Was Getting Robbed a Blessing? (How Did We Get Here)

In this episode of Designed to Glidewell, we’re taking it back to the beginning.

We’re introducing ourselves—who we are, what we’ve built, and why this podcast is evolving into something deeper and more intentional. From the outside, our journey into business ownership and vacation rental investing might look smooth… but the reality was anything but.

We’re sharing what it looked like to invest our first $20K into Airbnb properties that launched right before the world shut down—when everything we thought would work… didn’t. From struggling bookings to one of our units being completely robbed, this episode is a raw look at the moments that could have taken us out.

But they didn’t.

We talk about how we navigated those setbacks, rebuilt from the ground up, and ultimately created a portfolio and business model that performs at a completely different level today.

If you’re in the messy middle, questioning if it’s worth it, or wondering how people actually recover when things go wrong—this episode is for you.

Hosted by Ethan Glidewell & Sarah Glidewell 

You can view the video & audio version on our Youtube Channel 

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

And I get this phone call 4th of July, and the cleaner's calling me, and she's like, Sarah, she's like, I don't know how to tell you this. She was like, I uh opened the door to the unit that I was here to clean and everything's gone.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

I was like, that'll dampen the bright sunny day we were having.

SPEAKER_04 0:19

I was like, that sounds like a July 5 problem.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 0:22

Not a July 4 problem.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Boy.

SPEAKER_04 0:36

Well, welcome back to the podcast. This is a little bit different than it normally is. In the past, we were known as the Carvel Chronicles. As you all know, Emily has decided to go full-time mom mode. And it's been about two months since I've recorded a podcast. Um, and I miss it. And so over the last couple of months, Ethan and I have just been mulling over whether we wanted to pick this back up or not. And every single time we were pushing it off to prioritize other things, we just kept coming back to the fact that we miss long form content instead of just short form. And so here we are again, picking this back up. Um, just before this podcast started, we thought we had a name picked out, didn't do any amount of research on it whatsoever, and discovered it's the name of several podcasts already. So we are starting this podcast nameless.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Back to the drawing board.

SPEAKER_04 1:30

Back to the drawing board.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

And maybe our listeners can help out.

SPEAKER_04 1:34

And maybe our listeners can help out. Um, when it comes to this podcast, since we are starting over and it's no longer a best friend podcast, but it is a husband and wife podcast, we wanted to just talk through what this podcast is going to cover, what kind of conversations we hope to have, and who this podcast is ultimately created for.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

I think this podcast is going to be for a lot of different people. Um obviously, it can be for young entrepreneurs, it can be for couples, it can be for anybody trying to do some sort of self-improvement. Um, I think we're gonna cover so many different topics that I hate to just put a blanket over it and say everybody, um, but I just think that anybody that's, you know, just trying to better themselves.

SPEAKER_04 2:21

Yeah, that's so fair. Um, the original name that we had picked out for this was Design Your Life. And I think a main topic of conversation that we have a lot of interest in interviewing other couples on and also um having our own conversations around is the fact that, of course, we own and operate an interior design studio. We have shifted back into that over the last couple of months, and so we wanted it to have a little bit of a play towards design, but interior design is far from our entire lives. And so I think the thing that Ethan and I are arguably the most passionate about is being very intentional with uh deciding what direction our life goes and being very vicious, I would say, about pursuing that life. Um, we don't want a life that is a circumstance of default, and so um I think uh my hope is to talk through some of the things that we have decided over the last couple of years that have pushed our life in a direction that we really enjoy, um, but also maybe interview several other couples who we see are doing similar things and choosing to live a life that's very unique.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

So Yeah, that's right. And I also want to just include that this is gonna be we're gonna share some of the good, but we're also gonna share a lot of the bad as well. A lot of the decisions that uh cause the good and cause the bad, and really how we've evolved from those situations. I think that's very important.

SPEAKER_04 3:44

There has been a lot of good, but there has been plenty of bad.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

I argue with people and say, I don't know if I can teach you what to do, but I can certainly teach you what not to do. I've learned all those lessons.

SPEAKER_04 3:55

That's fair. Um, for this first episode, I think we want to focus on introducing ourselves, kind of talk about what we have done over the last decade of being together. Um, and just let you guys get to know us a little bit more before we dive into giving you any sort of business advice or um the do's and don'ts of building intentional lives and before we start interviewing other people. So why don't you kick it off on just talking about you know what you've done over the last decade and and what got you here?

SPEAKER_01 4:25

We'll try and not make this the entire episode. Um, I could talk about it all day long, but uh my entrepreneurship journey really I want to go back a little bit um earlier than that. I don't think I ever anticipated necessarily being an entrepreneur. I remember as a kid when I would imagine what my life was gonna be like in the future. I imagined the corporate man. I imagined Top of the Tower, you know, every all the shows you've seen with the the nice view, the desk, the suit.

