On this episode the guys talk with the ultimate momtrepreneur, Amanda Wittenbor, about turning passion into business. When Amanda would design her kid’s birthday party decorations herself, she found that a lot of other parents loved her ideas. She would soon find that her desire to make a couple extra bucks would turn into a 7-figure business, Amanda Creation.

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This is a direct transcript. Please forgive any grammar or spelling errors.

Amanda: And the truth of the matter is it’s been like failure after failure after failure over the past six years. And I just decided that I’m just going to keep going, like a psycho person

Jason: You can’t teach experience.

Amanda: I didn’t have any money. Let me tell you we were broker than broke. Three little children, barely paying.

Kevin: Thank you for joining us. On another episode of eCommerce Uncensored. My name is Kevin Monell and I’m here with Jason Caruso. Really great interview. Really great story. Really great lady today. We have Amanda Wittenborn on, and it’s almost one of the, I think one of the best stories we’ve had. I think that

Jason: certainly one of the top one or two, for sure. I mean, if not right up there, I mean, she is like the, uh, stereotypical, uh, American dream. Yeah.

Kevin: Grind it out, grind it out. Persistence, patients, all those things.

Jason: Yeah. For all you entrepreneurs out there. You really want to listen to this. Yeah.

Kevin: All right. So don’t forget. You can text us Q and a. We want to do the numbers.

8 4 4 6 4 3 0 7 4 5. Text us any question. You may have any comments you have about the podcast we want to hear from you. Um, subscribe to the podcast and join our Facebook group. Ecommerceuncensored.com/facebook. Okay. Enjoy Amanda Wittenberg.
Hey Amanda. Thank you so much for joining us. How are you today?

Amanda: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.

Kevin: So you have a, I’ve been reading up about you a little bit. I listened to one about another podcast you’re on and you have quite an interesting entrepreneurial journey you went through. Uh, why don’t you just give us a little bit of background, like where you came from and how you ended up where you are.

Amanda: Sure. So it started long ago when I had my first son who recently just turned 16. So that’s about how long all of this has taken. Uh, but I love to throw a theme to birthday parties for him from his very first birthday. And I just created all of the different decorations for all his parties growing up and, you know, by about his third birthday or so friends would start asking me, you know, where did you get these cute party decorations?

And I would tell them that I made them. And then they started asking me if I would make party decorations for them. And then one day, one of my friends said, well, you should sell these. And I thought, you know, I do this for my kids. Nobody’s nobody’s gonna buy, I’m gonna buy this. But I, on a whim one day I decided, okay, maybe I’ll put some of them up for sale and just see what happens.
And at the time I was. My business was more of a digital scrapbooking business. And so I had a website, but I sold digital scrapbooking supplies. And I started putting the party supplies up for sale and very quickly it was obvious that those were more popular and a bigger audience than digital scrapbooking supplies.
And so I gradually just shifted into creating more party supplies and less digital scrapbooking. And it kind of grew from there. When I first started making party supplies, it was digital downloads. So you would go purchase, let’s say it was, um, a mini candy bar wrapper. You would go purchase the file, download it.
You’d have to cut them out and then wrap your candy bars and even invitations. And thank you, cards and stuff. All were a digital download that a mom would have to print and cut. And do all the work for, and just as time went on, I realized that moms are just too busy to be dealing with that kind of thing.
And it was about six years ago that I shifted into selling physical products. So it took about four or five years of digital to shift into the physical. And the physical is where my business really started to take off.

Jason: So I just want to back up a little bit, because you said something funny, not funny, but something that I think is probably one of the worst things to do when you’re starting a business.

And I don’t mean that in a bad way, but everybody does it. In fact, Kevin and I are starting a new business as we speak and we did it as well. And that is basically we say, you know, we’ll start a business. And then like, if people buy it, like I’ll continue doing it. And if they don’t like, they never buy it right away.
Like, like there’s always crickets when you start a new business. So if somebody, if people are listening and like, Uh, I’m going to start a new business and see if, what happens. Like that’s like the worst thing to do because it’s not on the internet, it’s not build it and they will come, it’s build it. And then you got to start bringing them in so to speak. So it’s funny when I hear that, because it’s like such a common thing, but it’s really not the right way to go into it because, you know, we, we work with a company right now that’s approaching, um, you know, 10, uh, upwards of $10 million a year and their stories, the same thing, like, yeah, we built this product and like, we just, we put this website up and we’re like, ah, you know, people are gonna just come and buy.
Nobody did, you know. So just funny that it’s like a common theme amongst people starting businesses, because really what they’re doing is trying to talk themselves into doing it because they don’t have the confidence. And they don’t want to fail. So they’re trying to like create ways to prevent them from quote, unquote failing, even though that’s like the only way to do it.
But, um, it’s just interesting. So I’m sure that was your experience as well, because I don’t even have to know about your business that, that, well, I just, I just know that that’s how it is, what everybody.

Amanda: Yeah. And, you know, I think it’s the distinction is I didn’t set out doing this to create some mega business.

Like the intention back then was not, I really want to, um, start a business and what’s what product can I sell? And you know, how can I make this happen? That, that, isn’t how I started. I started as a stay at home mom who had a creative hobby and passion who wanted to just make a little extra money. So it was kind of.
Let me just see if anybody will buy this, you know, let me try it out and let me see. Cause I really didn’t have anything to lose. There was no money invested only my time in designing those products. And you know, I, where it is today, if you would’ve asked me back then if that’s what I was setting out to create, I wouldn’t have even told you it was possible.

Jason: And that’s why you’re successful though. Right? That’s why you’re successful because you didn’t go into it saying like, okay, here’s my plan. I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna do that. Then this is like how it’s going to go. And I’m going to make a million dollars tomorrow. That’s that’s, that’s usually when it fails.

It’s when you do something because there’s a, maybe your calling or you love it. Or there’s something that those tend to be a little bit more successful because there’s no pressure of making them. You know what I mean?

Kevin: And you probably had like everyone around the block, all your family members saying that they’d buy this for you, this from you.

And, oh, that’s such a great idea. And I think so many people get caught up in that, that internal success that they’re like, oh my God, this is going to be a multi-million dollar business. This is a no brainer that I’m going to start here. So like Jason said is like that kind of like alleviates the pressure to be like, this is just kind of like a fun thing to do.
And it’s cool that it kind of grew to what.

Amanda: Yeah, but I’ll also say I did not have everybody saying, oh, I’ll buy it. In fact, none of my friends buy anything from me and never have. I mean,

Kevin: it’s probably almost that way. Let’s

Amanda: be realistic. Your friends and family, aren’t going to buy your stuff. They just don’t.

