SPEAKER_00 0:30

My name is Renee Ventries, and I like to call myself a pairing professional. By day, I pair my clients with their ideal collaborators and other businesses. And by night, I pair wine with life and beautiful experiences beyond the bottle.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Amazing. I'm fascinated. Now, take me back to how you got started in all of this. Tell me how you got to where you are today.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

That is such a crazy winding journey. I was in the military, you know, in the early 90s and uh found out very quickly

Meet Renee: The Pairing Professional

SPEAKER_00 1:01

that I had entrepreneured myself out of being in the Navy. Fun fact the military doesn't care about your ideas or creativity. They want you to follow, you know, orders. So I learned how to be a good sailor, a good, you know, follower, but also learned a lot about leadership. And uh so as life went on, started the Cork and Keg Tours was my winery and brewery tour company. During the shutdown, during 2020, I became a mentor to other entrepreneurs since

Military Roots and Entrepreneur Spark

SPEAKER_00 1:26

I wasn't able to do tours. And that mentoring led into becoming an actual business coach. So I trademarked my company called BizLationships, which is mutually beneficial business relationships that generate revenue for both sides. So BizLelationships are really what I try to put together

From Tours to Coaching: BizLationships

SPEAKER_00 1:45

for my clients, help them to see beyond the four walls that they consider their business in and crack a wall open and give them a window to find a new audience and learn how to connect with them through community and relationships. So that's where the mentoring came in, the wine. You know, once I realized that I had a palate for wine and was able to pick out things in wine that had nothing to do with fruit flavors, I figured maybe it was time to work on becoming a Somalier. So I got certified, got hooked up with some really great organizations, you know, did virtual tastings for almost a hundred people several times over the years, and it just kept on growing. So then I trademarked wine o'clock. Um, so it's always wine o'clock somewhere if I'm in the room.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Oh my goodness, I love that. That sounds like so much fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

It really is.

Discovering Wine and Sommelier Path

SPEAKER_00 2:34

I love being able to make I love monetizing my passions, right? And I've always done it. I didn't realize that I was doing it. Like when I became a cheerleading coach, it was because I always wanted to become a choreographer. And when I started working in luxury travel, well, it's because I absolutely loved traveling and loved helping other people to find their ideal vacations. So I guess when I look back at my life, I've always found a way to make money doing what I love. It's a good thing I don't love cocaine.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Hey, I hear you. But I love the point that you made.

Monetizing Passions Through Life Stages

SPEAKER_01 3:05

You got one life to live, so live it. Doing what you love.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not always easy. Um, you know, excuse me. I didn't have a lot of choices, you know, for many, many years. I went into the military after high school because there was no way we could afford for me to go to college. I'm number five out of six kids, you know, so college really wasn't an option. Plus, I was kind of sick of it, didn't really want to study anyway. So I went right into the service. Being enlisted in the military, you make absolutely no money. So you have very few choices, very few options. But as my husband and I, you know, got older and got out of the military

Goals, Options, and Humble Beginnings

SPEAKER_00 3:41

and started working on our lives together, we started to make decisions that could lead us. What do we want in five years? Let's live our lives right now toward that goal. What do we want in 10? Let's live toward that goal. And so now in our mid-50s, we've actually been able to achieve a lot of our goals. And now we can live life with a few more options than before and being able to lean into wine, um, writing my best-selling book. All of this came because we came from very humble beginnings, made very calculated decisions on how we wanted to succeed, and then we went for it.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

That's wonderful. I'm excited to learn more.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

So you built your career around connection, creativity, and community. What does authentic connection mean to you in business and in life?

SPEAKER_00 4:25

They are very similar in both. It's more about listening to who you're with than talking about who you are. No matter what kind of situation I'm in, I'm always more about what I can do to make that other person feel comfortable or what it is that they're looking for out of the conversation. Is it just having fun and learning about wine at a party, or is it someone struggling with their business

Defining Authentic Connection

SPEAKER_00 4:46

and just needs someone to hear them and know, you know, where they are and meet them there? Yeah, being authentic to me just means listening to other people and giving any answers you can that may be able to help them. I've all I've also learned to never try to be like anybody else who's in the room just because maybe I respect them or they're doing really well. Maybe I should mock mock mock my mock, not so much mock, but maybe I should imitate their style, or maybe I should tone down my energy because everybody else is low energy, or you know, maybe I should dress a little bit less flashy because everybody else is in, you know, suits and plain color colors. And I'm like, nah, I'm just gonna be me. If they invited me into that room, they knew what they were getting. And who am I to not give them that? So yeah, authenticity really comes from listening to the other people who you're talking to who are looking for something from you and giving them the best that you've got for them.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Absolutely. I think there's some really great advice in there that you're giving about authenticity.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Yeah, you know, and I wrote a blog about it once on my website.

