EXPERIENCE 264 | Married & Magnetic with James and Angela Mitchell, Founders of Love Intentionally

My conversation today was with James and Angela Mitchell, the co-founders and relationship coaches at Love Intentionally. Angela was a career counselor, working in schools with depression and substance challenges, and eventually found her way into relationships. Meanwhile, James was the consment entrepreneur, working in real estate but always trying new ventures with widely ranging success. After years of taking intentional time throughout their marriage every week, every month and once a year retreats, James and Angela built the skills and resources and systems to help entrepreneurs forge strong relationships, whether it's a couple working together in business or one stable career alongside the ups and downs of an entrepreneur. Love Intentionally was formed in 2018 and experienced a revolution in recent years as the couple spent a year together and Peru and wrote a book, Married and Magnetic, the entrepreneur's guide to a thriving marriage and a booming business. This episode is full of great stories, relationship best practices, and a lot of fun. So please join me in enjoying my conversation with James and Angela Mitchell. Welcome to the LOCO Experience Podcast. On this show you'll get to know business and community leaders from all around Northern Colorado and beyond. Our guests share their stories and through it all you'll be inspired and entertained. These conversations are real and raw and no topics are off limits. So pop in a breath mint and get ready to meet our latest guests. Welcome back to the LOCO Experience Podcast. My guests today are James and Angela Mitchell. They are the founders of love intentionally and co-creators of love intentionally as well as the authors of a recently released book which is called Let me Check My Notes, Married and Magnetic. Who came up with the title? Co-created. Yeah. I mean I say all of his ideas are creative and some of them are good, but yeah most of mine are pretty good. Yeah absolutely. I'll play a numbers game though. Well they've been filtered a lot by the time yours come out of your mouth. Yes yes you are spot on there's less filter on that side of the couch. I have no shame in the unfiltered first draft game. Yeah I like to say that most people have a filter between their brain and their mouth, but for certain very high performing brain to protect the integrity of the system there's an overflow like a bypass valve that when ideas and thoughts are so good they just have to bypass the filter and go straight to the mouth. Yeah man when the creativity is flowing man get under the spout it's pouring out and this is what I live with. Greatfully. Yeah great fully. Oh huh. Yeah. I want to go back. Let's let you guys introduce yourselves just a little bit and maybe just introduce the idea of love intentionally. Sure. Yeah so I have been a counselor for 20 something years. I've worked in a few different arenas. I worked with survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, non-profit world. I worked in the schools for a long time with families and kids and then started working with couples about seven eight years ago. Was that because everything else was so hard or because you wanted a bigger challenge? Your husband was acting up and trying to start a different business. Yeah I find. Your partnership is like that. Yeah I find that I keep moving upstream. So I was working with yeah when I was working with survivors and a lot of that more intensive crisis counseling it was like how can I help prevent some of this stuff? I can go into schools and I can teach kids some skills that might you know help and it felt like upstream and more preventative and then working with young kids you also realize that as much as we can do in the schools there's also the home factor right and if home isn't happy then that can create a dynamic that the kids carrying with them and all anyway so I felt like I kept moving upstream. I've also just really enjoyed every population I've worked with and so yeah yeah and just the new challenge of it the new excitement of it and yeah and I really loved working with couples and one of the interesting things is I found that actually my years as a school counselor and working with kids has really helped me oddly enough in couples counseling because I think a lot of the patterns we develop and create that come out in relationships were often formed in childhood they were defense mechanisms and those kind of things and then they pop out in adults in our adult relationships and I'm able to spot them pretty pretty quickly. Very quickly. Yeah especially when they're coming from me. Tell me about your childhood. Right. Let me talk about it. Yeah my inner child. So what we do is we help entrepreneurs stay happily married and we do that before they get into crisis and so we look at high achievers as folks that don't wait for that crisis in order to act and to do things better. Not trying to save your marriage and trying to strengthen your marriage. Absolutely and it's a huge distinction. No I mean everybody's got their thing right every married couple is always working on something or always avoiding working on something and so we got into this because I've been in entrepreneurs since I was 11. Just my dad was a classic corporate warrior and really encouraged us to take a different path. Okay. To be the man in the arena or the woman and so when I was 11. So he wanted to be an entrepreneur but he was trapped by the Goldhand Cuts. Yeah he said I was always too busy making a living to make any money. Yeah you know and he had four kids and mouse to feed and those responsibilities. Yeah. Especially the older you get just become a little bit restrictive on options. Well that in plus health insurance. That's right. You got four kids. If I start a business my health insurance will be 2400 a month. Yeah. Yeah. Four thousand. Exactly. Well we had some benefit in that because she was in the school system and so while I was an entrepreneur she was the anchor. So we call that configuration the anchorpreneur. Yeah. And one of the things that we've done since we got married was go away once a year on what we call a marriage retreat and this was founded from our own desires and pre-marital counseling fail. We tried to be intentional about being married and so on to pre-counseling and that was terrible because counseling is designed. It just wasn't your cup of tea on the counseling side or. You think about what counselors are designed to do in relationships. They usually solve problems. They help couples in crisis because couples wait until they have that crisis and they go in there and they need to counsel. It seems like these days the marriage counselors is mostly like 90% women and they tell the women that it's all your husband's fault and you should divorce it. Well you know something. I don't know that's just my like what I've heard and I've done for people in the world. Yeah and I would say I obviously as a counselor I think counseling's great and beneficial. I made you laugh at that. So I was pretty good at some curls of teaching. I you know it also yeah matters who says it sometimes but yeah so I I think there's great counselors out there right we have a counselor that we go to when we need to and it's she's fabulous and so I to say that and to James Point especially 15 years ago when we were doing this we counseling was a lot of couples in crisis. That's where you went when there's a problem so we show up wanting to be proactive and preventative and have these bigger conversations what is this life we're going to create and all these things that we treat you talk about. Yes and it wasn't the counseling back then at least wasn't really designed for that and so that's where we decided after the failed counseling attempt to just do it on our own. So we kind of took James skills from all of his entrepreneurial years and he was used to business planning tried and setting financial goals and metrics and all these things and then I had the softer side that well let's talk about our communication and our feelings and our intimacy and all those things until we combined those and created our own weekend retreat that we went away just the two of us we talked about all these important topics got on the same page talking about the money stuff we're talking about the kids stuff exactly all of it. The vision stuff going absolutely that was my favorite part except it really wasn't and we made it up there. Right talking seriously. Right yeah so we really we just started doing that every year on our own so that's how we kind of created what was at least the first seed of love intentionally. Yeah. This was went back to win then. 2017. Okay actually a lot we got married in 2011. How long have you been? 2011. Yeah. Right away so it was part of your kind of foundations. I remember gosh years ago before 11th century was quite as real you guys being excited about it and talking about what you do and maybe even inviting us to consider checking in maybe that was the first few years. Yeah so we started with just well we started with that for ourselves and then friends started asking us about it like what is this retreat you're doing because we'd come back kind of on fire we'd be excited and we'd have all these goals and when we started meeting our goals too we started you know financially meeting our goals we were getting the kids in the house and all the things we were wanting in our life and I think people noticed and so our friends said oh what is this thing you're doing can we borrow your template so I literally sent them a word document that's what it was at the hard time and the feedback we kept getting was you have to do something with this there's so many couples out there that need this and at the time I was like well there's got to be a lot out there like this and what I discovered was most retreats for couples were either religious focused a particular religious philosophy or for couples in crisis it was a savior marriage retreat it didn't seem like it fit a lot of the couples we were interacting with was like well we just want to build an intentional life we want to stay connected we want to make sure our marriage and our business are thriving like how do we do that and so that's where we started I think that and one of my talents I think is identifying where there's both talent and a market opportunity and I would share that you know I've had an interest in doing this kind of thing personally you know because of my involvement with business and planning and strategic thinking and stuff and not to throw under the bus but Jill's been a little resistant like I just want to help support you and whatever the things she's like that kind of I guess more from a little bit religious side of like a help me yeah right and trust God and things will happen and change and stuff and I think for us it's amounted to a little bit of aloofness you know we post exchange students and stuff and we travel and we do things but we don't really plan that much what we're trying to achieve each year for example yeah which that absence of children in part allows that a little extra space yeah kind of but anyway so I can so I can see where there would be a lot of value proposition there because there is a lot of stake yeah and for us there's always these seasons of life where certain things are possible and like for example we'll talk about our kids for a sec at certain ages it makes more sense to go to Disney right now right and so if we wanted to make sure that we had those experiences at the prime ages then it behooved us to at least treat that like a big rock and not I mean gosh no we don't plan out every little detail maybe we did in the past but we've learned how to leave some space for magic sure it's been one of our lessons but also as growing adults and with my parents who are aging like certain trips with them they came to visit us when we lived in Peru last year for the year and that was a really great experience but we were on the tail end of there being able to manage like the stairs at Machu Picchu right so it won't be too much longer before you're supporting them in ways that you haven't spent a lot of time thinking about yet yeah life it's always changing it turns out yeah you get one thing figured out and then another season so you wrote a book while you're in Peru is that true correct we co-wrote the book co-read it yeah theme who's uh who's uh better at like thumb wrestling or you know if it's like a 50-50 is there a decider for you guys well that's a great question um thumb wrestling would probably be and would have been really great to decide exactly I mean you look like you have pretty long thumbs yeah I mean I put a bigger advantage she's really competitive she's the competitive one I could see you're like poking you in the ribs so that you're distracted and then she could she'll play dirty yeah hands down she learned that from her dad oh my dad cheated at candy land when I was like three so yeah yeah yeah we we get a lot of modeling from our parents um what we do when somebody when we find that like I want to talk about this or you know in certain aspects of the book I think this is an important thing to say and it didn't necessarily get agreed with and this is like one of those challenges about being what we call couplepreneurs now we work in the same business yeah and so we've decided a long time ago two things one either is it my lane or is it your lane yeah that's I was just actually thinking yeah we have yeah we have very clearly defined roles we have them at home we have them in our business it was one of the mistakes we made when we first started working together is we got along so great as a married couple and we switched over into being business partners as well and did not clearly define roles in that arena no man as well as no it did not work and so we've learned very quickly we needed to clearly define roles there and how we look at it as we do who's the leader and who's the supporter on this so it doesn't mean we can't ask for help or get each other's advice but who's taking lead and taking lead also part of that means if there's a disagreement you get the final say on that because we've usually identified you as lead because you have a strength in that area right or the skill set or whatever it might well yeah well also drive in and say I feel really strongly about this and that's just the cue that okay this isn't like one of those like okay whatever you not whatever you think it's like okay if you feel strongly about this well so do I right and that's when a better conversation can happen and we get to go back up to the top level who are we talking to in this like what is the message we're trying to convey how do we want them to feel right and whatever my idea is and whatever her idea is if neither one of them feels like the right one we both feel