The Social Selling Sisterhood Podcast Episode 70- The Husband's Perspective on Network Marketing

This blog post was transcribed using AI

Hi friend. Welcome to the social selling sisterhood podcast. I am Lindsay Dollinger and I have many titles, High school spanish teacher, dog mom, world traveler and direct seller. I empower women to run your direct sales business is the right way. So you can earn the money. You deserve to live the life of your dreams and travel the world. Now we got that out of the way. Let's get started. Mm Hello. Hello everyone. Welcome back to a live episode of the social selling sisterhood podcast. I am Lindsay darling er and I am so excited for this interview today and for you guys to meet Jared Ledford um Jared is my up line and color streets husband. He is super active in their business, which we will get into today on our interview and he's going to give us a husband's perspective on direct sales, which I think is very largely missing a ton in our industry. So Jared, Welcome to the podcast. How are you? I'm good lindsey. How are you today? Yeah, I'm great. Thank you. Thank you. Um, okay, Jared for us to get started. Will you just kind of give us a little bit of a back story, like how did you and Jessica? Because I believe you were in our company before Color Street. So how did you guys get started? What did that look like? And how did you get to where you guys are today? Well, I had been interested in direct sales for quite a while. Um, I had always been kind of looking for that next opportunity. Um, had been in retail sales for a long time and kind of transition more to a customer service rep and then commission sales and was always kind of, you know, when you're a salesman, you're always kind of looking for that next move. So for myself it was, you know, we kind of bounced around multiple different direct sales opportunities and nothing was really sticking for us, um especially something that we couldn't work together, So I think from my perspective, I was working, you know, 50, 60 hours a week doing commission sales, I didn't have the time nor the energy to um invest in something on my own with, you know, direct sales or multilevel marketing, whatever you wanna call it. Um I just didn't have the time, and honestly, maybe at that time really didn't have the desire, maybe I was looking at a pipe dream that wasn't there, looking at an opportunity that wasn't quite there, and it just wasn't the right time. And, you know, I think from Jessica ennis perspective, it's a perfect example of the right time for you to jump in on something. And we had we, I mean, we were in opportunities that really looking back on it. If we had invested ourselves and giving it our all, maybe we would have been two or three years ahead of the curve for direct sales. But I think everything kind of ended up where it needs to be. We're very happy where we're at, um, Jessica and I, you know, we met in high school and uh, we've been together ever since and now we're working this business together and it's great. Um, but as far as our, we had opportunities, we just did never, never really seized the advantage or seized the opportunity if you will. Yeah, I get that Well. And you have to, I feel like you had some really good points. It has to really mesh like it has to be the right time. You have to be in the right mindset, all kinds of things. But also there's that longevity as well, right? Because I know like even for me, I have hopped around too several different companies before I fell on Color Street and it's really where you know, I want to be and I love it. Um but I know it's it's a long game. Yeah, it's no different than anything else. I mean, you know, you start off in any job and you may switch jobs a couple times before you find the job that you really like and what's comfortable for you. Um I think the stigma that gets attached to multilevel or direct sales is that once you're in something you've been so invested in it, you've got your friends, family, your, you know, your your closest neighbors, all of your closest contacts kind of invested in you doing this one particular thing and then you jump over to something else. And if you do that more than once or twice, you kind of start looking like that person that can't really get comfortable with something can't, you know, can't, you know, is the company that you were selling for? Is is it is it stable? Was it the company or was it you, And I think if you are kind of in a, in a murkiness or in a position with the direct sales that you're not necessarily having the best success with or not that comfortable with, I would just be honest. I mean, I've seen it a lot here lately with people that are jumping around and trying to find exactly what works best for them. I think it's more or less just be honest. I mean, you know, I recently within the last year left a job that I've been at for 10 years and loved. But it was one of those things where it was a simple Facebook post, um I just made it public that hey, I still really support this company, still really love what I was doing there. Um it was just the right time for me to move on. Um with Covid and everything else. It was