Kevin: Oh, well, we, we laugh when our clients tell us like, uh, you know, everyone they’re going to buy, I got this guy down the street, who’s going to buy 10 of these from me. Right. As soon as I launched, we’re like, okay, sure. As soon as he takes a, as soon as you ask him to take out some money, we’ll see what happens,

Amanda: right.

No, that’s not, no, that’s not how it happens. But, um, you’re right. There was no pressure. It was a, let me try it and see, and there’s a playfulness about that. You know, when people are starting businesses and their goal is to quit their job or, you know, to make a million dollars or whatever like that, there’s a, there’s a lot of pressure behind that.
Whereas if you’re just, well, I can, I have a skill and I have a product and I just want to kind of see what happens. It didn’t matter if it worked or not, because. You know, I was just like a

Kevin: passion project for you. Right, right,

Amanda: right. It was a hobby. It was something I was really good at. And I just thought, well, if I could make a little bit extra money I’m back then.

I just wanted to make enough money to put my son in T-ball we didn’t have any money. I mean, we were broke. So just putting him in T-ball in the park district program was that was a stretch. So I was like, well, if I could just make a couple hundred dollars

Kevin: and that’s expensive, literally lacrosse field hockey and basketball.

It’s insane. It adds up.

Jason: But it’s, it’s that, it’s the whole, it’s, it’s interesting because like, you know, when you go into like a negotiation, like negotiating with someone who is ultra successful or ultra rich, they always have the upper hand because they don’t really care. Right. Like they’re already rich.

They don’t really need your product. Um, and you’re basically at their. And that’s sort of the attitude. When you go into a business that you’re trying to create wealth, or you’re trying to quit your job, or you’re trying to do those things. It’s like all that pressure of like, I don’t want to make the wrong move.
I don’t do things the way that I really would do it because of, I don’t want people thinking about me a certain way. Whereas like, you went into this like, shit, if this works, it works. If it doesn’t, at least I can get them in T-ball cause I’m sure I can make 200 bucks and then we’ll go from there. But what actually happened from there?
Like, so you went into digital and then you switched over to physical. What did that look like? What did that look like? Cause there’s an investment there right now. You have to buy all the material and then you got to try to figure out how people are going to like find you. So how’d that all work out.

Amanda: Right? So. How that happened was through a total loss of what I had built over three years, I had started selling those digital products on Etsy and through a misconstrued miscommunication with the Minecraft company and having a newborn. Um, there was a copyright infringement filed on me. I think my baby was maybe two weeks old when it happened.

And I was exhausted and I looked at the email and I was like, no, I have their permission. Like I have an email with their permission to do what I’m doing. I’ll take care of this later. While another week went by, before I was able to look at it and they filed another notice and then Etsy closed my store.
So at that point I had built it up and I was making between three and $5,000 a month on Etsy. And so that was quite a devastating loss. And, um, Having a newborn and being exhausted. And like, it felt like losing a job or being fired, you know, all the work I had put in and it was just gone overnight. Um, it took about a year for me to really get back to trying.
Cause at that I’m never going to make this work. This is never going to work. Like the only reason it was working was because it was on Etsy. Which

Jason: is not the case, actually like Etsy is very difficult to make any money with, right? Like their algorithms will I give everybody like one order or two orders and they get all excited that they’re going to, and then all of a sudden, like, and this is why Kevin and I, for the last four years of this podcast, we have been telling people over and over and over and over again, do not build your business on Amazon.

Do not build your business on Etsy. Do not build your business on eBay. You want to use those for some extra money, fine, but never build your business on a platform that someone else has control of. And you are an exact, you’re the reason why we say that is because, you know, one day you can make a five grand a month.
And then all of a sudden, someone gets a stick up their ass in Etsy, on Etsy or YouTube or Facebook or Instagram. And they decide that you’re going. You’re gone. But if you build your business on your own platform and use those platforms to get the word out, they can shut them down and you just move on.
Um, and that is a big lesson that like, you know, me and my ex business partner had a big problem with this. We have a baking blog and she wanted to build the, like the entire thing on YouTube. And I’m like, yo, Gretchen, we can’t do that because YouTube can shut us down. No, no, no. You don’t understand. This is what everybody in the baking industry is doing.
Uh, no, no, no, no, no. I do understand. That’s why I’m telling you don’t do it. Um, and you are a perfect, uh, example of that, unfortunately. And I’m sorry to hear that. We

Amanda: actually don’t have to be sorry because I wouldn’t be where I’m at. Had that not happened. So. Bad things can turn good. Right? So it, I was not in a good place that it was quite a dark place.

Um, I poured myself back into digital scrapbooking cause that was something I had had success in. And so I just worked to try and make income. Cause obviously we had come to count on some of my income to pay bills and whatnot. And now I have three children at this point. So that’s the span of, you know, about eight years, that little story I just told.
Um, but also now I have a newborn. So, um, you know, I just poured myself back into that and I kind of, at that point, thought I’m not going to make the party supply thing work, even though it was something I was really passionate about. Um, and you know, a few months went by and it was just kind of like this nagging thought in the back of my head.
Like, I, I really want to do it. And I really think I have cute things. And I really think if I could just get them in front of eyes, they would sell. Like, I had proven that already that if they were there and people could see them, that they would purchase them. And, um, it took about a year and I decided that I was going to try and sell on Amazon.
So I have a website and then I started, um, attempting on Amazon when I. Started on Amazon. They, you know, there’s no option for digital products. So I had to figure out how I was going to make it work. And at the time I designed a few invitations and I made them fill in style. So prior to that, they were personalized.
Somebody would send me their party details. I would type it in on the file. They would get the invitation with all their party details and print it out. Amazon, the switch had to be that they were filling because there was no way to personalize it. Uh, download. And so I was like, nobody’s going to buy in invitations.
This isn’t going to work. Nobody’s going to want to hand write their invitation. So like, obviously there was always like a negative, this isn’t going to work kind of thought pattern going on in the history of my business and how I operate. Um, but I thought I’ll just try it. And again, it really didn’t cost me anything because I just made the file.
And when somebody ordered it, I would actually print it out at the local office store, go pick it up, cut them out, package them with envelopes and ship them out. It was actually terrible business. It was, and it was a nightmare.

Jason: You make, you made it work. I did make it work. That’s really at the end of the day that that’s all that matters because no one really sees what happens, like how you got it or what you did or how inefficient the process was.