strongly there's typically a third better thought in there well and I was just thinking to myself about things like female security and sanctity in a way like so for me like the the zone of bedroom activities like Jill gets to kind of be the lead if it's something that she's not really comfortable with in there then she's the decider yeah yeah right yeah to to to to to an extent she can't be the decider that next month maybe you'll get lucky like there has to be some give and take but in terms of you know who kind of has ownership over that space I feel like that should be kind of a woman's choice to some extent yeah and that take what's the conversation absolutely yeah and then we always say you have to move at the rate of the slowest nervous system so you don't want to bypass someone's nervous system right and so that could be for sex and intimacy that could be for a financial decision right if he's ready to like throw it all on red right and I'm like wait wait wait we've got a kid in college we've got two other males to feed right like let's take a step back we have to move at the rate of the slowest nervous system and this is why that's just talk on sex and intimacy as fun as it can be at the retreat it was always always a little challenging if you might can tell already I like to live a little bit more on that edge when that shows up in our sex and intimacy quite often and while we want to move at the pace of the slowest nervous system there's also a check in from Angela like okay is this my nervous system or is this just my like comfort zone yeah 100% and we came up with this language there's a thing called a want will and won't list this thing was super awesome for us we didn't create it but it was a helpful tool something you stole from somebody yeah well it was given to us we worked with and got trained and certified in sex and intimacy coaching okay and that coach had given it to us as a tool to use in our own relationship and then something that we could use and this thing is extremely detailed like extra make you blush if it doesn't like good on you you might have to google some of the terms start stop keep is the thing we use in business yeah yeah start with things we want to stop but if it was something that I wanted and she wanted especially when it comes to intimacy and definitely in our business too it's like great you won't I want it like that's an easy thing like let's go there and then the next one is like I want that or she wants that and I'm like I will do it okay I will do that for you yeah and then that's where a lot of the exploration comes in and like getting outside of that comfort zone but making sure we're staying inside the safety zone she still feel safe or I still feel safe but I'm like is that a will you know like that if there's two wills no reason to move forward yeah exactly and a will and a won't is obviously any won't any won't I know yeah it's a automatic veto yeah it's interesting tool yeah I'd like it it's good language before we get too far along the conversation you were admiring the whizcal the whizcal thanks to seed and spirit distilling yeah or being our spirit sponsor and your first time tasting it would you like to share some tasting notes tasting notes smoky smooth put a couple cubes of ice in this thing and it's just really open it up man like I haven't I'm not much of a mezcal connoisseur so to speak yeah you're fondness for let American culture doesn't mean you like hasn't made it to that one yet like you know me and tequila had a bad experience back in the day and so I think I put all of those like you know types of things in the same way up with about the whizcal are with the mezcal kind of a tone here you do like whiskey I do like whiskey yeah I'm might be a connoisseur in that one it pair really well like yeah I would definitely drink this again five stars on yelp very good yeah so this is like a reintroduction to to being in love with agave-based products yeah kind of yeah the ony-hose like you know kind of find it I think sipping I think the problem with tequila was I wasn't sipping it sipping over shooting different yeah yeah I don't do many shots anymore I shooting like you know you're like you're like what's a shot yeah I've always said like I don't generally wake up the next day and go wow that shot was such a good idea like that doesn't happen so it's better Martini though like anytime we're gonna move into those will categories if I give her a martini we'll call it a ginset it I will I will with a martini right yeah I will I will more happily like it'll be a more enthusiastic will if you give me a martini yeah listen to the game changer I remember my first two real margarita lunch lunch yeah I did you take a nap later in the afternoon no I muscled through but I don't know how twenty bucks as he went to a brewery afterwards no it did not I was I was banking like they expect me there at the office and I'm pretty sure yeah I wasn't dating Jill yet but I'm pretty sure this girl was like a 35-year-old divorce save that was our customer at the bank and she took me there and I don't know if she had some designs on me or what I was you know 27 and pretty good shape at the time you know 26 I don't remember but anyway we had the two margarita lunch and then I went back to the office and stared at CNN.com for like two hours she was looking for a deposit no I was ignorant like I've never really yeah I've never really picked up that kind of thing classic yeah you know which is you know part of my super strength as well because it allows me to not be so distracted yeah a little bit you know it's like oh you're so nice so who hit on who first you or Jill she had a major crush on me which I knew about but she was 19 and I was 25 and I kissed her outside of a kick party and then like the next weekend I told her sorry you're too young for me I can't date you you're younger than my sister which was weird for me at the time I guess and then like a year to half later we like reconnected and then they started dating when she goes old enough to go into the bar correct yeah not quite actually not quite I knew the door man at the tutorial had pretty well so like a month before Jill turned 21 I took her there on a Sunday late afternoon and the door was I was like just just show him your ID Jill because we're in a big line yeah and so she trusted me and she did and Ryan sorry I thought you know the best Ryan but he looks at me he's like bear I'm like did it Sunday night we'll be good yeah just let us in you said trailhead yeah yeah we met in trailhead nice okay it's a it's a love factory there apparently yeah all the strongest relationships start to form the trailhead for Jill and I were already friends like after I shut her down we were still friends for like better part of a year or six months at least or like that before we kind of lost touch but but so I I don't know I I kissed her you know but she very clearly like wanted me to yeah like I wasn't picked up on that I wasn't taking too much risk yeah but good on her for you know shootin for for you know a older guy yeah shootin her shot looks like it worked out yeah coming up on 23 years 23 years I want for you guys what was that like for you well so we met in trailhead I had a what time of night was it when you met definitely an evening it was a friend's birthday party so it's my time but I mean like nine o'clock when things are normal or like 1245 it was not super like yeah I was like the first stop on the birthday train a good friend of mine who happened to live with her was having a birthday there and so I show up and Angela is dating somebody at the time and I was dating somebody at the time but it was just like log and I was like kind of like her well we had also just gotten back from tellyride bluegrass which I used to live in tellyride and so we connected over that I lived there from 2003 to 2007 okay Jill and I went to 2011 tellyride bluegrass I think okay we probably were there actually at 20 I used to go every year because I would go back even after I lived there so broke our festival cherry we had never been to a music festival yeah God's a great festival it was awesome and I was just like in love with tellyride and since I had just been to the festival I caught like a little cool points with her and the guy she was dating like worked for the festival so he was like backstage I was like that's fucking cool like you know so he and I are talking about you're boyfriend yeah he's talking about David burn and all this stuff and that was a fun year when he played and I just like logged her and then in the future things kind of started moving around and she became single again so did I okay and then a good friend of mine JJ yeah yeah he was my first mentor in the real estate space yeah so when I cut my teeth selling real estate yeah so the broker he was McGuy and they were friends his wife because they had kids together so when I got married I got when she had the tulu or doula yeah still there yeah yeah still right my dog used to be terrified of thunderstorms and found her way down to tula from why we live like the port and would come right or look yeah the port and would come just went to the square and they held her like I was at work way in the south side of town yeah Jill went and got her and I was like nice just I don't know buy something nice to say thanks for watching our dog for like half the day that Jill came home with like a 220 pair dollar pair of jeans yeah it's like what are the most affordable things they had yeah everything there's nice it's very routine yeah yeah make it look good she rocked those jeans for years I was really glad like I you know nice shit is expensive but then it's relaxed for a long time yeah so anyway kudos to tula yeah so anyway so JJ it was his birthday okay he's starting like 40 I think he was some of the big party at what's now our bar yeah what it was before um and yeah so we were going and that's that place before anyway as I'm leaving I tell Emily my roommate um who is how we first met I was she's like oh you look nice or she said something like that and I was like oh thanks it's gonna be just a bunch of married guys like I'm no one to impress kind of think and she goes well James is gonna be there and I was like oh yeah no she's young in immature which was true I say that I might have thought it but I didn't say that a fair bit younger uh I'm four years young three and a half okay twins you ask three and a half every step yeah he married up um yeah so anyway and then turns out that went over to her house uh I was like Emily and we come watch a Broncos game and I'm not a huge football fan but I was like let's go watch Broncos game and she's living with Angela and so I go over there and Angela's all like in her pajamas with the glasses on and she's an elementary school counselor and I was like she's really fucking cute um and so I just asked her I was like she has a kid it's like hey so I'm kind of been into these older women uh you said it this way yeah yeah he said it this way I said uh what and if they have a kid a lot of them have a kid or divorce you know and they're getting a little older and so what's it like to date a woman with a kid and she just laid it out this is the playbook this is the playbook on how to date a woman with a kid and so I'm just like over there taking notes like I had no idea that he was interested in me yeah when he asked the question it wasn't a general question yeah it was very pointed I'm like I honestly I maybe I'm like you I didn't take up on it I didn't notice I was like she's like sure I'll answer that question yeah take take notes take that take notes yeah here's what I would like to see yeah I was like you can't be spontaneous because you have to find a sitter and yeah I need to give him all the things yeah you're welcome but it's not that one old was your child at this time he was three okay yeah which is a very attentive needing time how long before you let him meet James um well he first just met him under the guise of him being my friend like I'd let James like come over for a barbecue with other people um it wasn't until I mean we figured out pretty early that this was going to be serious so maybe like six months in I let him start actually spending more time um but I was very I was one of those that I'm like I don't want to introduce him to someone that's not going to stick around yeah yeah you know and so it wasn't until I think we had shared the like I love yous and felt like this was maybe going somewhere yeah we were technically one night stand turned into lifelong marriage can work I'm glad um so we have a thing that we like to introduce which is the purpose driven segment um and it's sponsored by purpose driven wealth uh with Clint Jasperson and his team just saw him at the golf simulator with his daughters oh nice yeah he's turned into a pretty good golfer yeah um he's taking his grades just him and his two girls I mean one of them was wearing the coolest boots and like a like a full-on uh princess outfit like on like on the golf like she was hitting his simulator so it was yeah I don't they had their clubs I did we got there we were leaving as they were arriving but I just don't know if you're supposed to wear your boots when you're you wear whatever you want really later yeah especially whenever you're three and super cute fair well good job Clint way to be out there in the community so um I'm going to find a couple of cool questions um and I like this one here what's your like let's talk about internal compass when it comes to like even that uh what was it not start to stop keep but don't we'll want want will want um but when it comes to like ethical decisioning like where where does your compass come from is it from background research is it from compromise you want to let me go okay yeah I have a few things so uh I definitely I am a nerd by nature I love to research things so there is part of me like if I'm making a decision that I don't if it's a decision that feels like it would benefit me to gather more information yeah I'm going to go do that um I'm going to get all them and that feels like as a gut powered thing sounds like a little least a little bit yeah a little bit so rather than making the quick gut decision though which he's more prone to do um it's more like uh okay I think I need more I need more information okay so I information gather I also really I'm one of those that um really bases decisions around relationships and the people involved in the decision right so like how is this decision going to affect others yeah how is this going to affect me how is this going to affect my relationships right and and that is one of my um people over profit usually right yeah um and so I would say I take the people into consideration the relationships um and then I do also which I have leaned into a lot more I do think I have especially on that second piece of it the people part I have a pretty good