Sometimes the hardest part of growth (and leadership) is letting go.

In this episode, Curt and Melody get honest about what it really takes to evolve your business without betraying your values. They unpack how control, care, and clarity can all coexist — and what happens when holding on too tight starts to suffocate the very growth you’ve been working for. This one’s about trust, boundaries, and the kind of maturity that doesn’t always feel good while it’s happening, but always leads somewhere truer.

They talk about:

• Why “letting go” isn’t the same as giving up
• How to trust what you’ve already built -the systems, people, and process
• What discernment means in leadership
• The cost (and payoff) of clarity

Welcome to the Sole Proprietor Podcast. I'm curt Kempton.

And I'm Melody Edwards.

Each week, we dive into the ethical questions that keep entrepreneurs awake at night.

Whether you're building your own company or exploring life's big questions, you are welcome here. Hi, Kirkhampton, it is I, Melody Edwards here.

Hello, Melody Edwards. I want to talk about how you're doing today.

Because today I am so excited to talk to you today about what could be an entrepreneurial ADHD seizure in your life. A moment that is coming and going and passing, and that will just be some clothes that you're trying on that you don't like and send back.

Or we could be talking about you coming around a corner and exploring and maybe even living in a whole new world. That is shocking. Before we started today's podcast, I felt the ground underneath me shake as you were telling me some things that I want to unpack.

And I said to you, melody, our podcast is writing itself. Please stop talking so that I can begin the interview immediately.

Right. Because we always talk a little bit before the episode and catch up a little bit and see how the week was. And you said, you're doing great.

And then I said my thing, and you're like, oh, I guess that's what we're talking about today.

Yeah, I really am. I was like, oh, gosh, I have so much many questions. And then I'm like, wait, don't ask her those questions yet.

Well, go ahead, let's do it.

Well, let's start with some premise work here.

So, as some of our listeners may already know, Melody, you're a lady of business, but, like, the business that you're most focused on right now is Home Service va, a place where you can get VA for home service business. I mean, it's a. It's a pretty good name. It's a pretty good name.

I thought so when I named it.

Yeah.

And the reason why it was called Home Service VA is because that was the world in which I lived in at the time. And we have served many people outside of home service as well, because business is really business.

I think in many regards, we all kind of need the same systems in place or the structure, and we need support.

But at the time, because my life was focused on the coaching groups I was in which were focused on home service industry, and I was just kind of so enmeshed in that world, and it was what I was doing in my other part of my world that it made sense. I was going to help people in home service get a virtual assistant And I was just going to be a recruiter for them. I was just going to.

They paid me a little bit of money. I would find them the right person. And then it turned into a much bigger thing, because nobody just knows how to manage support, train, lead.

There's a lot of things that go into working with somebody. And so I was doing a lot of that for them, helping them, and it was a lot of work.

And eventually I did what I should have done right from the beginning. I flipped it into an agency, and that's where we're at right now.

So the virtual assistants work for me and my team, but they work every day with you, for instance. But they're not, like, you're not directing and supporting them in the way that you would have to if you were on your own.

You're not training them, and all of that stuff. So it's a weird world because everybody needs different things too.

All right, next question. You ready for the next question?

Sure.

How's that going for you?

Not great.

Please unpack it, because in some ways, you have this amazing reputation. You've done a lot of great work. So I'm gonna go ahead and just call BS on the first part there, but let's. Let's get real here.

How is it going for you?

Well, I. I would say it's been one of my hardest business journeys to date, and it's partially based on ideas that I had when I started. Also not understanding what I already understood. Like, I've come more into my own confidence, I would say, in the last two years, I've worked.

I've been working on it for years and years, but I didn't understand that.

I already knew a lot of things, but because I thought I needed to, I thought I would portray confidence in the world because everybody else mirrors that back to me, and they seem to know what they were doing. And I thought that's what it would take to get me to the point of, like, I wouldn't say I knew something until I actually did.

And I think any normal human knows that, like, sales and marketing is all about saying things that you may not be or be able to do for people and then kind of tricking them into giving them what they want on paper. And then you actually, if you're good, try to give them what they need behind the scenes once they sign up.

You mean fake it till you make it?

Yeah, that. And I'm not good at that. It feels really fake, and I don't like that.

And, you know, home service VA has A great reputation because I really have tried to put integrity first in everything. And I'm also, I am smart about marketing. I don't say we can do everything perfect.

I say things like we're not always going to get it right but we're going to have your back all the way through. If we don't get it right, we'll figure out how to get, get you there to the right place. So like that's smart marketing.

It's telling people kind of like we're not perfect but also it's setting expectations and they trust us. But one of the things that happened is when I started nobody even really quite understood what a, what a virtual assistant was. Nobody was. Not nobody.

But you know what I mean? Like a lot of our industry was not in the know you were in software. So you probably had a different perspective.

I had been using vas through sites like Former, you know, Upwork or Fiverr, like, but not for like my business. And when I started doing that, I started teaching other people.

And now what's happened because I spent so many years educating, I would go talk at events, I would educate.

But now there's a lot of other companies out there who have VA companies and they're smart like that thing, they're smarter, faster, smarter, faster, smarter. Can I say that more times?

They're just better at the marketing and sales part of it than I've ever been and probably will be and they know who they're marketing to. This is, what this is about is I made a commitment that we were going to serve a certain kind of person in home service.

I want it to serve people we could be successful for.

I literally say to our team and in our internal like when we think about people we want to work with, they are emotionally intelligent people who, you know, not as transactional because I want long term relationships. I want people who understand that this is a human they're working with and who care about things like living wages and things like that.

And what I found is that there are very few people in, in the industries that I serve. Not that they don't have emotional intelligence. I won't say that. That is not their concern and that's not where they're at in life.

And they are very transactional and they love being sold to because that's what they're used to. They love being sold to. They say they don't.

They're cynical but they love being told that this thing, this shiny thing I'm going to give you is going to.

Be perfect and Don't.

Yeah. And, and then when it doesn't work, this is what my experience was. If something doesn't work for you, it's almost like, what did I do wrong?

You know, like it's not the product's fault or the person who sold you the thing's fault. If you're good at sales, it's going to be like more of like, well, you didn't do it right or you didn't.

So I guess like I just thought, well, if I'm just honest and tell people exactly what we're trying to do, how we do it. And I give them really unique systems and ways to build trust.

