Episode 0: Power of Perseverance and Partnership

Neal Smock is today's Small Business Bestie.

Neal shares details about his career shift from the Air Force to entrepreneurship, which began with opening a cutting-edge float center in Oklahoma. Without industry mentors, Neal emphasizes the value of real-world business experience, crediting his hands-on approach for the success they achieved despite early skepticism. Further into their conversation, both Michelle and Neal reflect on how their personal and professional lives converged, ultimately leading to their joint venture. The couple candidly discusses the challenges and rewards of their entrepreneurial journey, encapsulating the heart of their podcast—showcasing the diverse stories of small business owners.

Learn more about Neal & Michelle's business, Cultivate Accounting, at https://cultivatelex.com/

If you are in Central KY and curious about floatation, check out Float 859.
https://www.float859.com/  Use Referral Code: SMOCK

Connect with Michelle on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/smallbusinessbesties
Check out the Small Business Bestie Website
Check out Cultivate Accounting

Transcript

0:10

Welcome to the small business Bestie podcast, where we celebrate the journey of women entrepreneurs in the heart of central Kentucky and beyond. I'm your host, Michelle, and my mission is to create a podcast and community for us each week. Join us as we sit down with a different small business bestie to dive deep into their stories, sharing the highs, the lows, and everything in between. We will meet friends who are brand new in business, veterans in business, and maybe even the occasional dreamer. So grab your favorite coffee or cocktail, get cozy, and let's meet this week's small business bestie. It has taken me some time to convince my guest here to join me for a conversation. But with a lot of heavy persuading and some puppy dog eyes, I finally got the love of my life to come join me in a closet so that we could talk to you all. So today I'm talking with my business partner and husband, Neil Smock. Neil, would you introduce yourself and tell everybody a little bit about you and kind of how this all came to be? Well, I think you did a great job. I am your business partner and husband, and that's about as far as it goes at times, I think in Lexington, I think I'm known as Michelle's husband at this point. I don't think that's true. You're also the guy that does the numbers at Gorilla shine. Yeah. And Poppy's dad. Poppy's dad. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much more to you, though, and I really know that it's hard for you to talk about yourself or even go as far, and I've never heard you compliment yourself, really, or brag about yourself in any way. So I'll do that part. But you just talk about yourself kind of. I'd love to hear. I mean, I know the story, but I'd love for you to tell everyone your history, like, what took you down the path of entrepreneurship. How the heck did we meet and become who we are? I think that you have a really interesting story. Got really interesting when you met me, but I would love it if you would just kind of talk a little bit about your journey. Well, yeah, I definitely am the reserved part of our cultivate team. A lot of it just contributes to what makes us a good team. You're the one that's out there and the face of the company, and I'm the one that's got my face in the computer. My story. I grew up in Kentucky. I grew up in Danville. Much like most people getting out of high school, I couldn't get out of Danville and out of Kentucky fast enough. So I joined the air force. I actually joined the air force during my junior year of high school. I wanted out so bad. The air force sent me to some amazing places, starting with which. So does the wind actually come sweeping. Down the planes there all the time, nonstop? It's easy to make fun of, though. Oklahoma. It has its good parts. Where else did you go when you were in the air force, and what did you do? Well, I was a computer guy. Worked on computers, mainly servers, helping people have access to the Internet and email and setting up firewalls and all other kind of nerdy, boring stuff like that. I did go to some interesting places. Went to Iraq three times, same base every time. That was not nearly as intimidating or scary as it may sound. It was pretty much like a summer camp for the air force that was stationed there. We didn't really have a huge mission there, just essentially just a refueling spot for planes going from Qatar, Kuwait, to northern Iraq in the Baghdad area. So for us, it was very laid back and fun again, did computers there. It was very nerdy and very on brand for me, I guess. But then after my air force time jumped around a few jobs, started to learn. Working for other people is probably not my jam. Not because I didn't work for great people, because I did, but there's just something about not being able to make your own decisions, not being able to set your own mission and things like that that just make things troublesome for the entrepreneurial type. So I picked a really safe business and jumped out on my own and opened a float center in a state where no float centers existed. I have to play ignorant here, because oftentimes when I tell people that we owned flotation therapy centers or something like that, they're like, what the heck are you talking about? Which to me seems crazy because they're so common to me in my experience. But if you would just real briefly kind of talk about flotation centers, how you became interested in it and all. Of that, really, it's kind of a spa like environment built around flotation tanks or sensory deprivation tanks. I heard about the whole concept through Joe Rogan in his podcast, which he and his promotion of flotation therapy really brought it back into the forefront of people's minds. So the whole industry kind of exploded right about the same time that I opened the float center in Oklahoma. I was just sick and tired of working at the job I was working at. Literally, the guy in the cubicle next door. We would just brainstorm what we could do. And I got this idea and I was dead set on it. And the reason why I say it was safe is kind of tongue in cheek because it's the reddest state in the United States. Literally every county votes red. And I chose this new age, hippie dippy health and wellness business that really nobody had ever heard of the concept, which it was quite risky, and we had a lot of trouble getting landlords and lenders and everything on our side to make it happen. But the newness and the weirdness of the whole thing really allowed us, and being first to market really allowed us to be quite successful. And honestly, it was a huge blessing for my entrepreneurial journey because starting that business and not really having a blueprint to go from or there really weren't mentors in the industry at that time. You really learn pretty quick. I love that you just brought up the lack of mentors in the industry because that ties in so perfectly to how you and I even met and got started. But I'll let you finish the discussion there. People ask me about college and education and everything, and I'm a very firm believer that especially for entrepreneurs, education is kind of overrated. And I speak to that from a point of before I opened the float center. And honestly, while I was going down that journey of getting everything started, the year long endeavor that that was, I was finishing up my master's in business, and I went into opening that float center and really knew nothing about how to really run a business. The float center was in that time of owning the float center, especially the time before we kind of