Ashley Raetz: Community Over Competition/Marketing Coach/Profitable Sign Maker

Ashley Raetz

SPEAKERS

Brandy Von Holten, Ashley Raetz, (transcribed by Rhiannon Niemeier)

Brandy Von Holten  00:10

Welcome back to Big Boss Mare. This is Brandy Von Holten. Today's guest is Ashley Raetz. Alright, so Ashley, you and I share something in common. We were married in the same year. So, you and I both been married right now for 16 years. I'm married to a David and you are married to [Ashley: a Clinton]. Clinton. We have such common husband names, so they have common wife names, Brandy and Ashley. Here we are trying to slay it around here. So, you have you have two daughters. How old are they this year?

00:48

Riley is 13 and Oakley is nine.

Brandy Von Holten  00:51

Okay. 13 and nine. My gosh, so 13, is she in high school?

00:57

She's in junior high. She's in seventh grade.

Brandy Von Holten  00:59

Does that feel weird to almost have a high schooler? [Ashley: Yeah, yeah.] David and I didn't ever have children and I see people my age, because we're in our 40s, that already have grandkids. I know you're not in your 40s yet, but I'm just like, whoa. They grew up fast. [Ashley: They sure do.] So, their names are Riley and Oakley, and you have a business name, RiOak. That’s your main one, RiOak Western Design. Before we get into your business, I would like to go through and let them get to know who Ashley Raetz is. Now, Raetz. Everybody is going to think it's r a t e s, but it's r a e t z. [Ashley: That's correct.] So you get the cool rates. [Ashley: That's right.] We’re at the bottom of the alphabet with some of the letters in our names, right? I wish I was Apple Appleton or something so I would have been called on more for things whenever I was a little kid, but I wasn't a Von Holten until later. I was a Smith originally. What was your maiden name? Marriott. And it's M A R R I O T? [Ashley: t] No double T? [Ashley: No, it's two T's.] Oh, it is M A R R I O T T. [Ashley: Like Marriot hotels] Marriot. But you say Marriott. I actually had Bailey on here for a podcast earlier in the year, and she says that you country it up and just ‘merit’.

02:37

That’s right. Yeah. Bailey and I are first cousins, so our dads were brothers.

Brandy Von Holten  02:42

 So you have a degree from Missouri State University. You have a BS in gerontology? [Ashley: That's correct.] Tell me about that.

02:56

Well, I was going to go to school to do speech therapy and minor in gerontology to work with stroke patients. I graduated in four years and got my B.S. with a minor in psychology and became a social worker for the state for several years doing the elder abuse hotline. So that's what I did with that degree. Then I left and went to work at a nursing home because it was a better mom job and went in for a pay raise, and was told no, that anybody could do my job, and that's how RiOak started. Because I was told no.

Brandy Von Holten  03:38

You were told no, and you were told that anyone could do your job? [Ashley: That's right.] Okay, that makes my stomach turn because it's people that are taking care of elderly, where we're all going to be, and that's our that's our parents, that’s our grandparents.

03:53

Well, was the best “no” I ever got though.

Brandy Von Holten  03:55

There has never been a “no” that I did not appreciate later. But whenever you get told no, at the beginning, it's crushing. Oh, it stinks, and it's a hard crush. You're just like, wait, what? David and I tried to adopt two boys before. They told us that we couldn't just straight adopt, they said that we always had to foster a few times. I wasn't interested in fostering because I latch on to a dog in about 25 seconds, more or less a child. I told them I was not interested in fostering, that takes a special person to be able to give, give, give. They told us that they had file cabinets full of people that didn't want to foster that just wanted to adopt. We ended up not adopting, but I don't like whenever people try to say, “Oh, we've got a million people that can do your job.” It just doesn't set well because, in the country that we live in and the world that we live in, everyone is unique. Everyone is loved and cherished. So, whenever someone tells we have a whole bunch of people just like you. It doesn't set well. I'm glad that you were told no, because here we are, you are rocking and rolling in your world right now. You were born and raised in Cole Camp, and if you don't know where that's at, Cole Camp is really close to Sedalia. If you don't know where Sedalia is, Sedalia is like an hour and a half away from Kansas City. Sedalia is where the Missouri State Fair is at, and Cole Camp is one of the neighboring towns. So that's where Cole Camp is at. Your husband that you've been married to for 16 years now used to be a manager at Caterpillar. [Ashley: Yes]. He has now come on board and you work together at your store. What does he think about working with his wife?

06:26

You know, it's interesting. We were high school sweethearts, and we get along really well. We work well together. Of course, I'm kind of chatty and bossy and he's really quiet and just goes with the flow. So, it works for us. It's been really good. He has been there to be able to be a dad, and be at home, and be supportive to me, and works really hard just trying to keep everything together. It's been really good. It's actually been good for our marriage. We work really well together.

Brandy Von Holten  07:02

They say that 80% of couples that work together, end up divorced, but here you and I are. I'm the Chatty Cathy, and he's the calm guy, and this huge workforce behind us. A lot of people, with me being a larger female, they’ll be like, “Oh, I bet you wear the pants in the family,” and I'm like, “it's not even like that, bro.” It's not like that at all. I completely appreciate him for what he's able to do and what he brings to the plate, but our marriage is stronger because of us working together. Sometimes we do need a little break. But with him being such a quiet, reserved person, a lot of times he'll work alone and I'm working on something else. So even though we work at the same job, we're not right on top of each other.

08:00

Right? So that's what I was going to say, is that sometimes Clinton is either cutting metal or doing the woodworking. We might go a full day, like it would be for any eight to fivers, without seeing each other/ We might see each other first thing in the morning, and then we don't see each other till five or six o'clock at night. It might be a little bit different if we were penned up in an office together because he probably would get tired of me talking all day. It just works for us this way because we're not together 24/7. But we get along pretty good.

Brandy Von Holten  08:31

What is so funny is, people will just see one side of our business. I don't know if you have this happen, but a lot of times people will be like, “well, if David built everything, what do you do?” And I'm like, “well, I market this, and I teach classes, and I do all these other things.” Sometimes it's the other way around, they'll see that I'm the face of the business, then they'll ask if David works, if he works here, or where he works. I tell them, he works here. Whenever people just meet one of us whatever part of our business that they see first, they don't understand that it is full time for both of us. Way more than 40 hours. Ridiculous. I don't know if y'all have that where people were like, well, what do you do?

09:28

We really don't anymore, but I think it's because we've had RiOak for nine years and I always go live, so our customers and our followers have followed us through the whole process of our growth. They've seen Clint whenever we were doing paint parties, and when he quit his job we made that announcement, we've pretty much involved our whole customer and following base to everything, so they know. We basically grew our business on Facebook, so they have been a part of our lives for the last nine years without even really realizing it. People know quite a bit about me at this point because I share so much.

