Finding growth and discovering self in doing hard things with Katie Flannery

Tiffany Sauder:

Hey, it's Tiffany. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know I'm feeling this pull away from social media and towards real connection, and that's exactly why I started my newsletter. It's a place for us to connect authentically without having to jump through algorithms. I usually share a little bit about what's going on in my life, my family, practical tips for two career homes, and just generally things that are inspiring me. I'd love for you to join me so we can create this little online space and we can lean into all of the ands in our lives together. You can sign up at the link in our show notes. Enjoy this episode.

I'm a small town kid, born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life. Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor and mentor. 17 years ago, I founded a marketing consultancy, and ever since, my husband JR and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. Yup, that means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life we love. When I discovered that I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world, and I want that for you too. I'm Tiffany Sauder and this is Scared Confident.

In this episode, we talked to Katie Flannery. What an amazingly strong woman. So Katie is in the beef business, wild, and has had this really interesting journey of walking into a family business that's been in her family for a really long time, her dad broke away and she and her dad have been business partners for the better part of the last 10 years. In that time, Katie's gotten married, she had a couple babies, and she is filled with an enormous amount of grit, a lot of creativity, ingenuity, and she's really brought a lot of modernization to this really upscale family owned beef business. It's really incredible. So listen in as Katie and I talk about what's hard and awesome about running into a really complicated life of and. Thanks for jumping on with me here. Katie's the COO of Flannery Beef. You guys just do meat, right? That's all it is, just meat?

Katie Flannery:

It's just meat and it's just beef primarily, and it's only just a couple cuts of beef. So we're about as niche as you can get in the meat world.

Tiffany Sauder:

Is there pressure to continue to not be that niche? I feel like it can be hard to stay really focused sometimes.

Katie Flannery:

There can be because you kind of have, or at least I have, and my dad has this kind of attitude of wanting to give our customers everything that they ask for. And so, by only having a couple cuts that we focus on, we get the question a lot, well, do you have X? Do you have Y? And sometimes you don't want to have to say, no, I don't. I'm sorry, I can't help you. What we've kind of learned in the past is if we do stray from what our focus is, it becomes more difficult to maintain that same level of quality. You're almost like overextending yourselves. So we've veered off track enough times that now we just definitively know it is better to say no, I'm sorry, I can't help you. But if you want this, I've got you 100% covered.

Tiffany Sauder:

So your family has been in the beef business, at least I was reading on the website, at least your grandfather, is that right? He started it, or not Flannery Beef, but he started in the beef business?

Katie Flannery:

Yeah, he started it. So my grandfather started working when he was a young kid in a butcher shop, and then he actually went on to open his own butcher shop. And so then, my father, his introduction into the meat world was working as a young kid in the family shop. And then kind of same gig for me. Family business, you get roped in. So that's how I ended up here.

Tiffany Sauder:

So can you orient me and listeners to the supply chain steps in the beef world? You have the producers, which is the farmers, and kind of what daisy chains next? Because when I think of a butcher, I think of almost somebody in a retail environment, which is not what you're doing per se. Can you kind of walk me through that kind of process?

Katie Flannery:

We started with a retail over-the-counter shop. And then as we started servicing more restaurant clientele, more wholesale, and pretty much put our shop online, so we started an e-commerce business shipping meat all over the country. We realized we didn't need to have a brick and mortar storefront, so we kind of moved the business into a warehouse style environment. So we do both retail and wholesale, but there's no storefront that you can walk into, which in a way, having worked in the retail world, is actually really nice because we get to set our own hours, we get to go home early. There's benefits to that for sure. But then to your question about the meat world, it's an interesting world that we exist in. I usually like to describe the meat industry as an hourglass, if you will, where if you can imagine the top of the hourglass, you have many producers, many ranchers, many people raising beef, and then at the bottom of the hourglass you have a ton of consumers, a lot of people eating beef.

But the choke point in the United States is the slaughterhouse. There are very few companies that pretty much run all of the slaughterhouses in the United States, and a lot of that has to do with the regulatory aspects. It's very difficult and very expensive to run a slaughterhouse. So you really kind of have them in a couple key players. And the way that traceability works in the industry is, when I buy from a slaughterhouse, the product will come to me with what's called a bug. It's a little circle that you'll see on meat packaging that has a number, an establishment number on it. And so I can trace it back to that slaughterhouse. But I can't go any farther beyond that. So that slaughterhouse is pulling in from multiple different ranches, multiple producers in their area. But when it comes to me, all I know is it came from that slaughterhouse. So that's the choke point.