intuition around that stuff right like I can tell when something just doesn't sit right with me or doesn't feel right um yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and so and James is really great about if he'll even ask me sometimes he's like what's your intuition saying on this one and it rarely if ever has led me astray actually the poor decisions in my life I've made which thankfully haven't been a ton were because I overrode my intuition and usually in an effort to like people please but in not the is this person going to benefit more like I don't want this person to be mad at me right right people please right which is different we don't do that anymore yeah yeah I like I can't override my intuition just to make someone else happy yeah yeah this part the compass for me at this stage in life man I'm gonna say it's my heart okay you know and what's in the greatest service of love and sometimes love can feel tough um but effectively what is going to create the most love for that person for themselves and then for their spouse partner their kids the world around them and it can be tough sometimes because that I don't want to disappoint somebody or I don't want to do that hard thing it's like you can really buck up and say this is going to be a tough moment it might feel disorienting but if you're doing it one for the right reasons and the right reason being your heart then it's going to guide you to a really great place um talking about um I guess they like when did you transition from this being an idea um the love intentionally we'll call it had you already been marriage counseling for a while and James was like oh now I've got a super weapon I can create this or you were like it's been really hard to stay lovingly married to this guy for seven years or whatever it has been it's not all peaches and rainbows yeah yeah um yeah yeah yeah evolution really yeah yeah so the first thing we did with love intentionally really was um after we passed around our we're a document you know we got the feedback um was I got and again this was kind of an intuition thing I literally woke up one morning we were at a friend's birthday in Oho Caliente which is beautiful the hot springs down there if you've been so it was kind of like I'm gonna just call it divinely inspired um yeah moment that I was like it's awesome three times actual yeah gorgeous and I was I just got the hit I was like I want to take this thing we're doing for ourselves and we've been sharing with people I want to facilitate that experience for other couples and so that's when we started our first retreat I believe that was 2018 I think 2018 was our first retreat did you have structure at all to your first retreat like for that was just you two or how did you come up with that we literally made a list of topics okay these are the important things to cover yeah these are the topics that each you know and we co co-created the list um and borrowed a friend's condo and estus park for the weekend yeah yeah yeah and and went through um yeah so it got more structure over the years because we started beefing up the topics and adding ones we realized we needed and we it became a much fuller thing by the time we really started sharing it um but yeah then I was like I want to facilitate this I've always loved group work I love the dynamic and the the mastermind if you will that happens in groups yeah yeah well it's like inspiring too if you see counselors get frustrated all the time because they're like how they're just not doing the things that they see they're gonna do and then put somebody in like a local think tank type environment and they're like should if I turn up next week and I haven't done the thing instead I was gonna do like it's not just yeah so count ability yeah so that was really the first thing we started doing and you it was shortly after that you switched to coaching yeah so she's bringing all this counseling yeah okay and she loves the retreats and I would go to the retreats and not feel that like particularly yeah I got in feel this level of mastery real estate this whole time but also like let's flash back to renewal blue though that was a fun season which is when I first met you really yeah so I've always wanted to do this impact on the world you know whatever impact means to you but I wanted to have a positive influence on this idea with renewal of like fixing the world let me get more renewable energy into the real estate sector there is a problem there's an opportunity I'm passionate about it let's go there's subsidies for solar panels 100% yeah and isolation and I get it and I'm willing to do the work and so I'd help people buy houses and while they're buying them in that financial event at solar panels insulation high efficiency units whatever whatever the house needed and to me that was pretty similar to the work we do now but I had this realization it was like I don't want to fix problems right I just want to create solutions and that was where if more love exists in the world more love exists in your relationship then you have more energy to do the other things to show up better for your family to show up better for your community and so it has a similar impact of creating more yeah yeah I mean there's one of the beautiful things about frankly like solar or agriculture is there actually additive you know so many businesses are service oriented right where you you know you I pay this counselor I pay this real estate agent or whatever but if things could be additive like frankly my marriage is better so I work harder I have more energy business works better yeah I'm not spending all this mental load and all this extra thought on oh gosh I'm going to get home and we're still in the middle of this fight we haven't resolved it yet or I'm trying to just like give her the cold shoulder dealing with the cold shoulder yeah it takes a lot out of a person to live in that tension low level or greater than that at all times and it really has a huge impact on what we can produce and what we can create in this world and especially with entrepreneurs we have a dream trying to do something well I bet like you being kind of secure focused research data you being the entrepreneurial dreamer and being in real estate where like from 2007 or whatever what you started through the you know financial that was fun thing and stuff after that and just waves up and down you know there's different seasons sometimes you rock it and sometimes it's slow and sometimes renewable is costing us a lot of money to work on and sometimes it makes us a little money that's all nice absolutely yeah and so I would say what happened was you had to your credit you had a ton of personal experience and making a marriage successful while building businesses right entrepreneurs got more than one going at a time and so and so we had done a lot of that work for ourselves and really found the systems that worked and helped us be successful and like I said shared them with friends and everything and we just we felt like in so many ways we had kind of this recipe and then so you came to the retreats initially with all that personal experience you didn't have a lot of professional training yet in coaching so then you went out and got a shit ton yeah I felt kind of inadequate in the space like when coaching workshop I'm like I can facilitate some conversations but like when it came to yeah the smart yeah I've got the lived experience right but I didn't have the professional experience and so this shift started to happen where I was like they love intentionally is our future this is the impact we can have on the world this is like how we can be the right and so I always have chosen to have a level of mastery in the craft that I choose and so the bridge from being in real estate and helping people buy and sell homes which by the way comes with a lot of marriage counseling people are buying and selling them relationship management management exactly was ninja selling so I was at the group real estate and Larry Kendall started that and he was the founder of ninja selling and ninja selling has coaches yeah and I always practice ninja love ninja yeah yeah and there was a guy that kind of spun that up and grew it for a while too I forget years ago now that kind of made ninja selling its own little unit almost out there that could be Lauren yes yeah yeah so she's the COO and her husband Rob is the CEO of ninja still there yeah he's been doing almost 10 years and I mean Lauren's been with Larry since she came right out of college and I knew Lauren in college yeah it was actually Lauren that was like have you considered coaching because I was starting to talk to people I'm ready to move out of this and I want to go into love intentionally I was like a bridge yeah and so I got 2000 hours of coaching entrepreneurs in business through ninja selling that were paid in about another thousand that were free right right and so I just got a ton of experience there and then I started noticing with entrepreneurs and salespeople it wasn't about the structure of it like go do the thing like you're talking about loco right go do the thing and then a week later it hasn't happened so we get back on our coaching call you were going to make 50 calls how many do you do like 27 okay well instead of trying to figure out more time blocks we started to figure out the emotional blocks and that was where I got into more of my men's coaching phase okay and so in the men's coaching world it's this idea that it's the tension that's coming up inside of us and not being able to manage that tension that is us getting in our way so I don't want to feel salesy or I feel like I'm bothering people whatever that emotion is that was getting them in the way of actually making the calls or doing the action became to me and my own personal life and then also in the coaching like what actually gets the needle moving blow jobs that works really well when you work with your spouse otherwise HR doesn't yeah doesn't really work with your clients as much a lot of realtors are into that I think but I wouldn't recommend it oh anyway sorry I'm glad you laughed at that I live with him yeah um yeah I'm always like baby if I do this thing like right if I do this hard thing yeah if I make X amount of calls this week yeah you like to be incentivized I do like that device but I would also say you realize too in that coaching that in the men's coaching that that was often those sent that same tension in the I don't want to say inability maybe the lack of skill in managing emotions feeling through them was also getting in the way of men's relationships and their marriage 100% do you think and this probably more question to you Angela do you think that the kind of changing dynamic you know right now like 65 percent of college students are females and so like 15 years from now it may be that females dominate the income spectrum in households if they choose to take on those slackers as husbands in the future right like it's good later and later and stuff um like do you feel that there's like a lack of clarity about what we're pointing toward you know it used to be kind of about you know back in the day day it was like the husband gets a good job mom is a great mom and cook and raise four to six little especially if you're Catholic right yeah but now it's one to two little right or maybe three for Craig Craig like us yep right and then also it won't be long before there is more than parity really realized by the yeah yeah yeah we actually wrote a whole chapter in our book on this just how marriage has changed over the decades right and so I mean we pens off our back you want to go but agricultural society and you need a bunch of kids to work on the farm and it was just a necessity necessity and survival really to get married and and then you know things have just shifted a few times and I think we have a very different structure around marriage now and very different expectations on what we're expecting out of a marriage now then our parents and definitely our grandparents had but I also don't think we really been taught how yeah you know so I think now we're in these roles where we're expected to be you know we're best friends and lovers and help each other you know intellectually grow and businesses and biggest cheerleader and best friend and like there's all these roles we're supposed to play as each other spouses that is a little overwhelming to be everything to someone I was just thinking you know Jill hate this if she listens back to this one so well no she'll be fine she'll like it actually but like for us you know she was I was the $80,000 year plus banker guy or 60 for a while and then 70 for a while and then 80 and then we didn't have kids we miscarried a couple times and stuff and so when I left banking to pursue whatever it is I've become she made like $15,000 before she was a trophy wife you know we're gonna part time job with a college degree vasters degree even in but but a very chill thing and then over the span of a couple of years you know she got she helped me out a bunch with loco and then she got a big promotion and so she kind of had a whole different career trajectory because of my entrepreneurship and if I would say it blossomed her life way better than being you know a trophy wife at home that didn't have any kids to attend to or hard things purposefully to do she became you know maybe a co-equal very much so for our family yeah and I think what happens is it's less about what structure you're you have right like oh so I know some people really want to be you know someone would want to be a stay at home mom right I don't want to miss out on raising my kids that feels like a privilege to get to stay home with them I turned out fell into the I want to work part-time when the kids were little yep that was the best balance for me I was like I do want a lot of time with them but I also need to get out of the house right and so that was what was right for me and thankfully James was making enough money that I could go part-time when our kids were little so I think it's less about the structure and more about the intentionality around the structure I think what happens a lot of times is we end up falling into these roles maybe based on how we grew up or just inadvertently because of life circumstances and they weren't always chosen or intentional or explicitly communicated and then that's where people start feeling the friction and the tension and the resentment right like we've seen a lot of couples in this maybe it's because we work with entrepreneurs but it's kind of a cool model James calls it leapfrogging where if they're both entrepreneurs one or he doesn't even have to be entrepreneurs but one will kind take a leap and make a big career move all the other kind of holds down the fort right and then once that stabilizes the other partner then can go back to school or enter a new career up their hours or follow