Grateful for Pickle Juice: The Thanksgiving Episode

Welcome to the Sole Proprietor podcast. I'm Curt Kempton.

And I'm Melody Edwards.

Each week, we dive into the ethical questions that keep entrepreneurs awake at night.

Whether you're building your own company or exploring life's big questions, you are welcome here.

Hello, Mel. How are you?

Well, I am recovering from a little bit of a voice issue, as you may or may not hear. Probably you don't hear it, right.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Everybody who's listening right now is like, did he get a different.

Yes, I'm the replacement.

Your voice is very, like, honey smooth.

Thank you. It's radio voice. It's higher. Oh, my gosh. I think my voice is higher right now.

Yeah, it could be. It could be. But it's just. What I notice is how smooth the cadence is.

Why, thank you. It's because if I. If I talk full force, I think I'll be like, you know. Yeah, I lost my voice for a little while.

I've been sick, as you know, because last week when we were going to record, I was so sick, and I came feeling very optimistic.

You came. Your text sounded very optimistic. You're like, I think I might have the COVID I may.

I don't know.

But, like, we can do this. And I'm like, okay, cool. And I showed up. And then you're like, I don't know if I can talk anymore.

Should we try to record, like, Melody, go back to bed?

I think it was my energy level, or lack thereof that was the most, like, it was going to be a very hard to hear podcast if I had stayed on.

But I definitely did not enjoy seeing you in that state. It was like, like, oh, man, she looks like she is hurting.

Well. And I'm grateful that you didn't enjoy seeing me in that state and that you let me go back to bed.

I know what you're doing right now. Okay, so our audience has already seen the title of the episode that they clicked on, and, yeah, it's Thanksgiving, so.

So we're gonna just sit here and be all grateful for everything, I guess. Right. This is a special episode where we just list out everything that we're grateful for.

Yeah. Let's make it really easy because let's just top top 10 things we're grateful for.

What do you guys do? I. I just. That got me thinking at the Thanksgiving dinner, when my mom asks what everybody's grateful for, so we go around the table.

What do you guys do at Thanksgiving?

I have never had to cook a Thanksgiving dinner in my whole life because I have always have multiple families that will take us. So sometimes we go to two or three Thanksgivings. So it really depends on where I'm at.

I will say now that you've said that, even for my, you know, my regular. What do I call family? Immediate family. The family I grew up with, we don't do anything. We don't. Maybe we do, but I don't think we do.

I think we're just like. They pray and then we eat.

Oh, like a meal.

Yeah, like. But it's a holiday meal.

A big meal.

A big meal. Yeah.

Yeah.

What is your favorite food at Thanksgiving?

Well, this might be kind of an unpopular opinion, but there is a special kind of smoked turkey that is off the hook now. Get turkey wrong. And it's just the worst thing ever. And most times when you go to Thanksgiving, you know, you go for the dark meat.

Everyone goes to the dark meat hoping there'll be some moisture in there. And then. And then usually it's kind of a letdown. But I can smoke a turkey. I can smoke pretty good turkey.

My mother makes really, really good stuffing.

Oh, I love stuffing. Yes.

Yeah, it has like, it sounds crazy, but it has like sausage, like, you know, homemade sausage. And I mean, she doesn't make it, but somebody did and apricots and all the other things. And so it sounds like a very gourmet stuffing.

But it is the best stuffing ever. There's never enough. And I'm always annoyed that there's not more.

But you know, you know how to fix that, Mel, it's pretty easy to fix that one.

I have, I've tried to make it right. Is that your assumption?

Oh, no, no. Just be first in line and give no care about the last person.

Well, I think mostly I want to have a Thanksgiving sandwich like the next day.

Yes, yes.

And that's the problem with not hosting Thanksgiving is you really have to make sure that you plan ahead and bring like, I have to make it when I'm at Thanksgiving getting my first serving or something, so. But I never remember.

Yeah, well, that's interesting because I typically will smoke a turkey and my wife will probably make a couple sides and we always go home with our extras. But it seems like everyone takes their extras home and.

Oh, no.

Yeah, what am I saying? Last year my parents did the cool thing. So my parents, we all meet in my parents house. They went and got those big black or say big.

They're the nice, like restaurant, like take home things.

Oh, that's smart.

And so as soon as dinner was done, there's Always so much extra food. They just said, everyone grab a dish, go make your lunch for tomorrow. Okay, there's still more. Grab another dish, make another meal for yourself.

And basically just kept going around, around, around and stuff starts disappearing, right? And it's gone. And then you all take home a restaurant doggy bag with like a balanced meal.

Not like, like, I've got enough potatoes for the next, you know, three weeks. And you're like, what do you do with that?

Okay, I'm gonna steal that and bring that to my sister in laws.

Actually, I'm feeling like I might have three Thanksgivings this year because I have a Friday Thanksgiving, I have a maybe two Thursday Thanksgivings.

You show up to every dinner with these dogs. I'm gonna bring like, hey, hey, I am here for you guys, but I'm also here for this.

Yes, I am not going to lose at Thanksgiving this year.

Yeah, well, very cool. Yeah.

So as our listeners already know from the title of the episode today, we're going to kind of be talking about, you know, we've talked about the holiday Thanksgiving, and there's traditions that go with it and there's sort of maybe a mindset that comes with it. Hopefully there's a mindset that comes with it. But, you know, the identity of being a thankful person.

You know, I think that's another thing to talk about because as a business owner, I have to admit I think I'm a pretty grateful person. But I'm also kind of desperate. And not desperate in the sense like, oh my gosh, I need this so much.

But it's like, I'm paying these people to do this job. I'm desperate that they do what they, I'm paying them to do.

And you don't want it to get to be this like transactional thing where it's like, like, of course they did this, this is their job. Like this. That is a proper way to think.

Like people maintain their jobs because they're professionals, but that can quickly move into something that's not very healthy.

Well, and also nowadays that's not enough for most people. Like, technically people get paid to do a job and that should be like, if I was looking at it just like that. It's a transaction.

You get paid for your time, you're giving your time to me, and then I'm going to give you my money for the time that you gave me and the work. But most people are not, that's not good enough.

Even for people like Matt, my husband, I tend to think, because I've never Been a good employee, like, in a long, long, long, long time. So I don't. I'm like, well, why wouldn't people just be happy to go to work whether they.

Their work is accepted or not, or if it's like, because you're just getting. It's for.

What'S your deal?

And it turns out people want their work to be valued and they want to know that, you know, these meetings matter, that we're going to, and that people are saying thank you on occasion for the work that you're doing.

Yeah. And meaning it.