an opportunity to be home and be with my kids and an opportunity to be at home with family and and jump in headfirst into this direct sales thing. And I'll tell you, I mean it's been a blessing for us and, and sometimes it's just being honest and coming out and saying it and moving on from it, you don't have to carry that baggage. Just lay that baggage down and move right on from it. So I think that's the best advice I can give you. If you're jumping back and forth, we're thinking about moving on, maybe just move on and jump in headfirst well, and that's the biggest thing I think I see when people are really excited about joining any company and then They don't immediately, it's either not as simple as I thought it was going to be or people aren't buying from them and it's that going in headfirst, like you kind of have to get a little bit uncomfortable. Be coachable, do the things because if you don't you're not you're not going to be a success with any company. You know, I agree with that 100%. I think with, you know, from my perspective, it was just finding the right product, finding the right target audience, finding the right time to jump in and say, okay, when we were doing this originally, we didn't have any kids, um all of our free time, we were vacationing, we were, you know, we were doing things in our early twenties, mid twenties that we didn't necessarily want to give up. And when it was time, you know, when we had, when we went from no kids to three kids in 13 months. I mean we had our oldest daughter and then we had twins and that was all in 13 months. So I mean you learn really quick that you have to transition into more of an adult life. And I mean that's, you know, one of the major benefits that we had in our in our early twenties, mid twenties is we didn't have any kids. Um, Jessica and I were married for Trying to think seven, 7, 8 years before we had any kids and we've been together for three or four years prior to that. So I mean we had had all these opportunities to vacation and do things and and be together and grow and learn and I mean honestly we wouldn't be where we're at if we hadn't failed half a dozen times before. I mean you take those opportunities that it's an opportunity costs that you incur by learning those life lessons or taking that risk. And we wouldn't be where we're at if we hadn't risked it. I mean we wouldn't have known the intricacies that come along with trying to run your own business. I mean that's really what this is all about. I mean you can call it whatever you want, but you're running your own business. So, you know, I always look at, I try to explain to people, it's like a franchise, you're a franchise e for these, you know, for these for these bigger companies, whatever you're doing direct sales or multi level, you're like a franchise e you know, you're kind of tied to the rules and regulations that they have, they're going to take a percentage of your sales, they're going to give you a commission. All of these things. I mean, it's just people overthink direct sales. They really do, people want to stigmatize it and they want to make it this evil thing, and it's really, it really just boils down to um do you want to run a business in the confines of a structure, and it's really built for people to do on a really whatever kind of schedule you want, if you want to do it full time, if you want to do it part time, I would say 99 of the time you're going to get out of it, what you put in it, I mean, if you're not putting any effort for it, you're not going to get anything out of it. I mean, that's just, you know, there are people that make a lot of effort and they're not successful and that's just the truth of it. I mean, that's, it's like that anywhere, any job that you look at, you could be making the best effort, you could be the best employee I've been there, you know, I've been on that side of the ball where you just don't get noticed, you don't get that promotion that you were longing for. Um, and it's a struggle. I'll be, I'll be honest with you, it's not the most fun in the world. And I think a lot of times it's just accepting that kind of like what we were talking about with direct sales in general to kind of circle back and say, maybe this isn't the right time for me here. Maybe this isn't the right opportunity, the right product, the right people, the right up line. Whatever the reason is, I'm sure there's opportunities out there. It's just being open to finding it, right? Yeah, 100%. And okay, so the majority of the people listening, I think if my podcast demographics are correct are women, um, and they might not quite be in a direct sales business yet, maybe they have an Etsy shop, maybe their coaches or whatever. And they've been kind of thinking about it. So from the husband's perspective, what are some, what are some things that I'm trying to think of how one or this like, like they can bring up to their spouse or um, I don't want to say like sell it, but sometimes I feel like people do have to sell or um, explain themselves why they want to maybe give this a try. Um, and talk maybe a little bit about like the actual risks because I know at least for our company