Brandy Von Holten  10:16

The way that a podcast works is I sit down, I talk to the person for a little while, and we write everything down. And I was able to get years and bullet points written down. And you were like, yep, yep, yep. So here is a problem that I run into all the time, I bet you do, too, is that people know so much about us. You've been open for nine years, we've been open for seven years. I share, share, share. I have 11 Facebook pages, group pages, websites, Instagram, Pinterest. I have a podcast, I write for magazines. People know so much about me. They’re invested into the relationship. We are in a relationship together. I don't know their name, some of them. I don't know their name. It’s awkward because they know everything about me, my fears that I've overcome, they've went through heartaches with me. Some of these people, they've cried with me, but I don't get to have the luxury of knowing them as deep as they know me. So how do you combat that?

11:35

It’s tough because whenever you lead a life of being an online influencer, I really don't know as if there is a way or even if a customer expects that, or if a follower expects for you to know them. What I will say is, you always know whenever people recognize you, and you don't know them, because you're on your podcast, or you're on a live or something. They’ll just stare at you, and you're like, just wave. It is kind of awkward, but it's fine. I don't know if there is a way to combat it. There would be no way. Sometimes whenever you're live, you might have 170 people watching you. I think it takes two years to get to know your customers, if they come in, they follow you, or they're commenting on your posts, those types of things. It's easy to get to know people that way. But in general, it's hard. We reach so many people. One of our Facebook pages, on average, it reaches around 70,000 engagements a month, so it's one of those things. It is awkward though, because they will ask, “how's this going,” or, “how's this?” Meanwhile, you're like,: what's your name? I'm so sorry. I feel like I should know this.”

Brandy Von Holten  12:46

Here’s the deal at our facility, we have people that have come in camp. A lot of times, of the 1000s of people that come here, they only have to sign a waiver one time. Then I only see them once a year, but they follow us. I struggle. I'm like, “Oh my gosh, name tags.” We thought about having, to help us, a sign in sheet every time they come here. Not for a waiver for liability release, but just a sign in of who's here. That way we can know their name. Anyways, let’s go into something else. You used to make custom signs, but the business has gotten so large that now you don't make very many custom signs. [Ashley: That's correct.] You were a horsewoman before, and a horse woman now. It's a little bit different. You started with western pleasure and showmanship, and then it didn't take very long for you to have the need for speed.

14:01

I loved barrel racing. Loved, loved it.

Brandy Von Holten  14:06

What did you love about it so much?

14:09

Honestly, I am probably one of the most competitive people that you will meet. I loved the competition. I loved the friendship with all of the kids that I ran around with. It was a really fun way to be able to grow up and have so many memories with my mom and dad being in the truck every Friday night, and not getting home until Sunday night from all of our rodeos. It was a great, great way to be able to grow up and be raised.

Brandy Von Holten  14:43

You did youth rodeo and then high school rodeo, and then you were still rodeoing until you got married. [Ashley: I did.] Then the babies came.

14:54

We needed money. So I sold the barrel horse, and then the babies came, and all the things that happen with that,

Brandy Von Holten  15:01

I did barrel racing whenever I was a child, I didn't ever bear race as an adult. I did martial arts a lot longer than I did anything competitive on the horses as a child, but now I do mounted archery, and I did some obstacle stuff around here, and a little bit of dressage, but I miss my team. That's what I missed the most, was the friendships and the training, not exactly the competition. The competition was always the pinnacle point, the top of everything coming together. I just miss all of the working out and the training. We used to go out to eat together and we celebrated stuff. It always felt good to celebrate those wins, and to make a plan with the losses with a group of people that had a like interest. So that's the thing that I missed the most. My martial arts instructor said that whenever she went to the Olympics, that it was the team. Yes, going to the Olympics was cool, but all of the best memories were all about the team. Were you on a rodeo team, or was it still individual?

16:17

No, it was definitely individual. It was Missouri high school.

Brandy Von Holten  16:23

So you had common people that you always saw every weekend. So you were like a family, a horse family?

16:29

Oh, absolutely. Cookouts, we would go out to eat, all kinds of stuff that the families would do after the rodeo was over with. You're camping out in the middle of an open field every single weekend with the same people. So even though we were competing against each other, it still was just awesome, great memories. I'm still in contact with several of the people that I high school rodeod with.

Brandy Von Holten  16:52

Let's change the topic for just two seconds your father, Mike Marriott. All the I just want to say Marriot. Mike, he was the best Santa Claus. One of my favorite pictures with my children's books, is, it looks like cowboy Santa is reading the book with me and I'm all country’d up. I just love that photo. I use it every year for Christmas, and I don't plan on ever not using that photo because it's just magical looking. But your father, he passed away in 2019. He had pancreatic cancer. You were able to repurchase the last horse that your father broke. And it's a 2008, is it a gelding? [Ashley: yeah.]. Tellus about him. What's his name?

17:57

His name is Ace, Jet Black, dad broke him out as a three year old and used him in showmanship and halter, won several different titles around with him. Whenever my mom had a stroke, she wasn't able to work for a few months, so my dad actually sold his horse and he never got him back. He was his pride and joy. He was like, this will be the last one that I break out. And he was. Do you want me to go in to the rest of it? [Brandy: oh, yeah, I would love to.] So, after my dad passed away, I would like to quote unquote, say we finally, I don't know if the right phrase is “made it.” but I had enough money to be able to buy my dad's horse back, and I just had to have a conversation with my husband, Clint. It was a Sunday night. I will never forget this. I told him. I said,” Well, I'm going to tell you right now, if Ace ever becomes available, I am going to buy him back.” And Clint was like, alright. So no problem, right. The very next day, the lady that my dad had sold him to actually called and said that her daughter was going to college, wasn't going to be using him anymore, and wanted to know if we wanted to buy him back. And I was like, Yes, I didn't even ask, because I already told him that I was going to do it anyway. So we went and picked him up. It was just a really special moment, to be able to be able to buy my dad's horse back. I don't even care if I ever even ride him again. It's just that sentimental value that goes with that horse, that it was the last horse that my dad broke out.

Brandy Von Holten  19:36

People think that they're just horses. Well, whenever my niece passed away, she unfortunately committed suicide. But her horse, my mother got. My mom loved that horse. That horse was the most useless animal on the pasture, but the most loved and most taken care of. I understand that because it meant the world to my mom to have my niece’s horse.

I did not know that your mom had had a stroke. I have never noticed any kind of ailment from it.

20:21

She was very lucky. She had to have surgery  on it. She was very lucky, and she worked really hard too, with therapy, with her walking, really everything, she’s a strong woman.

