#57 Staying Centered While Starting, Scaling, & Selling a Business as a Couple, with Jared Rowley

Gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the B&M podcast.

Today my guest is Jared Rowley and super excited to hear we were just talking before we hit the recording about business, about family, about education.

There's going to be, there'll be a lot of lot of Nuggets here, a lot of awesome.

So Jared, grateful to have you here brother.

Why don't you just give us a bit of background and and your story and we'll get started.

All right.

I'm grateful to be here.

Thank you.

This sounds like a great group and I enjoy following you and seeing the stuff that you talk about.

Definitely.

So I'm excited to be on here my story so.

I, for me kind of what I I where I start with.

It always is in high school.

I loved surfing, snowboarding, skating.

That's kind of what I I grew up doing, you know, and that was all very important to me.

I defined myself by, you know, how good I was at those sports.

That was kind of what I felt like, Like, Oh yeah, I'm cool.

Well, I've got value here, you know, whatever.

Stuff like that.

And so I I put it all on the line for that and that included my high school education.

I was just focused on chasing the the fun and and the things that I felt like mattered in high school was not one of that.

Education was not one of those things and so.

It was interesting.

I I I grew up and I remember thinking like, oh, I want to care about learning but didn't really know anything about it.

In the my high school, I did not support that very much, you know.

So I remember one time I was on the list going up snowboarding and I was like, I wanna learn more about philosophy.

I just watched some movie that talked about it and seemed interesting.

So I was.

I remember thinking like, what is the meaning of life?

Like I was alone on the lift and it was snowing and I'm going up and it's like, what is the meaning of life?

Like saying they're trying to think about it.

And I grew up, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

So, you know, obviously my mind goes to all that first.

But that lasted like the amount that I knew to ponder on last for about 5 seconds as I was going up.

And then it was like empty, nothing else.

I didn't understand anything with this.

So time goes on.

I did horribly in high school.

I graduated right before I went on a mission for my church, and right before I went on my mission, I I graduated.

So it was like a year and a half late.

So I barely graduated and I had to do, like a lot of extra things to get out of high school and to finish it.

Went on my mission and there I started to get into like ideas, right?

Like you, you go out into the world and you start talking with people and hearing all kinds of different ideas.

And that was a really cool thing for me.

But it was like, exactly, that's it.

It's such a critical element that you and and in this case you look like I want to go serve people.

So because you have this drive to get out, it's now you put yourself in a place to get exposed, and exposure just lights a fire.

Well, exposure, the thing that's interesting about exposure, it does two things for you.

It inspires you.

And that's one thing that's really cool.

And the second thing that I experienced was challenge, right?

And so, and I like that it was fun to be challenged on the ideas that I was out there to share, because it helped me fine tune the things that I believed and the things where I didn't realize I'm wrong here.

Or I'm right here and and I'm gonna fine tune that and and create a stronger understanding for the idea.

So that's what exposure did for me on my mission.

It was really cool.

I came home, I served in Little Rock, AR and so in the South, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas.

And so we I came home and I was loved learning about church topics, religious topics, and that was kind of.

The extent of where my learning went, but I buy a lot of books and read it, but it had kind of lit a fire in me about learning.

But it was only in this narrow field because that was the only one where I had any experience or anything like that.

And so go back to college, jump in.

This is really cool.

I think there's little principles here that are so.

Yeah, I love it.

It sparked a fire in that thing, right?

The exposure and the experience of it and and wanting to learn about it, wanting to share it, being challenged because I went through a very similar experience and I've done this and you have to now, well, we'll get there with business or whatever.

Marketing, like how do I figure this out?

And then it lights a fire and you go into that thing.

So yeah, you're right, there's a fire and it's a narrow field.

But now the love of learning is is there, and it's happening.

Yeah, that was well.

And the thing that was interesting is it was narrow at that point just into religious topics.

But but you're right.

Like there it it.

I learned to be curious was what was interesting on my on my mission is there was that that idea of being curious was one that became very important to me also like novelty.

I've realized there's something important that we all respond to novelty, and it can be for our good or for our bad, right?

Learning is always about finding new novel things that you didn't know before.

But so is, you know, jumping out of airplanes or like, that's not not like that's a bad thing.

But like you can take things to their extreme in in another way where you're looking for a novel thing.

And that leads to drug abuse or different things like that, where it's like, I want the next.

Most intense thing I can.

And so it was interesting to learn how to get the same like excitement that I did when I landed a crazy trick on a snowboard from learning some new idea, you know, a new novel idea.

I'm like, whoa, this is amazing, you know.

And and so novelty was the other thing that started to open up in a good way for me.

And I started to learn to use it in a good way.

I'm I'm just bridge that.

The.

The reward you get from snowboarding, skateboarding, something cool and learning something it can translate you can you can you can cross that you can bridge that.

And I've I've experienced the same thing where I was very physical an adrenaline.

I'm like I.

Find that for Bridge to jump off.

Now I'm the same like I I grab a leather book and I'm sitting here in my office and I'm what?

He said this in the. 1500s like, yeah.

And.

And I have that same experience.

Well, OK.

And.

And why I get that experience is part of the next part of like kind of my narrative.

So what made it so that I was able to get that experience is really interesting to me.

And it's something I've thought about a lot.

So I went back to college after my mission and did not do well, right.

Like, I thought that I'm like.

All excited about life.

And I remember like, talking to my grandpa who was a dentist, and being like, I want to be a doctor and you know, these types of things.