there is a kit fee um compared to some other companies, it is relatively low. Um but like so what are some other things that are into that that you can help walk our listeners through that process of talking to their significant other from your perspective and see that happen to me up. I think a lot of it comes down to just having the conversation in the first place. I mean being open enough to just talk. Um Right, I mean I think you know a lot of times you get stuck in a vortex or in a vacuum and you're like, oh man, I got to make this decision right now and you know it's it's whatever the cost is, you know, some some opportunities or low cost some opportunities or high cost, but it's looking at that cost and saying, okay, do I really want to do this? And then immediately kind of having that discussion. Not when I talk about this a lot. I get the question that automatically comes up is why don't need permission? And I'm not asking you to ask for permission. I'm not asking you to. Um, I'm really not. I'm not telling you to ask for permission. What I'm doing is have a dialogue, have a conversation. Um, I'll be honest with you. I was not real high on the, on the uh, when Jessica came to me, I was not doing backflips. I'll be honest. I appreciated her talking to me about it. And she will tell the story a little differently than me. Um, We were cap strap. I mean we were we were paycheck to paycheck. We weren't um we were not struggling financially. I mean we were both working good jobs. We were both making good money, but we had three babies and we had the financial responsibilities of a household and all that kind of stuff. And so we were, you know, paycheck to paycheck, hand to mouth, whatever you want to call it. But that discussion was pretty simple. She came to me and said I want to do this. I think I I think this is the opportunity that I've been looking for. And at the time she was, you know, she was a manager, she was putting in a lot of time and I thought well she's gonna have to do this on her own. You know, she's gonna have to start this on her own and show me that she's committed. And that was the discussion that I had. It wasn't okay, I don't want to do this, it wasn't it's too expensive, it was okay, look, I'm working 50, 60 hours a week, you're working 5060 hours a week. We've got to find a happy balance here and the balance can't come from because I mean Jessica would tell you, Jessica would tell you I am the structure parent, so I am of the two of us. I don't think that she would argue that I'm I'm the more involved interactive parent. I think that's pretty much been that's been public for a long time with us that um I take care of the kids, she takes care of the business and I worked behind the scenes and I try to do as much as I can, but my priority has been and always will be kids first. Um I think Jessica's priority is the same, but Jessica also was the breadwinner before we ever got really serious into direct sales, Jessica has been the breadwinner for us for a long time. So I know that that's probably the one dynamic that not every person listening can deal with. I know there's a lot of people that, you know, whatever you're ever you're doing, um I would say congratulations on doing it and if nobody is giving you a pat on the back, you probably need one. But for me personally, that was the difference between me and everybody else, was that I was already with someone that was successful. That had been, you know, promoting within her her ranks as a nurse and all that kind of stuff. So I was already okay with her being the more dynamic one of the two, even though I think if you met both of us, you would think the exact opposite. You would think, oh man Jared Jared's dynamic. He's a type a personality, Jessica is an introvert, she's all these things, but Jessica is so good at managing people um and working to find people's strengths. And I think part of that is is because we have worked together even when she was a nurse and when I was, you know, in sales or whatever, we always kind of work together to kind of balance each other out because I can get really hot headed, really frustrated and upset. She's more mellow, she definitely more calm and collected and cool and you know, I mean, that's that's the perfect foil for us now, as far as, you know what your listeners are probably dealing with is there's probably a lot of them that are not the breadwinner. Probably a lot of stay at home mom is probably a lot of people who are working part time anyway, especially with Covid, you know, who knows? You know what a lot of people are having to deal with and we're lucky and we've been lucky and I can't, I'm very thankful for the opportunities that we've had. But I think if you're really wanting to do something step, number one's communicate, you have to be open and open that line of communication. I know not always, it doesn't, it's not always going to work out the way you want it to, but I think if you start that conversation on an honest forthright, you know, hey, I really like this opportunity or hey, I want to start this, this Etsy store. Hey, I want to start a boutique. Hey, I got this opportunity to, you know, whatever