[ 00:00:01,080 ]Let’s go!

[ 00:00:22,290 ]Welcome in to behind the brand podcast. I’m Adam Hayes. To my rise, my co-host Bob Payton, and our guest today is Angie Stockland. Welcome in. Welcome, thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. Yeah. So you’ve got a quite an entrepreneurial journey. I do. It was long. Let’s start at the beginning. How did you get started with it? Well, so I went to college and graduated with a psychology degree and then became a school psychologist. Okay. So that always leads to entrepreneurs. It’s always, yeah. Business was not in my future. It was not an option that I even gave myself. It was an accidental thing, which people are like: ‘How in the world did you accidentally become an entrepreneur?’ Many, many, many, many. But my first husband, Randy, he still is an entrepreneur.

[ 00:01:05,459 ]It just bleeds out of his body. He was. The one that had like perpetual yard sales in college and other like money-inducing endeavors that we won’t mention. Right. It’s great to make money. And so we kind of accidentally started doing nerdy things like building websites in our free time. And realized that we had very complimentary skills. He’s very visionary. I’m very detail-oriented. He was the dreamer, and I was the doer, and we accidentally launched a business out of our house and we loved it. It was so much fun. The first business that we ever made money doing was called MailFromSantaClaus. com and it was an affiliate website. Okay, so we got five dollars for every letter that we sourced from a guy—uh, for a guy in Santa Claus Indiana.

[ 00:01:48,560 ]He was the one, yeah, did you know that? No, that’s interesting. So he was the one that put the letters together, mailed them out from Santa Claus Indiana. And this would never fly these days, but we built the website, did all the marketing. And then the last step of the process, it would switch to his website. So he captured all the payment. Okay. Interesting. I know, right? It would never fly today. But we got $5 for every letter we sourced, made $2,000 our first season. Woohoo! thought that was the coolest thing ever. You’re like, ‘Oh, we’re onto something.’ Real money. We caught the bug big time. We loved looking at analytics, figuring out where our traffic was coming from, looking at our conversion rate.

[ 00:02:24,390 ]Then we were like, ‘Okay, now what?’ You know, Christmas is 12 months from now. And so we found we looked at a whole host of other businesses. It feels in my memory, it was really long, but in reality, it was probably six weeks. Um decided to buy a sunglasses brand from a guy in Florida. It was discount sunglasses, and he had just had a baby. His wife was like, ‘Please get this out of our house.’ We bought the website, and none of the inventory. Just like, we started to figure out how to do it. Yeah. So luckily he was a software engineer, so we had some reliable skills. But for the most part, we just taught ourselves everything from the ground up. Kept our full-time jobs.

[ 00:03:04,240 ]So we were working nights and weekends on the project, which allowed us to turn a profit pretty quickly. And then it just kept growing. And I remember seeing pictures because I’ve known Angie a long time. So, of your, you know, you had inventory on your dining room table, living room, the, I call it. The prototypical garage story, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So that’s cool. So you didn’t buy the inventory. Did I pick that up right? We didn’t buy his inventory. We started from scratch. Okay. And then, so you started developing your own relationships with manufacturers or did you establish your own brand or how did that work? Later, we did, later, yeah, okay. So, at first, we just bought from wholesalers that we could find online, like that was as much knowledge as we had, right?

[ 00:03:47,170 ]Um, and then we took a huge chance and went to a trade show in Las Vegas. Now, when I think about it, like that was such an easy decision, but for us, then it was a really hard decision because it’s expensive, yeah, right? Yeah, money. It was such an investment, but it was, it paid off. Did you go as attendees or exhibitors? Attendees. Okay. And we found a whole host of companies that we ended up working with for more than 10 years. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. At that first show. And then figured out that we could buy things with, you know, greater margins and. Better terms. Yeah. Better terms. Well, terms that we probably figured out terms a little bit later. That wasn’t super obvious to us at first.

[ 00:04:27,660 ]But yeah, eventually we started manufacturing, designing our own goods. Oh, really? It went straight to the source, yeah. Oh, very cool. And who designed? We had people on our team that designed. And then we used a lot of the talent at the factory level to help us with that too. Like the designer’s got a really cool design and the manufacturer’s like, yeah, we can get close, but we can’t do that exactly. Or like that mold will be $12,000. And we would say, ‘eh, we don’t want it that much.’ The zero gravity ones won’t sit on the face, right? Yeah. So what was it like when that, I’ll call it, when you really, I’ll ask it a different way. When did you know all of a sudden that, holy crap, this is like really taken off, right?

