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Becky  00:00

That's my biggest advice to anybody, is that find financial advisors that invest themselves into your lives and and really understand your values. But I think that that has been the most important part, is to kind of give yourself a North Star to where you want to be in your finances, and making sure that that's where your money goes

Natalie Slagle  00:25

welcome to Money dates, the podcast that makes money conversations with your partner feel a little less taboo. I'm Natalie Slagle, a certified financial planner, and I'm joined by my husband and business partner, Dan Slagle, also a Certified Financial Planner. Say Hi, Dan Hello. In each episode, we'll share honest stories and practical tips to help you and your partner feel more connected and confident on your financial journey. So grab your drink, get comfortable and join us for our money dates.

Dan Slagle  00:57

Today, on money dates, we have AJ and Becky, a married couple that share both life and business endeavors together. AJ is a digital presence and industry relations specialist with experience in Medical Media Relations, health tech communications startups and most recently, the lumber and saw mill industries. Becky is a content strategist who owns and manages community lifestyle websites and consults with small to mid sized businesses to develop social media marketing plans and a strategic digital presence. AJ and Becky, welcome to Money dates. Hi.

Becky  01:35

We're so excited to be here. Thanks so much for having us.

AJ  01:39

Thank you. Make us sound very professional. Yes,

Natalie Slagle  01:42

you are. I know you're Dan. You're saying that intro, and I'm just like, what did these two do? I mean, such a different world than us. And thank you again. You are our first guest on the podcast. Dan and I were sick of hearing ourselves talk. And we're like, true. We know so many great couples. We have been saying it on our podcast. We want to hear from other couples. And you two said yes. So thank you so much for being here. We think your your story and your background is incredible. I mean, you two are self employed. That alone is crazy, and there's a lot of different financial navigations with that. So I want to dig into that. And I also want to dig into the fact that we know the two of you a little bit personally, and we know that you spend your money in really cool ways. So I'm excited to tap into both of those things today. So thanks again for being with us. But I want to know first, because you haven't always been self employed. So, like, can you talk to us a little bit about that transition from employment to then you taking that over, and when it was, were you two together? Like, just talk about the beginnings of all of this.

AJ  02:55

Yeah, so I was the first to step out into the world of self employment when I got a job offer to work as a contractor at Mayo Clinic and work 20 hours a week and make more than I was making 40 hours a week. So that was a no brainer, to put in my two week notice and start that process, and it was just baby steps growing and we had great people in our lives to help us navigate things financially and business wise. And there's, I think now today, it's been 14 years of doing this, and I will say that the imposter syndrome I had back then is a much different version of it today, but it's been one of those things as you grow it just becomes a part of the lifestyle and it becomes the norm. And the fact that we can take vacations and still keep running our businesses while we're on another continent is amazing with the technology we have and being able to work together and build a lifestyle that we love is just such an amazing thing for me.

Becky  04:08

I really think it came down to

Becky  04:13

being restricted in the roles that I had. I not in a in a way that was disciplinary or or harsh, it was just simply the confines business. And I had so many ideas, and I had so much passion for doing new and creative things, and it just wasn't an environment where that could thrive. And I had a really good idea for something in the town that we live in, and this guy here is like, Hey, you either gonna do something about it or you're gonna stop complaining about it. And so I did, and taking the step into self employment from having a full. Time w2 job for 10 or 12 years before that was scary, but also, I had reached a point in my career where I was clawing at the walls. I was sad. It was a sad time in my life, and I just needed a little breathing room and space to explore ideas, and so a lot of it was just jumping first and planning later, which is a lot of what entrepreneurialism is about. And that takes a ton of bravery. And you know, it's a big risk assessment. We had two small kids at that point. We had an eight week old, and we had a 18 month old. So is

Natalie Slagle  05:43

that when you, when you left your job? Okay? So, yeah, AJ, you, you left first the w2 world, the consistency, the there's a lot of great things in the w2 world, yeah, of having an employer and you left that 14 years ago. And I, I do know how old your children is are. So, so you left before kids, yeah, Becky, you left during kids, yeah, right. My brain goes to how all the financials of that, like, where's the health insurance coming from, where you don't have this paid parental leave? Can you like that's a huge moment. I know this was a while ago, but do you recall even stressing about the finances in that when you're raising children, very, very young children? Could you talk on that?