whatever the opportunity is and not just sales. I mean this is everything in your life, right? I mean desk and I have a very business like marriage. That's how we operate. Everything that we do comes to the table. I mean we lay everything out at the table and we discussed it every decision we make and I would encourage you to do that more often if you're not doing it. I think most people probably do have organizations, but if you're not, I would, I would highly recommend it highly recommend it. Well. And I think one of the things that I here and now I'm not married, so I don't, I don't have that dynamic where I, I get to have those conversations with someone about my business. But I think one of the things that I hear a lot from women on my team is that either their husband just doesn't understand or um, you know, they would really put more, they would put more time in their business, but they're not getting necessarily that support for someone watching their kids while they're able to do it. Um and we hear that a lot that's for sure. I mean that's super common. So we've we have a large team, I mean we have a large team at this point and uh I mean it is, you know, you hear, and it's not, I don't want to say this in a bad way, but a lot of times it's an excuse that you put on yourself. It's this, it's the it's the hurdle that you want to put in front of yourself to make it look harder than it needs to be. So from our perspective, we started our direct sales business, the one that we're currently running currently operating, We started that both working full time jobs with three kids. I don't even know that the twins were a year old to be honest with you. So I mean you're talking about three kids under under two years old for sure. When we really started jumping in full time it was a struggle. Okay there was a lot of time that we were up until 234 o'clock in the morning sleep in 23 hours a night dedicating especially you know especially me once we got to a certain point because Jessica always had the phone on. I mean she was pretty much an on call nurse manager so I mean she would get calls in the middle of the night, she would have to go. So I mean it's not like she could be up till three or four o'clock in the morning trying to put together you know whether you you know jot form I remember when we started job for him, I remember when we started, you know which tree and in your starting all these things and you don't know what you're doing. There's not a step by step. You know, you can look on, there's youtube, there's a Youtube for everything, right? I mean it's like, you know, you're in the Stream yard program, we've talked about this before every little intricacy little every little detail, your graphics, everything that you do with your business is important. And when you when you're starting from nothing and that's what we were doing. I mean we were starting from nothing, it's not like we had somebody holding our hands sand check this box off, check that box off. And really we were in a position with a with a really a startup, I mean we started very early so we were very lucky to be in that position, but also kind of held back and kind of at a at a at a less of an advantage than people that are coming into the business now, because they can come in and look at what we've done, and if they have a bigger social past, if they have a bigger net to cast out, they're going to be just as successful, right? I mean, I think what it boils down to is you have to be willing to sacrifice, and I think from my perspective, if my wife or my girlfriend or my significant other or whatever relationship that you're in, um if they came to me and said, okay, I've been putting all this time in, I would personally have a really hard time looking at them and saying it's not, this isn't gonna work or cutting them down, and I would never judge your relationship based on how your how your business is going. But if you're successful in your business, whatever it is, and your significant other, your spouse, whatever is not giving you the support you need. That's a problem. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't want to be I don't want to be a therapist, I don't want to get on here and talk about. But I can tell you, I mean, I I struggle with that from a from a husband's, from a husband's perspective, right? I mean, I struggle with that and I hear it all the time and the issue that I have, the issue that I have, whenever that comes up, I almost always have to pass that off to Jessica, because it's not a conversation that I feel comfortable having. It's not a it's not a conversation I should be having, frankly, you know, and that's maybe then if you're, if there's a husband listening or watching or if you're sharing this with your husband, I think that that's probably one thing I don't know that there's anybody on my team that wouldn't say that I'm 100 professional 100 of the time. And that's, you know, from from my perspective, that's something that I carry in every part of my life, every facet of my life. So when Jessica came to me with this opportunity, it was okay. Well how is this going to affect our business, which the business