It’s not so like curated as that though. But I mean, my life motto is life is a windy road, it’s all about the journey, not the destination. So I feel like you got to listen to the bends and turns and kind of flow where the river’s going.

Dana Kadwell: Yeah, mine’s not very curated it’s, but we teach our kids more than anything, but it’s just how I kind of live my life is be honest and be kind. Like before I say something, am I being kind, am I being honest? Doesn’t do it all the time, sometimes I’m not kind, but normally is how I try to like, do everything. Is this kind is this honest?

Courtney Hopper: I think being kind and honest is good. Like I always, in a situation that I’m leading towards being dishonest, it always makes me like question my motive in that situation. It’s not necessarily about like the other person, but it’s about like, what about this situation is making me so uncomfortable that I feel like I can’t be honest and it kind of gives me like a gut check.

Dana Kadwell: Yeah. I agree with that.

Courtney Hopper: So I definitely think that’s like an important life motto, even just for like how you feel about yourself, you know?

Dana Kadwell: Yeah, no, I agree. And I think too, like, and that kind of resonates a lot with like what Maghon was saying, like, just even like, just do it, like trust your gut. Like, no, that was the idea you have, or the business you want to do is good enough. And just dive in and just do it.

Courtney Hopper: Which really reminded me of when she was talking about business. And like we asked her, what was it, a good example or advice you’d have for those that don’t know where to start in marketing yourself. And she said, stop comparing your beginning to other people’s beginnings. And like, that totally resonated with me because I remember right around the same time that we were opening the Bradford, there was another big venue. That’s still like the venue to get married at, in our area that was opening and their opening party was, I think like in January and ours was like February, whatever. There was like a winter, ours was like the fall of the next of that same year, same year. I remember going to that opening and it was amazing, like other worldly, so much fun. So glamorous. I remember thinking, wow, I can’t wait till it feels like that for us. And Dana looked at me and was like, it’s never going to feel like that.

Dana Kadwell: It didn’t feel like that.

Courtney Hopper: It didn’t it feel like that, but I always felt like I was always comparing myself for our venue to that venue, right. And it wasn’t until like, not that long ago that it was like, you know what, this is our journey and it looks different, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. And our product is different and it doesn’t mean that it’s better or worse. It’s just different, and that’s okay.

Dana Kadwell: There’s always a healthy dose of comparison that helps you better yourself as a business. Like you have to pay attention to your competitors. You have to pay attention to, you know, what’s going on around you. And if you can look at the comparison in terms of how can I look at this? And like, maybe glean, why are they so successful or, you know, pay attention. I think that’s fine, but where it gets damaging as where you can’t seem to get over it, where it cripples you to the point where like, what’s the point in trying, like I’m never going to be as good as this person or this thing.

But I mean, I feel like comparison and social media, isn’t just business- wise. It’s everything. I mean, like I spend more time on social media, probably on the weekends than I do on the weekdays. Cause I’m like so tired and I swear every Monday I started out with I’m like, I better start working out, gotta drink some green matcha tea to like flatten that stomach, you know, because you’re just surrounded by this fake life ultimately, right.

Courtney Hopper: With good angles.

Dana Kadwell: Right. And it doesn’t matter how many of those things, like this is me posing, this is me not posing, and then not posing looks exactly how I look. It doesn’t matter. It’s still like this comparison to someone who’s like, Oh, well they have four kids and they have like a two year old. Like, how are they so energetic? Why are they so happy? Why is life seems so easy, and why does mine seems so hard? Like it’s like this pity party that you throw when you get stuck into that comparison game. I can feel it when that happens. And I, like, I literally just turn my phone off and like walk away because I know it’s just not healthy.

Courtney Hopper: Yeah. I mean, you know, I’m not a huge fan of social media in general. I know it’s like necessary in business nowadays. And I really didn’t have any social media until I had a business, honestly, like I don’t even have a Facebook. Dana can corroborate this or you could just try to look me up and not find me. So I never had that. So I hate it honestly, cause I feel like it’s just very like curated highlight reel of people’s life and it doesn’t really allow you to know them any better. And like, I really got sucked into a lot of the like election stuff and whatnot. So I would creep, I guess would be a good word, on Dana’s Facebook just so I could kind of see what some people were saying, like, what was the word on the street? Mostly with relatives. And I still don’t love it. Like, I don’t  love it. I don’t think it makes you think any better of anybody, like what a lot of people put out there and the opinions and I don’t know, it just feels like a very negative space sometimes.