Unlearning and Relearning Authenticity

SPEAKER_00 5:49

I have a blog and uh in a podcast called Start Whining. And um, in my blog and my podcast, I talk about I was going to make fun of all this. Why is everybody trying so hard to be authentic? You're just being authentic by being you. But then I thought back to my childhood and I thought back to how girls weren't supposed to talk about themselves. It wasn't ladylike, and how don't speak until spoken to. And you should say things that make everybody else feel comfortable, even if it's not what you really want to say. We're brought up not to be authentic. So as I was writing this blog, written ready to trash, everybody who didn't know how to be authentic, I was like, oh my gosh, I went through that same thing. So um I think it's really important for people to understand it's okay to question authenticity, since a lot of us weren't raised to even behave that way.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Exactly. Well said.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

From growing a local division to $2 million in revenue to selling your own award-winning tour company, you've reinvented yourself multiple times. What do you think fuels your ability to evolve and thrive?

SPEAKER_00 6:57

That's kind of an easy one. It's all the split personalities in my head. No, seriously though, sorry. I think it's because I'm not one-dimensional and most people aren't. Now, I'll give a comparison. My husband has always had one goal, one thing he wanted to

Reinvention, Focus, and Family Support

SPEAKER_00 7:13

do, one way of living, and he's so happy in that. He's very target focused. He's like a smart bomb of a human being. I am more like a rifle, full of scatter shot. There's shotgun, you know, shotgun spray everywhere with me. And all of that makes me happy. Drives him nuts. Not being able to have one thing to focus on makes him absolutely insane. Like, okay, this is just too much. For me, I'm like, I can't do just one thing. I love all these little things that represent me. So I think the biggest thing was prioritizing which one fit in that moment in my life. When my son was young and, you know, I wanted to stay home with him. Doing direct sales was the thing. When he was older and he was in school and I got a part-time job, but I was home by the time he was done with preschool. That was a thing. So I always was looking at what's going on in my life and which version of Renee fits best for that. And now in my 50s, it's great to be able to focus on what really brings me joy. And so, yeah, when I built that company to 2 million in revenue in that one division, it was incredible. My son was in school. I was still able to work from home. Um, and when that ran its course and I was able to get more into wine and my own entrepreneurial journey, my husband was right there for me. And we just made decisions that made it possible for me to be myself. So I think it was really just making sure that I took everything into stock. What was going on in my relationships, my son, my husband, my family, my dog. Um, what was going on with me? Did I want more school? Did I want to get a certification? You know, did I want to travel? What was I looking for? And I just I've made all of those decisions, including him, including

Community Over Ads: Connection Tactics

SPEAKER_00 8:54

my son. Uh, and then we all worked together to make sure that I stayed happy. But you know the saying, if mama ain't happy, no one's happy.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Ain't no one happy.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

See, you know, the age gap does not make a difference. You know exactly how the world works. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

And I just I love how you touched on having that support system at home and just how much that can help you flourish in so many different ways.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Absolutely. You know, it's not easy for my husband living with the serial entrepreneur, being a type A, you work 20 years, you get the gold watch, you retire and you know, play golf and boat into the sunset to live with someone who was a squirrel, you know, who like I have Jack Russell energy all the time, just like our 19-year-old Jack Russell. So I'm a lot, right? And I know I am, but being able to channel it really did help, you know, help him to be able to understand me. And it also helped me to sometimes back off for him. So he actually really helped me to settle into just doing like one thing and then connecting my mentorship and my wine. Now I mentor women in tourism and women who want to get into wine. So I'm able to scratch all these itches without making him crazy, seeing me flitting from this thing to that. But that calm that he brings also gives me a different type of energy to really focus on what I want to do. And it's part of why I become more successful, is because I didn't just move on to the next thing or the next thing. I actually took those things and evolved them and grew them and made them into something bigger and more beautiful instead of a bunch of different things. So it's really, you know, you don't know what you don't know. And when you have people around you who are different, when you diversify where your advice comes from, where your support comes from, you start to become more well-rounded, both personally and professionally. It's really hard for me to separate my professional life from my personal life because I'm the same in both instances. And it's just a matter