Brandy Von Holten  20:33

Sometimes you can tell, you know what I mean? A lot of times you can really tell, and I had no idea that your mother had a stroke. So your mom's Donna, and she does not work for you, but she'll help out with craft shows, and the kids. You said sometimes you’ll will be working and she'll come home and help you around the house and then already have dinner ready?

21:00

Oh, it's amazing. Like some nights that I am working late, especially during fourth quarter right now, Mom will come over and she'll clean the house. She'll do a few loads of clothes. As women, we always wonder what are we going to have for dinner? Nobody cares what we have for dinner. Nobody has any suggestions. But Mom will come over and dinner is always on the stove. It smells so good. My house is clean. So that's priceless, that is priceless. She's so good. Like today, because I'm here, she's going to go pick up the kids from school. So, it's just really nice to have her be so active in the girl's life. For one. She's a good role model for being a strong woman, for sure.

Brandy Von Holten  21:46

Do you have any brothers or sisters? [Ashley: I'm an only child.] You're an only child. Okay. I would have not thought that. I'm psychology-ing the heck out of you right now, and I would have not thought that. I might get a little heat on me for saying that. Sometimes I can tell. You work your butt off. Entitlement was what I was going to say, there's no entitlement. I'm so sorry for all the people out there that think I'm saying something bad. There’s been a few that have stood out to me. Then there are others that you would think that are the oldest of eight children, because they had so much responsibility put on to them. That's kind of what I feel from you. I thought you were probably the oldest or something. You're responsible, but then get the job done. So, let's talk about something before we came on the air here. I was helping one of my photographer friends today. She wanted some photos in action because she's trying to use different lighting. Her name's Jessica Buessing, she's been on my podcast before. She has been hired by a martial arts school and needed kicks in motion so she can perfect this. When Ashley came in, I'm like, “Oh, I can't do a toe touch anymore. I can touch my toes, like bend over touch my toes. I can still do the splits all that stuff. But jumping up in the air, feet fully extended, with your hands out, I was like, I've got this. So I asked Jessica if she wanted me to do a toe touch for her, and she's like, oh yeah, and starts taking pictures. Then we were both like, oh, that did not work out like we planned. So I was sharing this story with Ashley, and Ashley tells me a story about whenever she had done a round off for the fist time in a little bit. So tell us about this roundoff story.

23:55

Okay, as a mom, you're trying to teach your kids how to be able to do something. They were learning how to do cartwheels. And I say, “oh, you should try to do a round off.” They’re like, “Well, what's that?” I'm like,” Oh, let me show you,” because I was in gymnastics when I was eight. [Brandy: 30 years ago.] Right, 30 years ago. I take off running through the yard, and I did it. However, whenever I landed on both of my feet, my whole back popped out of place. So I ended up in the chiropractor the next day. He’s like, how did this happen? And I said, well, I did a round off, and he was like, okay, well, you either need to stretch or kind of consider that your years of doing round offs are probably over. So that's my roundoff story.

Brandy Von Holten  24:49

Oh my gosh. Well, trying to do this toe touch, and I think there was something else like not too long ago.. Oh, I was in this dance competition at Truman High School, I had some of my students that were tutoring me in dancing. I ended up winning me and my work husband, his name was Austin. We did the Evolution of Dance. But I was like, okay, you know, it'd be really cool right here if I did the worm, and you did the worm towards me. And then I was like, Okay, let's do this. And I did like this 10 point, chest, dive onto the ground, just like yard darted myself like, plink, and then there was no worm. It just me at an angle, hit the ground, and then I just fell down in pain, and everybody's laughing. They were like, Von Holten, you can't have boobies, and do the worm. Okay. It never occurred to me, I just thought you had to be really motivated and want it. A lot of martial arts is like that, if you'll just go for it, and so many people are hesitant, they justdon’t have that “I can do it. Sometimes I have that too much. My ability, I wrote this check then my body said we can't cash that. I can't cash that check. I can't do the worm. Today, I cannot do the jump up toe touch anymore. I need a trampoline.

Let's talk about these businesses. Let's start with RiOak Western design. My business is actually going to come there next year for our Chicks in the Sticks. We like to either rent a limo or charter bus and then we go to a couple of places and go shopping, It's all local, not chains. Then we'll go out to eat, we usually go to like a Mennonite lady's house, or we'll go to Charlie's Buffet. We go to some sort of specialty place out to eat. So you've just opened an actual retail store. [Ashley: a brick and mortar.] Tell us about that. Tell us about what you sell and what you do.

27:03

Well, Rioch is a handmade sign company. We've been in business for nine years. Essentially, we've just been an online retailer. The business continued to grow, and we had the opportunity to be able to buy a building, and I've been dreaming of this day for years. So we did, we bought a 12,000 square foot building. The bottom half of the building is 6,000 square feet, and we have turned half of that into a retail space. So inside of the store, we've got all kinds of home decor, clothing, gifts. We have saltwater taffy, and the old nostalgic kind of candy, those types of things. It's just fun and unique kind of gifts. We do try to find as many USA made products as we can to be able to carry, because that's something that just means a lot to me being that we are a sign making company ourselves. So, there's all kinds of things like that inside of the store. My painters actually work four, 10-hour days there. I have two full-time painters, and we ship our product all over the United States. We have a full-time shipper; we have a couple of people that work in the store as well. It’s just really fun. We have a full-time woodworker. USA made is just something that I'm very passionate about, which then kind of led to the other businesses that I have.

Brandy Von Holten  28:41

Something that I saw that you've just now started embarking upon is the clothing. You started selling clothing. I loved it because everything was cozy, it was neutral, and it looked like it was going to be timeless pieces. Do you remember the pants that had the zipper at the ankle with some bows right there? [Ashley: Yeah.] There's nothing like that. There's stuff that you can wear now, and it can be 10 years old, and you're not going to look outdated. They’re classic pieces. Do you have any new business that you're going to venture into?

29:28

We do, yeah, we do. We are actually getting ready to open up inside of our retail location, the RiOak Cap Company. We are going to start doing baseball caps, and we're going to also offer that with wholesale for businesses to be able to purchase. I'm going to create a little shack inside of my store with barnwood, it's going to look like a little shack. As you walk in there, you can pick a baseball cap, you can pick a patch, and then we'll heat press it right there on the spot. So, you basically can come in and do custom designs yourself and get your own baseball cap.

Brandy Von Holten  30:04

That’s great, because I have a hat on every day of my life. [Ashley: I do too! I love it] I have very specific cowboy hats that I like, and then I have ball caps. I'm in a ballcap all the time. I'm surprised I don't have a white forehead as much as I wear them, but I don't. But, that's really cool. So you have Rioch Western Design, and that's in Cole Camp. I love the building, because it's just as cute as can be, you can go in and get a cup of coffee, and they have all sorts of signs. Then you have The Profitable Sign Maker, and that’s a membership. Tell us about The Profitable Sign Maker.