of our life, not just the business of our direct sales or whatever we're doing. You know, how much time is this going to take away from me? What do you want me to do? And I was open to checking boxes with her like, hey, I need you to ship out these two packages and this is before you have a label printer. This is before you have access to stamps dot com or whatever you're using whatever program, pirate ship, whatever. Um, you know, I need you to take this reminded me I need just reminded me I need to cancel my stamps. Talk. Yeah, total side story. You know, I mean that was the big thing like, hey, I need you to take these packages at the post office. Hey, I need you to place this order on launch day. Hey, I need you to do this. He needs to do that. It just eventually became, I was part of the process and I think a lot of the times significant others you do want to ask for that permission and I don't know that you need to, I think a lot of times more often than not, it's just a conversation like, hey, I'm doing this. Hey, I might need your help. Hey, I would be happy if you would help me. Um I think it's more maybe ask for help rather than ask for permission because Okay. Oh God. Yeah. I mean, I think that that's probably the best little narrative I can give you is ask for help, not permission. Because the more involved I got, the more I was wanting to get involved with the business, the more I saw the benefit of it, the more I was able to keep her motivated to run her VIP space, to run her to run her sails through her customers. While I was doing all of the, all of the, you know, crap work really, package the admin stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Once that happened, once she could focus, it was it was off to the races really. I was just gonna so people listening, how can they maybe get their husband involved in their business? Because I do think if there is that by in of or like even awareness of what you're actually doing, like okay, well why do you actually need an hour a night to work your business and then they're helping you? And I'm like, oh yeah, I see, I see not what you're actually doing. Um Do you have any tips on getting husbands started, even if it's something really, really small um to get that buy in? And then I also want to ask you about the com plant because I think that yeah, I think there's a humbleness involved. I think that you have to be humble um From the wife's perspective, to be humble enough to say I need your help. And from the husbands perspective enough to say, okay, I'm humble enough to help you, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna bring you down or make you feel less than two, you know, it's all on an equal playing field, Jessica, never really had to come to me for help, I was probably the most willing participant. Matter of fact, I probably pushed her harder than I wanted to be pushed at certain points, because when you're really starting off early and you're the only person that's doing something, or you're the only person in your area, or you're the only person that's really pushing it. So you could be having, you could be working a direct sales, Uh you could be working a direct sales gig that's been around for 20 years, and you could come up with something that nobody else is doing and then all of a sudden you're the hottest thing that they've seen in years, right, It doesn't have to be that you're gonna start up or that you're in it, you know, at the at the right, right, right time, it's always, you know, this is a uh ground floor opportunity. I hear that all the time, you know, we're starting, we're starting a new company is a ground floor opportunity, yada yada yada. Um it's really about how much you want to put into it, right? And it's really about war for that that you're willing to put forth. And I think from a from a relationship standpoint, it's really about humbling yourself to say, okay, I'd really like you to help me with this. I really like what I'm doing here and sometimes, I mean, I've I've had a couple where they're really successful, they're making good money, they're bringing a lot to the table. I mean, I don't have to, I mean, honestly, I kind of want to just get mad about it for for for their sake, because I mean, that that boils down to a deeper issue, that's a relationship, something that has to be taken care of outside of the confines of your business, and ultimately you might have to be humble enough to say, okay, you know, why are we having this struggle? Maybe you have that discussion and you don't held in? I think that's a lot of it, and I'll be honest, we had that conversation with a couple, I would say 50% of them work, and 50% of them don't, I mean, that's just being real, but if you don't have a conversation, you're never going to fix it, it's never gonna get fixed, we'll bring it up, Yep, I love that 100%. And I go somewhere, I mean, that goes for anything in life, right? That was um there was a book, I think it's called Courageous Conversations, um Disclaimer, I didn't get all the way through it, but a boss gave it to me one time, because this is probably about 10 years ago, I was just really struggling with, I don't