Speaker 1: 0:30

It's nice to get out of your everyday normal, and then could you start to like fall into a rut of what you think I mean I'm talking about myself here, yeah, yeah Of what I feel like is normal, comfortable, and then, like I pull myself out, I see what other people are doing and I'm like, oh, it's okay for me to like have these high expectations. Just because these people don't, that I'm used to, doesn't mean I need to like lower it. I just need to either say come on up with me or this isn't the right fit for me. You've been doing a lot of this stuff. Tell me a little bit about that.

Speaker 2: 1:11

I started in right after the last shoot we did together in 21, really expanding, really expanding my energy, my spirit, my being, all of that I just heard you doing that, by the way.

Speaker 2: 1:25

I did a lot of that traveling. I did a lot of reading. I joined RRT Syndicate, which is a national entrepreneurship group, and met people who were doing things across the country that also felt like I don't have a place at home, I don't have the growth people at home, let me go find it elsewhere. So I joined that group and then when you're surrounded by 2,000 other people that are in similar mindset, it just elevates where you are and allows you to expand. So I started that in 21 and then I started doing all of the traveling. I really got into 75.

Speaker 2: 2:06

Heart was a big change for me, which I had just done when we did the shoot as well for the first time, and that reading and the expansion that I did during that time really kind of was a catalyst for me to really do a lot of self development and understanding of where I was and what people were impacting in me, how I was being impacted by other people, how I would revert back based on the people that were in my life at the time and just really evaluated kind of where I was, where I wanted to go and how I was gonna get there.

Speaker 1: 2:40

Yeah, and then how have you seen those changes like come about in your life over the last couple of years?

Speaker 2: 2:47

It's been wild. The group of people that I'm surrounded by now is different, and not in a good way or a bad way, it's just different. I tend to surround myself with people who are in a growth mindset, that are in a place in their life where they're either experiencing their own kind of awakening to life or at a point where they understand that I don't wanna just be the same person for my whole life.

Speaker 1: 3:12

I wanna continue to develop. Why can't you say that that's good, that's better, cause you feel like you're gonna offend the people that you start with. No, I just think it's different, we all.

Speaker 2: 3:20

I had a conversation with someone on Friday. I was speaking at an event on Friday and one of the participants came up and was in tears after I talked and she said I feel like I'm starting to understand, but I'm so late. I'm in my mid fifties and I'm late to this game. And I told her. I said you're not late. We all get it when we're meant to get it, but our journey in life is about learning and growing and some people just don't ever understand that part of it, and that's not good or bad. It just means that wasn't meant for them during this time in their life or at this point in their life or maybe in this lifetime. It wasn't meant for them. It's not a place for me to judge good or bad. Right, it's just about where each one of us is in our journey and where we find it and how we get there. Well, I'm okay with saying certain people are either.

Speaker 1: 4:11

Yeah, obviously not to offend them.

Speaker 2: 4:16

If I thought that they were gonna come across it, but to?

Speaker 1: 4:18

be like no, no, no. This group of people is now better for me because they align with where I'm going, whereas that group of people were holding, holding like little crabs in a bucket me down, and I'm so much happier now that I found this direction Right. And then there's a lot of like, guilt associated with like, but they're good people. You know, like that's not a good, bad people, but just maybe, like you said, they aren't growth mindset or they don't have the good mindset.

Speaker 2: 4:46

They're on a different path. They're on a different path, or maybe they haven't gotten to the path that you've arrived at already. Correct, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that one was a good.

Speaker 1: 4:54

Yeah, that's a good way to hurt.

Speaker 2: 4:56

No, no, no, no. It's funny though, because I have, I do. There's a fable is it good or is it bad? Right? There's an old Chinese fable that there's a little farmer who has a farm and there's this guy who lives next door and something happens with a farmer and the guy comes over and says oh, I'm so sorry that happened to you. And he said well, is it good or is it bad? Because no different than COVID, right?