Because what I understand is that for you to have a successful relationship with the va, there's a lot of fears that entrepreneurs come in with. They're control freaks, they're penny pinchers. They only they can do it the right way.

There's like a lot of mind stuff that comes into play when you're. And you need to build trust quickly. But that's not what people are buying.

They don't care about buying somebody who knows how to build a trust trusting relationship to get what they want. And they don't want to do anything. A lot of people don't want to do any work related to a virtual assistant.

They don't want to manage, they don't want to support, they just want a robot.

One of the things that I've noticed too is when you say they need to make a living wage. There's lots of websites you can go to find people who work overseas.

I have a lot of developers that live in the Philippines and there's a website that I use to find people in the Philippines and there's a lot of people who are willing to work for less than a willingness living wage. And they have different reasons for it, I'm sure.

Some probably don't feel like their skill levels warrant a living wage and some feel that their, their spouse works so they don't have to make as much or, you know, there's lots of good reasons. And they live in poverty and I need them to have a good stable Internet connection.

And so when they're living in a hut in the middle of this really barren place with very, you know, they have electricity three days a week and they have Internet whenever it's convenient for the Internet company, you know, that doesn't do me any good. So I just want to tell the people listening right now. I actually had a developer friend say, where you find these Filipinos?

I'm looking for someone who work dirt cheap and I use some of my melody words on them and I'm like, but is that really what you want? Tell me more about that. Yeah, I want to get some great programming done for, like, really get. Well, what, what do you want?

You want great programming? You want reliable programming? You want someone that you can talk to regularly? Do you want someone who'll be able to collaborate with you?

Do you want somebody who will be able to learn your whole code base and then be willing to work with you two months from now after you've taught them the whole code base? Because turns out they can't work for that price and they're embarrassed to ask for a raise or whatever. Like, tell me more.

And then at the end they're like, well, I want them to make enough to live. Good. Okay, cool.

Because just so you know, $2 an hour, believe it or not, I know that's really cool price to pay, but $2 an hour doesn't do a lot for anybody in the whole world. I mean, if they live in Ethiopia and they're making $2 an hour, there's still a lot of problems with that. So.

Yeah, anyway, here's the thing. I'll be very transparent. I started paying my first full time VA350 an hour because she asked for 350 an hour. I was like, this is great.

This is like magic. How could, how has this never happened before? Like, I've discovered this thing. But again, the thing is she can't live on 3:50 an hour.

She wanted experience, she wanted to learn. Because she'd always been in the corporate business world, she wanted to have virtual experience. And what you just said is so true.

Like you can get somebody who's less expensive. And a lot of entrepreneurs were very diy. Like, we want to get our own person, we want to set it up and we just want them to do the work right.

But it takes more than that. And I think the other part of it is for those who can't, who don't want to find the person and do all the work. We charge 16 bucks an hour.

And some people would be like, that's almost what I would pay somebody in America. And I'd say, okay, but are they getting like training, coaching, support from me and my team? They have access to me anytime.

Are they getting benefits like health insurance and bonuses and stuff? Is that all built into that price so that you don't have to worry about anything?

And they're there consistently and we're supporting it so that it doesn't break. That's like the goal. It doesn't always work that way, but that is the goal. And I think what I've found is that people don't care.

They'll care if they know. Like, they wouldn't want to pay $16 an hour and then find out I was paying them 350 an hour. They would be mad. Right.

And there are people who think what I'm doing is cheap because they understand the value of what I'm doing and they understand on a higher level. But for the average home service business owner, I've worked with hundreds of them at this point, you have to.

I know that the other part of it is I'm a. I'm a woman in the trades and I don't have the same visibility. I'm not male energy and that. And I think a lot of times guys like to have mirrored back to them what is comfortable for them.

And they don't like to like the things I'm talking about are think more emotionally mature. In a way, I'm insulting people left and right, but I'm not.

Yeah, I'm like, let me get the edit.

No, it's not like that. You know, when I'm talking about relationships and things like that, what guys really want is data.

Like, show me what this did for somebody's bottom line and how it made it better. Or they really want. Just tell me what you do. Show me. They want it quick and simple.

And that's at least what I believe the typical home service business owner wants.

Your grossly generalized view.

Super. Super.

We obviously know you wouldn't even have a business if that was completely true. Like, obviously there's people who step outside.

Of that, of course, but they're not the norm. They aren't. That's what I have found.

So finding clients has become very difficult for you in this.

Well, because I'm in a sea of other companies now, and there's no differentiation. There is, but it all looks the same on the surface.

And let's. Let's also point out that you're in this.

This industry with extra competition, and you're trying to do something pretty groundbreaking as far as the way that you're providing a service for a certain price with, you know, all this. Yeah, well, now that gets me to the point of this whole podcast is we care. You know, we're sole proprietors.

Right.

And our soul and our proprietorship often comes down to the fact that we do care. And I, by the way, have lots of relationships and friendships with People, male and female, who do really care. And it's.

It's fun to have those relationships.

Yes.

But they are further and fewer between. Especially when you put screens between people, things start to really cheapen and change.

There's a dynamic there that, you know, just look in the comments section. But we commoditize people now. Like, oh, you're overseas. You're just another thing, you know, just like on the other side of the screen.

So when we started talking today, you're like, kurt, I'm gonna have to let go. I gotta stop caring so much. And I'm like, ah, stop. Like, let's unpack that talk.

Talk a little bit more about what you mean when you say I need to care less and let go more.

Okay.

There's only one reason I can care less about home service va, and it's because there's a lot of brand confusion for me and for everybody else in that I've never wanted to just have home service va. I wanted it to be focused on a different kind of person. And what I realized over time is I want to serve women, but men too.

But at a leadership level, I want to help them get executive support. I want to do things on a completely deeper, different level. That's what my passion is. And I thought I would be doing more of that.

In home service va, we tend to get more people who are looking for general assistance. But when I get to do somebody, get to work with somebody who needs an executive assistant, that's my favorite thing.

If they're willing to put in the work, it can be the most amazing relationship that they have because it really gives them the ability to accelerate their growth in terms of their company or to buffer their time because somebody is standing between them and all of the yeses that they give. That's my story. And I guess so. I've always, for the past two years, known I was starting another brand called Melody Manager.

That's why I started the business Misfits podc. But I was like, we'll still advertise home service via in there. So then. Then it's a business expense.

And also, you know, so I'm still like pulling in feelings into home service VA when nobody is asking for that. And it is. I'm not saying I'm groundbreaking, but I am trying to do something that is not the norm in the industry.