that passion project right and they kind of leapfrog it which I think is a good analogy and we've seen that for a lot of couples has been kind of a neat way to both yeah so you're really a whole new kind of yeah yeah yeah yeah and you're supporting each other's dreams you're just kind of taking turns doing it to make sure someone's holding down the fort yeah interesting yeah it comes back I think purpose and polarity will create the passion in the relationship so it doesn't matter what the structure is per se but I didn't realize 65% of the college attendees are female we might only be 60 but it's a big number more than men right much more well and women don't need men for economic security like they did in the past correct yeah we still overall make less but that's changing and we don't need it as for survival yeah but one of our best friends she is the breadwinner and he is the stay-at-home parent sure stay-at-home dad he does the home schooling he does all the house stuff and that was the agreement that they explicitly created and then they still work to create the polarity inside the relationship so that magnetizes them together because there is some aspect of this masculine feminine polarity that we all carry both of them with inside of us and to make sure that we're being intentional about which parts of those are coming out because I do think that women in the workforce are generally asked to bring more of their masculine forward I don't for sure yeah especially whenever they are the only woman working in the sea sweets of men yeah right and so they're still in the old boys club but then they get home and if that role doesn't shift and allow the man to be that masculine for her and allow her to soften into that then it can create a lot of disconnect the polarity starts to fray and so that comes out in a lot of different ways but one of the ways you can tell is just a complete just a the lack of sex and intimacy lack of passion we haven't talked about the hallow stuff yet the relational emotional intelligence have we talked about that no we'll have to get into it another time probably not on air but local uses of the thing called hallows relational intelligence it's a big platform down in South America Brazil especially it's like disc but way more like a yin and yang kind of polarity powered and also notions of essential self stuff so are what you were talking about how women in the sea sweet world tend to be more masculine than some of their traits we've noticed like the the gals that own their own businesses have a higher what we call orange the achiever entrepreneur kind of demographic within them then then the men on average yeah because they kind of you know at least arguably needed to amp it up or especially historically I think there's less barriers to entry now than there were especially when they all have college degrees and boys are all dumb video games at home and their parents basement so anyway I digress um but I should I should actually we should talk more about that because it's amazing what it did for Jill and I to understand each other better and how we were wired yeah and we love those kinds of things that's one of the first layers of our work when we get a couple is we'll put them through a handful of different profiles and personality and styles quizzes love languages erotic blueprints we have an intimacy style quiz that we created disc profiles any grams and so oh dang it allows us any you know like mostly choose which ones make the most sense for that couple yeah and also like based on their interests and what they're wanting to work on like this is why we're here this is our intention for showing up to get some some maintenance in our relationship and then once we have that it can allow them to start to see each other better and have an honoring language instead of this kind of accusatory language like the you always or this is how you are and it's like oh oh this is how you're designed I think even sometimes within ourselves like um for familiar with true colors oh just thinking he's probably like a seven or eight seven seven promoter uh you two two nailed it nailed it man second rodeo yeah um but I think a lot of those with regardless of which one we're using it can help you see yourself in a more honoring light and then also your partner right and then it gives you language to talk about that in a way that is yeah like you said just more compassionate more understanding more honoring um and and then we can use that language so you know true colors as an example is going to use because golds are very organized and I'm I'm so blues and uh yeah exactly so yeah so I'm yeah so I am gold my second but it's pretty high and so there's part to me that would be almost used to be kind of oh I'm being so anal retinive or I'm being whatever and then for even for myself it's like oh that's just my gold coming out and it's good to have a golden the room it's how shit gets done yeah if James didn't have a golden his life all of his great ideas would not turn into things oh there's three and 40 emails in my inbox yes it's just my white type coming out yeah so really being able to see the benefits of the different styles and how they can complement each other yeah you know that actually because I think sometimes couples will come in we'll get the specially around intimacy stuff and they feel like mismatched in their intimacy and if we can turn that into no actually if you were the same you might be button heads a lot yeah this is complement each other right like what is each of you bring to the table for sure well I'm gonna call a short break and we're gonna jump into the time machine when we come back so be ready for that hi this is Clint Jasperson managing partner at purpose driven wealth we believe financial clarity leads to a life of contentment and purpose our mission is to guide clients through the complexities of wealth management retirement planning and legacy using a values driven stewardship based approach focused on provision contentment and enjoyment with more than a century of expertise through thriving we offer tailored strategies to help individuals and families achieve their goals and embrace generosity whether you're navigating a life or business transition or planning for the future we're here to partner with you every step of the way to learn more about purpose driven wealth call 970 330741 and we're back and back we need to we need to start back with the reload of the whizkel yes mr. Mitchell you are welcome thank you it's a pretty bottle it is a pretty bottle I'm sure it's it seems probably adds two dollars to my purchased cost when I buy it at the retail store to have such a pretty bottle but it was just plain jane and that's so much more in the value though I mean like I'm like it makes you know it's good product yeah packaging is important it is important so we bounced to Peru to talk about like writing a book right and making that that real was that it was like like a business strategy thing for you guys no moving to Peru was something that we have been talking about at our marriage retreat that one we talked about we created for years I mean we talked about and so it was actually been there you visited we went to visit we talked about living abroad from the time we were engaged like having something we wanted to do with kids someday some of these kids we have yes exactly and then we went to visit so it come up every year at our retreat and then it came we went to visit Peru we had ideas you know Spanish speaking I wanted it out of western culture just to give our kids a really different vibe um anyway we were kind of narrowing and then we went to visit Peru eight years before we ended up moving there so eight years before is when I got actually put on the marriage retreat just the place yep this is where we're going we picked a timeline because by then we had our three kids and we were done producing children and so we decided based on their ages when the best time would go right like planet dizzy landing so yeah exactly and it was one of those cool moments where it was a dream we had and the dream then kind of got clarified into more of a goal I would say and then we didn't know how we were going to accomplish it at first he was still in real estate I was in school counseling those are very local jobs right yeah so it was before this before 2020 yeah remote working was not really a thing I wish real estate was a right yeah yeah six to six yeah six to nine yeah and so anyway over the years things gradually just started falling into place and all of a sudden this went from a dream to a goal to like oh reality this is actually happening we didn't do this so that was like a cool part of our process I think that I do think really happened because we did that annual retreat and kept it on the radar every year and then I have I like to write not just for myself like I just generally enjoy the process I'm not a huge writer I just enjoy it when I do and I thought well someday I might write a book and then we get started in closer to Peru and I was like well maybe I'll write a book in Peru like I'll have time and space there we get about nine months in of a year commitment to being there no book not even sparkle the book in the end really but I wasn't I had no pressure around it I didn't feel disappointed about that it was just like oh we've been doing other things like living in South America and traveling and you know and then we got connected with someone the universe did its thing yeah right it just kind of put one right in front of us and the opportunity with the book coach and I would make your book yeah yeah it was this project icon and they did like the programmer no no no not like that maybe but we didn't meet with one no it could have been one of the bad things either or yeah so project icon project icon offered us the ability to help us start our podcast write a book build the online school community that we have obviously really put all of our resources in one place and and if it and evidently become iconic that was the idea that's what they want to help people do that choose that type of business not just to be a hobbyist and we looked at each other and we're like yep we're gonna do this we got three months left and so we spent while the kids were in school sounds like an expensive program to maybe probably is $20,000 expensive yeah no I mean I don't think for what all they got us I don't think yeah and yeah and so we spend the last three months improve pretty much writing our book every day while the kids were at school yeah yeah and they're coaching you and giving you yeah they're giving us like some feedback and helping with the editing and helping get it ready for print and all of that good stuff all the behind the scene stuff and effectively we were like well what are we gonna write about like this isn't like a story about marriage is this is this is a non-fiction sort of self-help style yeah book yeah marriage for dummies I'm kind of thinking basically marriage for entrepreneurial dummies entrepreneurial dummies exactly those of us crazy enough to try to do entrepreneurship and marriage at the same time and in our world right one of the things that Angela brings in to this business is yet she wants to help everybody yeah right and she's like too on the anagram yeah help people first make money second you know and that's where we can compliment each other really well yeah yeah and so the book ended up becoming this really awesome road map for entrepreneurial couples that want to stay happily married so how to have a happy marriage thriving marriage in fact alongside your booming business and we're speaking about what if you broke a shit well well that's why you can read the book because you don't have to pay for our coaching that was it and that was a bit piece of it for me was like how can I put what a lot of our knowledge and our tools and our framework in in a format that's accessible to about anyone because I do have this it doesn't have to become a counselor first yes and I do have this through two thousand hours of coaching yeah or even if it's a couple that can't afford our coaching right or our programs if they are broke right then yeah I I don't feel like only people who can afford it should have a happy marriage yeah right and so this was a way also to put all of that our frameworks our tools in one place where anyone really can access it and if you can't buy it I'll give it to you you know well the cheap things are self implemented yeah like at home depot yeah if it's kind of affordable it's going to take a lot of work yeah skill yeah I consider yoga to be basically self-administered massage you can have a free massage so you can put yoga with hatred on YouTube but you got to administer itself yeah it's your broke a lot of the startups enter that season where they're not nonprofit they're no profit yeah not intentionally nonprofit right yeah and in full disclosure like every startup's been there we've been there right and so the the idea is that that's really freaking hard on your marriage too right when you're starting the thing and your spouse gave you like a six month runway in order to get things off the ground and they're holding it down you three years right right and so that was where this idea of here's the entire roadmap here's the like if you want a new perceptual map on how to operate your marriage while you're growing this business whether you're scaling it growing it building it selling it like this is how you can go in there and grab the part that you want so the recommendation is read the whole thing first and then earmark the pieces and the pages that apply to you in that season that's a toolbox yes exactly yeah solve the highest friction first and then move down and how do you break it down Angela is that like I'm assuming there's some like financial stuff there's some intimacy stuff there's some roles and chores kind of stuff yep yep a lot of it is yeah kind of they're topically you can find those different topics on a communication and we have a whole communication model we've got you know intimacy stuff so a lot of it is the tools but basically like our framework is you know we feel like an intentional relationship needs there's like three prongs you've got you need a vision which we call your relationship nor star so what are you creating yeah for your relationship business can be part of that but what is this is you and pulls you in the next time yeah what is your nor star where are you heading and it helps for couples to be on the same page about that so for me for instance when James was in real estate and we had babies and toddlers when he'd get that call at 6 p.m. to write a contract or show a house because we had the same nor star I knew what our financial goals were for the year we had talked about that I was much less resentful when I have a screaming toddler on my leg trying to cook dinner right to go