65 | Wildest Dreams and Worst Nightmares Happen Every Day in Entrepreneurship

Your wildest dreams and your worst nightmares can absolutely happen at the same time, and I’m living proof. I’m back for Season 7 with a real-time debrief of the last six months of 2025: recovering from endometriosis excision surgery, navigating chronic inflammation, and trying to rebuild my nervous system while still leading a fast-moving women-owned brand. If you’ve ever felt like your body, brain, and business were all asking for attention at once, this one will hit home.

I also take you behind the scenes of the Woman Owned Wallet show pilot, from the joy of filming to the cracks that showed up in editing and communication. The hardest moment? Hosting a premiere party without having seen the final cut first. We talk creative control, boundaries, and what it means to show up in full integrity even when you’re scared, overstimulated, or unsure how things will land.

Then we zoom out to what’s next: the Woman Owned Wallet Tour and the idea that spending is community investment. I share why I’m reframing “customers” as community investors, how we’re mapping women-owned businesses in Louisville, Kentucky, and why financial wellness starts with where you choose to put your dollar. You’ll also hear about Penny the Piggy Bank, our new children’s book built to teach money mindset early, plus the growth of Pinkmas Bash and what it takes to design events with real care.

Finally, I tell the truth about closing the WoW storefront: the relief, the grief, the safety issues, the construction losses, and the identity shift of stepping away from retail. WoW is still here, expanding, and getting more aligned than ever. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s rebuilding, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.