But I've never been the norm in the industry. And, you know, I can look and I can see there's other women who are very successful in home service, but they really do have more masculine energy.

They project in a different way than I do and I don't literally have the energy internally to do that. It would be a lot of work for me and I want to just be me.

So I've come to the point now where I'm like, I'm not caring about home service B in the same way I've talked about, you know, what does the future look like for this company? Well, I want to grow it. That's always been my goal and it's been very difficult to grow and scale.

And I think part of it is I'm the face of that and I spend a lot of time feeling confused.

So I won't put out content or I won't, you know, wherever I am at in my relationship to the, the client, sales and marketing experience, we kind of find ourselves stuck.

Let's stop and unpack something real quick that you said. You didn't say the first part, but I'm going to tack it on here. I am providing something that no one is asking for.

That.

I mean, those are your words, that no one is asking for. So I guess we'll just start with what is, what are they asking for?

I think they're asking for a human robot who's just going to do things. And I've been very clear, like, I don't want to give you a doer. I want to give you somebody who's going to collaborate with you.

And nobody actually wants a doer.

They don't want somebody who's not proactive and self motivated, but they want somebody who's going to do on their own without any input from them as a boss who's just going to run everything so that they can drink a mojito on the beach. I want that too. That sounds great.

You're saying this to a guy who sells. Selling software to people and then they're like, can you go and set it up for me? I'm like, sure. What do you do for your price?

How do you price stuff out? Oh my gosh, you're going to make me tell you all that? Like, oh, well, that.

I thought that was a pretty fair.

Question anyway, so I'm just.

No, it's the same thing. It's like we want a quick, easy fix.

Okay, so you're offering something that nobody's asking for. You just said no one wants a doer, but everyone's asking for a doer. Yeah, Melody, I am not loading these questions in order.

I'm just, I'm putting them as you make me ask them. You're forcing me to ask you this.

I'm not afraid of your questions.

Okay. Why are you going to sell people stuff they don't need then?

I don't think I'm selling them stuff they don't need. I think I'm taking out the stuff that they don't want.

First of all, I have found that people can be very successful when they use the systems I've developed. They're really good systems. Nobody uses them.

I really struggle with the far, getting people to use the systems that are built to make them successful. And they're super easy. They don't have to do a lot of work. But even just sometimes a small amount of extra work is too much. And I get it.

I built it for people like me who will try to escape extra work at all costs.

Yeah.

But also, like, that's been tough. The other thing is, like, I'm all in on AI. I have been focused on that for three years now. Guess who doesn't care about AI yet? My clients.

Most people. Most business owners. We think AI is just like a conversation with a robot on a computer screen or whatever. And it's so much more than that.

And you have to.

I really strongly believe that business, small business owners have an opportunity right now that they're kind of like resistant to taking because it's just an extra thing that we have to do. And I get that because AI can be a lot. It's many things.

So there's all these extra things that I've put into our offer that people don't really use or care about. And the other thing is, like I talk about our company culture. People don't care about that.

Of course they care about what can we do for them, how quickly can we do it and what, what's it going to cost them and what are they going to make from that. And so it's transactional in a way.

So what does that look like?

So it's funny because I started from a place of not understanding and I've talked about this, but when I used to have my home service business companies, it was women we served. It was very much intuitively easy for me. I had relationships and would deep dive and try to understand that person on a deep level.

My customer Avatar Psychographic was four pages long and it told a story about the ideal customer that I loved working with. And that was pre AI, pre anything. I just really honed in on who I loved working with and wanted those people.

Now when I got into home service va and just, I hadn't really thought about, oh, it's. It's now all men. So I had to adapt to that. And I am not the kind of person that most people listen to. I. I have friends who'll be like, Melody, they.

They think you're ditzy or they think you're. You know, until somebody meets me or I'm vetted by another guy in the industry, then I've got street cred. But up until then, people don't.

Sometimes they don't even believe that I was a window cleaner. Kurt. I've had, like, things online where literally people would say, just because you hire guys to do the work doesn't mean that you're.

You know how that it is. That industry's rough. I'm not in those groups anymore. But that wasn't long ago. It was like two years ago. Wow. So.

Well, that, you know, that's the way it is. What I'm trying to say is, guys, I've lived this. I understand what you're going through.

And I also have a different skill set where I can help support you because I'm good at system building. I'm good at this other thing that you're not maybe as good at. And I'm good at people, which you may not be as good at.

And so I think I overestimated that people would care about that. Those skill sets, they just want the human. Like, I'm a human trafficker or something. They just want their human robot.

That's how I'm feeling today, Kurt. So I've redone my avatar. His name is now Mike, the overworked, overburdened home service contractor.

And when you make your new offering, you're going to pull out the Melody systems. You're going to pull out the company culture, right?

No, the culture stays. I'm just.

You said that nobody cares about that.

They don't care.

You're not going to talk about it?

Okay, I'm not going to.

Oh, you are going to care.

Stop it. Wait.

Wait a second. I'm confused. I'm confused. Sorry.

Not caring. At the start of this, you said.

You'Re going to stop caring and you're going to.

Yeah.

Give people what they want.

Yes. And.

And even though they don't want it, I thought that's where we're at. What's going on, Melody? What's happening right now?

What are you saying? I'm saying I'm not caring as much anymore about being the way that I have marketed and done. My selling has been Very based on truthfulness.

And not that I'm gonna lie anybody, but I'm just gonna tell the people what they want to hear in the way that they want to hear it. And I'm gonna care less about all of the words that I say, because I care very deeply about how I.

Even though you can't tell on this podcast, but I do care in marketing and the way that you talk. Like, you have to care about what you're saying and what it represents. And this is the biggest one for me, Kurt. I need my male.

I need a guy to come in and be the face of the company. That's where I'm at. Some partner, some guy who's good at sales but has integrity. I need to be able to trust this person.

I have somebody in mind, by the way, but I need a guy who's going to be able to come in and just do that front end, because I don't want to anymore. That's where I'm stopping the caring. Because when I meet anybody, Kurt, I care about them, and then I give too much, and then I'm sad when I.

When it's not reciprocal. And if I had been a better business lady, I would have been much richer by now. Slash. Any amount of rich. Slash. Would have been making money. Slash.

Many things.

So when we started this podcast, I'm just going to let the listener in on something at the same time as you.

I was either not going to be friends with you at the end and the podcast is over, or you're going to admit that you can't do what you said you're going to do, which.

