Have you ever met someone whose life radiates the possibility that comes from unwavering positivity and grit? Deb Wiegers, the co-founder of Wiegers Financial and Benefits, embodies just that. Her journey from a small-town girl to a successful entrepreneur is awe-inspiring. In this episode, Deb opens up about her fearless leap into the unknown with a can-do attitude that's contagious. From her early days of figure skating and retail work to co-founding her company, her story is a compelling illustration of how a positive mindset and resilience can revolutionize your life and career.
Confronting skepticism head-on and turning doubts into fuel for ambitions, Deb recounts pivotal moments of her life, such as the shift from a misaligned career path to flourishing in the insurance industry. Her candour about navigating the complexities of working with a spouse and evolving within a family business offers a real-world perspective that's as enlightening as it is practical.
Deb's insights remind us that change is a constant, but with a foundation of positive thinking and mutual respect, the path to success—with all its twists and turns—can be navigated with confidence and grace. Join us for a narrative that's rich with change, determination, and the indomitable power of positivity.
Have you ever met someone whose life radiates the possibility that comes from unwavering positivity and grit? Deb Wiegers, the co-founder of Wiegers Financial and Benefits, embodies just that. Her journey from a small-town girl to a successful entrepreneur is awe-inspiring. In this episode, Deb opens up about her fearless leap into the unknown with a can-do attitude that's contagious. From her early days of figure skating and retail work to co-founding her company, her story is a compelling illustration of how a positive mindset and resilience can revolutionize your life and career.
Confronting skepticism head-on and turning doubts into fuel for ambitions, Deb recounts pivotal moments of her life, such as the shift from a misaligned career path to flourishing in the insurance industry. Her candour about navigating the complexities of working with a spouse and evolving within a family business offers a real-world perspective that's as enlightening as it is practical.
Deb's insights remind us that change is a constant, but with a foundation of positive thinking and mutual respect, the path to success—with all its twists and turns—can be navigated with confidence and grace. Join us for a narrative that's rich with change, determination, and the indomitable power of positivity.
Welcome to. So you Want to Move to the Country and Raise Goats? This is a podcast about change. Change is all around us and sometimes we're ready for it and sometimes we're not. When it overwhelms us, well, we just want to move to the country and raise goats. This podcast features stories from people who have gone through change. We hope that their insights will help you better understand and deal with the changes in your life. I'm Peggy Koenig and, along with my co-host, katherine Greiba, we chat with insightful people with interesting change stories. We hope you enjoy our podcast.
Speaker 2:Vamp Uyghurs is our guest today today and she is the owner of Wiegers Financial and Benefits, a company she started with her husband. She never could have guessed, and nor did she plan, that success would look this way for her. Deb grew up in Tisdale, a small town in Saskatchewan, where she excelled at and coached, figure skating. She didn't really have a plan for what she would do after graduating from grade 12, but that didn't stop her from packing up a U-Haul and leaving on the last day of school. Deb moved to Saskatoon with zero plans. She had saved enough money to live for a couple of months to hold her over as she looked for jobs. No job was too small for her and she went door to door looking for employment. But here's the thing While Deb had no concrete plan, no formal education, no real supports, she had made up her mind that she was going to think positive thoughts and not negative. She decided she had the choice to think positive and put every negative thought out of her head. It was a decision that served her well.
Speaker 2:In our podcast, deb talks about how she became a self-made woman, making the very best of the changes in her life by deciding on her training, working for a company, starting her own company and then taking a step back as a business owner to raise their four children and then getting back into the business. Deb's story is one of change and incredible resilience. One of change and incredible resilience. Our guest today is Deb Wiegers, and Deb is one of the founders, along with her husband, of Wiegers Financial and Benefit, a long-standing, very successful company in Saskatoon. And, deb, I've known you for a few years. We currently serve on a board together but one of our conversations that we had is I learned that you came from a small town and quite involved in activities in a small town. So how did a small town girl from Tisdale make her way to be an owner of a financial and benefits company? Fascinating.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, catherine, I think it started with the fact that I knew I'd never be able to work as a waitress in a restaurant because I couldn't carry food nor coffee if I tried, and I know that everybody used to feel sorry for me, but I figured that was my first sign to say it's time to exit a small town. No, I'm laughing about that, but because we do, we do have these standing jokes at home. Do you know I'm laughing about that? But because we do. We do have these standing jokes at home. Do you know?