SPEAKER_04 4:56

The Harvey Spectre.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

The Harvey Spectre, if you will. And what a compliment. Um, wouldn't that be nice? And that was what I imagined. I never necessarily thought about what I was doing, I just thought about how I would look while doing it. Uh and uh admittedly, so I um, you know, like I said, I never really anticipated being an entrepreneur, but I found out very quickly in my first job outside of college, and really I learned this uh at my job in college, and my boss, slash my boss at the time, slash best friend now will tell you, he'll he'll agree with everything that I'm saying, that I'm just not very employable. Uh I just I don't make a very good employee. Um stubborn, hardheaded, and if I see something being done incorrectly, I I try and call it out. And um, and so I took a job outside of college. I was doing everything they wanted you to do. I was work every day, eight to five, and I worked for a year and a half straight, and one day I got an eye infection. I lived out in West Texas, I was in the oil field and I got an eye infection and uh called the boss and I was like, hey, I have to take the day off. I need to go to the eye doctor. And he said, Oil is $110 a barrel, you will be here. And I was like, wow, I literally can't see out of my eye. Um and so that was the day that I was like, hmm, maybe, maybe there's something else out there. And fast forward uh a couple of maybe a year from there, I moved into the Dallas Fort Worth area, met a gentleman who was selling insurance, um, sold insurance successfully for the first three years, climbed my way up to regional manager from the outside looking in. You would imagine everything looks great. Uh, but from the inside, I was like, this still doesn't feel like it is what it should be. Um, and so me and the guy that recruited me, who was my boss, uh, decided we were gonna go out on our own. And so that's exactly what we did. We had the tough conversation, and and a little side note, we're gonna be talking about a lot of tough conversations that we've had in our careers, but we had the tough conversation with the owner of that company, went out on our own back in 2018, um, tripped and fell many times, decided or learned that it wasn't as easy um as we thought it was. However, we finally found our footing and uh became extremely successful in the insurance business. However, that's when I learned my next lesson was I can't do it all. And believe it or not, you know, it's uh when you're trying to sell scale customer service uh and you're dealing in the insurance business. I mean, you're talking a one phone call could take an hour. And so if somebody needs a new card or if they need to switch to a doctor or if they have a question on medication, whatever it may be, that can take an hour. And it's like once you get to a certain number of clients, all of a sudden, you don't have that many hours in the day. And in I I I realized that, however, I didn't do anything about it immediately. Maybe my stubbornness wouldn't allow me to hire, maybe it was scared, uh whatever it may have been, I didn't. And so what ultimately ended up happening is I continued to scale and I continued to field those phone calls and I continued to burn out. And eventually it led to complete burnout, where I basically shut my phone off for honestly nearly a year, and I just didn't answer any phone calls. And fortunately, I mean, somebody might hear that say, How on earth did you get paid? And fortunately, the insurance business works a little different than than other industries. I was still getting paid from these policies so long that they stayed on the books. Um, but in that year, it really gave me some time to think like, what is it that I'm actually doing? What am I good at? What am I bad at? What can I um what can I do differently? And so took that year, came back, refreshed, rejuvenated, and literally fell right back into the same trap and um of just doing it all and realized that very quickly it didn't take as many years this time, but very quickly realized I I couldn't I couldn't do the insurance business. Um and so as of the beginning of last year, 2025, I sold that business. And um since then, of course, I I did skip a little bit of the part, but like while doing insurance, I was also helping you scale short-term rentals and helping you run um some of the operations that that requires. And um and so once I sold the insurance business, I got another opportunity to really take my foot off the gas and do some more exploring and and that's led us up to this point.

SPEAKER_04 9:45

Um yeah, I think one thing that we learned and probably learned too slowly, especially now having employees, um, is you can't be sales and fulfillment.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Well, you can't be good at both at the same time.

SPEAKER_04 10:02

Uh and you can't scale sales and fulfillment. It almost is like you start with sales with a little bit of fulfillment, you then go into a stage of 50% sales, 50% fulfillment. Right. And then all of a sudden you've made so many sales that the fulfillment no longer allows you to make sales unless you sacrifice the fulfillment.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Yeah, you're 100% fulfillment, and that just drained the life out of me. I, you know, when I sell, I'm energetic, I'm happy, I'm like your best friend, right? And during fulfillment, you're like, who did I just call? That guy was not the guy that sold me because I'm like, what do you want? Like, I that's just not who I'm who I am and who I what I'm good at. I just I turned into a monster very quickly.

SPEAKER_04 10:42

Yeah, you hated it very quickly.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

I was awful to clients, I was awful to friends, family. Uh, but yeah, we learned too slow too slowly.

SPEAKER_04 10:50

Yeah. Well, I think too, I mean, you and I both have been in the entrepreneurial space to some degree for the last decade. Like even when I still had a W-2, we were side hustling our faces off. Um, and I think one thing that we are really feeling now after being a decade dabbling in it and five years really heavily in it, is that they always say that the thing that got you to where you are is not going to take you to the next level. And I see social media posts all the time that'll talk about like at the beginning, it is that that thing that you're forcing. Like it is just grit and it is a lot of pushing your way through, and it is a lot of long hours and just hustle that gets you to a certain point. And then all of a sudden you realize that that hustle is now harming you, not helping you. Yes. And so I feel like both of us have kind of hit that brick wall, me with real estate, you with insurance, where we have been excellent solo preneurs. We have been able to make two to five hundred thousand dollars a year for the last several years just by ourselves with really no support whatsoever. Correct. Uh, just by hustling. And now we're realizing that it's just capped if you don't start.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

To get to that next level, you have to do the next thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:06

Yeah. If you ever want to break a million dollars in revenue, you really do need to start building things out.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

And not to say somebody couldn't, right? But I mean, if you're trying to scale, you have to get a team, you have to get help. Because you ultimately you aren't fulfilling what you promised or what you told somebody you were gonna do. There's just no way.

SPEAKER_04 12:23

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Did you want to introduce yourself at all at all?

SPEAKER_04 12:26

I mean, yeah, I'll make it a little bit quicker because I think a lot of our listeners are much more familiar with my story um than yours. But for the last 10 years, I have been in some form of entrepreneurship alongside you, but never completely aligned with you, right? Um when you were starting the insurance business, I was very much handling all of the creative stuff when it came to your business, all of the marketing materials, the Instagram, business cards, one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Your mom still has it on the fridge. She's so cute.

SPEAKER_04 12:56

Yeah. All of that sort of stuff. So it always was something that was like really lighting me up. Um, and then it came a point where the insurance was making enough money um that it wasn't necessary for me to have a W-2 anymore. And so that was at that point, the moment that I got to leap into originally carwell design, then the Carwells, um, and now this third iteration, I suppose, um, that we're calling studio host, where we really are stepping back into design, but in a whole new way. Right. Um and so I just think that over those years we've learned a lot of lessons along the way. A lot of things have worked, a lot of things haven't worked. Um, but in this next chapter, and I know we'll get into this maybe on this episode, maybe on the next, um, you know, the reason why we have gone through those iterations. Um, because I know, you know, a huge key to success of any business is that you just chip away at it and you stay dedicated to the one thing for a really long time. And I think that every single time we've gone through an iteration of a business that we have collapsed or sold, um, I feel a little bit like guilt around that.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Like am I doing still feel guilt towards insurance, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:07

Yeah, like am I doing something wrong? Did I fail at it? Um, but at the end of the day, I always come back to this idea that we are in our taste testing era. Like I do not want to just have a successful business. I want a business that I truly love. Right. And I don't want it to just make me money. I want it to fulfill a purpose. That's right. And so if it takes me seven, ten times to scrap it, like, yes, that's a slower start. Yes, that's more frustrating, but it really truly is honoring that like gut instinct that something is off. And if I ignore it, things just kind of start to crumble anyway, just like insurance did. Um, and so I really want that to be um maybe a moment of encouragement for someone out there that's ready to burn it to the ground. Because I don't think that we necessarily should be carrying guilt for burning it to the ground because every single time we have rebuilt it, we have very quickly understood why.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:06

So that um I guess it's a little recap on me. Um, one thing that I want to talk about before we like get into any of the stuff that we're doing now or the direction that we're going as of 2026 is just talking about those early years of when we like when you're gonna keep a PG, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Not the debauchery of the early years.