They just care that they got their thing, you know? And we’re going through that. Kevin and I right now with this new product that we’re doing. We’ve learned over a span of 20 years that people just want the shit, right? Like you can make it look good. You can hire a big, you know, uh, you know, uh, studio to help you with the videos or whatever.
But at the end of the day, people just want the thing. And it’s like a really, I think, important lesson for people like you it’s like, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Right? Like they don’t really care how you did it. They just want, they just want it.

Amanda: And I do see that a lot in, in people starting businesses that perfectionism of, I have to have it completely figured out before I even start.

I’m like what I started with and what it is now are complete. And it couldn’t have gotten where I’m at. Had I not gone through all those steps. Right. You just have to start and that’s, that’s literally what I did.

Kevin: Yeah. So it’s interesting that you went from the digital product to, to actual like printing this out and doing all the legwork.

Because for us, like I’m a graphic designer too, by trade. I don’t do it as much anymore, but like, I’ve always thought about doing that with my wife. Like she does, like, she did these, um, back to school science for the longest time. I was like, oh, how cool would it be? If we could just have people down by them, download them.
Like, even like the people around us that bought them from us. They wanted it just done for them. Like as soon as you say, buy something from me, but you’re also going to have to do this other thing. It’s a whole, whole nother story, but like, you’re going to put me to work. She’s like, I just I’ll pay extra.
Just do it yourself with the physical product aspect of it comes in a whole nother area of kind of complication with your business and how did

Amanda: sure. But in the process of all of this, remember I started with one child digital downloads and I liked to do the extra work at that 0.2 more children later, and I’m exhausted and I’m like, moms don’t have time for this, you know?

So my business kind of evolved as my motherhood did too, in knowing what. Needed and wanted, and it just changed an ABD from there because I just became, I had a better understanding of it that even though maybe I liked to do little crafty projects and all of this, most people didn’t have time for that.
Oh. And

Jason: that’s why they buy from you though, right? That’s right.

Amanda: Well, I’m solving that problem now with the physical products. And, and once I had an understanding of that, everything else kind of fell into place. So when I was going to the office store and printing and cutting, I did that for about six months until I said, you know, at this point, people are willing to wait about a week to get their, their invitations and they’re paying shipping.

What if they were prime? You know, what, if they could get them in two days and they were there. I bet you, I would sell them. And so it was about five years ago that I invested in my first inventory purchase. It was about 400 packs of invitations that cost me about $750. And I was terrified and I thought, what if I’m wrong?
You know, what if, what if I can’t pay this money back? Cause that was too big of an expense back then for me, you know, three, three little children and I’m not making really much money. And here I am investing $750. And I know a lot of people go into these e-commerce businesses, you know, investing five or 10,000 or even $25,000.
But I was just at $750 trying to do this for the least amount of money possible to kind of test it out and see if it worked. And it was five years ago, January that I shipped in my first, um, set of invitations. And I was right. They flew off the shelf, especially

Kevin: when you’re selling something that has like a design to it as a very subjective, well, it’s also proprietary.

Jason: Like people aren’t really knocking it off. It’s like buying, they are, they are, but they can’t knock you off. Right. Like it’s, it’s you, but it’s your, yeah. I mean, it’s your right, but you know, the knockoffs never really do as well as the original. It’s just, it’s just the way it is. But you know, it’s funny. I want to go back to what you said about the $750 because Kevin and I own a seven figure business.

We have an agency, a digital marketing agency. We have this podcast that makes us money and we’re starting this new business. And like, if I paid $750 on something right now, you wouldn’t change my. But I’m on Amazon. Like, I can save 20 here. I could save 30, then I’m like, what am I doing? Like, why don’t I just buy it?
Like, why am I wasting time trying to save $50 or $20 or $30? Like, this is an investment into a business and I’m playing this stupid game, you know? And it’s just like, it’s funny because it’s not, you thought it was because you didn’t have money, but it’s, it’s more of how we’re wired as like

Amanda: people, I didn’t have any money.

Let me tell you, we were broker than broke three little children, barely paying the bills. So I didn’t have money. There was no extra at that.

Jason: Great. So that’s a much scarier than what I’m trying to do. Like I’m like, I’m like, I’m not pressing the Amazon button for like $200. And I’m like,

Kevin: I gotta listen to him every day.

I got this option. It’s $200. He flew up, he moved to South Carolina a couple of months ago. He flew up to New Jersey to pick up some audio equipment that he could have bought on Amazon for 200 bucks.

Amanda: It’s now what’s your time worth? No, my mindset has changed over the years. Um, but there is still that piece of me that is totally cheap.

Like what is the cheapest possible way I can do this? And it came in handy when COVID hit, because that was again, the thing I’m making $0. How can I try out a new idea? That’s not going to cost me money because I don’t have any despair because if this doesn’t work, I don’t have any more money. So it serves me well to be kind of a cheapy and do things as inexpensively, as possible to test ideas without investing in.
But also the pressure of like, I don’t really have this money if we don’t sell it, how am I going to pay this bill? And that’s a good motivator to make sure it’s going to work. Right? Yeah. And

Jason: when you’re bootstrapping, it’s a good, it’s a good, it’s good to be that way. Right. Because you have to be resourceful and that’s kind of where you build everything is being resourceful, right?

Like it’s when it’s, when you’re like Kevin and I were, this is like our seventh business that we have right now where you don’t have to be. It’s, it’s really where you get into trouble because now you’re five, 6,000 into the, in the hole. And it’s it’s, you want to buy some Facebook ads, you want to do these things.
And now you’re 10,000 in the hole. So, I mean, I think it’s a good lesson to learn and you, you figure out ways to do things more efficiently that way. And now when you have a business, we’ll get into, I want to get into not exactly what you’re making, but like generally, just so people have an understanding of how big your business is, but.
When you then have to pass along what you’re doing to someone else, they can’t like pull anything over your, your, you know, any wool over your, your eyes because you ready if you’ve been there and you know what it’s like, so we’re going through that right now, because now we have about, uh, I don’t know, five employees or four employees or something like that.
And they’ll come to us with problems and be like, no, no, no. We, we, we used to do that. We know exactly how to do it. Like, so it’s a good lesson, but let’s get into, um, because I think when people go into e-commerce, they think that they need, you know, like Kevin and I, our business, um, is actually down this year, but we’re as profitable.
So we, we learned how to spend less. Um, even though we did get more staff, we kind of, we spent a million dollars on Facebook ads last year and we didn’t, we didn’t do. I’m sorry, the year before we didn’t do that. Yeah. We didn’t do that this past year. Um, but we did make the same profit. So, you know, we’re learning that side of it.
It’s like, okay, how do we now have more employees and still be profitable? So talk to me. Uh, so my, my point was like, people go into these businesses thinking they need to make like a $10 million business. You know, really, if you can create a seven figure business, you can live a really, really good life.
You don’t need a $10 million business. And I get it. Silicon valley makes everybody think that like, oh, if I’m not doing 10 million a year, I mean, at the end of the day, it’s like, for me personally, I don’t know what I would do with all that money. I mean, people want a lot of money. They just, they just donate it.
So like, okay, that’s great. I’d love to be able to do that. But if I can make myself a half, a million dollars a year, if I can make myself $300,000 a year, that is.