Speaker 2: 5:18

I lived through COVID as a restaurant owner. Covid was very bad at the time. I thought COVID gave me a lot of opportunities I wouldn't have had had it not happened. So at the time, in the mindset that I was in, which was really a fixed mindset it wasn't more of a growth oriented mindset, it was to some degree but I questioned and thought that it was bad, that COVID was bad, and how am I gonna get through this? And I had a very negative mindset on that period of time. Covid has given me the life I have now and it has also given me the growth mindset that I have now, whereas, had it not happened, I would probably still be doing the same things I was doing that.

Speaker 1: 5:57

Could COVID give it to you, or did it give you the opportunity to make different decisions in your life?

Speaker 2: 6:02

So I would say the challenge that was COVID, right, the challenge of how the why did you? Step up to that challenge. I didn't have a choice. Did any of us have a choice?

Speaker 1: 6:13

A lot of people went out of business.

Speaker 2: 6:14

A lot of people to go out of business, and that was their choice. That was the choice they decided to make At that point in my life. I'm not a person who decides to say no to anything right.

Speaker 1: 6:25

Did something influence you? Cause I think you made like you did. You made this like you made a lot of. You could say like I didn't have a choice, but I think you purposefully put yourself in situations around people that allowed you to feel like this was just the natural way to do it. And it's funny, cause once we're there, it's hard to look back and be like why would you make any other decision? But there are lots of people that make a lot of other decisions that were like you made that choice.

Speaker 2: 6:53

Yeah, I'll say that the pivot that I made and the reason I made it is because I felt like I was in service to the people who worked at the restaurant and most of them are still there. They're still working for me to stay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I made that choice because I didn't want to see them in pain. I wanted to keep them from things happening in their life that was going to negatively impact them, because we all deal with that differently and I don't like to watch people go through pain and I like to help people. So the choice in my mind was very clear what do I need to do to serve my people? And that was why I made a lot of the pivots during that time that I did so. Was it COVID? Covid, I think, was a catalyst for me to be able to launch that expansion of myself, because I think once I realized what my purpose was and in serving other people, my intentions at that point in time were very clear. And then it stretched beyond the restaurant, then it stretched beyond COVID. Then it was like how do I help other business owners get into that mindset of growth and expansion and solving their problems and having their business serve their life instead of their life serving their business, and that's really what's kind of launched me in the last two and a half years since then.

Speaker 2: 8:07

What do you mean? What do I do now? Am I still in the restaurant? I still do that. I'm not as engaged as I was back in 2020. I have an amazing team, like I said, most of them are still there and were there during the COVID times, and so I help guide and coach them. I have small business owners just a handful of them, a very small client roster that I help them kind of steward their business. How do they grow their revenue to be more profitable? How do they Separate?

Speaker 1: 8:37

from the restaurant business Separate from. Yes, Like an advisor.

Speaker 2: 8:40

So I have four more businesses that were created just after COVID. When I did 75 part, I was starting to launch all of them, and so it's an advisory. It's called Valkyrie Ventures. It's an advisory business, and I've got clients all over the country that have come to me through my faith. In all honesty, I know COVID taught me what I was meant to do. Now I am serving more people because when I help a business owner to really engage in their business, to help their business serve their life, they then understand what they do for their own employees. So it becomes a trickle down effect. So that's what I'm doing in service of people with that particular business. And then I have started speaking on some of the things that have happened to me since then and in recent months Nice.

Speaker 1: 9:29

Yeah, so it's like just kind of spreading its Whew Wings it's been wild.

Speaker 2: 9:36

It's been wild for sure. It's been an amazing adventure. I am very blessed to be able to help other people come to what they need in their own businesses and for their employees.

Speaker 1: 9:48

And the reason why I kind of really like dug into that piece. Yes, because a lot of people will look at people like you or they'll see the people whoever it is that they're watching from afar and then like how did they get to that spot, you know? And then once you're there, sometimes it's hard to look back and be like how did I get here? Like what were those pivotal moments or those decisions that I made? They're usually little baby steps. It's not like a huge leap Sometimes they are, but usually they're little baby steps. And if you can guide somebody on those baby steps, make the good decision, like you made the decision to do 75 hard right, like it, kind of like started that like motivation and you know, like for me, it's like making the decision to make my first hire.