And meaning it. Yes. I also think you can go to the other side.

Sometimes there has to be a balance because there have been times when I have been like, too over the moon about somebody's work or just feeling like.

I don't know how to explain it, but when I've had a team and my leadership style was more about just all in on the team and just focused on giving them just kind of love, bombing them with gratitude, and then people start to take, like, take it for granted. So it can go both ways. There has to be a balance there.

I've, I've done that. I can verify that's not just your experience, that's also mine. Totally separate. We never talked about that before, but I think you can.

I think you can be so grateful that you give someone power. A complex. Yeah. I mean, like, we want to empower for sure, but I guess power can go to people's heads and they can wield it sort of inappropriately.

And I do think that people are like, what are they going to do without me? You know, that can be. That's where it gets like a little.

But also, do you want them to feel like you're just a link in the chain, a cog in the wheel, and, like, I could replace you in 15 seconds. So there is, there is a balance there in being grateful for people.

I think it's called leadership.

Yeah. Yeah.

Like, you have to be a good leader.

Well, okay. So obviously, as business owners, we have people and we lead people and we need to be grateful for them. But this has been kind of a weird year.

I don't know how other people are experiencing this year. I'm going to go ahead and be really intentional about just quickly saying, and then leaving that politically, this year has been really weird.

And I don't care if you're on any side of the island aisle. I think that's the proper way to say it.

Between tariffs and inflation and real estate, you know, living, which that's Been on the rise for a while between some of the. The feelings that are happening between people on different sides of the political spectrum. It's really, this is.

I've always kind of taken the approach that politics is politics, I get one vote and I can only do so much with it. But I've got a lot of other stuff I can control. I'm going to put my energy there.

This has been one of the first years that I have felt like the government and politics is touching my life a lot harder and a lot more immediate.

And I feel like, not like around my throat, but maybe around my wrist, like I can feel the hands sort of like holding me and going, don't you forget I am right here. So there are outside influences that are difficult and I want to kind of talk about the gratitude side of that stuff.

But what are your thoughts on that?

I think this year has just been very stressful. And it's not just the government. I would say that's been a huge part of it.

Especially in our old industries of the trades, home service, having issues with getting workers and keeping workers and how the government can affect that. Even right now there's so many things to worry about. And I also think AI is another stressor.

Yes, that's good because it changed so fast, right?

It's the. There is nothing that has changed faster, I think in our, in our lifetime. And you can't keep up, you just can't.

But you feel like somehow you have to know what's going on. And I am very exhausted by that. In fact, before I went to my last AI conference, I was like, do I, do I still want to be doing this?

Am I, what is the point? You know? And then I came away and I'm like, this is great. I've learned so much, everything's awesome.

But I do wonder that on a day to day basis because I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how things relate to my company essentially at this point. And I'm wondering, one interesting side note on this.

I'm wondering compared to the last couple of years and this year, not last year, let's say the year before, the last couple of years before that and this year, how those Thanksgiving conversations are going to be different because I think for a while there was a lot of tension and stress in my brain.

I felt like the four years previous were very boring to me and I know probably other people did not feel that way, but compared to this it felt completely boring and much easier to, to be with family. This year there's so much going on. It's, it'll be interesting.

I'd love to know like, what people's experiences are this year with their families at Thanksgiving and, and if this is a stressor.

Yeah. So, you know, obviously I think you can't have this conversation without at least touching on that.

But yeah, it's just really to emphasize that the difficulties around us right now, you kind of learn a lot about yourself in difficulty.

And I know I shared this previously, but like, I've been doing a lot of training for endurance mountain biking and I always tell my kids like, it's deep in the hurt locker or the pain cave. They call it. It's deep in the hurt locker of the pain cave where you find out who you really are.

And I don't know if I've given this example on here before, but my son and I just did an eight hour race and he said offhandedly, oh, yeah, well, we were a team, so we each were responsible for roughly four hours.

But anyway, we, we were passing, you know, laps back and forth and we didn't get a lot of chance to talk, you know, because you basically slap the hand of the other person and they go and do another lap on the trail. But my wife was there and she was able to sort of like feed, you know, he's out there right now, but he's feeling this way. How are you feeling?

You know, and there's a lot of information being passed that way. Anyway, I finished, I think it was my third lap and I said, wow, I can't imagine doing a fourth and a fifth.

Like, I really am having a hard time imagining doing a fourth. But I'm like, it's, it's beyond my mind to be able to do a fifth at this point. I'm like, I'm starting to feel the muscles cramping.

I'm starting to feel like some serious exhaustion setting in. And. But I said, I know I can. I just, I just, it's hard to imagine it right now. And so she said, well, he's out there, he's hurting pretty bad.

And I said, well, here's the deal, Rach. When he gets in and it's time for his last lap, he's going to tell you he won't do it.

But I want you to tell him that he is going to discover so much about himself on the fifth lap. All the other laps combined, he won't learn as much about himself as he will on that last lap. He ended up not doing it. He ended up not doing It.

But the only time we ever got a chance to talk was when I did finish my fifth lap, and I came to him and I said, he's there. And he's like, don't cross that line. Because if you cross the line, you have to do another lap. He said, don't cross that line.

He said, I want to talk. And so we talked. And all that to say that he just generally is like, dad, I literally can't do it. My legs will explode.

I said, that's exactly how I felt when I started this lap. You can do it, son. He's like, you don't understand, dad. My legs will lock up. They won't even move. Like I said, I know.

That's exactly how I felt the whole first half mile.

The whole first half mile, I actually had to stop and get off the bike because it looked like there was fists under my bike shorts that were just going all around my leg, and I could barely use my leg. But I'm telling you, if you'll work it through the first half mile, you won't even be that much slower than your last lap. I promise you.

It's like, dad, you don't understand. I said, dad, I do understand. Anyway, the point is, is that kind of, as we come to the end of this year, and a lot of us might feel like we're.

Our legs are locking up, feeling, like, really tired. We're feeling maybe not even like that significant sharp pain, but maybe just like that, progressive fatigue.

And I say that to everybody out here right now. Is that what I'm grateful for?

And I'm saying this with the analogy of an endurance athlete, but I say it as a business owner, a husband, father, someone who's, you know, an American. If you're feeling really tired and really fatigued, like, you do need rest, like, rest is just as much as important as any training mechanism.

But giving up teaches your body, teaches your mind, teaches your soul, emotionally, spiritually, whatever. You know, there's so many different levels that we take information in, but all of those are listening for that, what it feels like to give up.

And I am so thankful to know that I can always do one more pedal stroke right? I can. I can do it.

