All Up In: Toast & Jam

Music. Welcome to all up in my lady business I am your host Mary nisi on this podcast all explore the fine line between having it together I'm losing your shit here I share my journey as an entrepreneur a mom a wife a DJ and randomly a beekeeper I have no shame and no filter except the ones I use on Instagram my stories of resilience a little structure and a lot of resource Wellness can show you how to take those same things and live your life with your hole. Music. Welcome to episode 3 of all up in my lady business it is Mary nisi. It was very stressful putting at that second episode it's almost like the first one I had amped up so much for and then now that we're on episode 3 I'm like. Wait I hate all of this I was like trying to pull it in like re-edit it and Amelia and Christina and all my people that I discuss this with her like Mary. You're overthinking this and I'm like really I'm overthinking it. As if that's not something that I'm known for but I put it out there anyway as imperfect as I as I thought it was and I think it went okay and I your being back here at leads me to believe that was a that's true. So today's topic is going to be diving a little bit deeper into how toast and jam came into the world and how I started doing it and as I mentioned before I was raised in a pretty crazy chaotic household with five brothers and sisters and my mom was essentially a single mom at least by the time I rolled around we would joke in my family that. So there's you know like I said before like there's my four older brothers and sisters and there's five years and then there's me and we have this joke in our family that my older brothers and sisters their upbringing was like the first half of Boogie Nights where it's like on film. And it's all golden Hues and light 70s am Rock and then. My little sister and his childhood was like the second half of Boogie Nights that was like on video. And cocaine and fireworks on the floor not really cocaine be cocaine never happened but it was definitely a different type of upbringing between the two of us because by the time Robin and I were coming up my mom was. Raising us all by herself so you know she's my mother was a very hard worker I got my work ethic from her but she was working so hard to raise us and get us all. You know in one piece to adulthood that there wasn't a whole lot of like pressure or expectations on me academically or from a career perspective it was just sort of like. Get through school get a job you know no one's ever going to take care of you the way that you're going to take care of yourself you have to like be able to provide for yourself at all times and and I did I really have worked since I was 14 I got my first job. I was a 13 or 14 my sister Jennifer she was a manager at a restaurant in Omaha and I was a busser at the restaurant and I tables for weekend brunch and then eventually I kind of worked my way up to being an expeditor which is the person that's in the window when plates come up you find the ticket and you make sure that like this one doesn't have onions that one has extra cheese and you you would put the whole tables together and then get them to the runner and I was like 15 years old and I was doing that and I was like the youngest person who had ever done that. At that job at that restaurant at that time my sister actually wasn't my manager at that point she had moved on but I had a management a kind of recognizing my. Organizational and detail orientation - from a very young age. But anyway so I worked a lot of retail and service jobs all through high school and college and as I mentioned before I came here to Chicago to go to college I have a degree in English and art history from DePaul and you know when I graduated I wasn't sure what I wanted to do or what I was even qualified to do I tried to dig around in temping and then I got swamped in that improv cycle actually when I was doing improv like a couple of the theaters that I worked at had like touring companies so they would hire us to let come in and perform like the like the norvo Nordisk third quarter. Jamboree where they talk about their quarterly earnings or whatever and then we would like perform while they were eating and. One of the things I did this isn't like the early days of smartphones AT&T was rolling out one of the first smartphones and it was a flip phone. And it had a web browser on it and had a bunch of set apps that were like. They were static apps that they were for like Cosmo and zagat's and some sport thing maybe it was ESPN but anyway it was like the first smartphone and they hired a bunch of us to like fly around the country and go to like their sales meetings to pretend to be Target audiences so that when we would walk into the stores they would know how to sell us the phones and the whole thing culminated in this event that was in Times Square and it was in November it was early November and so it was. A dicey decision to do an outside event in November in New York City but whatever so I had like a chef's outfit on and then there were other people who had like old-timey movie outfits on like movie they work in a movie theater with a thing with like the double sets of buttons and there was a football player football players and we basically were in Times Square okay. And we were handing out playing cards to people to promote this AT&T smartphone that was being launched there was a glass box that was set up in the middle of Times Square where this guy who came in second place in The Bachelor