Speaker 1: 10:32

That was a big pivotal moment for me as a business owner, because now it wasn't just about me, it was about like crap, I gotta make sure that I can pay them and train them. And then it just kind of started like well, now I don't need to be doing all the things Like right, yeah, yeah, it's client acquisition instead of like just photographing people.

Speaker 2: 10:53

Yeah, I mean as the business owner, your job, like you said, it's so much greater than the technician part of the business, which is most business owners start out as a technician. Whatever their business is, they loved doing or they were skilled at doing it, and so they start in that manner. And then to your point when you start staffing and you start adding people and you start realizing, oh wait, a minute now my job is to make sure that this business can run profitably to serve the people that are inside of it. Correct, More than just yourself.

Speaker 1: 11:21

And I feel like a lot of business owners don't ever get there. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:24

That's true.

Speaker 1: 11:25

They always stay in that technician stage because they don't think it's possible. They don't think it's something that a lot of people in their industry do. Example I'm talking about photographers. Yeah, they're like I'm always gonna be a photographer. This is comfy. This is what I see All the other photographers doing, you know, like they don't have that vision.

Speaker 2: 11:43

Yeah, yeah, I think it's amazing. You know, in the last especially the last few months, I would say since early fall last year I have really come into alignment with my intentions and my purposes for being here on earth right at this time in life and history, and a lot of that is helping people. A lot of that is helping people to figure out that there is so much more than just your comfort zone. Right, where are you comfortable? You use the example of the photographers being comfortable taking pictures. Well, what are you meant to do? What are you here for? What are your purposes and your intentions?

Speaker 2: 12:22

In life, so many people haven't gotten to the point where they start looking at what they really believe in and who they really are inside. They're doing a lot for other people, they're taking other people's cues on things instead of really understanding what they need to do for themselves. And so in the last like six months or so that's a lot of what I speak on is what do you find for yourself, what are your purposes, what are your intentions? What do you love? What do you want to do? Who do you love, right? What energizes you to get out of bed every morning? Because your business is one thing, but your life is really another.

Speaker 1: 12:53

How did you get to this point for yourself?

Speaker 2: 12:55

You know it was a very painful process, I think. To be honest with you, I really started to go through a lot of struggles with some of the businesses that I had created. I have some multifamily real estate, I have some other things that I've created in the last few years, and I was running up against walls with them and I'm like what is going on? Why is this so difficult for me? And what I realized through recognizing my faith was that those things weren't in alignment with what my intentions and my purposes were and where I was meant to be, and so, essentially, I was being told that, hey, this isn't in alignment with where you're meant to be. So you need to start figuring out where you are meant to be and what you can help people do and what you can help bring them toward.

Speaker 2: 13:38

So it's been a journey. It's been a journey, just like you said, one of the little baby steps that have happened. First one was figuring out how to take care of me, which I didn't do for 44 years. I took care of everybody else, right, and I would even take that back to probably when I was 42 was when I started to figure that out. So once I started to take care of me and what I wanted and what I saw and what I felt and what my purposes and intentions were. Now I'm like gosh, I need to… what was?

Speaker 1: 14:04

that? What switch did you have to flip to get?

Speaker 2: 14:07

there. You know, in all honesty, that whole 2020 period, right before COVID, my dad ended up with oh my gosh pancreatitis really bad. The hospital in Williamsburg had given up on him and they had said they were just going to make him comfortable to let him pass. And he was not a man who was ready to pass, and so we had a medivac to shock trauma in Baltimore, and that all happened in the beginning of February of 2020. And so I spent every day at the hospital, back and forth. He was in a coma for two months and, as you know, covid then was happening all at the same time.