And just what I wanted was to be engaged with life.

And I felt like there were these certain types of people who were engaged with life, and I wanted to be that.

So I come home and start studying that.

I'm like, I hate this.

This is not for me.

It is for some people and some people thrive in it and that curiosity is ignited for them in that and they chase that and they get novelty and all the things from being a doctor.

I I didn't get that and so my grades, same thing in college, got put on academic probation, totally failed and ended up just going snowboarding all the time.

I was up in Utah and it wasn't till I got married.

The my wife and I found this small liberal arts school that we went to.

It wasn't accredited.

It wasn't.

It was just like someone, a family member was going there and they were talking to us about it and it was it just just excitement.

Like I was overcome with this idea of like I need to be there.

It was.

They talked about reading the classics and going into class and debating with each other and.

And just all these ideas.

It was exciting to me.

It was kind of what I imagined that day on the snowboard list.

Like, I want to understand, you know, like philosophy, right?

I don't want to know how to do this, but I didn't know how.

And so this, this spoke to me, you know?

So we go down to the liberal arts school and start going there.

And it was exactly what I hoped for.

The first day we go in, we've been reading Plato's Republic.

Which was hard for me.

I, I I remember sitting down we had mentors is how it was structured was with mentors and I sat down with my mentor and I was like I'm struggling with this book.

Like you asked me you know where a talk was in the journal of discourse is I can give you the page number what pay like where a quote was on the page all of it.

You know I I know it well but just the ideas in in this religious arena.

But I do not.

I'm struggling to understand.

This and to be able to remember it or understand why it matters at all and my mentor just said give it time was his answer and it is like but he said just keep going give it time.

So we go into class the first day and he asks the question, what is justice and?

For three hours, we didn't move on from that question.

That one question we spent three hours talking about and debating and discussing.

And it was invigorating to hear every.

And I thought I gave my answer right off the bat.

I think I may have been the first one to give my answer and I just thought, okay, this is obvious.

Next, you know, and it was kind of like I was used to how it was in college.

Like you give the right answer and then you move on to the next question.

So I gave the right answer and then we moved on I thought we're going to move on to the next question and and are my mentor said interesting what do you does anyone else agree with that or what do you all think about that and all these other ideas of justice started popping up and like what no you know and and so then I started defending my idea and and that conflict again right.

Not that conflict is not bad.

Contention is bad, or or not something that we should seek, but conflict?

Is good, right.

The opposition helps you fine tune your idea.

And so that was my first experience outside of religion that kind of lit that fire and from there it made it so that I was able to the model.

That's what was interesting is it showed me with just religion.

I didn't really understand the model.

That day that that friction, just like starting a fire, right, You you take something and you create the friction and the coal starts and then you can from that coal you're able to fan it and give it more, more fuel and it grows into a big fire.

And so that friction, that day was like, ah, this is how it works, you know.

And it helped me understand a why, like why do we need to be learning?

Why do these ideas matter?

That school gave me that.

Why I was there for two years, I think, in the hole.

And when I came out, I'd read all kinds of classics, been exposed to all kinds of ideas.

And my mentor was right, right?

Like, it took about three months before I started remembering sections and books.

But it's because now I had a schema that I was building on, right?

It took a little while for me to start to build a structure that I can hang ideas on and pull ideas off of and start cutting them down.

But that that happened like 100 books later.

And then yeah, yeah, OK, now I'm.

And a lot of discussions and so and and that may have been just me personally, I don't know if this happens for everyone because I I do well, like my personality type does well with discussion and I know that not everyone does that or thinks that way.

But for me, that was a big thing.

Discussion really helped light that fire.

Let me let me do I want to ask a question with with your life experience now so so look you said it gave you kind of a why you you begin to understand like why we need to have that kind of education why we need to have the conflict.

So now jump, jump ahead to today and the experiences you've had over the last 20 years.

Give us, give us your what?

What was Now looking back, even more clarity around the why?

Like why?

Why, Why a classical education?

Why an education?

Like is it really relevant?

Because people are asking that.

It seems crazy to me, but people are really asking like why read those books?

Why have those debates?

Like what does that have to do with me and and and raising a family and running a business?

OK, I love it.

So why?

A few reasons why?

The deepest reason I think is.

To connect with goodness.

I used to be obsessed with truth, and I still think that it's such an important thing and it's something that we need to find.

But I think that now I'm much more interested in goodness.

What is good and how do I bring the most goodness into my life that I can find?

And what's interesting, Jared, sorry to interrupt here.

Like a lot of the classics are introducing you to like messed up stories.

Exactly stuff.

So I love to hear you say that it's like introduction to goodness, but part of part of finding and seeking the goodness is is reading some of these great classics that are really disturbing and and depressing.

It it that's exactly right and and the reason that I think that both so I'm not into broken books but I am into ones that that.

Are help give clarity, right?

Like, not all books give clarity.

Some of them glorify things that are not good, and I don't love that, right?

But other books show the ends of badness, and that is a very good book to read.

Right now my son is reading Hunger Games and it's kind of lighting that same fire for him where he just wants to come over and talk to me a lot about like.

Wait, the government is doing this in the book, Like what the heck, you know?

And and he's like wanting to talk about that and he's seeing this is the end of an unchecked government where there's not freedom, where that is not a value that they have and it's sliding that fire.

And so there's a difference there, right, between goodness and that, that Dostoevsky talks a lot about how.