Amanda: Um, it is plenty

Jason: and plenty. I think if people, you, if people went into it thinking like, look, I don’t need to make this a $10 million business.

If I can just make an a million dollar business or a high six-figure business, I can live really well. So why don’t you tell us how, like, like that, how does that relate to you? Like, is that true? Do you find that to be true? Do you find that to be because we’re, the more money we made didn’t necessarily mean the more money was in our pockets and we learned that the hard way.

Amanda: So, and there comes a point where the more money you make does not change your life anymore and does not add any more happiness to your life. You hit a threshold when you say it’s

Jason: $60,000 a year, which I don’t know how that’s possible, but if they say

Amanda: yeah, right where I live certain parts of the country, absolutely.

You know, we’ve talked about moving out of where we’re at because cost of living is so hot. Yeah, well, I might cause

Jason: I love it here.

Amanda:It’s of a crazy state in the snow I could do without

Jason: I came from New York. So trust me.

Amanda: Yeah. So basically when, um, when I sent that first inventory in and it started to do really well, I doubled down on what was working.

So it was working. I picked, I think at that point, maybe had 20 different invitation designs to, um, to pick from. And I thought, well, if I’m making X amount with 20 invitations, I could double it if I had 40. So I made 20 more
invitations. So, and that’s kind of how I did it for the first couple of years. I thought, well, if I have a hundred invitations and I’m making X amount, if I had 200 invitations and so I just would double what I was doing.
And then I thought, well, what’s another product that’s similar to invitations that, uh, You know, with the system that I had created already, that we could easily fit in. And thank you, cards was the next one. So at that point I just took my top selling invitations and I created matching thank you cards. So if you had an octopus themed birthday party, you could have octopus themed.
Thank you cards.

Jason: That is just amazing. You can up sell them, right? Like on the way out, this is another product and we talk about it. So you make more money from your current customers than you do, getting new customers. People don’t understand that everybody wants to scale to, uh, oh my God. If I could figure out how to get people who don’t know me to buy, um, I’ll make, I can make this business, whatever I want it to be, but actually that might be true, but you’re not going to be more profitable.

You’re more profitable when you sell it to people that you’ve already paid for. With the first order, so to speak

Amanda: or increasing your order value.

Jason: There’s a hole. Exactly. Yeah. I love your naivete though, because at first, because I’m a marketer and I can tell you that that logic for beginner makes sense, but for me as a marketer, doesn’t cause I like, just because you sell a hundred, it doesn’t mean you can sell 200 just because you sell 200 doesn’t mean you can sell 300.

And I love the fact that you didn’t know any better and that’s what it takes most of the time.

Amanda: But also let’s talk about the fact that people like you are out there teaching people how to start businesses and you’re teaching it from your expertise, not from a beginner standpoint and a beginner viewpoint.

So these beginners come in and they think. I have to do it one way or I have to invest this much money, or this is how I do it. If I were to teach you what I’m doing right now in my business, you would think you’d never could get there. But if I tell you what I was thinking, when I was first starting, you could do it because that’s how I did it.
So the trouble out there with people wanting to start a business and learning is they’re learning from people who are experts and have honed the system. And they’re not coming at it from the very beginner. I have no money. How can I make this work kind of mindset? And that’s the difference, the money

Jason: in that, I can’t make money from someone who doesn’t have money.

So that’s the, that’s the problem. But the truth of the matter is people would be much better served. Like I created a Facebook ads course, right. And I took a different approach instead of like, like the rest of these gurus that say, oh, I spend a million dollars a day. I get back to a million dollars. It’s only a two X return.
That’s how. Like I took a different approach to it. I said, look, these are all the things I wish I knew when I started. I wish I knew how to recognize when an ad was working and when it wasn’t working, I wish I knew when to start scaling. And when not to start scaling, I wish I knew how long I should give an ad to work before I turned on.
So I just took all these things and I was like, okay, what, what I want, what would I like to have known when I first started? And that’s how I built the course. And that’s where I think people would be much better served as like, you know, my, my buddy used to tell me you can’t teach experience and it’s true.
It’s like, no matter how good I am at business, I can’t teach that to someone with no experience. I have 20 years of experience. Right.

Amanda:And you have to go through it. You have to, and, you know, that’s where people quit. When they get into the, I lost my Etsy store or I put this up for sale and it’s not selling, I guess I picked a bad product. You know, that’s when people decide that they’re going to quit because it’s just not working. And they think that they’re doing something right.

And the truth of the matter is it’s been like failure after failure after failure over the past six years. And I just decided that I’m just going to keep going like a psycho person and not worry about all the failures along the way. Right? So that’s really the difference in why it’s successful and why somebody wouldn’t be successful.
And the only true failure is if you stop working,

Jason: the only difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is successful. People just didn’t give up. They’re not any smarter. I mean, I’m just as dumb now as I was, you know, whatever, five, seven years ago, I just learned not to give up and you kind of learn what works and what doesn’t work.

You know, Kevin and I just started this other business with somebody else has married. Uh, like a marriage type thing. And you know, the first month we did like eight grand and they, it was like the first month we started it, but it was only because we have 20 years of, of failing. Like, that’s really,

Kevin: we talk about our seven figure business that Jason mentioned earlier.

And when people hear it, I’m sure they have that same thought be like, how did you do it so quickly? Be like, no, no, like we had a, uh, we did a baking blog course. We did, we started several e-commerce stores, you know,

Jason: three years

Kevin: going on six years of this podcast

Amanda: all the time, because people will walk into our story at this point.

And they’re like, oh, overnight success. I’m like, yes, it only took 16 years, you know? And I think that is important for people to understand too, when you realize that failure is literally a daily thing and a part of the process, then it doesn’t bother you as much. If, if you think that it’s just success after success,

Jason: so yeah. Right. If you’re expecting it just froze for a minute. Yeah.

Amanda: Oh, okay. Yeah. That, you know, you’re just a problem solver. So about three years ago, my husband, I convinced him to quit his job and work for me.

Jason: Wow. And at that point,

Amanda: you want to know what that’s like?

Jason: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want it. I want it. No, no, I didn’t put, sorry.