okay yeah honey yep you're right you need to go do that right that's in our goals right and so that would be $6,000 to the family budget exactly that's going to mean we can go to Disney this year right so anyway I the vision and then the strategic life plan so that's more how are we going to get there what are the goals how do we keep our household running smoothly how do we keep our finances running smoothly the logistics the logistics because that's often where couples experience resentment intention is over those logistical pieces who stuck in the roommate phase yeah and then ultimately when you have those two things it really creates the space for connection for that intimacy for that deeper level where you're not just roommates right but you're actually love each other and feel connected and feel intimate with each other which is what makes it all worth it like nothing's worth it if you don't have that connection you can have a vision and you can have a strategy but if you don't have a connection like what's the point yeah so the book is kind of structured that way you guys have struggled for the connection part we struggled with the intimacy part and that was the one section when Angela would inevitably cry on during the first like 10 years of our marriage retreat yeah I mean I tell you what I would think real hard for like months because I'm like this thing has come in this is the time in the space this is the container to have these conversations I'm gonna I didn't even have AI back then but I was like journaling out you know like how can I say this in a better way so it can be heard and received and there's a lot of layers to that but yeah that was a challenging thing I think it's now become like one of our superpowers but it's because we worked on it so hard and we got help like we are we got help for it right we tried to do it on our own for a while and then there's just things like you know James always says you can't read the bottle from it you can't read the label from inside the bottle right like someone you get outside perspective and and the thing with intimacy is it bring it touches on people's vulnerabilities it touches on their insecurities it touches on their wounds it's like this really vulnerable space that no one talks about or tells you how to navigate and when you coming into it from different places and different desires and all of this stuff and you know there's the well no idea the map you followed to get to that totally yeah and then there's also the classic I mean it's not always on gender lines but often where women need emotional safety and connection to feel open to sexual intimacy and men often use sexual intimacy to get emotional connection now I can feel close there I was not clear I do love you sorry but kind of like the stereotype right yep yep and sometimes the stereotype it's pretty accurately because we've been conditioned to be that way you know for sure yeah I think we will understand all of this more if we get to know little james and little angela and so oh wait one more thing married entrepreneur meetups oh yeah that's really what we all reconnected and scheduled this podcast from really um is that something you have the next one scheduled is something yep so we yep absolutely we meet the last Tuesday of every month okay so our next one is probably before this airs um but the last Tuesday of every month for the 53730 we put it on our like social media stuff yep different locations we highlight a different local business is owned by entrepreneurial couples okay so we've done happy luckies for some dragon we're gonna be at trebuchet group this coming month okay and dig it yeah and its couples were one at least one is an entrepreneur they don't both have to be entrepreneurs they don't both have to be in the same business but just the idea of they're trying to build businesses and marriages a long time it was actually pretty cool the the one event that I went to was like oh there's all these like both in the business together and otherwise but that was over half of your attendees was both in the business together yeah and it's just a it's a free event because we want to build community and you get famous on Facebook linked in like where is your uh email chains like if people are out there they're like I want to learn about I can't go to the next one but I want to go to the one after that where do I find it yeah we post them up on Instagram Instagram so you'll find them there also just follow love intentionally dot co that's you and we also send them out in our we call it a love letter instead of a newsletter if you're on the newsletter yeah absolutely so you'll get access to that there and then we put them through meetup.com I kind of automatically unsubscribed to newsletters when I ended up getting subscribed to them so maybe I'll re-subscribe I don't know if you were subscribed I don't think I'm sitting yet yeah we don't we don't just like throw you on there like it's an option yeah usually well but I came to your meetup so I thought maybe I was like automatically on your spam letter um but I wanted to be so love spam love spam your spam love I I do love spam like it is it is one of my top three guilty pleasures yeah in life I would say yeah can't do it and I open it and the cat comes running and the dog's running because it's not like that and Jill pretends that she's disturbed to the like four minutes later she's like kind of a little piece yeah just saying so we're gonna zoom time machine angel you're much older much three and a half year three and a half years older which puts you circa when and where when I was born yeah when and where I was born 1980 80 in Hamilton Ohio Hamilton which is Cincinnati outside Cincinnati hour yeah all right yeah I only lived there till kindergarten and then I moved to North Carolina so okay and like North Carolina is where I grew up the rest of it North Carolina Asheville North Carolina which is outside of Charlotte okay so city it was a really big financial hub at the time increasingly yeah and stuff like that okay yeah and then grew up there grew up there city girl I knew I was going to suffer so it was it was smaller more rural it is bigger now it's become a larger suburb but when I was growing up it was pretty small and fairly rural I'm telling my family my family so my parents divorced when I was 10 okay so you want to North Carolina with them and then I split so actually went to Atlanta with them and then they split and I went to North Carolina um I have a brother who is James age he's like the birthdays are just a few days apart I'm still on the under were you initially like I can't do yes I actually did I told Kate Anna that we were talking about them of course she's like what about James I was like he's too young yeah he's not only younger than me he's way immature for his age yeah grew up fast yeah so I mostly grew up with my mom and my younger brother in North Carolina cool and what was your kind of persona yeah you seem like a high achieving young lady yeah James calls me yep James calls me the valedictorian of everything and then pretty much because she is she is literally the valedictorian of everything she's ever done yeah college high school so very focused on her achievement and did your mom remarry or did you stay with your mom yep twice she remarried twice um she's so not polyamorous no not polyamorous no separate serial monogamy um yeah so she I have a stepdad when like 11 to 16 and then she married my current stepdad um when I was already adult but he's great and the grandfather to our grandchildren so are his grandchildren or children yeah yeah and like where do you think your urge to succeed and valedict came from yeah I wonder so I think some of it is oldest child right that's very common and yeah in oldest children especially if you follow like edlearian counseling practices it's very a first child thing to be the responsible over cheaper that kind of thing um I think yeah and my brother and I have always gotten along really well but my mom says that I always was more like a second mom to him and I think the reason we got along well was because for whatever reason he like listen to me he's just different like let me how do you throw in a fit about it we probably wouldn't have gotten along as well but um he's really great like that um so yeah I think some of it was that and my mom was great and involved and around and she was also a single mom so she was working like three jobs right right and so we did have a lot of responsibility at home um and I think being the oldest I also felt responsible for my brother whether anyone told me I needed to be or not I felt it um so I think that's where a lot of it came from and then I think to because of the whole divorce and in my 10 year old brain I think I internalized some of this will like dad left because I wasn't good enough so now I'm really gonna be awesome at everything right um to earn love and got this once he was gone or yeah we didn't live we far away yeah we saw him but we lived in different states for most of my life and so um it was less frequent you know seeing he wasn't a daily president and talking about like a teenager Angela yeah so think about college all that kind of yeah so I mean I literally was valedorian in high school so I'm a big school big I mean not huge I think there are 400 and some kids in my graduate class yeah yeah um I and I've also been always very social I love people I'm an extrovert and so I think thankfully in addition to being a high achiever school came pretty easily to me and so I did what I needed to do to make really good grades but I also had time to be social well you had a lot of heart obviously yeah for others as well yeah like how do I say it right like you're pretty you're tall you're smart you're like sometimes people that have that are kind of like oh I get all the goodies then because I've got these giftings other people are like I should give a lot of effort to helping other people succeed because I've been blessed with all these goodies yeah I don't even know yeah I don't even know if I saw myself as having so many good days of that age I mean I think as I've gotten older I'm very grateful for all the things I have but yeah I and I don't I I always have one need to help like yeah I'm driven for sure yep but I and I also went to help so I like you know in college I ran hope for the homeless the organization on campus that helped homeless we helped homeless adults then but then I wanted to help kids so me and a couple of my classmates started a tutoring and after school tutoring program program for kids living in the shelters that were homeless and I did those kind of things you know because I wanted to I think I I did realize especially in college that I have a lot of privilege right whether it's because the color of my skin or growing up very middle even with a single mom we were still like middle class you know I had a lot of and I I wanted to use that towards good okay it's an interesting thing to feel really privileged growing up in that single parent household as a female it's the time that you did which is testimony kind of to that hard of service I suppose that you were born with kind of yeah and I think it was modeled for me like I remember as a teenager yeah I think as as a teenager I remember we would on holidays sometimes we would go to me and my mom and brother deliver the meals on wheels you know so people who couldn't get out we would go deliver food so I think I think it was some modeled and then some yeah also just me let's let's go see little jams let's let's call it four years old or something like that I don't know by the James baby James it's good James Taylor's old sweet baby James um what was you seeing what you arrived to and I grew up in Texas and okay that was just an interesting place to grow up on I've always kind of been even at that age like this is where I am but I don't really represent that okay um what was the circumstance was your family was your dad involved with the oil stuff or something no he was an Oklahoma or Oklahoma my grandpa did not like him my mom's dad was the mayor of Houston for 10 years oh wow when 68 to 78 when Houston had a problem Mayor Louis Welch had a problem okay okay that's why my middle name is Welch oh yeah so my mom had yeah my mom had that kind of a family and my dad grew up so she was like a blue blood a little bit as far as using those right yeah still not very many generations deep blue blood yeah and my dad grew up the son of a cotton pickin man in Oklahoma from the dust bowl okay and so he's kind of a cowboy they met at Abling Christian first year proper style exactly man that's my dad's side to a tea a great grandfather grew up in a cave in Tennessee on that side right so kind of come from that sort of aspect and then my mom's side and they're both the babies of five and when I started having babies whenever they were 22-23 okay got married at 19 and 20 second oldest male I get the goats on the farm and the family goes um I think your older sister likes goats more she probably does like to have the goats I want to let her have the goats yeah yeah she wants all the stuff in my parents attic right there's a lot um and so they were poor you know and they had my sister and I when they were super young just the two of you just the two of us at first there's four of us now they had a seven year gap and then had two more kids okay so they were two poor to have the amount of kids they won right so they waited till my dad they would have eight had they been kept going yeah you're in a doubt yeah and so as a result of that when I was four um turns out elementary school is free back then right so I still free elementary school sure okay great yeah well free yeah so school is free daycare was not my mom was a night nurse and my dad was just kind of figuring out what he ended up oh so you got shoved in early to elementary school I turned four in August and started fit kindergarten that same time oh wow so I was the four year old in kindergarten so there were kids in my grades that were over a year older than me right so I was always the youngest kid in my grade and I think that played a pretty large impact I was like kind of a late bloomer I was August 20th birthday and so I was the youngest um I'm the oldest okay but I was also the youngest in my class always by like all the way and I was a late late bloomer so I was Kurt the squirt for like all my growing up so playing like seventh grade eighth grade once I got to that age like sports really didn't work for me anymore yeah except for golf okay and so in that world that's always musically inclined so I fell in love with choir okay and so growing up some pipe too what do you want to sing us oh ton and bomb oh there we go I'm gonna let you take this yeah I did a select choir okay you know so like I was super into that interesting um but didn't really find that social stride until about eighth