Becky  06:34

I will say that Aj is first opportunity to leave the w2 world and head into a world where there was opportunity for flexibility and contract work with Mayo Clinic. His first position was with the Center for Social Media at Mayo Clinic, and that, frankly, opened up a lot of doors for him to really explore different career paths and different opportunities there. And very quickly we went from really paycheck to paycheck to for the first time in our lives, having a savings. And that was, I mean, we're talking like paycheck together. You were paycheck to paycheck in the w2 world, and you actually started seeing your finances blossom after,

AJ  07:23

yeah, well, I think we had about 50 bucks in savings. So he did have a savings, right, technically, but it was not much, right.

Becky  07:29

So what that allowed us to do is really start to think creatively about what this could mean for our family if we were able to be very stringent and very disciplined in our finances. And I remember, this is back in the day, we didn't have any money for any software or anything like that, so I had a little Excel sheet, and I would write down, like, when everything was due, it would keep you, like, a running tab of the total amount in our checking. And at some paycheck to paycheck, we were down to, like, 300 $400 and when we knew pay, you know, payday was coming. And so when we started to work in the contractor world, and it was, you know, huge credit to AJ, because he started to see social

Becky  08:12

media as a opportunity for businesses and advertising way before anybody had really even thought about when we started dating in 2009 he was telling me that Facebook was the next place that businesses were gonna advertise. And, lo and behold,

AJ  08:27

listen, I'll throw out my inspiration was the Will It Blend YouTube channel where the owner of blend tech blenders just built a little studio and started a YouTube series of Will It Blend. And it's videos of him taking everything from a rake to glow sticks to iPhones to show how good his blenders were by blending them up. And it was a scene, yeah, like one of the first viral phenomenons of YouTube. And I just saw the power of these free platforms that if you're creative and you don't use it just to market your business, but you have fun with it. You can build such amazing things.

Becky  09:06

Yeah. So I think after a couple of years of contractor pay, which obviously has its pros and cons, you really have to understand contractor pay and how it's inflated, because you have to deal with all your taxes and health insurance and expenses yourself. But that leap showed us the potential that existed with a very disciplined budget. And so at the point where I had started my business, I think I was just it was that perfect storm of having two young kids, having insane, creative, pent up energy and a little bit of a cushion that we just hadn't felt in the last couple of years, that I'm going to be very honest, that the making the leap for me was just like a no brainer. It was like a hey, no. Now or never.

AJ  10:00

And we talked, and I said, if you take one year and we break even at the end of the year from the initial investment, great lesson learned. You tried it and you were able to say you did it, yeah, to me, that's where the the bar was. And Becky really is not giving herself enough credit for the disciplinary actions of sticking to a budget, knowing all the money, because she has handled it all. I am not equipped with the mental faculties for spreadsheets, and it is a genetic disorder that I have,

AJ  10:34

but it is 100%

AJ  10:38

due to her rigor and her dedication to keeping us on track financially, as a family, as a couple, that has allowed us to be where we are today, and that that's just solely what she has done. And while I may kick and scream like a little child sometimes because I want to buy something for work, like a new camera or lens or something that I can clearly justify in my brain. She was so good at making sure that we talk about it and we work on, how do we get that

AJ  11:10

at the right time? I mean,

Becky  11:13

camera lenses and camera equipment is really important, obviously, for the work that we do. The parts that I had a little difficulty with. Were some, you know, real, off handed purchases. The most recent would be. AJ is now an ordained minister in the international church of gnomes. So if you'd like to gnomes, gnomes, Church of GNOME, like garden, garden guards,

AJ  11:35

yep, the church of gnome. I even have my hat upstairs. It's a little when I tell you, this was a $40 fund purchase moment for me,

Becky  11:48

that's a severe understatement. I think I sat in silence for maybe a minute, and I was like, that'll be That'll do for now. We're at the point of $40 fun purchase. Is okay? Well, so, yeah. So anyways, this is a long, long explanation for a short question.