even know if confronting is the right word, but kind of when I had an issue with something and bringing it up and having those, those conversations that aren't necessarily the easiest conversation. Um but I do love how you talked about getting your husband involved in some of the stuff and how you kind of did that on the back burner well, or behind the scenes rather of your business as you guys have been growing it. Um talk a little bit about how you guys have worked together to build your team because I feel as though um you and Jessica have done a really great job of having you visible as well and you showing up in the team space and helping her support us. Whereas I don't know any other team space that I've ever been in or currently I'm in that the husband is present. Um so how have you guys done that? Um, I think for us we knew pretty well, I would say probably a year, maybe a year and a half into it, that this was going to be bigger than we thought it was gonna be. We always thought that we would have an opportunity to make some side money and really hustle and get what we, you know, what we wanted, which was more income, which was more opportunity. And I think what we did was we looked at the team and I started looking at down lines and how we could structure the team and once we really started bringing on some heavy hitting recruiters where the team started to grow exponentially kind of away from us. Um that's when I kind of came in, so we work for, this is going to be strictly direct sales right now. Um I work with the half of our team that reports directly to us. So these are the people that were there first line in our business, that would be an executive level, That's where, that's where I am. I am 100 invested in present in that side of the business and I become almost the middle management because Jessica's time is beyond valuable, Jessica, still a full time nurse. She still loves what she does and it's important to me that she do that, I mean she, you know, we paid a lot of money for her to go to school, she's got a master's degree. Um she still loves being a nurse. I think she loves being a nurse a little bit more than she likes doing sales. I'm just gonna be honest with you. Being a nurse, being a nurse is her calling in life and it's a purpose for her and it's important and sales is my life. I mean I I have been a salesman since I was 16, probably been a salesman my entire life to be honest with you and I was happy with the opportunity that she gave me to do this business and I jumped in head first. I mean I think a lot of it boils down to the middle management piece. I'm visible because I have more time, I'm more readily available. I like to talk sales. You know, I'll talk business all day long, you know, all scheduled the meetings with the leadership, I'll bring him here, you know, we've had him at the house, you've you've been here, um we are, I'm not afraid to meet with just about anybody if you're the, if you're a startup and you just started on and you're however many levels down, you might not even affect my business if you're on my team, I've got you. And I think that's probably the primary difference between not just me and Jessica being in it together or being visible together, but we really do invest in everyone if they want it and some people don't, some people do, Some people take, some people take all that we can give them, Some people take nothing and it doesn't necessarily mean that they are more successful than others. I would, I would hope that they are. But I think a lot of it really boils down to that middle management idea where I've come up and I worked in the automotive industry for the longest time where the, where the dealership structure basically is you have a you have a dealer principle, then you have a general manager, then you have each individual department manager. And from there I would look at myself almost like a department manager, a general manager, more of a department manager where I can take these little issues if you have a website issue or you have an order issue or you get damaged product. Um, I can take care of all that. If you have a placement question, if you have recruiting questions. I mean, I do one on one training calls, I do team trainings, I do whatever you want. Um, That takes time. Jessica has to schedule her time. I don't I mean I do schedule it but I'm available almost all the time. I mean I we have so many California people now that I almost operate my life on a California schedule. So I yeah I'm pretty much I mean I'm pretty much locked in until about two in the morning Most days I'm pretty much locked until two in the morning because I will make myself available. I mean I have to look at it from the perspective of okay if I'm in California and I'm working my business and I work till six or seven o'clock at night. In reality I'm coming home and I'm working my business after I put my kids to bed. If I have that or whatever from 9 to 11 and I'm trying to be on their schedule. So not only that, but Jessica can't do that. And when I have an issue that I can't handle, okay, I'm gonna get the boss, It makes Jessica that much more. I don't know. It just to