Dana Kadwell: Right, but I really appreciated the way Maghon approached it. She’s like, it’s a game. Why do you have a game on your phone? It is to enjoy yourself. And to me, I think she didn’t say this, but the implication is if it’s not enjoyable and you’re treating it as whether it’s a measuring stick or you’re treating it as something that is super serious, like it’s like the Bible to how you should live your life, then that’s the wrong way to be looking at it, because I do like social media.

I feel like, for me, it keeps me connected with so many more people that I never… because I don’t love talking on the phone. I get tired, like when someone calls and I know I’m like, this is going to be an hour long  conversation. I’m just too exhausted to deal with it, like I’d rather just like connect over a picture on Instagram in that moment. Sometimes I do want to have a phone call with somebody. But I mean, overall, like all these people, these 20-30 people, right, that I interact with on a daily basis. I don’t have time to talk to them every day, but I want to see pictures of their new babies, old clients. I want to cheer them on. I want to send that, you know, you look amazing, you’ve worked so hard, congratulations on your job, new babies. Like, I want to do all that stuff.

Courtney Hopper: Yeah, I’m just going to think about it as like Frogger and I’m just collecting flies, going to collect you and you follow her, and you, while avoiding being squished. I also loved how she said that when kind of talking about people again starting their business and judgment on social media, that you will never feel like you made it.

And I look at her, she has like 40 or 50,000 followers and seems very curated, but not inauthentic. Like she seems to have the secret sauce for social media. And I look at her and I’m like, wow, like she’s made it. And it’s interesting to hear someone like her say, you never feel like you’ll make it, or you made it. Like, no, one’s giving you a special reward at the end for like being an entrepreneur. And I think that’s so true.

Dana Kadwell: I do think that’s true, but I think too, the way I look  at it is you never made it maybe by being recognized by the world. I think everybody has this pinnacle point in their business they try to get to. For me, it’s a certain salary. It’s a certain like lifestyle. It’s some freedom, you know, and to me, if I reached that point, whether the world tells me I’ve made it or not, I will feel like I’ve made it because I have reached that plateau that I think i’ve been fighting for.

Courtney Hopper: I’m sort of like sliding scale for you between like how much money you make and how much personal freedom you have.

Dana Kadwell: Yeah, I do think that, but I think everyone has a different scale. I think that there’s somebody who could walk into our business right now and say like, Oh, we made it, like we’re here and that’d be fine. But I think everyone just has a different standard of what it looks like to “make it”.

And I think the point is, is that the world will never tell you that. Like, if you’re judging your success and whether you have made it or not on the ruler of the world, that you’ll never feel like you’ve made it because there’s always someone better than you out there. There’s always something greater than what you’re doing out there.

There’s always a standard that’s higher than what you are portraying. And you’re always going to be reminded of it. The world’s not gonna say, Oh, gold star, congratulations. And be like, Oh yeah, but you did this wrong and this wrong and this wrong, you know? So it’s like shutting out the noise and recognizing like, this is my goal, my standard.

Courtney Hopper: I really love that. I’ve always felt like I got into my own business. Basically to offset my life, not for my life to offset my business. You know what I mean? Like I didn’t get in business for the purpose of being busy and suck up my life. I got into business to hopefully have a little more freedom and availability in this one life that you get. And so I feel like for me, it’s very similar, is that freedom there to be able to do what it is that I need to do for my life and my family, which is important to me while still maintaining my business.

Dana Kadwell: Yeah, and to me, it’s also maintaining myself.

Courtney Hopper: That’s where the money comes in. Like some Botox.

Dana Kadwell: I don’t mean that, I mean, more like being personally fulfilled, because I think that’s where a lot of, like, I think that’s why I have the world’s depressed is because you’re just not personally fulfilled in whatever you’re doing, you know? And so I feel like for me, it’s have I finished what I have sought out to do. And I don’t even know what that is. I mean, it reminds me a lot, like when she was talking about how she was so afraid to talk about Betty Confetti, cause it was, the dream was too big

Courtney Hopper: I know, I love that.