Natalie Slagle  12:06

But there's, I think I get this comment quite a bit with now where Dan and I are at as being self employed, and people comment on, wow, the incredible flexibility you have. They kind of see what you what you have in this moment. You know, this journey for the two of you started well over a decade ago, and it's kind of, it's so easy, even for Dan and I, to look at the two of you and see, wow, look at this incredible flexibility they have. You know, I know the two of you and I want to talk about it, but you really prioritize using your resources to create incredible family memories and incredible family travel. But that I don't know if, including myself, if people are really giving the credit of the journey that it took to where you are today. So I'm glad we spent time on it, because you went from having $50 in your savings account to now being in a different situation where you can afford trips and you can afford things. So I let's, let's make sure we give that credit of pass to Becky and AJ and all of the hard work you had to do. But now I do want to kind of get to the nowadays on what the two of you are doing, how you're navigating things. And I actually want just we do talk about finances on this podcast. And I think a really important financial aspect in entrepreneurship is health insurance. And there's been a lot of changes with health insurance, and you two have had to navigate that. You know, you can share, you could share what you want with the specifics, but it's, it is a beast, and I'm really, I would love to hear from you on how you two navigate that. Talk about it. And because it's, it is a such a different conversation than with people who have W twos and their nice employer health insurance. So do you mind just talking about that? Specifically? Before you start

AJ  14:07

talking, I will just say again, Becky took it upon herself to crack that nut and figure it all out, because she was bound and determined to make sure that we had the best coverage that we could get and to go through. And I remember when things were changing, there was one month she spent 70 hours on the phone trying to get things fixed. And when you're going state by state, each state is different based on what kind of opportunities you have for health insurance. If you're on the open market. And because we live in Rochester, where Mayo Clinic is, some of the metrics that they use to judge how much you should be paying is based off of how many sick people there are in your county. So the numbers of people at Mayo Clinic actually increase the health insurance that we pay because of its proximity to where Luke you live. So because we live in Olmsted county with a world renowned Healthcare Center, we pay more in the state of Minnesota, which is a backwards thing. Bonkers.

Becky  15:10

No idea, yeah, well, I guess I just want to say, like, that's a known, right? We've always known that health insurance is more expensive in Rochester than it's going to be in other places, and we have really worked hard to ensure that that is not the reason that we decide against entrepreneurship. Wow, that's a big decision, because that's a reason why a lot of people decide not to go into it is because of health insurance alone. So okay, I feel

Dan Slagle  15:43

like that is the number one reason why people go into it, especially in a self employed dual situation like your household. I'm not

AJ  15:51

taking over your story at all. But I think to put into context too, when we had Evie as an infant, we kind of put our heads together and said, we are going to choose to do the hard things with this child. It's easier to stay at home, it's easier not to go downtown on Thursdays and go mill around and navigate a crowd with a stroller. But what we did is we chose to do the hard things, and I think that actually created almost this muscle memory of resilience, and that's what we've been teaching our kids, is flexibility and resilience. And that helped us make this decision as well.

Becky  16:30

Yeah, I think that Aj is spot on with that. It is a muscle that you have to flex and you have to work just like anything else. And so resilience and being honestly. Let's just call it what it is. I'm pretty stubborn when I want something and I want flexibility, like there is, I hesitate to even compare it to anything else. There is no perk like flexibility. I just finished hosting my kid's book there this week, and that was multiple hours every single day. And that's something that I get to do with running businesses and different volunteer work and these sorts of things. But back to the health insurance. It is really, really scary to make that jump into paying for health insurance, and right now in our country, we're kind of at a pivotal moment to decide what's going to happen. We have really benefited from premium tax credits in the past for our health insurance, and those are not there anymore. We have seen our health insurance premiums double in 10 years, and that goes the same for deductibles. And so it is a major, major factor for us that needs to be priority. Paying for health insurance has to be the priority. That's where our time and attention goes to, like outside of our mortgage and our utilities and these sorts of things. So it's not just an afterthought. It is a major, major, major part of our budget, and nothing else gets sorted or thought about or whatever until we know that we have enough money to pay for our health insurance. It is not cheap. We don't have great insurance. However, one thing as a family that we have adopted is that, and a lot of people in the entrepreneurial world do this is the concept of medical debt. And now we carry a lot of medical debt because our procedures and these sorts of things are very expensive because we have to meet our deductible. A lot of entrepreneurs take advantage of the 0%