Speaker 3:I think one of the reasons for me wanted to move away. If you can remember, back to the 80s I know I'm dating myself Things weren't all that easy in the work world and that's when, unfortunately, a lot of families were sending their children to Alberta and they're saying there's just not many opportunities, you know. So that obviously is weighing on us. I never did have any desire to stay in a small town, loved it, loved growing up in a small town, met and had a lot of great experiences. But I think, like many, it was just.
Speaker 3:There was so much more out there, and you know, my father was probably my, my, I think my biggest hero in that. As much as we had our tough times at home, um, there was one thing that we learned really, really well and if you want to be successful and you want to be um able to, you know, carry on and have a career, be entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurial um, you need to figure what that looks like, and I think that's where I said I'm not going to get it in a small town. I think I've got bigger opportunities somewhere. I didn't know what they looked like, I had no idea. I just waited to jump into the water.
Speaker 2:So you finished high school and then you just knew I'm not staying in Tisdale, not marrying the local farmer, not going to be a career waitress in small town Saskatchewan. So did you move to Saskatoon?
Speaker 3:The last day of school Literally had the U-Haul.
Speaker 3:In fact, I think that was our graduation gift we had a U-Haul and it was parked on the driveway and I took whatever belongings I had, which was all of just a bedroom, my two by fours that made my bookshelf, and I just said I'm just going, I'm going to figure this out, and I stayed with my sister for a little bit of time and then I was able to, you know, find a little space on Victorian Main Street and happy to say that I just absolutely loved the whole sense of just being independent. It was amazing.
Speaker 1:So, Deb, I mean I find it so funny that you got a U-Haul for your graduation. When I graduated, it was a whole set of luggage.
Speaker 3:Isn't that the truth? It was one or the other. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So this, this little seed of, was there a seed for entrepreneurialism, back when you were growing up, like what, what was your like as a child? Did you see other business people around you? Like what got you interested in that? Or maybe you didn't get interested in that right away. It was much later.
Speaker 3:You know I think Peggy would have been later I think one of the things that I probably would put a lot of weight on in terms of things that I've learned along the way was the experience I had with the skating space, right? So when I say that, you know what I mean. I was, I think, 10 years old when I went home from school and they were sending up the little notes and I said, hey, mom and dad, I'd like to figure skate, because what else do you do in a small town? It's hockey or skating, right? I was excited to really challenge myself, to want to be able to advance in the skating space. I was very okay.
Speaker 3:It was a little bit stressful, but when you went out to summer camps and you stayed with different families, right, and you were billeted, I think I just look at all those things as an experience and every time you took one of those steps, it just further created the confidence that you could take the next step, whatever that next step might look like.
Speaker 3:So the teaching, the figure skating teaching, was one big, bold step, in that I always say it wasn't difficult working with the children, it was the difficult part working with the parents and how do you manage these relationships and how do you start to have, you know, these conversations? I mean, you're with your little children on the ice, so pretty sensitive conversation, right. So I think, the more I got to learn that I had that ability to converse with people, it really took me to some of those next steps without even really knowing that that was going to take me somewhere. And, to be honest, my retail space the time I took in doing retail, selling clothes, it's just that, in combination with teaching and working with the parents and the children, started to make me realize that I had an ability to create relationships. So where it would take me at that moment in my life I had no idea. I just knew that I had the ability to connect and create relationships.
Speaker 1:That's so interesting, deb, because I, you know, I always tell young people that as they're sort of working their way through some of those jobs early on, there are just so many things you can learn, you know, from selling clothes, from getting involved in the skating club, and it sounds like those are things, those types of activities really helped you realize what your gifts were like, what you were really good at yeah, absolutely, and even you know it's funny because the laughing joke is uh, back in the days when they had the max confectionery, I don't know, is there even a max confectionery open anymore?
Speaker 2:I don't know yeah I think there's. I think there might be one, not many though.
Speaker 3:I was on. I was on the west side of the city by myself and doing all those functions right. You opened up in the morning, you cleaned, you washed up the washrooms, you stocked the shelves, you worked the till you cashed out. You did all those things, locked up and went back and did the same thing and I thought what a great way to learn a lot of things in one space and to learn that you have the capability to do that right.