me it builds that that much more of a legitimacy because it's not just Jessica taking phone calls about, hey, this, this package is in transit or hey, I got these nails and they were damaged or hey, you know, I got a question on placement. It's, it makes her time that much more valuable. And it also means that I'm directing her time to the place where it's needed the most I can kind of schedule for her and get her where she, you're like filtering your filtering some stuff for her that she doesn't have to do. Yeah, I love that. When you're the ceo of a business you don't take, you know, you don't take a call about if if the bathroom is leaking you got people to handle that. You know what I mean? And that's kind of you know that's the example that I throw out a lot. Is Jessica is the ceo she has stuff that she does and I have no problem saying that she runs the business. She does her V. I. P. She takes care of her customers. I am not present in that side of the business. I very rarely will do anything to do with her. You know with her selling to her customers. That's very rare for me. Um I've done a couple of flash sales for her. We're all come in and I'll do I'll use Stream yard. Um I used to stream yard to do like a spin wheel game and well I mean well really hit it, hit it hard but that's only been a couple of times I've done that, I just don't get involved in that to them. That special when I come in. She, you know, she uses me when she wants to have a big sailor. If we're, you know, we just did the catalog, we just did a catalogue launch with our business and uh you know, we had a lot of things that are retired now that you're gonna be able to get any more. So we went live and we did a we did a big sales of big, you know, sales of Colusa basically where we were, you know, spending the wheel for prices and we were, you know, every so often we would, you know, throw things in and we would have a good time. You know, it was just, it was exciting. So they get excited about that. And that's something where Jessica can really focus on that aspect of her business, growing the actual sales part of our business. And I work on the admin, I work on the back office, I work on stuff that tries to help other people's teams grow and then serena of course with direct sales that helps us to right well, and I think you guys have just done such a good job, at least from the team side because I'm obviously not injustice VIP group but of you both being visible. So I feel like the team knows that we have support. So it's like basically we have two up lines instead of just just um and I have no doubt that that has helped grow you all business tremendously versus if you had been the husband at home, like, okay, I'm not like you can do your thing, but I'm hands off. Um I think your business would have looked completely different had that not. And I think a lot that happened, I don't know that growing, I don't know that I helped grow the business as much as maintain it. Because what happens? Yeah. What happens is in direct sales and you really get hot. I mean you, you have this kind of moment where you've really got to put the foot down on the gas pedal and take care of every advantage that you can and then when everything starts to kind of level law. I mean this is any business, it's not just direct sales. You're going to have that initial boost, man, you might get 10 customers that are really hot on something. And then all of a sudden five of those people have signed up for, five of those people have brought in somebody new to your, your boutique or your Etsy store, whatever. All of a sudden you've got this influx of new business, you've got this influx of new opportunities and then 56 months down the road. Have you maintained that business and grown? And I always, I always end my lives with onward and upward because if we're taking even a one step forward, That's better than a one step back And you know, with direct sales, you can always do that. I mean, that's just, that's being real. I mean, we have been, I mean, you know, our struggle, we've been in the, you know, right in that bright in that pocket for now for 18 months where we're trying to take that next step. And that next step is, is a national type of situation where we would be in a national level. And that's a big step. I mean, if you're sitting on that, if you're sitting on that precipice, a lot of it's just maintain, maintain for the next wave. And I think that's what me and Jessica, Jessica and I have been able to accomplish together is the fact that we have maintained through not everybody has been able to do that. There's been a lot of people, you know, a lot of people fall off and and and that's unfortunate. And I I don't credit that. I mean I credit that a little bit to myself, but that's mainly Jessica. I mean, I I've been able to help her, I've been able to help her kind of navigate and things like that. But I mean, it's really just staying focused and working together and trying I mean, trying different things. I mean, we've tried so many different things and and really, I mean, I think the biggest thing is, you know, when when Covid happened and everything started to