Becky  18:40

loans that hospitals are required to provide for medical debt. So what happens then is that we just incorporate that payment into our monthly budget, and we utilize that as much as we possibly can. So instead of taking on a lot of debt for to meet our deductible, we will just have a running medical debt balance that we simply incorporate monthly payments into. And, you know, medical things come and go, and sometimes it's further down and sometimes it's up a little bit, but that is one strategy that we use because we don't pay for that debt. And so it is just something that continues to roll, and that is our reality. It is part of how we have to figure out our finances,

AJ  19:30

and part of the ability to do that is I drive an old 2007 Jeep that's been paid off for years, and it I put on maybe 3000 miles a year on it, because it's just my getting around town kind of car. And I don't have any qualms about that. Yeah, and we have our student debt paid off before Teddy turned five, I think, yeah, something like that. Like, it's not like we have loans and car loans and credit card debt and all this stuff we've been really for. To be able to get focus on making those debts gone before we made the decision, okay, we can roll with a medical debt expense because it's just like a car payment.

Becky  20:10

It is a lot of lifestyle choices. So because our priority is to never leave entrepreneurship based off of health insurance. Well, then we prioritize what we buy or what what we take on is debt, because being an entrepreneur is very important to both of us and just the life that we've been allowed to build because of it. So that takes discipline again, you know, flexing that muscle to say, well, he's not going to have a new car. And once we we have a van that we had to buy, and once that's paid off, we'll, we'll keep it for the first kid that drives, and then see what happens when we need another one. And so

AJ  20:54

it, it takes discipline for sure. I was just gonna say, like it's for anybody that's listening. It's really based on what you prioritize in life. We prioritize travel. We love exploring. We love going to national parks, going around the world. And those are high priorities for us, not driving a Mercedes. Yeah, so it's just one of those things, like, the money's there and it's we're not trying to look like we're rich. We just want to be able to afford the health care, afford the house, put money away for the kids, be able to travel. Like it's just based on where your priorities at in life. Yeah, yeah.

Dan Slagle  21:31

Is there. When I think about the two of you and what you've shared up to this point, it seems like you're in in alignment with a lot of the spending that takes place in your in your household, is there, and it seems like that's an area that you know that excites the two of you, yeah, as well. Can you recall like a time where things really, really clicked, or maybe you were able to more so align certain spending items with those values that you've created?

Becky  21:57

Can I talk? I'm really excited about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think when AJ and I got married, we played for a lot of the wedding ourselves. I've lived here a long time, and so I have a pretty wide and deep network, and so we needed, we didn't need to, but I was whatever. We had a pretty large wedding. We just ran out of money for our honey. She knows everyone in town, right? We ran out of money for our honeymoon, and so we had to cancel. And we, you know, took flight vouchers and but we just like, we're like, let's just get away. So we went up to Minneapolis, and we stayed at the W in the fauchet Tower. And there was one evening we were having drinks in the bar downstairs, and they had these, like, cool, like swings, you could send. It was very chic and very cool. One, 2010, 11.

Dan Slagle  22:46

This is very like Katy Perry, like, almost the picture I get in my mind,

Becky  22:50

they were more like cozy like, weren't they like hammock swings or something, like someone, yeah. Anyways, one of the things that I had read somewhere along the line was to, like, on your honeymoon, have a chat about family values, and that can be a couple of different ways, like your your personal, your moral values, as well as your financial values. And AJ and I, I wrote it down a little notebook, and our financial values were basically our relationship, our home, future children, hospitality and travel, those were kind of our top priorities in our life, and also included in that is obviously our financial our generosity. Where and how do we want to give our money? And in the 15 years that we've been married, we have not really strayed from that. We will revisit it from time to time, and we will revisit it with our important financial advisors, who, frankly, changed our entire outlook on our finances.

AJ  23:55

I will say it's it's been great, especially Becky has benefited the most from having financial advisors, because it's been great therapy where there's a lot of like stress around managing finances for our family, for and it's great to hear from professionals saying, you're not alone. Yeah, you're making great choices. Or here's how we could help, yeah. And I feel like every time she gets off the phone with them, it's like a weights been lifted from her, and she glows a little more.

Becky  24:25

Yeah, it's true. That's my biggest advice to anybody, is that find financial advisors that invest themselves into your lives and and really understand your values. But I think that that has been the most important part, is to kind of give yourself a North Star to where you want to be in your finances and making sure that that's where your money goes right. It goes towards our home. It goes towards our kids. It goes to towards the ways that we want to be generous in our community. It goes towards travel and having people in our home. Hospitality is a big thing for me, and they. Haven't changed. You know, we kind of reorganized them. We, two years ago, we did a big downstairs rental project, and we didn't get to travel as much. And it's just, you know, these sorts of things that that keep us in the on the right track.