SPEAKER_04 15:29

Yeah. But just, I mean, if if we have listeners who are maybe in a W-2, um, maybe looking at their life and saying, like, man, how do I get out of what I'm doing now? Those are all questions that we had seven years ago, ten years ago.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:46

And I just feel like we were really intentional about some of the moves that we made that we didn't understand why we were making them at the time, but they really played in our favor. And so I want to talk about like, you know, when we were in Ulysses and when we were all um living in a frat house, essentially. And you know, we were dirt floor poor at that point in time. Like we just did not have two pennies to rub together. I had a lot of debt from student loans.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

And and just to clarify, this was 2017, and we were early 20s, mid-20s. Yeah. So a few years back.

SPEAKER_04 16:26

Yeah, almost a different time.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

But I wanted to make sure a lot of people don't know what Ulysses is. I don't, so I wanted to make sure everybody understands. Yeah, give them a little time frame. This wasn't last year.

SPEAKER_04 16:36

This was not last year. Thank God. Yeah. Um but we were dirt floor poor at that point in time. We're happy. We were very happy. Like I look back on those times and I'm like, man, I will say that's something that not to like digress down a whole different rabbit hole, but um I feel like because we are so fond of those times, it also gives us a lot of confidence to lose it all right and be okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:05

Um and so I feel like that has been just like a core theme in every decision that we've made where we're just like, we were so happy with nothing, and we also are happy with a lot. And like if we have to burn it to the ground, it doesn't necessarily change the uh emotion that we're feeling. Um but at that point in time, you had dug yourself quite a credit card debt hole.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Yep. Learn what a credit card was pretty quickly. Learn that that wasn't free money.

SPEAKER_04 17:34

Why do you think you dug that credit card debt hole? Like what had shifted at that point in your life to result in getting into $25,000 worth of credit card debt?

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Well, if you recall, um, you were the first one to introduce me to credit cards. Um I did not have a credit card. Didn't I went all through college without one? I went all through Midland Odessa without one. Um, and when I left Midland Odessa, I had a fairly uh large um nest egg, if you will. But, you know, when I moved to Fort Worth, I brought a buddy with me. He took a little longer to get uh a job, and so I was covering double rent, you know, and it was a new city. We went out, we were over 21, we just you know, we ate out all the time, we never cooked. Um, so it didn't take long for that little nest egg to go away. And you were traveling up to Michigan, and then I was also traveling up to Michigan, and then of course I had to be a big baller up there, impress you and all your friends. Uh, you know, so when you and I didn't have a job that entire time, like I went six, eight months without a job, so no job, you know, no income, double bills, you know, partying and and then traveling. I mean, it didn't take long before that was at a zero, and I don't necessarily understand why. Oh no, no, we did spirit credit card because you get because we would take that Dallas to Detroit flight, yeah, better seats or cheaper, whatever the credit card offered, whatever their little special was that I'm sure was a trap. Um and I just think that that really opened up credit cards for me, and and so I never understood like a statement balance or any of how to pay those, never learned any of that. And so I just swiped and uh kept swiping until we were in Chicago that weekend, and it declined and said no more money. And I went, What do you mean no more money?

SPEAKER_04 19:30

Yeah, we were at Shed's aquarium in Chicago, and you wanted we wanted to both go inside the aquarium and you swiped the credit card and it was declined, and you were like $25 and you like put that credit card back, took out another one or like carry on.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

It was just free money, and I just I I guess maybe at that time it was some sort of confidence that well, you know.

SPEAKER_04 19:52

Well, you had been making really good money in the oil field before moving to DFW, so I think you had this expectation that like it'll come. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah. And uh lo and behold, it didn't, or not near as fast as I thought it would. It took a a whole lot longer to rebuild that era and get out of that um than anticipated.

SPEAKER_04 20:10

Yeah, and at that point in time I had student loan debt. I had about 20 grand in student loan debt. Um, and all of a sudden I think you and I were just like, wait a minute, if like if we're gonna get more serious together, uh my number one goal is that I was walking into marriage specifically without debt.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Right. Yeah, you made that very clear very early on. Yeah. And I thought that was a brilliant idea. I would have never even thought about it.

SPEAKER_04 20:37

I did not want baggage. I didn't want to start marriage in that way. Right. Um, and so even before we had gotten married, we decided to combine finances. Yep. It just made sense at that point in time that, like, okay, if we could live on one income and completely invest another, that would be a lot faster of a result than if we were trying to handle it solo.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Yeah, and previous to living on one, investing on another, it was literally just living on one because I just started the insurance business. And I mean, if anybody knows anything about that industry, it's probably similar to real estate where it's like takes a while. Yeah, takes a while to build up. And not only does it take a while and you have to go without money for X amount of time, you also have to spend money on marketing.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

And you're bad at sales, you're bad at the process, you're bad at all everything. And so you're spending money, you're getting that opportunity, you're getting that at bat, and you're swinging, but you ain't hitting any balls. And so again, it kind of, you know, you wonder how you get into 25,000. I'm certain there are people that are listening or that will listen that have significantly more and are like 25,000 is nothing. But when you're making zero dollars, twenty-five thousand dollars is a lot, and when that minimum payment's a thousand and you make that thousand dollar payment and nine hundred immediately turns around and goes on interest, that's a scary hole.

SPEAKER_04 21:53

Yeah. Yeah, you just feel like you're burning money at the end.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

I won't forget that feeling. I the very first payment I made, that thousand dollar credit card. Payment and then the very next day, 900 was back on it, and I was like, Whoa, something's wrong. And I called them and they go, No, that's the interest. I was like, Oh, this isn't free money. There it is.

SPEAKER_04 22:11

Yeah, I'm not borrowing it at a zero percent.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Yeah, okay. Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_04 22:17

So that's where that hole came from. Right. Which then um at that point in time, I mean, when we realized, like, okay, we were gonna have to tighten up stat immediately.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Um if we wanted to make this work.

SPEAKER_04 22:31

If we wanted to make this work, it was all of a sudden like, okay, well then what are we doing here? Like, are we going to change our lifestyle? Do we want to figure out how to reel our lifestyle back, or do we want to figure out how to make more money?

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Right.

