. I mean, it was pretty crazy. I'm not,
Speaker 5:it's pretty crazy. I think certainly living in West Africa was a really crazy and transformative experience. It was brief, but it was life changing. Changed my perspective and you know, certainly has colored the way that we Um, you know, teach our Children. I mean, how do we teach our Children? You know, for me, part of being a parent is creating a better life.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Um, providing more opportunities than we had. I don't think all parents think that way, but that's our opinion as parents. It's Trevor and I and but also treat. I mean, that was
Speaker 4:the goal for every family. A couple generations ago, it seemed. Which I don't
Speaker 5:think it is necessarily. But I think, um, teaching them humility, and, um, giving them that perspective. I think, you know, travel, for me, gives them that. Um, certainly not staying at posh resorts all these places. I'm not talking about that. But, um, giving back as far as, like, service, time, volunteering, um, you know, again, treating people and animals and insects with respect. You know, like, just, you know, It's just showing them that, um, not everybody is nearly as damn lucky as we are to live the way that we live. And it's really hard at this age to be like, ah, you have no idea. You know, like I grew up in a 1200 square foot house. Um, we didn't have a lot of resources. We all shared a bathroom. You know, my daughter the other day was like, hey, I just learned that not everybody has their own bathroom. I'm like, oh man, we got a long way to go here. You know, like I think that, um, Africa was really, again, While it wasn't my favorite experience, it was the most eye opening experience of my life to date of just seeing how privileged anyone is to be born in the United States and to have the opportunities that we do. To even speak out against our politicians and say we don't like our government. Totally. We'd be murdered in other countries for doing that. So, yeah.
Speaker 4:You know, I'm feeling compelled to share a little story from my past in this moment because, um, like, something that you and I have in common is that we've been blessed both physically and intellectually beyond the average. Yeah. You know, we're way smarter and physically very capable. And I felt super, like, embarrassed almost about that, like, Uh, as I was, especially as I was studying ethics and different things and I was like awkward about it, I was like, well, how did I, because I remember I grew up a shorty, you're all awkward and weird and you try to like almost avoid that. knowledge, but ultimately it's the truth. And the truth is, is probably both of your kids are going to both be physically and intellectually gifted beyond measure. And so I appreciate where you're going. And when I ultimately came to faith, it was like, you know, to those who have been given much, much as expected. And so I guess that would be my charge to you is kind of, you know, recognizing that it's not just about where you were born and whatever else. And. It's amazing to me that through the tough family dynamics between your mom and dad and the moving and all this, like you've shined forth and through with all this focus and determination. So consider this a great compliment and a challenge. I
Speaker 5:appreciate that. Challenge accepted.
Speaker 4:And for your kiddos too. Make them be great ones.
Speaker 5:They are so far doing a great job.
Speaker 4:I know you can do it. God bless you. Um, if people want to find you, they hear this conversation and they're like, that chick is really cool. Uh, do you want to share your website or something? Yeah, so
Speaker 5:you can find, um, my company at PrecisionSigningAgency. com. You can find me on LinkedIn. I am just Autumn Fleck. Uh, you can sign, uh, find Precision Signing Agency on there as well. I'm on Instagram. I don't use it a ton. Um, I love to scroll a little bit, um, but I have like an adversarial relationship with social media after watching a few documentaries on it and I'm also on Facebook, but I usually just use that for marketplace. So you can't find me. I
Speaker 4:just dump and leave. Yeah, I, you
Speaker 5:know, you can send me a message on Instagram or you can follow me. I post stories, but I don't actually post to my timeline, uh, just because I'm also don't want to post my kids in, you know, permanent places without their consent. Yeah. I think
Speaker 4:that's wise. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I hope you enjoyed it. I did. Okay. All right. See you next time