Dana Kadwell: I did think about you, cause you say that all the time. I think it’s so interesting how much do you kind of try to take up less space and you’re too afraid to put yourself out there and to make, the world aware of these are my dreams and my goals for fear. I mean it’s just pure fear really, but it is. It made me sit there and wonder, and I’m sitting here thinking like, do I have a dream that’s too big to say?

Courtney Hopper: Do you have a dream that’s too big to say?

Dana Kadwell: I don’t know. I couldn’t really think of anything. I mean, I feel like for me, it would just be multiple venues. Like I do want to be someone who owns…

Courtney Hopper: You did send me some information about some land last weekend.

Dana Kadwell: I do think that, but sometimes it feels, it does feel silly. It feels possibly premature at this moment, even though I don’t think it is.

Courtney Hopper: I personally, I feel like it is a little premature at this moment, at THIS moment.

Dana Kadwell: I guess the other part, if I was to be truly honest, it would be to speak more. I think, to really be that expert because, when I really think about it and I take the feeling of being slightly narcissistic off, because that’s what I feel like when I like when you toot your own horn, like I think highly of myself, I don’t actually think highly of myself.

So I had to like tell my brain that this is the truth. Like I do believe that we have run a successful business and we know how to do it. I know how to open the next venue and to be successful so much quicker and faster than we did here. And I know how to run an event venue. I know how to manage a team.

I know how to create less burnout in our space, like in our company, like I know how to do that. And I feel like there’s so many times when you struggle with that imposter syndrome. And if I was to be true, like truly honest, like the big dreams would be to own that. And to say that and educate about that.

Courtney Hopper: I think people, I think I said this on another podcast, are like really searching for significance, like whatever that means in their life. And to me, it would be significant to impact somebody else’s life, bottom line trajectory by kind of learning from my mistakes, inspiring them. Like, I want to inspire somebody to take some big steps in their life.

Like, we felt inspired to take some big steps in our life and it wasn’t easy steps, right. But they were big steps and there was a point that, I mean, maybe thanking the parents, I really believe that we could do anything and I’d like to have other people feel that way too.

Dana Kadwell: But don’t you feel like we never had a cheerleader, like other than like the obligatory parents, husbands, blah, blah, whatever, but like really when you’re looking at the industry…

Courtney Hopper: Yeah, and I do. I was talking to  our real estate agent because we’re buying a piece of property with her now. And she was, I walked her around the Bradford, like since the renovation, she’s like, I haven’t been here since you guys opened. She’s like, it’s really changed a lot, all I can see when I’m walking around was like how nervous I was for you girls. And I was thinking, I really hope those girls know what they’re getting themselves into. She’s like, and I’m just blown away. Like I had no idea like how successful it would be.

Dana Kadwell: Well, yeah, but I mean, but there was nobody like. There wasn’t another venue in the industry that was like, good for you. I’m so excited for you. It was so cutthroat, and I feel like the tides changed a  little bit, but like, I don’t want someone else to feel that way. To feel like, like for the longest time we separated C&D Events and the Bradford people didn’t even know that it was owned by us for like, it wasn’t like super common knowledge, like if you dug for it you could find it, for fear that we would be taken off venue lists and we were, and we have  been taken off venue lists because we own a venue. And they say that exactly, it’s because you own a venue, you are competition. Their fear, I guess, is that we’re going to convince them to abandon their contract, to come over to the Bradford. I don’t really know, but that’s the industry.

Courtney Hopper: No, we don’t have room with the Bradford for them. That’s why we’re here.

Dana Kadwell: I feel like for me, I want to be someone else’s cheerleader.

Courtney Hopper: Yeah, totally.

Dana Kadwell: I want to say, I don’t care if you’re two miles down the road. You know, I want to say like, congratulations, I’d love to give you advice or help or whatever. And I feel like we’ve tried to do that when we have the opportunities.