Speaker 2:You know, deb, and it sounds like you never, ever thought that a job was beneath you, that you were never just working at a confectionery, you were learning merchandising, you were learning stocking, you were learning stocking, you were learning cash control All these things that would serve you well going forward, and I think that's such a positive mindset to have, and is that part of your DNA, your positive outlook on life? You're looking for what you can do and what you're not, what you're not doing.
Speaker 3:I would. Yes, Catherine, I would think so. I mean, hey, don't get me wrong, I have my days where I'm just like you want to close the closet on me too. But one of the things that you know, we've always learned and even when I got into the insurance space and just the whole idea of the positive mindset is what your brain can do, and your brain can only have one of two thoughts. It's either going to have a positive thought or it's going to have a negative thought. So you know what we do? A lot of amazing things when it comes to our mental well-being and the tools and resources. But I always tell even my children I said, brain can only take one or two thoughts, positive or negative. So if you're going to give it a negative conversation, conversation, it's going to take you down a negative path. Every see everything you see in front of you. You're going to look at it negatively. If you're going to have a positive thought, it's going to take you down a positive path that come natural to you, or do you?
Speaker 2:do you work at that? Do you? Are you mindful and conscious of any negative thoughts that pop into your mind? Are you or that's just really natural to you to do that?
Speaker 3:um, I think it's something I probably learned to get better at harnessing over the years, when I was a young teenager. I mean, let's not kid ourselves, teenager life is tough. You start to learn a lot of things, it's scary, you make mistakes, you're hard on yourself, um, and I think, um, for me, uh, I could have taken myself down that path, and sometimes I I did. But what I did realize is that I and I would always, you know, talk about it. You know, when I say to my kids, I said, I think about myself being in the well. And I said you know, you can allow yourself to go down the rope, but the minute you let go is the minute you've given up. And I said so it's up to you to have all the strength you can to climb back up that rope, and so you have to do that. You have to get back up to go. Okay, I did this. It made sense.
Speaker 3:At home, our space wasn't overly positive. Growing up in the family world. My father was a farmer, so you can only imagine how things would get quite stressful at certain times of the year, and he didn't have any family background and finance support to get him through that. So I think maybe, looking at that, it was almost like I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be that person because it drains me and I don't want people to look at me going. You're draining me now. I got to move away because we can make those choices today, right?
Speaker 1:So, deb, a little earlier you said something that sort of caught my attention about how you realized how much you loved independence, how much you loved independence. So when you came up to Saskatoon, did you come up to go to university or did you come up to get a job? Like, how did you thrive in that independent environment?
Speaker 3:I had zero plan, peggy. I had zero plan. All I know is I saved enough money from my figure skating days that I could payroll myself for a couple of months. And I came up to the city. And well, first I came up without moving all my furniture. I payrolled my way to find an apartment. I said, first things first I got to find a place to live. So I lived on my sister's couch for a while. That's not going to last long. And then I found my apartment and then I furnished it with my bedroom furniture. So in other words, I had no living room. I did not have a kitchen table, I mean. But why did you need all these things? I just had a bed. Life is grand.
Speaker 3:My clothes were all good, and then I, just, in the back of the days, the star of phoenix. I just started looking for jobs. I just started looking for jobs. I was teaching skating for about three seasons and it's only winter time, right. So then I would pack my stuff up. It will go to the city. I would try to find a full-time job. Very tough in the 80s. I tried a little bit in Regina, but I did want to make Saskatoon my home and then I just honestly, I went door to door, I went everywhere. So that's how I managed with the job for the um federated and I was able to get a temporary job. I was happy with that. It was just the first step. I needed to get to the next step.
Speaker 1:Do you have any support surround you to to get you through all of this, to keep you propped up or did like was there family around or did you have a lot of friends around Like? What were your supports?
Speaker 3:Zero and I'm not and I don't want to make this the wow, Wow, Like this is. I want to tell me you can do it, If your mind is made up that you can do it. I didn't have someone that marched me to the bank to figure out how to get a bank. I just had to figure this stuff out. I even bought my first car and I went and this is I went and I got a standard and I was prepared to put my loan together for my first car. But I've never drove a standard. But I liked that car. I even had the salesman take me out at Milo Honda down by Costco. I went out there on the back road and he taught me in one hour how to drive a standard and I drove away with the new car.