joined forces, was the real education in business that I needed. So I guess my lesson from that is, if I had to start over again, just starting is the most important thing. What year was it that you opened? And we can say the name of the business. It's still chugging along. In fact, next week I'm going to Oklahoma to interview the current owner of the business that you started. So what year did you start Float OKC? We opened it in 2014. It was myself and that guy that I was working with. The guy in the next cubicle. We'll call him Cubicle guy. Well, he's Matt. He's a great guy. And honestly, we had a great time doing it together, but I don't think his heart was really in it. And so after the first full year, we decided to part ways and I actually bought him out and just ran it by myself for a couple of years after that. And then, as fate would have it. We met, and then I don't know if you want to jump in that part of the story, because that's another crazy twist. Well, the abridged version of that is that at the same time that you were starting Float OKC and kind of getting it off the ground and going, I was starting a business about 30 miles south of you in the health and wellness spa industry. But my business was drift therapeutic spa. I dreamt of having float tanks, which is why I called the business drift. I could not, for the life of me, afford to take on the initial overhead and investment of flotation therapy tanks and all of that. So I just went ahead with the business without them and offered massage and organic facials. I was running my business for about a year, and I did not go into it with an MBA or anything, and I was also just figuring it out. But I don't figure things out quite as gracefully as Neil. And I was really at the end of my capacity to deal with the stress of owning a business. I was also a practitioner within my business. So I was the owner, the boss, the janitor, and a massage therapist. So I think I was just spread very thinly. I kind of pursued you. I didn't know what I wanted from you. I was just, hey, hey, guy, talk to. It was. It was excellent timing because you were in the southern suburb of Oklahoma city called Norman, and I was in Edmond, which is the northern suburb, and I had this grand idea to expand Flotokc to Norman. And for those of you that don't know anything about that area of Oklahoma, Norman is like the blue dot in a red state. So it's a very cool, hippie college town. So I thought expanding to that area, it was just a no brainer. A good portion of our client base were driving from Norman up to Edmund. To float, and I was one of them. That's actually how I knew to even bug you, is because I was a pretty regular floater at Float OKC. In fact, our son Azra was five at the time, and I took him to float at float OKC. And if I remember the story correctly, you weren't there that night, but your manager or your lead float technician on staff took a picture of him for social media. Was so exciting, you could still go back on load. Okay. See Instagram all the way back to the beginning and find that picture of Azra. Yeah, it was the cutest little five year old Azra in there, floating, just zenned out. It was the sweetest. And now he's an angsty 14 year old who would probably punch us if he knew that I was saying this. Yeah. Also, he would probably think we were torturing him if we asked him to get into a float tank right now. Oh, my gosh, he would hate it. An hour of silence. I can't handle it. Yeah, I'm going to plug right now. Float eight five nine here in Lexington. If you guys are interested in float therapy as we're talking about it, if it's piquing some interest, go check them out. I float there. I know their water is safe. I trust them. They're doing things right. So if you're at all interested, and. I think the guy that runs it most of the time, his name is Patrick, right? Yeah, something like that. He is the best. He really is so cool. Yeah. Floating's awesome. Yeah. Well, so I was interested in opening a float center with the idea of expanding into massage. So I purposely leased a space that had more than enough room than what I needed. And right about the time that I started stressing about the huge burden that a second location was bringing to my life, you came to me and was asking me for advice on starting or expanding your massage and facial business into float tanks and offering flotation therapy. So I don't know who had the idea. I'll take credit for it in this podcast if you want me to, but why not just join forces and do this whole thing together and kind of try to? A little side story is right about that time, the team at Flotokc, I was kind of not involved in organizing this whole thing, but they did a fundraiser for this organization in Oklahoma City called Water Four. And the mission of that company, of that nonprofit is if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. So that whole thing was tossing around in my mind, and then you came to the picture. So it just seemed like almost like divine intervention into my plans to give me the kind of motivation to say, yeah, let's do something together. Because this is a lot, doing it alone. Yeah. And it's so crazy because like I said, I was kind of at the end of my capacity, I was truly contemplating just like folding and saying, I got in way over my head. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm exhausted. I was exhausted and Azra was exhausted. That poor guy was like sleeping under massage tables while I cleaned the spa at night, or he would go into the rooms that weren't being used and he would take a nap while I was doing massage because I was a single mom trying to figure this all out, and I was just. Man, I was done. I was so tired. And I had had a conversation with my mom when I was like, man, I think I'm going to quit. I think I'm going to close the spa. I can't do this. And my mom was like, just pray about it. Just pray about it, please. Don't make any rash decisions. You always make rash decisions, Michelle and I did. And for some reason, it was like, when I was trying to listen to God or the universe or whatever it is that you call that, and, like, okay, what am I supposed to do here? What is next? It was like all I could think about was get a hold of the guy from float OKC. Just get a hold of him and figure it out. And I did. And I felt like an idiot talking to you on the phone, because I was like, I don't really know why I'm calling you, except to. So y'all will know everything that you need to know about Neil and I, because our first time meeting as a business meeting, he drove down to Norman. You might have already been in town to doing stuff with the new location or whatever, because the build out had already started at this point, I'm pretty sure. But we agreed to meet at a little tea house, if you will. Did they do coffee, too? Yeah, I think they had coffee, too, all about cha. I didn't want Neil to think that I was a caffeine addict or that I was, like, a weirdo who drinks coffee in the afternoon. So we went there, and instead of ordering, like, a late or a cup of coffee, like I would normally do, I was like, I don't want this guy to think that I'm a bad person. And I drink caffeine after lunch. So I ordered green tea, which I don't like green tea, really, at all. And I did that just to impress you. I hope it worked. It worked. I also drank green tea that day. I remember I just said, whatever she's having alive, I also don't drink green tea. I don't think I've ever seen you. Drink green tea after that, especially out of fancy little. What do you call it? Little kettle looking things in these little tiny tea cups. Yeah, teapots in little, tiny cups. That definitely wasn't my thing, showing up in my f 150. Yeah. Big