Courtney Hopper: For me too, like when you’re talking about like speaking and inspiring other people, I really have a hard time with knowing what my expertise is. Like, I understand my roles in the company where I’m at, but I don’t necessarily feel like the authority on anything in particular. Do you know what I’m saying?

Dana Kadwell: Yeah. But it’s like your best friend is going through like a really tough time with her kids, okay. Like, just struggling.

Courtney Hopper: Definitely not the authority on that.

Dana Kadwell: Well, yeah, but she’s sitting there, she’s telling you these things and you’re listening to it and you have these ideas. You’re like, Oh, well, have you tried this? Or like, you’re encouraging her that she’s not a bad mother and she’s coming to you, not to just vent, but to ask for help and advice.

And so you’re offering this help and advice and we always say, I’m not the expert on this, but when you’re listening to somebody else, you can see things differently when it’s not in your life. And there’s lot of times you give advice, you’re like, I should have taken my own advice when I told XYZ. It doesn’t mean that what you say isn’t valuable just because you don’t have the perfect children and you’re not the perfect mother.

And that’s exactly where we have felt like why it has taken us so long to even do this podcast. It’s that fear of. Who are we? What do we know? Why are we important? Why should anyone listen to us? You know? And at the end of the day it’s, everyone has a voice everyone’s voice is worth something and has just has worth to it. I’ve kind of gotten over the hump of imposter syndrome just by talking myself out of it. Who’s really the expert on anything? I mean, even the most famous people who biggest…

Courtney Hopper: Like Brene Brown, she seems like the authority on shame.

Dana Kadwell: Yeah, she is truly and expert, but she probably still experiences shame.

Courtney Hopper: Yes, she does. She says so

Dana Kadwell: But here she’s telling you is that you  shouldn’t experience it. And she wrote a whole book about it and how to process it and how to get away from it yet she still experiences it herself.

Courtney Hopper: That totally resonates with me though, that you will never feel like you made it. No one’s standing at the end of your life to give you a special award or the end of your business or whatever, or the end of your day or week. You just kind of gotta like have the internal knowledge that you’re building and doing your best life.

Dana Kadwell: I also felt like her talking about like minimizing her problems. So, and it’s so on point what we’re going through right now, because I would say 2020 is probably one of the most depressing, like me personally being depressed, years ever. And it would come in these waves and I would be sitting at home with enough money to buy whatever groceries I want to buy, kids that were healthy. No one directly connected to me has passed away from COVID. We both have jobs, the business is not going under. It’s hard, but it’s not going under.

And I just remember feeling so low, but so shameful of how I felt, because I could easily turn to a friend of mine who’s truly genuinely struggling.  I’ve had to send sympathy cards and flowers, to friends who have lost grandparents and parents to this thing. And I’m like, here I am in my own little  protective bubble that seems to be doing just fine, and I can’t pull myself out of it. I feel like so many people feel that way, like where you’re just, I don’t even know. I think shame is one of it, but I think it’s actually when you are more, when you have perspective in life, when you can recognize perspective that you have a hard time. Letting yourself feel because you have so much perspective.

Courtney Hopper: I suffered from that before,  it was almost like a self-loathing cycle. Like you feel these things, but you feel bad that you feel that these things. So it’s just like I hate that I feel this way. Do you know what I’m saying? It’s like this kind of vicious cycle, and I think that like feelings are transient. Like you feel them, you acknowledge them, and at some point you understand that they’re going to pass, but that doesn’t make them any less relevant in the moment. And I think that when you shove them down and you try not to feel them when they come up is when they become bigger things in your life than they were even meant to be. Like, I think really feelings are just kind of like a marker for. What’s going on in somebody’s life, right? Like, This is working, this is not working. You might need to tweak this or maybe it could just be like, I remember just recently by child came to me, my seven year old, and it was his bedtime and he was like, I’m crying for no reason. I think it’s time for me to go to bed. And he was tired and he went to bed and he like was fine the next morning, but it was like such a moment of self-awareness like I’m having these strong emotions and they seem to have no reason. I must just be tired. Like, it can just be your body telling you, like, Hey I’m tired.