Speaker 2: 14:44

And March 16th of 2020, which was the day they shut down the restaurants. They also shut down hospitals too. So during that time I was going through all of that. He was in the hospital for about a 10-month period and then he came to my house to rehab with me. So between that being there for him, the COVID stuff, all of that and having dedicated my life literally to other humans, I was exhausted. My body was exhausted, it was tired, I had put on weight, I was mentally not in a good place, and so, at the start of 21 was when I found 75 Heart, and it was like that was the light bulb.

Speaker 1: 15:16

That was the moment to take care of my body. Why did you get so attracted to that specific program?

Speaker 2: 15:21

I needed something with structure that I hadn't challenged myself with before, and that particular program has so much structure around. Not only you know about it, right, we've talked about it, you know. That program has so much structure around feeding your brain, right. There's a reading component you read every day, and it's self-help books. You can't read anything other than that you know. So the mental component and the structure behind that is so important. It was feeding my brain, and then my body needed attention. You know, I wasn't eating the right things, I wasn't fueling it the right way, and so there's a component of that there. I wasn't drinking enough water, which is an amazing change in your life. Drink more water.

Speaker 2: 16:04

Everybody should drink more water. That's a small thing. Yeah, it is. It's so small, but it makes such a difference, yeah, yeah. But I'm a person that's never shied away from a challenge. So when I saw it, I'm like, okay, this is going to be super hard, but I'm up for a challenge. My body needs it, my mind needs it. Let's do it now. And the amount of empowerment that I gave myself by showing myself that I could complete it, feed my mind, feed my body totally changed my life.

Speaker 1: 16:32

You fulfilled a promise you made to yourself. Commitments are everything Okay, angela, I can do this again, or I can do something like it's like a stepping.

Speaker 2: 16:40

Yeah, yeah Well, and subsequently I've completed that four times. So this is my live hard year, which is a whole, nother part of the program. But bottom line is is to your point, once you make a commitment to yourself, even just to get out of bed every morning like, put your best into it. If you're going to make that commitment to yourself, do it to the best of your ability. That's what we're here for to do our best every single day, yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing. Yeah. It's been quite the journey since I was here last.

Speaker 1: 17:08

What advice would you give specifically to female business owners who are the Angela and Angela's friends Two to three years ago?

Speaker 2: 17:20

The biggest piece of advice is put you first.

Speaker 1: 17:23

How do you do that? How do?

Speaker 2: 17:25

you put you first you just do it.

Speaker 1: 17:27

There's not a, but I mean like get up in the morning. You've got your kids to get ready.

Speaker 2: 17:31

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:33

You don't even like if you could bring yourself.

Speaker 2: 17:35

So it's different for everyone, right? We all have to find a different space and time that works for us. For me, during that time, it was like I got up earlier in the morning no-transcript, to give myself a window of about an hour to just a journal. I was reading my books, I would sit with my cup of coffee in a quiet space. That's what it was for me. You have to be able to feel your own energy levels depleting and when you're in that place where you feel completely depleted, that's the moment where you're like, oh no, I need to figure out how to refuel myself. And it's different for everybody. Some people need to withdraw and be by themselves. Some people need to be in a crowd or with their friends to re-energize themselves. I know that's not how I choose. That's certainly not how I choose, but some people literally are like yeah, some people literally are like the more they're around people, the more they're filling their own cup. Yeah, that's completely not me, but understanding who you are and what you are.

Speaker 2: 18:37

One of the things that I did in 2020, which was very pivotal to to all of this transformation within myself is I actually had my human design read. So I worked with Marcia Hoffhine's. She is a human design reader here, local, and she showed me what human design was, which is literally our birthplace, our birth time and our birth date, and that's it. It's not a questionnaire, it's not a Myers-Briggs, it's not anything that you have to use your brain to answer which may be inaccurate. It's literally those spatial points in time and those are the gifts that we were given when we arrived here on earth.

Speaker 2: 19:18

So, that being said, I used that to understand who I was, how I re-energized myself, what I needed to do to put myself first, so that then I could fill the cup of other people beyond that. So my advice to women who own small businesses figure that out for yourself. How do you fill your cup first? What does re-energize you, so that then you can help other people and then understand your energy level and when your energy level actually starts to deplete, so that you can refill yourself. That's the biggest challenge. Sounds like a lot of self-awareness.