off road tires. That's good times. It was a good time. So fast forward, we decided to join our businesses together. What do we need to say after that? Things went really well for a while there were hardships. Like, it was tough, but we grew that business. I think it's worth noting the struggle we had over the name of the business, because combining two businesses, we went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth about the name. And it was just kind of hilarious for a while. It was, let's just operate them in the same space, but two different businesses. And then it was like, no, let's do float, OKC because of this, or, no, let's do drift. Because it already has a strong presence in Norman. And then it was like, let's just name it something totally different. And we came up with the idea of Zen tribe, and so we were dead set on Zen tribe. And then, right. I think in the 11th hour of renaming and rebranding, I think we were both just silently stressing about that. And I remember we were doing something at your old spa, and I think we were sitting on the tailgate of my truck or something, or sitting in the bed of my truck stressing about something. And I was like, why don't we just leave it drift? Let's just run with drift. We already have the sign. So that's. I think that was the breaking point, is we were sitting in the bed of the truck waiting on the guys to come dismantle the sign. Oh, yeah. So there's like a $5,000 backlit, nice sign, whatever you call it, something die cut sign or something like that. I don't know. But, I mean, they're expensive. And so we were going to get rid of the name drift therapeutic spa. But we had the sign and we were like, what else do we do with this? The guys were going to take it to, like, a junkyard. And I was like, I can't watch my$5,000 sign go to a junkyard. I think for you, it was also like, if that sign goes to the junkyard, then that slams the door on drift forever. Yeah, that's true. So we put it in the garage for a minute. Yeah. And then we decided, you know what? And also drift had a huge Google, like, a lot of Google reviews. Five star Google reviews. I paid a lot of money for those Google reviews, y'all. No kidding. They were all organic. But, yeah, that was the other part. Like, if we get rid of, like, there goes that Google page, and it already has all of these wonderful reviews. So all of that combined, we decided to make the location in Norman became drift therapeutic spot. The location in Edmund remain flow OKC. And then at some point, somewhere along the way I tried to get Neil to buy me out of the business because I'd fallen in love with him. And I came to him and said, hey, I caught feelings for you, man. I'm sorry. You're going to have to buy out my portion of the business. And I said, it doesn't surprise me. True statement. True statement. Because you're really cocky like that. So arrogant against everyone's judgment and warnings. We started a relationship as well as being business owners at this point, and. We told all of our employees, and. They were like, yeah, I thought we were keeping it a secret, but apparently everybody knew. You can't hide anything from them. They're like little ninjas. Like, people who work in a spa atmosphere are like the closest thing to an actual ninja because they walk around stealthy and quiet, and you'll turn your head and there's no clean towels there. And then you look back and there's a stack of clean towels, and you're like, where did they come from? So they were probably just spying and eavesdropping the whole time. Yeah, they knew. I don't think we were very sneaky, though. Okay, I'll try harder next time. I think it was kind of smooth sailing. Normal operation drift was much more difficult task than I think either one of us expected. Massage and facials and the practitioners involved in that, that's its own dynamic. And then you have these giant machines that are float tanks that, if we're being real about it, they are built with supplies that are meant for pools and hot tubs and not super highly concentrated Epsom salt water. So they're just prone to failure. So a lot of different areas that we were getting hit with. Just difficulties in that business, and it required a lot of our time and effort and energy. It's a labor of love because it's not for the faint of heart dealing with those machines. I think for me, my favorite one was the time that a very intelligent, and I'm not saying that in a sarcastic, mean way, like a very smart team member, misunderstood the directions for what to do in a certain situation. And she ended up adding, like, 200 extra pounds of salt to the tank. And there was like, a layer of crystallized salt on top of the water. It was so saturated that it was like a frozen lake, but instead of a sheet of ice on top, it was a sheet of salt. And it wasn't my favorite in the moment because it was kind of stressful and like, oh, my gosh. Now all this work has to be done to correct what has happened. But looking back on it, I'm like, it was so unlike that team member to not process the information and then just having to try to deal with it in a light hearted manner as to not be upset because not wanting to make it worse for anybody. So, hindsight, it's actually kind of funny, because who would think that you could actually add enough salt to water to create a frozen lake effect? I had no idea that that could happen. Yeah, so much drama with those float tanks, but there was just a lot of drama with the float tanks and then the difficulties of the rest of the business. I think over time, float OKC, the original location, just kind of got neglected. And our poor store manager, Austin, he really carried that business for quite a long time. So, Austin, if you ever hear this, thank you. I don't know if we ever thanked you enough for holding things together for as long as you did. While we were off starting new ventures and falling in love and all that stuff in late 2019. Well, I think probably mid 2019, it was just clear we've got to offload float OKC because drift takes away too much of our time and effort and energy. Well, in another life event, in January 2019, we had a baby, so we had a newborn, and we were trying to run a very high maintenance business in Norman and a low to medium maintenance business in Edmond. So, yeah, something had to give. Yeah. So we decided to sell float OKC just so that it was not something that we felt guilty about not giving it the attention it needed. The team members alone deserved more than what we were giving. And then the pandemic just a few short months after that, just totally changed everything. I mean, it changed everything for everybody. But it took us from owning and operating two businesses all the way down to zero businesses for a while because we sold photokc and then was shut down like everybody for a couple of months. So that was a wild piece of our story. And honestly, we even considered just not reopening drift after the pandemic or after the shutdown because of the situation in Oklahoma with massage therapists and everybody. The word that we were getting is no. Massage therapists are going to want to come back to work, understandably, because there was so much fear and so much uncertainty about what life was going to be like even after things opened back up, that nobody really wanted to be in an enclosed room with another human for an hour, an hour and a half. And the feelings that we were getting from our team was that we were almost definitely going to have a severe reduction in staff when we reopened. I mean, our store manager was very nervous about reopening. And when we did reopen, we decided to jump into it and just see what life had for us. We went from a team of 16 to when