30:50

The Profitable Sign Maker, I have a Facebook business page that goes with that. Through the business coaching, which we'll talk about here in a little bit. people kept asking me, “Where do you get your resources from? Where do you get this, how do you make signs?” What I quickly realized is that there's probably a need, just from being in the industry for so long, that I had all of this knowledge to be able to help other people either wanting to get into the sign making business or wanting to be able to learn or just be a part, and Brandy I know you'll appreciate this, of a community that was community over competition. I hear a lot from business owners that say they stole my idea, and I'm sitting here thinking like, why can't we all work together? I don't understand this concept. There's a lot of people in the world, so I wanted to create a safe place for sign makers. So, The Profitable Sign Maker was born. Inside of that membership, there is a full course that teaches people from the woodworking, to where I get all my resources, how to be able to design. It’s a course inside of a membership. Along with that we have a community that is held on Facebook, and we release out tutorials every month, we released that SVGs, it's just a really positive atmosphere, no matter what level of painter. I've got some people that don't even have a cutting machine that get in there just to be able to learn, all the way up to people who have been sign makers for the last 13 to 14 years, they've been doing it longer than me. But they're there because they love the designs, they love the community, they love the comradery, just the new ideas, that we stay on top of the trends. And so it just really kind of became a passion, if you will, to create a safe place for sign makers and to come together to be able to help support each other. As you know, Brandy, only people that are in your field, really, truly understand that day in day out grind. Like, your neck hurts from painting all day, you have to go to the chiropractor because you're painting all day or doing round offs, or toe touch touches. It's just one of the things that was a passion of mine to be able to create this community. And it's amazing. I get to teach over 1000 people every month. And so it's just been something that's been truly an amazing experience and probably blessed me more than I've been able to bless other people.

Brandy Von Holten  33:16

For the people that don't know what an SVG is, because you said that was something that they get, and SVG. What is that?

33:27

It's a very simple term, and the word sound really scary, but it's scalable vector graphic. The signs that you'll see on a wood sign, or maybe the graphics that you see on Facebook or Instagram, that basically can be turned into an SVG. All that means is it's just a way that words that we use, or a graphic, has been saved. So that way, whenever you go to scale it, it doesn't distort the way that it looks. So you can put it in a laser or you can put it in a cutting machine. They get those designs every month,

Brandy Von Holten  34:05

Whenever I have something put into embroidery, sometimes I will want it to be made larger, because if they try to take my logo, and I want it bigger, it doesn't look good. I have to pay to get it digitized, to be made larger. For example, our Country Tough Trail Versatility logo is a horse standing in grass. Whenever we expanded it, it just looked [Ashley: all pixelated.] Right, it was horrible. It was like a picture that somebody took on their phone, they're trying to blow it up, and then it's fuzzy. It's not a clean line. So these SVGs, whenever you say that they're scalable, that means to be made smaller and larger for whatever project you're doing and on whatever medium you're wanting. [Ashley: and it doesn't distort.] Does not distort, okay. There is nothing like having the best photo in the world then not being able to  use it because it doesn't have enough pixels, or it's too big and you can't compress it. So, you have another business, an SVG club? [Ashley: I do.] Tell us about the SVG Club.

35:15

Well, inside of the membership that we just got done talking about, that's actually called the Creative Maker Movement, and that's inside of that Profitable Sign Maker. I am a firm believer, if any of you all are business people out there that are listening to this, you have to listen to your audience. Whenever you listen to your customer base and your audience, you quickly can find other streams of revenue for yourself. The one thing that my members kept asking for was more SVGs. They were like, hey, can you create an SVG for this and I’ll buy it. This happened for about a year until I quickly thought, Ashley, listen, you've got another stream of revenue that's waiting for you. No joke. I thought, well, let me just throw it out there and see if anybody's interested. So we created an SVG club. There is no community that goes with it, there's not a whole lot of maintenance, it's just five commercial use designs every single month, and then a bonus. So, we provide a bonus every single month that goes with that. That's what we do. You get commercial license for it, meaning that you can make anything with it. You just can't resell that design because it's my design. You can make, bags, signs, pillows, whatever it is that you want to be able to make with them. You can make it and have free royalty to be able to do so with that.

Brandy Von Holten  36:41

They’re able to sell the product that they made with the design, but you don't want them to sell the design to someone else. [Ashley: That's right. Yeah. Because I'm selling it to them.] Well, that right there is cool, that all they needed to do if somebody else wanted to purchase it, they just needed to come to you and purchase it. That's easy. That's just being classy. People need to keep it classy. The whole pirating is not cool, especially whenever you have it so affordable. You're trying to be up and up, so people need to be up and up.

37:13

1. Yeah. It's basically if you think about it, it's $2 a design, and I don't care how much money you make with that. We had a lady that sold $700 worth of signs with that one design. Well, it's $120 a year, if you think about it. That one design pay for five years of the SVG club if you put it like that,

Brandy Von Holten  37:39

 I have so many different things that I pay a yearly subscription to be able to use. For example, canva.com. I use the heck out of Canva to make beautiful flyers. I just use them for marketing purposes, I put my logo on photos that were taken here, just because then whenever that photo gets shared, I want to be working all the time with every photo. So I pay $10 a month to use Canva on the professional level. I appreciate their services, and I'm going to continue to pay that, I don't care. It's $120. Well, if I get campaign for one electric site and two stalls out of it, because somebody saw a flyer and decided to come here, it's paid for the whole year. I don't try to take shortcuts. If you're trying to be cheap, then you’re going to have cheap product, you’ll have cheap clientele.  Just put the money into it and do it. Right. That's right. So you have The Profitable Sign Maker, then I didn't understand the words of The Creative Maker Movement.

38:51

Okay, so The Profitable Sign Maker is the business, 3that's like the Facebook business page. Thhat business page promotes the membership, which is The Creative Maker Movement. [Brandy: And that's your SVG club?] No, that's the membership. The SVG club is something that's separate. So that's two different memberships there. I chose The Profitable Sign Maker because that's the course that they get with inside of the membership. I think the branding with that, that could happen in time. So business page, and then SVG club. It's what we like to call, in the membership world, a low-hanging fruit offer. So it's $10, people get to know me, they build a relationship, they see they can make money with it. Then from that, whenever I do open up the creative maker movement, they can be able to join that and I also promote that on The Profitable Sign Maker page.