Energy, Boundaries, and CEO Days

SPEAKER_00 10:53

of which one is getting their priority in that moment.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

What you see is what you get, right? You know, so that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah, and it's and it makes it really easy to be myself both in business and my personal life because I've made who I am a part of my per professional brand.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Amazing. I love it. Looking back, what's one defining moment when you realize that connection, not just strategy, was the real key to business success?

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Hmm. This goes all the way back to when I was working for the pet sitting dog work walking company. We had no money for advertising. Advertising was so expensive. It was hit or miss. We had taken out some ads, you know, that just weren't doing anything. And I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna get out there in the community. So I started driving around our grooming vans when they weren't full of dogs. I would drive them around, I would park them in the parking lot, not too far out, but a little bit in. And I would pretend to be in there trying to like straighten something

Leading With Fun: Wine as Workplace Metaphor

SPEAKER_00 11:54

up or cleaning something. Invariably, every time someone would come up and say, Oh, is that a mobile dog walking, dog, dog grooming van? I I have a dog. I would love for someone to come to my house. And I was like, Oh, this old thing, yeah. And it's a it's a Mercedes. Yeah, we come to your house and we bring it. Here's a card, or better yet, tell me what kind of dog you have. I can tell you when we have openings. You know, does Fluffy eat a groom right now? So I decided instead of a static ad, I would get out there in front of people, let them see what we have, and attract them. I applied the exact same philosophy to when I owned the winery and brewery tour company. Drove that van to the supermarket, to wherever, had music playing, had the lights going, did it when the sun was going down so people could see the lights and be like, what's going on? Is there a DJ back there? And so I would always just attract people. My husband called me a moth of flame the other day. He's like, You just attract all these moths. I'm like, maybe so, you know, I don't know. But he's like, you just you bring people into your universe. And I'm like, yeah, I guess I kind of do. So that's exactly what it was. That's when I knew that connecting with people really did work more than just running an ad or handing out business cards. I don't even have business cards anymore. I hand up my bookmarks for my book. Um, somebody wants to talk about the other things I do on business. I've got a QR code saved on my phone. I'm like, you want to connect? Here's how. So they come to me, I give them what they're looking for, and uh sometimes even get paid for it.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Hey, that's awesome. It's really just a human experience.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Yeah, absolutely. You know, and and what I do are things that do bring joy and make people

Books, Personal Stories, and Wine Personalities

SPEAKER_00 13:33

happy. So it really does make a difference to me that they see that I'm joyful as I do it. So if I'm not in a great mood, I'm not going out and trying to connect. I'm not gonna fake it. I don't, I can't put on a smile, you know, they come easily naturally enough. I'm definitely not gonna try and force one. It just doesn't work. So I tell that to my clients all the time. If you have a day where you just can't get up and network, you're just not feeling it, take that day as a CEO day where now you're working on your business instead of in your business. You can still get things done, but without having to go out and force yourself to be something that you're not feeling.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Words of the wise.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Words of the wise, absolutely. Learn the hard way. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

How do you bring fun and authenticity into leadership while still driving serious business results?

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Oh, that's such a good question. No one's ever asked me that. So, for example, I have an event coming up next week where it is a corporate event, and I said to them, Do people want to learn about KPIs and cross promotions from a slide or from sipping from a bottle of wine? And they're like, tell me more. So I said, I can give the different roles in your company portionalities, where I say, for example, this is why you need to listen to your CTO. They are like the Cabernet Franc of your business. They're the structure and the backbone that are necessary for longevity of that wine. If you only put this grape in there, it can be great for a couple of months, maybe even a year or