I am going to do it.

You're going to do a variation of what you said you were going to do.

I said I was going to stop caring, but I do. I don't care anymore. The same way.

Should I say same way? Yes.

When you care this much, and you're gonna care this much now, and maybe the bottom is here. That's true. Yes. All the way down to not caring. Kurt. I can't change who I am as a human being. I know.

And that's the point I wanted to get to. We finally made it. We have arrived at my destination.

Okay.

And you made me ask the questions, and I did. But here's what you're gonna do. Here's what I hear you saying.

You're gonna.

You're gonna listen to your customer, and you are gonna fake it till you make it. But you're gonna fake it. I know. See, we came full circle. You Said that you can't fake it till you make it. And I'm not gonna.

You know, marketing is all about this. This way of sort of, like, making promises we can't keep or whatever.

The fact is, is that you are gonna come in and provide a service that's toned down from the service that you have and try to really do your best at rooting out the things that you can live with being gone. But you are going to try and find a new standard where you care less, but still feel that this business can have your DNA in it.

You're not going to build a piece of junk. You just can't. And, Melody, that's okay. That's why we have this podcast.

You can't build a piece of junk and sell it like it's a polished turd because you're incapable of it. And that's great. That's why we're friends.

I don't like this conversation anymore. You've insulted me on so many levels. How dare you say I can't care? I'll show you.

Well, go for it, lady. Lady of business.

I think that that's so important to understand that there's people out there listening and going, oh, so she's going to be just like all the other ones? No, she's still going to have a unique selling proposition. It's still a business of Melody DNA.

Look, Mellie, if you want to sell this business to somebody else and let them turn into a piece of turd that will sell something that. That you're not willing to sell, then you know what I did? That's my window cleaning company. And they had it done within just a few months.

Same.

So it's funny. We both had window cleaning companies. May have one more thing in common. But I sold mine to a conglomerate. They bought a goose that lays golden eggs.

I had built that golden goose a certain way, and I was so proud of it.

And they bought it, and they called into that code base, and they would reach up the rectum of that golden goose and pull golden eggs out as fast as they could. And when it was nothing but a carcass, they laid it on the side.

And the golden eggs that they pulled out of the backside of that goose was greater than the amount that they spent on it. And they went and bought another business with the proceeds. And you know what? I still feel bad about it. But I didn't do it.

I didn't know what I was doing when I sold to them. And that's okay, you know, like it is. What it is. It's fine. I just want to make sure that as you go into this with the attitude of, like, I'm gonna.

I'm not gonna care anymore. Melody, you're caring is who you are. And your care can change. You can change, and you can get yourself comfortable with a new standard.

I think that's good. Listening to the customer base and giving the people what they want.

So far as you are telling the truth and so far as you are, you know, being honorable. Look, you came into this conversation making me feel. With the words that you chose.

The things that you said made me feel like you're going to be dishonorable and unethical and you're going to sell something to people.

It feels dishonorable and unethical, Kurt. It truly does.

But you won't do it.

Well, I am going against my own integrity. Like, I have a standard that's up here. Right.

And one of the things I also mentioned right before we came on was like, I always tell people, do not make your business your baby. It's a business. I will sell this company someday because it's not my legacy company. It Melody Manager brand.

I'm. Yeah, I'm gonna. I have a bunch of questions already written down about Melody.

Yeah, so, I mean, like, the same background, but it's just. I know that it's going to be so much easier to sell with this other thing because there's no resistance.

There's a lot of resistance in home service for me.

But what I do know is that I've put a lot of heart and soul and suffering into this company that I've created, and I've cared very deeply about what it is that I'm building. And that hasn't really mattered for my sales. You know, it was. It's been difficult for me, for my team. I'm the front end.

I'm the salesperson for my company. And if I can't get the people coming through because I'm not giving the right messaging that people want to hear, then it's all on me.

Like, I am the bottleneck.

And part of that, though, was because I was making this about me and my brain and, like, my vision and my ideas, which is what we want our business to be about.

And I found myself in a place where the people who I can actually serve with the name of the company that I have are not people who will care as much about that. They're very far and few between. I would say the exception is the cleaning industry, if anything, because there's A lot more women in that.

And I'm not trying to be sexist, everybody. It's just I've had a lot of experience now in. In the world of home service, and there's a lot to that.

It's going to be easier for a guy to sell what we're doing than it will be to. For me to be heard. That's just been my experience.

Okay.

Unless I'm on a stage, then it's a little different.

Yeah. Let's go back to fake it till you make it.

Sure.

You know, at the beginning of this, we did talk.

And by the way, authenticity to me, I often feel like I have to present what I am today and who I am today and what I think today, because if I try to put forward something that I'll try to be tomorrow or something I might have tomorrow, I feel like that cuts into my authenticity and it.

And it ultimately is a lie at that moment until I'm able to make something happen where I think marketers are much more comfortable with that because they're like, yeah, that's how we live our whole life. Just promise something and then make it happen.

Yeah.

Tell me. We're changing, you and I both. We're constant works in progress. We are changing.

And my experience, especially as I just kind of called you out in my most fun and loving way I possibly could, I know that you're getting ready to fake it till you make it. What are your rules for faking it till Mel makes it?

Well, I think Mel isn't a part of that as much as possible. So if I'm faking it, that my version of fake would be. So I'm not the face anymore. I don't do the talking and the messaging. We keep it simple.

I'll get a guy, you know, a home service guy who's in the industry to rep the company instead.

If I can find the right person, I'll even probably give some equity in the company, whatever I can do so that I don't have to be that front person anymore because there's resistance right from the start. Most of my. By the way, most of the hundreds of people I've worked with, they were referrals. That's how I've always grown my businesses.

And now with so many other brands in play, people and, you know, other companies in play, I don't have that same network anymore. Especially because I don't have a home service business anymore. A lot of times people don't even know that I was a.

That I was in the industry at all, which is weird. So I guess what I'm saying is, like, I'm not putting my heart out there.

The same way that I was before is with a change, I'm going to simplify, and I'm not going to care how simple it is. I'm not going to care if it completely, completely aligns with everything.

Just like you've talked about in the past, like, your messaging has had to change. You know, your sales messaging, the funnels, all of this stuff that we're kind of like, I'm cynical about it, but it does work.

But like, that kind of stuff, I just have to go in on it. The crazy thing is I've known all these things for years, of course, but I've resisted because I'm like, that can't be the only way.