we reopened. I think the day we reopened, we had nine. And then within a week or two, we were down to seven employees, I think including us as well. Maybe that was including us. Yeah. And neither one of us were money making practitioners at that point. Yeah. I did go back to trying to take some massage at that point, just to kind know, make ends meet in Oklahoma, the NPR station. There, they did audio diaries during the pandemic to kind of capture how the pandemic was affecting different people. I might have been an NPR nerd. I don't know. Explains why I lived in the little tiny blue city, but I actually did an audio diary for them. And I was listening to the voice memos on my phone the other day, and I came across the audio diary that I did for NPR. And listening to that, I kind of got emotional just hearing what 2020 me was experiencing and remembering those feelings of defeat before the defeat actually happened. Because I recorded that in July, and we lasted until December before we finally threw in the towel. But even in July, I could hear it in my voice. I was just like, very, like, we're down to a staff of seven. How am I supposed to run a spa with seven people? Nobody can tell us what the heck we're supposed to do. Nobody knows what the sanitation or safety procedures should be. I'm getting one message from this person and another message from this person and another message from this person, and then the clients think we should do it one way, and the staff think we should do it another way. And the state board thinks we should do it this way. And I don't know what to do. It was a very. I mean, my gosh, I'm saying it was a hard time. I didn't know anyone who died from COVID so how could I possibly say Covid was so hard? Right? So what? I couldn't figure out how to run my business, okay? But the kinder side of myself says that business was our baby. We raised that thing from a fledgling little thing to this thriving entity, and then suddenly it was gone. So I do think that I mourned our business. Sorry, guys, I'm going to get a little choked up here. I mourned that business. And in the time, I was very like, let's just close it. Because my emotional response to things whenever I'm threatened in any sort of emotional way is like anger. That's my defense mechanism. So I think I do remember being very angry during that time period. Looking back on it now that I've had time to process those emotions and everything, I realized the anger was actually just my fear and sad fear and my sadness and my mourning of this thing that I had poured my heart into for so long. So then what happened? What kind of crazy, intelligent life decisions did we make after we decided to close the business? Well, we took a few months to think about things and really just played it cool. Got our heads on straight. Yeah, no, just kidding. I think days after deciding to close the business, we laser focused in on the idea of. At first, the idea was realizing one of the dreams that we had that kind of brought us together in our courting days, which was the idea of renovating a school bus into an rv and traveling the country in that. So we were like, okay, what's next? And I think we just really honed in on, like, let's realize that idea and spent some time on that and then just thinking about time investments that remodeling a whole school bus would have. Taken, and we didn't have anywhere to do it. And we did buy a school bus. I don't know if you remember that. We bought a school bus on eBay. Do you not remember that? I don't remember that. For, like, 24 hours, we owned the rights to a school bus from an eBay seller. That's safe. I recommend doing that. Yeah. And being the cowboys that we are, we did that. But also we were smart enough to find another human on the Internet that was, so they say, a diesel engine mechanic. And we sent this person there. Oh, was this school bus, like, in Carolina? Virginia. Virginia. Okay. Yeah, I do remember this now. Okay. Charlotesville. Yeah, Charlotesville, Virginia, something like that. The guy went and looked at it, and he was like, it runs decent, but you can find better. So we were like, okay. We kind of pulled out of that, and we were like, okay, let's transition into a different version of the same thing. And that's where we landed on Baymax. Another little aside is we like to name all of our vehicles, starting with the truck that I had when we met. We like to name all of our vehicles after Disney characters. So Baymax was this big, white, 40 foot rv that we found. And that's where the Baymax name comes from. From Big Hero six, which poppy randomly wanted to watch that the other day, by the way. So that was kind of appropriate. But we bought it. It was already renovated mostly. It was. It was beautiful. It was an interior decorator. The wife was an interior designer. Right. The husband was something that made a lot of money because they lived in a ginormous house in Dallas. Yeah, software guys. Yeah, software. I think it was a beautiful job that they did inside. And I thought I was going to love it, but when I walked in, actually saw it in person, walked in, I was like, I don't know. It's kind of pottery varnish to me. Can we make it colorful and weird? I want some greens here. Golds. Oh, yeah. I was chatting with Courtney Rica the other day for an episode, and she and her husband had traveled in an rv. And I was telling her after the recording, I was telling her more about our rv days and everything. And I said she had done this beautiful job renovating it. But I went in and painted the cabinets this ridiculous green color, and she was like, shut up. I painted my cabinets green. And we both got out pictures of our rvs and started comparing. And I was like, you've got to be kidding. They had the same backsplash that we put up. It was awesome. Anyways, I'm sorry. Yeah. Baymax was beautifully decorated and was very Instagram worthy. And then we got a halt of it and is there like a weird Instagram, like an Instagram for just weird things? Because that's where we belong. Yeah. It was still awesome, though. It was awesome. I loved it. Yeah, it just had a little bit more character. What would you call it? Hippie. An intersection between hippie and what would you say? Well, it looked like a very non artistic, hippie redid parts of an rv that an interior decorator had done. Yeah, it looked exactly like what it was. We also did a lot of fabrication in there. Yeah. Rebuilt the whole dash. Yeah. That was by necessity because of water damage. It was great. Yeah. So we had fun time renovating that. And the house we were living in, the clock was ticking, so we needed to move out of there. So we got it renovated as fast as we could and moved in and ended up hitting the road with plans to live in the rv for two years at least. I, for one, had an amazing time. Even all the struggle that was involved in rv life, I loved it. I tell people this all the time. I think it brings stuff like that kind of brings you back to more in line with how humans evolved. Like, every day the struggle or every day the mission is the same thing. Get food, get water, make it to the end of the day, and then find a place to sleep. And that's what rv, what life was for me. And I think it was just so simple, the mission you had every day, that after running stressful businesses through a very stressful period of time with the pandemic, it was almost like a necessary bridge between our life in Oklahoma and what became our life. Yeah. Yeah. I think we all had different experiences with our rv days. Clearly, we're all different humans with different lenses and all of that, but I know there were parts of it that I thoroughly enjoyed. But honestly, the day to day for me was pretty