change. I mean that's what really pumped our breaks rather than grow. We went in to maintain mode. We went into growing the sales side of our business and hopes that once everything kind of, you know, gravitates on the other side, hopefully we will be in a better position to continue to move forward. Yeah. Yeah, awesome Jared. Well, is there anything else you want to share before we have off here? Anything I didn't bring up or I'll tell you, I I think the biggest thing from from a husband's perspective, I think a lot of times, you know, you just don't ask the questions and you don't bring it to the table. I can't stress that enough. You know, don't ask for permission, ask for help. And I think that that's you know, you don't always need help and that's fine too. I mean you might be perfectly finding your business without your husband or significant other or whatever and that's fine too. But I think a lot of times you might find a benefit and just saying, hey, you know, this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm doing. This is where I'm, you know, I'm in the office till 11, 12 o'clock at night. This is what I'm doing here and I'm doing it for this reason. I'm doing it because I want to take, you know, I want to buy a pizza this weekend or I want to take the kids to a movie or hey, you know that Disney trip that we're planning six months from now. I'm trying to save up for that or hey, you know, the car might need replaced in six months or a year. Hey, I'm saving up for whatever, whatever the reason is why you clearly thought that starting a business doing direct sales, doing something outside your comfort zone was the thing that you wanted to do. And I think a lot of times you don't even talk to your significant other, your spouse about that, you've got this idea in your head that you want to do something. And from a, from a, from a husband's perspective, I think a lot of times we feel left out, we feel hurt by that. We feel like we're not involved and not that we want to take control. Some, some, some guys, specifically guys, they definitely want to, they want to rule and that, you know, that's unfortunate. And ultimately you can't deal with that. You have to deal with it on a case by case. But I can tell you more often than not, I believe that a husband just wants to be involved, just wants to feel like you're not in there, you know, like especially with direct sales, you're not just in there on facebook all the time, and God only knows what you're doing on facebook, or God only knows what you're doing on instagram. And you know, there's a, you know, a lot of it's just bring it to the table, it opens up the line of communications, it creates such a more trusting environment and in communication is key. Absolutely keep If we wouldn't have been able to communicate about our business, we would not be where we're at. And Jessica did ask for help. I mean, she did come to me and say, look, this is overwhelming. And ultimately, I think from a husband's perspective, if you're, you know, if your significant other, your spouse is in a position where you're sitting at home, like, I mean, I'm I'm sitting at home, but I work, I mean, I, I basically work every day, I work the business every day, but I also have, you know, pick up times with the kids and I do, I take care of all of that, and that's, it's big help to Jessica is if I was, you know, if I was anything right? Matter of fact, that's the big time right there, so, but no, I perfect. Yeah, I think from my perspective, the communication piece, yeah, you know, if you're watching this and you're, you know, on our team, I certainly welcome you to reach out to me if you need something awesome, well, thank you so much for your time Jared. I know there are so many people who, and I'm definitely going to share this with, um even potential stylist who have talked to me about being nervous is to talk to her husband or the husband's side of things like this is definitely going to be something valuable for us to use. Um, guys, I interviewed Jessica probably about a month ago ish on the podcast if you are listening on the podcast so you can find that the interview is also up on my Youtube channel. Her podcast is actually my number two muscles new podcast ever. It's really good. So make sure you check that out. Um, I forget the title now, but she talked a lot about belief and finding belief in herself to build her business and it was just really, really awesome. Um Jared if people want to connect with you, where can they find you? I'm on facebook, I'm on instagram, I don't have a presence. I'm working on that. Um, yeah, Jared Ledford. I think my instagrams at Jared Ledford probably instagram is probably the easiest way to get a hold of me directly because it's all instagram is pretty well open. I think. I think I've got my facebook pretty well tight tightened down. But if you, uh, if you hit me up on instagram or um, head up Jessica Ledford dot com, I mean you can contact me through there. Um, yeah, I mean instagram is probably the easiest one at Jared Ledford awesome. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. I appreciate it very much Lindsay. All right, bye bye bye bye.