AJ  25:12

But that renovation project was built on hospitality because, yeah, we had this inherited basement as the second homeowners, where it was the 1970s eighth of an inch, wood paneling everywhere, and bright green carpet. And it just was a really nice thing to say. We want to do this because we want to allow our kids to have a place that they can call their own and enjoy older bring our friends over, turn the kitchen into trader Dick's Aloha lounge.

Becky  25:41

So I love Dallas far days down here. So it's really fun.

Natalie Slagle  25:44

Yeah, that's amazing. It seems like

Dan Slagle  25:47

you have that, like, core set of values that you you drafted several years ago. You revisit them on a pretty frequent basis to almost, like, realign, right? And I every anniversary, yeah, every anniversary. Even better. I love it when you do that, because you are self employed as well, right? You have potentially, like, I'll call it inconsistent income at times. Like, how do the two of you decide where money or resources get allocated to, like the values and like how they shift throughout the year, right? Is it kind of based like, for example, you've shared, you have have children, so like, there may be some years where you have more expense going towards experiences for the kids or travel versus the home. So can you talk just a little bit about how, how you go about prioritizing some of those

Becky  26:36

values? Yeah, so

Becky  26:38

when we're thinking through our values and how we spend our money. I think he's really easy going, and that's amazing, and I have to be really careful that I don't take advantage of that easy going nature and kind of usurp my plans onto that. But I tend to think strategically, and I tend to see the calendar in, like, a full chunk, like a year, and, like, how does our family fall in? We make a lot of money in q1 which can really look like inflated finances. Like, whoa, look, we've got all this money, but we really have to be very careful. And over the years, we've really been able to understand the importance of having, like, for example, a larger savings or larger cash on hand, as opposed to, you know, investing or allocating all of these things for travel. But I tend to think, you know, in three month chunks, like, okay, in the next three months, you know, it's spring break, we'll go visit our friends and go to a place that we love in the Pacific Northwest, and then this summer, well, we need a new deck. And a total fit of rage. I had a contractor come and was so tired of my deck, and it was wobbly and creaky, and I put my foot through a board, and I was like, just tear it down and take it to the thump. And I thought, you know, we'll just get a deck bill. Well, it turns out it's a little bit more of a process. We don't have a deck and we need one. So that's probably gonna be happening this summer, so we'll go on a trip. I don't know, it just, it all just seems to go together. And when I explain it to AJ, he's got a lot of trust in me and kind of how I look at our finances and what is needed for our family, and I'm really grateful for that, unless, like, come down on him hard for being an ordained no minister.

AJ  28:26

Well, I also would like to add that you are an ordained minister for the Universal Church of light and unity, personally Life Church, which is what everybody

Becky  28:35

anyways, okay, act two, the finances. I got ordained better. That's all. I got ordained better. That's just kind of how we we have worked through it. Our kids are busy and active kids, and I am not going to deny that we spend money on them. Kids are expensive. Kids are really expensive. And then when they have

Becky  28:59

interests and you see your kids blossom into an interest. It is. It's really hard to say no to something that just brings them so much joy. One kid is art club and sewing and horseback riding, and just brings her so much joy and happiness, and she's got a lot of that pent up creative energy like her mom and so giving her ways to explore just lights us both up.

AJ  29:28

And then Ted, our son, Teddy is he's in his sports era, yeah, so it's like football and baseball, and during the winter, we're at the batting cages every other day, and he's taking classes and doing strength and agility training. So one of the great things about how we have chosen our fields to be entrepreneurs in is that a lot of the things that Becky does as a local and regional professional know it all with her one. Websites is having to get content of new events and new places. So these are work expenses that we can take the kids to, and they get to experience things that a lot of people in their class and their age don't. So if we need to go do a review of the new children's theater play that's up in Minneapolis, we get comp tickets, and we do a review, and we take the kids and get their opinion so little things like that. They have been so adventurous in ways that have really delighted us, and they're great with traveling and exploring, and they've just caught that bug in a way that makes it so easy to just do it all together,