So you say all that, and I agree that I've had to make these changes on my funnel and the way I talk to my customers and the way we share messaging. And a lot of it's felt necessary in terms of being more clear or in terms of, you know, on my own.

I wouldn't necessarily usually hone in on people's pain and try to, like, hover there for a long time, but that is an important part of marketing. And I recognize that if people don't feel that you understand their pain, they're. They're not going to probably buy from you.

So, you know, obviously I've had to make some changes, too, in faking it till I make it.

Has that worked for you?

Yes, it's helped me transform.

Has it worked for your business, even though it might?

Yes. I'm not done. I. I guess that's, That's. That's the qualifier there. I'm not done. But I've seen some positive changes in results.

I've seen some positive changes in myself, and I think that that's, that's the interesting part I wanted to tear open today is, you know, the title of our. Our episode we talked about being letting Go.

And letting go is such an interesting thing because if you let a kite go, it's just going to fall to the ground. So you need to apply pressure in order for something to go where you want it to go. You.

You have to turn the steering wheel if you want your car to go where you're trying to direct it. But there is a certain amount of letting string out or giving rope to or expansiveness upon what you're at.

Like, you need to read more books if you want to get to a destination that's more exciting.

Or you need to consult a map that might tell you you're going to have to drive through a really horrible desert to get to this awesome tropical location. Like, letting go can mean so many different things.

And what's interesting is that letting go in the terms of, like, just letting go of the kite string can feel kind of good. Like, no more responsibility. I love it. And then you watch your kite come crashing down.

Letting go, in the sense that we would talk about on this podcast, is probably one of the most painful things that we could do.

And I think you're doing a great job of illustrating it, is picking up the book and reading about the destination that you want to get the atlas for so you can drive to it. It's a lot of effort, it's a lot of energy, and it might require you to throw away some of your preconceived notions.

And it also might mean that something that you have always ethically thought was wrong, once you've really let your mind get around it and let go of what you previously believed that might have been garbage, you might actually find out that that's actually not garbage at all, but maybe one of the most precious truths that you'll ever learn.

By the way, I'm being kind of careful here because I'm trying to throw some light out there, knowing full well that this, this is not an eternal truth, that every single piece you pick up on the sand, in the sand is going to be a gold nugget. But there are gold nuggets out there. And sometimes you find that being raised in a cult has closed your heart and your mind to this belief.

But you know what? Not everything is like that cult.

Or, you know, I was in a relationship with someone, or I met a marketer one time, or I had a salesperson one time, or I had this VA one time, or I had, you know, all these different things that have all changed the lens that we look through. Yeah, that was the case for that experience. And there's no shade on that whatsoever because that, that was all true.

But it's one anecdote that might not necessarily represent the whole, or it might be like one of those 50, 50 things where it's like, yeah, a lot of people have experienced this. This is a really big problem. But there's a lot of people who aren't experiencing it.

So when I asked you what your rules are for fake it till you make it. One of the things that I want to kind of unpack is what kind of outfits do we try on and see if we like them.

And when I say outfits, I'm actually talking about, as Atticus Finch would say, putting on some new skin. Crawl around in that body for a minute and see if, if you like the way it fits.

You know, this is what teenagers do all day and it drives us as adults crazy.

Yes.

Because the kid we thought we knew yesterday is totally different tomorrow.

And that's actually really cool when they're finding themselves and trying on these new, new Personas and skins and makeup and clothes and friends and all sorts of different things.

But we as business owners, we can reinvent ourselves and do all sorts of different things and, you know, fake it till you make it doesn't sound great to a person who's super authentic because it feels a lot like a lie.

But with a changing market and with beliefs that might not necessarily be true at their very core because of our own anecdotal experiences that we've made true, I'm just wondering, what are the rules for fake it till you make it?

Can I say I do believe that the ideal clients that I love serving are out there in home service.

I think I've done a horrible job at finding them because it's like I have to do a search for one person at a time almost, you know, instead of just marketing to the masses and then having more people come to us. So I'm letting go of the ideal client is one thing. I'm not holding on to the person that I wanted to serve in this business.

And I'm okay with that because I will be serving them in Melody Manager because I think I was trying to do both at the same time.

I was trying to, you know, find those people who are like more heart centered but really more emotionally intelligent, more growth minded, like really truly wanting to learn and grow and they're curious about, you know, the people that they're working with and just more of my kind of person that I can easily teach. That's what it also comes down to.

Do they understand the way that I'm communicating to them this information that's important in my view, that makes it so that they can be successful? It doesn't matter if nine out of the 10 people that I'm giving the information to don't care about it.

I probably shouldn't be given giving out the information. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

And because it's about me, it's about my, like the systems are built around my ideas and beliefs about humans and people and the world. And so I thought I would attract People who felt similar. But in the home service industry, it's not easy in that way to find those people. So I'm.

When I say I'm like letting go, it's letting go of the idea that I'm serving a certain kind of person. And this was the company that I could do that with.

I've had a lot of experiences that have been painful in the last four years of growing this and just really, actually it's grown me so much and I kind of feel like I'm turning into what I would call in my brain, like a bad person. But it's not.

It's somebody who has boundaries and who's not going to get taken advantage of and who's going to hold people way more accountable than I have in the past. I've learned from the start till where I am now. I hold people accountable in a totally different way because you have to.

I'm not running a charity and I'm also. Matt Clark was the person who once told me, business can be a ministry, but it can't be a charity. And that's kind of like stuck with my heart. That's.

Yeah, but it's like I needed to hear that thing to understand. And I'm not trying to run a charity.

It's just that I gave so much to people and that's not how relationships in the normal world work a lot of the time. That makes me sad.

Well, when you do run a ministry, it does lead straight to a charity. Like it just does. Like it's. They're hand in hand, you have to physically decouple them.

And I, I can see the tendency for that to go back to the example of trying on some skin and seeing what, what works. I'll tell you a couple things that I've done.

Number one, having a larger team is super helpful because you already got the skin of other people to try different things. So let me just first give you an example. What I'm not saying so that there's no confusion.

I wouldn't take someone else, say, oh great, I got a big team. There's this really risky thing I want to try.

And so I'm going to ask them to do something anti their personality because they'll be much more comfortable for me to have them do it. That's the exact opposite of what I'm saying.

We leverage these other personalities, these tendencies and these sort of beautiful differences and diversities amongst us as men, women and all the different cultures and households in this world. You know, just.