Speaker 3:So I don't. And then his tip was just make sure when you hit hills don't get nervous when everybody starts to honk at you. Just stop, Just take a breath, Start all over again. But honestly, I don't. I didn't. My mom just kind of. You know she had her own things that she was working on. My dad was too busy running his business. My sisters and I have a little bit of a uh, a challenging relationship, um, and so you know what it was?
Speaker 3:kind of just a sink or swim, that's really what it was for me, yeah so how did you?
Speaker 2:because there must have been, because sounds like you swam a lot, but there must have been a few times when you thought, how am I gonna do this, this, how am I going to keep going or not? Did you just? That was never an option not to make it.
Speaker 3:It just wasn't an option. I mean, my father was, you know. I just didn't want the strings attached to it. He was prepared to send me to Saskatoon and pay for my education, but I just didn't want the strings. So Debbie would rather do it the hard way, and so I came to Saskatoon. When I got my job at Federated they allowed me to take classes and get reimbursed if I passed. So I started business administration, got that down and then slowly found my way into the insurance business, which is in itself a very interesting story.
Speaker 3:But it's almost that you had to kind of take the attitude that where you are at that point in life, it it's going to take you into places and maybe, for lack of a better word, you manifest it Right and you, just because it wasn't about getting up in the morning and go like, oh my God, I feel like a loser. I think I'm going to go back home and live with mom and dad and work in the restaurant. It just was never. It was an option that given to from my parents. It's just an option I never wanted. I wanted to move forward.
Speaker 1:So, if I can summarize, I mean, you are a self-made woman. You, you did this based on your drive, your, should I say, stubbornness stamp. Should I say?
Speaker 3:Probably a little bit of that Feisty. I like the word feisty.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do you think there's still room in this day and age for people to actually do those things? Can you still do?
Speaker 3:that I would so want to see, that I think that's the thing that we've lost is, you know what, when you you girls know, when you accomplish something, that just that feeling, but that pride that you have instead of thinking, why should I have to? Right? Right, the world will take care of me, perhaps the parents will take care of me, perhaps I deserve more, perhaps, but wouldn't you want to master something and and have the ability to take pride in that? Because that, to me, is what pushes you to that next step. And I always, you know, think back to the insurance days and the strangest, how I got there, but I my. One word that I always came out of that was that. You know, I never did like the word persistent, because that's, of course, in the insurance space, you get that but I had tenacity. I was persistent, but I had tenacity. I had the desire to want to just keep moving forward and it just was. You know what. Not that I had a vision board or anything, it's just my vision was success, whatever that looked like.
Speaker 2:Right. So you didn't set out by saying, oh, my goal is, I am going to be, I'm going to found, find and own a financial and benefits company. That was not. It wasn't that defined. It sounds like you took First of all, you got your business admin, and then you moved to the next step and the next step and you just knew it was going to be success, whatever that looked like.
Speaker 3:Totally, I was jumping straight in there. And you know what? Again, I always say, wherever you were, you know what Either make a decision whether you want to be in that space. If you don't, it's only you can move you out of that space. And so I had a great five years at Federated, because they did eventually get me on full time and I was able to move into a fairly nice salary range and there was benefits and all those awesome things that come along with it.
Speaker 3:Right, it just wasn't me. I'm a terrible employee. I like to do things my way. I don't have any problem working hard. I, I'm a terrible employee. I like to do things my way. I don't have any problem working hard. I just like to work hard on my terms, right?
Speaker 3:So I knew that our worlds just weren't jiving. You have to remember, I grew up in an entrepreneurial, you know spirited space, so that didn't work really well in a unionized environment either. I just couldn't. It doesn't make sense to me. So when? I you'll probably laugh at this.