Tiffany Sauder:

We saw some of that fragility play out during COVID actually. Not in the beef place, but in the Midwest, there were some pork slaughterhouses, I think, that got hit pretty hard and you started to see the effect came really, really fast.

Katie Flannery:

It did. Well, I mean a lot of these packing plants, they'll run basically 24 hours a day, two production shifts and then a cleaning shift. So I mean, it's nonstop. And so when COVID hit and you really had less people available to work and then they were doing the social distancing, it slowed down the process dramatically. We all felt it in the first couple weeks before they could really put a plan together of how to move forward.

Tiffany Sauder:

So if I were to go and look at the Flannery Beef business plan and see this is the thing that you guys seek to obsess over, you talk about quality and service, but what about the part of the process that you guys are in have you really done to set yourself apart? And then we'll start talking about the behind the scenes, but I just want to spend a few minutes kind of understanding the business.

Katie Flannery:

Taking a big, big look at beef, there's a couple different grades of beef. So quality levels, there's USDA, Prime, USDA Choice Select, and then it kind of goes all the way down. So what happens there is at the slaughterhouse packing plant, they can decide if they want the cattle graded and that means that they actually have a USDA inspector come on site and look at the carcass and make a determination of the quality level of that piece. And so, USDA Prime is the top quality level and that's exclusively what we deal with. So we're only bringing in USDA Prime. Right now, you're probably looking at about six to 7% of all cattle produced will hit USDA Prime, so it's a very, very small number. So we bring the product in and we are looking for the best source of product.

So every packing plant that we purchase from, dad or I have been there, have taken the tour, talked to the people. So we really have a good sense that they're doing the process right, because obviously we only want to be working with people who treat animals well. You're not going to get high quality product from an animal that's been mistreated, so you definitely want that aspect of it. We kind of look at every single piece as what can we do to make it better? So we want the steak, the product, when it goes out our door, to be better than when it came in. So we're already working with the top quality Prime. And then what we do in-house is we dry age it. And so that's a niche within the meat world that I think is gaining a bit more traction in the last couple years. We've always done dry aging because that's how my grandfather did it, and that's how a lot of meat was, I guess, handled before the days of CRYOVAC, right?

Vacuum ceiling really changed the entire beef industry, because now all of a sudden, the packing plants can break down the carcass into smaller pieces, CRYOVAC them, and then transport them in boxes rather than whole carcass. So think logistics, you can fit a lot more boxes in the back of a truck than you can half an animal. Dry aging is really where we have set ourselves apart. And the, I guess, realist way to describe it is a controlled decay process. And I know that sounds uggy, but it's kind of the same concept as salami and cured meats. You're basically controlling the environment that you put the meat in, you're controlling it through temperature and length of time. When you dry age, you're basically allowing natural enzymes within the meat to start breaking down the muscles. And so, that gives it a level of tenderness that you don't have in unaged product.

And then you also get a really cool role in microbial activity. So you'll actually start to see some mold grow on the exterior of the meat. And what that does is adds another level of tenderness and flavor, same concept as like blue cheese. The little pockets of blue within blue cheese? Those are all tiny fungi living in there, and they bring a very unique flavor to the game. And so that's what goes on with dry aging is the introduction of these microbes that we have within our dry aging rooms bring a depth of flavor that you do not get, again, if you're comparing it to an on age product. So that's kind of our niche, our world.

Tiffany Sauder:

That's fascinating. I was watching a few videos on Instagram before here. I was like, that's wild. It's literally mold. That's not what it looks like on your plate obviously. But it's interesting how that natural decay, like you say. I was like, oh, that's wild. I never knew that's what was happening. Really fascinating.

Katie Flannery:

There's kind of like a perception that mold is bad, and I think the crazy thing is there are so many different types of mold. That's a broad brush to use to just say, okay, if food is moldy, it must be spoiled, because there are certain molds that are harmful to humans. And so mold on bread, you really don't want to mess with that. So if I leave a loaf on the kitchen and I forget about it and then I see that it's starting to mold, that just goes into the trash. If I have a block of cheese in the fridge that's starting to get a little rough around the edges, I'll just trim that off. So it's again, different molds. Some you can just trim and you're absolutely fine. Some better safe to just toss it.

Tiffany Sauder:

Oh, I feel better. I feel like I totally just hack off the end of my cheese when it's molding and eat the rest of it. That's funny. That's excellent. Oh, totally.