Transcript

Welcome Back To Season Seven

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey friends, welcome to Woman Owned Wallet, the podcast. I'm your host, Amanda Dare, a serial entrepreneur who has already made all of the money mistakes, so you don't have to. Now I'm working on my money mindset, expanding my companies, and having open conversations with women around a subject that shouldn't be so taboo. Money. My company, Woman Owned Wallet, and I are determined to help you foster a more positive relationship with your wallet and help you create a life that makes you say, wow. All right, let's get into it. Can y'all believe it? Moneymakers, it's season seven. Seven of Woman Owned Wallet, the podcast. And I'm just over the moon, excited about that. I feel so grateful to be here and so grateful to just yap a little bit because I am a yapper. So I do love to externally process what I'm going through. And trust me, I'm in a lot of therapy about it too. I hope you are too for your baggage that you're carrying too. You know, it's heavy. It's heavy. Um, so I'm just excited to be here with you and um be talking through all that's going on with WoW and with me, Amanda Dare, your host, and get into it for season seven. Woo! So excited. Last time that we spoke, I was um two weeks out from my surgery, the surgery that I'm just gonna say saved my life. And it was for endometriosis excision surgery. So they took out endometriosis from my body, which is these lesions that can like connect your organs together. Oh, it was intense. The recovery was intense, and we're only about six months out from it, honestly. Maybe seven, if I could count right. Um, and sometimes my body still doesn't feel, you know, all the way but put back together. But I definitely got multiple months of relief, and I'm going to some doctors now for like the next kind of step of it. Um, but we'll talk about that in a future episode. Today's episode, I really want to just kind of discuss what happened in those last six months of 2025. Right now I'm in March of 2026, so we'll talk through the end of last year in this episode, and then maybe next episode, we'll talk about the beginning of 2026. I mean, I think that sounds good. I hope it does, because that's what I'm gonna do. Okay, so what happened, y'all? I mean, I'm sure you maybe not sure, but if you've been following us on social media, you do know some of it. But um, I just want to get into like the deep dive, the real real of how I was feeling in my experience through some of the I kind of like to say it like this my wildest dreams and my worst nightmares happen simultaneously. So this is gonna feel like a roller coaster, and that's because that's my life. And um honestly, I really enjoy riding this roller coaster, and um I feel like I mostly manage it pretty well. Well, mm-hmm, but you know, just a human, just a girl, just out here in this world trying to literally survive it, and um do my best to leave it a little bit better than you know, than how I found it. And I can do that through utilizing my own experiences and through sharing those with others, especially as somebody who loves to yep. So let's get into it. I feel like um the end uh the end of 2025 was like such the end of an era. So we'll get into that, but let's kind of, you know, we'll start where we left off. So as I said, you know, now I'm about seven months out from that surgery that closed, you know, that we talked about in the closeout of uh season six. And um I just remember thinking, like, okay, this is a really big moment, and it really felt like a major shift in my life. There has been, I don't even know, because it's I've told you before, it's hard to quantify it. I'm just gonna say 20 years of um being in physical deep pain every day and learning how to mentally and physically, but mentally deal with having a chronic illness, it's not for the faint of heart. Definitely not. And um, I definitely struggled through it a lot and didn't always get to show up as myself. And um, I'm still figuring that part out because when you have endometriosis, because it's um an autoimmune disease, like a um inflammatory disease, there's basically like 20 other diseases that you can have higher risk of because you have endometriosis. And just as a reminder, there's no um reason why one in 10 women have endometriosis. It's 190 million women across the world, and that is the same amount of people that have like diabetes. So the fact that it's not been studied and it affects this many people blows my mind. And I know that there's like really good um funding going into it right now, and that women's health is being more funded than it ever has before, and I'm grateful for that. So let's um let's keep moving through it because, like I said, there's all these other ones. So I'm working on those now, but because there's inflammation throughout the body, you know, ADHD is really high, um, SIBO, which is kind of in your gut, is also really high. My um arthritis, you know, inflammatory through your veins, um, really high. So I'm just kind of working through a lot of that with um some doctors and trying to figure it out, as well as just overall learning how to release tension that my body has held through going through endometriosis for such a long time. My body understands how to be tense because it's holding, it's holding a lot. But now without the um major like excision spots, I think they took out like five areas and there was endometriosis. And it was just like um after they biopsied it, they found it. And so it's like kind of learning about how to manage life after the surgery and to remind everybody this is not, this is something that regrows, this is something I'll probably have to have multiple surgeries for. Um, I'm also just really struggling to choose myself, like mentally. I think it probably looks like that on the outside that I'm like, that's not hard for me to be able to stand up for myself or choose myself, and trust me, um, it's still very difficult. So I'm learning a lot right now. I got a lot of open wounds, and you'll probably hear that throughout this season of the podcast. And honestly, I I know y'all know um at this point in the podcast that uh I'm just gonna talk about it all. And I am gonna talk about it from my experience. So don't take anything, you know, I said as as anything um negative. It's just how I experienced it and how I want to explain it um for my my life story. So yeah, that's what we're gonna do. But that's where we were. Um we talked a lot about the pilot episode of Woman Owned Wallet, the show, and um that we actually did come out with the pilot episode in late August. And I mean, as y'all can tell from the end of season six, like everything was feeling so hopeful, so aligned, and there was a ton of creative like alignment, like uh the excitement, I should really say. And I did feel that consistently working with the team I have um and had, and felt so good in the creation of the first pilot episode. But things have changed a little bit. So I just want to walk through some of the things that really did happen. Like I said, my wildest dreams, like launching the pilot of a show and my worst nightmares, um, that I'll get into with my experience from that, happen at the same time. So let's go through it. Now, again, filming part, the filming part. Beautiful, amazing experience. Worked with the whole team. The editing part is where we started to see cracks in our creative alignment. So working um with the team I worked with before, um, some of them I still work with. Cusco, he's my audio person. But he's gonna be in my life for the rest of my life. Like I'm just so obsessed. Um, so nothing that I uh said last time was anywhere near um hurting my relationship with Cusco. He's he's my he's my bro and my gal, and I'm obsessed. But working with the other um member of the team I talked about before, Greg, um, we uh, like I said, kind of like in person, we're so good. And then behind the scenes, we just could not communicate. I think this is an issue that happens on