was going to be running all of his day-to-day operations using the smartphone and the whole thing was being emceed by a young Ryan Seacrest and he was like on the stage Charlie was like ordering he like use match.com to get a date and then people could vote on the date like vote on the person that he's going to potentially have a date with it was all very like staged and ridiculous and then he ordered her flowers from ft.com and then he like had food delivered from Pizza Hut and all of this was happening while we were standing there who like dressed up like physical manifestations of all of the apps that were on. The phone at the time the problem is that there was a sleet storm going on and it was like raining. Ice shards from the sky and we're all freezing and soaking no one wanted are playing cards nobody wanted anything to do with this ridiculous thing Ryan Seacrest is working harder than I have ever seen anybody work in my entire life trying to get people to care and engage with Charlie who came in second place on The Bachelor to watch him use his phone to like do these day-to-day tasks they want to shutting it down early and we had all these boxes of playing cards that we had like they were like you know they were like, eight and a half by 11 by 8 inch boxes that were filled with playing cards they were super heavy we had to carry them back to our hotel so I'm dressed like a chef I'm carrying this box along with everybody else I was boxes they were so heavy. We get back to the hotel we walk in and the White Stripes were staying there. And Jack and Meg white are like in the lobby and I'm staying there like a drowned Chef rat holding this box of cards. My arms are killing me and I'm like this couldn't be the least cool way to interface with Jack White and I didn't. So I start toasting Jam if this is your first episode that you're tuning in for by way of recap toast and jam is a mobile DJ company that I own that specializes in weddings and corporate events. In 2005 I incorporate I start the company and. Basically I disappeared from sight from all my friends during this period of time because all I was doing was eating sleeping breathing. Toast and jam so I was living in my condo I was working super super hard all the time we had all of our staff meetings there I did all my clients meetings out of there.

00 in the afternoon I'd be still my pajamas I haven't brushed my teeth I was still you know like I was on like my fourth meal of the day I was working all the time and I realized I needed some kind of separation between church and state because working and living in the same place wasn't wasn't good for me. So I partnered up initially with a wedding planner friend of mine because she was also realizing that she needed to get out of her house and so the two of us found this location in Wicker Park that was a really cool space and when we were talking with the guy that was the owned it he. Explain told us that by yeah he's like oh yeah kind of casually mentions like oh yeah like in the early 90s the Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair use this as their practice space and I was like this is the universe forcing me into this place and so we go and we look at it and like at the time there was a children's clothing were designer in there and she had all these creepy small mannequins with tiny kids clothes on it and, I mean that's neither here nor there it just was a thing I think about when I think about the early days of toast and jam with a creepy mannequins in the room anyway so we were there in that office for 10 years and it was great it was it made us look more legitimate. It gave us a place to have meetings gave me a place to go to work I could set like I work from nine to five. And it was right in the middle of what I lovingly referred to as the crotch of Wicker Park it was like one block off of North Damon in Milwaukee at some point toast and jam was growing so much that I was kind of taking over the whole office my DJ's were having meetings there every night and I was had a lot of equipment and stuff so the planner decided to move out and get our own place and it was kind of huge for me to take over the whole office it was terrifying but I had to take the leap and you know see if if I could run a whole office like have a whole office and I yeah I took it over and and I just it worked out and never looked back. And so we're in the office I'm in there all the time I'm working and then I decided that I needed to bring on a second person to work in the office with me. Around this time I was getting married and I really wanted to have a honeymoon I wanted to be able to. Take a week or two off from work and actually take a week or two off from work because I up until that moment I hadn't had a real vacation in years like I mean because when it's just me I'm the one who had to do all of the you know initial emails from flattery inquiries send contracts and DJ intros like I was doing everything myself and at this point. You know that was around 2010/2011 we I mean we had probably 15. DJ's working here and we were doing a lot of events I mean we were averaging between, three to five hundred events a year around that time and I need to tell so one of my DJ's Dina she had working for me for a couple of years then she kind of got burnout and was like I'm leaving DJing and I was like you want to stick around and use all those skills you were learned DJing and turn them into a administrative job and she said yes and so she came in and she got things organized