SPEAKER_04 22:45

And both of us are of the mindset of let's figure out how to make more money. I think that just in general, the further we get into these conversations, the further we get into this podcast, you will learn that that has been a repeat theme for Ethan and I over the years, over and over. I just think it's a better problem to solve.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

I absolutely agree, but it's also not like we're out here spending recklessly and carelessly, right?

SPEAKER_04 23:08

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Like we we keep our bills significantly lower than I would say the average person.

SPEAKER_04 23:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Um, which allows us more risk, but it also allows us to allows us risk to try and go for making more money.

SPEAKER_04 23:21

Yes. Our repeat bills are very low. Very, very true. Yeah. Our fun bills are very high. That's a whole different story. We'll talk about that one afterwards. All right, so we lived. So we it introduced us to our first side hustle.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 23:37

Um, at that point in time, we were like, we're gonna figure out how to make more money.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

I was which nobody else was doing, none of our friends were doing this. They thought we were crazy.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

And like we're 25 and no kids or 23 or however old we were, and no kids, like what else were no money. What else were we gonna do?

SPEAKER_04 23:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

You know? So this was like the best time. The perfect time.

SPEAKER_04 24:00

Yeah. What we did have was uh a cell phone and a pickup truck.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 24:06

And I right now I'm following this girl who is doing this exact thing that we started doing, and it's just like making me want to go back to it so bad because if we went back to the side hustle, like we could turn it into a full-time thing.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Yeah, yeah, and social media wasn't what it is now, and I think yeah, that would be a fun one.

SPEAKER_04 24:22

No, and she has exploded on the internet over the last couple of months doing this and just talking about how she's like going through a shift in her career and using this side hustle as a band-aid to make money in between W-2, she wants to be a full-time content creator, but she's not making any money from content right now. Anyway, she's flipping furniture, and that is what we did day in and day out for so long. We the house that we were living in at the point in time that we were all living in this frat house, because we were all dirt floor poor, we had furni we had beds in the bedrooms, but we had a couch, a couch in the living room, and this house in DFW had a formal dining room. So we had this like little tiny dining table in like the breakfast snook, and then in the formal dining room, there was nothing. Right, it was just completely empty. It sat empty the entire time we lived there. Yeah, um, and so we had a pickup truck, a cell phone, and an empty room in the house. And so, what we would do is in DFW, there's of course trash pickup day, but sofas, chairs, broken down lawn mowers, weed whackers, any any big trash that you couldn't fit in your little tiny trash bin, you could leave out by the side of the road once a week, and a big truck would come through and they would pick up all of these items. And so on those days, our date night would be getting in your pickup truck, driving around all of the cul-de-sac in DFW, and we would pick up every single piece of furniture that not even furniture, literally broken down lawnmowers.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Oh, I was just gonna say if anybody's listening to this and and is low on cash, get in a big Metroplex like that, any lawnmower, chainsaw, power tools, they do not have to work. You can just pick them up and it's 50 bucks.

SPEAKER_04 26:07

Yep, 50 bucks, and some mechanics gonna come and grab it. Somebody's gonna come get it. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

And good for them. Good for them. And you tell them, hey, it doesn't work, uh, you know, just quit running, don't know what's going on. And all day long, you will have people fighting over it. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_04 26:22

It was incredible, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:23

And like for the furniture, all we would do, we wouldn't even like the lady that I'm following now, she will actually completely refinish it and she'll sell her pieces of furniture for like 800 to a thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

They're beautiful pieces of furniture. We were not doing that.

SPEAKER_04 26:35

We were not doing that.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

We were arbitraging.

SPEAKER_04 26:38

All we were doing is I knew how to make things cute. That has just gotten me through life in general, is just making things cute. And so we would take this furniture and I would bring it home and I'd put my cute little accent pillow on it and like put a lamp next to it and a little plant on the floor.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

We would clean the furniture to be clear.

SPEAKER_04 26:55

We could steam the furniture, we'd wipe it down, whatever. We would just clean it up, stage it, photograph it well in good lighting, take every single angle, show every single scuff on it. Um, and we would sell it.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Put it on marketplace.

SPEAKER_04 27:07

Marketplace, offer up. Like we had it listed on several.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Yeah, and it got so like everybody at my insurance business started catching on to what we were doing. Yeah. And like anytime one of them would move, they'd say, Hey, come to my house and take the furniture that we don't want. Just get rid of it. Yeah, just come get it all free. And we're like, ching, payday, let's go. And so we would, you know, take the truck or rent a trailer or whatever we need to do and drive up the road and go load it all up, throw it on there and take a photo.

SPEAKER_04 27:35

It was literally an additional income.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Fantastic side hustle. It purchased us, I think I told somebody this the other day, it purchased us a 17-day trip to Malaysia and Indonesia. Yeah. Um, which arguably two very inexpensive countries.

SPEAKER_04 27:52

But yeah, the total trip was like under three grand.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Right, right. But nonetheless, like that's money we didn't have, but that started our fun money.

SPEAKER_04 28:01

Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Fun money fund.

unknown 28:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:04

That we didn't want to stop having fun. We just wanted to make sure that we worked a little bit harder and then could go have fun. Correct. Um, and that just opened up a whole new world for us where all of a sudden we were like, wait a minute. It was just like our very rookie beginner entrepreneurial lessons of like adding a little bit of value, marketing it in a little bit of a sexier way, having somebody willing to pay us for that.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

Yeah. And I think the important part of this entire story is if anybody's listening to this, like, I I mentioned something a minute ago that like everybody thought we were crazy, everybody was wondering what we were doing, why we were doing it. Our buddies are like, hey, let's go to the bar, and we're like, no, it's it's Thursday night, it's furniture night, you know, we have to go do this. And so I hope somebody is hearing this story, and and I know they're hearing outside noise saying, Why are you doing this? What are you doing this for? Stop it, let's go do this instead. It's stupid, don't you know? I just hope that that story right there encourages somebody to just stick with it. Yeah. Because that uh although an excellent time in life, I think it taught us more than we realized.

SPEAKER_04 29:11

Yeah, well, and they were such fun date nights.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:14

Like it was like an Easter egg home.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Oh, when you get a when you got a score when you saw a lawnmower, you're like, oh boy.

SPEAKER_04 29:20

Well, the first time you grabbed a lawnmower, I was like, dude, that is taking up room in the pickup truck that could be a a chair or it could be a stereo, or it could be like literally anything else. Like, why are you actually picking up the junk and you were like and we just got addicted to it? Like we were just, it was like this game online where we were just like, how fast can we sell it? What goes the quickest? What gives us the best offers? Like patio furniture.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Oh, all day long.