both of our sides for sure. However, I'm I'm just not sure his full experience because it's not mine. Um, but creatively, um, we're no longer working together. And doesn't mean he doesn't do a great job, just didn't work out for me. So we worked through filming, like I said, and then we posted up, I want to say it was like over or almost a month after when we filmed, that we were gonna have our pilot launch episode um party. So we were gonna host a party, and Greg kind of kept trying to get the party earlier. He wanted to get through it. And maybe there is some of that creative, like when you get creatively excited, you just want to finish something from like start to finish when you get your hands on it. And maybe by putting it out further, that excitement just got lost. But um unfortunately, until the day of the pilot uh party, I had not seen any of the footage and have not seen the editing. And um, Greg was very interested in being the sole editor. And so I just had some suggestions and some things I would want to change, like adding um the title sequence, you know, to uh like the logo to the um video and stuff like that. But that was just something I never got to do and I still haven't been able to do. So the filming, like originally the idea was that it was gonna be like diners, drive-ins, and dives, but for woman-owned businesses. So I'm gonna be running around as gal fieri. So of course I need to have like an intro into each space and an exit. We need to do something together. And some of that happened, especially within the cherry picking um segment. I thought that was beautiful. Um, but WoW needed more of a segment in the beginning to kind of explain, not explain, but show what we really do. And that um Greg really felt like it was just long, one long intro. So it was just, again, creative differences there. I always thought it would be a separate segment where we're just introducing the entire idea of the show, but also featuring Wow, the storefront and um the concept of wow with the tour. And then we would walk around to different women-owned businesses, we would show them off. So we filmed actually a tour of us walking about 30 uh different people around Nulu from they're all my friends, they're all such beautiful humans for like showing up and doing amazing things. And we're gonna still utilize all that footage. Um, but once we went into Story Louisville, um, we just didn't have enough filming time to really integrate um Amanda Dare, the character, into the story of um that segment. So it felt a lot more like docuseries when we did that. And originally we had discussed um with the entire team that the episode would be, you know, about 30 minutes because, and I mean, maybe it's like eight minutes per segment, so it's closer to like, you know, 24, 25, whatever, but it was always going to be a longer, full episode show. And um the morning of the pilot, um, Greg didn't Greg had forgotten that information and had um edited, we had multiple cancellations of meetings before that, and so I'd still not seen the pilot episode. Now, I had a lot of people tell me when I was explaining what was going on that I should cancel the party, and I was not interested in doing that. I really do believe that this day, this moment, was a major shift in my mindset, in my confidence in myself, in my perspective. Um, maybe not my perspective, but in like how I was gonna show up as myself and how I was gonna move through the world. And how I'm gonna move through the world is that I have a choice on how I feel in a certain moment, um, which was not, I haven't seen this, so I'm I'm some kind of victim or something. I'm like, no. I showed up in full integrity. I got all these people together, I got all these businesses together, I got all these amazing creatives to work together on this cool project. No matter what it is, I'm gonna show it off. I'm gonna show it off to my friends who came to the pilot party that we actually held at Story. So thank you so much, Dory, for helping us um launch the pilot. However, I had not seen the footage and Greg and I were going back and forth deciding how long it should be. He said it should only be five minutes. I was shocked by that considering that we had filmed for days. So I didn't understand how it could possibly be five minutes when I am a yapper and I talk way more than five minutes every single day all the time, um, even for the intro. So that was confusing. He's like he could maybe get it up to 10, and then it was just so freshing because I still hadn't seen it when we were setting up for the party. And then after the party started, it was like 720 or something like that. Um, the team and I received a 20-minute video from um from Greg. And so we were like, okay, well, 20 is great. You know, like that was part of the goal was to get it to be a little bit longer and to be able to utilize the full amount of footage that we captured over a couple of days. So yeah, we received that. Um unfortunately, Greg didn't come to the party. He had other plans, and um we had a blast showing, you know, showing it off, but it was very nerve-wracking introducing something that I had never seen. Um, but I did choose that I was not going to be embarrassed because I had shown up in full um fully myself. I had shown up in full integrity. And if for some reason that there wasn't a show that even came through that night, I would just go and I don't know, play some music and dance with all of the people that wanted to support it either way. So got through that. Did I have a little half gummy to be able to manage my nerves? Yes. Yes, I did. Utilized that um for my own mental health to help me, you know, stay calm. But I just was over the moon when we finally received it. And um, I just want to thank Greg for being able to be a part of that beginning and then also providing something that was longer and like what I thought we had originally discussed. So I'm still very grateful for the experience. Like I said, it's just you need to get some stuff, you know, more clear and you're working with each other in creative ways. And um, you know, behind the scenes, it just the communication just felt very different then um than it did when we were together, all together as a team. So again, no stress. It happened, it worked, but at the same time being able to choose how I was gonna show up in a situation that felt like it could just be complete stress, not having seen what I was showing the world was pretty hard. Was pretty hard, um, but it all turned out okay. Now, like I said, we're not working with Greg anymore. Um, but I did um purchase all the footage from him and the audio and everything, and so we're still utilizing that footage in the rest of the episodes. We also kind of shifted, like I really did want the show to be originally pitched to some larger network. And then I kind of realized that I would lose so much control. I would lose so much of the um the choices around who got to be featured on the show or who, like there would just be so much more input that I wasn't really ready to receive when I really just want to put in my time and my excitement to showing off how amazing these woman-owned businesses are in Louisville and then touring beyond Louisville, since there are 17 drivable, like major cities from Louisville. How to utilize Louisville as a hub for woman-owned businesses, and then kind of web out from there. And the goal is to put women on the map. So we have this map of Nulu. We started in 2019, and when I started, there was less than 30 woman-owned businesses. And this year I just finished the new map. There's 54 woman-owned businesses located in the New Lou district of Louisville, Kentucky. And I'm so very proud to have been a part, you know, of that kind of story, of that excitement of the things that we got to put together for the neighborhood to just thrive, especially for woman-owned businesses, of course, makes me super happy. Hey Moneymaker, did you know that one of the most powerful things you can do with your dollar is decide where it goes?