now she would be like why do you do this this way and I'd be like cuz it's the way it has to be because I came up with it and it's the best way and then she'd be like so that's a great I think you're awesome you're she's this beautiful way of kind of. Talking me into doing things differently and it was always better it was always better when Everdeen would take something over and change it you know. I am really good with systems and organization and things like that and I had created a lot of clever ways to keep track of leads you know how to keep track of the calendar which I lived and died by because if we if I don't know if I've got availability for a date then. I can't give it to anybody a DJ for it and I made all the contracts and you know things like that and this is you know I started the company in 2005 think about how much the internet has changed since 2005 there's so many like apps and. You know software and things that can help you now streamline everything but that didn't really exist back then so I was kind of just bootstrapping it and like pulling it all together and I had come up with this very elaborate way that only existed inside of my head to keep track of everything and my way, was obviously the best way and there was no way to tell me anything because I like a lot of people who start their own businesses suffer from this like Founders syndrome where we think that we are the only ones that can solve a problem we have to be involved in every decision. Our way is the best way and yes whenever we are presented with an alternative way to do something. Some steps out or you know my you know be able to automate it completely you know we always claim oh we tried that I tried it didn't work and this very redundant 17 step process that I have created to receive a payment using five different applications and like 10 different spreadsheets is the only way that makes sense and it is the best way and it is absolutely true that it is the only way that makes sense because it only makes sense to you and it makes delegation and being able to offload any part of your business impossible I remember what I was doing my research when I was creating the toast and jam lab my online course that teaches DJ's how to grow in scale their businesses I interviewed a bunch of different DJs around the country to kind of get an idea of their pain points and things like that and there was this one guy I talked to. Who I was like well tell me about your day like what do you do like what's your job like what do you what's what are you doing he's like oh I check all the leads and I write all the quotes and then I do all the meetings and then I'd make the contracts and I do everything else and the DJ's my few Subs they just do the jobs when they when they happen and I'm like. Almost all of that could be offloaded to somebody else and he's like oh no way. Because I mean you know it doesn't take a lot of brainpower to like send a quote or like look at the computer and see if there's somebody available or like right can't be that's all admin stuff and he's like well no way they want my jobby then that's my whole job and at first I thought. Look I get it like that is your job right now like you are working in your business but if you were to offload all of that stuff that quite frankly didn't require your brain to do you could do all kinds of stuff with that to work on your business you know you could look at your geocities website that has the like most recent photograph is you know from the Bush Administration the second one not the first one but still a long-ass time ago you could maybe get some new photographs in there that aren't just you in low ceiling sad banquet halls with like four people on the Dance Floor which there were pictures of you can go network with other vendors so you weren't working the same for banquet halls you can post a flyer at a record store to get new talent to work for you you can do all kinds of things you can look at learn what SEO is and try to optimize your website from that perspective there's so many things you could be doing to work on your business and instead you're just working in it. When I was thinking about starting DJ company I thought I would just get the URL DJ Mary nisi.com and go from there but then I was like wait a minute if I do that then I am the company and I knew even then that I didn't want to be the sole employee I knew I wanted to have other people to work for me I knew I wanted to grow an army of DJ ninjas to assassinate dance floors on my behalf isn't that kind of the point of working for yourself is that you figure out the product and you grind for a while until you fine-tune it and then you grow it into something that you can scale hire employees and you can step back and then at some point you're getting in a solid nine holes before you wander in around noon three sheets to the wind isn't that the goal I mean that's the man that that's like the madman method and that's not true at all that's out the oh that's gross 70 stuff for me it was all of that without the golf or the day drinking or the office dalliances. All of this is to say when I started the company I remember when I got my first lead that wasn't for me where they were asking for a DJ that wasn't me. I was like yes it's happening because prior to that point if I were to be like sorry I'm I'm booked in that available I need to give you just another DJ that people would just go stand it was like it kind of sucks because it's like wait a minute first of all I'm great but