Speaker 3:So I I had met my level of frustration and physically it was starting to impact my health for sure, and, uh, I decided after work on a Friday I was going to go next door to the article dodger with my friends because we were in the mailing and the stationary department and I'd met a lot of friends before I moved up into accounting and we went to the bar and after a few cocktails I just started to share my not so happy with the world story. Right, and they just looked at me, this individual, and just handed me a card and he said you go see this guy, he'll give you a job. Well, when you hear that in the days where jobs weren't easy to find, you went, why not try right, right and and and so, in my experience, in going to this next step, not knowing anything I didn't even know, catherine, it was insurance. All I saw it on there was, I wouldn't say the insurance company, it just said an insurance company had no idea what I was setting myself up for, to be honest, um, and what I learned in those couple of interviews with this individual is that I needed to be tougher and stronger and there was no way and excuse my words and hell that he was going to tell me I wasn't going to have a career in this space because I was going to show him and that was my mission is to show him that you know what in this space, I mean, you might think it's all about men.
Speaker 3:You might think it's all about people that are older than the 22 year old. You might think that just because I don't have a natural market, that I'm going to fail. But when you, when you said you didn't think I'd make it, and my brain I said, oh no, I'm gonna make it it. And every time I see you at an event I'm gonna smile. Actually, that's what I'm gonna do. So and I know he knows that and if I could, if I could find him today, I would send him a card and say thank you very much for telling me I wouldn't make it, because that's what turned my jets on, not for everybody, but that worked for me, yeah yeah, I also get a sense that, uh, you, you developed a really um in tune.
Speaker 1:you were very in tune with yourself as far as self-awareness. Like you knew, you knew what you didn't like, you knew what you liked, you knew what you didn't like, you knew what you liked, you knew what you wanted, right. And it was sort of like those things were the wanting, liking, knowing yourself, and those just all move together for you and that's just really what you're. Well, I guess that's what your vision was, because that's really what drove you right, the self-awareness.
Speaker 3:Well, and one of the things you know, and I'm sure many can relate to this, is, unfortunately, my mom and dad didn't have the greatest of relationship, so there was just a lot of turmoil at home, and it was that's why the sooner I could move away from that, the better I would be as a person, because it was difficult, for sure. And my mom when they did, when I left school, my mom and my dad separated and it was a nasty separation for a period of years because it involves land and property, and to this day my dad will say it wasn't supposed to be that way, right, I mean, he understands that this wasn't the best thing with the children he was raising either, but my mom never was able to stand her on two feet right. He was the guy she quit school, she raised us, but when it came time for her to move on, she had nothing to move forward on and I I said never going to happen. I said I will always be independent, I will always take care of myself, I will never be dependent on somebody else.
Speaker 3:I tell my daughters that I mean relationships. Yes, you need to make them work, but in the same token, do you know that someday, whether you planned it or not, you might be on your own. So what are you going to do about it? And I think that was part of my drive is, I would never want to have been as vulnerable as my mom was at that time, because at that time she was a young woman, she was only 46 years old, she had lots of life to live and she didn't. You know, go out after not working for you know, 15, 20 years, and then try and find a job not easy she really was a mentor to you in a way of this is what I'm not going to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, really paid that for you. Yeah, it's not, it's not fascinating. So you worked in insurance and obviously were successful of it because you proved him wrong, and so how do you move from working in insurance? Do you then just kind of see there's an opportunity here to start a business, and we're just going to start? I highly doubt that you had a fully fleshed out business plan, deb, just from what you're talking about, to be able to step into, you know, buying or creating a business. But maybe you did. I don't know zero.
Speaker 3:It's a zero again. I know I don't have the best master plan in life. I don't know this, that I'm teaching my kids just like jump out there and see what happens. So all I knew, all I knew is that when he said, the harder you work, the more money you'll make, I went sounds like a great plan, okay, tell me more, right? And so, um, when I did go in, I didn't. I did.
Speaker 3:Obviously, through the few interviews I do have to add in, one of the things that this gentleman had told me also was that because I was female in this space, I would never make it, and that was probably my biggest motivator, having come from some of the history that came from. But anyways, I think that you know what ended up happening is that when we got there, I got trained up as everybody would be on the general insurance selling process, call it that to then obviously meet Cliff a few years later Well, shorter than that, I guess, but we worked together for a couple of years and I think at that time, catherine, that's when I started to create a plan, because I said, okay, it doesn't make sense that him and I are working a parallel career because at some point in time one of us is going to have to stay home with children and we can't both be working night market, which back in those days that's what the insurance space was. Right. You called and you wanted to go see, you know, jane and Bob and the two kids. At seven o'clock at night I said one of us is not going to be able to do this.