I, I know how that’s like, and I never want to do it, but
I’m not. I want to finish. I want you to finish your thought. Sorry.

Amanda: Um, at that point, the business was at about 650,000 a year. So going back to talking about you don’t really need to make as much money as you think to have a really beautiful lifestyle. Um, I was making his salary and then some,

Jason: I mean, 6, 600, 600 grand.

You know, if you’re. Um, you know, even if you’re doing like 10, 15%, I mean, it’s still like almost two people having a hundred thousand dollars salary.

Amanda: Yeah. We’re in our profit margin is between 30 and 40% because we sell. So, um, we were making decent income and, you know, it was a tough decision for him to make, because obviously that’s a scary, that’s a scary thing to do

Jason: compared to,

Amanda: I mean, it’s not guaranteed, right.

They could have fired him the next day,

Jason: say that all the time, but you know, nobody, Kevin over there, it’s not of the same mindset ex

Amanda: I think there is no guarantees, you know, and I trust myself and my abilities more than I trust a corporate America to keep my husband employed. So he quit and. Again, I was right.

You know, I haven’t been work on the business. We quickly grew. So because I had his help and he could work, start working on some things and I wasn’t doing it a hundred percent by myself. You know, obviously we were able to start growing a little faster. So fast forward three years last year we crossed the 2 million mark in sales and, um, you know, it’s still growing.
So we’ve been growing year over year. I keep adding new products and new designs, um, after thank you. Cards came stickers, um, circle stickers, mini candy, bars, stickers, kiss stickers, um, you know, and I still have ideas. So I stay with the trends on the parties. Like that really is just my passion and I’m just really good at it.
My designs are really cute and they sell and we’re filling a need. So moms are getting adorable themed party supplies delivered straight to their door, ready to.

Kevin: So, yeah. So what does your marketing look like? I mean, you talked about like increasing your inventory and bringing in new products. How do you get people to know about them?

Amanda: A lot of our business is on Amazon. Um, so the majority of our sales are there currently, but we do have our own website and we do a variety of things. So there we blog, there’s email marketing, there’s Pinterest, there’s Facebook. And honestly, some things work sometimes, and then they don’t work other times.

And sometimes it’s really successful and tough sometimes it’s not successful at all. So I haven’t even found something that works a hundred percent of the time, you know, so we had a really successful Facebook ad campaign in 2020 for our teacher postcards. And I mean, it just. The sales were through the roof.
And then I just, I haven’t really replicated the sales the way that was. So I just feel like sometimes it was timing and product. It was the right product at the right time. And that’s why it did so well. Um, but you know, our Facebook ads are hit or miss, so sometimes they’ll do really well. And then sometimes I get nothing from it.
So I’m not, I’m not the one to speak to about awesome marketing, but yeah,

Jason: I mean, I was, I was curious, I, you know, I have to say, say, um, that you have to give you credit with something for something because you, you like knew that you needed more products. And that’s interesting because most people fall in love with their first product.

And just think that like, when things starts slowing down, like, oh, I just got to figure out how to sell this thing differently or better. Or when really, if you look at like, like one of our clients is like one of our ex clients. I heard now they’re doing like, uh, like almost $200 million, Kevin, by the way.
Um, you know, I’m talking about, my aunt told me that they doubled their sales, but anyway, um, they they’re like a a hundred million dollar business and they, they do have one hero product, but it, all, their sales don’t come from that one product. That product brings everybody in and then they sell all these other things.
So people, you know, so that’s kinda how, you know, you grow a big business. It’s like, okay, you get people in what your one hero product, but now you’ve got to have these other products to sell them to start, you know, growing that revenue to the numbers where you’re seeing your there’s no way that that’s, that’s going to last forever with one product.
It’s just not.

Amanda: And for us, the strategy is we don’t have hero products. I have a category invitations that are by far. Our best category, but if you did down and you look into all the individual invitations, there’s not one standout. So if one gets copied or if one gets taken down or whatever, we don’t miss it, you know?

So we’re, we’re making a lot of money on by selling a few of a lot of different things. So I don’t sell some of my invitations only sell a hundred a month.

Kevin: And do you see it, a lot of your orders coming from people who have bought from you in the past and most?

Amanda: Yeah. There’s a lot of repeat customers, um, especially so.

Totally changed the business for me because we were a party supply company and people were not allowed to party. So we had a 95% drop in sales overnight. So I lost the business again overnight. So that’s the second time if you’re keeping out. And I just, I currently say like, Lord, please don’t let me prove that I’m resilient ever again.
I have proven it. I am. Can we just move forward with a little bit more ease? Um, but there’s no party supplies and that’s all I had to sell. That’s all I was selling. And so. I think the first two weeks of the pandemic, you know, I did what everybody did and laid on the couch and watched tiger king or whatever what’s going on at that time.
But my brain was working cause I was like, I don’t know how long this is going to last. And I don’t know when party supply sales are going to come back and if we don’t sell product, we don’t make money. So what are we going to do? And I just started creating and I started creating new products. The first thing I created was like a change of plan postcard because of all the events people had planned that they could no longer have.
So weddings, big celebrations, things like that. Um, and I just, I kept going and I think I probably created 10 new kinds of products, stationary products. Thank you. Cards, postcards, um, coffee mugs, like I’m a designer. So I just started designing things. See what stuck. And the one thing that hit right at the right time was I created a set of postcards for teachers to send to their students.
So kids were. They’re trying to figure out this zoom classroom thing. And everybody was in a panic and missing each other. And I just had cute little teacher postcards that had little puns on them that said like, um, one of them had a little piggy on it and I said, I miss my students pig time. And it was a little postcard that they could just fill out, quickly address it to their student.
And a little bit of happiness arrived in the mail. And I literally saved my business with these teacher postcards turned it around. Our 2020 sales were higher than our 2019. It was insane. Bring it forward to 2021. Nobody wants postcards anymore. And we just recalled about 10,000 units of inventory that wasn’t moving and wasn’t selling.
So again, it’s just. How are you moving with what’s going on and not staying stuck with the fact that like, no, I made these postcards, no, I printed these postcards. No, I need to sell these postcards. It was like, these are sitting there. They’re not selling, they’re actually causing us more trouble because we have to keep track of them.
Let’s just get rid of them. And so I have 10,000 packs of postcards sitting in my garage, currently waiting to be donated to a lovely organization that will use them and we’re moving forward. Um, but had I held on to that and, and felt like I have to make these postcards sell, like, why aren’t they selling?
We would not waste the

Jason: energy, you know, a lot of wasted energy too.