the everybody else here is just as good as I am if and so. It was great for me when I finally got that person that asked for not me and I know that when I tell this story to other entrepreneurs they're kind of like wow how did you deal with that I'm like very well. I was very happy when somebody wanted something other than me because it meant I was growing a good business not just a good service that I was doing. And so just because you came up with the idea doesn't mean it's a great idea and there might be a better way of doing things and being open to that I think is a sign of in many ways true entrepreneurship and also true leadership because being able to groom other people for better positions and being able to offload them to other people is also a skill that will determine if your business is built for the long term. Okay so Dina is running things I get pregnant. And I am looking forward to just giving birth to this baby it was going to be awesome and then when I was 8 months pregnant I got audited by the Illinois Department of Employment Security and an audit is really awful anyway but it is really bad when you are 8 months pregnant. So I'm eight months pregnant I'm actually in Hawaii on my babymoon. And Tina sends me a message through Facebook because she's like I'm not going to contact you at all and so she sends it to me through Facebook and she's basically was like um I think you're being audited and basically, this was in 2013 and. They former employee had filed for unemployment and at home I did use that point had been 1099 and when you can't you can't get unemployment when you are. A 1099 person that somehow it flagged me and so wanted to try to find out if I owed them back unemployment taxes and here's the other thing about audits in general they're about their opinion based or not fact-based that you basically it's like if the auditor decides whether or not you are you know you owe anything it's not really like. There's a formula for it it's like opinion so basically they determine that I owed back unemployment taxes and that my DJ's were Miss categorized and they should have been W2 instead of 1099 and I wound up hiring a. Labor firm and tax account and I mean it was it cost me so much money in the end the state of Illinois got like 13 hundred dollars for me. And it cost me almost 30,000 dollars when I got through that entire house so it's it's not fun to go through this and I want to redoing my contracts and my employment agreements all this other stuff to try to like keep it at Bay and then two years later I got it again. And it was through that decision that I wanted deciding to make all of my DJ's 1019 or taking them from 1099 to being W2 like it never stops. When you own a business it's not just like. You are like you want a DJ company and you are or anything you like doing like it could be anything it could be a photographer or you know you 3D tchotchkes that you sell on Etsy or whatever your job isn't just you make the product you sell the product and. Then you get to sit around and enroll around in the money after you pay your taxes like there's other elements to it that get brought into it that you can't even anticipate like I could never anticipate an audit like you. And when I think about I think they're I think of an audit is being a financial audit for the IRS but this was by an entity that was trying to decide if I had my employees categorized correctly and if not then I was no the money and it's like. You know it doesn't that doesn't matter they don't care if you're pregnant like I'm like hey I'm eight months pregnant can we push this to next year and they're like nope. And it's like okay so I'm having to deal with finding you know. 10 years of financial stuff while I'm losing amniotic fluid and trying to you know just get the baby out of me and that was it's all whole other things it's in this time my son flipped breach and then I had to deal with trying to get him to flip which is a whole other Nightmare and I want to have a C-section I didn't want to have have. So many things can are happening while the same time the Illinois Department of Employment Security doesn't really care that you're going through all of this and you have to provide it's all this documentation and you've got a deadline and it has to happen but the luckily we want up getting all the documentation to them before I gave birth and then we wound up losing the audit we found that out after I gave birth but that was after I came back from maternity leave so but point of all this was was that. I had to do so much pre-planning and so much preparation and so much training to be able to replace me but then once I did it it was done. And I was able to take a maternity leave and I was able to give birth to be with my son for a little bit. So yeah when you are a business owner at the end of the day the buck stops with you no matter how hard it you try to like office or certain things or make something somebody else's job there are still going to be like I don't understand this you still want to having to do it for them whether it's what you want to be doing or not but I think if a man who owns a business where to get audited. A month and a half before their child was due and even if you are planning on taking paternity leave you are. Sleep deprivation and possibly sympathy weight gain as side you are the same person physically after the baby was born and you can sign documents have meetings I mean it's you're not physically. And mentally bogged down the same way though the person