But if I intentionally can just rest and get my mind right, it's amazing how much strength we all have that we don't even know that we have. And you will dig deep. You will find it in there. And I'm not doing the hustle and grind talk, though.

I want to make sure that everyone understands that that's not what I'm saying. Hustle and Grind says you can always do one more pedal stroke. Don't even rest. Right.

But what I'm saying here is that you're capable of way more than you think you are. Be measured, be intentional when you are resting, rest, do the right things, you know, make sure you do that.

When I was preparing for that race, you know, that was the same thing I was doing. I rested the week. I was tapering up to it, and it was intentional rest. It's special rest. Like, I was literally doing important, special things.

And this year, as I look back and I. And I wonder how many other people are in the same pain cave.

Like, I just want to, like, be encouraging to you and say, you are going to be shocked at what you're capable of. And I'm starting to feel that way already about just this year. So, anyway, does that make sense?

Melody, as you were talking, I was like, oh, my gosh, he is so good at bringing together analogies. And I always feel this way, Kurt, because I'm like, wow, he's going really deep into the story.

I don't even remember where we started, and I don't know how he's going to bring it back around. And then you always just land it. It's amazing. Thanks.

You're really good at it, and I'm grateful for that because otherwise we would be all over the place. I totally relate to that in every way. And I think the way that you said it is really eloquent, actually.

I. I have definitely been in a pain cave this year. I had big plans for my company, and I made some changes to move towards, like, the big goals that I had.

And it just kept being the same or worse over and over again, no matter what I seemed to do, no matter how much work I put in. And at the same time, I was feeling pretty miserable. Not all year, but I was kind of pushing back the fact that I wasn't taking as many bike rides.

I was not doing things that made me feel happy most of the time. But I am grateful for my grit. I won't lie.

There are times when I do want to quit, and the person I've always thought would let me quit the most would be Matt, because he's not even a business guy to begin with. And I've always been surprised at the times when I'm really near the edge where he's like, you're not quitting. You know, because he's a.

He's an endurance athlete like you. He Never stops the training and always has the goal and long goal. But the other thing is I did have to stop.

I set a stopping point for myself, I think, back in September, where I knew I was getting close to my line of just kind of just falling apart. And I just took a week. I was like, I'm out. Things are okay here. And I.

Sometimes you just have to remove yourself from the pain cave and realize that is not the whole world. You know, you get stuck in that sometimes.

I will also say that the greatest joy and the thing that I am most grateful for in this entire year has been the birth of my little baby nephew. Because I have spent more time, more mornings, sometimes 15 to 20 hours a week I will spend with this kid, just holding him in his infancy.

The best time. And it's so meditative for me. And it takes me out of the pain and it makes me feel joy again. You know, that's.

I need to vouch for this. I will text Melody out of, you know, whatever or nowhere or we'll talk.

I don't know how, but I hear about this little baby so much and I know it does bring you so much joy.

So much.

And it is so cool to hear about this journey that you've been on because, I mean, it's shocking. It's not your own baby.

It's really shocking. I think everybody is that impactful.

I'm shocked his parents don't think I'm going to kidnap him, but they're also very grateful because sleep, you know. Sure thing. But yeah, it's been an unexpected gift because before he was born, it didn't even really mean anything to me, really.

Like, I'm like, yay, baby. But I didn't understand, like, the. Because also my kids are older now and this is like my.

I don't know, it's my time between being a parent and a grandparent where I get to practice grandparents skills without actually having to be one.

Yeah. At this point, if we were to have a baby, Rachel and I, I would. I told Rachel I went and took measures into my own hands.

So there's no danger of that. But before that surgery, I told Rachel, I think if you told me you're pregnant right now, I would probably have an aneurysm.

Like, it would just take me. Take me to the funny farm.

Yeah.

And it has nothing to do with like not loving the kids already have or like, you know, whatever. It's just I've got a lot going on and I want to really fully invest in these kids. That we have. And I kind of feel like I'm at my limit right now.

But, like, I was just. Yeah, like I was just saying before is I think that we surprise ourselves with how much more we're capable of.

And as your kids grow up, you know, as your kids grow up and they move into other seasons of your life, it's. Or their life.

Yeah.

You move into new seasons of yours.

Yes, that's so true. And I think it's been very empty in a weird way in my life.

Now that my kids are older, it suddenly just happened, you know, it's not like there was a point of older. Right. But suddenly I was like, why am I feeling so much space? What is happening here? Why am I not having to be like.

And it's been such an interesting experience again that I wasn't expecting because I have been child rearing for 26 years now. I yearned for the day when I would feel this way, and yet it feels empty. So. But I am grateful for the space.

I'm just going to keep bringing it back to gratitude.

Yeah, well, you should be grateful because you've raised adults and not children. I think that's an important distinction to make.

You know, and I don't want to make this whole entire talk about, you know, endurance athletes and cramping, but I do need to say, like, there's lots of things that you can do for cramping, which is sort of what you're talking about here, too. Like, if you're in a really bad cramp. I don't know if everyone knows this, but. But you could drink.

I think it's like 8 ounces or 4 ounces, you know, just not. It doesn't need to be a ton, but you need to drink some pickle juice. Dill pickle juice.

I've heard this.

If you drink it, it does have salt, and it does have some electrolytes in it. But what it really does is it's actually a neurological blocker of the cramp.

It actually shocks your brain system enough with the flavors that it's so random and weird. And you can do it with, like, hot peppers and stuff, too. But that's not really fun when you're doing endurance.

But dill pickle juice will actually make your brain stop firing the cramps for a period.

Side note, wish I had known this when my son's football team was playing. One of the kids who is like, the star does not understand his limits, and he gets cramps in his leg that just take him down.

Oh, and should have brought out, should have brought out the pickle juice that Gatorade did. Nothing.

Yeah, so Gatorade is the perfect example of like, you know, marketing. That's not real. Right. So we all know we need electrolytes, right? And marketing, marketing says that Gatorade does electrolyte.

But electrolytes are actually another funny thing. You don't need to drink something that has all the electrolytes in it. In fact, you shouldn't. Your body needs a daily value of magnesium, potassium.

You've got to have it. Those are electrolytes. But you take those in as a daily value over time.

So for example, like everyone knows that bananas have potassium and avocado has twice as much potassium as banana.

Also, if you take in too much potassium like via pill or something, in fact, the FDA won't even let you make a pill over 250 milligrams of potassium because it'll literally kill you. Yeah, well I, I'm about to teach you something important, I promise. So potassium, you cannot take it into the pill.