Natalie Slagle  30:43

the intentionality that the two of you have built with your businesses and but it's, it's serving your personal life. It's serving your children. It is so powerful to see, and I'm just so impressed by that, right? Like your what was the words you used? AJ, flexibility and resilience, yeah? And, you know, you just describing like this, you know, adventurous life and and honoring these things that your children want to do. Well, you've also kind of made it a part of your jobs. I mean, that's, that's not nothing, maybe unintentionally, yeah, but it's incredible, like your your values are not only happening personally, but they're also happening professionally. And then you're utilizing your money, your resources, to to accentuate all of that. And this is the thing about entrepreneurship, when you're both entrepreneurs, that I think is fascinating. And I'm wondering if you could dig into it a little bit more, is how the business financial decisions impact the personal financial decisions. It kind of starts at the top, and the top would be the business, because the money you bring in in the business, the money you spend on the business, then whatever is left over is what we get to enjoy personally, right?

Natalie Slagle  32:04

So at least that's how I navigated in my head, is I have to start with the business finances and then go to the personal so how like Becky, I'm kind of understanding that you're making a lot of these maybe tactful decisions, and then coming to AJ and talking to AJ about it, yeah, is that also happening in the business side? Or how do you navigate, kind of what happens professionally, and then how that impacts you personally?

Becky  32:31

I think a lot of it for me boils down to I have a business that I'm super fortunate, has almost zero capital involved in it. I mean, I get a new computer every five years. I'm a real stinker about it. I don't keep my technology super updated. I just kind of make it work. And so a lot of the business financial decisions come down to who we have helping us on our team at any given time. And the nature of our work is that people kind of come and go, right? They kind of come and go. And so sometimes we'll be spending more on contract work. Sometimes we'll be spending less. Maybe we have a personal thing going on, so we need more work, more people helping us with our work, or less people helping us with with our work. So I think it always comes down to what are we willing to take on personally, and what sort of effect does that have on the rest of our lives? Because I could probably work on my websites 100 hours a week and still, obviously have things to do, but I don't want to so, but that wavers at different parts of my sometimes I'll just be like, Wow, I'm really into it, or like, I really want to work in January, February, March is always more busy time. So I'll double down on some of the help that I receive with my team, or somebody that's new, or my team will take on more hours. And so I think for me, a lot of the business decisions and the business finance decisions are, where are we at personally, and what are we willing to flex and or give up in order to save on business expense? And when are we ready to, like, say, You know what? I got to step back for a little bit. It's going to be travel baseball season, so I need more help during the summer, and so that, for me, is the most important business expense, and we always have to be aligned on how much we're spending on our people who we love and we want to invest into, and they've we're so fortunate that we both have team members that have been very loyal to us and the work that we're doing, and they are happy to flex in and flex out as needed. So from there, that's the main business expense that we need to look out for. Then it's our health insurance, and then from there, we need to make. Or that we're maintaining our home and whatever, but right next to it is going to be like, Where can we go? Where can we travel? What memory can we make? We have a bad case of wanderlust in this family. We are everywhere. We just love it, and we're so fortunate. We've got kids that love it. They're good travelers, probably because we schlepped them around everywhere,

AJ  35:22

well, forced them, but no, and I think, like, what Becky's saying is we're, we're always working on what's our workload, and is it at a point where I need to bring somebody on to help that, or do we need to just, you know, can we expense that? And like right now for myself, my business is to the point where I am scaling, where I'm having multiple people now helping out. I used to be just freelancing, and now I have enough clients where I can afford to still pay myself that same wage and bring others on. And it's been like Becky was saying, we we love our people and we're able to help others. And it's a new term, I think that I just heard on Instagram, somebody saying is a contractor collective, which is like an interesting new model of work, where we're all contractors, and we all have kind of our core clients, but sometimes we need help on projects with someone in a specialty that I don't have. So we'll bring them on and they'll help us. And I was just having lunch with a young man who I mentored and helped get his career started with videography. And he's like, Hey, I work with this young woman who is really interested in web design. She went to school for UI UX, and she wants to learn more. So we had lunch, we met, and I'm like, great. I've got a project that I'm doing, actually, with one of the places that you guys sponsor, the med city roller derby there. Finally, I can give back to a community that helped me get to where I am, where I'm doing a pro bono web design to help the roller derby team, because they're a non profit, and everything they raise, they actually give to charity. So it's a great way to give back to the community, and this is a great project to help train somebody in that wants to know more.