It's such A cool thing because I always tell people all the time I don't know anything about Pokemon, but if, if we were all Pokemon cards, I really hope I don't get this wrong because this is pretty public now.

It's not just people in my company, but if we're all Pokemon cards, we all have our own face and we have our own like, sort of things that make us interesting. But then we also have different power up levels. Like, right.

So like some people are like really good at this and like not so good at that and it's kind of impossible to be good at everything.

That's sort of the beauty of diversity is that where I'm naturally going to be weak for sure, not because I'm weak, but because I'm, you know, by virtue of the fact that I'm really good at extrovert or introvert, then I might not be so good at extrovert or introvert. Right. Like there's this continuum. So anyway, having other people allows you to experiment with other things.

You know, hey, so and so you're really good at this. What if I put you in charge of this? And let's see how, let's see how your personality can drive this or how your tendencies can drive it.

That's one really cool way to try on a skin that's pretty comfortable and can give you data points on what actually does work, or at least anecdotal because you might not be able to get enough data.

The other thing that's really helpful to me is by being really lethally honest about the fact that I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm going to try something. And so that gives my authenticity's itch the scratch that it needs and then it gives me the permission to try something else.

So. So you say that though, like you're saying this to your internal team of like, I don't know what I'm doing.

You and I would probably say that to the world I've seen. You've probably said it on a stage before.

I have.

I love saying it. I love saying I don't know what I'm doing. And that's why I love business, because every business person, we're just figuring it out as we go.

I used to think there's a formula. There's no formula. There's like things you can do. But. So that's the thing right there though. You can't say it in home service.

You can't be like, I don't know what I'm doing. But I'm doing this well. Well, I do too. I do too. But to the right audience, it works.

Okay.

And then your pe. Like, let's say you're. You wouldn't go out in an ad, would you say, like, listen, so I.

Might not do it in an ad because it wouldn't strike. You're right. That wouldn't strike the chord that I'm trying to get it to do. So if I'm on a stage, a lot of times, what I'll do when I'm.

When I've got a large audience of people that I'm. I've only been interacting with a short amount of time, I'll first, through authenticity and experience.

Sure.

Help people know that they're talking to somebody who's a professional. Like, you know, that I'm doing something.

Once I've set that stage, now I'm in the clear to say, I know a lot of you think that I've got it all together.

I think there's probably some of you who are dangerously afraid of thinking that I have all the answers, because I've tried some things that have worked. Let me just tell you guys. All right? Now, the imposter syndrome is strong. I wake up every morning knowing that I haven't figured it out.

And the more I learn, the more I know. I don't know. And I'm gonna let you in on a secret. Yeah. The secret is this. Please don't tell anybody this. I'm figuring out this.

Yeah.

I'm testing things out and trying them.

And so today I'm in a demo, and I'm selling home service va, and I'm talking to somebody, and we're in the demo, and I say, listen, I'm gonna let you in on something. I've been doing VA work for years and years and years. A decade.

Right?

I am so good at VAs, but I don't know what I'm doing. And the more I learn, the more I know that I don't know.

But what I've learned is that people are imperfect, whether it's us or the people we're working with. And you can say the next part.

Which is the next part, is where I roll out and say, I have always sold VAs this way, but we are undergoing a new program. We're doing a new. A new.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it a pilot program, but I am just in the process of rolling out a new process that will save you money, it will save you time. Or no, it will cost you time, maybe because they're DIYers. Right. So this is going to appeal.

It's going to save you money, but it costs you a little bit of time. I am going to offer you the old way and I'm going to allow you to take opportunity to do the new way. The new way is this.

You don't get my systems because you're not going to use them anyway. You're too busy and you're not going.

To look at them.

And yeah, they're really good. They'll save you a ton of time and they're freaking awesome. And we include it in our normal package.

I used to force everyone to buy it, but what I found is that unfortunately people are paying for something they're not using. I am going to provide you X and Y and Z and I'm going to. And so here's the difference. Here's the two packages.

I have my screen shared with you right now and I can show you what. What you get in one, what you get in the other.

And I know that I have never offered, you know, up until last month or whatever last year, we didn't even offer this.

And I know that this package is not the one I love to sell, but it's the one that in the industry, people have been asking for and I have finally produced it and I've produced it to a level to where I'm comfortable with it and I have a very high standard. But I can't take this one. I can't get my heart to take this one off the table.

If you find yourself in a position where you're interested in moving up the premium pack, the Melody Pack, in fact, this is your chance, isn't it? If you want to go with the Melody Manager package, it comes with all these other cool things and I won't be offended if you don't take it.

But this is the whole package. And this is the home service VA sort of basic package.

Right?

Like. And here's Kurt from Responsibid. No way you're selling in packages. Yeah, I know. I can't help myself.

But here's what that does, is it allows you to be totally authentic and say, we're trying out a new skin.

This is the only company that I haven't like, I did use packages before. The reason why we didn't. So when I was a just in a recruiter, I would. People would pay us once and then we'd be done. Now the.

There would be obvious packages that we should have Done like we should have had a support system or service that they could buy following that. And there's probably also a DIY version as well. What I found is that we spent.

The reason I became an agency, we spent so much time helping people when they came back and it wasn't working, but they hadn't done anything to make it work. That's what I fear. That's what my team fears. We invested lots and lots of time in that.

So it's funny because I have a resistance to this change because. But the thing we're doing now doesn't work because.

Not all the time, it does work, but it doesn't work the way that I would want it to because it's based on how people, what people are actually going to do. And so I'm resistant to making changes that are going to.

I'm afraid of ending up having more work again and like people being unhappy even though they didn't do the thing they. The basic things, Kurt, like putting in the pricing and responsibid, you know, there's no magic system or formula for this. And it's people.

People are like I say, it's part science, part magic, part something else. Talent, I guess, figuring out how to. To do the people game. And I don't feel like I always get it.

So just right when I think I've got it good, something happens to remind me that I had myself up here and I should have, shouldn't have put myself up here because I only am still learning. I'm always learning. I'm always trying to grow from what I learn. But also, Kurt, learning is exhausting.

I just want to be an expert and tell people exactly what to do and then I want those people to do exactly what I say and then for them to be successful and then to thank me if they think.

If you think learning is exhausting, imagine implementation. It's all dominoes. You push one over and you got a bunch of.

Yeah, I just love the concept of trying on these new skins in different ways because it offers us ability to play this little make believe but still be authentic. And to me, as you're talking, the more you talk, the more I felt like this is what she needs. Her authenticity needs to be respected.