Speaker 3:The other part of that was, I guess maybe maybe it's part to my ADHD is that I look for quicker results. You know, this process was I maybe for lack of. I didn't have the patience to kind of follow this process. I just wanted to meet somebody. Let's talk about what it is we're talking about and let's let's fix you and let's move on and we'll find the next opportunity.
Speaker 3:And in the business space you can do that a bit more Right, and I could work a daytime market and I actually started by default to really realize that I loved the space, the lane that I'm in today. My discipline call it that doing employee benefits and consulting in this space, in this space only. So that's really what I feel kind of created the organization to have disciplines, not to all of us be doing the same thing, but to rather be saying this is the space you're great at, cliff, you're great in the financial planning space, right, the other ones we put into spaces and stay in a lane that you're exceptional at and then allow the company to grow by virtue of the fact that we're collaborating or, as we say, share a wallet.
Speaker 2:So how big a change was that for you when you were used to running your own show. I mean, you worked as hard as you needed to to make the money and you were in charge of your own destiny. And now you're married and you have a company, and you're not the only sheriff in town. What was that like?
Speaker 3:There must have been some shifts there some shifts there, usually shifts, um, what we did realize at the beginning and then we kind of strayed away. But we're kind of bringing it back, actually even today, because cycle of life brings in raising four children, right. So when we started we really just I took on this the benefit space and I kind of took on a little bit of the marketing space and clipped in the financial and he worked with clients on the financial planning space. So we were almost in our own lanes. There was things that we had to come together and discuss. So I think the difficulty is when he'd want to step into the marketing lane and I'd want to not that I ever really desired much to step in the financial lane. So there's things that we still had to come together on and I think that's where our conflicts would be obviously right. Sometimes you can agree to disagree. Sometimes it's like no, I think that this is where my expertise is not yours. So, yeah, stay back right and and.
Speaker 3:And I think that obviously it changed a lot, probably after the kids were older, because during the period of raising four children I did need to stay in my career path but I couldn't be working at the hours I could before, right.
Speaker 3:So I would rely on Cliff to kind of be there to kind of drive some of those other things and I just stay focused on my clients. So by default, he kind of went running the show, right. And then Deb comes back in kids are older. Deb comes back in and says I don't know if I like the way we're doing this, right, and now I'm looking a little bit more like uh, like a little bit of disturber, um, but I needed to get back in. I think that was our most challenging time is that all of a sudden I come back in and say wait a minute, my, my, I see it differently and and here's how I would like to proceed in this area and I think that was hard for him because he was a man that is very a driven used to run in the show Right.
Speaker 1:So there's some weaning to be to be done so, deb, it sounds like you and Cliff never had that conversation, um prior to you know the kids coming along. It just sort of evolved that way until it wasn't working anymore when you came back. So there was never a conversation, it was just sort of an evolution that happened.
Speaker 3:An evolution that had I not wanted to get back into the business to the degree and then like more so, I would have just kind of just kind of gone along for the ride. Right, I'm in this little department, I don't really have a lot to say. I can maybe put my hand up once in a while, but then when I really wanted to own some of those decisions, because I felt that my brain worked in that space better, that's when I think we had to really take a step back and it just be probably in the last, like even five years, you know, because I'm now able to focus entirely on the business, right? So, um, like this is a standing joke, I tell Colton I said, although you're the CEO, you haven't got rid of me that fast.
Speaker 2:I'm still around.
Speaker 1:I got things to do, yet it's interesting that the business evolves along with the life cycle, like with the family life cycle. So they've sort of you know, they just sort of evolved together. When you had the kids, things changed at the business. When you came back, things changed at the business.
Speaker 3:So there is. It's sort of an interesting ebb and flow that I think a lot of people with family owned businesses may or may not think about when they first step down that road that there are going to be changes. Yeah, absolutely, Peggy, and I think you know it's. There is no cut and dry Like depends on the day, depends on the week, depends on what's happening at the home front. If we've got teenage problems, it takes us both to come back into the family, right? And you know, and we had a little bit of a you know kind of our lanes I guess call it that because I would always be the one in the morning.