[ 00:05:09,430 ]What did that? feel like at the time? So I’ve thought about this question a lot because I feel like there were different points in time where we looked at each other and thought, ‘Okay, this is a real business,’ right? Like the first time we hired somebody who wasn’t a family member. That’ll do. That felt like a real business. The first time that we offered insurance to our employees, that felt like a real business. You’re getting serious now. Right. The first time that we got shirts, matching shirts for everyone to wear, like that feels silly, but that felt like a real business. So I’m not really sure. I mean, eventually, like we both quit our jobs and we committed to trying it full time.

[ 00:05:43,300 ]Um, but you’re still taking a risk, you know, every day, every day, you’re like doubling down on the investment you’ve already made, right? Um, to try to grow it bigger, and so, like, you’re continuing to make that investment in that risk every day. Wow. So, what years was this in that timeframe? We started in the Santa Claus letter business in late 2005. Okay. Um, we sold in 2018, so there was a big a big delta there. Yeah, so we stayed in our house for about a year and a half. That’s when I quit my job, started hiring people at that point in time. You know, at the time, it felt fast, but when you look at the time period, it was pretty slow growth. Yeah, yeah.

[ 00:06:22,860 ]So even in 2008, 2009, and 2010, kind of the housing crash affected you at all? It didn’t really. We got really lucky because of the industries that we were in. They were, we were selling discounts on glasses and discount reading glasses and so, 15 to 20 frames. We had some other brands too, but for the most part, those brands were pretty recession proof because people were like inexpensive. Yeah. They couldn’t, they couldn’t pay $250 anymore. And so they were coming to us instead. So actually helps. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Cool. So, when you bought the discount sunglass, did you essentially buy a domain name with existing traffic? Is that what you did? We did. Yeah. In the customer list, yeah, nice, awesome.

[ 00:07:04,600 ]Yeah, we had twenty thousand dollars in our savings account because we had built our budget. To buy a business or build one. And we spent $10,000 on the domain and then the other 10 on marketing and like redesign and product. Right? Yeah. Would you, would you use that? Back then, was it WooCommerce or Shopify? Was it not around yet? Was it not? No, no. We used the relic Yahoo Store. Wow. Oh God. That was the rat’s nest of e-commerce. It was awful, horrendous, it was really, really awful. Yeah. It was Yahoo Store. Um. And then we ended up, eventually, we started using X Cart. Okay. Which is open source PHP. And then we built all of our sites and we just kept them on X Cart until we sold.

[ 00:07:50,920 ]Yeah. Nice. That’s a nice, fast platform too. Yeah. It was at the time. I don’t know if it’s even still around. I mean, if I was doing it today, I would go to Shopify and figure it out. But yeah. Yeah, they’ve got all the tools now. Yeah, but it did not exist. If you— let’s say, Speedback. In that first two or three years, if that was now. Would it survive in today’s world? I don’t know. I mean, that was like, that was really before brands had figured out digital marketing. Right. And so This will probably surprise you because if you shop in 2026 and you Google sunglasses, there are no small brands that show up. But we were number one or number two for sunglasses for a period of probably three years.

[ 00:08:34,280 ]Right. Yeah, that’s a big deal. It’s a big deal. Big boys, Amazon, maybe not even in the realm. No, absolutely not. Right. Yeah. That was pre, all of that, yeah. Um, I think JC Penny may have been the first one that started like challenging us, but even Sunglass hadn’t figured it out right. Yeah. So, no— you might be able to do it today, but it would look completely different. Yeah. Nice shady rays wasn’t on the scene yet. I think I remember Shady Rays. Were they on the scene back then? I feel like it. I don’t know. Okay. I’ve forgotten a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Because the Sunglass hat, at least during my days. That was. A long time ago, it was all retail, kiosks. There was no digital presence. No, none at all.