SPEAKER_04 29:44

I remember the first time we got patio furniture and it went so fast and people were so mad.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Oh, yeah, that one was the one that really started the bids. Well, and it's also so low risk because it's like if something, if we pick something up and sure we put a little time into it cleaning it up and it didn't sell, you just put it out the next week when the trash day was there. There's just no risk. It was literally perfect.

SPEAKER_04 30:06

Yeah, all upside.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Yeah, all upside.

SPEAKER_04 30:08

Well, and I think the next iteration of this for us was we went through that era, we side hustled our way out of debt. Um, but when we got out of debt, we didn't increase our lifestyle at all.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Correct.

SPEAKER_04 30:21

After we got out of debt, we just continued to live on one income. Like you were doing a little bit better at that point in time with insurance. Right. I had, I think, moved jobs and my salary had increased. Debt was completely gone at that point. And instead of us increasing our lifestyle in any capacity or going and getting a new car or make getting a nicer apartment or any of like the obvious things, I think we already had the apartment that we wanted at that point in time.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

You're right. But you still drove your beater. Tori. Yeah. Tori still lived.

SPEAKER_04 30:52

Yeah, Tori still lived.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Yeah, we didn't we didn't increase the lifestyle at all. I mean, sure, we may have had we may weren't we may have not been paying 35 cents for rent anymore. That may have gone up a little bit, but everything else stayed the same.

SPEAKER_04 31:06

Yeah, everything else stayed the same. Um, and I think at that point in time both of us, like you were really starting to get into insurance. I think at that point in time you had started going off on your own, and now I had the W-2 income where I was like, okay, you can take some risk and we can make it on mine, and it's okay if like we, you know, try something new and just you know fall flat on our faces. Um but the reality was is that that wasn't the reality. Like you started making good money um pretty quickly when you went off on your own. And so we just started at that point in time stacking cash.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Right.

SPEAKER_04 31:42

Like we just started saving and we didn't know what we were saving for. No, had no clue.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Probably scarcity at that point. It was just like we're not going back to what we had.

SPEAKER_04 31:51

I don't want a 25 grand hole, I want a 25 grand nest egg.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

We don't know what we're saving for, but it's definitely not to go to that. Like, whoa.

SPEAKER_04 31:57

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so we just started stacking cash. Like we just I at that point in time, I was so used to putting over a thousand dollars a month towards my student loans that I just was like, okay, I'm just gonna continue putting a thousand dollars away. Um, and it was the first time in my life, like I had graduated, start started paying off my student loans, and then finally was at a point of break-even that this was the first time that I had any savings, right? Any amount of money that was expendable whatsoever. Um, and so we did that for I was gonna say, when was that? That had to be in twenty sixteen?

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Yeah, maybe twenty eighteen or nineteen. Yeah, early nineteen, I would say. And when did you graduate college?

SPEAKER_04 32:38

Uh 20 uh twelve is when I graduated. High school, twenty sixteen is when I graduated college.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Two and a half, three years of delayed gratification. Yeah. Um, and not only delayed gratification, but paying off debt.

SPEAKER_04 32:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

I mean, it wasn't fun. All your friends, did they have beaters? Um maybe not your Michigan friends. Okay, that's not a good idea.

SPEAKER_04 32:59

Michigan nobody has nice cars.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Right, which makes sense. But like most people outside of right outside of college, what do they do? They get the nice car. Yeah. They get the nice apartment or house or whatever. Yeah. And we delayed that.

SPEAKER_04 33:09

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, even my friends that did have average cars, they still had car payments on their cars. Okay, yeah. Um, and so that was a huge advantage. Like I did have parents who got me a car when I was 16. I did end up totaling that car and then spending the money from the insurance claim on another car, totaled that car, spent the insurance cars.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

We could speak all day about the number of cars you've totaled.

SPEAKER_04 33:32

Yeah. But nonetheless, I never apparently I just kept getting crappier and craffier cars, is what happened. So the first car I got when I was 16 was like the nicest car that I drove. And then by the time I was post-college in my early 20s, on my own for the first time, I had the worst car that I'd ever had.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Right.

SPEAKER_04 33:47

And I was I just was carved out at that point. She was fine. Yeah. It was just my dad's car.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

After the last time weather material, come on, the worst car you've ever had. Well, after the last classes.

SPEAKER_04 33:58

We do come from different social classes. That'll have to be a whole episode though. Okay. But the with the Taurus, it was like the last time I totaled a car. It was the third car that I had totaled, and my dad was like, You are taking my beater, and I am taking this insurance money from your last drug, and I am spending it on your brother's car because now he's 16. Well done, John.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

It was a smartphone.

SPEAKER_04 34:18

So he sold me that car for a dollar. But nonetheless, yeah. Uh so we saved up 20 grand. Again, we didn't know what we were saving it for, but I feel like both you and I had the mindset of like, we want to be entrepreneurs, we want to be business owners, we know that that's going to require some amount of capital. Yeah. I don't know what it's gonna look like to pay to play.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Right.

SPEAKER_04 34:38

But I know I'm gonna have to pay to play. That's right. I know I'm gonna need a nest egg. And we had no clue at that point in time what that was going to look like.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

No.

SPEAKER_04 34:47

So then I feel like it takes us to our next chapter of you were doing really well in insurance.

unknown 34:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:53

And we were married at this point in time, living in a nicer apartment at this point in time. Ethan was making over six figures at this point in time. Yeah. From your own book of business. You just went, once you figured out how to sell and you got that ball rolling, it was like I you were gone.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:12

You were in houses slinging insurance.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

8 a.m. I'm in a I'm sitting at a table.

SPEAKER_04 35:17

You are sitting at a table.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

5 p.m. I'm sitting at a table. I went all day long every day. Yes. I was addicted.

SPEAKER_04 35:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

It was excellent.

SPEAKER_04 35:24

Yeah. And so he comes home one day. I'm working at an architecture firm at this point in time and making $45,000 a year. Loving my job, though. Like I loved that job working downtown, had great bosses. Like it just was the greatest W-2 in the world. Didn't pay a whole lot. Um, and Ethan comes home and he's like, Sarah, uh, you know, uh, if this keeps going the way that it's going, I'm gonna retire you in a couple of years. And I was like, I panicked. I panicked. I was like, that sounds like a mental health death sentence for me. Um, I need problems to solve and not problems that I'm uh creating while sitting at home. I just knew that that wasn't the route that I wanted to go. Appreciate the offer, but no, I might take you off on it now. But at the time I was like, no, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 36:23

Offer expired.