Our childhood memories can save us, right?

That was something that he believed mattered is that our childhood memories had the power to save us.

And the reason that I think that is, is because we are exposed to goodness, right?

In that period and those things that we hold on to, the nostalgia of it.

Memories have the power to give us a reason to keep going and to keep fighting.

And I think that books have that same power to help.

It help us be exposed to the things that are good in this world and that are worth fighting for.

There's there is evil, there is darkness, but there's also light and beauty and goodness and and that's what we're here trying to maximize as much of it as we can get.

And so.

Yeah, that's that's part of my why.

For if if I were to to say why I'm doing what I'm doing right now, it's that.

And a lot of it comes back to that.

I love farming, I love reading, I love art.

I love you know all these different things and it comes back to to that that gives life and light is is just connecting with with good good things and have you felt like since that time have you kept up a pretty good learning schedule do you read regularly has it been a part of your routine and.

Yeah, Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

I read every morning.

I read for about two hours in the morning and then, yeah.

And then just all throughout the day I'm reading or.

Consuming like you know, lectures or stuff like that while I'm driving that I feel like are contributing to my learning.

And so we're going to get into this.

But you're in a very different stage of business in life right now that gives you that time freedom.

You guys were in the deep of building the business.

Were you still reading when it was business?

How many children do you have?

We've got 4 kids, yeah.

And and so I would just so I'm not good at like saying here's this goal like I'm gonna execute on that and like I can cut everything else out and not think about it.

I don't do well with that.

And so for me, what works well with, like do accomplishing something is piggybacking, right?

And the idea of piggybacking onto the habits that you already have and so.

I find things that I'm already doing and then I piggyback something that I want to include in my life onto that.

So every day I go to the bathroom and every day I take a bath.

Like that was something I was already doing no matter what.

And so I read on those times, right.

And that's where I would get.

I sit in the bath and my wife at first like what the heck.

But now it's just like I think she's she's like oh this is awesome you're learning and you're growing and and I take it really seriously I I have like a.

A table that goes across my bathtub and I just sit in there and I read all day and not all day.

You know, I'll read for like 40 minutes in the bathtub, but I'm taking notes and and like it's it's something that I take really seriously.

I'm like an engaged learner in there, but it's just piggybacking on something that I was already going to do.

So kind of unconventional, but Alan Greenstown unique.

When I love it, I love it.

Yeah, Alan Greenspan, I I was reading his book that he had.

He talked about how the bath was like the most important thing for him and Winston Churchill both really, like loved their baths for their study time.

I was like, interesting, OK.

And so then I started doing, I'm like, yes, I am all in.

I get it.

I love it.

But anyway, so yeah, I would read about two hours a day and then.

And I still, even then I would do it right.

And and it was because I piggybacked it on things that I was already doing anyways and I would, I get up pretty early.

Like I generally get up around 5:30.

And so that makes it so that it's not like a huge burden on the family, the fact that I'm in the bath for 40 minutes or whatever, you know.

So that's why that's why I started getting up.

Well, I was already getting up early, but I maintained it.

When we started having children, I was like, if I'm going to keep.

Learning, Keep working.

On without taking away some family I got to get.

A birth, Yeah, yeah.

I want to be as much as an equal partner as I can.

And if I'm in the bath and like chaos is happening outside, I feel really bad.

Like I'm I'm not being an equal partner as I should be you know.

And and so that that's been helpful.

Good.

Beautiful.

Take it up early.

Let's go you guys.

You got, got married, went to university, now Kind of lead into the family and business.

Yeah, great.

So that taught me that I love learning and how to take the the process of learning into other arenas, right.

And I went, fixed up my education, like went back and fixed up my grades, went to EU, ended up working with two senators there.

I was a ghostwriter for one and then a researcher for the other.

And then I was planning to go do a JD.

MB A is kind of where this the next.

Story comes in planning to go to a JD.

MB A just finished school, was applying to all the others and I had this great internship light up lined up in the DC law firm and we're getting ready to go out there and I felt a strong prompting not to go.

By that point, L my wife, we had had two of our kids.

One of them, our oldest is Lucy and our baby at the time was named Solomon and we were broke students and so we didn't have any money for a baby carrier for Solomon.

And so Elle made found a way to make a carrier for him, a rap style baby carrier that you wrap around and tie it off with a long piece of fabric.

And she made it.

And her friends said, hey, that's nice.

That's a lot more breathable than the other ones that are on the market right now because you make US1.

So she made them one and then it grew from there, right?

And so that is, she's been doing that for a few months.

By the time I was getting ready to to go to school and I just felt like I was not supposed to go to school, we're going to take on a lot of the schools we're applying to.

Would have been about $250,000 of debt.

And and L, you know, had this little startup going.

That was my point for doing a JD.

MB A was to go work with startups.

I wanted to do that.

And L already had this startup.

So it was like, what are we doing?

Let's do this, you know.

So this after we left the college, I started working with another startup for a little bit.

But by that point, Sally Baby had started to take off.

And so L said, come on in here, let's do this together here.

The other one was not making any money.

And early on, like were you getting into the Internet cells?

Was it word of mouth, like how a man launching back then?

Yeah, that's been my favorite part.

It was before Instagram existed and or let's see here, it was not before Instagram existed, but Instagram was very, very, very new.

So everyone was just using it to post like their pictures and kind of feeling it out, you know, it treating it like another Facebook at the time still basically you know?

But it was.

And so how we got it started was and I love this part of the business process, right?