[ 00:09:14,920 ]No. They were all digging their heels in the sand thinking that it wasn’t going to actually stick around. Interesting. Yeah. So, if you don’t mind sharing, what was the exit like? What did it feel like? What led to it? How did you kind of make that decision? So in 2016, we were actually in Hong Kong at a trade show during the election. And it was such an interesting experience being like in China. Oh yeah, and when that happened, um, and in Hong Kong, um, but it just the world felt very uncertain. We’ve been doing it for a long time at that point—right, like over 10 years. And again, every day that you wake up, you’re like, ‘Investing what you’ve already done Yeah.

[ 00:09:54,600 ]And then there was talks of recession and trade wars, which actually ended up happening in the tariffs this time around. And it just felt like, is it worth continuing to risk this? This was our retirement. It was our life’s investment. We had, I don’t know how many people at that point in time, 70 or 80 people. Right. Yeah. That relied on us to feed their families. And it’s a lot of pressure. Yeah. Yeah. And if we weren’t going to maintain our profitability because we were bootstrapped— Yep. Not really a fundable. Type of business. That was just a lot of pressure. And all of a sudden we were like, what would it be like to take money off the table? Or to have somebody like back us that has bigger pocketbooks that could help us grow faster.

[ 00:10:38,910 ]Yeah. Yeah. And grow to the next level. So that’s what I would ask. If you would have stayed in the business and had that backup investment, what do you think the next play would have been? To go from what 14 or 15 million in revenue, maybe with 70 employees, that’s probably about is that where you were. Close to yeah, okay. And then, good guess what what would the next layer up be and what what did you feel like you needed investment to get to the next level to do. So the next level in e-comm at the time was like 25 million. And then it was 100 million. Okay. So it would have been figuring out how to increase our market share. Reading Glasses at that time was actually our biggest brand.

[ 00:11:17,990 ]We had three brands: Reading Glasses, Sunglasses, and Prescription Eyewear. Reading Glasses was by far the biggest, but a lot of those customers weren’t shopping online still. So we had just started in 2017, we started advertising on TV. And that was really interesting. Yeah. And it was expensive, but it paid off. Yeah. Our growth rate went, we just talked about this in class the other day, but our growth rate went from like 20% year over year to 40% year over year. Yeah, that’s substantial. Yeah, TV advertising. So I think we would have continued to push down that path. We weren’t really interested in the wholesale game because companies like Foster Grant had that covered. That wasn’t our expertise. Um and potentially branching off into other like eyewear adjacent or related products, right?

[ 00:12:01,610 ]Yeah. So when you created your own product, did they carry the discount sunglasses name? Or did you brand them as a certain thing like Warby Parker or whatever? They were branded as our URL, our domain name, which was Sunglass Warehouse and readers . com. Okay. Yeah. Nice. So during that time when you started to mull, right? What did you do then? I mean, literally was it— phone calls—right? How did you get from the idea of exiting to exiting? Yeah. Just curious. So this was late 2016. We took a couple of weeks to think about it. Once we decided that, yes, this was something we wanted to do. We started making phone calls to local folks that had sold businesses in the last few years. Like, who did you use?

[ 00:12:50,320 ]What was the process like? And then once we had a list of, like, people we needed to talk to. You like banks we should interview. We started interviewing banks. We interviewed. I don’t remember like five or six different ones. We found an iWear specific one. And then we started the process from there. So that was probably. By the time we chose a bank and started the process, maybe it was March of 17. Nice. And then? Yeah, and then. And then. Because, I mean, we talk about this in class. You know, we haven’t talked about— what we do at Purdue. But this moment is what most of the kids ask about, right? All the other stuff, they kind of don’t get it. per se. But then it’s like, okay, at some point you have to.

[ 00:13:35,240 ]kind of commit. Yeah. Right. You almost just have to commit to go. Yeah. And what that’s like, right? Yeah. So once we picked a bank, then we talked with them about strategy. Like, what does this look like? We’ve been profitable. several years, well, most of our existence really. And so we were trying to figure out, do we prioritize growth moving forward? Do we prioritize profit? Like, who’s gonna be most interested in us? We ended up riding the fence, to be honest. That was the strategy we chose. But we worked with them on like, who are potential buyers. We had a huge list of like, dream buyers and like, realistic buyers. And then they started hitting the pavement and saying, ‘Are you interested in this company?’ And then anybody that was interested, we had management calls with.