grade okay and then I found my crew and my tribe all right I started to really enjoy life a little bit more that's actually pretty good like yeah like finding a place it being kind of confident I think summer camp helped you too that was where I really bloomed okay parents sent me to summer camp in steamboats brains Colorado okay I did go to one in um curviel texas in the hill country when I was younger there's an all boys camp and man like that was rough for me and what was the camp in the steamboat is also like a bible kind of camp too or something not a bible camp okay much my parents sugar in they are very very Christian and um that is actually my mom has told me one of her greatest regrets is that she sent me that camp but I'm like mom that was the greatest impact it had on my life she goes I know that's why I'm like but it wasn't a Christian it was not a great it was inside I think she would have done that differently yeah she would have definitely done that she did that differently with my second you know so like my brother and sister being like one of the camp that took your brother away from the Lord exactly exactly he found the devil lettuce um but yeah summer camp was really where I started to experience and explore like who I got to be who I wanted to be okay and practice things out of that container of being a texan now is where I kind of started being like the hippie kid that lived in texas okay interesting yeah and this is like as a teenager as a teenager for sure so you got to like the weed hook up going on and everything I was like was that part of your early entrepreneurism 16 well I think any good entrepreneur worth their salt has sold drugs at some point I'm just gonna call it is gonna call it any weed consumer that isn't dumb has bottled ounce and then sold out three quarters yeah three quarters just a numbers game yeah you get a free quarter yeah basically the man 100 percent 100 percent um but that wasn't till college so mom if you're watching this like didn't do it in high school I never had it in your house no no it's all good no um but yeah always it was funny because my dad you know but you became like a mountain kid as like a middle teens like a grateful dead kind of fish guy probably or not fish but it was after that was more like widespread panic spread bed yeah I had a season with them string cheese incident Jerry died in like only my second year after high school so I that wasn't any opportunity to be a Jerry guy way too soon I remember one of the first times I smoked weed it was a I was a CIT counselor in training so 16 as a camp and the counselor that I was kind of under he's like great like you know hit this and then I was like great and he's like now go outside with your walkman walking back it's pre-ipod phase and uh here's a here's the disc one of the pink floids wish you were here I was like okay let's go and I just remember like shine on your crazy diamond like kicking on and like yeah oh man have a cigar and I was like yeah I like this lifestyle you know that's when I fell on the steamboat fell up at the mountains and that's ultimately how I ended up in Colorado okay let's let's talk about the details a little bit so you're like getting out of high school and you're like I'm going to college in Colorado is it just that simple yeah I applied to three universities Texas Tech University okay and I got in within two weeks and I was like great that town literally smells like cow shit I don't want to go to Lubbock but it's good to know that I'm not gonna stay in Houston and I was like I really wanted to get out of there when my parents had the second around the kids and my older sister was a challenge for me and so like I was the kid like in the house all the four kids that would like go out on the roof and just sit out there for like hours and just like get away from the family like smoke joints not yet like I probably read more books back then okay yeah yeah that was something that came in later and how much was your sister like you're not with not very much because you had a good relationship with her little brother she did my sister and I fought until she left the house for college and then she left the house for college out 16 I was a junior the year that her first year as a freshman she went to Ole Miss University and then that was when we started to get along because she joined a sorority and now we get to go visit her Ole Miss and she would take me around her sorority and by that point I believe it was a custom too so then he's like oh this isn't so bad actually probably where the older I'm thinking from thank you Amanda sister for his confident for approaching you when you were great that's all those stories on the way I dress yeah next family trip we'll talk about that Angela let's all about expect you in the college yeah decisioning what was your scene well so I was on the scholarship scene so I actually came out and so I'm in North Carolina I yeah so you're applying for scholarships at that point but I came out and looked at Colorado State because at the time I wanted to be a veterinarian because that was how I was going to help was animals I worked at a vet in high school and so I came out and looked at CSU and my mom was like she's on the trip with me and she's like oh yeah she's definitely coming here who wouldn't want to move to Fort Collins you know and at the time I decided it was too far from my family probably mainly my little brother like I still had that you know deep connection and so I decided CSU was too far away um I got a full ride at NC State University go wolf pack um I got the same amount of dollars at Duke but it only paid a third of dukes to it right and it paid all of NC State's tuition did you win the basketball game you know I watch I don't know I am down like 12 points to a way lower so yeah I actually am not a Duke and yeah my I just like to see him lose yeah I like to see him lose you know yeah my step-dad when they shouldn't be I'm like yeah yeah my step-dad went to Carolina he was a huge Carolina fan and I went to NC State and so we always say the main thing we agree we agree on a lot but we all can agree that we don't like Duke you know that's like this yeah so I went to NC State uh yeah because I got a full ride and it was great um not better than your mother though no I that only lasted about a year okay I realized I actually didn't like any of the classes I was taking um and I know she was getting a's yeah that wasn't the point I didn't like them but I really liked the classes I was taking about humans like sociology and so I switched to sociology I don't think my dad appreciated that phone call when I told him I was switching from like a career to a 70 thousand dollar career effect to a 40 thousand dollars yeah um but he wasn't paying for college so he didn't really have a day um and so I switched to sociology oops that was me um and uh and yeah and loved it and got a minor and women in gender studies got another minor in French which I really haven't used it all other than it helped me learn Spanish later in life um yeah and then I was just really involved on campus I volunteered with our women's center I um helped with answering the hotline for sexual assault victims which was probably led to my first job as a counselor um I ran the take back the night marches and yeah yeah this is kind of probably a sensitive question but like did you have experience in that space yeah yep yeah so yeah I think so and I I it's one of those to me that getting so I was raped when I was 16 but I didn't tell anyone that or deal with that at all until I got to college and was probably like 20 it wasn't even my first year of college but I was um taking a one of my women studies courses and we read the book I never called it rape which was about date rape um and yeah exactly and so I then I remember I mean so my professor was the first person I told because I emailed her and I was like I know I'm just a ride an essay on this book and this is really like I'm realizing I am this book you know um but I think it was also getting involved in the work and then going on as a counselor to work with survivors was part of my healing process as well because it was it was one of those like I was able to take lemons and make lemonade kind of thing that's maybe not a great analogy but I think it was that I can take this horrible experience and I can use it to help other people and I do think from a survivor standpoint when the person across the table from you has been through it themselves sure oh it's so much like you know right you're like oh they've actually been through this and they know what this feels like right even in our like look what they take chapters you know when people are like I feel like an imposter I feel like you know or whatever yeah it like to have the sense that somebody at least a little bit understands where you've been is huge like I don't want parenting advice from someone who's never been a parent you know and it applies to a lot of things so so I do think that was huge part of my work that I did initially and becoming and like even how I ended up a counselor um and and I'm you know you know you're never grateful for the trauma but I'm grateful for where where my life is now it would not have been the same like no I just did a really good job of bearing it and ignoring it like up to college yeah but you kept valedictorian status and all that yeah yeah yeah and then I you know thankfully I was in a place and supported that I was able to get counseling I did one on one I did group counseling and really I think processed through a lot of it um and healthy ways it wasn't always easy but yeah okay what was your uh college experience like they're young man a lot of drinking I was really good at drinking in college yeah I went to CSU go right asking older women out yeah yeah definitely I just thanks Amanda I didn't realize how much gratitude I had to my older sister with that um yeah so I got into CSU and was really excited to come to school here lived in Derwood so one of the towers and I really was involved on campus okay like I find that building community is something that I love to do and being surrounded one of the places I chose to do that was a fraternity so I was in fight elte theta which is one block east of the book ranch there's one of the grantees I uh I lived across the street from the Sigma Chi at North Dakota State and so I actually was pretty close friends with actually me and the what was the president and the vice president of Sigma Chi we're big weed smoke of buddies together we were in the club of we get deans list and we smoke a lot of wheat nice yeah I I joke that and it's not really a joke I'm really glad James and I met after college because I'm out like fighting for social justice and he's at a frat party drinking lots of beer I don't think we would have like exactly yeah I was perfecting that just so I can meet Angela right seed well you had to be ready to score the challenging liberal uh it's very smart feminist learning tale yeah I had I expectations yeah expectations and luckily loved me on my potential yes um yeah I called him so I mean I really enjoyed the I like the party you know and I like to be social and so I found opportunities to really lean into that whether it was like intermurals or through the Greek life or through like being I got into the business school about halfway through and then just being super involved in that uh three years into college well it was kind of the heart of the music scene really blowing up in those days and stuff I still got the Aggie for like ten bucks right and you did like American Idol like yes you idol I got a third place oh yeah I like it who did you close with in the finale uh it's like an Evan and Jared song from like back in the day okay maybe a Goo Goo Dolls like you know he just like singing the hits but three years in um I got my parents were like listen son let me sit you down I graduated high school at college based on my relationships with my teachers and so school was kind of easy for me but was a lot easier was the relationship and the rapport and so and then showing up for like office hours that was my one tip to any kid going to college right out of the house at 0.5 GPA a hundred percent and so my parents looked at me and they're like son you got like a two point or not a two I have a 3.0 GPA I'm a beast dude right like we're paying out of state tuition from Texas and if you want to continue getting us to pay for college which we're doing and we love to do you're gonna come home to Texas and we're gonna pay in state tuition for that B average like that's the deal I think that was my parents trying to get me to come back home right and I said thank you so much for that invitation I'm actually gonna sell all my shit and I'm gonna go to New Zealand for the semester take this semester off like I will see you offer and I'll raise you what I'm actually gonna do and I went to New Zealand for was about three months okay during that semester and just traveled around was there like a music festival series I found it you they have some really cool like but for that no man I you know I just figured out a study abroad without the study fight just did the abroad fight I got expelled from Lincoln University and she wasn't church which I was not rolled in but that's how you got your visa back to that likes to party thing but I learned how to survive on my own yeah I learned how to get around the spaces that I wanted to how to see what I wanted to and then during that time I fell in love with real estate I started getting like oh these are cool houses or these are cool properties like how does this stuff work and during that time then I came back and went back to my summer camp in steamboat at Polter and worked for another summer as a counselor and then from that moment on I came back to forecalls I got my in-state residency which was a pain in the ass back then like I'm sort of emancipated minor and I did everything by myself survived my own like all my bills documented everything and then I got in-state residency at CSU got into the real estate program and then I finished those final two years on my own right and oh that's cool and were you were just like working out jobs at pizza hut detailing my mom tease meticulous detail nice that guy was a fight out back in the day and so he would hire a lot of the guys from the house so I just go you can make as much as you could as much like clean yeah yeah so I learned how to detail car real good nice um and I was interesting in that as I went from the that was when I kind of grew up became like this is what I want to do I'm not going to college because I have to because this is what's supposed to happen but I can run a car detailing business and have a better life than I do this 100% and I went from sitting in the back of the classroom and taking naps fell asleep in almost every class yeah to sitting in the front row