stressful because it was like, I think, just constantly having to think about the silliest things, like, do we need to dump the tanks? Are the tanks full? Do we have enough groceries? Are we going to have enough electricity to keep the groceries cold? Is there stuff in the refrigerator that would go bad if we didn't have shore power? Do we need to do laundry? All of those things. And then I was also. And by my own admission, I was the one who wanted to do this because I'm a control freak, but I was the one kind of deciding what our route was and where we stayed and things like that. I was the one finding the campsites and all of that. So it was very stressful in those ways for me. And I feel like with fear of sounding like a bad mom right now. I feel like there was so much of the time that I was just like, oh, I just wish we didn't have these kids with us so that I could go see what I want to see, so I could go do a hike out and stay the night under the stars and experience these beautiful national parks that we're visiting. I don't want to just hike in for a day with a monkey on my back and then hike back out. I wanted to experience this stuff. And with a three year old or two year old, I guess she was. At the time, so many of the things that I wanted to do just weren't available to me. Yeah, everything had a time limit. Everything did. Yeah. So it was like, I was already stressed to the max from all the other things, like the anxiety of all of the other things. And then you couple that with, like, we were so close to all of the things that I wanted to do and see and experience and be a part of, and I still couldn't do it. And I was like, oh, my gosh, this is so frustrating. Which reminds me, we got to plan a trip back to Zion. Yeah, for sure. But I think also at that time, I was unmedicated for my bipolar disorder and everything. And so you couple already just having a hard time with normal life, like having a hard time staying balanced for normal life. And then you put that kind of stress and environmental pressure on top of that. I think it was just really amplified my symptoms, if you will. So I kind of think to myself, I wonder if I had had the help of the medications, the treatment that I'm on now that helps keep me good. If I had had that while we were in the rv or even especially while we were going through the COVID stuff, I wonder how much differently I would have been able to respond to the situation or the environment. Hindsight is always 2020, but, yeah, I do think that that played into some of the reason that I didn't love our rv experience quite as much as I think you think of it so fondly. And I'm like, there were nice moments. Well, and then there was the other part of it where Azra being a very sweet, what was he, eleven at the time? Very sweet eleven year old. He wasn't really feeling it even before we started, but just being the human he is, he was like, yeah, let's do this. Whatever you guys want to do, let's do this. And I wouldn't say faked excitement, but he was excited because we were excited about doing it. But it was very clear once we started that it just wasn't the lifestyle that he wanted to live. So luckily we were able to have a conversation with him in Baymax in, I think, Gallup, New Mexico. Yeah. Was that where our second stop in Gallup, too? Yeah. Basically, he admitted, don't, I don't really want this at all. I didn't really think about the fact of road schooling meant that I wasn't going to be in a real school and have real friends, and I really want that. So I think within a couple of minutes, Michelle and I were outside taking a walk through the rv park saying, okay, either tomorrow we're heading to Colorado for a month, because that was on our plans. We already had everything booked, or we're just going to start heading east and find somewhere to settle down. And we decided pretty quickly to just start heading east and not really knowing where we were going to land, but we were going to land somewhere in a permanent fashion. Yeah. And ended up in Lexington, which, if you were to ask me in that moment, would have probably been the last place I would have picked, but it. Was one of my top, so I was pretty certain that Kentucky is where I wanted to be, which is so weird, because I'd only been to Kentucky once, and we came and stayed for a couple of weeks a couple of summers before all of this had happened. You don't have a lot of family here necessarily. You've got your sisters here and a few cousins, but. So there was no real reason as far as family is concerned, honestly, to land back here. But when we had come to visit for a wedding, I just loved the area, the greenness of it. I don't know, the beautiful rolling hills. And at this time, I didn't even know about the hiking in Kentucky because when we were in the rv, that was the highlights for me, like, the ability to go out and hike. I loved it. I wanted to just keep hiking forever. So when we ended up landing here and the first babysitter that we hired for our daughter, her name was Savannah, and she and her boyfriend were rock climbers. And she started asking if we'd been to Red River Gorge. And I was like, so I'm from southern Oklahoma, which the Red river separates Oklahoma and Texas. So I lived 30 miles from the Red river my whole life growing up. So when she starts talking about, have you all been to the Red river gorge? I was like, what are you talking about? I assumed she was talking about the Red river back home. And I was like, how does she even know? Like, nobody makes know association. So then I feel like when we got here and we found out about all of the hiking and the outdoors activities that are here and the food in Lexington and all of that other stuff, I was just like, man, we hit the freaking jackpot here. It's all of the best things combined in one. It's a city, but it's not super big. Yeah. And I think all my teenage angst about this area, I still wasn't really thrilled about it when we landed. But I think over time, it just became clear, like, lexington's, like, the perfect spot for us. Like, Azarus thriving. Poppy's in a great school, and obviously we have all the things going on for us that we do. So the universe has a way of making things work out. But growing up here, I really didn't have any interest in coming back to Kentucky. Oh, I can totally understand that. Like, if somebody said to me, hey, I can't even say it without laughing, hey, you want to go back to don't? Yeah, you know. Well, I guess that's untrue. I'm going back there next. Know my family all still lives there. Good to visit. It's a place to visit. Of all the places in Oklahoma. It's one of them. It is one of them. I shouldn't be so mean about Artmore. I grew up there. My family still lives there. I've learned a lot about the world and about myself, thanks to know. So it played a role in my life. When I go back there, I still get to appreciate some of the things that made me who I am. When we were there over Christmas, I visited the restaurant that I worked at for several years, and it helped me get through being a single mom to a know. Without that restaurant, I would have been up poop creek without a know. Yeah. So it is kind of fun to go back and see some of those. Um, I still follow lots of people from Ardmore on social media, and my friend Kristen owns a coffee shop there that they just celebrated their 20th anniversary. And I'm like, how is that even possible? Aging myself by saying that? But it's like, those things are pretty cool to look at. And Ardmore is. The climate there is terrible. The landscape is very flat. There's nothing really to do outdoors yet. It's kind of brown, except for maybe three months out of the year. So it's just not the place for me, I