Reputation to Referrals to Revenue

SPEAKER_00 15:05

two. But without that foundation that your CTO makes, just like that foundation Cabernet Franc gives wine, the wine falls flat within several years. So if you're looking for your company to really succeed, think of your CTO as your Cabernet Franc, listen to what they say, and your business will have longevity for 20 years to come, right? So things like that. So I put wine and, you know, and sometimes if they want bourbon or beer, whatever they want, I'll put any any drink in front of uh a crowd and give it life and compare it to what they're dealing with. So when I did that for a cyber community, uh cybersecurity company, I did that with like the bad guys and the good guys and the breaches and all of that. When I did it for Salesforce, we talked a lot about how those client connections are far better. And we talk about how they're like a blend in wine, right? So just there's a lot of fun ways to do that. The best way for me to do it is to understand who I'm talking to and what their mission is at the end of hiring me for an event. What do you want people to get out of it? Do you want them to feel more connected to sip different things and work? Or do you just want them to have fun? If you just want them to have fun, then I will give them their personalities. Gonna find out who the Chardonnay in the room is. If you don't think it's you, it's probably you, right? So things like that. I make it conversational. I don't give speeches, I open conversations, I open the floor. And just because, just naturally, in our house,

Vision: Wine O’Clock, Coaching, and Stages

SPEAKER_00 16:32

we like to say ball busting is our love language. Making fun of, you know, a situation, making light of a situation is how we get through life in my family. So I just apply that to everything. I need to make sure I know what their level, you know, how much they can take. Like, look, I'm an ex-sailor. I will drop the F-bomb without even thinking about it, unless I really know my group is very conservative, you know. So uh yeah. So I just kind of I get to know who I'm talking to and then I let it fly. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Yeah, I think there's always a way to relate to somebody and you're taking that philosophy with your knowledge of wine and to what they're doing. I think it's just a really cool technique you have.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Thank you. Yeah, you know, and I've made it into it's that's the first book came out, Poor Relationship Choices, P-O-U-R. So now it's going to be a series. And um, one of the books in this series is going to be called Nobody's Perfect. So it will talk about all the great things about somebody, and then it'll be like, but beware, these are some of the things that might be pitfalls. I can use astrology for it, you know, the color codes, all these different things. But all the imperfections that we have make us the actual perfect person. So

Manifesting Goals and Playing the Long Game

SPEAKER_00 17:40

yeah, that's something that's just been, it's got such a natural flow, it just keeps on happening and keeps on happening. Sometimes it gets emotional, though. Um, we were at a family reunion a couple of weeks ago, and I hope I can tell this without tearing up because it was just so cute. I was talking to um the fiancé of um one of my nephews, and she wanted me to ask, she wanted me to tell her what her wine personality was. And I was like, Oh, I think you're kind of a Pinot Grigio today. You're you've been just so light, and your conversation's been great. You've been really easy to get along with, just like a Pinot Grigio. And she said, Oh, thank you so much. I love Pinot Grigio. What's my fiance? What's Brandon, you know, your nephew? And I looked at my nephew and immediately I started tearing up because such a great kid. He's in his 40s, and I'm calling him a kid, but such a great kid with a great son, and he comes from a fantastic brother

Balance vs Equity in Life

SPEAKER_00 18:33

of mine who's happens to be one of my favorite humans on earth. His son represents so many of the good things that are in my brother, so many of the good things that are in my father, and his son represents so many great things from all of them. Port wine is made in that way, with the best from different generations of wine all into one bottle. And so I don't have a chapter in the book yet for that, but the next book is probably going to lead with that.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Sounds like a perfect family, if I do say so myself.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

It was an imperfect family with a perfect definition of my nephew. Yes. Amazing. So yeah, those things just really I've always thought differently. I've been writing since I was seven. I've never, I've never done things the regular way. In fact, my sister, we at the family reunion, I was doing a speaking event, and my sister opened it for me. She was an uh introduced me. And she said when we were young, we all would take pictures out of a coloring book. We would each get a page as, you know, couldn't afford all of us to have our own. So we would tear pages out, crayons in the middle. Everybody else is coloring

Vulnerability, Mental Health, and Support

SPEAKER_00 19:35

on their page. They could always tell mine because mine would have the picture in the middle and only coloring outside of the areas that weren't the characters, and my character was completely blank, and everything around it was all her colors. Uh-huh. I didn't even realize I did that until she said it just a few weeks ago.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

That is too good.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yep, I just am who I am. I've just evolved. Now it's wine instead of Kool-Aid and juice boxes.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Hey, that's where it's at. So you often talk about turning reviews into referrals into revenue. Why is leveraging reputation the most underused growth tool in business today?