[ 00:14:16,110 ]If they were still interested, we brought them to Indy and did management presentations. Um, of course, like this is a long timeline—I’m shortening it up a little bit, but uh, management presentations those were three-hour presentations before Q&A. I know they’re brutal, brutal, lots of coffee. Yeah, well, and I was in China for a couple of them, so I was like, getting up in the middle of the night, enjoying the call. This is like Zoom was super popular, right? Um, And then we had two, we ended up with two companies that were super interested. So we had first bid, and then we went back to them and said, ‘This is what we need.’ We worked on it. We had both of them bid a second time.

[ 00:14:53,620 ]We picked one of the bids, and then we started due diligence. Gotcha. Nice. And that completed the sale. How long did due diligence take? It was painful. That’s what I tell people. We had done audits with our own accountants. Running the firm just to make sure that we were in the clear, right—this is painful in itself. But those are people on our team. But I always tell my students to like, they did not want to joke with me like I was trying to be friendly. And funny and they just kept staring at me. That’s not what I’m asking. We don’t care. This is not funny. This is accounting. So we’d already done that, which was helpful, but it didn’t really help. I think it took about six months. Wow.

[ 00:15:34,350 ]But high level, the company that bought us was Foster Grant. They are owned by Esslor, which is a public company. And Esslor and Luxottica were in the process of merging. I was going to ask you if it was a Luxottica company. Yeah. They were in the process of merging, which $6 billion, $7 billion at the time. It was a way more important deal than ours. And so ours just kept getting shoved to the bottom of their to-do list. That’s one of the reasons it took so long. Which is another one of those challenges. You don’t even think about until you’re there, right? And so we we closed the deal in July, and we weren’t even allowed to announce it until, like, November. I think. Wow. Yeah. Until they sorted their stuff.

[ 00:16:12,720 ]Yeah. When did your employees find out? Um, some of them found out along the way. It was kind of like, ‘Need to know.’ Right? They’re like, ‘What is all this going on? Why are these people with suits walking through?’ Right? Which is something that don’t know that we talk about a lot, but we were a very transparent company. We did open-book finance, which means we shared all our finances from, you know, all the way down to cash. And so it felt very genuine to have this huge secret. And not tell them about it. But you also don’t want to get people in a tizzy because it could fall through at any time. Yep. So they go through all the angst, and nothing happens. Yeah. Right. And then they said, ‘I’m frustrated.

[ 00:16:51,450 ]I’m leaving. Yeah.’ They’re not going to be around, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So it was a bit of a protection mechanism, but it felt awful. Yeah. I’ve had a client say he felt like he was lying to his employees. And I had to say, ‘You’re not. You’re not lying. You’re not disclosing information that honestly is not their business. It’s your business. It’s not theirs. So there’s a fine line between the two of those. But it could also kill the deal.’ You know their emotional anxiety as well, all for not because the whole deal can still fall through, right? Exactly. And then where are you? That’s correct, right? If it did fall through and they were anxious about it, correct? Yeah. So we let people in, that we needed their help with things.

[ 00:17:34,350 ]Like the guy that did our analytics software, finance person, obviously we needed his help. Eventually, we needed to let our tech person know. So we brought people in as needed. And then, eventually, a couple of weeks beforehand, we told our leadership team so they would have time to process and digest. Um, but I was really surprised, like when we told the company, like they didn’t know— no big surprise; it was a big surprise. It was okay, it was a big surprise. We had people that were excited, people were confused, and some people were devastated. Yeah, I imagine. So, was there a lot of retention in the migration over to Foster Grant? Yeah, that was one of the things that we heavily negotiated that ended up working out. Nobody was going to get cut.

[ 00:18:13,830 ]Yeah. For reduction, for some period of time, I’m sure that’s not forever. Yeah, right. But for like the two-year period, we had a two-year earn out and they promised no redundancy. Like, nice. Yeah. Awesome. That means you had a strong business even after going through due diligence. It was painful. Yes, of course. So, at the end of your two years came into 2020. That’s what I was going to ask. Yeah. It’s a great question. So I had, we, Rainey and I had two, and our CFO, Eric, had two-year contracts. I didn’t last. Right. After a few months, I sent a message and said, ‘I need, can you please let me out of my contract?’ Right. Randy can have my earn out.