They don't even make like, you'd have to take like 500 pills because they know that people would overdose on potassium, kill themselves thinking they're taking electrolytes and it would kill em. So it's better just to eat food with potassium in it. Don't find drinks with potassium, don't find pills with potassium. Potassium just eat food.

Magnesium, yes, you can take. But also that's something that you know, while you probably won't do too much damage to your body, taking excess.

And magnesium, again, it's better just take as a daily value. You're not replacing that when you're like in a football game or something. So what's left is you need salt. You just need salt.

You just need salt when you're doing it. That's the thing that you're losing your sweat, you gotta replace. And then it works with all the other electrolytes to keep your muscles working.

Well, the reason I say all this is because neurologically you can block, you can prepare with electrolytes, you can be ready.

So there's, there's the preparation of like having diet and then there's also the preparation of having enough salt on, in your water or whatever during the effort. There's the rest before, there's the rest during, and then there's the rest after. You can still cramp and have all the pickle juice in the world.

You could still cramp if you had all the electrolytes you needed. If you overexert your muscles to a point where nothing can go beyond it. So you could be cramping for many different reasons.

And so I know I brought that example up earlier, so now I. It's time to, like, make this make sense.

So my point is, is that as we go through these different things that, like, I don't know if I can go a step further. You might be able to trick your brain with pickle juice.

You might be able to just put yourself in another mindset and stop the neurons from firing and shock yourself. But then that might not work, but actually, that usually does. But then if.

But it only worked for a period, then you could say, have I prepared myself going into this? Have I rest enough? Have I gotten the right food and fuel in? Have I gotten the right other stuff?

So going into these trials, maybe there was a big lesson that you need to have known some information you need to have had that you didn't have. And then there's just the depletion. And depletion comes in the form of both rest and, you know, in the case of, like, electrolyte sodium.

So as we kind of look at where we're at and we're feeling, you can almost diagnose what it is that needs to happen right now. And you can have, like, plan A and plan B, plan C, whatever, but you can almost kind of tell where you're at.

And one of the things that I've noticed this year is that as I have started making some pretty big changes in our company, and we have some really big changes coming down the pipeline, I have a bunch of people in my company who are doing things that they've never done before for the first time.

And we've studied it, and we've done all the preparation we think we need, but people start getting tired and depleted, and that rest starts to become important. But guess what? When people aren't moving the speed I want to move, then I start to get depleted, and I start to feel a certain way.

And if you aren't taking time out to replace and to change your mindset, what happens is you spiral. And that's sort of what that locking up of a cramp is is. It's cramping.

And you know when you're trying to relax of cramp muscle and it just goes tighter and tighter and tighter. That's spiraling. And we, as humans, our mindset is, I've been angry at this person for this thing for the longest time.

I haven't brought it up to them or I've just hinted at it to them or whatever. And it's just getting worse and worse and worse. I'm going crazier and crazier and crazier, and I can't make it another step right.

Or something that's outside of my control is happening, and I'm. I'm fixated on it. I can't stop. And. And before you know it, you're the one that is completely stopped up.

It depletes all your energy. Even just thoughts can deplete your energy.

Isn't that crazy?

It really is. Yeah. I think you and I have probably been through enough times in our life where it's hap. I mean, this has.

This happens to me, even still trying to be very aware of it. Just. Why am I sick right now, Kurt?

I think it's because I went on three trips within, you know, three pretty big trips within a very short period of time for work. I was very engaged in the stuff. I was just like, energy, energy, energy into these, you know, other things and thinking about family.

And then I come home, and my body's like, yeah, you're done now. And that used to happen in window cleaning at the end of the season. I wouldn't get sick all season. And then it would be like, okay, we're done now.

And then I'd be sick for, like, a week or two. And I. I definitely.

Same, by the way.

Yeah, right. Your will to do something sometimes, especially as entrepreneurs, can override everything. Until a lot of times our bodies will be like, yeah, no.

Or until we. I don't. I don't know. Until we give up or until we come to some realization and.

Or sometimes we need to look in and see what the lesson is and find out that, like.

But you have to be away from it, though. You have to be.

Yeah, that's. That's it. You have to separate yourself and look in and go, okay, like, I need to take a peek at this.

But it doesn't have to be just about us. I think something. I am. I'm. I feel like now it's a thing that I keep saying I'm grateful for.

I would've said it even if it wasn't the Thanksgiving episode.

But something that I'll say really helps me and that I'm grateful for is being able to go to a mastermind or being able to have friends who are in it with me in business, like, trusted people that I can go and talk to about business who are willing to, you know, bat things around or tell me exactly what I'm not seeing. I would say actually, it shouldn't just be about your brain.

The other part of it is being able to let go and walk away for some time and do something creative or do something else to just let it go. And then you have a different perspective on this as well. But at the time, we don't feel like we can. It feels.

Or. Or even if you did, you're still so close to it that you need the distance.

Like, and this will be the last cramp analogy, but, like, you don't repair, get stronger from an exercise until you've had time to repair the destruction. So when you're out working hard, you're tearing muscles, you're.

You're doing things to your airways and your lungs and your heart and everything else. It's the rep. Repair time that makes you stronger.

And so it's not like you're less if, like, you're in the middle and you're like, I feel like I'm about to break. Yeah, no, it's like, okay, good. It's time for. Okay, I'm at the bottom of the trough. Okay, so I'm at the bottom of the trough. That's.

That's where I'm at now. The good news is, is you did all the work.

Now you need to stop and let recover, and you'll be stronger next time, and maybe not millions of times stronger, but, like, you'll be stronger.

Do you find that you. I don't know. I've worked really hard to make it not a habit, but, like, to be able to look at any problem that comes up or any hardship.

And it might not be immediate, but eventually I can literally turn anything into something I'm grateful for because it taught me a lesson or it gave me some insight or it made me stronger or it showed me an area of weakness. I don't know. Do you find that. Is that something that you have grown into?

Yeah, I think I have. I'm. I'm hesitating because I. I know I'm for sure not perfect at it.

I'm not.

But I was just.

It's a practice.

Yeah. I was just coaching an employee, and she had mentioned something about how she was just, like, really getting frustrated and stuff. And.

And I said, you know, again, this is something I'm not perfect at, but it's kind of in the same vein, is like, did you assume that the person you're frustrated with is doing the best they can? They think that they're right? Have you already assumed that? And she's like, I mean, yeah, but like, you have no idea this, honestly.

I know, I know, but the things you're saying make me feel like you're kind of operating from a place where like he's sabotaging you. And like, I know that feeling.