SPEAKER_01 18:41

Introducing the Woman-owned wallet tour, your new favorite way to explore cities through the lens of woman-owned.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

From cafes and boutiques to salons and sweet spots, we're mapping out the baddest businesses powered by women. Think of it as a self-guided tour. Meets empowerment hour. Grab your friends, your wallet, and your walk-in shoes because we've done the research so you can do the shopping. Every stop you make puts money directly into the wallets of women. And around here, that's the goal. Ready to walk the walk? Visit womanownedwallet.com or come into our storefront in Louisville, Kentucky, and start exploring women-owned businesses near you.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Thanks for calling Woman Owned Wallet the Hotline.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Women forever. Bye. This store is very amazing. It's so cool. Your shop is the cutest. I love all the pink. Um, and I love that you're supporting women. Keep on doing what you're doing. All right, bye.

Penny The Piggy Bank Book Launch

SPEAKER_02 19:55

So maybe as you're going through your day and you're feeling overwhelmed by something or a feeling that you have is like is overcoming um or overtaking really your mental health in some way. Listen, we don't need to be too too worried about that. We do get to choose how we show up and how we how we present ourselves, even when we are feeling very stressed. So I just want you to remember that. And in that moment, I felt that I had control of my emotions and I did feel very regulated to be able to manage that stress um of not knowing if the show would be there or not. And um, it did, and it worked out okay. So as we move forward though, oh ADHD, you guys. It's not inflammation in the brain from this endo, I swear. I forgot what I was talking about. But now I'm back. So the new version of the show we've actually been shooting in 2026. So we will go over that a little bit more next episode. But it's a lot more casual and a lot more um kind of creative chaos, and we're moving through utilizing all different kinds of equipment, all different phones and cameras and mics and everything. It's across all of um all of the technological things. But what's cool about it is that it just feels more real, more wow. It feels more open and less stuffy than the original one did and the original idea did. So I'm very excited to continue um making the show and putting it out on YouTube for y'all. So definitely give us a subscribe, follow all the likes, all the things. I have to like learn all the language for YouTube as I um work to grow that as well. So I'm very, very excited. I hope that y'all follow along. My kitty is right here. Kitty boy. I don't know if you'll see him probably. He's gonna be yep, right in the way. What you doing? What you doing? Checking it out? Yep. Keep walking. Alright, love you. Bye, Teddy. One of the other things that happened is I got two cats when I had my endometriosis surgery. Oh goodness, that jump was real loud and real shaky. Sorry, y'all. Um, so I got um two baby kittens. Well, now they're a year old. Their birthday was yesterday. My little heart was so I was like singing them happy birthday with my husband, and we're just like being cute and adorable, and I'm obsessed. Um, but yeah, they're now a year old. But last July, it was like like June 30th or something, my friend Caitlin, who has KKP boudoir, the photography that I'm obsessed with. Um, Caitlin had a stray cat in her neighborhood named Nancy. And Nancy um kept bringing her litters of kittens to Caitlin's doorstep. So Caitlin helped her to um care for them and then find them homes, and then eventually um also got Nancy Spade so that she didn't have to worry about that again. Here he comes. Okay, bye-bye. So we got um Ted, who is the one that walked across the screen. That's his full name is Theodore Lasso Darty, because my last name's actually Darty, my middle name is Dare. And we have Winifred Sanderson Darty. So we have Teddy and Winnie, and um, they are truly my my little babies. I am so obsessed with them. So if you hear any weird noises, it's probably them jumping up or jumping down because they usually are hearing me talk to someone and not just to um a microphone. So that's interesting, I bet, for them to experience. Okay, the next thing I want to talk about, because like I said, uh just the wildest dreams are always kind of in the works at WOW. I mean, I'd say wow to myself a lot too, because I'm like, wow, we got all this cool stuff going on. But also, like, people ask a lot, like, how do we produce so many things? And I really think it is the ADHD. But also that I work with a lot of creative people and individuals in order to make things happen. I'm not doing everything by myself. Um, I'm just kind of leading it and leading the charge of like, um, or leading the branding and maybe some of those marketing and other things, but the vision definitely comes from wow, but it's it's always supported by other creatives in our community. And that's how we are able to get it going. So I'll record this podcast, for example, and Cusco will edit it, and then I'll get it back edited and we'll put it out into the world. So um, for my next exciting thing, we have Penny the Piggy Bank has a book. And you know, she's our mascot for um for woman-owned wallet, Penny the Piggy Bank. And we have a book now that I wrote and was illustrated by Little Loving Lessons. So, like I said, working with other creatives to make things happen. Um, that we have Penny Saves the Day, a playful start to a powerful money mindset. And the story is by me, and then illustrated by Kim Tipton and Amanda Nelson.