Amanda: Right. So, you know, it’s just been going with the flow and dealing with the failures along the way and dealing with the things that don’t work and the different things that are crashing and burning all along the way. And it’s literally been two straight years of it.

Um, but we’re still doing. And, you know, we’re still growing because we’re willing to change and we’re willing to just figure out what’s working. And then we continue to do that.

Jason: And you couldn’t do that with a $10 million business, but a $10 million business, you can’t stop and start and move and change everything, right?

Like with a $1 million business or a $2 million business you can. And that is, I think, you know, there’s this constant debate, like, do you want freedom? Do you want to, you know, be a prisoner to your business or do you want to whatever. Um, and I think. When you have a business like yours, like yeah, you’re going to work more.
I mean, you love it though, which is, which is great, but you also are small enough to be very nimble, to be able to change directions very quickly to try new things too. You know, you don’t, you’re not restricted by red tape. You can just do whatever you have to do. And, um, I think there is a lesson in that as well, where, where I think like a big 20 or 10 or 20, $30 million company, they can’t, they can’t really do that.
So that’s awesome. I will tell you this, you need to figure out how to grow your email list because you probably can, if you’re not, I don’t know what you’re doing from email, but our email list brings in like 30 to 40% of our revenue. So.

Amanda: That’s definitely the focus. That’s definitely the focus this year and to grow the website sales and they are increasing, which is good. Um, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to touch the sales that we see on Amazon, but we can have a good portion of it be from our own website, which will be great. Um, but having, I think we’re at a sweet spot in the size of the business.

It’s just starting to hit a size where we’re like, uh, it’s getting hard to manage, but our income level is great. You know? So I don’t, I don’t, I’m not motivated to make any more money, which I’m just not, we have all we need, I’m able to pay my people, bonuses and pay them well for what they do. And you know, we’re able to go on vacations and I’m saving for college and everything is fine.
Um, I don’t think I would want it to be a $10 million business, because like you said, it’s really a lifestyle. I, my children are still. You know, I have a 16 year old, a 12 year old and a seven year old, and I still want to be there for them. I still want to pick them up from school. I still, if they’re sick one day, I don’t want to have to answer to anybody.
I don’t want to have to be at the office. You know, I want to live my life. If I want to take a nap on a Thursday afternoon, then I’m, I want to do that. And so we’ve really built the business around freedom, um, for me.

Jason: And that is the thing it’s funny. So Kevin knows one more. Tell him, so Kevin owned this agency that we have now for, he’s been a part of it since 2003.

And, uh, like his son would play basketball around the corner from our office, literally three miles away. And so he would tell me like, yeah, you know, max, max has soccer today at 12. Oh, too bad. You can’t be there. He’s like, you know, it’s, it’s close. It’s like, I said, why aren’t you they’re like, no, no, I got to work.
Like, dude, you can go get a job working for someone and they can tell you not to go. But if you’re going to create or have the stress of owning a business, these are the things you have to do. This is why you do this business. Not so that you can have a job. You want to, you want to work 80 hours a week.
That’s okay. But you got to take the hour out and go watch your damn son, play soccer at 12 o’clock in the afternoon. That’s the point of this? So my buddy over there, cause he’s kind of like a workaholic. He used to be used to stare at his computer for like 15, 16 hours a day. He just wouldn’t leave. But there’s no reason to have a business if you’re not going to do that

Kevin: for me. Yeah. I say to him all the time, like I’ll text them during the day and I’ll be like out driving one to fill the hockey one to, you know, basketball. And I’m like, I just don’t know how people do this. That have regular jobs that were like corporate jobs who like, they can’t like. They can’t just take as many days off as they can.

And plus you’re, you’re creating your own staff. Did you put your, have you put your kids to work yet? Yes.

Jason: There you go. Absolutely minimum wage. Well,

Amanda: they do help out and I’ll tell you a funny story about that. You know, the boys, they like to play video games and they want to buy whatever in the video game.

And for whatever reason, I go back to I’m a cheapskate. I’m like, you’re not spending money on things that don’t exist

Kevin: for robots.

Jason: Right.

Amanda: That’s and so if they want to spend their money on Robux, I’ll pay them $5 an hour. If they’re willing to spend it on real items in the real world, I’ll pay him 10. I can’t tell you how many times they’ve worked for $5 an hour. You can pay them.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, you could pay them up to $12,000 a year. This is something it may work. I mean, something that the talk to your accountant about, but you can pay them up to 12,000 a year tax free. And I don’t want to give you tax advice, but

Kevin: basically not financial advice.

Jason: Yeah. Basically they don’t get the 12,000, but it’s taken out of the business.

It’s like sad about that. Yeah. It’s it’s um, w Kevin and I don’t do it because we don’t have that type of business. Our businesses are like dollars for hours. And then our other businesses, not really something that our, our kids can do, but you can, I don’t know exactly in this, like I said, this is not tax advice, but I think you could pay your kids up to 12,000 a year tax free.
So if you wanted to do that and save for their college, you can pay them a thousand each a month, throw in a college fund, and there’s no tax on it because it’s under it’s $12,000. So something, something definitely to look

Kevin: into and teach you, teaching kids about money is really getting tricky. Like it’s this world of like cryptocurrencies and robotics and everything else.

My wife, like when we were growing up, it’s like, you have this much money. You pay this for this thing. Now it’s like, my max will come in and be like, I bought this new hat. I was like, okay, let me see it and be like, well, it’s on my roadblocks character. Like, what do you, what are you talking about?

Jason: It’s fake well and

Amanda: work at worth work ethic, especially for my older son.

Um, if he wants to buy something, he calculates how many hours he has to work in order to make that money. And I gave him a project to do. I’m like, I need this group of, you know, letters to Santa stuffed, you know, like these packages need to be put together and he’s literally moving at a snail’s pace.
Like, he’s just sitting there listening to music and stuffing and I’m like, you’re stuffing like 40 an hour. I could give that to somebody else and they could do 200. Like I need this done

Kevin: 30 year olds do the same

Jason: thing. Yeah. We got 30 hours to do the same thing, but you gotta, what you gotta do is you say like, look, this is going to take 20 hours.

Anything over 20 hours, you get paid half. So it’s 2, 2 50 an hour. Instead

Amanda: of five, I learned from my 16 year old that, you know, I can’t pay you hourly on a pay you per project taken advantage of his own mom, but you know, unknowingly again, everything is a learning experience. And you know, as long as you don’t get stuck in something that didn’t work and he just, okay.

That didn’t work and move forward. That’s literally how I’ve made it work. And that’s how I’ve made it grow. Is that anytime something’s gone wrong, I just go, okay, well that didn’t work. Let’s keep going. And there was a time that I remember my husband looked at me and he goes, you know, Most people would’ve quit by now.