SPEAKER_04 36:27

And uh and so we had a really great conversation that I referenced a lot. Like I talk about this conversation a lot, is that we had a conversation where I was like, okay, I was like, if if I'm going to be done with the W-2 life in the near future, then you make the money and I'll make the money grow. And I did not know what that meant at that point in time. Like I didn't know the first thing about real estate investing. I didn't know the first thing about the stock market.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

Yeah, any investing.

SPEAKER_04 36:58

None of it. I was just happy to be out of debt and have 20 grand in the bank account.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

We were the richest people alive.

SPEAKER_04 37:04

The richest people alive. You couldn't tell me anything.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

Right.

SPEAKER_04 37:07

Um, but and so you had uh you had found a book, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:11

Yeah, I was driving to a client, uh, an appointment, and um Brian Page, I think, is who it is. Yeah, he was on the radio and he was talking about Airbnb. And again, this is 2019. And uh he was talking about Airbnb and how much money he's making and how easy it is. And boy, is he a liar? Um But uh it was very intriguing, and he was selling a book, he said or giving a book away, and he said if you would pay for shipping, then he'd send you the book, and so I ordered the book.

SPEAKER_04 37:44

And it was like twenty pages.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

Oh yeah, super simple. I read through it.

SPEAKER_04 37:47

It's like a magazine.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

I read through it and I was like, I think this would be something Sarah would be really good at, and I handed it to you.

SPEAKER_04 37:52

Yeah, yeah, and so I powered through it and was like, Yep.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Powered through 20 pages.

SPEAKER_04 37:57

Yeah. Like, yep, this is this makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Um this was even before this was in the first apartment in Fort Worth, not the second one. Yeah. Um and so I remember finishing that book and that weekend we were going to go somewhere. I don't know. Um, we didn't have roommates at this point in time, it was just us. And we were traveling a lot at that point in time, uh, because you were making good money and we still had enough to put aside. So every weekend we were gone. Like we were we could not be bothered to stay in Fort Worth for a full weekend.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

We live in one of the best cities ever and we were never there.

SPEAKER_04 38:32

Never there. Um, and so at that point in time we read that book and I was like, well, let's rent out this place.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Right.

SPEAKER_04 38:38

Like, let's just try it out. And so I remembered that night, it was a Thursday night. We were leaving on Friday. Yeah. Uh we went and picked up a lock for our walk-in closet at that apartment, and we were just like, Okay, I'm just gonna shove the stuff that matters in here, but I don't care about any of the kitchen supplies, I don't care about anything in the living room. Like, you know, there's very few things that I have any interest in locking up. Um so we took Take it all, really.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

We know there's nothing worth any value.

SPEAKER_04 39:06

Yeah, this is furniture we found on the side of the road that we decided to keep instead of flip. Yeah. And uh, and so we threw it up on a Thursday night on Airbnb with iPhone photos, and that was it. And we posted it available that weekend, and it booked instantly.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Immediately, yeah. That was that was one of those light bulb moments.

SPEAKER_04 39:26

Oh, when it booked immediately, and we knew how much we were allocating to spend on that weekend versus what we just made.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

That was what yeah, that was our new budget. Oh, we're like, we can travel and make money while we're traveling.

SPEAKER_04 39:39

Like it we it was done.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Which just a side note on that, it's so funny to think how we listed that. I mean, we're literally talking like our personal cheats, right? I mean, I'm sure and our personal silverware and things like personal towels, yeah, personal like what we started with versus what we now put into houses like into our current real estate is astonishing. Yeah, yeah, but anyway, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:06

So instantly it was like we ran we ran that for a few weeks.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:11

Then went down to our leasing office and we were like, we need another apartment.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

We've had three bookings, we're immediately successful.

SPEAKER_04 40:19

Oh, it we need more, yeah, yes. We yeah, it was like it spread like wildfire for us immediately. Um, so we signed a lease for another apartment, lied to them, yeah, furnished it for three grand, yep, spent three of that 20 grand on that Airbnb experiment. Right. Um, because we were nervous, like, of course, the weekends were renting out, people were coming to Fort Worth for the weekend, but we were like, what about Monday through Thursday?

SPEAKER_01 40:41

Who comes on the weekdays?

SPEAKER_04 40:43

And so we were like, okay, we can break even if we are just renting out the weekends on this additional rent, but like, are we gonna have any weekday bookings? And we listed it and it was booked every day.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:55

Every day, all day long. The first month, I think we made like three or four grand profit after all expenses paid. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

However, we were self-managing, self-cleaning, yes, covering our tracks from the apartment complex.

SPEAKER_04 41:10

Yeah, the apartment complex, it's like we were we got the okay from the office, yeah, but it like wasn't okay per the apartment complex. Right.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:19

And then like three months into it, the office lady that let us do it dipped. Yeah. And then we were like, oh no. Yeah. Like it was like a and then your manager came.

SPEAKER_01 41:29

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:31

Um, which is like a whole we could digress on that story as well. But um, but I was like, wait a minute. Like this one apartment by itself is nearly what I'm making, working 40 hours a week for an entire month.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:47

And so we just at that point in time we took all 20 grand. We signed three additional leases in Dallas. We were like, this is the thing that I'm leaving my W-2, I'm doing this full time, and I'm gonna continue growing this. Like, this is it. Never looking back. I'm gonna replace my nine to five income overnight, and then some, and I'm gonna work a fraction of the time. This is magic. What could go wrong? And we framed Enter. Oh, good. Enter COVID.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

Dang it.

SPEAKER_04 42:19

Yeah. Um, yeah, we spent all 20 grand furnishing those three units, signing the leases, like the whole nine yards. Um, and we listed those three apartments live on Airbnb in March of 2020. Literally when the world collapsed.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:36

Not good, fam.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

That was a little scary. I mean, fortunately, insurance was still doing very well.

SPEAKER_04 42:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Um, because I I don't know. But can you imagine any listener out there? Imagine like one minute you're on top of the world, you're like, wow, I literally have more money than anybody I know, including inclusive of my parents.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

Um, I have no debt, you know, I've I have this job, it's going really well. And you turn around and you've you've saved all this money, you put it into something, and you've literally lost it overnight. We might as well, we'd have done better in Vegas.

SPEAKER_04 43:08

We would have done better in Vegas.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

Just the deflating part of that. I mean, you're literally kicked in the teeth. Teeth. In the teeth, and uh man, that just that's where you learn the lessons, though.