Speaker 1: 19:53

A hundred percent self-awareness, whether that's through the human design or through other ways being in tune with your body's energy, being able to like shut it down or crawl to a crowd in order to kind of fill up your cup.

Speaker 2: 20:09

Yeah, and whatever it is, that is faith for you and your life. Right, we all have a different faith practice. Some people don't understand what their faith practice is. Some people are very understanding what their faith practice is, but it's about understanding what you need. From that perspective also, I believe that there is a higher being. I have a lot of faith in the fact that what is given to us is given to us for a reason the gifts that we have. We are unique to ourselves on this planet and we are meant to bring those gifts to help other people. We're all here to help and serve each other bottom line in whatever way we do. But, that being said, figure out what that is also and kind of align with that and understand it and study it for yourself and understand what that means to you.

Speaker 2: 20:56

I had the ability to sit with I don't know if many people listening will know who David Goggins is by the ability to sit and listen to David Goggins. He is a man who has done a ton of ultramarathons and he was a seal and he's done a lot of really hard challenging physical things. He studies only himself. He doesn't read books by anyone else. We are all given the answers to our life inside of ourselves. So he journals and studies himself to figure out what is meant for him. And I believe that I believe that we all have the answers. We may not know them, we may have to figure them out. We may wonder why things are happening to us, but internally we know. If we sit and study ourselves, we will know what we are meant to do with what we have been given. That's interesting concepts, I know, I know.

Speaker 1: 21:45

So it's a lot for today.

Speaker 2: 21:46

I didn't expect to talk about all of this today but that's okay.

Speaker 1: 21:50

Tell me, like, where do you see yourself in the next five, 10, 20 years? Do you do that, Do you kind of like future cast, or are you somebody who's like no, I'm going to like kind of see how things happen next 30, 90 days.

Speaker 2: 22:02

You know it's wild, I think I alluded earlier to. I gave a talk on Friday and I had the whole talk planned out before I got there on Friday and I had an energetic experience to one of the speakers while they were speaking. That brought me back into my faith and that wasn't something I was going to talk about during my talk and I was going later in the day and I was quickly reminded by another happening that happened. No, angela, you need to talk about this for the first. So I changed the whole thing for the first five minutes, right.

Speaker 2: 22:32

So I've now learned that just don't like try to plan, like, try to plan, like do a plan, but recognize when you get messages that you might need to alter your plan. So for the next five to 10 years, I have a general mind, but I'm also open to whatever life is going to bring me. If you would have asked me five years ago what I was going to be doing today, I would have not said any of things. Yeah, so I'm. I have a very general, broad view of what I want five years from now to look like, and most of it is travel, most of it is enjoying life, most of it is understanding how to fill myself to be able to serve other people, and I have a general idea of what type of service to other people I'll be doing. But that's about it.

Speaker 1: 23:11

How are the kids in terms of seeing you kind of blossom and flourishing and changing? I mean I remember growing up my little brother when my mom cut her hair. She cut her hair and she got a perm. He was like you're not my mom anymore. Change People. Kids sometimes just don't like that change. But how have your kids been?

Speaker 2: 23:40

You know, my kids are very funny. So I have two girls, and one's almost graduating from high school, the other one is in middle school. My goal for them when I was raising them, when they were young, was just to create strong, independent women. Right, and they are both of those things, much to my dismay some days, because I have lots of opinions about what I'm doing with my life right now. They are. They have embraced it, they are.

Speaker 2: 24:07

I remind them every day as their mom that I feel that a lot of my job is to show them what it's like to follow your dreams and not lose focus on that. So they're seeing that. And there are days where they're like mom, you're traveling, you know we miss you. And I talk to them and said, yes, I am, it's a sacrifice that we are all making right now, but I want you to remember that when you're growing, your job is to follow your dreams. That's what we're all here to do. So to lose sight of that and I want to be an example of somebody who's doing that, to show you that way also. So they've embraced it. They travel with me sometimes. So that's been great and I think they're used to me changing, because I think they've watched me change so much their entire life that it's just kind of like a natural if I'm not changing, like what's wrong with mom?