But these opportunities to grow and change, they all require this ability to step outside of what you. What is true today. That's hard.

Yeah, it is. Because if it was working, I mean, we've only been an agency for a year, but we were acting as one long before that. In, in many ways.

But I do feel like if something's obviously not working, why am I trying harder and harder to make that work? You know, it all comes from the front end of the marketing side of things. Because I didn't have to market those first couple of years. I didn't.

I went to the events, I did the shows, I met all the people, I gave them cookies and they liked me. And then, you know, they would refer me. But at this point, it's like, I think I just need to give in. Care less. Not care at all, I guess.

Did I say I'm not caring anymore? Was that the whole point of this?

Yeah, yeah.

Care a lot less. I'm going to be caring about 110% less because I was already at a 350%.

Oh, okay. Okay. So you're gonna get down to the 200%?

I'm gonna try, yeah. Am I just stroking my ego on how much I care right now? Like, do I actually care that much or am I just pretending that I.

Well, the fact that you're answering that, asking that question probably, probably answers it. But I, I do think that there's. There's some important things to know as you, as you move into this next venture.

You're not going to do well building a business for somebody else who has a completely different disposition. I think that you're gonna have to build a business for yourself in a pilot way that you can dump if you have to dump it.

Look, you didn't come here for my advice.

I just. I literally did come here for your advice. So give me all the advice.

I think that you need to put yourself in a position where you can try something on and throw it away if you don't like it. And I think that what you're going to end up testing out.

You're going to need to figure out different variations of things that you can sleep at night with if you turn out something that you don't like.

I think your authentic self needs to be able to raise its hand, have an honest conversation with yourself, and feel no shame or guilt, because shame is super unproductive. But guilt can be. But I would love it if you didn't even have to do that. Because you go into it knowing I'm gonna try something I think will work.

Because that's actually, that's. That's where I've grown.

That's where I've grown the most of the business owners trying something that I think will work and knowing that my gut could be wrong.

Yeah, but is your gut Wrong. I feel like most of the time my gut is right. Not because the majority of the time I'm.

My gut is right, like, in terms of who I'm working with, let's say, but because I've had the experiences with those people who I love working with, who are the right people, who have home service companies most of the time, but, like, I can actually change their life in a way just by giving them the right information, the right support, the right tools. That is meaningful to me. And it comes like, that's my primary motivation.

And I don't know that my gut is wrong about what I'm trying to do, like, what I want to do. It's just the wrong vessel for it, this thing.

Well, it also depends on what your measuring stick is. You can get caught up in measuring it the wrong way. So, like, was my gut right? Well, I guess it just depends.

Is sleeping at night your measuring stick? Or is your bank account your measuring stick? Or is the kind of friends that you keep your measuring stick? Or is the relationship you have your.

Your spouse your measuring stick? Or are there two measuring sticks you want to measure off of?

Like, you're allowed to measure with whatever you want, but oftentimes we'll judge our success based off of a measurement from a stick we don't care about.

Yeah.

Or we tell ourselves we care about it so much that we start operating off of that measuring stick and we get. You know what they say is when you lean the ladder against the wrong.

You've been spending your whole life climbing a ladder, only to find when you get to the top, it's a top, it's on the wrong wall. Like, these are important questions that you're asking, and you need to know the answers to them, but you also can't know the answers to all of them.

And I think that's fine.

Yeah. Well, can I tell you another weird thing about this? Sure. This is a different realization. I came to these paths every week.

There's a new major realization every single week.

I realized that the way that I have been thinking of sales and selling is very, very different than depending on what industry in home service you're in.

And you already probably know this, but for window cleaning and holiday lights, I was giving quotes not normally, like, over the phone, especially in Massachusetts. We aren't like you, Kurt. And we have so many old, weird types of windows here. So back in the day, we would have to go and look at a house.

We couldn't just rely on people to tell us because there was lots of variations and the same for holiday lights. So when we were selling, if a client, if a prospect called in, we were creating an experience from the start. But I didn't have to close in one call.

And something like a cleaning industry, they have to close in one call. If you're an electric company or something, you're not closing in one call. You're going to like maybe do a diagnostic or something.

And so my whole experience was we were being really successful for certain kinds of businesses. And I've struggled with the cleaning industry because I just didn't get it.

And now it's like, how did I not see that sooner they have to close and do all the work in one call because it's like a lower. It's just a lower ticket. And it's been really sad for me to realize I'm.

I'm seeing it this late in my time because if I understood that I could have made changes that would have made their experience different. Because I haven't gotten. I didn't understand. So, like every day in business, like we're talking about, I don't understand.

There's a lot of things I do not understand. I think I've got it. And then I find another thing that is like a mind blowing, obvious thing. Does this happen to you in your world?

Yeah, more than I care to admit, for sure. I just think. I think that's one of the beauties of, of our personality types is that everyone thinks they're right. Humans, we don't want to be wrong.

We're not walking around acting like, hey, I'm a book of misinformation. You should ask me any questions. I can tell you a lie or that I'm overconfident because I don't know what I'm doing.

I think that we all think we are, but what you and I have, I think is special is that we both kind of know there's a good possibility that we're not and we're willing to listen. Like we're still putting our best foot forward regardless of whether we know we're 100% right or not.

It's that willingness to lean into the fact that we're wrong and excited to find what's new and right.

Yeah.

You know, it works against us, I think, in spirituality. I don't know, maybe you. I shouldn't speak for you. I think it works against me and spirituality in some ways.

But it's my favorite part of my spirituality that I'm in right now.

I don't think it's my favorite part of whatever spiritual journey I'm on. I think it's also not a great thing to be. To have, like. It's not a good trait for, like, sales.

Oh, heavens no.

The opposite of what you should.

Why do you think I built a sell software melody?

I know. Yeah.

Because I'd rather have software selling than me. And you know what else? It's not good for politics.

Yes.

I feel like politics really lends itself well to people who are 100% sure that a thousand percent of all the things that this political party agrees on is right and true and good and irrefutable. And it's. That's worked against me as well.

And change is not valued. Like, they will use that against people.

Yeah, he changes. Flip flop. They have that word. He flip flopped. So you mean when you get new information or she got information, they change their mind? Different.

Yeah.

Well, they went. They ran on the principle that they wouldn't do this, and then they did do that, and then you're like, okay, okay.