don't think. I feel like Lexington is definitely the place for. Yeah. Yeah. I love it here. Yeah. You've almost been a different person since we landed here. Yeah, well, neither one of us really learned our previous life lessons well enough, because when we first landed here, we both decided to suit up other people's uniforms and go work for other people. That's true. How long did you last? Three months. I think that was good. And you were even working for one of the employers that's known for being the more nontraditional style employment kind of things. I don't know if you could say the name of it or not, but. I mean, it's big ass fans. It was fun. It was a cool place to work, high energy. I think a lot of people would really thrive in that environment. You told me yesterday that I would do really well at big ass food. Yeah. Well, aside from the aspect of working for other people, I think we both kind of struggle with that a little bit, just because we like to make decisions and we like setting our own principles and living by those principles. And when those things are kind of set for you and you disagree with them and you kind of have an eye twitch when you're like, if you just tweak this just a little bit, things would be a little better for everybody. Or if your marketing had this type of message instead of that type of message, maybe it would hit a little better for people. But I think it was very clear for both of us, after a period of time, that working for other people is just a little bit more difficult for us weirdos than in a lot. Yeah, I agree. It's definitely difficult for me. The company that I worked for was a small company, great CEO, founder, just all around great guy. And the mission and the vision and the values of the company, I was in line with all of that. And I think that at the end of the day, what it was is like, I'm a visionary. I don't know if it's that I want to be in control. I'm air quote, in control. Like, I want to be the master of my own destiny, so to speak. Or if it's just that my ideas come so quick and so fast that if I'm not able to express them or try them or see them to fruition, then it's frustrating to me. And so then if I'm having to run my ideas through someone else's lens to say, what do you think? Then it's taxing. Yeah, emotionally taxing. I think that's the same thing for me, is like, we're the type of people that almost like to express ourself through our occupational outlets. And if we're in a situation, like me at big ass fans, where I was given a task to do something, and my idea for the best way to accomplish that task, or the best way to present my results or whatever, was x, y, and z, and we had people that were in a different state telling us, oh, it needs to be ABC. And I'm like, yeah, but I really think it should be XYZ. And here's my reasoning. No, we want it in like, that just doesn't work well for the type of people that we are, that, like I said, like to express ourself through our occupation. We're not artists. We're not musicians. This is almost like our outlet for showing the world what we are. And if we're confined to other people's rules and marching orders, it really kind of restricts us. This is kind of our art. Yeah, for sure. I don't know. There's something also about the fulfillment that I get from seeing something, that I had an idea about it. Let me see if it's going to work. And then seeing it work. The fulfillment I get from that is so much more than if someone were to say, hey, good job. Thanks for doing what I asked you. To do good job. I don't really get fulfillment from an atta boy. I get fulfillment from, like, oh, that thing I tried to do works. Yeah. Also, there's a thrill to it, too, trying something, and it works. When you're ultimately on the line and that's what's paying your bills, that's a lot more exhilarating and thrilling when it works. And even when it doesn't work, there's a lot of lessons to be learned from it. And all of this kind of leads us to where we are now with cultivate and why we both quit our jobs and ultimately landed on doing this together. Yeah. Again. So when you quit your job initially, Neil started a pressure washing exterior cleaning company called Lexington exterior cleaning, and it was going really well. I mean, really well, considering that it was a brand new bootstrap. Like, bought some equipment and mounted it on a tiny little flatbed trailer. It was really picking up steam and doing well, and I was still working my nine to five job at that time, honestly, harboring a little bit of resentment. At the time, I thought it was resentment because it was a stupid idea that you had, and I was resentful because you had a stupid idea. But now I'm like, you were not thrilled with that trailer in the garage. I was mad about all of it. I was mad that those chemicals, they stink. I mean, they don't stink like rotten eggs. They just smell so strongly, like a lemon. There's just lemon everywhere. Well, when you have 40 gallons of lemon scented bleach in the garage, it permeates. Yeah, puts off a smile. But you were doing that, and it was actually going really well. My resentment, probably, if we're being honest about our emotions, my resentment was probably like, you're doing something without me, you MFR. How dare you? How dare you get to live an entrepreneurial life while I'm stuck going to this job that I should love because there's nothing wrong with the job, but I hate it because it's a job. So that was going really well for you. Congrats. Yeah, it was exciting. Getting very dirty and wet every day. And ruining all of your clothes. All of them. We bought so many nice clothes when you started that job at big ass fans, and they are all bleach stained. I don't even think there might not even be any left because, like, slowly would throw them away when you weren't looking. Just. They were downs because I wore upf shirts for pressure washing. So you were doing that. It was going well, and eventually I became so I'm not going to say miserable with the job because I wasn't miserable with the job. I was miserable, period. I was miserable. I think I was probably still mourning our business, and I was probably mourning the fact that the rv life didn't work out. And then I was mourning the fact that I was now working for someone while you were doing something awesome and. Fun out into the wilderness. Eventually, I decided to quit my job. The plan was for us to work the pressure washing business together for a period of time until we could bring people in to run that business for us. And then we would do whatever else was next. And I quit the job. I had been home three days, four days. I don't know. We had just moved into a new house. Well, we moved into an rv in between. Or not rv. An Airbnb. An Airbnb between houses, which was really fun also. Yeah, I highly recommend doing that. But then you broke your foot, your toe, your toe joint. So we stumbled on the idea and roundabout way had the idea of doing a bookkeeping business. And we're thinking about, okay, well, let's just do both businesses. Bookkeeping will hit it hard when pressure washing is very slow. Right. Because they were Fall winter months, and then in the spring and early summer, we'll hit the pressure washing business very hard. Once again, not learning our lessons. We were dead set on having two separate businesses running at the same time. We really like doing this. Yeah. Two things happened. I broke my foot. But I also found out that I had that little spot of skin cancer on my neck. Yeah. And I was like, universe is telling me, let this pressure washing thing go. Meanwhile, I'm still bitching at him about the lemon smell in the garage and not being able to park my car in the garage because