And I think with 2020, it was like so much mental fatigue, so many things that you had to process and you had to go through and, decision, decision, decision, decision. Like, that’s what I felt like in the office. It was like every day you like, kind of girderd up, let me get my armor on. Let me have one more hard conversation. Let me change something up again. Cause apparently this thing has never going away. And then even when you kind of got through the getting used to COVID, you had all the election stuff and you know, the kind of racial reckoning in the United States, like there was just so many things to process and so many things to feel that. Even like that fatigue can bring up really strong emotions in people. And I think that acknowledging them and feeling them and talking about them is important.

A lot of times, like in our society, we kind of value people who have it all together, right. That are seemingly  self-reliant like, I don’t need anybody. I got this, you know? And that was like, totally not the way we are as humans. And so negating those feelings just makes them stick around for a whole lot longer.

Dana Kadwell: Right. I mean,  I just think it’s a cycle of feeling not good enough and definitely hard to get yourself out of it. And I don’t, I’d never, I don’t think I really pulled myself out of it. I think what pulled me out of it was some Xanax.

Courtney Hopper: Sure. That’s fine too.

Dana Kadwell: That’s what got me out of it is to get me out of the funk, you know, and, and just kind of make my mind rest a little bit. But I mean, I was having literal physical reactions, like a physical response to it too. And I still suffer from some of it today, but to the point where I have no memory, like, I can’t remember anything from one second to the next, like I’m reading a recipe and I walked and I know I need to get the milk out. I watched the fridge. I can’t remember why I walked to the fridge, so I have to walk back and I’m like, I see the recipe book and I realize, Oh, I was getting the milk.

Courtney Hopper: This is called becoming late thirties. Dana, only going to get worse.

Dana Kadwell: No, but I mean, it is. And  I would do that before, but it was definitely like a much more extreme version of it. I mean, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s not just  age. It’s more of your brain has never, never stopped thinking, moving processing. Like the emotional on top of it. It’s like, there’s not room for any other new information in there.

I mean, down support, like I’m actually like a pretty decent, like, I can look at a word and recognize it spelled wrong. I’m a decent speller, but I would like misspell. Like I was writing a grocery list the other day, and I wrote salad as S-A-L-L-E-D, which is like the weirdest way to spell salad. Like, and I didn’t even recognize it until I was like an hour later.

And I was like, what is a salled?

Courtney Hopper: That’s a new fruit.

Dana Kadwell: And I was, I had an online therapist was talking to, and she was like, that’s just literally, like your body’s telling you it’s too much, like it’s too much. Like that you have no ability to retain information from minute to minute from hour to hour, and you’re just tired. And like, that was one of those moments where I was like, okay, something has to change in my life.

I don’t know what it is because it still is what it is. But yeah. So I definitely felt that, like, I felt like it’s and I look at like our business and we survive 2020, we got to the pandemic and it wasn’t by sheer grace and blessings, it was just by sheer, freaking hard work and hard decisions, hard conversations, manual labor. I mean, it was not just because it’s because we literally hustled the shit out of it. I recognize we could have done all that and it still could have been unsuccessful.

Courtney Hopper: Yeah, but we have a nice product. So there’s that.

Dana Kadwell: I felt like she was a really, I thought she was a really great guest and someone that if you are nervous about starting, I feel like even her story about starting that she is very risk adverse, and she did it in a way that was super safe and that never leveraged too much to where if it all came crashing down, that she would be in a place where…

Courtney Hopper: and I love that, that intuition, like her understanding what makes her tick, and then allowed her to be like her most creative self. Do you know what I mean? Which I like, I totally like, I get that, like, I really get that.

Dana Kadwell: But I love that someone else’s telling her like, Oh, the best way to do this is take out a loan and she’s listening to that person because they are the expert possibly at that point, but they weren’t the expert on her and what she needed. And I feel like for so many new entrepreneurs, They want to watch a YouTube video.

They want to listen to a podcast and someone tell them, this is what you should do. This is how you should do it. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. And I think the whole point, and I hope that the message you get from our podcast is there is no right or wrong way to do it. Everyone is at a different point in their journey of being an entrepreneur, and some for you to open a company or a business, maybe you need to take the safe route.

Maybe it needs to be all organic. Money that you don’t take out loans and, you know, whatever, or maybe you need to be the person that jumps all in full body, but see how this shakes out there is no right way to do it. And she’s proof of that.