who had the child is I was so grateful I had Dina my accountant my lawyers my friends and family around me to help me get through the audit because it really was a nun fun thing to be dealing with in the last month of my. Pregnancy with my only child and by having that team I was able to not have to take on the entire brunt of, that completely awful situation of the audit and still be able to get through it and move on much quicker than if I was doing it alone. Music. When I figured out that this was my job at this is what I was meant to do I really I took it seriously like I want like like I find especially with women in general like when women start businesses. There's this there's this oh well it's just I mean II it's just me I don't need to set up by like a business bank account because it's just me or I don't need Business Bank I don't need to accounting software I don't have and I don't not making enough money to. Justify that I'm not making enough money to incorporate I'm not making enough money to. You know like it's just my thing I it's you know there's always this undermining of like what. It is like even though it is their sole source of income they treated as if it's just this small thing that's just gonna be the the way that they make money and it's not going to be a business and it's not going to be any it's just how they're making money and it's a well that's your job. That is that is what it is and so by not putting on your big girl pants and maybe you know taking out a loan. Aunt were incorporating and having to file an annual report at that point or getting a lawyer to actually make your contract as opposed to like you know finding a free one on the internet you know it's like all of these steps you can do look when you invest in. You know me getting an office like that was me committing like my rent for that office when I first got it it was fourteen hundred dollars a month. So I knew I had to at least make 1,400 dollars every month and that's on top of my own personal expenses you know it was like okay I'm going to make I have to make this much money and so for me bye. Striving and getting a lease that I had to make weather you know whether I had the money or not it forced me to have to take things way seriously and you know I have to book this company needed to book like it was something like we didn't like 15 weddings a month in order to like be able to cover all of the things. And. One of the weird things about owning a DJ company we people ask me what I do it's you know I'm like oh I want a DJ company we specialize in weddings and corporate events oh that's so cool that's so cool what does your husband do as if like. You know my job is seen as a hobby it gets asked a thing that either people are things like a really cool thing that I'm doing or sometimes I run into somebody I haven't seen in a long time they'll be like oh you still doing that DJ thing and it's like that DJ thing where I employ 25 people we do 700 weddings a year that thing is that the thing you're talking about. And it's like whenever I you know or four at a party and no one knows anything about John RI and the be like oh we do Mario I own a DJ company that's really cool John what do you do I'm a municipal Bond Trader and I like okay that makes sense that he can do that while she does this flighty weird thing and it's like well the flighty weird thing is actually as important to the economic safety of our family is his job is and it's you know it's also a harder thing when you know when it comes to General childcare and things like that it's like I will say men have been the default workers for ever, and so when women started entering the workforce en masse they had to start grappling with things like maternity leave or elder care or you know just the medical things that come along with women being in the workforce and men are the default and so when I started this company and I was taking maternity leave. You know one of the things is that if you're going to offer a thing to one employee you have to offer it to everybody so the fact that I took maternity leave kind of meant that I had to offer it to. Everybody else here too if they worked full-time and so, you know and Dina got pregnant like I she got a maternity leave and I want to bring another DJ to help out in the office while she was gone and like and even now D does not here anymore but now we've got Nora here and she's got children and I'm always willing to like you know I'm always gonna say yes if you got a doctor's appointment I had a lot of crappy bosses and I always wanted to be the boss that I wanted to have and. You know if somebody comes to me with a reasonable request I'm going to honor it I'm going to do what I can to make their lives easier work shouldn't be so hard. Music. Now let's talk about the whole ass Enos of the last week I'm not going to start every episode by talking about the crazy trips that I've been taking before episode but I went skiing this past week and as I mentioned in the previous episode that I had torn my ACL and I had surgery and so I was trying to get my need ready for that Yoga Retreat that I went on but what I was really doing it for was to get it back to skiing again because skiing is my happy place like literally when I was laying on the. Operating room table trying to have Sebastian cut out of my body I was thinking about skiing down this one particular run called Harmony that's on that's in canyons and Park City and so when I tore my ACL it was very. Very bombing it was a it was