Becky  37:09

Yeah, one last point. We really talked about this a lot, but I think too what I love about our business models and the flexibility that we've built so we help each other, we kind of cross over when need be. AJ, does some work for me. Actually, he's technically my boss on paper. He's an unpaid team member. We won't tell so we have a one of the most important aspects of one of my both of my websites, actually, is our event calendar. And our event calendar is really important to me, because it's where everybody can go find out what's going on. I'm really strict about it. It needs to be accurate. It needs to be full. It needs to be have a variety of events across the wide spectrum of things to do in Rochester, and I try to keep it comprehensive. Well, I did have a team member for a while, and different financial issues meant that we weren't we know we needed to cut that position back for a bit, and then this guy will say, Well, I'm happy to do it. And he keeps doing it, even though, hopefully in the future we can outsource it again, because being tapped into the community is really important to him, so he knows everything that's going on. Now, I got to be careful, because he's coming from my know it all crown, right?

AJ  38:27

There's no way I couldn't absorb it,

Dan Slagle  38:29

but that his no middle crown. Stop, no. Okay, okay.

Becky  38:35

He had to, he had to know it all anyway, and you go, get my hat. Now I know, but what I'm saying is is, like, that's that choice, right? We he loves doing that. He loves being tapped in. So even though it's a it's obviously a pull on his time resources. It benefits him and it benefits our family.

AJ  38:57

Plus, I was able to get really techie and use certain tools to really streamline the process to be more efficient and productive. So I built custom Mac OS shortcuts where I'll download all of the events and hit a button, and it'll turn the time zone to Central Time Zone, and it'll turn it into one ICS file to upload, and this button will take all of the images and format it exactly how we want it to be. So I don't have to use Photoshop for every image.

Natalie Slagle  39:29

It's just fascinating. It's fascinating well, and it's like, clearly, you're an expert in something that most of it like you're saying. They say, I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about now, but that's why people need you. And I, I think it's really interesting. I mean, like, just a part with thinking back to your story, the two of you making that leap all those years ago to to be self employed, to be your own contractors, and now you're at a point where you're starting people off the same way you did, right? You're giving that opportunity to contractors, and you're creating employment for people and income, and

Natalie Slagle  40:07

that's wild. Yeah.

AJ  40:09

Okay, so I need to share with you a quote by Denzel Washington, which has inspired me for years, and it was through an interview he was having, and he said, first you learn, then you earn, then you return. So I look at it saying we're in our return phase now, because we're at a point where we can now give back and help others. And that wasn't there for us in this community at the time we started. It is in a lot of other communities, but we want to build that now where we're at that age and that level of we can help people who have an interest in it and avoid a lot of traps that we've gone through. And you know, they're hit like my conversation this afternoon was this young woman who wants to do web development, and she goes, Do people just tell you, Oh, I can do that with AI, no, I don't run into that, but I totally get why you would.

Natalie Slagle  41:02

Yeah, it's a great way to now be on our return era. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think the the last question that we'd love for you to kind of like, put this all in a bow for us, is just what works about your financial situation, and then, if you don't mind sharing, like, what's challenging, you know, what's the thing you're working on, especially when we're again, just centered around the fact that you're both self employed at this unique experience. Like, what is working financially, and then what's the next challenge for the two of you?

Becky  41:36

Yeah, I think what's working financially for us is both AJ and I have spent a lot of time earning the trust from our clients. AJ has had a couple of different sectors that he's worked in, but frankly, there you can thread the needle on all of them, right? It's like somebody recommended AJ for this, and then that, and then this, and then it's all based on relationship. And I think if there's anything that's working for us financially is that we have a series of clients that just trust us, and they trust us. They trust us to spread their messaging with my platform. They trust AJ to Well, first of all, AJ gets passionate about every single aspect of his work, whatever sector it is, he's gonna, all of a sudden, know everything about it. And I think that that is hugely, hugely beneficial to his clients. They see that they see the passion. They see that he wants to be involved. And so I think what's working for us financially is actually what kind of who we are. At our core is that we want to develop relationships. We want to develop that trustworthiness, and that has year after year, benefited us, because they keep coming back, and that's like a real family that they're benefiting. That's a real family that they have truly built up to allow us the opportunities that we have right now. So, I mean, it's a little bit of a sort of answering your questions, but at the same time, I think it's really, really, really important for us to acknowledge that we're nowhere without our business relationships, and that is a very important aspect for both of us.