And I think the same thing goes for gratitude is where, like, if you're operating from a place of like, I might not be grateful for it right now, but is this something I'll ever be grateful for? And it makes you slow down, it makes you think about things another way. And when you don't do it, it's important you do it later.

Well, it has to. You have to do it as an entrepreneur or else you become a very bitter person who's more closed minded, I would say, or more affected by experiences.

And that's why I jokingly say I'm an optimist with a bad memory. Like as an. That's what an entrepreneur is in a way. And when I say a bad memory, it's a bad memory to the. That pain.

I remember the pain, but I can turn it into a lesson or something that is more optimistically viewed. Whereas everybody else in the world be like, are you crazy?

Okay, you've just led me into a little game I want to play because this is fun. This is pretty fun. I'm going to do a little speed round with you here. I've got three questions.

Okay.

And we're going to take you up on what you just said, which is that you can turn anything into something you're grateful for.

What I've got here is I'm going to just bring up some sort of scenarios for you and I want you just to throw out an example and let's just see where this takes us. How's that?

Sure.

All right, so this is kind of a lightning round. Melody, what difficulty are you secretly grateful for? Some difficulty in your life?

I think the one that comes to mind in this lightning round is losing my assistant. I think that is something most people don't know is right now I am operating without a full time assistant, full time Melody manager.

It's been probably a couple months at this point. I find there's tremendous freedom in it.

But I also realize all of the areas that this person, you know, my, my person really helps me and really supports me and I do have people on my team who are supporting me in other ways. But it makes me understand my customer's perspective.

Again, sometimes when you've had something for so long or you've had something, an assist for so long, you forget like the Block that exists when you're getting started. And you know, this is the third time maybe where I've had a missing assistant. And every time it feels freeing.

And then I go, oh, yeah, this is what happens. This is why I have this person.

And then it helps me to get better, though, also with helping clients adapt and helping me to get better with the relationship. That's a weird one, but it's something I'm experiencing right now.

Yeah, you'll see that.

What about you?

Difficulty that I'm secretly grateful for. This one actually did not just recently happen.

This happened a little while back, but I had signed up to go to an event as a seminar for kind of a highly rated author, you know, pretty, pretty popular guy.

And I didn't really know what I was getting into, but I'd heard good things about him and that he had the ability to help people sort of like find some new, you know, entrepreneurial maybe energy or something. Anyway, so I went to this event and I've never been in a cult environment before. This was the first time. So I got to the event and they said.

I said, I don't see any like schedules. I need to leave at a certain time tonight. And I'm just gonna make sure I know what time to leave.

They're like, oh, plan until two in the morning or something like that. I'm like, no, I go to bed at 8 o' clock every night. I'm on a very strict sleep schedule. You know, I work hard and I sleep hard.

Yeah.

They're like, no, it's gonna go till. Till 2am and then I'm like, oh, well, maybe we could just talk about what we're gonna talk about faster. And anyway, the whole event was crazy.

I've never been in anything like it. The whole room.

They.

You couldn't go to the bathroom without, like, there's no bathroom breaks.

And if you did get up to go to the bathroom, there'd be someone who would like follow you through the door, walk you to the bathroom, stand outside, wait for you to finish going to the bathroom, walk you back into the door. And it wasn't until a little ways in I start realizing like, oh my gosh, I can see people changing around me.

This is like legitimately, like a choreographed, like kind of scary thing.

And it was all designed to get you tired to get your bod in on something and sort of treat the guy on stage like he's sort of godlike and then buy everything that he tells you that you need in order to achieve the Things that. The impossible things that he's actually doing on the stage. And I realized, my gosh, this is, this is just fully choreographed.

And they even assign a partner to you. This is a partner to make sure that you don't leave because they don't have bathroom breaks.

They did break for a lunch break at one point and they needed that partner to make sure that when you went to bed the next night that you showed up exactly 30 minutes early, which that's crazy. And then also at lunch, they need to make sure that you didn't leave the premises. And they were supposed to text if you did.

They were supposed to tell on you anyway. It was a crazy experience. So why am I grateful for that? I am.

I've always wondered when they do these experiments where people do things that they shouldn't do, but it was because they were pressured into something or the human mind sort of like falters. Like you. You probably heard about the electrocution.

Oh yeah.

Where they had.

Yeah.

The punish with the electrocution. You've heard about the ones that like, they did a prison experiment to see what people would do, you know, be really mean.

Oh, I know where this is going.

Yeah. Anyway, the one that really hit me, they've taken it off Netflix since, but there's one called Darren Brown's the Push.

And they basically got a really nice person to intentionally try to shove someone off the top of a building just in a six hour period of starting. And it actually worked. These people actually could have been taken.

Wow.

Like. But they had, they had ropes on the person they were going to push.

They knew what was going to happen, but they legitimately just showed us a mental experiment that humans are so frail and I've always worried, oh my gosh, I think I'm frail. So this isn't much of a lightning round answer. But my point is, is that I found out like in this experience.

Experience that I never once let go of my own control of myself. And I basically walked right up to the person and I said, I'm leaving and I'm not coming back.

And they called me and called me and called me and I was ignoring at first, but then I finally picked it up and I'm like, you guys are a cult that I have no desire. No, we're not. Of course, no cult members are cult. So I learned that I could stand up to that and it was awesome. I loved it and I feel powerful.

I love that. And because I have always been very worried that I would be that kind of person. Too. While also, Kurt, I want to be a part of the cult.

I'm very torn about it. Uh, there's a lot of benefits to being in a cult.

But I will say I've been in circumstances too where I've not faced that kind of thing, but something similar. And I've done the right thing or the. Done the. Stay true to my values is what I would say.

And not given into other people's values or their way of doing things. So I'm not surprised, honestly.

Well, thank you. Because it was a. It was a very pleasant surprise.

Yeah.

All right. Not much of a lightning round here, but don't ever ask me a question.

It is for us. I mean. Okay, we're moving at curtain mouth speed. That's right.

Lightning round. Question 2. Who taught you something that you're grateful for this year?

Well, yesterday something happened. Good thing for my short term memory. I'm in a very short term women's leadership group.

We're meeting a lot and one of the exercises we had to do the other day was like, who are we in the future? You know, I've done a lot of these exercises. They're very fun for me. For some people, they are so scared of these kinds of like deep. Like some.

For some people, it was the first time they've asked themselves some of these questions. I'm always surprised by that. But what I came up with was, well, I'm a confident and creative.

Like that's what the things that are missing right now and that's what I want to have. And my friend Val later was like, I was really surprised that you said confident because you're one of the most confident people I. I know. Like what?