SPEAKER_04 43:22

It was. I just remember being like, I had gone to my boss, and her and I will talk about this story now. She was like, thank God she like saw the writing on the wall because we were so buried in like still working our nine to fives, furnishing these units, talking to landlords, getting this all set up. Like, I know that COVID didn't like there were rumblings of COVID January and February in like Italy and across the world and whatever. But it was like I was still to this day, I am like so oblivious of what's happening in the world in general. I'm so unplugged from the news, but I just didn't see it coming. I was so like, This is gonna work.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

I don't think anybody could see that coming. I

SPEAKER_04 44:00

Yeah, I don't think we could have any ever anticipated the severity of it. Um, but I just didn't see it coming. And thankfully I feel like Samea, my boss at the time, did see it coming to a certain extent because I went to her and I was like, Hey, two weeks, I'm out, sorry, Sayanara, I just furnished these units. You I'm rich. Yeah, I'm rich.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

Like you'll see me in 40 under 40 or something.

SPEAKER_04 44:20

Literally, like I you you could not tell me that it was going to fail. Yeah. And then the moment we launched, it was like DFW in particular, all of these units were in the heart of downtown Dallas. Yep. No one was going to a city.

SPEAKER_02 44:35

Nope.

SPEAKER_04 44:36

And now we were responsible for five rents, and I had to go back to my boss and be like, hey, the two weeks that I put in, I'm gonna need to retract that statement. Yeah. Um, and thankfully she took me back.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Um so I had to. Yeah, we're now responsible for like five thousand dollars a month and additional, actually, not inclusive of the Fort Worth one. I know.

SPEAKER_04 44:56

Additional um Yeah, now I was in a situation where 100% of what I was earning at my W-2 was now just going to pay these rents that I couldn't get out of because I could not break the lease. Right. And no one was traveling, no one was renting. It was terrifying. I was like, okay, well, I'm just gonna work 40 hours a week and make no money. That's right. And you did and I did. Um, yeah, so it's just, I mean, it has been so many ups and downs, but that was like the introduction into I'm gonna invest and I'm gonna lose it all tomorrow. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Um, I guess the how So if anybody s thinks that we've gotten super duper lucky, I hope you hear that story. Because it's like there's no luck involved. That one was straight hustle and grind. That was straight hustle and grind. And we got out of it, but boy, barely.

SPEAKER_04 45:41

Barely. I mean, at that point in time, like we were in those months we could find displaced people, people who had COVID, who were looking at quarantining away from their family. Everyone was scared, so they were like if somebody a member of their family got COVID, they were like, okay, send them anywhere else other than this house. Um, and so there was still people that were renting, it just was at a really low rate, it was few and far between. One of my favorite stories that whenever I tell people this story, it's the story that they remember us for. Like people always bring it up if they've heard it. But, you know, COVID started in March in the US, at least, where cities started shutting down, or at least Texas started shutting down. And um July, we decided to come to Michigan, take a break from being in the city. The world was an absolute mess, but my parents lived out in the middle of nowhere. They had this little boat, we were on a lake on this boat, uh, 4th of July. Obviously, no one's partying. We're the only one on the lake, and we get a phone call, and um, we had just been fist fighting, trying to like make rent, trying to like get people in there. It just was miserable. I was so anxious, I was so frustrated, I was so deflated, I was so mad. Um, and I get this phone call, 4th of July, and the cleaner's calling me, and she's like, Sarah, she's like, I don't know how to tell you this. She was like, I uh opened the door to the unit that I was here to clean and everything's gone.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

And I was like, That'll dampen the bright sunny day we were having.

SPEAKER_04 47:19

I was like, that sounds like a July 5 problem.

SPEAKER_01 47:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 47:22

Not a July 4 problem.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Boy.

SPEAKER_04 47:25

Um, and we had been robbed. Like at the time, I didn't know I was supposed to have ring cameras on my property. I only had regular renter's insurance. I didn't have short-term rental specific insurance, so if I wanted to file a claim, I would have been committing insurance fraud, couldn't do that. Air cover wasn't gonna cover a single thing because they didn't book through Airbnb, they had booked through booking.com.

SPEAKER_02 47:47

Right.

SPEAKER_04 47:48

They had used a fake ID, they had used a fake phone number, they had just pulled a moving truck up to an apartment complex and started moving stuff out, and that's not alarming to anyone.

SPEAKER_01 47:57

No, they did very well.

SPEAKER_04 47:58

It was brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 47:59

Good for them.

SPEAKER_04 48:00

We called the police.

SPEAKER_01 48:01

I hope they listen to this.

SPEAKER_04 48:02

I hope they do too. I was like on Facebook Marketplace after that, just like scouring the internet for my furniture so I could go to the city.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

I wasn't. You win, guys, you win.

SPEAKER_04 48:10

Well, and when we called the police, the police were like, Yeah, you're like the fifth person that's been hit today. I was like, cool, okay. Where is the like, you know, group of us that can get together and like there is none? Talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 48:20

No group.

SPEAKER_04 48:21

I was so upset. Um, and so we had to decide at that point in time again, because we couldn't break our lease if we were going to then take the three pennies that we had made that year from trying to get people into these units and refurnish an entire unit, and we did.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

Here we go again.

SPEAKER_04 48:38

When's that furniture flip day where people are leaving out their furniture for trash? Like, let me go try and redo this, which means new photos, means lowering the listing price, means all these starting all over, yeah, for six months, right?

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Because we knew we weren't gonna reset that lease. No, I'm not certain why we decided to refurnish it. I guess that made more sense than breaking that lease.

SPEAKER_04 48:58

Yeah, because it was like six months of no money, right? Uh well, negative money because we had to pay the rent, or that's right, um six more months of breaking even and just swallowing another three grand furnishing the stinking place.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

That's right. Well, I know we're getting close to an hour.

SPEAKER_04 49:11

Yeah, we definitely are. But uh, but yeah, I mean, as time went on, we obviously learned several lessons about um doing Airbnb correctly. But when we talk about design these days and why it's so important, it's because we have done the opposite. Yes. We have experienced the type of guests you get when you have the opposite, we have seen the income that you get when you have done the opposite, and it's the headaches, the problems, the chaos, the confusion, the questions, the disappointment.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

The disappointment. Yeah. When we talk about design and why it's super important, it's because we've been there.

SPEAKER_04 49:48

We've been there.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

And we if we could save anybody from going through that pain, uh, then please.