when I tore my ACL it was it was very disappointing and awful from the oh my God. Skiing is the only sport that I'm actually good at it's one of the things I really truly loved in this world it can't be taken away from me and so when I was working with my surgeon. Um I was he's like what do you want to do what your goal is Mike I want back on skis like within a year because if I don't get back on them immediately I'm never going to get back on them and be too afraid to like. Give it a go and so you know he having it in a very aggressive plan to. To get back up to Snuff and apparently when you get when you have that kind of sir when you have surgery in general doctors only doctors tell you to do like four times more than what you. Typically would do because they know you're not going to do everything but I did everything so after I had surgery I didn't move for two weeks. And then I was able I would to physical therapy twice a week for six months and I'm backed I'm only going once a week now but I'm still going to physical therapy and. Something dawned on me when I was dealing with all of this and I was able to get through it because everyone was like oh my god when you tear your ACL it's so hard it's the worst recovery isn't it like eight months free be back on your feet and I was like nah I don't have eight months to get back on my feet I had weddings I didn't have an option to like not be on my feet and so I follow the doctor's orders but here's the thing most people can't really follow their doctor's orders. I was able to take a full two weeks off after my surgery and I needed it like I was on Superbad meds I were met by med bad I mean like opiates and you know you can't walk and you have to get they had this metal Contraption thing that was like motorized was on my bed and I had to like lay there while it brought my knee up and down for four hours every day and like the average person kids take two weeks off and then if they do to the to take that those two weeks off they don't get to like. Have more vacation time to like actually relax and unwind like Ayo I work for myself so I was able I was able to give myself two weeks off and then. Have really great insurance through my husband's job so I had unlimited physical therapy sessions when I went to go get physical therapy so I could do as much physical therapy as I needed to do and so. As a business owner was able to give myself a time off I have really good insurance I was able to do all the things that I needed to do in order to get myself you know up and literally running again and so that kind of sucks you know I think it's one of the many things that sucks about like not having a socialized medical program in this country is because I it's only because I had really good insurance I was able to get the results that desired so anyway off that soapbox I really wanted to get back on skis again. And so we plan this short little trip to Park City for the weekend I was going to a resort that I knew like the back of my hand so I wouldn't be surprised with any I wouldn't be forced to try off try runs I didn't know I did a little lesson first thing right when I got there I did a lesson to kind of remember some nuts and bolts and then I it was a pretty great trip like I was able to. I was able to do it though but it was humbling. At certain points we had put Sebastian and ski school and I had a I had my lesson at the same time so I wasn't able to be with John when he like. And when he finished up when he drop Sebastian off at the ski school and what I met up with him. Midday to ski with him for the rest of the day while Sebastian was finishing his day-long lesson and I was like hey what time are we picking him up.

30 we are nowhere near the base of the mountain we had we're over on Iron Mountain which is like. Three or four Peaks over from where the bases and I was like are you sure it's 320 that's a really random number can you look at the little ticket they gave you so we look at the ticket and it says 245 on it.

30 now and I'm really full quick got to get all the way across the mountain so we get to the top of Iron Mountain and there's it's a it's a pretty Advanced part of the mountain that I normally would have been it would have been able to just sort of muscle through go to what we remember is being the easiest run and we get there and because there was no snow they hadn't snowed in like a month and they almost all the snow was manufactured and they weren't grooming a lot of the runs because they didn't have a lot of because of the labor crisis that they're going through right now so. They're so runs that normally would be groomed were just covered in these Moguls that were like. I'm not good they were like the size of small cars and they are and we get to this run and it's a super long run and it is just covered. In three foot high Moguls huge huge Moguls and I start trying to go down it and I'm like I can't I can't do this I physically I cannot risk. Tearing my ACL again and I was wearing a leg brace they get it I have a ski brace like a plastic it's like a is I wasn't like completely out they're vulnerable so I'm sitting there and I'm like I don't know what to fucking do because I cannot get down this thing we've got 10 minutes to get Sebastian so I called the ski Patrol and when I hurt my knee last year when I fell on the run that I fell on it was a black diamond which I don't know what I was thinking trying to do a black diamond for my last run of the day but I was laying there on the snow for like 10 minutes like