unknown 25:16

So, yay!

Pink Miss Bash And Community Investors

SPEAKER_02 25:18

She's real, she exists. Um, we talked about it in season six, but it's so cool to actually have the book here fully in person, fully illustrated, fully everything. Um, and yeah, I just think it's really beautiful. I'm very proud of it. And um I do think that going through more of an avenue to chat with kiddos about money mindset earlier is gonna be something that heals a lot of us. So I'm really excited to continue Penny the Piggy Bank's journey. And just so you kind of know the vibes of this book, it is for sale on the website if you want to check it out. Um, the back of the book actually says, Meet Penny the Piggy Bank, the mascot of woman-owned wallet, where every penny has power. In this story, Penny guides her younger sis her younger siblings through their money lesson, how to choose a goal, save with intention, and celebrate progress. Kids learn alongside Penny that money isn't about having a lot, it's about making choices, being patient, and believing in your dreams. Because when kids learn how money works, they learn that they have power too. Yay! So that's the vibes. This is Penny on the front here, and then on the back is Minnie and Maxie, her twin piggy bank little sisters. Maxie will spend every cent that she um gets for her piggy bank, and Minnie will never spend a cent. So this is kind of actually a little bit of a legacy story because my family is very similar to this, where my dad and younger brother don't like to spend a cent, and my mom and older brother like to spend every cent they get, and I consider myself the penny kind of in the middle. Sometimes I spend every cent, and sometimes I'm trying to save for something larger. Like I just feel like um I've always been trying to help um people understand one another. Being a middle child, being an older sister and younger sister at the same time has been a really um useful skill set in how to explain things to people and how to communicate and in how to help people see each other's sides. Um, so through the story, they end up saving for a um something really, really, really special, which um they decide to all save together as like an exercise and how to learn about saving. And they all save for a super fast high-flying kite. And at the end of the book, they purchase that kite, and you'll see the little cashier in the book. We needed a cashier, and um Kim was like, I want to make you the cashier, so I'm in the book as well. Look at her! You guys, I'm animated. That might be the biggest dream come true ever. To be animated, or I guess to be illustrated, and um I'm working on animating them as well. Trying to learn animation, y'all. I'm always I'm always learning something. And then if I know enough about it, then I can speak to the person that's really good at it to explain what I'm what I'm hoping for. So my goal is that eventually Penny has her own animated series. So we'll get there. I'm very excited about it. And none of, you know, this dream is a is a long one. I'm already working on her next book. Um, but it's been it's been a beautiful journey to go through with l little loving lessons who write empathetic children's books, um, illustrate them, and write the stories. And um we have a mama of two that homeschools, and then a therapist and their best friends. And so they learn, like they know how to kind of bring those stories together and allow like harder conversations to be happening earlier so that they don't seem so hard and seem so uh scary to have. So I really appreciate working with um with them. And they were on the season uh six podcast of Woman Owned Wall at the podcast. So definitely check out the Little Loving Lessons episode. These humans are amazing. I'm just so obsessed. And what was really cool too is that we hosted Pink Miss Bash. So this would be our uh second annual Pink Miss Bash. We hosted it, and it was actually the day that we got to launch Penny the Piggy Banks book. I did um, I needed to have like a little reading, but at the time I was still struggling to breathe quite a bit with all this inflammation I had around my um my diaphragm. So um Amanda beautiful like Amanda Nelson, we call her Mander. Well, Kim calls her Mander, and I've adopted it. Um but Mander did a beautiful job um actually doing the reading, and then we got to show all these kiddos the book. We have um stickers of each of the characters that you can collect as well, and little plushy stuffed animals that are crocheted by Haley, who has also been on the podcast in one of the earlier seasons. Haley with Honeybee Fiber Coat also crocheted like miniature and big ones of Penny with her cute little pink bow. And then she also made Minnie and Maxie into like small crocheted animals as well. Or uh not animals, but piggy banks. Let me see if I can grab one. Oh yeah, they're right behind me. Let me see if I can reach. All right. I didn't want to take up my headphones because I didn't want to mess up my hair. So I had to reach in kind of a funny way. But here she is. We've got Penny the Piggy Bank. And you can see right next to the book. You could take it home, love on it, and um help to tell the story by having something physical. I think anything, any way to actually kind of like learn or absorb or take in new information is always good to have um multiple um ways to engage with it. So having something soft, that's a little piggy bank. You can see the little piggy bank slot on the top, um, and they each have their own vibes. It looks like right now I might be sold out of maxi, but I do have mini right here as well. So you can kind of see, you can do a little collection of all of them. Oh, they're so cute of them so. Um, I'll have to get some more, some more maxis so I can have all three of them on my desk again. Um, but yeah, it was a really, really beautiful experience uh to work with all of these amazing people on creating this new story, this new world, this new um experience of learning about money in a playful way so that it doesn't seem as scary. And it's a good way to kind of learn saving, intention. Um, and like I said, I just really want money to feel intentional. And that's something I'm still working on. I mean, I've had this podcast four or five years, and it just still feels like something I'm constantly working on is intentionality. And I think there's so many distractions in the world all the time, and there's so many time restrictions um on things or whatever. Any restriction you have on it, it's it takes you away from being intentional. And that's the main thing that I'm trying to remember as I go through my, you know, growing phases and learning and expansions and um how do I how do I manage all of this? It's all it's new to me every single time. So I often just kind of feel like I'm gonna mess it up, but at the same time, it doesn't scare me from even trying to do it. So I think that's the important part. Um, but yes, Pink Miss Bash happened November 23rd. Trying to remember. Yep, 23rd. Now, this is similar to Galantine's bash, and y'all have probably heard a previous episode where we chat about that, but we have found kind of our, I would say our perfect um mix of vendors, amount of vendors versus amount of attendees, where we still feel like the businesses and the vendors can still have really great sales days and there's not too much going on that distracts the um so I'm actually currently working on rebranding customer to community investor. So if you uh, especially as women, we put 90% of our income back into our local community, but we don't often utilize the word investor for ourselves. Um so I really want to think and e think and think um through that of like how do we kind of rebrand or reframe what our contributions really are because our wallets all have power. And so if we ever feel out of control or out of, you know, like we don't have any power and it feels hopeless, well, we need to be able to remember that we do invest in our communities with time, with resources, with money, whatever it is. So basically what I'm trying to say is that our community investors came together with our woman-owned businesses and had the most beautiful day. We actually, it was like a random, like it was freezing and cold for like days and days. I want to say it was like raining or snowing or something. Oh, it was snow and ice. No, that was Galantine's. Anyways, but it was not good weather. There was only one day of like 55 to 65 degree weather, and it was on Galantine's Bash. Like it was such a beautiful day. We got so incredibly lucky with the weather. And um, usually we have about 100, 150 people that purchase tickets like on the day or at the door. And um on Gallant or on Pink Miss Bash, we had 400 people that decided to come out that day um on that day and purchase tickets and come inside and like I said, do that community investing. So it was amazing, but also overwhelming. Like we had 1,250-ish people in the room that day, and it was just it was our biggest event we've ever had. It was so glorious and so beautiful. And um, I definitely think the weather helped us out because a lot of times Louisville, especially, we're like a last-minute um sign-up or show up, or they call us last-minute Louisville for a lot of reasons. And I think part of it is because like we never know what the weather's gonna be like. So why would we wanna like pre-plan too much stuff if it's just gonna be nutty or crazy? But these are indoor events, so it's always you're always gonna be warm and you're always gonna have a place to, you know, to settle and feel good. Um, but the fact that that day was so damn gorgeous was beyond. Um, I was so appreciative of that. And um basically at all of our events, we have crafts. And that's like another way I think it's a really important because if you get overstimulated, which 1,250 people in a room, trust me, I was overstimulated a lot that day. And if you're feeling overstimulated, you're feeling um like you want to stay, but there's just a lot going on. I really just like to center people with creativity. So we had ornament painting and we had friendship bracelet making. Those are some of my favorite things to do, but definitely the friendship bracelets. We have it every event. I'm becoming the uh friendship bracelet lady so many times right now. Like, hey, you're if you're coming, can you bring that? I'm like, yeah, sure. Um, because I have a massive box of friendship bracelet making stuff that I'm always happy to share. And it was just like the most beautiful day of people crafting and having that space. Also, always always creating kind of a caretaker room. Um, so if if a kiddo really needs a nap or you need some uh time to breastfeed or just feed a kiddo or whatever the kiddo needs some time away because they're overstimulated, we do have kind of a quieter space available for the majority of our events as well. And um actually every event I think we've had that. And so I think that's another thing that's just like considering the care that you're putting into each one of your events is really important. And that's something I'm always kind of considering and thinking about. And um, it's always about y'all and how to make sure that you can feel um that you can really enjoy the full experience and throughout the full um the full day. I mean, we have it from like 11 to um four, so you can come and hang out for those five hours and feel like there's something to do the whole time, but also that you can relax and enjoy all of it. So it's a beautiful day. I'm so, so happy about it. Um, and I'm excited for this year to be our third annual. So um we're already working on Pink Miss Bash for 2026 as well.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Thanks for calling Woman Owned Wallet a hotline. Hey moneymaker, you've reached the WOW Hotline, where your voice, your story, and your money questions matter.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

This is Amanda Dare from Woman Owned Wallet, and I'm so glad you're here. I hope that you'll leave us a message with your money question, or maybe a wallet win of the week. Or if it's just something that you wish we were talking about. Leave us a review, a question, anything. Your voice matters. Nothing is too small, too weird, or too real for me. Trust me, I've told y'all everything on this podcast. So take a deep breath, say your name if you want, and let it out. Let that question not win. Or just anything on your mind out. I'm happy to listen. We're listening and we're cheering you on.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