And she said, well, you're always online, you're always being yourself. You know, you're just yourself. And I wish I could be more like that.

And it made me realize that because I've never met Val in person, but we're friends online and we're friends on Facebook and we text each other. But it made me realize I am. I've gotten used to being online and not having it matter to me. Right.

I used to think a million people were watching and now I don't care if zero people are watching. I'm just putting out a message. And that's thanks to you, Kurt, by the way.

Awesome.

Those were hilarious. Yes. But I've become very comfortable and it's pushed me a little bit More and more to be more confident in just being me.

But I didn't think of that as the kind of confidence. When I say confident, I don't mean as a human. I think I mean confident in business, in leadership.

And I hadn't even considered that because that's my area of focus right now is, like, feeling like I'm not good enough at this thing that actually encompasses a lot of my brain and my energy and my time. But there's another part of me that's completely confident.

An unconfident person probably wouldn't do a podcast with you, but the lesson for me is that it was so simple. I am confident. Like, it just opened my eyes to something that I hadn't been seeing. And that's.

Sometimes you're saying that Val. Val taught you something that you were. That you didn't maybe understand that you were. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah. Or that maybe my definition of confidence was skewed a little bit because I've been talking about confidence. Confidence, confidence.

So much time is spent on this thing that I'm trying to get, and it just made me realize, is this all focused just on business, this lack of confidence? I don't know this week.

Well, like, I wouldn't feel confident walking into a McDonald's wearing a Speedo, but I feel confident when I am maybe doing something at work.

Do you feel confident just being Kurt? Like, are you. You?

Yeah.

Yeah, me too. I'm me. Yeah. And that's all I want to be.

I like that.

And I think it's hard for. It's really hard for people to do that because it's scary.

There's a whole list of people who've committed suicide who just didn't want to be who they were. Now, I'm not saying everyone who commits suicide, there's lots of reasons, but.

But not wanting to be who you are could be due to pain and, like, the pain that comes with your circumstances. Or. Or maybe you don't feel that you're surrounded by people you can. Who would accept you for who you are.

And, yeah, I feel really bad for people who don't have that. That particular kind of confidence. They just want to be them.

In the end, that's all we have. We have ourselves. We have our values, our integrity, our just understanding who we are is probably.

And I think we've talked about it, like, that's one of the purposes of our existence, is figuring that out and being okay with it. At least that's what I think that you may have told me one time. So I'm going to ask you the same question.

Who taught me something that. Okay, so this is a group of people. A group of people taught me something that I'm grateful for. I mentioned this, I think before to you. Melody is.

I went to a door to door sales conference. Now I have a sales software and I feel obligated to learning a lot about different sales strategies, theories, you know, stuff like that.

And so I went to a door to door one. I have no business being there. I'm not a door to door salesperson. I don't own a company that sells door to door.

I have no reason to be there except for the fact that Sam Taggart's cool and he has some other leadership stuff that I really like. So I went to it. One of the exercises was that me and a group of five other people went door to door selling no soliciting signs.

That was part of the boot camp. We had to go door to door and make as much money as we could from 10 no soliciting signs. These guys, these guys are powerful people.

Like I. I'm so nervous. I used to be a missionary for my church, knocking door to door.

But I don't know, it's not appropriate to say this, but selling God, which I wasn't selling him, but selling God is a lot different than like going to someone's house and asking for their money. So anyway, these guys do it all day, every day. They sell pest control and solar power and Internet.

Like there's a guy in our group that sold roofs and these guys aren't afraid of anything. Like this is the right at home at it. I'd always assumed that salespeople were just really cocky, narcissistic, didn't feel anything kind of people.

That's the only type of person who could handle that day in and day out and get, get a kick out of it. Boy, was I wrong. I was so wrong. And I loved learning this lesson.

Like it was really painful because they'd go to a door and they'd be willing to dance at the door like do crazy stuff. Crazy stuff. Yeah. And the jokes, they're so witty and they're just so funny.

I learned at the conference before the words were said, these are important words that I didn't know said. Your job as a door to door salesperson is not to sell them the product per se.

It's to make sure that they don't kick you off their doorstep before they fully understand the offer that you, you have.

That's really, really amazing insight.

Yeah. He's like, when you knock on the door, this is. Again, this is classroom learning. When you knock on the door, they weren't waiting for you to come.

They don't have time for you. Their time's already allotted. They're doing something else. You just stop them in the middle of what they're doing.

Obviously, they don't want to talk to you. Obviously, they're good, and they don't want what you have. They already had everything they needed.

But the reason you got off your butt this morning is because you had something so important that everybody needs it. And your job is to make sure they at least get a chance to understand what they're turning down. And that was, like, kind of shifting for me.

When we got to the door and I watched, it was all about the person at the door. See, narcissists are. And don't get me wrong, these guys made money. They understood how to make a deal happen. We ended up making off of 10 signs.

We ended up making, like, over $3,000 before we ever left the parking lot. We sold all 10 of them over the phone to people that we knew for 100 to $500 a piece. And then we went to Home Depot and took all that money.

And so we took our Venmo money, went to Home Depot, and just bought every no soliciting sign.

Brilliant store. Yeah, brilliant.

Anyway, so here's the deal. They would get to the door, and they showed me, and I learned that These guys were 100% in service of the person behind the door.

And they made them laugh, and they had a good time with those people. And sure, some people paid 100 bucks for a $5 no soliciting sign, but it had nothing to do with the sign. It had nothing to do with the money.

It was all about buying into the entertainment and the. And the joy. I mean, they're knocking on the door saying, hey, look, don't you hate people knocking on your door? It's late at night.

You should be in your family. Why are you at the door with me? Because you don't have a no soliciting site. And it just turned to this very funny thing.

I am so grateful that I learned that, and I hated it. As we're walking out to the parking lot to go get our plan put together, I was like, all I want to do is leave right now.

Yeah, I would feel the same.

So glad I didn't leave.

Although I might enjoy it if it was a game, if it's not real. I mean, it was real, but it was a game too, so that's so cool.

So that's my story. Now. I got a question for you. This is the last question that I've got for you. What went right for someone else that helped you to grow?

That. That is such a hard question. I'm not gonna lie. You told me this question beforehand. But if anybody knows me, I have no memory.

So I do know there is one thing that kept popping in my head immediately, which was a very painful thing that happened. It felt painful to me, but it was a very good thing for somebody else.

That's the way I view it now, which is somebody else got an opportunity that was really good for them, but it was not necessarily good for me. And I think. And what that has taught me, what it allowed me to do, is first of all, to release some of the.