by myself trying to think to myself like what I did to deserve this and is there a universe where I'm not hurt and this guy comes over and he's like hey are you hurt and I'm like I don't know so he helps me stand up and my leg literally moved from left to right at the knee like jelly like it like just was boneless just waving back and forth. And he's like are you okay I'm like yep I'm fine 100% couldn't be better and I turned myself parallel to the mountain and slid down to the part that wasn't. Like on a 90 degree angle and then I Pizza to the bottom I should have called the ski patrol like I should not have tried to manage that on my own my ego would not allow me to admit that I was hurt and that this was going to fuck up the next eight months of my life which it did. So when I'm laying there on the snow, and I'm like I know I can't do this so I call the ski patrol John Zack you're calling ski patrol like I don't know what else to do John I am stuck here I'm like 30 feet down from the top and I don't know what to do so she shows up John takes off to go spring Sebastian from ski school and she's like. Okay so you're just I'll carry your skis but you need to just walk down this mountain I'm not even kidding it was probably the length of like five football fields it was huge. And so I'm like crying at this point and I start walking down the mountain and then I slip. And I start gliding like through the Moguls on my ass. I like sledding like on my ass like and I go down like three or four of the Moguls and it was so fun like. The feeling in my heart I have it was ridiculously fun and she skis up to me she's like are you okay I'm like yeah is it okay if I just slide on my ass down this thing and she's like. If that's how you can get down get down so she basically just skis behind me while I slid down this mountain on my ass giggling and laughing my ass off and I almost feeling guilty at times because I was like oh my God this is so fun and no one else gets to do this like no one gets to just slide on their ass down through Moguls like ping-ponging through the through the mullet was it was so fun she actually told me it's actually called glissading it's a mountaineering technique when like. People are Mount are like mountain climbing it's like a way that they'll get down their kind of slide down their houses so I have to say I am horrible at asking for help. Like I can do anything on my own you do not need to help me I will figure it out like I would rather die, then let anybody know that I can't do something it is like it's not it is my week suit and. I was actually very proud of myself for calling the scoop the Snow Patrol are the ski patrol calling the Snow Patrol and when you listen to that band alone called but I was really proud of myself for like recognizing that I couldn't muscle my way through this one and that I let this person come along and I got so excited on my ass I got to experience something that most people will never experience. And even just getting back out there like it hasn't even been a year since I had the surgery my husband was like he just kept saying over and over again I'm so proud of you I would never have done this like you're doing amazing because it's you know I I probably shouldn't have gone back this quickly but my doctor said it was okay and I think they know like if I went any longer I probably would never have gotten back up so I skied with my whole ass I asked for help with my whole ass. And I think I made it through the whole trip without getting hurt I even got better at something my husband actually said I looked better like once I mic on my confidence got shook it was not cool but when I was up there and actually having fun he's like you you look like you did before. And that was a long process to get there and you know I'm not really good at being told I can't do something I'm not really good at being told that. Something might not be the same so here's the thing is that I was working so hard too. Make it so that I was the same but I'm never gonna be the same you know it's always going to have I hope it always have like an element of like. Being afraid that I'm going to hurt my knee but I'm a much more careful skier now and I'm willing to I'm willing to know when I am in a place that I can't get out of that I might need some help and. That is a difficult thing for most entrepreneurs. To Grapple with I think you want to do everything yourself or your ways are best way or the highway and. You know when I was starting my business that was one of the things I always thought was kind of good about me as an entrepreneur as I was like willing to under willing to be like I am not a bookkeeper I'm not good with numbers I'm going to hire a bookkeeper I'm not going to try to incorporate myself and save $900 I'm going to just. Have somebody else incorporate me and I'm going to pay for someone to do that I'm pretty good at identifying the things and I'm really truly bad at but. It's the DJing part of things and the dealing with my employees that's the place where I. Want to do it all myself all right guys thanks so much for tuning in I'll be back next week please live your life with your whole ass. Thanks for listening to all up in my lady business I have been your host Mary nisi you can find resources and links from this episode in the show notes at all up in my lady business.com if you enjoyed this episode smash that subscribe button and follow us on all your socials and don't forget whatever you do this week do it with your whole ass. Music.