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Because it takes the most time, it takes the most effort, and it makes the person who that brand represents have to put themselves into it. You can't give a marketing agency that type of power and control because they aren't going to actually capture you. They can capture your brand, absolutely. But if you are a big part of your brand and if your relationships either with the community or others are what drives your business, you don't have a choice but to use relationship and community to build your business. I'm big on uh, you know, alliterations. So conversations convert to currency. You know, community connections convert

Growth With Others and Closing Reflections

SPEAKER_00 20:53

to currency. You know, you have to really look at the fact that the people who are buying from you are also people who are telling others to buy from you. So I'm not looking at a transaction. When I'm even when I'm doing a podcast like this, I'm not looking at this podcast of me just getting to talk on the podcast where one of my favorite dresses and hopefully people watch it. Absolutely not. This is a lead magnet. I will be bringing it up. I will be showing it to people. I will be making sure that they understand listen, this is what we have in our community that can help to spread your brand. You should get one of these as well so that you can also show an elevated version of yourself on film, right? So it's never just about the one-to-one. And as soon as I figured that out, probably, oh my God, 20 years ago in business, I knew that connecting through relationships and community were it. Philanthropy is another good one. When you get, um when you can come together around a cause, you find other people with a lot of your same values and the same things that are important to them. Suddenly you have a whole community, you know, within your philanthropy and your philanthropic philanthropic businesses. And now you can do good together while you're also, you know, able to, you know, fill your own pockets, which you can use to help support the charity. Yeah, it's a no-brainer to me to leverage philanthropy, community, and relationships. And then you get those referrals from those folks. Um, you get repeat business from those folks, and they tell others, I spent less than $200 a year in marketing. And still to this day, I spend very, very little money on marketing. I put it into philanthropy, I put it into relationships, and I put it into my community.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

That is super inspiring.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

And looking ahead, what's your vision for Wine O'Clock, your podcast, and your biz relationships community over the next few years?

SPEAKER_00 22:41

Yeah, you know, they're all gonna grow right along with each other. I think the biz relationships are going, it's going to be less individual coaching and more workshops and you know, speaking from stages. I could have a bigger impact then. And also, as I start to retire, I'm not going to want to be on the phone with somebody every week. So I will definitely be changing, you know, that into coming down a bit. As far as the wine goes, I'll be writing another, you know, series of wine books. I've got three in the hopper so far. Um, I'll be writing more. I'll be doing more events where I help people to pair wine with things they don't necessarily think would actually work, getting them to expand their palettes. You know, I guess I just really want, as I, as I go forward five years from now, I want people to think of the way that I create wine pairings and create wine experience to be the standard and not something that people are like, wow, I've never heard of this before. They're gonna know that wine o'clock with Renee Ventrice was where they started pairing, you know, wine with fire pits, you know, wine with ski boots, wine with, you know, with uh with vacations, or wine with business events. So yeah, I am going to become a household name in five years, whether it's between wine, relationships, and they're all just gonna wrap up together.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

I have all the faith in you. No doubt in my mind.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Thank you. Yeah. I see it. You want to hear something great? Gary V, Gary Vanderchuk, um, you know, big guy in you know, business and entrepreneurship, super successful wine and business as well. So um, six years ago, he made a post on LinkedIn and it said, in 10 years, where do you want your business to be? And so I answered that post six years ago and I said, I want to have written a book, I want to have bought out, I want to have started and sold a successful company, and I want to make a difference in people's lives. And it popped up in my feed two weeks ago, and I was like, I'm five years ahead of schedule. Scary feed, look what I've done. So hopefully he reaches out to me and is like, let's talk to this woman about getting your goals five years ahead and actually visualizing it back in 2019. And I've already done some of those things. Well, okay, I've done them all, but now I'm gonna do better even more. But to see that in writing that I said that six years ago, I was floored. I was completely flabbergasted.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

That is just a magical full circle moment.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