Katie Flannery:

But a lot of it is temperature.

Tiffany Sauder:

Because it molds in a refrigerated environment? Is that why?

Katie Flannery:

The risk with molds is that certain molds produce mycotoxins, and so mycotoxins are the health hazard to humans. The most prevalent ones, they need to be in high heat, humid environments in order for them to produce those mycotoxins. At a lower temperature, you basically are preventing the mold from getting to that stage where it's harmful to humans. It's conceptually similar to bacteria, because in the meat world, the big concern we have is E. coli, right? And the safety parameter for E. coli, one of the big ones, is temperature. As long as you make sure that your product is always under a certain temperature, maintaining an environment that's not viable for pathogenic bacteria to grow and to thrive. You'll never be in a situation where you can say, I have eliminated this threat, but with the right controls, you can absolutely make the case, I am doing everything I possibly can to keep this threat at a near zero level.

Tiffany Sauder:

So let's jump a little bit into the, you talked about your dad is in the business as well and the family business aspect of this. He worked with your grandfather but then left and started Flannery Beef, is that right? Kind of branched off?

Katie Flannery:

Pretty much. He learned everything he knew from his father and he had two brothers. And so, basically all three boys were roped into the family business. And it was only about 22 years ago that dad decided to split from his brothers and open his own shop. So the butcher shop that my grandfather started in San Francisco, it actually still exists and it's called Brian's Quality Meats and it's run by my two uncles. But in early 2000, dad decided that he actually wanted to focus more on just beef and on dry aging, because the original butcher shop, again now run by my uncles, has morphed into, it maintains a very high quality of beef, but it's also a very specialty deli. They're doing fish, they've got produce, flowers, I mean, so it's more of a high-end grocery than a tried and true just butcher shop. So dad split, basically opened a small butcher shop in Marin County just across the Golden Gate Bridge from where his father's shop was, and he operated that for about 10, 13 years, something like that. And then, around 10 years ago, we switched from that.

Tiffany Sauder:

Were his brothers excited for him to go do this? Was it a point of contention in the family for a while? What did that look like?

Katie Flannery:

It was definitely the latter, not the former. And I think, I was young enough where I really didn't get it. But now looking back, the Flannery family has very strong personality traits, and you see that with dad and his brothers. I think the issue is they all wanted to be running the show. And if you've got three people all trying to take lead, it just doesn't work. They were butting heads too much. And so dad made the decision, if I want to be able to captain my own ship, I'm going to have to go it alone.

Tiffany Sauder:

So my dad has two brothers as well, and they were, here, it wasn't beef, but it was farming. And my dad was the one who left farming. He didn't go open up in the same industry, but my dad was the one who sold to his brothers, became an entrepreneur, and essentially said, yeah, I got to go. And I was eight when that happened. And I don't remember the event, but I remember it kind of felt different, because my dad now was an entrepreneur and it was just a very different existence. He wasn't going to the farm, that kind of stuff. So at the time, it was very visceral for the family, my mom. All of that was a really big deal relationally because it was where they were your family, they were your friends, they were who you worked with, and suddenly all that stuff changed really quickly.

Katie Flannery:

I do remember, when I didn't really understand the full picture, there was one time where I saw one of my uncles and I said, "Oh, let's get together for Christmas. It'd be great to have a big Flannery Christmas." And they said, "Yeah, for sure." But then nothing ever kind of happened. But then I found out they all had a Flannery Christmas, we just weren't invited. It was weird because I didn't get it, but now really kind of understanding the full picture, okay, yeah, there was a split in the family. And I think time heals all wounds, so dad and his brothers are on really good footing now, but back then when he made the split, there was just an undercurrent of not getting along.

Tiffany Sauder:

So you've been working with your dad for 10, 13 years, something like that. And so what's that like? How does that look? Are you guys like, oh, we separate business and family, we just are compartmentalized? Or no, it's all one big bag and we just navigate it? What's that look like for you guys?

Katie Flannery:

Oh, it is all one big bag. Yeah, there's no compartmentalizing. The business is our lives. When he shut down the retail storefront and we moved into this warehouse environment, it was right after the 2008 economic downturn. So things were pretty tight. And so, for the first year or two, it was me and dad running the entire business. We pretty much started from the ground up. We weren't giving ourselves any salaries. Any money was going right back into the business. So I was 22 still living at home, working 14 hour days with dad and then going home and we'd have dinner. So it was very all consuming. In a way, I think just really helped me and dad have a very strong business relationship where we kind of understood what we needed from each other in order to run the business, in order to make it successful.