We love, I treat business like Sherlock Holmes is very much how I feel like businesses is where the business model reveals itself to you and you, you go and it's trial and error, right.

And so you're trying to find the evidences that justified the business model?

And so we love that.

That's such a different perspective.

Oh yeah, no, it's fun.

I I love that part of it.

And So what we did was we went to these big trade shows and everyone's like, Oh yeah, you know, we paid $5000 or whatever to go to him and like, you'll make 2530 whatever off of this.

So we sat there and we're making all these wraps I was finishing up.

One of my classes cuz she'd been doing it for a few months while I was in school.

We had family come and help all this to try and get enough wraps made for how much they were gonna sell.

We thought we go to the trade show and no one buys them and we could not give them away fast enough like no one would buy it.

I'm not fast enough.

We couldn't even give them away is what I mean.

So we do.

That was a failure, right?

And it felt like, oh, this business, maybe there isn't something here.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't think we even covered our our expenses of what it costs to get in there.

And so that was a a really sad, like kind of a defeat, right?

It felt like.

But then Elle had this idea, her blog, she was doing like a little blog that she would post just cool stuff on there, like sewing patterns and stuff like that or life experiences.

She's a really gifted writer.

And so she just was writing and she had a little bit of a falling, not much, but people were buying from there.

And she's like, interesting, you know, people are starting to buy from here.

And then we had someone who had a bigger social media following.

They weren't called influencers or anything back then, but she wanted to wear one of the wraps.

And so she wore one.

And we got 140 orders that night.

And we're like, whoa, OK.

There's something here.

And so then we started following that and we started to get more.

That's when the business model started to reveal itself is people were following L on Instagram like crazy just for the business.

And so then we're like, oh, we maybe should make a business Instagram account.

Like it all started to become clear what was supposed to be happening as we followed just little evidences in trial and error, right?

Like the trade shows.

Not so great for our business or but this is really working.

Let's follow this.

There's action here, there's things happening and so we started following that and it just took off like crazy.

It was really cool.

I want to dig a little bit deeper into that because the trial and error process can be so discouraging, wasteful like time and effort.

Like you.

I think your story is perfect, where you like you have to pay the money to get in plus make go through this Herculean effort to get all the raps ready because it's going to be a killer show and then boom, right?

How did you guys keep a vision?

How did you keep driving it in the trial and error and making mistakes trying to figure it out?

I love the the Sherlock Holmes approach.

You're going to have some misses.

Yeah.

So what we did early on, we read the book mean Startup and that was a book that was really important.

And in that book it's more geared towards a tech company.

But the idea is to fail fast, right.

And so, and it talks about the idea of a minimum viable product.

And so that really rung true to us and we use that we viewed our company as a marketing company, right, like the product all that we the backside was not as big of a deal, but if you're not selling it, my dad always says nothing happens till someone sells something.

And so we were always testing like how to what can we be doing to grow like to grow the marketing and to get more sales coming in like that and so.

We would we would try and do the minimum viable product so things that we're not gonna break the bank right.

We wanted things that were small but would prove a concept and then it would validate the idea and then we would start to scale it.

So we just are always doing little things like that We we heard the saying I'm willing to risk the the coat off my back but not the shirt, right and so that we took.

That was really important to us to not like go mortgage our home so that we can pour all of our money into digital marketing or something like that.

Whereas like we don't even know if digital marketing works for us yet.

You know, like that's not a smart risk.

And so we tried to have very educated risks that we had taken.

It was small things and we'd say, I wonder what would happen if we went with this kind of influencer.

You know, let's test that out and give a free one to them and see what happens in that.

Category, you know if if it resonates with people or not and if it does, it's like cool, let's give them to 100 influencers in that area and see what happens then.

It does well, it's like great, let's pay $25,000 for one post from someone in that category, you know.

And we've slowly start to scale it up like that after testing small things and we just tried to do that with all the different areas of the business.

So, so insightful.

Well, again, going back to the store ahead, you guys think, you know, I'm gonna, we're gonna mortgage everything and hit every trade show in the country.

Exactly.

It would have been a huge fail and we would have lost everything for nothing.

Exactly.

And so it feels obvious, but it wasn't obvious to us at first, right?

Like that's the thing now is so to Fast forward a little bit more and you can pull us back if you want.

So we grew that.

Solly Baby was the name of the company.

We grew it to the point where a private equity fund was interested in buying us and we sold it to a private equity fund and started up again with the idea of testing.

We along the way had helped a lot of other companies start and grow and they would ask us to invest and we never did.

And then they would get these huge valuations later like we should have invested and so we.

We invested in one company cuz I thought I would like being an investor, right and I love that side of it, like the thinking, the problem solving and that side of the business.

And so we invested with one little company and it worked well.

And so then after we sold Sally Baby, we started a venture capital fund and that's what I do now full time is just work here and we invest in companies and we're very hands on and help them grow.

But it's the same stuff.

We just do this over and over, you know, like finding the little things that work and and testing it where the stakes are low and scaling it fantastic.

And when you say full time, are you, are you working 4050 sixty hours a week or no?

That's what you do for.

As you're that's that's what I do, yeah is So what?

I, L and I when we're in Sully baby and and this might be interesting to people who are running business with the family member, right, because that's we invest in family owned direct consumer businesses because we could never find any venture capital that would let us live the life that we wanted to be living.

They expect you to be like, you know, wait, why are you not working 80 hours a week?