Brandy Von Holten  39:48

Okay, so you get people in with the SVG club. [Ashley: That's right.] Then they fall in love and they say, Oh, this brings value to me, and then they'll sign up for something that costs more. [Ashley: That's right.] And then this Creative Maker Movement is whenever you teach them how to be a better business operator? [Ashley: No, no.] Oh my gosh, I'm sorry that I'm confused. I don't live in your world. My world is a lot different. I love these podcast interviews because people don't understand your world. With me, people get really confused because I have the term Big Boss Mare. Well, this is Big Boss Mare with Brandy Von Holten. Well, I also have a Big Boss Mare goal sisterhood. It’s a private group where we have 100 days, and they tell us what their goals are. I show them what I'm doing. It’s a goal setting sisterhood, and it's so positive. My cup of positivity gets filled by watching them grow. These ladies are rocking and rolling. Big Boss Mayor also has cups, and it has leggings, and then I have a motivational book that I'm working on chapter by chapter that is called Big Boss Mare. Okay, so Big Boss Mare has all these different [Ashley: streams of revenue?] Well, people see Big Boss Mare, and think, what's this? They might just think it's cups because they don't understand the complexity of it. I know you have something completely different. That's called Creative Strategies with Ashley Raetz, that's completely different. I am having a little bit of a stacking issue, I understand you have a business page that's called The Profitable Sign Maker, then you have something small in there called the SVG Club, where they get just these files so they can go and conquer the world themselves and make everything they want to with their signs. Then you have The Creative Maker Movement that's underneath. It's like there's two levels underneath The Profitable Sign Maker.

41:59

That's right. The Profitable Sign Maker is the umbrella of the business because I run three different businesses. That’s what we do in businesses, we build multiple streams of revenue underneath a business in order for it to be successful, just like what it is here. You do clinics, you rent out your wedding venue, all of that is underneath Von Holten Ranch. So, underneath The Profitable Sign Makers is the SVG club that people can join at any time. Then there's The Creative Maker Movement that's underneath. It has the profitable sign making course that's inside of that monthly membership. The reason why I call it that is because I can see in the future, we always come out with a game plan, anytime I start a business, we try to come up with a five year plan. I can see books being called The Profitable Sign Maker, I can see conferences called The Profitable Sign Maker, all of this. But The Profitable Sign Maker is up at the top and then we build those multiple streams of revenue underneath it. I have the signature course that's called that, but that goes inside of that membership. I know it is kind of confusing.

Brandy Von Holten  43:09

I get it now. Now that I understand, “here's the umbrella.” We are trying to have multiple umbrellas. We have Building with David. So Building with David has kits that people can just buy anytime they want to, and it has a manual in there. We send it to them, and they get to make a USA made product. Then we have Building with David, which is a monthly subscription, where they get sent a kit and they build with him every month. Last year we kind of we kind of toyed with things a little bit and we tested the waters. Well, we did a kid's camp where they got to build a kit, and we did horsemanship at the same time. So it was part me part him. And that was really cool. I could see people that don't want anything to do with horses but instead having camps where we have kids come and build things. So we might have Building with David camps where we're going to make a bird house. He wants to do things where we send paint home to them with the kit and then he wants to have staining, or have things where they make little coasters with tiles in them. So that's one umbrella. Then we have Von Holten ranch. [Ashley: Oh my gosh, that one is huge!] Right. We Country Tough Trail Versatility under it. We have the Country Tough Mounted Archers. So we have versatility, mounted archery, then we have clinicians that come in, then I am going through Mounted Police instructor training so I'll be able to train other people and they'll be able to get continuing education units for going through my mounted police training certification. But, I have to get certified first, but I was invited to do that. That’s all in addition to just people that want to come and trail ride, or ride in the arena.

45:09

I mean, it's smart business. You have one umbrella, and then you have all your multiple streams of revenue underneath, it really is key to success.

Brandy Von Holten  45:17

It’s a lot for somebody to understand, and to get to know everything. I know that there's a lot of trail facilities that are not making it, they're not making it. It's because they've not diversified. I have found that diversification is super important. Then clarity, they have to understand what the heck we are doing to be able to buy into it. My husband, I think Building with David is actually going to outshine Von Holten Ranch. Same with Big Boss Mare, I feel like female entrepreneurs, and somebody being positive and being confident in their own skin and getting to meet these other women that are rocking and rolling. Sometimes it's something so small, they need to hear some kind of words or something said to them, and then they lock in on it. I know something that was said to me is “if anything matters, everything matters.” That has helped me out so much with making sure that I find balance in my life, and I make sure there's groceries in the house, and I make sure that I take the clothes to the dry cleaners. It helps me with making sure I get all the little pieces done so that I can be 100% here. Sometimes I need like a mental break, and I'll go to Bailey’s coffee shop, your first cousins coffee shop. She and I were talking the other day and me and her are extremely busy. Then we look at you, and we're like, man, we've got to work smarter. Ashley has seven full time employees, and I'm like employees are where it's at. Bailey quoted you and said, “do your best and hire the rest.” I was like, oh, that's epic. I texted it to my husband. We have five part time employees now. We want two full time and to go from there. Having employees makes the world so much better, it makes it where we can make more income and life is better. Then we can take some of the stress off of us so we don't burn out.

47:37

There comes a point in business where if you're going to scale, you have to hire other people. Bailey and I were talking about this today because she brought me coffee. She and I were chatting a little bit about business. And I said, you know, there, there really does come a point where you have to make a decision of how much more do I want to grow? When is it enough? For me, I don't really have a ceiling, so that means I could end up with 20 employees. I don't have a stopping point right now. But everybody has that ability in business to decide when is enough, enough, or is what you have enough. I'm still a young woman, I'm 38 years old. I still have a good 20 years to do this and to impact people's lives. I feel, in order to scale, there does come a point where you have to hire out. I’m kind of a perfectionist and I think that's one of the reasons why our business has been so successful. But believe it or not, there really are people out there that can do things better than you. I picked what I'm really good at. I love marketing, and I love hand painting, and I love being able to help people. So that's what I choose to do. Then you hire out the rest and you can find people. I'm not a very good monotonous task person. Painting the same sign over and over again, I’m not really great at that. My mind tends to wander. I'm not very good at shipping, to stand and do the same thing over and over again. My mind wanders, My shipping girl that I have right now, she wants to make every single step count. Well, I'm a creative at heart. So I might go in 10 different directions all at one time. I don't focus very well. I'm just in this creative brain where I'm like, “oh, you know, this would be a good idea.” I will just drop everything and go to the next task. You can't have that, so I had to find people that were task oriented because I am not task oriented, I’m idea oriented. I want to be able to develop ideas, and then I have to hire the people in order to make those ideas really happen for me. It’s awesome.

Brandy Von Holten  50:14

People ask me, “How do you get everything done?” I am a checklist person. But then also I probably have adult ADHD that has never ever been medicated. And I'm like, don’t medicate it.