So leave us a message at 5024757967. And maybe you'll hear your voice on the podcast. Thanks, Bunny Maker.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

All right, so let's take this, you know, this uh next step together. We have in 2020, I should say I. I decided in 2025, in December, to close the storefront. We've had the physical storefront for um what would have been almost six years, like five and a half. And um, like we're coming up on when I rented it pretty soon, which was April of 2020. Y'all, I thought that pandemic was gonna be two weeks. Um, it was just so impressive, and I didn't know, but I didn't want to lose that spot in Nulu. I loved it. Love my landlady still, love Chris. She's amazing. She believed in WoW before before anybody else did because we had the map to show her and the growth and the idea. And uh she believed in it and she allowed us to beat out other people to um utilize the space for woman-owned wallets. So I was so, so grateful. Um, there are a ton of reasons why I felt like closing the storefront um was a good idea uh during this, you know, time of my life. Not only my uh physical health, but my mental health was struggling quite a bit. Um definitely going through that surgery was a major shift, but it really just opened up a lot of other issues that I've been brushing under the rug, you know, or sweeping under the rug so that um I could just manage being an entrepreneur the last 15 to how long have I been an entrepreneur? 16 years, almost 17. So um it just kind of felt like it was the time to really focus on that. Here's my kitty Winnie coming across the screens. Hi cutie. She's cute. She's like a little tuxedo cat. Like she's my first black cat with white on her. All my other kitties have been orange or blonde, and I love them, but she's a welcome change as well. I'm obsessed with her. Um she's just a baby. She's so cute. Uh so yeah, just kind of realizing that after, you know, Adrian found a new job. By the way, she's loving it. She's working on podcasting, so like how amazing for another woman on business. Um, so oh, she works for Ellie, who's also been on the podcast before. So check out Adrienne's episodes and Ellie Puckett's episode as well if you want to hear more about what's going on. But that was, I guess Ellie's episode was before she bought the podcasting company that Adrienne now works for. But you can always catch up and see what you, you know, see their story where they were at the time. But um, yeah, so after realizing that I had kind of been lowering my responsibilities uh to other people and realizing that if I didn't take time to really focus on myself and choose myself in this time, that my health issues would continue. And so that was definitely a major, major reason why closing the store and focusing on my physical health first, but also obviously my mental health. I mean, they do go in hand in hand so much, but my physical health, um, I mean, I've been in a doctor's office every single week, or maybe I skipped a week but had to the next week for different things that I've been experiencing, um, mostly uh through inflammation issues. So if there was an entire week where I couldn't um drive and I couldn't walk around my house because I had so much inflammation around my diaphragm that I couldn't take a deep breath. Um, and basically the only thing I could do is kind of calm myself, calm my nervous system, calm like I just needed calm in that moment. And um, it was probably like a major um break that I had actually, you know, just kind of realizing like um, or not break, but break through, I guess, is that I had to choose myself, I have to choose my peace and my calm. And just from being in Nulu and being a business owner the last um five almost six years with WoW has been so much trauma um from going like starting a business in the pandemic. Like what?