[ 00:18:51,880 ]And they said, ‘yes.’ And so I left, but Rainey did stay for hit the full two years and it did hit. Yeah. In 2020. And that was painful. I bet. Because sales were up tremendously, right? But they were important; they weren’t allowed to do the work. Yeah. Yeah. That’s tough. Yeah. So, but even despite, imagine though, if you’d started six months or a year later, right. And that, so that’s not good. Yeah. So I was. little happy that I wasn’t didn’t have to deal with that, but I still felt bad of course yeah the business was great, but it’s not like hey gee there’s probably going to be 2020 right so yeah so what was pressuring on you to that you wanted out what what was that like the um obviously due diligence was long and we had plenty of opportunity to ask a lot of questions, which we did.

[ 00:19:45,820 ]But. I don’t know that we followed up as much to make sure that what they, I had an interpretation of what they said clearly wasn’t what they meant. So like part of the negotiation was that we would operate as a separate entity. It was their idea. They had done other acquisitions too. We were in Indiana. They were in Rhode Island. So it just made sense. They said you operate as normal. So I took that as we would operate as normal. And then, first day. Hello. They were like, let’s make sure that we start this transition to get all of your products moved over to our factories. And I said, what? What? How is that operating? Thank you. Right. So I didn’t ask enough questions. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t ask enough questions.

[ 00:20:26,610 ]What does that mean to you? Right. I didn’t think I needed, you know, anyway. Sounds like what they meant is they’re going to operate as normal. Right. Yeah, yeah. And they said things like, ‘We love your culture.’ This is a great end. Made a lot of decisions that didn’t reflect that. It’s not yours anymore. That’s the hard part. Yeah. And I was having a really hard time hiding. My frustration from my team members and that’s—I was honestly just being toxic to them. If I was there, they were not going to be able to get on board, because they’re still looking to you, despite the fact you don’t own the business anymore. Absolutely. Yeah, I was still their boss, and I they deserve to have a leader that was like bought in with a vision.

[ 00:21:04,010 ]I just wasn’t right. Yep. Makes sense. Using that as an example of things you learned, if you had to tell somebody else who’s about to go through this process. Number one or two things that just out of all of that. What it, what did you walk away with that you just wish we would have could have— type of thing. I think there were some things that we knew were important and we negotiated those fiercely. And there were other things that I think I just trusted. Would work out and didn’t ask enough questions and didn’t say, ‘How do you see this working Um, operational things almost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And leadership decisions, because, you know, I was led to believe that a lot of decisions would still be ours and some of them were right, but not all of them.

[ 00:21:49,160 ]So I just think there were things they didn’t see as important and I saw as important and we just didn’t talk about it. Nice. Yeah, awesome. So I think that you can’t get everything you want in a negotiation. Well, some people might be able to, rarely, can you get everything you want in a negotiation? So you got to figure out what is most important and what can you live with. Nice. Good. So post exit, right? Take a breath. Yeah, and you get kind of all the stuff away from you. What was that? What was that even like for you? Did you have real trouble just not being the owner, and I mean, the business is done, right? Or on your side? It’s kind of somebody else’s now. You’re sitting at home on the couch.

[ 00:22:26,510 ]What’s that like? It was awful. Thank you. They were still operating as normal, right? I just wasn’t part of it anymore, but I was still very connected to what was going on. People were still texting you. Yeah. But. And then, you know, like, cause Randy and I were married. So, um, at the time, you know, I was still having—oh, that’s right. You exited before him, right? Yeah. So I was like, ‘Hey, so-and-so needs this. Can you figure this out?’ And so, like, it just wasn’t great. And so. Probably knew a little bit of how involved my identity was in our business, but like, it was that like I didn’t have a lot of—I don’t know. You don’t have time for hobbies, right? I have time for hobbies now, but I didn’t necessarily then.

[ 00:23:14,040 ]I didn’t take the time, and so I had to like go through this grieving process. Honestly, like, it involved therapy, and like, who am I if I’m not a founder? Right, and I guess I still am. I’ll always be a founder, but I’m not currently like a leader, right? Yes, I mean, yeah, but it’s just different. Who needs me? What do I like to do in my free time? I didn’t have the answer to any of these questions. So I was like, I wasn’t ready to start another business. Maybe I will never be ready to start another business. I had to think about, like, what did I love about my job there? Like, what did I love about being at One Click? And what did I not love?