50:31

Let it run.

Brandy Von Holten  50:33

Exactly, let it run. It takes all sorts. My husband, if you want to see him break down and not be able to get anything done, make a list for him. He sees that list and he could not get it done. As soon as the lists goes away, it’s fine. He gets overwhelmed. And when he gets overwhelmed, he can't function. Whenever I see the list. I'm all like, “we're going to mark off something today.” I get really motivated with a list. I have to see things consistently. I make personal planners, and at the top of it, I have my big goal. Do you know how many times I have written adventures at Von Holten Ranch - Chalkboard? It's my third children's book. But I will tell you, the day that it goes to print next month; actually, it's in the next 15 days. This has been a long time in the making. It feels almost awkward to me to write something new on the big goals list.  I don't even know what it will be. I do have the entire book series, I guess I can write Adventures at Von Holten Ranch – Glamour, because that's the fourth book. But I have to focus on sales first for Chalkboard. With my children's books, I always want to beat the book before with how fast I can get it into all 50 states. The first book took me two months. The second book took me one month, one week. I'm shooting for 30, might have to be 31 days, but we're going to go for 30 days with the third children's book. But no, I understand what you're saying, like right now I have so many photos that show our facility, but they've gotten stacked up over the last seven years, disks and flash drives that have hundreds of photos on each one. I need to go through them and put them into files, and then go back and go on to Canva, put my logo on them, and then do scheduled marketing. I don't want to do that. The stack is getting bigger, but it needs to be done because it's content. I've hired a lady and we've been working on these for two weeks. She'll open one up and I tell her the numbers of the photos and where it's going to go. That’s what she's doing right now, and she loves the organization. She’s on a quest to get all of those done, but I don't want to ever do that. I never wanted to. So, I understand, having an employee that is like one plus one equals three. I've said that a lot, that I don't want one plus one equals two around here. I want one person's job plus one person's job and we can create something even greater. That's what I work on a lot around here. Is there anything else that goes underneath The Profitable Sign Maker? [Ashley: Not yet.] Okay, so that's your future? Yeah, So many people cannot learn online, and they would probably love a workshop.

54:09

That's right. The building that we were talking about earlier has a full 6,000 square foot upstairs. That will actually be a place that we're going to rent it out for events. Primarily, we got the building for me to be able to host my business conferences and sign making retreats. That was one of the main reasons why we bought the building.

Brandy Von Holten  54:34

What a cool thing to bring to your community. They're going to need rooms, they're going to need food, they're going to need fuel. And jobs that you are generating right here in your local town. My first children's book is about how one positive person can make a difference in the world, or you can be a nasty cow and be say, I'm going to steal this, and I don't want to work with anybody, and I'm going to steal people's ideas. You can either be a nasty cow, or you can be awesome and generate business. The things that you're doing are helping other people make a living in the same market that you are. How crazy is that? People don't understand that there's so much more on the other side of being a nasty cow. That stuff's exhausting. In the horse world, in the wedding world, and in every world that I'm in, there's nastiness. And I'm just like, y'all got back up away from that, because your life is only so long.

55:51

Life is too short to live in the drama? You know, I've been there, honestly, whenever I was very first getting started. I guess I didn't know any different. As soon as we kind of, quote, unquote, had some success in our local area, nobody was doing signs. Then all of the sudden, everybody was doing signs. And it was hard, in the mindset that I was in whenever we very first started, to see that everything was going to be okay. It is now, but as soon as I realized how much that was affecting my mindset of worrying about what somebody else was doing, and that they took one of my designs, and they've copied me, and they're using the same business model. As soon as I kind of let that go, it robbed me so much of my creativity. I couldn't be in that negative headspace and think of beautiful home decor, or inspirational things to be able to say to people, whenever it robbed me. As soon as I made that mindset switch truly, I realized it truly is a really big compliment for somebody to want to copy what you're doing. It doesn't make the sting any less bowed for us, but it is a compliment. If somebody sees that you are being successful in something. Again, whenever I would see that, I didn't realize that this was probably leading me up to this point that I'm at right now. Was I a successful sign maker? Absolutely. Am I making good money? Absolutely. I am making even better money now that I've changed my mind set and am willing to share my knowledge with everybody, and help them be able to get that one step further or save them hours of trying to search how to be able to make the design on YouTube. As soon as I switched that mindset, and then realized that I could be helping so many other people, you guys can do the math. 1000 people, it's $42 a month, for 1000 people.

Brandy Von Holten  58:08

That’s what it costs to be in The Creative Maker Movement. $42?  And is that year long?

58:15

Yeah, it keeps going until you cancel your membership. So you get the sign making course, you get SVG, you get tutorials every month, you get a tutorial from me and a guest artist. Then just the support of the community is amazing. I think the way that my mindset has been since I started this a couple of years ago, it's something that has made a really positive community because I always say on there, if you're a drama girl, like you're not welcome into my area. We're community over competition, if you share the picture, you're going to inspire somebody else that they may take it. Maybe not the picture itself, but get inspiration from it, and they might do a sign that looks very similar to yours or whatever. I can honestly say it's attracted the most positive group of people. It's such a powerful world when we change our mindset.

Brandy Von Holten  59:11

What I have found is whenever I come up with something that's original, even when people copycat ideas and things that I've done, it's not as good as ours. You know why? Because I did it from my heart, and it was original, and it's low rent to copy stuff. It doesn’t come across the same because they don't realize what all went into it, and the whole thought process. Right now, with my online horsemanship courses, it took me failing a little bit and getting behind and being like, “Oh, I need to do that. I need to change this. I need to change that.” Now I'm ready to roll. Well, what people are going to do, is they're just going to say, “oh, I can do an online course about this.” And I'm like, “Oh, well be prepared to have a few issues,”: because it's not easy to copy the end thing. The whole learning process is what makes it successful. So, tell us about Creative Strategies with Ashley Raetz.