unknown 43:59

And

Confrontations And Safety As A Retail Owner

Construction Losses And City Decisions

WoW Expands Beyond A Store

SPEAKER_02 44:00

And then moving into having like one and a half years or so of like normal business, which is where we hit our highest numbers ever, where we had three full-time people working at WoW. And it just kind of felt like, you know, we were really scaling and growing. So I kept going that direction. So like financially, I was more invested, more responsible than I'd ever been. And that was beautiful if it had continued to scale up the way that we were planning. However, like you heard in season six, um, I have skimmed over the um frustration and the um financial um losses that I went through by having a storefront on a street that went through construction for over a year and a half. There's so many moments I can think back to that would just probably make me cry instantly if I um if I really let them. But there's so many moments where I just was sitting in my storefront, this space that I had built in order to have conversations um about women and about our how we contribute to the world, the community investment, the infertility as well. That was a big thing that happened actually. The endometriosis um diagnosis came because I was talking about in infertility with um a girly that exchanged friendship bracelets with me and just we were just being there for one another. The community, the connection, and it was 400 square feet, but it never felt like just 400 square feet. It always felt bigger, it always felt like a movement and like a space where you really could come and just talk about what was going on. I mean, the amount of times that the amount of stories I have that I'm gonna keep figuring out, you know, remembering and writing down, um, and maybe just putting into a book or something. Like even if it's just for me, my heart would sing if um if I got to just relive so many of the beautiful moments that I had at WOW. Um, I mean, especially one coming to mind is that um, and she came back like right before the store closed, but like years before the store closed, um, I had a girly come in and want to spend the money. Her first money that she had earned was from the Tooth Fairy, and she wanted to spend her tooth fairy money um shopping at woman-owned wallet because she wanted to make sure that it went to the wallet of a woman and that she could invest in her community. And like it was just so beautiful of like an experience, and someone understood that um from such a young age, and also that her, you know, her family supported her learning that like oh that was so fun and so cute. And she came back to visit me to um just thank me for the storefront and everything, which was really, really kind. Um, I got a picture with her, so I'm like really excited. Um, and I gave her another friendship bracelet because I was like, you have to have this. Like, I just want you to know how um how how impactful your story was on my story. I really appreciated that. Um, and then there was all the times that were really difficult, the the times um there were so many gross things that happen when you're maintaining a storefront surrounded by bars and restaurants, but mostly bars, the amount of times I've cleaned up after people or found things in my flowers outside, or found found beer bottles or unexplained substances, whatever. I don't want to get into it, but the amount of gross things that happened that I had to manage being a storefront um owner and manage, you know, in a physical space that's open to the public is a lot. It's a lot to manage, a lot to handle. Um I've I also had to manage a lot of the feelings, you know, that people have. Um my last week, maybe 10 days before I closed the store, if I'm just not sure the exact timing, but it was very close to before the end of the year of 2025 when I closed this store that a woman um was in the store. I was talking to a customer checking someone out, and she yelled in the store, like, everybody out. And I only heard everybody down. So my brain was just like, oh, I'm being robbed. Like it's finally happening, of course, right before I close this store. And um, because it's a downtown area, and like, I mean, I've had stores all over this city. I've worked in malls, whatever. Like things can happen like that. Like, you know, so I was just like, oh, it's it's my turn. Like, there's multiple places that have been broken into around me, and and on all of the streets and all of the places I've had storefriends, like, you know, there's always just a security issue across um any city, not just downtown. But I was like, okay, I heard everybody down, and I'm responsible for the people in the storefront. So I'm responsible for if they're safe, what's going on, you know. And um she basically got her family out of the storefront, which is not what I had like understood at first. She was like yelling everybody out to her family. And then I was just gonna be like, oh, like what's going on? And before I could like address her, she was like yelling in my face about how the abortion is healthcare stickers, um, how she's never she's not gonna support murderers like me because I think that. And I said, Yeah, abortion is murder to the women who don't have um access to it when they need it. Like the amount of friends that I have that have had to go through what miscarriages and abortion um treatments to manage non-viable pregnancies alone is the abortionist health care that they're not considering, or maybe they are and they just don't care about women, but um I do, and to her, she just thought I was just um a baby murderer, and she yelled in my face. And uh, after I told her it is, it can be, and it has caused murder to women who didn't get proper care. Um, there's tons of studies about that, and or tons of stories and things that come out that you can whatever. It doesn't matter the opinion. I had to then um be screamed at for being murdered and after or saying, you know, her saying I was a murderer, I don't believe that. Um, but that abortion, it's healthcare, obviously, is um something that drove her to a place where she could no longer manage her own emotions. And so she's yelling in my face, and then after I said, you know, it is murder to women who don't have access to it, she um went like she she didn't know what to say, and she was like, Well, I'm not gonna support murderers like you, you're a murderer. And I was like, Okay, bye. Like, if you're not like I've just never gone into a store, and if I saw something that was even even remotely something that made me feel something, scream in the store and not know how to manage my emotions around a piece of art. You know, art the sticker is art, it's designed to help you feel something or feel seen, is what I thought. But obviously, you know, to other people, it makes them feel other things. So it was um, there was other people in the storefront, and I'm just managing this conversation. So a lot of the times I've just had to go numb, you know, honestly. I mean, there's been multiple other occasions where um I've been talked to or yelled at, or um, the first day we opened, we got yelled at by a guy who thought we ruined his marriage because we sold a book that taught women confidence, basically, and like supported that. And he said that we caused his divorce because we sell that book. And I was just like, okay. And then there was other times when our safety was challenged a lot of times. Um, or someone came in and exposed themselves to my staff. Um, so I had to manage the you know, feelings and emotions of the staff after traumatizing things happened. And um yeah, there's a lot that goes on with having a storefront that has, you know, an external of like to the street um entrance. And there's a lot that happened in the mall as well. I had a stalker at every different um location I've ever had in storefronts. So there's a lot of great things that happened that wanted made me want to keep it open. And there was a lot of stress that I have been personally feeling so relieved to not have to manage by what is it, three months out barely of I would say even like six weeks, um, whatever. That's not my math is not right, y'all. It's mid-March. So I was just like, okay, well, three months after I finally am starting to realize like, oh, I am really sad and I'm really angry that I had to close the storefront. Um, but I'm also really relieved that I get to engage with new things and not have the last 15 years of owning storefronts be my only identity. I have missed so many holidays, so many birthdays, weddings. I've missed um my own health has gone obviously down, trying to just keep it maintained and keep it going, that um there's a lot of relief in not having the storefront, the physical storefront. But there's a lot of grief in like knowing that it didn't also feel like my partly it was my decision and partly it wasn't. Um I just truly felt that wow could not, um, I mean, to the numbers, to the data, wow, could not sustain financially a storefront any longer. Um, and mainly the last year and a half, close to two years that I had um had the storefront, there was construction outside. And there was, it was a a statewide plan for the construction. So the city didn't have a ton of um input, but