You know how when you have a mentor, you have people in your life who speak to you that you kind of hold on to. Their words are more important sometimes than they should be because they've been around for so long, or that they. Have you ever experienced that?

Where you start to have that problem of the friction of not necessarily values, but that they might not know what's best for you, even though there's somebody that you've trusted to help you figure that out? Is that that unique to me? It sounds like it is.

Yeah. It's not. It's not.

I've had.

I've had similar experiences. I'm thinking to myself about, yes, this.

Has happened so many times to me.

And once I have somebody who I have come to trust as, like a mentor who can give me knowledge and wisdom or whatever, it becomes harder for me to, like, really. Cause it's a fight internally sometimes. Cause they're not always right.

In fact, I would say their opinions are valuable, but I've really learned that they're not. They're not the thing that I should hold on to. And this person was somebody who had been a mentor to me and still I would consider a friend.

It was actually a gift to me. Now, this is how I think of it. The optimist with a bad memory. Painful at the time, but it was a gift.

And I remember I just wanted to throw in there, this is the part I've been chewing on the most. I remember when it first happened.

It's.

It felt devastating to you.

It was. Yeah. I think I've come around to the idea that. And I think I don't have. Maybe the same.

That was the last in a line of business mentors, I would say, that were really. That I was clinging to, if that makes sense. Anybody else that I've.

That's come on board since then, I feel very confident that I understand my internal wisdom. I've learned enough, I know enough. I can trust the gut. Right.

And I'm also still going to take other people's wisdom because that's either why I'm paying them or that's why I'm around them. But I have to make the right decision for me now.

That's like a normal thing that people who don't have my flawed inner world or whatever that is, they would just be like, yeah, that's how you do it. But no, that's not how I've done it my whole life. So the gift is kind of being able to let go of needing the.

Not approval of others, but the needing the other people's opinions to make decisions that are going to affect my company, my life, things like that, and being okay with that. It's a freedom. I hope I made sense.

Yeah, you did. And I know that there's been a lot of, like, importance around. Maybe not.

This is one of those times where sharing the exact details probably isn't super helpful, but maybe just a tiny bit of shade that I like. A color shade I would add to that is that this is a person that you weren't using to consult with you on, like, generic. Like.

Like, I'm paying this consulting house. When you use the word mentor, I just want to make sure that the people listening understand like.

Like, this is a really smart, trusted person who is deeply involved in the inner workings of your business and knew everything about your business.

Yeah.

And knew how their decision would affect you. Like, yeah. It would have been impossible for them to understand it in any way other than that, so.

Except I don't think they did understand it.

Well, I think. I think it'd be impossible for them to not understand that what could. The implications of what could happen.

I agree.

And yet they chose. They chose the decision that was sort of the best financial decision for them. And I know that that was extremely painful for you.

And so to hear you say this today, I just. It's probably hard for the listener to, like, understand the gravity of what you're saying, but I just want to like.

And again, you don't need my validation, but I do.

I need everybody's validation all the time.

I see you.

Thank you. And you know what, though? I truly feel much freer because of that experience.

Every time a painful experience happens I do find something like we were talking about in the beginning, but this has been very freeing for me. Doesn't. I don't feel all, like, roses and flowers about it, whatever that means, but I made that up.

Roses and flowers.

You know, roses and flowers and pickle juice. But. But I. I'm good with it now. And I feel. And again, more confident in trusting myself.

Hey. Yes.

Brought number two in, so last one for you. What are we calling this again? Lightning Round.

Yeah, Lightning.

I can't wait to hear your response to this.

Yeah. So someone who had something go right for them that helped me to grow. And I think this is a really nice question to end on Lightning Round and this.

This podcast, because as we talk about gratitude, you know, we raise our kids and we talk about raising kids all the time, and it wasn't until the last few years I realized I'm raising adults. Like, I can't be raising kids. I'll screw everything up. So my oldest daughter, you know, when she started getting older, she's just.

She's this beautiful girl, right? And people would always say to me, I hope you got a good shotgun. Be cleaning out on your porch.

You know, people always say that, and I always laugh along with it. And I thought, surely I'm gonna have to beat these boys away. Well, in today's day and age, kids don't even hardly date anymore. It's so weird.

Like, when I was a kid, I was on a date. High school, I dated almost every Friday, Saturday night.

You were a player, Kurt.

Well, it wasn't like that. There's a group of three or four of us guys, and we always were meeting different girls. And like, I don't know, you're just.

Making it sound like you are even worse of a player now. Oh, but I know we would do. You were my age, so I get it. It's not. Yeah, it wasn't like that.

I guess. I guess today it sounds. Maybe it sounds like a player today, but, yeah, back. Back in the day, it was just going out and having fun.

Yeah. Yeah.

Just go get a date. Let's go. And if. If you couldn't find a date, your friends would just call someone and get a date for you. Because it was like, this is crazy.

You don't have a date.

Okay. That's not how my life was, but okay, we'll. We'll. We'll say that was your life.

Okay, well, the high school I went.

Yes. That was kind of how. That was normal.

So my daughter didn't have the door being knocked Down. And part of me thought, oh, she's just intimidating because. Because she's gorgeous. And I could see that, you know, boys, don't they get nervous?

But more and more, I realized. The more and more, like, I realized this is.

This is actually a real problem for kids these days, being able to get to, like, make these romantic relationships.

Anyway, my daughter since went to college, and she's dated a few boys, and there was a boy that she dated that, like, really didn't have a lot of direction in his life, but it was, like, the first one she'd gotten serious with. And it almost got to the point of marriage. Like, it was. It was going to go there. And I was just so sad because I'm like, she. This guy just is not.

Life is happening to him. He's not happening to life.

And I looked at the relationship I had my wife, where I was able to sort of bring some strength to the marriage, and she was able to bring her strength to the marriage. And when we put it together, we were both really strong.

But the more she dated this boy, the more depression would come in and spiraling and, like, they got weaker together, and my daughter became fragile, and it was really sad.

You're telling the story of my daughter, too.

Oh, really?

Yes. I don't think it's a rare story, but I. Give me that happy ending, please.

Yeah. Well, the boy. The boy came and asked for her hand in marriage. And I said, look, you know, I'd love to give you my. My blessing, but let.

Let me just say this. Why don't you get a job?

Why don't you get to the point where you can go to bed at a decent hour and wake up at a decent hour, do those two things and let's. Let's talk.

Wow, you've never told me this, and that's amazing. First of all, nobody does that. That's actually amazing.

Well, they broke up just a few months later. Mikayla came to me, my daughter, and said, I think I want more of what you and mom have. And I said, thank you. So she meets another boy.