Speaker 2: 24:59

Yeah, work with mom. Exactly. What's wrong with mom?

Speaker 1: 25:02

Yeah, no, that's great. So, in terms of like people in your life, do you feel like you have people in your life that are like you've changed too much? Oh yeah, how do you react? How do you react? My own mother is one of those people.

Speaker 2: 25:17

Yeah, you know I will say it's taken me for most of my life. Pleasing my mom was something I always wanted to do, and I listened a lot to all of her advice and I followed the majority of it. The first thing I did not do was open the restaurant. That is, leave my nice corporate job and get into the restaurant. Business was something she frowned upon quite significantly, and she has struggled with all of the things that I have done in the last few years and she still struggles with them, and so that's been super hard. But, understanding that we are all here on our own individual paths, it's not my job to make her happy.

Speaker 2: 25:57

Yeah Right, it's been a long time for me to figure out, but yeah, she is one of the people who have been that way. I've got several who have been like what in the world? What in the world? And then I have some people who have been with me for years and they're like no, I always knew there was going to be something else that came out of you. I just didn't know what it was going to be.

Speaker 1: 26:15

Yeah, yeah, you're like I didn't either. Here we are and here we are.

Speaker 2: 26:20

I'm just hoping to get new messages, new things to do. Okay, go do them.

Speaker 1: 26:25

Yeah, and how do you personally deal with change? I love?

Speaker 2: 26:30

it. I love it. I always have Sometimes too much, I think. Sometimes I have left things too quickly, sometimes I've kept things around too long, but I have always embraced change in my life. It's just a kind of a natural thing. I think it's one of my gifts. To be honest with you, the ability to pivot and change is definitely something that I've been gifted with. I know a lot of people struggle with it and I don't really struggle with it at all.

Speaker 1: 26:57

I don't either, and I'm actually admonishing people that are like you change things too much. I'm like I'm not going to sit on a sinking ship.

Speaker 2: 27:04

No, no, well, and the thing is is that once you realize that you are meant for visionary role, there are people who are not meant for that. That's not a part of who they were designed to be. Back to the human design reference that's not a part of who they were designed to be. We are all unique and we all bring different gifts and some of us have been aligned with a more visionary type of role that can see forward, to make space for the people who are not necessarily as visionary in their thinking. We all have a space and time. Without those people, we would have trouble getting things done, because we want to move on to these visionary things that create change for people and create new spaces for people to be, if we didn't have people who were doing the actual things that are in alignment with that we would get nothing accomplished.

Speaker 1: 27:52

I'm an implementer too, though Me too. Me too, I was like I want the vision. But I'm like let's get down dirty, let's do the done.

Speaker 2: 27:58

But there's more implementers in this world than there are visionaries. So what do you think that means your role is for yourself? Yeah, yeah, I guess, yeah. So you have to embrace that, and that's something that I struggled with, like I literally operated in that restaurant, you know, seven days a week for years because I can do both and I really it was kind of selfish of me to do that, because there's so much more that I can build and create for other people that once I got outside of those four walls I was able to do. So I'll challenge you that, if you are both, there are way less visionaries than there are integrators. So I would challenge you to create that space for all the people that would come with you on the operations side of things. Oh girl, I'm trying, yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:45

You can do it.

Speaker 2: 28:46

You can do it I swear, you can do it 100% yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:51

I love that because then you know I get to step up and do a different scope of work and you'll integrate the, the as you go up.

Speaker 2: 28:59

There'll be things for you to integrate. You can still. You can still do those integrations. You gotta get the training manuals together. No, someone else needs to do that, aliyah.

Speaker 1: 29:08

Well, in terms of, like, how you want things done, I would never hire a team and be like have at it. Like no no, no, this is the process.