1:00:27

It has been going on four years coming up spring of next year. People started seeing, my success on RiOak, on the retail, and how I was having sold-out Facebook group sales. We've had three, top 100 sellers on Amazon handmade, and one of mine was a top 10 seller for almost a year. The sign simply said, “Get Naked,” not even kidding. Top seller on Amazon. I don't know why. But that was it, it was a top seller. So that was the sign that we had, and it did so well. I was posting on RiOak, and it would be all of our packages that we were taking in, and people started reaching out to me. It was really weird. I call it a little God wink, because within a matter of a month, I had about five people that reached out to me and said, “Will you be my business coach with somebody?” “Are you willing to teach me how to be able to do Etsy?” “Are you willing to teach me Amazon handmade?” Or, “Have you ever thought about creating a course?” Then randomly somebody from Amazon messaged me and was like, “I see everything that you're doing here on Amazon, is there any way that you can teach me how to be able to do this?” All of this happened within a period of like four to five weeks. I feel like it was just this push. I had no idea what I was doing, to be honest with you. I told Clinton I was like, “I think I can be a business mentor.” And he was like, “Okay, well, what does that look like?” And I said, “I don't know. But all these people keep reaching out to me, like I need to research this.” So I'm never one that just jumps in feet first. There's always a lot of thought. It might be a quick thought process, but usually thought goes into it. I ended up investing into a program and taking a course myself in order to learn how to be able to run a proper membership. So, I flew to Canada and took this course, I did all the things with this program. Then I launched out Creative Strategies with Ashley Raetz. Within that business, I have a signature course that teaches people how to be able to create and curate a relationship with their Facebook audience, selling strategies through Facebook, and then your basics of your SEO. We created that, then from that course, you have the opportunity to get into my business mentor program. You have to go through my signature course in order to get me as a business mentor. I only open this up March of every year, I don't open up my program any other time, I don't sell my course any other time, you can't just come on to my website and purchase it. I open it up for four days a year. That's it. We do a six-week course, then you can join my business membership from that. Inside of the business membership is where we dive in deeper to Etsy and into Amazon handmade. I'm just support for my members to be able to ask me questions. I do a live at least once a month, then we do roll out trainings. This month, we did e-mail marketing. In August, we did how to be able to run a Facebook group challenge. It's just different stuff like that, to be able to help online entrepreneurs and people just wanting to get started, or people that have been in business for a while and they are honestly seeing failures, [Brandy: Or they're stagnant.] Right, or they are stagnant. Bailey and I were actually talking today, business doesn't have to be a secret. Are you willing to get up and do the work? If you're willing to get up and do the work day in and day out month after month, year after year. That's when you know, you have what it takes. You have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. With this, I really have dove into mindset with people because usually there's a lot of baggage that comes with that and that's why I developed like my masterminds from the people that are within my business coaching so they can come and get more of that one-on-one attention. In a group setting we dive in deep of really, what holds a person back? Fear, usually, of something right and so on. Usually, people are like, “I'm scared.” Whenever you really dive in deep, and I guess this is where my social work comes in, we do a lot of social work with our minds, because sometimes there's a whole bunch of reasons why we do what we do as adults. We carry around this baggage. I've just found so much passion in helping other creatives and other business owners be able to live out a dream and, honestly, just believe in themselves grow.

Brandy Von Holten  1:05:27

I know you and I have a lot of parallels. Whenever we opened up Von Holten Ranch, we went all in. You know all about that, but we sold our complete cattle herd, we cashed in my retirement, we sold our property. We had to move here without a house. We lived in a horse trailer without a bathroom in it, we had a porta potty two months after we were here, we didn't even have a shower. We then built this. Where we were living at before, I had seven years left until we were going to be debt free. I was working as a schoolteacher, and gave up all that security for a very, I wouldn’t say insecure, but just a dream. Whenever people tell me, oh, must be nice to ride horses all the time, I know I ride horses much less now. I've gained a lot of weight since we have started, I've gained almost 60 pounds. Now it's coming back down since we opened this, and I've worked harder and more hours than ever.  I see people, and what their perception is of what we do is so off.

1:06:53

I don't paint nearly as much now, obviously, as what I used to. So, I'll sit down maybe once a week, you know, and actually paint for a full day. There just as a lot as your business grows and as you scale. You might not be doing everything, but you still have to manage everything. Well.

Brandy Von Holten  1:07:11

I cannot believe that you said that you don't have a ceiling. That's the way that I feel with my books and Big Boss Mare. With Big Boss Mare,, I meet so many people that put limits on themselves because of their age, or because they get the mom body, or if they're larger, or if they didn't go to some fancy college, or if they didn't go to college, or if they didn't finish high school. They always think they're not enough or that they cannot have this wonderful life that they want to have. They think they're not worthy

1:07:54

Honestly, Brandy, you might have hit the nail on the head with me. You guys can't see me here on the podcast, but I'm only 4’ 10”. Right. My entire life. I mean, my entire life, every time we go somewhere, even still today, I'm almost 40 years old, and people are like “you’re so short.” How are you supposed to respond to that? Wow, tell me something I don't know.

1:08:23

“You're so perceptive. Tat was such a good observation of the scientific method.”

1:08:30

I think it's one of those things. A lot of times, even as an adult, you get treated like a child whenever you are only 4’ 10” and be people say, “Oh, wow, you can do that?” Literally today, not even kidding, I hope  this one customer that just came in today doesn't listen to this podcast, but she came up and she looked at me and she goes, “You're the owner,” eyes real big, and I said yes. She goes, “I'm really sorry, don't take offense to this, but I didn't expect you to be so short.” I was trying to think, okay, how do I respond to this professionally? I looked at her and I was like, okay, and I just smiled at her. I said, “Well, here I am.” I didn't know what else to say. Do you have to have a height limit to run a business? I don't know.

Brandy Von Holten  1:09:19

Apparently you have to be a certain weight to be a cowboy or be able to explain something to somebody. [Ashley: Oh, absolutely. I mean good grief gurdy.]The fact that I have like a biology degree and a minor in physics, then I have my master's in teaching. I understand how the body moves. I understand anatomy and physiology. And then I understand how to teach people. My students, a lot of times, they are much better riders than I'm going to be.

1:09:43

Sure, absolutely.

Brandy Von Holten  1:09:47

People notice and will say, “wow, her student can do that better.” I'm like, “yeah, she sure can because I taught her well.”  With me being from South Texas, whenever I get excited or going, my country twang comes out. A lot of people connect that with not being smart. [Ashley: I know isn't it interesting?] I just think oh, honey, culture yourself quickly. People and their perceptions are limiting them. They're putting these judgments upon people. I had a kid one time say, “Hey, are you going to do a ribbon cutting for that?” If I would have been a person that's like,” adults are smarter than kids,” that they don't have any value in what they say. Instead, I thought, Oh my gosh, that's the best idea. I forgot about it. You should open yourself up to not judging people or having an expectation. My instructor, my martial arts instructor, is a little bitty lady. She's short and she's small. I'm a heavyweight fighter. I did the best I ever did with her. I just thought that a heavyweight needed to train a heavyweight because we fight differently, but she understood, and she understood me. My horsemanship instructor, he is not a tall cowboy. We are about eye to eye. He's probably five foot eight, maybe. I'm not five, eight so he's probably a little bit taller than me. If we were both barefoot, we'd probably be eye to eye. Most cowboys are taller and they're lanky, right? Well, he's not, but he can out cowboy them. My second children's book was about not judging a book by its cover, basically. It was about finding your own passion. That's Adventures at Von Holten Ranch -- JoJo. It's about my mule that looked differently. He looked different than his mother. He looked different than everybody else. He was not good at some stuff. But, he found what he was good at, and then he excelled in it, it being mounted archery. He's good, and he's an eye catcher because he's different. I've turned down $10,000 for a mule that somebody wouldn't pay $200 for before because he's different. His differences became his strengths. I just hope people keep on underestimating me, I’m sure you’ve seen that in your business. That would be fun.