and taking notes and because that was my choice I was all of a sudden I was paying for it until my dog yeah yeah and that was a huge shift that's what my dad told me right so my I grew up super poor like free school lunch and stuff but his farm finally started making some money the last couple years before I went to college sit son the farmer's doing good enough now I could help you with your school and if if I thought it was a good idea but I think you get a lot more out of it if you pay for it yourself was he right oh 100% yeah all the kids that flunked out had their parents paying for it you know I came down close but I was paying for it so it was buckling down and turning into a deansless guy instead yeah huge while smoking joints yeah yeah that would be like that way I didn't drink so much that was my substitute product yeah got it you know for me hear that we have the local experience is coming up and we have a new you might not know about this tell me more this uh I owe you a bottle of the crazy ginger hot sauce you I saw you you when last time I saw your lunch you well you had the the labels made yeah you're showing me the labels so I think I think Paul over at Matador actually has my first shipment ready to pick up but I couldn't get down there last week and I didn't so I owe you a bottle of hot sauce but your offices right around the corner so I'd like to continue to get it's it's it's already baked in like we're not going to be able to change the recipe anymore as a few of my past podcasts where it was like do you want more peach do you want more ginger you know too hot not hot enough but I always think it's a good idea to change your mood before you tell like crazy stories that you're willing to sure let's go I think hot sauces one of James leveling which is that true if you're listening you're willing yeah you're you're not a want you're a will I like some hot sauces next can style yeah I like hot sauce I don't put it on everything like James does I put it on like Mexican food and James puts it on his breakfast okay there it is James that one right there that's the one my name that's got a nice little puddle in there there you go that was one ahead intended for you actually so we'll just take some tasting notes allow it to change our that's delicious look I like it ginger Ford mm-hmm kick it slow there's a feature something yeah peach is the number one yeah I was like there's sweetness oh yeah it's like it's coming on stronger is that a habanero it's got to be a habanero yeah peach bell pepper than habanero yeah you like it I like it it's it's like spicy enough to like have to eat another one you know I'm saying yeah and I appreciate that it's like for the not like hot sauce for that I could still taste good that's still yes that's a good flavor so I'm right and it's hot I put that on a taco all day yeah or my breakfast as Angela any breakfast do any breakfast man cool well I got congratulations I gotta I owe you no congratulations to Paul at manager he took my ideas it's like dude it needs to be called crazy ginger so it needs to have a lot of ginger it needs to have the right color yeah and it needs to be delicious because I'm sick of my podcast guest being like yeah that hot sauce you gave me it's pretty good yeah no it's flavorful I want to be like man out of that hot sauce you gave me I need some more yeah and that's that's hot sauce to run out of right there so would you guys like to do a shared local experience or one of each and then I shared like you you're you're you're still more of your lives separately how long you've been married now 15 years coming up in jail and you're 42 almost you said 45 45 and you're almost 40 or are 40 40 no three and a half years yeah to the math card cash come on yeah I'll be 40 to this summer so yeah so you're approaching you know more than you're more than half of your adult lives have been married mm-hmm for sure so you're you're quite familiar with each other we're familiar 26 when you got my idea but you were six yeah thanks for keeping the math that you were 29 and a half yep I think I want one of each I think I want a a local experience from each of you as singles okay and then the craziest experience that you're willing to share as a couple is that fair yeah okay oh it seems to go first am I allowed to pick that yes you can you can play that card what's the what's the genre of story well it's the I mean it's local so it's the craziest experience you said you got really good at drinking for a while in college and stuff I don't know if there's is there a near death experience or anything or like have a suit okay all right let's let's let's let's does Angela already know this story I assume maybe parts of it maybe I think yeah this is like a multi this is a spring break uh sophomore year so I was 20 years old oh wow not even 21 yet no but my fake ID said I was 21 yeah yeah 22 even maybe you probably just so I'm not like just sneaking another eight and uh we did a road trip from Fort Collins we went down to Lake Havasu in Arizona and we went to Las Vegas um you know I splashed more of this you good splashed it up man okay it's good telling low-cost stuff let's go um like Havasu is a bonkers little town I guess it's not right I guess it's a town but like it's spring break you just got crazy right and so we just show up we don't have anywhere to stay we're just like rolling with it yeah yeah we're like proper road trip for dudes in a car exactly me two of my fraternity brothers they were 21 and then my best friend growing up best man in my wedding came up from Texas Tech and he was like I'm going on this road trip and we're at Lake Havasu and a couple of wild things one like one I mean like it was like wake up and just just get fucked up you know so like that was that was the intention of the trip just take all day if you don't start the morning that's actually what my t-shirt from Sullivan says that I wore on uh St. Patrick's day I still have that one six I saw like four of those t-shirts they look like we can still good um and so there's like a club and it's on the lake but we can't get in because we're not 21 and so like he and I like our like army crawling like maybe ceiling like around the edge like half in the water right climbing off on the edge and we would be sneaking on to the you sneaking it on we'll enter the back into the back of the club right and we we had a lighter so we could uh they had zip ties that were holding all of the things together of the fencing so the fencing was all of my zip ties so you could squeeze through burn the zip tie and then we could squeeze through and then we got in we're really great we end up getting kicked out because they're like where's your wristband I was like damn it um and then we're like ready to go the next day car doesn't work and so we go to in an outburger thank you hotline and out burger and while we're in an out burger uh yanco my best friend was uh pike in college at his local university attack and there was a bunch of pikes inside oh this is another fraternity another fraternity and they're like we can get you guys fake IDs they're like we can get you on our boat oh and so we were gonna leave that day but instead we end up getting on a boat and it's the near-to-the-experience if you look at videos of like havesy there's a party code and there's like this spire that you can climb up and then jump off of and uh I was probably will just let's say way too drunk to be jumping off of that right yeah the words drowned rat came out like one of those so like we're barely surviving we get through there and then we go to vagus and that's where the baby came in this yeah you climb the damn thing and then you just hop off try not to like hurt yourself at this like cliff dive those way too I and the vagus came into play and uh we got to sit down at a blackjack table the lady didn't we got ships from our buddies and so we just sat down when ships are ready and she let us play all night long and we played for probably like eight hours through the night um we ended up winning a couple hundred bucks each and blackjack she she gifted us a breakfast buffet and in the morning we got to eat this breakfast buffet which I didn't even want because she knew that you guys were a couple of punk-ass 20-year-olds probably we just kept tipping her really nice and now like thank you thank you man you know and in she would even cycle back through and so like we're just making all these poor decisions but somehow really working out for us um and the breakfast buffet was the best thing I'd ever seen but I was I had so much alcohol the days prior and had the worst heartburn I couldn't need anything oh I was like oh no this is great this is great so that's you know that was one of my more wild swing breaks there was a it's that place called in Texas I sent another beach down but like again that involved jail but you know I did my best I've never been to jail I've been in the back of a car but I have never been to jail that's really surprising thank you for I could sing actually yeah this is why it's best that we meant later try my best yeah all right I feel like you probably got you can you can top him on the one-up yeah I'm trying to think what would be my crazy maybe not yeah we never really heard how you like landed in Colorado either I'm sorry for messing that part of the show oh yeah I was very cliche I graduate when I graduated um well this could lead into my story so I graduated college and I figured I was gonna take a year off before I went to grad school okay and so the first thing I did was to sign up for college in New Zealand and don't go yeah well what I did is I traveled to Cuba oh wow so I was my graduation gift to myself yeah I did not I was not traveling with anyone but I probably like the early Obama presidency because that was when Cuba was finally opening up a little well no we had to get a special and it shut down right after us um oh so before yeah this was bush this was um 2003 oh wow yeah and so I had to go through this organization that had at that time a cultural exchange visa if you want with them they did shut that visa down after I went so you could no longer go on that but I made it under the deadline and so there was a group of people I was traveling with but I didn't know any of them going in so I'm 22 just graduated okay and I loved seeing the world I loved traveling so I booked myself this trip to Cuba and it was probably one of the more life-changing experiences I ever had um I did not have a near-death experience but that's probably a good thing when you're doing yeah yeah um but like honestly I was also pretty naive like it could have gone poorly um but I two women on the trip with me we kind of combined forces and um yeah and one of the someone we met or one of the leaders on the trip he he was engaged to a Cuban woman and we beat the three of us became friends with him and he invited us the first no the first night we were there we arrived and he said yeah we've been invited to a block party and in Cuba they're very well organized well they were that post revolution right in their communities and their neighborhoods so we go to this neighborhood and the streets are all blocked off and everyone is just partying in the streets there's food there's dancing music yeah yeah kids are running around and I didn't know how we'd be received as people from the U.S. this was like the Ellie and Gonzalez days I don't remember that um well I'm Jill and I went to Puerto Rico back I don't know 12 years ago or something like that it was maybe it felt a little bit like even though Puerto Rico is a lot more U.S. and Cuban but still we were very much outsiders yeah and in really how I was viewing it I was like we've kind of single handedly destroyed destroyed their economy right like with all the yeah and so I was like I don't know how they're gonna like us very much but they were everyone was so so welcoming and let us into their homes and all this stuff um yeah it was great so that was our first night and then we ended up hanging out with this Cuban woman who was engaged to our guy anyway and so the three of us somehow ended up having this very local experience in Cuba because we met other Cubans and they kept inviting us so I went to all these parties with Cuban artists that were being like um censored by the government I was walking around one night going home from a party with this group and the Cuban police stopped our group and was like checking everyone's IDs because the one guy he was Afro Cuban and he was an artist and both of those are like not great as far as government's conservative they said they did away with racism anyway like all these things and looking back on it I'm like I am kind of like impressed that I survived that situation um but it was just a very I guess out it wasn't involving heavy drinking although we did drink at the parties and we salsa dance and it was a lot of fun but no but it was just like a very different than a tourist experience in Cuba Afro Cuban like I'm very familiar with like Barbados and even like progress Julio Juan Julio told me about how Colombia looked different because they kind of got rid of all the indigenous people so that happened in Cuba Spanish Spanish yes that happened in Cuba too yeah and so in Cuba I will say you know they're pros and cons to Fidel Castro in the whole yeah well to that to the genocide but even post that like revolution and Fidel Castro and everything but one of the things they did is they did really work on being an anti-racist country and so um in people there were also you had Spanish descent you had African descent for example still the white people control most of it in the blacks are less powerful yeah I think it was better there you we would still see a little bits of racism and what was hard was that people weren't allowed to talk about it because they're like no the revolution solved that and so you couldn't if you pointed out any racism it was like talking to you as we get over but what you would what was crazy is you would go if you went into a restaurant and you saw all white people sitting at a table or all black people sitting at a table it was like strange in Cuba everyone was very like interracially mixed half well and I don't even know if his intentional or has just been happening for so long but like anywhere you went it was very a very mixed race group and everyone was you know either of Spanish descent or African descent and then those people had babies together of their generation so there was just all these different shades right well it takes the elitist part out of it too somewhat probably yeah so yeah so that was a really yeah so anyway I got this very like not tourist view of Cuba when I was traveling through there that I just kind of lucked into and then I remember coming back and I was flying into Raleigh North Carolina and I looked down and I just see all these like cookie cutter houses and yards