there's all this pressure washing equipment. But I'm like the terrible wife that won't just come out and say, look, I'm really upset with you because the garage smells funny and I can't put my car in there. Can we talk about ways to address this? I'm the wife that's like, really wish I could get my car in the garage. That'd be nice. But instead I'll just park out here in the snow. Yeah, I'm not very nice sometimes. Yeah, we want to go ride our bikes, but it's going to take 20 minutes to move the trailer around just so we can get to them. Yeah. If only I didn't have a husband. That was such an ahole. But anyways, now that everybody knows way. Too much, about our marriage, the pressure washing business. Honestly, like, looking back, it could have turned into something big and great and all that. And honestly, I do have a soft spot in my heart for home service related businesses. That whole thing is just awesome to me. The seasonality of that business, I think, would have driven us crazy. Yeah. Because it's really boom and bust, even in the best of scenarios. So between you breaking your foot, getting skin cancer, and me already being terrified of the sun because my mom has had melanoma, it was like, all right, we aren't doing this business. Yeah. Being the cowboys that we are, we just jumped right into cultivate and turned it into what it is today. Kept pressing. Yeah, I get asked a lot. Like, we own an accounting company and neither of us are cpas, so I get asked a lot. Well, first of all, I get asked a lot like, oh, so you're a CPA. Do I have to explain? Like, no, I'm an accountant, but I'm not a CPA and try to help educate people on the difference between the two terms. So neither of us are cpas. Neither of us have an accounting degree. You have an MBA, and I have an honorary master's degree of the universe because I've been through it. But I don't have that type of formal education either. I want to just kind of address what does accounting mean or what does it mean to be an accountant versus a CPA, and what makes us qualified to be someone's small business accountant? An accountant is just someone who works in the accounting field. You could drop out of high school and be an accountant. But a CPA is a state certified accountant that can perform audits and state related work and large company valuation services and things like that that require any other type of business valuation, whether it be lending or whatever companies need or it is required by a bank or a state agency or something, for a state certified CPA to review the financials and basically validate that what they're saying is actually correct. And if it's not correct, here's the corrections that need to be made. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And before you go on, I want to throw in here also the difference between CPA, EA, and accountant, if you will. Yeah. And an EA is an IRS certified enrolled agent who is basically like the IRS is giving them the stamp of approval that they know the tax code. Both the CPA and an EA can represent clients to the IRS in the event of an audit. So, real quick, a CPA has to have a four year degree. Four year degree. They have to pass the CPA exam, right? Which is that tax code exam plus the audit exam. Is that correct? I'm not sure. I don't know the exact exams. But they also have to work under a CPA for a period of time before they can go at it alone. Much like electrician needs to work under. A master and then an EA can take the enrolled agent exam. They do not have to have any certain degree for that, but they do have to study and take that exam to get that correct. Okay. Both the CPA and enrolled agent tests are no joke. They're both legitimate certifications. They both carry a lot of respect for me because those tests, you can't just roll in off the street and be a savvy person and pass them. You got to know what you're talking about to pass those exams. But I don't think that should discount those in the industry that are in our situation for this reason. When we landed on bookkeeping and the accounting business, the reasoning for that is we were small business nerds. Even during our time of not owning a business and living in an rv and working for other people, the whole time we were reading books about small businesses and comparing notes and talking about it and talking. Every business, small business we go to, we talk about, this is really well done. Wow, great. This is amazing. I would love to meet the owner. Or if they just did one little thing, it would make it easier on the employees to create an awesome experience. We're truly small business nerds. And what kind of started this whole thing that led to cultivate was what's the tool that we use to really involve ourself in as many small businesses as possible? Because we love this. We didn't really feel qualified to just jump in and tell people that we were business consultants because we didn't really have a framework to go about doing that. And we really thought, like, okay, we really understand bookkeeping from our time of doing it for our own businesses and kind of really took to it really well. We can do this, and this is our foot in the door of really having an impact on as many small businesses as we can find. We come at it from a small business standpoint, so enrolled agents and cpas come at it from their mindset. Like, numbers are numbers, and we come at it from, we're really trying to perform for small businesses because that is our area of expertise. That's our area of super high interest. So when our kind of differentiator is, we're not going to do it unless it makes sense unless we can make it make sense for a small business. So if we've got to create a couple extra accounts on the chart of accounts to tell the complete story for the small business owner, we're going to do it. If we have to go back and categorize 50 transactions instead of making a journal entry so that we can tell a better story to the business owner, we're going to do it. Right. It's not a means to an end. It's not just, let's produce this profit and loss so that we can do the taxes. It's what do we do to make sure that this business owner is getting the story from their financial statements that is going to help them make better decisions and create better businesses for Lexington, right? Yeah. I think that, honestly, when you pitched the idea to me of doing a bookkeeping business, I had the reaction that probably a lot of people have when I first tell them that I'm an accountant, where I go, but I'm not an accountant, how am I going to do this business? And it took me a minute to get used to the idea of, like, okay, I do know how to do bookkeeping. I've done it. I understand it. I do know small business, and I think about it all the time, and I study about it all the time. And I'm probably annoying to normal people who go out with me because I'm constantly either critiquing or commenting on everything that I can possibly see about the operations of how something is working. But after I got over that initial reaction of, like, I'm not an accountant, and realized that because I was ignorant to the fact of how the accounting titles work, and so I was under the assumption that I needed a degree or something to be able to do this type of work. So once I realized that that wasn't the case and that there are courses and certifications that I could get to prove that I know what I'm doing, that I understand business and numbers, and I got on board with it, the idea of being able to help small business owners in that way became super exciting to me because rewind to 2015, when I was starting my spa and I went from being a solo massage therapist, just renting a space and doing my own thing into an