Both of you?

Like I don't care that you're moving or I don't care that your family is doing this or that.

We expect this, you know, and so we never took on investment, but when we were in our business together, we would work both of us half the days of the week, right.

So then it made it.

So I was able to be with my family a lot.

L was able to be with the family a lot, but we're still both working and growing and doing.

Something together it very much made it so that we're on the same team, right.

We have this thing that we're working together towards and and it was just very exciting and and it created that a sense of unity sometimes a sense of opposition, right.

Like I could be really annoying Elle would do a post and and that's the hard thing right.

The man in the arena idea, she's the one, like really out there doing.

No one ever knew I was in the business even, you know, I was like very much behind the scenes.

And she would be out posting or doing something and then I'd be like, why did you do this?

You should have done this.

And she's like, but you're right, that would have been good, but it's too late now.

And that would create friction with stuff like that.

But we learned to work together and it was a huge blessing for us.

Did you guys find a way to take on roles and responsibilities?

Did you split?

Responsibilities or did you share how?

Did it?

No.

That was a big an important lesson that we learned is splitting the responsibilities.

And so yeah, we did do that.

That made a big difference for us.

But we we still would talk about stuff together around like I always have been interested in the marketing side, but she's.

You know, very gifted writer and and just very tuned into the demographic of solid baby.

And so it didn't make sense for me to be in that arena at all.

But so we would talk about it, but it was like, no, this is her thing, you know.

And so we tried to keep the, the, the roles very defined in that way.

So man, and that's that's how Rachel and I, I know that this is what you you have.

What we have is unique.

Rachel and I work in our business together.

We love it.

We.

Both, yeah.

Yeah, office.

And we figured out a way to to to manage it to raise a family and we travel all over the world as well and still run the businesses And it it it ended up working out beautifully.

I love how you guys said that you divided time so that you're both getting time with the kids and in the business.

Yeah, and that's been an important thing The other day I was we went and we went to in and out and I went just alone and made the order for everyone and.

We got back and one of our kids had switched their order recently.

Like, oh good, you remembered that I don't want Pickles on it anymore or whatever, you know?

And for some reason that made me feel really like proud, like I am involved enough that I know the little nuances of the orders that you guys like when you go out to eat, you know that that's important to me is to be involved with the kids and so.

With the companies that we invest in and with all of our our things that we do, we try and have it where we preserve time for the family.

That's a very, very important part for us.

That is awesome, man.

Very way to go.

I don't know you weren't looking for this, but kudos.

Kudos to you guys for for taking what what works for you, what was important to you, and starting a new business, a new fund on those same principles, empowering people to say, hey, you can you can still succeed in business while succeeding in family.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's, that's the huge part of it for us.

That's like kind of our governing principle for for both Al and I.

Like if we had a mission in life, it would be to empower families.

Like we believe.

Like a very deep belief that World Peace begins at home, right?

Like back to that Dostoevsky idea, the childhood memories.

Grow and develop into adults who are living out those childhood memories and either hurt people, hurt people or you know, or they're they've, they've had a lot of good experiences and mentors and their parents that have helped them grow and to do good things.

And So what happens at home very much impacts the world and so we try and empower as many families.

As we can and we our belief is if these business owners have strong families and and we help them have good incomes, they're able to have more impact on the world as well.

And so that's a really exciting thing for us.

That's so awesome.

Is Elle still involved in some of this?

Does she?

Does she like to participate in it?

Yeah.

So it's interesting.

She does, yeah.

She she comes in and participates in this.

Solly baby was very much her thing, you know, and I was in that like the supportive role in that and helping with the different stuff.

And I think that this is more my dream, you know, and so and she comes in and supports with it as well.

She works with the companies and does helps with the branding.

And you know, it brings all of her amazing insights.

But what she's really wanting right now is, you know, kind of like the tide comes in and out is kind of how life feels sometimes.

And So what?

The ending when we sold Sally baby, I was like okay.

That's the end of this.

And she's kind of entered into this phase now where it's like I don't have clarity around what is next for me.

And it's interesting.

I don't know how much this is a tangent, but but it's very core to a lot of the things that I believe and feel.

So I'm going to go into it is this idea of of.

Narrative psychology is something that's very interesting to me, right?

And so it's all rooted in union ideas around archetypes and stories.

And I think that we're governed.

Yeah, we're governed by that.

Our minds are.

And so for Elle, she came to the end of this narrative, right?

Like, she sold it.

And now she's.

On the threshold of a transition, right?

And so you move from that threshold into the unknown again.

And this is a period where she does not know what's next.

And in that, it feels chaotic, right?

And that's exciting, though, because chaos is where all creation happens, right?

It's why chaos is the idea of the feminine is chaos, right?

Like, it's why that's the feminine where creation occurs, you know?

And so from there it's.

So that's where she's at right now is she's still working with me doing this, but she's in this phase where it's like, what's next?

I don't know.

And stepping in to the unknown And it's like I I always get so excited watching any family member do it, the kids or Elle or anything.

It's like it's brave and it's so cool and and when you're willing to sit in that area for a while.

Then you get clarity around the next thing, right?

Then the creation happens and just like that acorn, right.

It it is this thing, but it it cracks open and this, you've got a lot of growth from it and you have to sit in that chaos for a little while and not know what's happening before you can crack it open and and have that growth.

And so that's where she's at right now.

And she's doing this with me because she's good at it and she loves all the people that we work with.

But it's not her passion like it is mine.