[ 00:23:54,710 ]Figure out what those things are so that I could go fill those buckets up. That’s why I kind of called them as my buckets. And then I just started my roadshow, which is like connecting with people I hadn’t seen in a lot of years. And saying, ‘How are you?’ Let’s get coffee. I was doing like two to three coffees and lunches a day. Oh, my world now. Which was like my full-time job until COVID hit. And then that kind of halted. And I was like, ‘Okay, I got to figure out what to do.’ Right. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So what was that process like then? figuring out what to do. Yeah. Did you have help doing it? No. Are you just self-taught?

[ 00:24:28,410 ]Yeah, type of thing I literally like made lists and thought about my buckets and what could what could fill these. So I looked at being a coach, I looked at being a consultant, I even looked at like me to classes to be a certified coach, talk to coaches, thought about teaching, which is what I ended up doing. Um, I thought about working for a non-profit because I thought that could be interesting that would feel like value-based. Um, I thought about creating a digital product and selling it because I knew how to do that. Um, yeah, so there were lots of things that I I kind of thought about. Yeah. Yeah. And I ended up, Natalie ended up calling our boss during COVID and said, ‘Do you want to teach?’ And I was like. ‘Yes.

[ 00:25:06,420 ]Sure. I need something to do it. Why not? Yeah. Yeah.’ So you’ve been doing that since 20 2020 2020. 2020. So right, oh yes, oh that’s interesting because When I, this was 26, so I started in 22. So you’d be at two years in. And we went through the whole mask thing. Oh, my goodness. Yes. That was awful. Yeah. So I taught online. My first class was online. Um and I’d never been to anybody else’s class before, right? And then I started in the fall. Yeah, Wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Shout out to Natalie. So she heard us both, I guess. it’s a nice I call it the other side of the day, right? Of daytime activity. We’re dealing with owners and people in the real business world, and you’re dealing with kids.

[ 00:25:57,090 ]Know not much, but are really smart and have some really cool ideas. Yeah, and so you get to flip back and forth. It’s really cool. It’s just I feel like it’s one one way to stay connected to entrepreneurship and to the community, and a way to give back. And I think, as I was a founder, and because Randy and I were married, and we did a lot of like activities together in the community, there were a lot of times where people would. You know, be like, what’s it like to work for Randy? What’d you say? Yeah, the patriarchy is alive and well. Can we change the word with? With. So he was really good about correcting the record, but I was like, there aren’t a lot of people that, you know.

[ 00:26:38,040 ]Of course. Look like me or you know, we just need a more diverse group of founders in this world and so why not start at a younger level and say you can do it too, like, why not you? Yeah. Which is the fun part of what we do, right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And you teach down at the Indianapolis campus for Purdue now, which is. brand new right kind of startup in some ways for Purdue, which is interesting. What’s that? It’s been really fun. I think the campus is very different. It’s like working at a small college, but at a big university. Yeah, with a brand, but one building. Yeah, and the students are super diverse. Like half of my classes are international students, which is really fun.

[ 00:27:18,470 ]so it leads to great discussion and a lot of things that i’ll be like this is how it works they’re like that’s not how it works in my country i’m like all right let’s talk about it all right yeah yeah well that’s an interesting discussion then yeah and i’m envious that you’re an indie because i think indie you have and i’ve watched some of your posts right because we don’t talk anymore because we’re not pretty but we’re at lafayette and i’ve I’ve noticed that your interactions with startups and indie is much more, you know, easily accessible because it’s there versus being in West Lafayette, right? Yeah. So that’s really neat to watch. It’s been really nice because we can actually go on field trips. Right. Yeah. and show students.

[ 00:27:55,490 ]Versus just a coffee shop across the street. Yeah, like what does it look like behind the scenes? Yeah, that’s pretty neat. Nice. What’s next? What’s next for Angie? uh, I know you’re an investor. Let’s talk about— oh yeah, yeah. Um, I have nine Angel investments currently and I have money and some funds too, but those are pretty hands-off. Sure. Yeah. Um, anything exciting out of those nine that’s bubbling? Um, let’s see. I don’t know. It’s it’s hard hard to know, right? You never know right? Yeah, but we have—uh, my husband, Jeff, and I have a couple of investments that we’re like really excited about. Um, one of them is Home Field Apparel, who is a local college collegiate apparel shop. Okay.