Jason: Oh, you made lemonade out of lemons, right?

Amanda: Nope. Because I think most people wouldn’t keep doing this and I’m like, well, I just, I know I can make it work. I know I can do it. And it was just that determination and that unwillingness to quit over the years that has got us where

Jason: we are. Okay. And I’m sorry.

It’s it’s nice. Not having to worry about paying your bills. It is,

Amanda: um, it’s life changing. Cause I told you. Super

Jason: broke. That’s all that matters. If you can find a way. Yeah. If you could find a way just to pay your bills through your business, I don’t, you don’t need to make $20 million. You will be happy.

Just Kevin and I is our wives and our cars. Like they all come out of the business, our phones come out of the business. Our internet comes out of the business. Like I talked to my neighbors and they’re like, uh, how much is your internet? I’m like, yeah, I don’t, I don’t really know. Like, what do you mean?
You don’t know? I’m like, I, you know, my partner and I, we run it through our business, our business, because we work from home and like, you don’t even know what you pay. I’m like, no way. It’s just paid by the bookkeeper. Like, I don’t like, how much is your car? Like it’s somewhere around five nine. I don’t really know.
Like, what do you mean? It’s a big bill. Yeah, our business.

Amanda: It doesn’t matter anymore. You hit this threshold of you can afford it and you’re not paying attention. Like you used to, I’m not calling the cable company to reduce my bill by

Jason: $20,

Amanda: you know, but I bought concert tickets for me and a friend and they put it on the credit card and I didn’t think anything of it.

And like three months later, she was like, I gotta pay you for that. And I was like, oh, you haven’t yet. She was like, it was like $400. How do you not miss this? And I was like, I didn’t even know it was gone. You know, it’s a beautiful place to be is a beautiful place to be. Especially when, back in the day, my husband used to park the car that was the furthest behind in car payments at the front of the driveway and our one car.
So it couldn’t be towed overnight. So to go from that to, you know, we bought a million dollar house last year and. You know, our bills are completely covered and then some it’s a dream. And I, I don’t ever, I’m never not grateful for the fact that I’ve built it every day is a look around in wonder, like, look at what I created, look at what you can do.
And I have no special skills that other people do not possess. There’s nothing going on. Just, I just didn’t give up

Jason: special skill though. That is a

Kevin: special skill

Jason: that everybody could do that everybody could do it, but it’s a skill. I mean, it’s, it’s the, the number one thing I talked to, like my friends who want like everybody now, obviously we have a similar story to you.

We were all broke and now, you know, you know, Kevin bought a million dollar home. I can’t quite afford it, Jason,

Kevin: out of the gutter.

Jason: Right. Um, but. I forgot. I was going to say, yeah, we have a similar story to you where like, you know, we kinda like didn’t have anything and now, um, you know, we’re doing, we’re doing, you know, pretty well.

And I haven’t looked at my bank account probably in a week or two. Like it’s like, it’s like, and, um, I feel like the same way. It’s like, you know, our lives have changed so much in these past like three years that, you know, I’m grateful that I have freedom. I’m grateful that I don’t worry about my bills.
And honestly, like the next thing that Kevin and I are working on is a passion project because that’s like the only thing that we don’t have. But, um, yeah, it’s such a nice place to be in. I don’t need to be, you know, I moved to South Carolina because my, I was paying $5,000 a month. My house. And now I’m paying 2000 a month for house.
Just a little smaller. My taxes went from 20,000 a year to 1500 a year. Like South Carolina sounds lovely. Oh my God. And it’s the kids are going to school. No masks on it’s like, that’s a whole another story. But yes, the point is

Amanda: it was like, you, don’t the amount of money you think you need to make is not even close

Jason: because you listened to the wrong people.

You listen, you listen to people, uh, like what the hell is that? Guy’s name? The guy who does,

Amanda: my son is obsessed with Elon Musk. Well, you’re going to make as much money as Elon Musk. And you don’t mean the key to

Jason: Elon Musk. Think about Elon Musk. Like he’s sold everything. He’s like, I don’t need, my buddy is worth $60 million.

Right. And I, and he had this like 25,000 square foot house that he just sold and he’s a builder. So he built it himself. It only cost him. I think it cost him like a million dollars to build and he sold it for like 6 million or whatever it is. Right. He makes 60 million, he’s worth 60 million. I said to him like two months ago, I’m like, so what are you going to do now?
Cause he lives in this like little house now, like him and his wife live in like this, like, I don’t know, it’s like 3000 square foot. Right. So I said, what are you going to do as like, are you going to buy a big house? He’s like, what am I going to do with it? Like I sit in one room and watch sports. I go to the kitchen and eat.
I go to bed. He’s like, I need a toilet, a refrigerator and a TV. He’s like, I don’t, I think then why are you making all this money? He’s like, I just enjoy what I’m doing. That’s really all it is. It’s like,

Amanda: and then definitely have goals with the money-making in the future. Should it increase drastically? I mean, give back I’m passionate.

Right? I’d absolutely love to fund my kids’ choir organization. That they’re a part of in purchasing their own building. Like I would love to do something like that. You know, so there, there are things to do with ridiculous amounts of money, but I’m not motivated to make it personally well. And these

Jason: people would, all this money are, they’re usually the ones that aren’t the happiest because they’re there and it’s true.

Their entire, I just saw a lady on Facebook or Instagram stories. She’s like, look at any really successful people that others admire. And only one part of their life. They have their shit together. The rest of their life is a complete mess. They don’t see their families. They don’t see their kids. They don’t talk to their kids.
The kids don’t like them, their wives or husbands, like the rest of their lives are a mess. And we like look up to them. Like they’ve had this all figured out because they’re rich. And at the end of the day, That’s not what makes people happy? What makes people

Kevin: and turn your kids into jerks either. You want them to stay humble and like understand where they came from.

Right? Like a lot of these rich kids are just like jerks.

Amanda: It’s not getting a car. That’s not happening.

Jason: I was thinking about this earlier. I mean, it’s crazy because like, you think that you want to build this nest egg for your kids, right? Like you put all this pressure on yourself to make all this money for your kids.