It is, because it's tied to the families.

But she's working to get that next thing right now and she's sitting in that and it's really, it's really cool.

And so actually, yeah, love that it's the best.

No, At first, You know, you want to avoid it.

It's uncomfortable.

There's.

A lot here.

It's sure to eat.

But man I've gotten this place and and it manifests in every area of my life.

Like I I tell my wife or people sometimes, like, you know, you know what my favorite thing would be is like, you guys blindfold me, put me to sleep.

And then I wake up in an unknown land in some unknown city and have to like find my way out or whatever or do all this.

I just like put me somewhere where I have no idea what's happening.

And those people language like let's figure this out.

I love.

The English Speaking of it so.

That's cool that you guys are in that space and.

And just sitting with it to see what comes next and and what's really fascinating, this comes up every week, if not every day.

And when I'm coaching is that so many people are in this space where when you're young you're like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, maybe get a degree or whatever, get a career, start a family, do those things.

And we have these big, big goals, but they all seem to end in the 30s.

Or yeah, that's right, people.

Get there.

And they're like, hey, I did, I checked out the box and I hit all things.

Wow.

And it's this big now what?

So what you're talking about is super relevant, no.

And I think that's like a yeah, the now what is something that's really important for this phase.

As I got closer to my 40s, I'm like okay, I'm kinda, I'm interested now like I I can see how that midlife crisis happens since I started learning about it.

And there is an author who after Carl Union, you know his writings were all very dense and and confusing.

And one of his students, Marie Louis von Franz, she kind of is known for taking what he had and making it palatable to the masses.

You know and and is kind of people view her as responsible for making it mainstream.

She wrote a book called Queer Eternis which is the idea of the eternal child.

And in it she talks about how when we're on one like while we're growing up we're developing our ego, right?

Or the things our identity.

And the 1st 40 years is very much that like who am I?

What do am I good at?

And and you strengthen those strengths, right?

And then you can believe that after that you need to start developing your shadow self, right?

Like you need to start tapping more into your shadow, your unconscious, to become an individuated whole person.

And so that you need to start going outside of your shadow.

And if you or outside of your your ego and the things that you're good at and start tapping into the things that you are not coming as natural to you.

And there's a lot of excitement and growth in that because it's new.

It's it's things that you're not good at.

It's that same sense of adventure in that and so in that A.

Lot of discomfort.

Well, absolutely.

Because like, for example, I'm very great at the phase that you're talking about, right?

Like the stepping into the dark and the chaos and the creativity.

That's the strength for me for sure.

I love brainstorming.

I love like that side of it.

But what's interesting is once it comes to systematizing, I can come up with great systems too, right?

But when it comes to the executing the systems, I struggled doing the same thing over and over and over and so same here.

That's my yeah, that's my shadow self though right.

Like and so I started to research how to do that better and and and you believe that you need to do it in play, right.

And so for me with my personality type, the MBTI personality type, I'm an ENFP.

And so Myers Briggs was based off of union type theory and they built this out as a way to understand what type you are, right.

And so I started looking with one of my friends who's I think you've met Mark and he's very, very good with the Myers Briggs.

And he we started like playing with it one day on our chalkboard here at the office.

And we're like how can you develop, like what does an NFP need to develop their weak things of being basically detail oriented, right.

Like how do you do that?

And as we started talking about that and I started reading the different things from Marie Louis von Frantz and you, it became apparent it has to be play based.

It has to be things that are no consequences.

It has to be play, but it has to be the stuff that you hate.

So for me it's it's how do you have something that's repetitive that is that is also play based, right.

It feels like they don't go together.

And So what I came up with, I love our yard and gardening.

I all that stuff in The Lord of the Rings where it talks about the hobbits loving things that grow.

That's like I was like thank you.

I'm that really speaks to me as like a goodness type thing, right.

And So what I realized is I'm going to go out and play in the garden right now I'm just like oh that plant needs water or whatever.

And I go out and just enjoy pruning it.

And so I made a really intense system of how to manage our yard and our garden and I've worked really hard.

I've been trying to stick to that as best I can because that is my play based version of my shadow self, right?

That is me learning to become more detail oriented with something that is low stakes.

Beautiful.

And creating and maintaining a system, Yeah.

Strategic system is something you love it or passion about.

It's Yeah, I love it.

Did you guys get a big chunk of land?

Yeah, we've got about 3 acres, so not like a huge chunk, but big enough to have a tractor.

That's all we needed.

But yeah, so we have a big garden.

Our goal is to live off of 50 or have 50% of what we eat be from the garden or from something we created.

We grew or raised the meat for it or something like that.

So 50% of what we consume.

You have animals as well.

Are you doing a greenhouse?

You do, Yeah.

We've got a big garden.

We do garden boxes and then like an orchard area that we've got and just a lot of Berry plants, stuff like that.

We've raised chickens and slaughtered them and and ate those.

Right now we don't have any other livestock.

We're getting 2 cows or we're on the wait list for 2 cows.

But yeah, so yeah, well, they're the Highlander cows, you know, the long haired cows that are really cool.

Yeah, Yeah.

And so they're, they're really like popular right now.

And so there is a wait list for those.

But their milk is supposed to be very creamy and like nutrient rich is kind of what they're known for.

And their meat is supposed to be really some of the best.

Like it was became very expensive after they bred them because it's a very very good beef and so that you know it makes sense that they're they're cool.

But anyway so yeah that was kind of my answer to tapping into that shadow self.