1:12:38

Yeah, I know. I love that. Yeah, I have seen that graphic. That's good.

Brandy Von Holten  1:12:42

If they wanted to get in touch with this powerhouse, this short powerhouse. That's okay. I'm the fat powerhouse. Okay.

1:12:50

We’ll be dynamite together.

Brandy Von Holten  1:12:52

Oh my gosh, I know. My spirit animal is a pony. A mean little pony. With good hair, good hair. So how do they find you?

1:13:12

 Probably the easiest way is to honestly just look us up on Facebook or to send us an email. So let me give you that if you want to visit my retail, you'll go to RiOak Western Design on Facebook.

Brandy Von Holten  1:13:26

So RiOaK, is R I, is the “o” capitalized? [Ashley: Yes.] Okay, so it's big, R little i capital O, a k? [Ashley: That's right.] Oh, because it's Riley and Oakley combined.

1:13:39

That's right, my two little girls. So, you would go there if you need any kind of signs or home decor, we do a lot of live sales on there, and we ship out. So, you can be able to shop with us online there. You can go to our website from there. If you are interested in sign making, then you would go to the business page, The Profitable Sign Maker, send us a message on there. If you need business help and you're wanting to be able to grow your Facebook following and be able to learn business strategies, those types of things, you'll want to go to Creative Strategies with Ashley Raetz. You can also visit my website for The Profitable Sign Maker and Creative strategies. It’s AshleyCreatives.com

Brandy Von Holten  1:14:24

Ashley Creatives. So Ashley, just the regular spelling, creatives with the s on there. [Ashley: That's right.] You are not singular at all. No, we're plural creatives actually. AshleyCreatives.com.

1:14:39

And from there, you can join the SVG club. You can check out The Profitable Sign Maker or you can check out The Code Book ourse, there's a countdown when that opens up next on there.

Brandy Von Holten  1:14:48

The code book course goes with creative strategies.

1:15:01

That's the signature course. That’s called the code book. The reason why I call it the code book is because, it's so hard when are you very first get started, it feels like it's a secret code to try to sell online. I feel like it's not as big of a deal, but whenever I was very first getting started, nobody wanted to share anything. Like Bailey and I were saying, business doesn't have to be a secret. There are programs out there. But that didn't really exist, or maybe I didn't know how to be able to find that, whenever I was very first getting started. I just felt like it was so closed off. A lot of times people don't know if you can trust anybody online, I think that's a huge ordeal right now. You have to develop that relationship with your people. I feel like selling stuff to people online feels like the secret code that you can't break. It feels hopeless for a lot of people. So, I developed the Code Book and call it The Code Book, because I will help you be able to crack the code to online selling.

Brandy Von Holten  1:15:59

My departing question to you is about your business. A lot of these are Facebook oriented. What if Facebook goes away?

1:16:18

That's a great question. That is why we have multiple streams of revenue built in, would it hurt if Facebook goes away? Yes, it will

Brandy Von Holten  1:16:24

Until we recreated one, and then you would pop up.

1:16:28

We have multiple streams of revenue in a lot of my communities. A lot of things that I do are based on Facebook, however, I have everybody's email. Would it hurt to try to have to find another platform that we could get everybody on to develop the groups for the memberships? Yes. However, they do exist out there. You know, like Slack, something like that?

Brandy Von Holten  1:16:49

I didn’t know about Slack. I'm on Instagram, I mean, there's so many different ones. Right now, with the world that we live in, I'm always like, Oh, no, where are we there

1:16:58

iI think the one thing, I don't know if you want to call it positive or not, however,  through COVID, truly, 2020 kind of like, moved the online world probably five years ahead. Even like with the memberships and everything, there's zoom, and people become very comfortable with Zoom meetings and everything like that. We have a Zoom account. So, we could always do zoom meetings with people, it might look a little bit different. But that is why we build multiple streams of revenue. So we're still selling on Amazon, we still sell on Etsy, we still have our storefront now, we still have access through emails. I mean, there's all of these multiple streams that we have built in,

Brandy Von Holten  1:17:43

People ask me, what would happen if they shut down all the businesses and I'm like, I'm a cat, baby. I’m a cat, I’ll land on my feet, and we will change. Do you know who told me that you need to make sure and embrace things, and whenever you see these openings to just go for it? Leroy Van Dyke. Girl, he is 94 years old, his father my husband's great grandfather did work together. So when we had Leroy out here in concert a couple of years ago, he was just like, you could do so many different avenues with this. I just really loved hearing that from someone else, because whenever I looked at his resume, I mean, he was like the first singer to sing with Marilyn Monroe in Las Vegas. He worked as some kind of special agent in something, he had his own TV show. A lot of people don't know who Leroy Van Dyke is. The fact that that same entrepreneurial spirit is there about changing and evolving. If Facebook stops, you won't. We used to host for all of these different associations, and now we just host for a few. And I'm like what do you think you think I'm going to sit down in a cardboard box and just wither away? I'm like, I'm just gonna change my Avenue.

1:19:21

In order to be an entrepreneur, you have to be really good at pivoting. It’s just the way that it is. And some things are going to work. And I can tell you, you will have a failure. If you don't learn from that, then that's your own fault. It’s just one of those things, I just don't believe living life in fear. I really don't. Somebody asked me, what do you think about everything that's going on right now? You've just invested all this money in the store? Well, I guess the bank is going to get it back. What is, what's the worst that can happen? Are we supposed to live life in fear of the unknown, life is just too short. I don't believe in it. If you see a door walk through it. If it doesn't work, it'll close behind you and you open up another one.

Brandy Von Holten  1:20:04

If David and I were not willing to completely change, we were comfortable. We had six digits we had big vacations, I had a fun life, you know what I mean? I was smaller than I am now. But we wanted more. We wanted more. If we weren't willing to get rid of everything that we had to go towards the possibility of more, then you wouldn't be listening to this podcast right now.? So AshleyCreatives.com, you can always look up. You can look up BigBossMare.com or Brandy Von Holten. And if you are like, “I don't know where to get in touch with this girl,” then you can contact me, and I can help you get contacted with Ashley. But thank you for tuning in to Big Boss Mare with Brandy Von Holten.