actual business that had employees and overhead and all of the things and employment taxes and all the stuff going on, I was very lost and overwhelmed by all of that. I did not understand it, and I sure as heck didn't have anybody helping to break it down for me to say these numbers look great. If you do this, you can increase your profit margin, or if you do that, you can decrease your expenses, or if you do nothing like that, the idea of being able to help people in similar situations to say, let's look at your books, like, really deep dive in it and decide what are your goals for the business and how can we use the numbers that are currently being reported to help transform the profit margin or transform the revenue being generated or whatever? That's when it became an exciting business to me. At first, the idea of an accounting business sounded very awful. It sounded boring because there's, like, that idea. No offense to any of my accounting friends out there, but there's the idea of accountants are, like, kind of reclusive. Sit behind a desk, sit behind a desk. They don't have time to have personality. And especially during tax season, I can't do anything except sit here with, like, I imagine, like, the green bankers laying up number of machines. Yeah, number of machine and maybe a cigar or something. I don't know, maybe I'mixing that with poker, now that you know what I'm saying. Just this idea of this super overwhelmed, stressed, serious, very, er, kind of human. And I was like, I have no desire to be like that. Then I recognize that it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to treat it that way. And we're a year and a half in to cultivate, and I feel like I am the most alive version, most vibrant version of myself that I have ever been, and I'm doing that as an accountant, which is crazy. I think that goes back to, we're living kind of our mission when we started this. Let's get involved in as many small businesses as possible because we love it, and it's what our conversations to each other are wrapped around 90% of the time, anyways. Yeah. So, literally, it's one of those things where if we lived in a society where you didn't have to make money, we'd be doing the exact same thing. Yeah, I think that that's absolutely true. I would still be trying to get everyone I meet that I find out is a business owner. I'm like, okay, tell me all about it. Let's start from the beginning, and then tell me your whole business story. I love it so much, which I guess brings us kind of full circle as to why I started this podcast. When we first started cultivate you, and I went, I made you come out of your comfort zone and go to Lexington podcasters lunch. We were not podcasters. Really had no intention of becoming a podcaster at the time, no, but I was. We were labeled as podcurious. Podcurious. That's right. You're still podcurious. Yeah, well, I'm a podcaster now. Look at you go. But, yeah, so we went to that meeting, honestly, I went as a way to just meet people, because I was brand new at the idea of networking, and it scared the pants off of me, but I just knew that I had to start getting connected with people. So we went, and at that meeting, it was like, maybe I shouldn't do a podcast. So, for the past year and a half, I've ruminated on, what would a podcast look like? What would it be, what would it mean, how would I do it? And I've kind of lived through a couple of iterations of it. Maybe it's just me talking for 15 minutes about different business topics, and that's the podcast. Or maybe it's me and my friend Beth, and we're the small business besties, and the two of us talk about business topics that are relevant specifically to women who are business owners. And then that didn't work out, and then it was like, well, maybe I should do this, or maybe I should do that. And it's interesting because in the beginning, honestly, the whole idea for a podcast was a little bit self serving. The whole idea for the podcast was like, how do I put a podcast out there that could bring attention to the business that I run and bring clients in? And I couldn't really figure that out. It just didn't feel right to me. It didn't feel good to me. I didn't like it. And then after I got the idea to do a podcast with Beth, I got really excited about the name small business besties, and then Beth didn't want to do it. And then I was like, well, now it sounds weird. I can't do a small business bestie without a bestie. And then it hit me, like, all the people that I talk to on a daily basis, literally what I do every single day, is talk to small business owners, and I ask them all about their business and how they're feeling about it and what it's been like and all of the things. And I thought, those are my besties. I don't need one bestie to sit across from me, although I like having you here. Thank you. But I don't need one permanent bestie. I need all my besties. And the podcast isn't about my business. It's about their business. That's what it's always been about for us, everybody else's business. And I think that that's beautiful. And I'm so excited. And I think that whether small business bestie podcast has one listener or 1 million listeners, I just think that it's a beautiful opportunity because every small business owner feels the way I felt about drift. They feel like, this is my baby. And it's the same way, you know, if you go to lunch with your friend who just had a baby and you say, hey, how's the baby? Do it, they're not just going to be like, okay, it's fine, it's good. They're going to take it out and show you pictures and talk about the last time it had a ballot movement and all the things, right? And so I think that this is that opportunity for small business owners to come in, tell me about your business. I want to see the pictures. I want to know about all of the things brag to me about your baby. So I'm excited. It's awesome. I'm proud of you. I think it's going to be great. And I'm glad the mission of the podcast kind of switched because I think it's much more in line with who you are as a person. You're all about highlighting other people and lifting other people. Oh, stop it. You're going to make me cry. Well, Neil, thank you. I know this was not the most exciting thing that you could have done with your evening. I really appreciate you agreeing to it and being so supportive of me always. Well, I'm kind of proud of myself. I talked more than I thought I would. You talked a lot. You sound good on this. I can hear you in my headphones and I like it. Well, I'll add that to my resume if I ever decide to work for somebody else. All right, watch out, ladies. Taken. We're going to wrap it up. Thank you guys so much for listening. And if you are a small business owner and you're interested in coming to chat with me, please don't forget that you can sign up for a pre podcast chat at WW smallbusinessbestiepod.com. Thanks so much. Well, that's it, friends. Before we go, just a little reminder that I'm your host, Michelle, and I'm the proud co owner of cultivate accounting, where we help small businesses with accounting. And I hope besties like you go from idea to launch and beyond with personalized small business coaching. No matter what phase of the journey you're in, I'm here to cheer you on every step of the way. Connect with me on Facebook at Michelle smop. Five 20 new episodes of the small Business Bestie podcast drop each week, so hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Do you want to be a bestie on the show? We'd love to hear from you. Just head over to smallbusinessbestiepod.com to submit your guest request. Until next time, keep dreaming, keep going. And remember, do it even when you're scared. Thanks for hanging out with us.