that just look like little postamps you know they were all and I just remember crying and being like this is so boring yeah this is so sterile what are we doing why are we not salsa dancing in the streets moving to an operating environment to have a freaking culture yeah yeah the aliveness yeah yeah and then after that I packed my dog and everything I owned up in my Subaru and moved to Colorado very clearly I literally was driving a Subaru yeah I was just like ready to get out and do something different your craziest adventure together how do you think the osu peninsula that was a little crazy I was a little crazy it's somewhere between like yes traveling and having those experiences physically or one of the greatest tools that we've used as a couple to grow together in our relationship um individually personally right and then also spiritually our psychedelics okay and that has been oh shit I didn't even offer you guys any mushrooms is that what's in that way yeah well that's too late now yeah yeah yeah that's a big mushroom in here we're on the off ramp man I'll tell you what if you really want to get to know yourself um in the context of your marriage and if you really want to get to know your partner then take psychedelics together and I'm not talking like a little amount I'm talking like a fucking a lot of really interesting so on that guy like what's because I mean I'm not I'm not experienced really but like is it is like sharing this with somebody is that a lot I don't I have to measure things no you probably want like it doesn't feel very heavy no no you're not dealing with a lot of garbage there but I would probably say like double that and then each take it yeah you take double oh really take so I don't know if you should trust James on this because he can handle a lot more than the most yeah take more I mean take break the veil um and in essence you know in essence that's helped we had this experience that we call cellular weaving I think it was one of our crazy experiences yeah that's right yeah yeah we tell this one and the angel is like I'm not sure we want to share that we can share parts of it share parts of it which parts this episode is sponsored by a logo think tank logo think tank provides peer collaboration for business owners we build smart safe places to help business leaders navigate every stage with a business journey and we love what we do and who we do it with our model features gift back minded business veterans and the role of logo facilitators and we're always looking for abundance minded individuals to add to our membership facilitator team local community or to feature on this podcast listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of logo think tank get their sixth month of membership for free just mention the logo experience podcast on your application to learn more visit our website at logo think tank dot com that's l-o-c-o think tank dot com so I will just say that um I mean as you can probably tell from our personalities I was hesitant to enter this world I was like what's going to do and yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah a little bit uh you like James you and I share a lot probably I suspect of similarity in that we've both done a lot of dumbass things over the years and we've rarely actually gotten punished for it yeah it's pretty true does a great way to say it yeah and yeah that's both the huge blessing and like you haven't gotten the free lessons that not free lessons but the painful lessons too much yeah I've got some lessons but they were all yeah low stakes I've got punches in the mouth before for telling a guy that he shouldn't really beat up his girlfriend like and he didn't like me telling him that right like yeah but I talked took relatively low consequences yeah punched in the face and I fell down and I got up and I said dude you don't want this fight and I was like yeah he's way bigger than me you know and it was kind of over yeah but I have but we I mean I didn't ask you to describe it in detail but you've had consequences right of too much trust of too much yeah but dumbass is a lot and not faced too much negative consequences you haven't even got a DUI you've never been arrested you've never spent the right night I didn't say that well yeah I mean I think in general um it is less safe for a woman to be in an environment and not have her with you control about your circumstance yeah right and so I do think that is a very real thing that women deal especially where substances are concerned yeah who am I around if I'm really drunk like someone might take advantage of that if I'm really right and so there was that piece of it so let's have you lead us into this yeah so yeah so okay because you had to feel really safe yes so I feel like you could do that I overdose Jill accidentally when we were in Vegas no palm springs one time on mushrooms like yeah we'd have much like not much but like free really fun mushroom experiences and then who sees I actually give it both of us too much twice too much yeah yeah that happens to the rest of us yeah and I ordered repeats it to the rock plays and what you do about it yet figured out and I can't deal with it right now yeah so we got invited by some friends to there was like a annual gathering of people that would come together with the intention of doing psychedelics for more of like a spiritual development kind of thing okay and we a lot of couples that were a few singles that was not a requirement yeah no but so it's like a forest mushroom dance thing kind of only they rented very nice mountain houses it was the bougie version okay a bougie version yeah there's a hot tubby mushroom it was around you great big mountain house and the obvious yeah I've taken it yeah and so they normally did you heard of that before yeah I've yeah so yeah so we got invited and James basically came to me with it and said I would like they were going to do one in Colorado they usually did him East Coast and so they're going to do one in Colorado we got invited by these friends I'd really like to go but I don't really want to do it without you I think this is gonna and that was like great foresight on his tone like when am I or was this 2017 okay so this is early nine years ago yeah early earlier than 11 potentially just right around the time yeah this is part of that like this is what I want to do yeah getting into our hearts yeah yeah and mind downloads and so he's he and I was a lot of foresight I think to say this is I think this could be like one of those life-changing experiences and I don't want to do that without you yeah right we had an experience yeah I want to set up on a new track where you're not coming along yeah and so I went and talked to the friends that invited us the wife and the relationship is a lot more like me she's a little more grounded a little more like control oriented and so I went and talked to her and I was like tell me about this am I joining a cult is there going to be an orgy like I don't know why how these like crazy I've seen too many documentaries about these things wow wow I'm like what's happening and she's like no no it's nothing like that and you can come and not her take if anything doesn't feel right to you can say no like you can write and so I ended up after talking to her and having a much better understanding I've plus I did some research so this is like years ago and we're talking about mushrooms here at the time there were a few different I'm a game what about the I'm not I'm a game what's I was there was I was the first time I did I was okay second time was just last year in Peru okay yeah so that was one of the options but yes so we went it's definitely a very early adopters in that space yeah I think it's become much more total open and acceptable now this is pre how to change your mind right yeah the Michael Paulin yeah he just came on somebody's podcast the other day uh dragon probably yeah again I don't know I read his book forever ago the octavarians dilemma yeah yeah he's got a few good ones up there don't know that one uh so yeah so yeah anyway yeah we yeah so I end up saying yes and we go um and then the first time we were on a heart opener which they do very intentionally to kind of set the stage in the container um in the group and it was like a MDA substance like similar to MDMA anyway um and I felt so great and that's a gentle one and start with your previous experience with drug culture was pretty zero yeah I mean I drink alcohol and I had smoked weed two times yeah kind of thing yeah yeah she dove in the deep end yeah so this was big for me yeah but I should remember the that first night and we're all sitting around and talking and the women are braiding each other's hair and I'm like why was I scared of this this is so great and um and then it was the next day that really I think James and I had this really kind of like moment of deep connection this is what has carried me through the biggest challenges that we face in our marriage beyond that point yeah yeah it's just because you do a little bit of work you do the thing doesn't mean like it's you're not gonna circle back or slide backwards yeah Jill and I have revisited some of our same patterns yeah yeah a few times we keep doing it until we get it I can I can I can tell the cadence of your podcast to tell this one after we've had a few whiz-scals with go um but I am inspired because I feel like this one gets a really bad rap mushrooms have this wonderful aspect to them they're very grounding they're very earthy they're natural LSD is one of the most amazing substances on the planet for connection for understanding vibration for connection to self for connection to the divine and that was what this day was all about oh really interesting and there is a book out there in case anyone's interested and they're skeptical like me it's called a really good day um and this woman she's experimenting with micro dosing LSD for depression um but she documents a whole thing and she was an attorney so she does all this research around it the legality of it she talks to all these doctors it's generally very safe like no one dies of an overdose of LSD right like kind of thing and so there are there are some limitations if you have like schizophrenia and your family you probably would avoid it so there are a couple things but for the most part it's very safe anyway all these things so you are in are the two most important things for good yeah I have never done psychedelics with a partner the girlfriend with angel before we've been married like at this point like 70 years actually yeah and so here we are like into our marriage and I'm just like I don't know how this thing is gonna shake out like we're having all these conversations like you do your trip I'll do mine like we'll come together we're like really trying to like plan this thing out and meanwhile you're girlfriend well your wife by this point but it's like I smoked weed two times and I'm pretty nervous about this whole idea yeah and the next thing you know to get you go to not just like this little piece of paper but like a drop of things that like somebody that people know in the in the group have made yeah you know and it was clean and beautiful and I think what came out of that for us like to round this out was that I I felt like I saw his soul and vice versa right it kind of opens that up why I felt like I really saw him as a human who he was at his essence and I remember saying that to you like I can see your soul and I love it like I love your soul you know and so it was I think kind of this moment for both of us that it felt like not to be cliche but kind of like we're soulmates and so it makes all the other things that come up in life they can be hard at the time we might need to talk through in whatever but like at our most base levels like we love each other's souls you know and that's worth fighting for um I think for for me and Jill like even though we haven't yet explored LSD together or uh oxy I don't I was I was you don't want to have and that's that's okay like I feel like we kind of have that same kind of level of appreciating exploration of yeah life together not fear of the other mm-hmm a hill I will die on in this life is that if you are able willing and excited not just a will but a want want in your relationship to have a full psychedelic experience whether on mushrooms or LSD to whatever degree feels right to you and by all means start small and build up like you know you can never take less even if you take more but to share intimacy right the emotional kind the the spiritual kind and definitely sexual intimacy while in that space together it will create a whole new understanding of how you connect and how you are meant to be together that can weather the most intense storms that are sure to come your way I'll just let that be enough well if people want to get your book do they go somewhere? yeah we don't talk about psychedelics and sex in the book that was one that Angela sex in the book about sex in the book so we're on amazon.com easiest place right now married and magnetic okay and if they want to learn more about like psychedelics and relationships they should just reach out to us yeah DM me instead love intentionally.com you can sign up for a free call with us or we love us there yeah what we call connection calls almost like a relationship review but like well gladly hop on a call with any couple that's curious about what we do what we talk about how it can apply to them in their relationship and just drop in for 30 minutes and see where that goes you know and then from there it can be like all right well we could use a few more conversations to see if this is the right fit and how we want it to look or we can get pretty clear on what's the next step yeah and for some people it a better relationship doesn't involve psychedelics at all right I mean most of our clients probably they've heard of this story here we are at the list that was why it's the local story but we are on the local experience we take we take the lessons from that and the connection that comes from that and all psychedelics have done I think for us and what they'll do is we'll show a person what's possible and then you can go and recreate what's possible we have to do the work on the other side yeah without having to take that crutch anymore yeah it's just like it's just like an interesting way to kind of like hit it's like if you're stuck if you're if you're doing karate and obviously you're like a white belt like you know take a psychedelic you go have some intimacy or all of a sudden a black belt and like tontric sex you don't have to do anything it's just like oh shit and then once you're done with that now you got to go through the steps to rebuild it and so learning how to build the steps to get there without that is what we get to help those couples with that that's not what they're into and that's great take it appreciate you guys