Speaker 1: 29:15

This is the way we do things here and then it's like trust that the process that you put together can be replicated and duplicated. Yeah, that's why they have franchises, right, somebody else has like created the system. And then it's like here we go. That's what I'm in the process of, yeah, yeah, moving towards. What are three tips If you were sitting in front of a potential client that you would love to work with? What are three tips or three pieces you like to kind of go over with the ideal client?

Speaker 2: 29:52

Yeah, one important critical piece is to build the right culture for your business, that that empowers people, that allows them to feel seen and heard, that gives them the safe place to come to work every day where they feel like it's something they enjoy doing and that they want to be there to do. Because that trickles down to your sales, it trickles down to your customer base, it trickles down to every single facet of your business. When your business is loved by the people inside of it, it is a successful business and the money comes along with that. So that's the biggest thing. A lot of the clients that I work with they bring me in on the financial side because I'm really good at cashflow and I'm good at showing them how to grow their revenue and then be profitable with the growth. But oftentimes that's the most important piece I start with because there are a lot of companies out there where their culture is broken or it's not identifiable.

Speaker 2: 30:44

The business itself doesn't have a culture. It's kind of running amok a little bit in what the things are. So that's the number one tip I would say Focus on your culture, understand what your business's culture is and feed a culture that creates love for your business with your employees. The second tip, beyond culture, then becomes feeding yourself. You're a part of that culture, so you have to understand, as the business owner, that it is your job to be living your best life. And if you are consistently 100% giving only to your business and not feeding your personal life, you can't feed the business well. And that is just as critical as that culture piece, because you are the driver of the culture, so if you're not emulating that in your own life, you can't expect your employees to do the same.

Speaker 2: 31:33

And then the third tip is really just to kind of focus on what your customer engagement looks like. What do people say about you? Are they aligning with what your actual culture is and what you want it to be? If you put a survey out to them, are they coming back with the same things you hope you hear? If not, that's something you need to also focus on, because the most important piece of a business is word of mouth.

Speaker 2: 31:57

It's word of mouth At the end of the day. We're all on social media, we're on our phones, we're on our electronics. We have these relationships with our electronics, but we are all people who are meant to be here to help each other through this lifetime and we want to have that human connection at the end of the day, and so that is critical to understand what your human connection is to your customer base, your employees, everyone that surrounds your business. So those would be the three tips that I would give. None of them were around money, but money at the end of the day is a result of those three things.

Speaker 1: 32:31

Yeah, the value and value gets created, and you just said so many different ways. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 32:39

When you're focused just on the money, you lose sight of the other stuff, yeah, and, in all honesty, money is something that will follow all of the positivity. So if you create love, we're all here to create love. There's a book that I read that I absolutely love. It's called the Divine Law of Compensation and it is all about the love that you provide to the world will come back to you as gifts to you. So if you're providing love to your business, if your employees are providing love to your business, if you're providing love to your customers, if everyone is loving each other, the compensation side of it will follow.

Speaker 1: 33:14

It's so true. Yeah, it's so true. So, just to kind of wrap this up, is there anything else in terms of like, maybe a tip or some advice that you've heard from your amazing circle of people that you surround yourself with, that you, or something that you've just like, lived and experienced yourself that you would love to share with?

Speaker 2: 33:34

Oh geez, oh geez. I have so many things to say. One particular thing? I don't know that. I have one particular thing. I think you're a motto that you live by yeah, love, just love, love is the necklace. This necklace is a coin from 79 AD, from the Qing Dynasty, and it was created by a jeweler in Great Falls, and it just is a constant reminder to me that even then, there was compensation for the love that you provided.

Speaker 1: 34:08

I feel like it would tie into your whole mission statement.

Speaker 2: 34:12

It does tie into my whole mission statement. Certainly does. It, absolutely does. So, yeah, that's what my necklace is.

Speaker 1: 34:19

Thank you so much for being on the show and sharing so much with us.

Speaker 2: 34:22

Thank you for having me, I appreciate it. Of course.