[ 00:28:38,550 ]And so they’ve been growing rapidly and got a lot of press during the national football run recently because Connor is an IU grad. Connor and Krista are both IU grads. And another is called Flow Vision. Hmm-hmm. They do machine learning to help meat processing plants reduce waste and save costs. Yeah. That’s Nietzsche. It’s very niche. Yeah, how do these, you know, materialize? How do the opportunities that you evaluate materialize? And then, do you have a criteria that you’ve kind of established for it? Yeah, good question. I’m definitely not like a prolific investor. Right. I only have nine. The first one was probably sounds like most people have none. That sounds pretty prolific to me. It’s not my full-time job, let’s say that. People are like, how do you find your deal flow?

[ 00:29:23,540 ]And I’m like, eh, I’m not actively looking necessarily. It’s organic. Yeah, it’s mostly organic. Oh, there’s another one too, Compact Medical. They actually just they’ve been in business for 10 years and just got FDA clearance and working on revenue for the first time, which is pretty exciting yeah. So most of them, I found through the generator program, the G Beta Mentor Swarms and Investor Swarms, which have been really fun. But then once you’ve given money to a couple people, your name comes up again— Word of mouth. Yeah. That’s good. So I don’t necessarily, I’ve worked on my investment thesis, if you will, and I don’t have a set criteria. Um, because we’re in Indianapolis and all of this is changing rapidly. Marketing SAS has always been well-funded.

[ 00:30:06,740 ]And so we’ve kind of stayed away from the companies that have been well-funded by other people and tried to find opportunities that aren’t necessarily getting funded in Indianapolis that we believe in. I’m definitely a founder first investor. So I like to invest in founders that are scrappy and determined and you think they’re going to do anything. Right. To make it happen. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That’s nice. Personal. Mm hmm. What do you enjoy doing now? Well, I like to read. Yeah, I didn’t read for a lot of years because I didn’t have a lot of time. Um, but the last few years I’ve read around 90 books each year. I know so I love that 90. 90. I don’t think I’ve read 90 books in my life. Maybe 10 or 20, 90.

[ 00:30:52,210 ]Wow. Well, I’d take that back. That’s probably not true. I bet you’ve read more than 20. My wife looked at my bookcase and yeah, so probably correct. But in a year, wow. Yeah, what do you like to read? I love to read fiction books. Yeah, yeah, I’ll listen to a great memoir. Um, those are the only audio books I like to listen to, otherwise, I like to read. Nice. Yeah, it’s a fiction reader. Love to travel. Yes. Yeah, we’re getting ready to go on a trip to Europe for a few weeks, so that’ll be fun. Nice. And I have a three-year-old at home, so that’s always fun. Yeah. Are they going with? Yeah. Yeah. And my mom and stepdad. Cool. Nice. What are you looking forward to most about that trip?

[ 00:31:30,300 ]We’re going to stay for about a month, so I think it’ll be nice to just unplug from Indianapolis and see new places. Um, eat new food, eat new food, yeah, we’re doing mountains and beach and city. Okay, so you’ve got a circuit already laid out. Yeah, I do. Yeah, of course. Nice. Yeah. Viking ship in there somewhere? No Viking ships, no. Okay. No. No, we’re going in May. Viking tours. Yeah, um, and then my husband, Jeff, has recently started a rock band, so they released their first album, and I’ve been diving into social managing their social media, which has been interesting. So releasing in the digital age, when the age of Spotify and Apple Music is just. It’s just different. Yes, yeah. It’s just different.

[ 00:32:17,080 ]It’s prolific, and the number of new songs out every day— every day— in the millions, millions of new songs every day. Wild. Yeah, and then we have the age of AI, and that’s huge for music. And so I, you know, figured out TikTok, which I’ve never done before. Yeah, it’s one thing to have the distribution system turned on its head with streaming, and it’s another thing to have the supply chain turned on its head with AI. Yeah. It’s really wild. Yeah, it’s very wild. It’s definitely changing. Yeah, but there’s been quite a bit of backlash. Which is good. What do you mean backlash? Backlash meaning that at least the people that I know really want to get back to real human emotion, authentic, like live in-person performances of people really playing their instruments and really having an emotional connection again.