Courtney Hopper: Yeah, I think there’s no roadmap. There’s no, like if you do a then B then C that you’re going to be a successful entrepreneur. Dana’s not going to write that book, right. So everyone has their own journey, honestly, and everyone has their own path and I love how she took hers and she didn’t compare. Her pace, which is probably slower than some others to others and allow that to make her make decisions that she would later regret. Cause when it, you know, when the pedal came to the metal and push came to shove, she was able to pivot in a way that was super successful for her business and a way that was safe for her and allowed her to still maintain that kind of creative freedom without being bogged down with like financial stress and things of that nature.

Dana Kadwell: Right, and what came out of it Is her ultimate dream of Betty Confetti and this beautiful book about making mistakes and turning, Oh, I just love that. Like turning your trash into beauty, or like something broken and thrown away into something that spreads joy and happiness and love. Like that’s so powerful.

Courtney Hopper: I love talking to her about it cause I could feel her energy with it. And I know that probably sounds hokey, but there are certain times it’s not just someone who’s super passionate, but someone who is like operating in what I consider their zone. Like you can feel energy between them, between you and them.

Like when they’re sharing something with you, like this could be someone who’s like a mixologist and makes a great cocktail. Like, I experienced this in Vegas with somebody that I was like, I could tell they were just operating in their passion. And when she was talking specifically about Betty Confetti, you could just feel like how much passion and heart she had behind it. And you were like, wow, I’m really experiencing this person talking to them. And I feel like that’s, to me,  that’s when you’ve made it, like, I would love for someone to talk to me or listen to me or talk to somebody and be like, you know what? Like, I can feel you like your authenticity when I’m talking to you or when I hear you speak, I think that says a lot about the path that she’s taken and where she’s at.

Dana Kadwell: What would you say was your favorite tidbit to that she gave, I should say. Is tidbit the right word?

Courtney Hopper: Well in like my not really answer. I love the word jobby. It was a€ hobby

Dana Kadwell: I say that.

Courtney Hopper: A I love that. I as like, where was that word?

Dana Kadwell: It’s a jobby. It’s so true.

We had a jobby for

I know we did.

Courtney Hopper: C&D was jobby. It’s a job hobby, but yeah, I love that. Oh, I loved when she said that when you are starting a business, that it’s all inside of you, like everything that you need to cross that finish line is inside of you.

And you have to believe that before anyone else is going to believe it. And I think that that is totally true, that you have to believe that you can do it before anyone else’s going to believe it. That was my favorite little snippet. So what was your favorite like takeaway from this episode?

Dana Kadwell: I personally loved it when she was talking about when you’re faithful a little, you’ll be given a lot, because I feel like that’s very much how I approach business in general, is you definitely being the ideas person, and so you want to go from zero to 60, like instantaneously and I’m like, well, can we like go 10 miles per hour? Make sure this works. Let’s have a good process. Let’s make sure we’re serving that area of our business well enough before we try to take this massive leap, because I feel like it’s just such great advice. Like if you put in the energy and the effort with just a few, it pays off in the end.

Courtney Hopper: Yeah, I love that. I think that’s great advice. All right. Well, that was a great episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as we did.

Dana Kadwell: I know. And if you haven’t checked out Betty Confetti, make sure you do it is a beautiful book. It’s great to read to your daughters and your sons and it’s a great adult book as well.

Courtney Hopper: I think it definitely speaks to all of us and turning our mistakes into something different, or being okay with making mistakes.

All right, thanks everyone for gathering with us today, to talk about the hustle. To learn more about Maghon Taylor, visit allshewrotenotes.com or follow her on Instagram at allshewrotenotes.

Dana Kadwell: To learn more about our hustles, visit canddevents.com, thebradfordnc.com, and hustleandgather.com. Or follow us on Instagram @CandDEvents, @TheBradfordNC, and @HustleandGather. And if you like the show, be sure to subscribe and leave us a rating and a review.

Courtney Hopper: This podcast is a production of Earfluence. I’m Courtney.

Dana Kadwell: And I’m Dana.

Courtney Hopper: And we’ll talk to you next time on Hustle and Gather.