And this boy is amazing. Like, I just saw it the first time I met him. Like, this guy is different. They fell in love, wonderful dating.

My daughter's come to us several times and said, I'm so grateful that I had the past experience to understand this one better. And as a father, I talked about, you know, you want to sit on the porch and clean your gun, scare all the boys away.

But the fact is, is that's not actually how it's gone for me at all, and I'm so thankful is that watching my daughter bloom into a woman, watching someone one plus one equals three situation with, with her and this, this, this young man. You know, she's so stressed out about trying to buy a house in this day and age.

She's so stressed out that she'll ever be able to afford to adult with all the other adults. And I just told her yesterday, and I'm gonna see if I can do this without crying. But she said, dad, I. I'm just so scared. I. I'm.

I don't know how we're gonna do this. This is. This is gonna be really hard.

And I said, you know, hon, if it helps you, and I know it's hard, and this isn't gonna make it easier for you, but maybe this will at least bring a little comfort for you, is that there are way dumber people out there that are making it happen every day. They're making it happen just from day to day.

And those dumb people also are married to even dumber or don't have a spouse like you and Simon, this other boy. You guys are both smart. You got your heads on your shoulders. You're good people. You're both thinking ahead. It is possible to overthink.

It's possible to spiral. You don't know what's going to happen in the future. Don't defeat yourself before it's happened. But let me just tell you this.

Walking with confidence, knowing that you have your act together and you have a lot to offer and you are a strong woman. You don't even need this boy. But, boy, the two of you together are dynamite.

So, you know, January is the wedding, and I am so thankful that I didn't clean my gun out on the porch and try to scare boys away and that I let my daughter sort of go through what she needed to go through and to observe it. Because an adult child is very different than a young child.

The young child, you're trying to grab the steering wheel for them and steer them down the road and make sure their foot's on the gas. But an adult child, you got to take your hands off the steering wheel. You got to just have a little.

Bit of faith, you know, That's a really gorgeous story.

And it reminds me, I don't know if I've ever said this, but I had read this book one time, and it said, because most parents, and I would say I'm one of those that struggled with the idea of letting go, I didn't See, when they became an adult child, I still saw a child. Child. Right.

And I think a lot of parents struggle with that idea because we go from, like, protecting, and then we're supposed to, like, just let them go. That's crazy.

But somebody once wrote in a book that those, I don't know, 3,000 or 2,000 days of adolescence are going to shape, and the way that you have a relationship with your child are going to shape the next 30 years of your relationship with them. And I found that to be really true. And it really opened my mind to the idea of, like, wow, we have to, like, we have to help our kids become adults.

And that doesn't mean telling them what to do or. And I'm not as wise as you when it comes to child rearing. I do want to say that I'm way more impulsive, but.

But I think, trust me, you don't want my wisdom.

Well, I think just even the wisdom of saying to her past suitor, like, I think you need to do some work first, and then I'll give you my blessing. That's wisdom. Most people would have been grumbling and even, you know, I don't know, I think that's really cool.

It's risky, you know, because. Because at that stage, she's in love with him, and you could. You have a real chance of pushing your.

Your daughter away and, like, never seeing her again or the grandkids, you know? But I think that's the story of.

Well, what. What you said was fair, though.

Yeah, that's important. Being fair is important to me, and I think I was. But. Yeah.

So now here we are, and I'm looking at what happened to her, and I think to myself, this helps me understand more. Like, I've always looked up to my parents as, like. I've just thought of them as, like, these pillars of, like, perfection.

Like, even though I know they made mistakes, I'm like, if I could just be as good as them, I'll be fine. And I look at it and I go, what must it have been like for them to take their hands off? It takes an incredible amount of strength.

Yeah.

To take your hands off the wheel and let them go.

And even when you see it seems like they're driving straight into a brick wall, it's like, I now have to, like, just be willing to go to the hospital if she drives into the brick wall.

Like, yeah, it's really tough.

But luckily that. That story didn't go the way I was worried it was going to go. And now there's just so much strength in it.

And boy, how fun has it been to tell my boys. Know, like, I have three boys underneath her. And to be able to tell them, like, look at the difference in these two suitors.

Yeah.

You know, and I hope you understand who you need to be for the person that you want to marry someday.

Oh, my God, you're the best dad ever. Stop.

Well, anyway, yeah, I thought you were going to say, by the way, in the story, and I'm glad I didn't interject, but thought you were going to say, well, Michaela, if it, if it helps you to feel any better, I'm going to buy you a house. Oh.

Well, that's another thing I've learned, though, and that's raising a kid. That's raising a kid. You can't raise a kid.

That's true. Well, this was really fun, actually, to talk about Thanksfulness. Giving.

So thankful this year.

Yeah.

So thankful.

And actually it has given me back a little bit of energy to finish out the year strong. Just giving me a little bit of a different perspective because it does feel like we come to the end of the year and it's like, ugh.

And then we're suddenly supposed to be like, but it's January 1st now and everything's different. It's a fresh start. Like, we've made this up. But. But I think it's.

This has definitely given me a little bit more of a different perspective than what I had expected actually to come away with. So thank you.

Cool.

Well, I hope all of our listeners, as you think about Thanksgiving as a holiday versus an identity, there's just a lot to sort of think about and just say, am I being grateful enough? Am I. Am I being too grateful? Right.

Like, and make sure that you are thankful for the things that you have because honestly, at the end of the day, you're not going to be able to. You're not going to do every.

Like, everything that comes in your life is going to come through so many different channels and people and systems and methods and all that, and so much of it you don't even have control over. So you can either be grateful for what you've got or you can just spend your whole life bellyaching about what you don't.

But at the end of the day, you can affect so much other change and make sure you're putting your energy into that.

It's very wise. And I agree. That's my wisdom.

Well, Melody, thanks for. I know you. I know you are still under the weather I appreciate you being with us today.

Well, Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and everybody listening.

And to all the listeners.

All right, we'll see you next week, Amelie.

Yes, goodbye.

All right, bye. Thanks, everybody, for joining us at the Sole Proprietor Podcast. It has been an absolute pleasure having these discussions with you.

If you wouldn't mind taking just a few minutes to rate and review us wherever it is that you listen to podcasts, it would mean so much to us.

We really do read each of these reviews, and it gives us the opportunity to get the word out to more people who could benefit from hearing about topics like this and so many others.

If you want to engage with us at our website, maybe share some topics or ideas of other people that you'd like to hear on the podcast, feel free to go.

Go to soleproprietorpodcast.com and share with us your thoughts and ideas about what we could do in the future to bring even more light into the world.