So along the same process L's in that darkness right now and and for me my darkness is not chaos, it's order.

And so that's my shadow self.

Is is learning how to tap into the order more and and become a more whole person by being able to live in chaos and in order well and and thrive in both of them.

Love it.

Can I, this is a good I think good point to maybe jump back to kind of the the waves, the oscillations.

How did how did it change you guys to go because the you started the business and and we're bootstrapping and you never took on investors and then you built the business was doing very well.

So you're getting regular incomes.

How did it change you to go from well?

You grew into the business, right?

You had to grow with it into the business, but then when you you, you got a buyout, right?

How did that change you?

How did it change your family to then have a big chunk of change and less work?

I don't know.

We've always tried hard to.

Let's see here Brigham Young, who is a prophet for our church, talked about how if you need something then then just get it.

You know, don't make sure it's a quality good thing and and something that will last and that you value.

Right.

And so we've lived by that, but we've also always tried really hard to keep those types of things that we want to a minimum, you know.

And so because like we'll buy art that we love or you know, we'll do the things that we really love it.

It's made it so that this is hard.

I'm trying to figure out how to say this without it sounding pretentious.

It's very much our ideal that we're trying to work towards.

We're not perfect at it, but we really value the idea of enjoying simple things, right?

I say that.

And it's like if you were to come into our life to be like you don't value simple things, but at the same time, we, I love ridiculously leather bound books.

You know, I have this Sangorsian suit clip.

Yeah.

It's like it's not simple, but at the same time it is, you know, and we try and keep our ideal is that we're not out, like just blowing money on all kinds of crazy stuff all the time.

And so I believe how ideals work.

And this, this is something that's really important to me right now in this age where we're moving into a time where relativism is a more prominent idea.

And I think that there's good to be had in that.

But I think that one of the problems that's happened with this movement into relativism is we've gotten rid of ideals.

And and I think because we misunderstood ideals.

I think that the more of the postmodern thinker believed that ideals were things that we've tried to achieve in this life and that people because we could never achieve an ideal, we should get rid of all ideals right and incredulity toward amend and narrative is what they say leotar.

But I I don't think that I think ideals are guides that help us see like oh this is something to be working in this direction.

It's never something to be achieved.

It's something to help guide us, to help us know if we're on track.

And so our ideal is valuing simple things, you know, and and things that are are just leading a more simple life where we're able to have more resources to help people and and do stuff like that.

So well, yes, you come in and you'll see you know these books that are nice or like art like stuff like that that we love.

At the same time, we're always trying hard to like live on lower our budget every month and get it like live on a budget and do these different things.

So when we sold it we needed to adjust like we that's when we were like OK this is kind of game time to see how much we really value these ideals that we have or not you know and and trying.

To that's trying to puts the ideas to the test.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean now we remove some of the previous limitations like how do we now hold the ideals?

I love that and and it's it's hard to even talk about like, I feel like cringy talking about it even.

Like it's like, you know, we're so good at this.

We're not.

It seems that we value and we're trying hard to do and we are getting better at all the time.

And it makes me happy that we're getting better at these things that we value, you know, But that is something that we value and we've tried hard to get at.

So you asked how it changed us and how we manage it.

It's that we had the ideal of trying to live a simple life that's full of connection and meaning and money is not necessary for any of those things.

And so money is a tool to try and accomplish the stuff that we believe in is how we view it and get some of the things like that Brigham Young talked about.

But it's like it it is good to have beauty around you and and and good things like these books that will last a long time.

And my notes can go down, you know, in them.

The kids can interact with them and take their notes and pass them on to their kids and they'll all be able to see how we all interacted with this book and these ideas and these thinkers, right?

And so it has meaning is what's important.

We're anything we buy.

We try and buy it because it has meaning, not because it makes us.

I always ask myself, what am I looking to feel from this?

Like, if I get a car, do I imagine myself driving up and seeing everyone looking at me?

And, like, is that the thing that brings me dopamine and excitement?

Or is it like imagining my kids one day opening up my nice version of Lord of the Rings and seeing like, whoa, told him, like, believe these things and look at these ideas that my dad drew from it?

And I feel that, but I also feel this.

And I'm gonna take these notes in my grant.

Like, that feels exciting to me.

And that's the meeting I derived from it.

And so it's like I'm willing to spend more money on that same.

I love that.

Love, love.

Love that.

Yeah.

I'm curious.

Well just cuz so many people they.

They want to have the experience you guys earned and created.

But having done it now, do you feel like like it it fundamentally changed your relationship with money or with business or life?

Was there a switch?

I know, I know a lot of people.

Even people who are earning great incomes still worry about money.

In fact, I personally know people who have 10s of millions of dollars and still worry about money.

I'm curious, was it a?

Shift.

Or did it all stay the same?

It was just a different experience.

No, it's kind of stayed the same.

Well, not that's not accurate.

It has given us more clarity, right.

That's something I chase a lot is trying to get more clarity in life and it's given us more clarity around how to understand what money is it when you know it.

That's why it was so important to us to have those moments when we were in college and it was rough and but also beautiful.

We would go out to the parks and really enjoy ourselves and we'd sit around a lot and talk about ideas and we would, you know all these wonderful experiences that we look back on and really value.

And so we had a moment where during COVID where it was like okay, this could be it because California locked down all of our supply changes in California and no one in California could make anything, right.

If they went into their factory and made stuff, they would be put out of business.