Speaker 3:I was always there to say I want to spend my time with my kids. In the morning, I go to the work, I work. A little later I come home and he'd run in the house about nine I would take off to the gym. Right, we had this thing going right. And, and because that was my sanity, right, because I went from kids to work to home, now I need to go to the gym and burn off a little stress and Debbie could eat a a bowl of popcorn at an incredibly slow rate, because it wasn't until the popcorn was gone, the kid, the clip, went to bed, right Cause I got that two hours to myself and and that's about all I got. So I think that that moment I didn't have the capacity to take anything else in. It's when now I start to own some of my end of day.
Speaker 3:Kids are older. Now I can spend a little time at the office, I don't have to worry about their lunch being made. They're big kids, they can do it, and I wanted to teach them. As much as I love my kids, because I have three girls and one son, I wanted to teach my girls that you too can do this. It's not easy some days, but you can do that. You need to choose to want to do it, right. But if you want to stay home full time, you can do that too. But don't let society make you believe that you have one path to take and only one path, Because, as you well know your parents, there's always that guilt thing that goes with women I should be at work, no, I should be at home. No, I should be at work, I should be at home, Right. We have this constant conversation with ourselves and I said I think we've got to relinquish that guilt and and otherwise it's. You know it's counterproductive.
Speaker 2:Right, so true, so you're right now going through another shift where your, your business structure is changing. You're, you're turning, your, your son has become the ceo of the company. You're still involved, but the the idea is I understand it is that you'll be, you know, kind of take being less involved so that you can move into, eventually, full retirement, and so you're, it sounds like you're just starting that, that whole path I think we've been doing it a little bit.
Speaker 3:The biggest thing that I said about about being self-employed and entrepreneur is I have no problem working my butt off, but when I want to flex my time, that's what I am working hard for, because I like to flex around. What works best for Debbie today, if it's 30 degrees out and I want to hop in the car and go to the lake early, I want to be able to do that. So that's why we needed someone like Colton to help manage that operations side, to make sure that everything was you know, you know was working. They didn't need me here, but I have obviously a role and I have a responsibility and you know what, in today's space's space, I mean we can connect with our clients in a lot of different ways. So, yes, love the one and ones, but I also know that we can now take a zoom call from the you know another place right and and so, um, for me it was more about being able to have the flexibility to, to move into.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't even want to call it. I say to me I always think retirement is a word for people that really don't like what they're doing today. Because you're retiring, would you retire from something you love, or would you retire from something that tires you or stresses you or drains you? Because if you love what you do, then to the perfect world is to make it fit so that you can start to enjoy some of those retirement things. But I can golf when I'm 30. I don't have to wait till I'm 65 to golf, right, I just might want to golf a little bit more, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:And that makes sense. I was going to ask you, like I just like, what does retirement look like for Deb Wiegers I, you know, the word retirement just isn't the appropriate word at all.
Speaker 3:I just, I just. To me it brings a negative connotation. It's like I just, I see, we see it, we see it in our space. People that have worked hit this magical, magical age and either their health is gone or they just aren't happy because they don't even know what it is they're going to do when they wake up in the morning. Right, some people have it figured out.
Speaker 3:I've got a girlfriend and she absolutely loves to sit at her easel and paint all day long. Good for you. I can only walk so many hours a day, so I can't walk for eight hours. Right, I need to do other things that will stimulate the brain and and so this is why I still find that being at work allows me to still stay mentally active and, in the spaces that I can refine, to enjoy most, not all of it, I mean. I mean, we don't have jobs or career paths that are perfect. There's always going to be things, but if the majority of that is stuff that stimulates you and keeps you wanting to do it, then I feel that I've been successful.
Speaker 2:Fascinating, Deb. This has been fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. I had no idea on some of this. It's absolutely wonderful. So thank you very much. It's been a really lot of fun.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, Gals. I appreciate the opportunity to share and maybe next time we'll do kind of part two over a glass of wine, because I walk for stress release. But I also have a couple glasses of wine for stress release. So there you go.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Please subscribe on Apple or Spotify and share with a friend this episode recorded via Zoom audio. Producers Peggy Koenig and Catherine Greiba. Executive producer. Koenig Leadership Advisory. Theme music La Pompe, written by Chris Harrington. Music publisher Envato Market. For information on this podcast and to purchase some fabulous goat merchandise.