[ 00:33:10,540 ]Yeah. Maybe good for some things you know, like elevator music or something right— or whatever, yeah, yeah. I don’t. I mean, do you really want to sit in a TV screen and watch something that a machine made up, right? Yeah. Just doesn’t seem right. And you can train the models, and like there’s. There’s controversy because if you’re using the actual artists to train the models. Somebody’s going to get sued somewhere at some point. Right. What else? What other hobbies do you have right now? Hobbies, um, I like to ride my bike, but I haven’t been out yet because it’s been too cold. Right, it’s been a five and a half month. It’s been like it’s supposed to drop next week too. The winter is never ending at this point.

[ 00:33:54,930 ]Yes, yeah we’re in the fourth winter of the year. Yeah, I know it’s wild. Yeah, that’s pretty much. I mean, obviously, like a three-year-old keeps us pretty busy. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, that’s been quite an adventure. Sure, so I mean, using that as a backdrop. Yeah, investor now got nine investments. Three-year-old kind of— what do you i mean, do you plan? Do you have a plan for what would be next? You know, in going to keep doing that? Is there something else that maybe you haven’t scratched yet that you might? That’s a good question. I really thought I probably would teach for two years and then move on. Right. But then we had a kid and it’s kind of the perfect job. Mm-hmm. Um, for having a child.

[ 00:34:37,969 ]And so I think I’ll stick around for a while. And then I think. I’ve been very involved in the back end of the band process. And then Jeff and I have also been tossing around the idea of starting a studio out of our house because we have all the equipment already. Because they recorded and mixed the whole album at our house. And so he’s been working with startups for a long time through Generator and Agrinovist. And what if we did? Did like a startup studio for musicians. Not sure what the market size is for that, but it’s an interesting way to use his startup skills and music talent for like a whole new crop of people. So that could be another business opportunity too.

[ 00:35:22,790 ]Eric, when you said that I was thinking like backdrop music for video and you know, just like for startups, right? That’s, you know, they maybe can’t. spend the money on certain things right oh that’s interesting so we were originally thinking like first-time artists that have never recorded before yeah so he could like stop and say like, this is, these are what these words mean. This is how this works. We wouldn’t necessarily be a studio for like, you know, your third or fourth album, but for your first album, you could take it slow. He knows how to play every instrument. We could play backup for everyone and just teach them the process of what it was like to record. Right. Yeah. What do you do producing as well?

[ 00:36:01,300 ]Okay, that’s a huge value, especially to a new artist, who might be really talented but not know how to write a song. Yeah, because like it’s not necessarily innate, and everyone yes right yeah. Yeah, or even might be, but you haven’t tried. Yes. Yeah. Getting them to exercise that muscle. Yeah. So that’s probably on the immediate future. And then, I don’t know— my retirement career could be like owning a bookstore and a beach location. Oh, I like the sound of it. You get 90 bucks for free. Angie’s read books. I know. Wouldn’t that be fun? It would. Yeah. And a little resort town somewhere. So we’ll see how that goes. We got to get through high school first. Yeah. I think I told him this, that we went to St.

[ 00:36:50,200 ]Croix once, right? And we went on the catamaran. And the guy was from, I think, he was from Indiana. And we’ve just started talking. I said, how did you end up on a catamaran at St. Croix? He said, I think he was 45 or something. And he said, ‘I just decided one day I sold everything. He was single. I just sold everything and I’d been here. I bought a catamaran and here I am. It was like they’d been there a decade, and so is that what he did? That’s what he’s doing full time. Yeah, wow. And it wasn’t cheap. I get that right. Yeah, that was even then. That was a long time ago. So it’s you know, sometimes it’s just you know. That’s what we’re going to do. Yeah.

[ 00:37:26,450 ]It’s okay. Yeah. Maybe a little cobblestone street somewhere. Maybe it’s not at the beach. I don’t know. TBD. Yeah. I like it though. Yeah. So I don’t know. There’s always, I’m not an idea entrepreneur. I’m not like. What’s that mean? Like there are some entrepreneurs that have like so many ideas all the time. Right. Like they just have a lot of ideas. That’s not me. I’m an operator. Operator. Yeah. Yeah, but you’ve been there, done that, so. A lot of people have ideas, right? Yeah, so I could maybe help people with their ideas. Ideas don’t pay the bills. That’s right. That’s probably true. Yeah. Well, anyway, thanks for coming on. Of course, thanks for having me. Great to have you. And have your story. It’s always valuable to hear what happens behind the scenes. Right. So we appreciate it. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. All right. Yeah!