And I was just listening to Tom Hanks, his son, who said his mother and father gave him nothing. And I said to myself, why am I putting this pressure on myself to have this money for my kids? When we all have to figure this out? Like, why am I doing this to myself? Like, I want them to have a good life while I’m responsible for them.
But at the end of the day, I’m never going to hand them a million dollars. I’m never going to hand them $5 million. Even if I had it, I wouldn’t do that because they have their own journey to go on. And it just made me think that like we put ourselves through all this pressure. And at the end of the day, it’s not a good idea to give your kid a million dollars or $2 million for five minutes.
So they got to figure it out on their own. And that’s Tom Hanks, his son like

Amanda: IMAX is work. We are our most valuable asset is time and everything that we do revolves around time with the family. So we work to make sure that we’re paying. When the kids are around, that were going on, family vacations, that we’re spending as much time together as a family as possible, and nothing else matters.

And that’s been from day one that was from when my husband was working in corporate America. He would take jobs that were closer to home so that he could come home and see them at their sports practice. And he could go to their choir concerts and he could do those things. And he wasn’t, he could have easily taken a job in the city and been gone 12 hours a day.
And we wouldn’t have ever been broke, but we made conscious decisions to keep him close to home. He took a lower salary so that he could be there. And that’s what it’s about now for us. And I’m lucky that my husband is my best friend and we work beautifully together. It’s probably a whole nother podcast on how to work with your spouse.

Kevin: That can be really rare.

Amanda: It’s very rare, but I absolutely adore my husband. He adores me and we love spending time together and we do different parts of the. You know, so he does what he’s good at. And I do what I’m good at. And we don’t really cross. We don’t cross that. He likes charts and graphs and I like rainbows.

So I’m like, I’ll know what’s a good one. If it’s in rainbow order. And if it’s not, then I have no idea what any of it means. And then he loves to

Jason: show me his graphs being present is so important. My son yesterday asked me, like, I don’t know. It was like, I don’t remember the time three 30 or three o’clock dad.

Maybe it was four. I don’t remember that came up. Cloud science used some hoops with me and it’s just like,

Kevin: yeah. Did you clock out? You didn’t tell me you were taking off in the afternoon,

Jason: right? Yeah. Right. Um, but no, I mean, that’s like the thing it’s like, you can. You can do that. And that’s the point. And I don’t think enough people get into business for the right reason.

They get into it because they all want to be rich. And I think that that somehow is going to make them happy, but you know, really, you know, we live pretty damn good lives and we’re not Mo I’m not a multimillionaire. I mean, my business is make seven figures, multi seven figures and our, our, our, when we make money.
But like, I don’t have a multimillion dollars in the bank and I’m pretty happy.

Amanda: I don’t have a fancy car.

Jason: Yeah. That’s a whole nother story.

Amanda: That’s what you want. That’s okay. Some people like fancy cars, I don’t care, you know, but for us, it’s about freedom owning our time. Nobody having a say in.

Jason: But you’re saying, congratulations, Amanda, this is like one of those, uh, feel-good stories.

And I think a lot of people can learn. I mean, we tend to talk about a lot of tactics, tactics, and techniques and strategies. But I think like at the end of the day, the most important one is just perseverance and not giving up because you figure things out through the struggle, right? You learn how to do things the right way.
And I, I, you know, I tell Kevin, Kevin, but I tell people this all the time, you know, we have 70,000 people on our email list right now, and it’s been much more, we’ve gotten rid of a lot of people, but the point is, is like we can send an email out today at 70,000 subscribers and make five or six or $7,000 with one email.
We couldn’t do that three years ago with a hundred people on the email list. The only way you can go from a hundred people to 70,000 people is time. Mike that’s it, right? Like time, I don’t care if it’s five minutes, there’s still time that you have to go through the steps. You have to go through, uh, the process.
And a lot

Amanda: of people want to three years, right? Three years. Yeah. Three, really? That much time either. But no, your life can drastically change in just a few years. The

Jason: day could change in a day. No, no. I was sued and lost all my income seven years ago from my, from my business partner. And my life changed. I lost everything in a matter of a day.

Amanda: So, but you can grow something amazing in not as long as you think, you know, and that’s right.

Jason: But

Amanda: also you’re right. Yes. It could change for the worst. Obviously I lost my business twice, so I do know the feeling. So

Jason: I did what you did like, and I, and I laughed when you said this, but I told Kevin this all the time.

Cause I lost everything. I lost my house. I claimed bankruptcy. Pay for my, my son to like, have food. Like I had to borrow money from everybody, but you know what? I wouldn’t be sitting right here. If that didn’t happen. Like I’d still have a blog, a blog that did $20,000 a month, rather than multiple businesses doing seven figures plus, you know, so like, I can’t, I can’t really complain.
It was tough, but I learned right.

Kevin: So cool. Awesome story, man. Thank you so much before we go on, we haven’t even talked about like how people see your stuff and where to go.

Amanda: Oh, well, uh, amandacreation.com. There is no “s” at the end of that. It’s just amandacreation.com and you can see all my fun party suppliers and stationary.

We’re on Pinterest. We’re on Facebook. We’re on Instagram. If you want to see pretty photos of it too.

Kevin: Cool. Thank you so much, Amanda.

Jason: I might that this is, let me tell you something. If you want a state that you don’t feel like the government is in it, this is where to come. I see like a cop a week and I, my taxes are like $119 a month.

Amanda: So I told my husband last night, no joke. I said, Illinois has until fall to figure this out. And if it’s the same shit going on in the fall, I’m out, I’m out. So they’ve got till the fall. So we’ll see what happens. But we live in

Jason: strange area. Nah, no. Yeah, we do too. We did. Or Kevin does it. I did. Yeah, I did.

I mean, Kevin tells, Ken tells me these horror stories about like his kids, like. Yeah. You know, somebody has COVID here. They, they got to stay out for five days and then they go back to school. Like, that’s it. That’s all you got to do is like, so anyway, hold other story. I don’t want to get political here.
Um, but thank you so much. And congratulations on all the success. I really commend you for what you’ve done. A lot of people would not have stuck it through and, uh, you know, you are a Testament to just working hard and figuring it out.

Amanda: That’s true. And that quitting the credit that to being the only reason

Jason: that is the only reason.

Right. I agree.

Amanda: Thanks so much for having me guys.

Kevin: Thanks, Amanda. Okay. Wow. We, um, we stayed on hanging out with her for a long time after we got off the podcast.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, we told her it was gonna be a half hour and it was like an hour.

Kevin: Yeah, we were on total for two, almost over two hours with her. She’s really nice lady.

Really great story. And, um, you know, we have a lot of things in common. I’m going to

Jason: get her to move to South Carolina. Yeah. Good luck with that. Yeah. Lots of fun.

Kevin: All right guys. Thank you guys so much for listening as always, you can check us out at e-commerce uncensored.com. Text us your questions, comments, anything 8 4 4 6 4 3 0 7 4 5.

And we’ll talk to you guys real soon

Jason: later.

 

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