And so we had a moment where we were like, this is it, this is how it ends.

You know we'll, we'll spend all the money that we have trying to keep the business alive as long as we can and get the employees going.

And I remember we were driving up our hill, our houses up up a hill, up a Rd. we're driving off that hill.

And Ellen and I were talking about it and we both just said we're okay losing everything.

You know we have, we would be happy in a cave is what we said.

You know, like we we have the things that we need to be happy and so let's do the best we can to keep it afloat.

But if we don't, that's okay.

And so that's a very tangible way that we view money differently now is it's a way to help us accomplish things we believe in and solve problems and and help us, yeah, accomplish things that we're we're trying to accomplish.

And and so that's why meaning is important in that that equation for us because our house helps us bring meaning to our family and you know these different types of things.

And so it they make sense to have that and to have one that we really value.

But also, you know, if we lose our house, it's OK because our family is what really brings us the meaning.

It doesn't.

The house amplifies that, but it's not the it's not the house itself, it it's what it enables us to be done so.

I love it.

It's just a tool.

It's a neutral tool, yeah.

Yeah.

The things that matter most to us, Jared, that's so hey, I I got, I got to roll here in a second.

But I want to ask you, this is a perfect role in there for family.

You took your kids on a big old adventure.

Yeah, Yeah.

So we my two oldest.

They were 10 and 12 at the time, and we had someone.

How long do you have before you gotta get off?

I got like 6 minutes.

Sorry.

All right, I can do that.

So we we had a friend who done the John Muir Trail a few times invite us to go on the John Muir Trail.

I think he was joking, but I accepted and the John Muir Trail is around 215 miles, 211 miles something like that through the Sierras.

And so we we had to do extra, we had to do 260 miles is what we ended up doing.

And we started up north and ended at Mount Whitney and it was huge, a 10 year old and a 12 year old.

We were gone for almost a month, backpacking 260 miles.

But it was a life change.

You know, we talked about like narrative psychology and and transformations and all that type of stuff.

And it was the coolest thing I could have done to help my kids feel that deeply.

So they they know the process now and they refer to it often when they're going through hard things, they're like, oh, this is like the first week of the JMT.

You know, it's like that first week they're they were bawling, you know, like Solomon, he was 10, our boy, and then Lucy was the 12, our 12 year old.

And Solomon, like the first day we went 10 miles and he was like a walking zombie.

He could not talk.

But it was so sweet because it humbled him so much that, like, I remember he was trying to get over this log.

It was like a foot high and couldn't lift his legs high enough to get over it because he was so tired.

And I helped him over.

And he just, he just looked up at me so sincerely.

And he said, thank you so much, Dad, for helping me, you know?

And it was like our first day.

And I was questioning the decision to bring them on this trail big time.

But they both laid down on the side of the trail.

We're 1/4 mile from our campsite that night, and they just both started bawling.

And they're talking about how hard it was.

And they did not know what they were getting into.

As much as we tried to hike, you can't know what you're getting into.

And that's a great lesson for life too, right?

We have things like that all the time, but then they continued the process just like life.

If you jump into things and you don't allow yourself to quit, just like the JMP, we didn't have the chance to quit ever, right?

It just wasn't an option.

And so after that first week they got their trail legs, they say and then they became some of the fastest hikers on the trail and they're just zipping around. 14 mile days is like nothing to them.

And and it became, it was just a huge adventure.

And by the end Solomon, my goal for them, we believe our we have a big goal to teach our children self efficacy in different areas, right.

And so my goal for them was to have self efficacy in the belief, the lowest level of Maslow's hierarchy right, that they can survive in the wild.

I wanted them to have the belief that they could survive in the wild.

And so by the end Solomon, our 10 year old said I feel like I could live out here and both of them said that you know we were walking down our last two miles and kind of talking about the trip and and they both said that and the the thing that was really interesting about it.

So they learned the whole epic pattern, right, you know, the climax and and the the you know being out there in the desert, the whole thing.

They learned the whole epic pattern and it was a really cool thing.

By the end what happened that was really interesting.

We got home and they would just.

Do all the things that they used to complain about so much, like doing the dishes or all their chores.

And what was interesting is at that point, asking them to do the dishes was literally the hardest thing that they had ever done, right?

Like, if you think about our kids is like, I've never asked them to do anything that hard before at all.

So you're asking them to do this.

It's like, dude, you just asked me to do the hardest thing.

Of course I'm gonna push back on that.

After the JMT, it was like, oh dishes like that's a delight.

I get to sit here and relax and so it made all of it so much easier, all these big chores.

But it was really cool and they look back on it often.

That narrative arc, they've applied it over and over and I helped them do that right all all When they're going through something hard, I'll help them liking it to that process.

Now they do it on their own and it's been really life changing for them to to have such a queer understanding of the epic pattern and how it applies to our life and starting a business and your friendships and calling it church.

Everything follows the same arc.

And they experienced it so directly and and now they can know.

You just got to persevere through it.

Exactly.

Yeah.

The thing I love about those big epic adventures of my kids as well is, is it's a memory that you have now for the rest of your life together, that something.

Remember and cherish but also draw back on.

Yeah, it's a better life Dostoevsky again, right?

The childhood memories are are have the power to save us.

And it will be more intentional and more deliberate about creating memories.

We even get that much more power.

That's right, Garrett.

Thanks, man.

This has been been gold, brother.

So appreciate.

All right.

Well, thank you for having me.