That's what you're supposed to do as humans is like, you get. You learn more, you get more information. You meet different kinds of people that teach you a different thing or a different way of viewing something.

It really bothers me that they're in a lot of areas of the world or in our lives, you know, in the politics and sales or whatever, that the things that should be valued, like the things we say we want, we say we want honest politicians, we say we want people to tell us exactly what we're getting for a product. And it's actually the opposite. We actually don't want that. It's just what we say we want. I want it.

I. I think you're right, man. I hate that. I don't know. I want that to be false. Let me think about it some more and we'll get back to you.

Okay. I hope you're happy to be wrong on that.

Yeah. Let's kind of wrap up here with, you know, this interview is about how you're going to move forward and what you want to do.

Yeah.

And I said at the very top of the podcast that maybe this is a corner you're coming around, opening up into a whole new world that you're going to live in and build a house in kind of thing, or it's something you're going to try on and see if you like it and maybe you'll send it back and maybe you won't.

Yeah.

And there's variation in between. I'm confident of that too. But let's just check in with you, Melody.

What.

What do you think is your next move?

Well, I'm.

I'm pretty confident and I think it's a good idea for us to try a different way of marketing to the people that we are trying to serve and making it less just. Honestly, the opposite of whatever I doing right now is pretty much what I'm about to start doing. Not.

But it's a good test, you know, it really is a good test. And I will not just do that, go all in and only do that. We'll be testing other things.

But I truly believe, like simplifying, making it less about, you know, it has to be more data driven.

And you know, it's funny, before I made this decision two days before, I had made all of these videos because I have this sheet that I get, an agency checklist that I give anybody who's coming to ask me questions, anybody else. Nobody's ever asked me to answer the questions maybe one time before, and I will easily do that, but they wanted me to write.

A person came and said, well, I'd like you to tell me the answer to the question. So up till now, it's been my secret marketing move.

Because if I am the person who holds the questions on the checklist and makes them, I know that I can answer them. So anyway, I made something and it. One of the questions is like, what's your rate of success?

And one of the things that I think I said in that video was like, I actually don't know what our rate of success is.

Because the way that I see success is that it used to be if you reached 30 days with a virtual assistant and it was, you know, you hadn't come back and said, it's not working, and you used all the signs from our checklist, then it was successful. It was a successful match. Now what I understand is that how do I. Is time the measurement of a successful match? What is the measurement?

And for me, it's like, how long are these matches? How long are people staying together? So the point is, I did not do what I used to do, which was like 87% of the time.

We get the first match right, but we look for a hundred percent success rate. But people aren't perfect. So we're not going to be perfect. But we will do whatever it takes to get you that right match.

If we don't get it right the first time, I can't say that anymore. And I think I said all of that and I turned it around and very confident.

I will never put that out to anybody else now because it's not part of the Mike messaging. Mike is my avatar. It's not part of the mic messaging that I need to be putting out into the world.

Does Mike care about success rate?

I think he might care. Like, is this going to work for me? Is the question. And maybe he doesn't care about success rate. That's a great question I should ask Mike.

And I would ask you, but you're not Mike.

I do think Mike cares about success rate. I think he just doesn't want to hear all the caveats.

Right. So it's either you lie and you just give a number. That's not true.

We have a 97% success rate. What does that mean? Well, do you really want to know?

Because it means that 97% of the time, somebody will, no matter how many people we have to change, they will be happy within. They will tell us that they are happy with their VA at some point. That's 97%. But I don't know. I think that what you're doing is healthy.

When you say you want to do 180 from what you're doing, I think that anytime we're testing something, we need to have enough variables change that it makes a difference, and few enough that we can isolate which variables did not make a difference or were making a difference in the right way. So, just as your friend, be careful what you're doing.

Obviously, you've thought a lot about this, and I'm not trying to rain on any parades, but I do think that the way this conversation started was that I could tell you're having a very vitriol, vitriolic response that's been building for years. Yeah, and I was a Boy Scout. I've made dry ice bombs. I know how it works.

You put the ice in, you put the water in, you tighten the lid all the way up, and then you run like heck. Because it's not going to happen right away. But that pressure is going to build.

And I thought that when we started our little discussion this afternoon, that I heard that boom sound that I thought I'd heard before, and I just wondered where all the pieces are going to land. And I think that you're in a much better place than I had originally thought you were.

Kurt, if only life could be that easy. I would love to explode and then become a different human.

Yeah, but you are. You are my friend, and you are Melody. And no change to your business is going to change you. It's Melody.

I think it's just not going to be all about Melody anymore.

And you know what? That's. As a business owner, and I can tell you from my own experience, that's a wonderful thing. That's a great corner to come around and change it.

I will say that I don't think it's always been all about Melody.

No.

But I do think that Melody is going to probably back off a little bit as far as what she considers is the right product for her market, and I think that's healthy. But you do care, and I love that.

And I think it's going to be really, really special with what you come up with, because you're going to care about different things, and you're going to allow other people to take ownership of things that maybe they don't want you to take ownership of. That's true. And. And I don't know where it's going to land. I can't wait to hear where it lands. But this has been super fun for me.

By the time this episode comes out, we'll probably have an idea of where it landed, so we can just add on to it a little bit.

That sounds really cool. That sounds really cool.

Yeah. Thank you, Kurt, for this therapy session once again. I always say it's therapy, but it is.

And also validation that I can make changes in my business that feel very uncomfortable to me and also be okay with them, and I'm not going to blow up my life of integrity.

Yeah. Yeah. I wondered at the beginning of the column, like, seriously, I wondered at the beginning. No, I didn't, but I wondered, like, is she.

That exploded right now? I'm not gonna care anymore. Like, this will be fun, because that's not possible.

Sorry I disappointed you with all my caringness.

No.

I told my team today we have to manify our marketing. We're manifying it a little bit, which means more for men.

Yeah. Manify. Well, I.

It's more masculine, is like more data.

I'm glad. I'm glad we've had the conversation.

Yeah.

And the best part of ideas is bringing them to life.

Yeah.

So you are going to bring something fantastic to life here. It will be different. And I hope that you build a little bit of a rip cord in there for you to shake it off if you don't like it.

And also lather up if you love it.

Well, you know, I will. I am adaptable. I am adjustable.

Just some days, I stay stuck in my little stubborn place for a minute, and then I move on because I have that grit, so.

Yeah, you sure do.

Thank you, Kurt.

Thank you, Melody. See you next week. You too.

Sam.