It really was. Oh, I cried and I was like, and I was about to go on stage, and I was like, oh my god, I should never have been looking at LinkedIn before I came on stage. It so I I led with it. I'm like, okay, guys, I'm a little, this is not what I planned to say, but you have to hear this. And then it just kicked off the whole thing, and it was amazing. And people really did talk about whatever I say right now, I hope I get a chance to see it, you know, again in six years. And I said, set an alarm, put an alarm on your clock that's going to go off six years from today with what your goal is. I'll wait. And in six years, that alarm is going to go off, even if you change phones. Hopefully, it congres with you, but that alarm's gonna go off. You're gonna read it, see if you don't manifest it from today going forward.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

Really, really cool.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Such a such an awesome philosophy to live by.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

I agree. It's and I really do live by it. I live by balance, but balance doesn't mean things are equal. It's just like the difference between equality and equity. Equity means you give what needs to, you know, to what needs it, right? So if I don't need, if I'm full, I don't need any food, and this person over here is hungry, equal means we both get the same size piece of cake. Equity means this person gets a bigger piece because they're hungry and I'm good, right? And so that's what I do with my life. My son lives in Nashville now. As hard as it is to let go, he doesn't need me momming, smothering him as much as I would have when he was 16, 17. So I can pull back on that and I can lean more into my dog who is 19 and does need more of that. And I can also put a break a little off for my husband, who now is just the two of us. And I know that sometimes his job is stressful. He needs me more. So I don't treat them all equally. I give each of them as much of me as they need, but I also make sure I take plenty for myself. Kind of lean on each other, right? Absolutely. My self-care helps me to be better for them, and they understand that about me too. So they know if they hear that bath water running, they're not gonna hear from me for at least 90 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Right. I'm a firm believer that you have to help yourself first before you can help others.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Put your mask on first before you put someone else's on from the airlines on down. Yeah, it's absolutely true. And I have a very bad habit of not doing that. So something people never believe about me is that I do suffer from depression. And depression isn't about being happy or sad, it's literally an imbalance, excuse me, where chemically um you start to get the blues for no reason whatsoever. It can happen in the middle of a vacation to Italy, or it can happen in 2020 when the world was going to hell. And so one of the signs that I am about to crash is I start putting on everyone else's mask and my mask isn't on. I will go out and do a fundraiser for uh, you know, for veterans moving forward. I will look for gifts for my son and give him advice. I will try and do all these sweet things for my husband. And when he sees all that, he's like, hey, you need to put your mask on. And I'll be like, I know. And so I do, and then I'm so much better. So that vulnerability of bringing other people in around you to know when you might be, you might be the one who's always giving, giving, giving, but they need to recognize when that's a a a sign of bad things to come for you and be there for you. But we have to be vulnerable enough to let them in.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Doing that has changed everything. My family is so in lockstep with who I am and understand me so well. It's not that everything is perfect because perfection is only for lasagna and dogs. Everything else has flaws. But we know how to work with each other, we know how to support each other, we know when to say we're sorry, we know when to say thank you, and we know when to say, get out of my face.

SPEAKER_01 28:51

Well said. I couldn't have said it better.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

It's all true.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

As we wrap up, is there anything you'd like to add that I haven't touched on today?

SPEAKER_00 29:01

You've really done a great job of covering all the things. I think the biggest thing I'd love for people to understand is, you know, I have been married for 32 years. Um, in the book, my husband is not the toxic X chapter. He is the love at first sip. And in those 32 years, we have gone from, you know, scraping under our car seats for change to, you know, split a coke, to now being able to take these wonderful vacations because we plan for them and we we move together in the same direction. So I think I just would want everyone to understand that growth doesn't happen in its own silo. Even if you are alone, you might not have, you know, a partner in your life, you might not have children, but you have friends, you have people who care about you, and you need to let them be a part of your journey. They may disappoint you, you may be hurt. It still helps you to grow. We learn more from our bad bosses than we do from our good ones, right? I learned how to be a mom from watching mothers who I was like, I will never do that to my child, right? The good stuff came naturally, the other stuff I was like, be careful, don't do these. So I just want everyone to know there are people out there who really do support you, want to see you succeed, blank out all the noise of all the people who love to see you struggle, but are silent when you have success. Put them off to the side and thank them for reminding you of your value. And you will never fail.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

I love it. Thank you. That's just that's amazing. Thank you so much, Renee, for joining me on the podcast today. It It was a pleasure to hear your story and to have you on.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.