SPEAKER_04 49:56

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think one of the common questions that we get when we tell that story of at the very beginning of like, what made you decide to keep going when you were just getting kicked in the teeth for the first entire year of saving up 20 grand, thinking you're doing something correctly, being optimistic about investing, wanting to be an entrepreneur, and then just taking an absolute beating. I just feel like for you and I, it has never been a question on whether we want to build a business or not. It has never been a question on whether we're entrepreneurs or not, or whether we're cut out for it or not. It's just do I get to play the game and can I stay in it?

SPEAKER_01 50:33

That's right. Yeah. And it it it costs to play.

SPEAKER_04 50:37

It costs to play.

SPEAKER_01 50:38

And again, I just think that that was the year that we have learned. I'd say maybe 2025 or 24 was maybe the hardest lessons learned, but that one at the time was the hardest lessons learned, and there's a lot of value in that. You know, and that doesn't mean we quit, that just means we pivot, we we adapt and we overcome.

SPEAKER_04 51:01

Yeah. Yeah. And I think at that point in time as well, um, a common theme through our relationship in general is our detachment from money in general. Like it it comes and it goes.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

Always.

SPEAKER_04 51:15

And it's just one of those things that like the situations that we get ourselves into and being entrepreneurs, serial entrepreneurs, can be frustrating and emotional and heavy. Um, but we do not add money weight on top of that.

SPEAKER_02 51:32

Right.

SPEAKER_04 51:33

Um, and as we get into these episodes, like Ethan and I could tell stories for days because after like after that, we got into a van, we lived in a van for six months, we've lived in construction zones, we have We're gonna very much talk about money and experience and and how we've evolved with that. Yeah, yeah, but it has never been a point of tension in our marriage whatsoever. Whether we've been 50 grand in the hole, whether we've been 500 grand up.

SPEAKER_01 51:58

And neither one of us have ever borrowed any money, minus credit cards, but like from parents or friends or family or anything like that. We've never never had to.

SPEAKER_04 52:07

Yeah. We're winning or we're losing. It's ours.

SPEAKER_01 52:10

Yeah, we're betting it all on black and that's it. And uh I say that with a little bit of pride just because I know a lot of people online have been like, oh, well, it's it's different for you because you have parents who and it's like, yeah, we do have parents that wouldn't you have parents that would. Sorry, mom. Uh but uh you know, they would, they would do anything in a heartbeat to make sure that we were fine. Yeah, um but we continue to this day. They still, if you ever need anything, you know, I appreciate that. Yeah, but we don't no, thank you. Yeah, and we've never used that and never needed that. It's just I don't know, this is just a game to us. Like I I truly enjoy it. It's fun, it's trying, it's hard, it's difficult, it's uh there's all all the emotions. I mean, we talked about having kids the other day on on our video, and it's like, oh, it's the highest highs and the lowest lows. It's like what we feel currently with business. It's like things are good, man, they're good, and of course things are bad, they're bad, but it's just like one of those things that we've learned to overcome and adapt to. And I just I don't know, you get addicted to it, I guess. Yeah, well addicted to the chaos.

SPEAKER_04 53:14

Addicted to the chaos. But I think you know, the portion for me around having a massive resistance to borrowing money, resources, whatever from parents, from really anyone, is that like the reason I love it is because it's mine.

unknown 53:33

Right.

SPEAKER_04 53:34

The reason I love the mistakes, I love the chaos, I love the success and the failures is because it's mine. Right. And if I didn't feel like it was mine, it would just steal the joy that I have throughout all of it. Yeah. Yeah. The good and the bad, you know. Yeah, exactly. And so, no, it's just it's one of those things that it's like if you like any entrepreneurial couple or entrepreneur in general that's listening to this, it's like you just know this is where you're meant to be, and and it's going to come with the highs and lows, and it's gonna come with a surplus of income, and it's gonna come with all of it being taken away from you. And that's that's part of that self-development portion of entrepreneur is entrepreneurism um that makes it so addicting and so fun and so worth it. And so, uh, so yeah, I think you know, really we could talk all day, we will talk all day um as these episodes go on, whether we're doing a solo episode together or whether we're interviewing other couples. But um, but our goal with this really is just to um, I guess, bring more exposure to couples that are like us, because I think that the portion of our marriage that I love the most is how intentional we are in building a life that we're excited by.

SPEAKER_02 54:43

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 54:43

And I know that we have found ourselves in company with a lot of couples that are doing that for themselves as well. And the time that we exist in allows us to do that, it allows us to take these like big creative, risky leaps. Right. Um, the opportunities are absolutely endless, even in this economy that people will talk about all the time. It's like you you can create whatever you want to create. Um, and so I just want to open those conversations up about the good, bad, and ugly of deciding to take big risks and not live life on default and not do things exactly like your parents did, or whatever narrative you have in your head as to you know why you have to do something or or what path is laid out in front of you. Um, and just maybe look at things from a different perspective and give people permission to take those risks just like we are.

SPEAKER_01 55:33

So give them permission. I love that.

SPEAKER_04 55:35

Yeah. So uh so yeah, that's the direction that this podcast is going. Um, I hope that this was a fun little intro of the two of us and giving you guys a little bit of backstory on um some of the early years.

SPEAKER_01 55:48

Yeah, one hour out of ten years is probably enough of that. We don't have to go into too many more details. We've got some. I make it sound all mysterious and stuff. We were so pathetic and lame. I mean, we're just hustling and working, you know.

SPEAKER_04 56:00

Hustling and working. That's right. So traveling a lot in between.

SPEAKER_01 56:03

Yeah, so stick around. You know, we'd obviously love to have you uh listen to us and um and I hope you look forward to uh Sarah. I hope you look forward to sharing more and the good, the bad, and the ugly.

SPEAKER_04 56:16

Yeah, absolutely. Um so give us a follow if you don't follow us already. If you have any suggestions on a name for this podcasting, our dreams were crushed on uh best winner, the winner of the best name.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

We make the first guest.

SPEAKER_04 56:31

Ooh, it probably won't be the first guest, but because we'll probably have a few guests before we release this first one. Okay, but sorry guys. Yeah, nonetheless, you can be a guest on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 56:41

Maybe some sort of little plaque.

SPEAKER_04 56:43

Yeah. Send you a gift card.

SPEAKER_01 56:45

Yeah, there you go. That's better, easier. Very good. Well, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04 56:49

Yeah, thanks for listening, and we will catch you next time. Bye.