they I was in meetings, y'all, for three years talking about this transformation of the street. And don't get me wrong, there's parts of it that I really like. There's they widen the sidewalks, there's some good stuff. Um, but there's a lot of it that they pretended, they basically gaslit the business owners. They pretended to listen and then they didn't change anything that could have really um supported the business owners through a year and a half of construction in front of their spaces. And they also acted like there wasn't an issue for you if it wasn't directly in front of your storefront. And I was like, no, you can look at my numbers and see, you know, the 150 grand loss that I had dealing with all of that construction. And I think people hear construction and they just they don't understand the full gravity of it. Like they tore up everything to add new things. Like, I couldn't even get into all of it, to be honest. If you want to look up the plans and what they did, what feel free. Um, but they added like a massive median in front of our stores and made everybody back in park. They also added, um, they took out like, I want to say it was like a hundred parking spaces. I might be wrong on that, but there was a lot of parking spaces. They took out five in front of in front of my store. So there was a big median um, or not median, a bump out that was put out there that was just consistently um utilized in ways that no one intended for it to be. So by adding this quote unquote green space that was really only dirt the whole time with some grasses that all were not taken care of and died immediately or just like weeds everywhere, there wasn't a lot of maintenance around it as we were growing too. Like, or as it was going along, I mean. Basically, they did it over a year and a half along this one street corridor, and at the same time, they made the two parallel streets um from Market Street where my store was. If you can imagine just like the main streets of a downtown. So Market Street was having the major construction. They did it basically from the ends of their construction to towards the middle, and they did it one side at a time. So what it really felt like was that they were trying to manage how much construction was happening at a time, but it really actually made everything more difficult because then it was always under construction for that entire time. Like I feel like if they had just made a different plan and like closed the street for a few months and paid our rents or given us some kind of grant to be able to stay open or whatever, like maybe you had to apply for it. I don't care. But like if they had supported what actually happened, like the storefront would probably still be there. Um, but at the same time, I have all that relief and like now I'm doing all the health things. So like it all just happens for a reason. But I just really feel like it was not handled in a way that benefited anyone at all, even this, even the state, even anything. And to have both streets on either side of market, Jefferson and Maine, both being made into two-way streets as well, is good. But to have all of that construction up happening at once, and then realizing once the construction was done is that everything is paid parking, um, except for a few spots, which of course I know the spots because I parked down there for six years. Um, and I just feel like there's there wasn't consideration for what this neighborhood that's promoted so much um as like this beautiful artistic, you know, it's like um the arts neighborhood kind of thing. They there wasn't enough consideration for the small businesses as they did all the construction and as they made all the parking, paid parking and everything like that. I thought that that was really um unkind to do. And I don't think we're a big enough city to where that was actually a concern that they needed to generate revenue off of this area, especially since the majority of the people that pay to park there are the employees versus like the tourists that come from downtown. Maybe they took an Uber, they took one of the bird scooters to get there, but they didn't, they don't usually have to pay for the parking, which is probably what they thought, you know, like, oh, we'll have the tourists pay. Yeah, the tourists weren't the ones paying. So local traffic is it's difficult to get down there if you feel that you have to pay to be somewhere in your own city. It just doesn't feel good. And honestly, it was just incredibly frustrating to me. And I think was the wrong move. And if that was a city move, I think that's the wrong move, y'all. And um, I think you really need to consider that kind of stuff of like nickel and diming people for parking to actually be a real hurt, um, a real problem for small businesses. So that there was just this emotional toll, the health, um, the meetings and frustration of being gaslit that they were listening to us and they didn't change a thing. Um, you could probably see the same plans that were from 2008. 2008, they were implementing in like, what was it, 2023, 2024? You know, it's like there's so much that had changed about the neighborhood that they weren't willing to change the plan. They just wanted to get this thing done. And now that it's quote unquote done, they're like, now we'll fix the things that you guys want. And I'm just like, okay, great. So now we're gonna go through more construction. And not only that, there's um, there's a lot of developers in the neighborhood. And it's not that I think development is bad or anything, but there's like four projects all that are getting started happening at once that are all also construction. And not that I can't deal with that. I've been down there multiple times to hang out. It's been fine, but to be a business owner trying to manage my physical and emotional health and financial health during that time. I just needed a break, needed to be able to do something else. And with all the other things that we had going on that weren't getting my full attention because the storefront was so overwhelming. I'm just ready to give all those things attention now. And hopefully, hopefully you can be on that ride with me. Um, even though, trust me, I still miss her. I miss the 400 square feet of all pink and fun and loveliness. And after Christmas, just painting it all white with my family was um was really hard. Um, really, really hard. So thank you for everyone who has ever visited or come to the storefront or given any love to it um on social media or wherever. And now I hope that you'll do that throughout all of the different parts of WoW and know that we can still hang. I'm trying to make a safer space like we had in the storefront for us all, a safe community place where we can talk and have questions answered and feel feel really connected to one another. And um I know that I can still continue to do that without the storefront. So just follow along, just love on it a little bit, maybe send a send a little love my way if you wouldn't mind. Um, because I'm still going through a pretty big transition, and even though I'm excited about all of the future, I know I have to grieve the past in order to be able to fully move on from it too. So yeah, it was a really big, really big uh change. So just remembering that WoW is not just a storefront. I mean, we still have WoW originals online, but WoW is like basically the only change that happened was that the WoW storefront closed. WoW, the brand is obviously still here, still kicking, still loving. Um, but WoW is really more about the mission, and WoW truly is expanding right now versus contracting. So closing the storefront wasn't the end of WoW. It was just the end of one version of her. And I do kind of imagine that eventually we'll have storefronts again. But for a little bit, I'm just gonna pop up places when I feel good. I'm gonna work through consignment and wholesale. You'll see the WoW original products uh still out there, and you can purchase them online as well. So um if you really want a breadwinner sticker or a don't be a dick, you know, hat, or you want an Indolly We Trust keychain, any of those fun sayings that were always our best sellers, you can go on to womanownedwallet.com and there's free shipping. So no worries there. But yeah, I think that just 2025 was really the year that broke a lot of stuff open for me. And um, 2026 is the year that we build it all back and we build it stronger and bigger and really instead of bigger. I mean, I think our impact is gonna be bigger, um, but is more aligned than it's ever been before. And I'm just very, very excited to do that with y'all. So thank you so much, moneymakers, for checking out this episode of Woman Owned Wallet, the podcast. And until next time, Moneymakers, go out there and make that money. If you want to put more money into the wallets of women like we do, then check out our website, thewomanownedwallet.com. And we can't wait to continue the conversation on our social media. So definitely follow us on our Instagram at womanowned.wallet and on TikTok at womanownedwallet. You can support us by following our podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify. And don't forget to leave us a review. Thank you for listening to WomanOwned Wallet, the podcast.