AJ  43:19

I'll share my aspect of that second question, because Becky summed both of us up with her answer for the first one, very well for me, and this is something we've talked about, is we spent years working towards this financial marker of paying off the student loan debt, having this much In savings, and now it's kind of like we made it now what? What's that next hurdle? Because I'm not trying to die with the most coins in my purse, kind of thing. It's what do I want to do now that I have the opportunity in front of me to choose my own adventure? Because we were always living that life that I'm sure everyone's aware of is I got to pay the bills, got to pay my debts, got to pay the mortgage. And when you get to that point where you're like, I have freedom and choice of what I do next, it is really scary. It's very hard to go we've matched all these alignments every year, we keep realigning, and it's like we've met our goals, our bucket list is knocked out financially. Now what? And that's, I think, the biggest challenge for me right now is figuring out what motivates me to keep going and to keep pushing and to keep working hard and all of that. That's, for me, my biggest thing.

Becky  44:43

And I think going off of what AJ said, it's tempering that with the Choose Your Own Adventure. And for me, my biggest shortcoming in my finances is just simply the needle on feeling secure keeps shifting you. And I wish that. I wish it could just stay in place, because security meant something completely different for me when we had, you know, three or $400 in our checking account at some time, and now it's just having a real talk with myself and saying, what is it that makes you feel unsecure and facing the music a little bit, and it's me like, well, what if I can't have that subscription to my favorite Home Sense? Like, you know, that's what it really comes down to. And so having a real good talk with myself every now and then, just saying, You need to realize, girlfriend, like, lots of things have changed for you, and honestly, we've always just figured it out. That's where they figured it out.

AJ  45:48

That's where that therapy with her financial advisor comes into play, because they understand so well where she is, like, emotionally with that, yeah, feeling. And it's great, because they can take that and say, Okay, well, here's where you are, here's where that security is, here's your some charts. You know, according to the you're ranking very well and doing very well. And that's, I think, the hardest thing is, we did not grow up in families that had financial advisors. We did not grow up in families that had big savings account or investments, even so, when you're growing up in lower middle class and working bill to build, maybe having some extra scratch to do, like a family vacation to a park, this is a place that's all new territory that we were not prepared for, and having the right people around us has been extremely beneficial

Becky  46:44

and helpful. Best decisions we've ever made in our business, in our marriage, for sure, was just finding people that aligned with our values, that saw us as people and that frankly, flexed with us a little bit like I'm always going to be, that person who needs just a teeny bit more in her fluid cash. I just am like, I just and having somebody who says, Yeah, you know what? I see you, I know you. I can understand why that's important. Is just really important to us. So there is this, a lot of nuances to entrepreneurship, but it's been really fun to talk to you about it today, for sure.

Natalie Slagle  47:20

Yeah, well, you know, I think obviously, in our seat as as financial advisors, it's, it's really awesome to hear about the just like what you're getting out of that experience, and what we strive for with our clients, and even just in this conversation, like numbers, they'll there's a million different ways to go about the decisions that the numbers are showing to you. And the two of you have made decisions that are different from probably most people that you surround yourselves with, and that, I think, is the beauty and the art and you know, this whole financial realm and and making it work with your partner, and even the two of you are so different from each other, but you have different strengths and different weaknesses, and you're and you're leaning on each other on Hey, this is what I'm good at, so I'm going to kind of take over here, and vice versa. So thank you so much for the conversation today and being real and authentic. This was so fun.

Becky  48:23

Oh, thanks for having us. I love that. And yeah, what an honor. What an honor. So thanks for our everything that you do and keep doing good things. It's gonna be good. Yeah, it's amazing. All right, bye, bye, bye.

Dan Slagle  48:41

Hey, if you've enjoyed this episode and are looking for personalized financial guidance, schedule a free complimentary consultation using the link in the description below. Natalie and Dan Slagle are the founding partners of Fyooz financial planning, a registered investment advisor. The information provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any securities. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. Advisory services are offered to clients or prospective clients where Fyooz financial planning and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. For more information, including our disclosures, please visit our website at WWW dot Fyooz financial.com.

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