And we really didn't let it bleed over too much into personal life. The weird thing, I think, about a family business, and it's funny, my husband doesn't get it. Sometimes I'll blow up at my dad or he'll blow up at me and it's very emotional, very, very raw. But then the next day, we'll have a cup of coffee and say, okay, clearly we need to talk and we're absolutely fine. And sometimes my husband doesn't understand. He's like, how can you talk to somebody that you work with like that? And I was like, I would never talk to an employee or a coworker like that. But dad is a different story. I see where you're coming from. I should, in an ideal world, I'd be able to better control my emotions.

But with family, it's different. And there is that weird feeling where you know at the end of the day, you're going to be back on the same page with that person because you're family. And you will always get back to the point where, hey, I love you. You're family. The disagreements we have, when you take a step back, are just in the workday. It's not anything about our core relationship as family.

Tiffany Sauder:

Did you guys have to work to change the natural parent child relationship where it's like, this is my dad, he raised me when I was younger, punished me and gave me instruction, and now today, we need to operate as peers? And breaking that rightful hierarchy when you're young, but now that you're partners and working in the business together, how did that play out?

Katie Flannery:

He was really, really good at throwing me in situations where I kind of had to sink or swim. And I think he saw it as educational for me. Honestly, how I got roped into this is I had gone off to college. I didn't really know what I was doing. I was thinking, well, maybe I'll study business, maybe I'll study art history. And mom and dad basically reached out and said, well, why don't you take a year off? Just hit pause on the college thing. If you want to learn more about business, dad is trying to start an e-commerce business. He's got this retail storefront. He really wants to be able to sell steaks online, but dad's a dinosaur. He doesn't know anything about the internet. Why don't you help him with that? That was my first introduction to the family business was trying to figure out how to sell steaks online. And dad really just dropped the whole thing on my lap.

He said, here's somebody that I've been talking to that can help build a website. Make it happen. And the benefit is, it was a small business back then, so it really wasn't something that I had the capability of screwing up because it was just starting out. And so I was able to find my way and figure out, okay, let's take product photos, let's figure out how a shopping cart works, all of that kind of stuff. And then that really put me in the role of running one part of the business. And he very much still wore the hat of being the most knowledgeable on the product side. So I was just kind of taking pictures and building webpages. He was the one that would talk about the product, educate me on what we were selling. And that kind of went on for a while, a long time.

I always deferred to him as, hey, if you have a question about a ribeye, you're going to need to talk to Bryan, not me. It really wasn't until the last couple years, honestly, that he said, "Look, you know just as much as I do. You can go talk to customers. You go pitch the product." And I was like, "No, you're better at this. What do I know? You've been in it forever." But he forced me into more communication with customers and then I was able to kind of see, wow, all of those years of sitting around the dinner table talking shop, it's in my brain. I absorbed all of this knowledge from him. And so, over the last couple years, he's been the one to push me to take over more from him. So I've been incredibly blessed that he gave me a fantastic foundation of knowledge and then really almost in a way is trying to get me to replace him.

So it hasn't been a situation where he sees this as his business and he always has to be in charge and I have to listen to him. He's slowly, over the years, been very upfront like, this will be yours. You need to step up and you can run the show. So I'm very, very lucky to have him kind of understand that.

Tiffany Sauder:

What have you most learned about yourself over the last 10 years?

Katie Flannery:

That I am capable of working ungodly long hours. This is actually a funny one, because I was thinking about this then. Of course, everything changes once you have kids. And I was thinking, what I think one of the benefits of running your own business and being put in a position where when you run into an issue, you have to figure it out. You don't have somebody to go to. We didn't have an IT department, so if the printer wasn't working, I had to figure it out.

And you do that enough and I think it really helps you build this mentality of, okay, if I hit a problem, I am going to exhaust all of my options to try to figure out myself how to solve this problem before going to somebody else. And I was talking with my husband, I was like, "How do you teach that to your kids?" How do you give them this sense of your destiny is almost like in your own hands, you can figure this stuff out. Your default shouldn't be, well, this isn't working, so I'll give up. Or this isn't working, so I need to give the project to somebody else. So that's a weird one. I still don't know the best way to kind of, and I don't even know what you call that.

Tiffany Sauder:

I'm a synthesizer. The thing you most admired about your dad was the steady diet of problems that he gave you and that built that resiliency in you. And I think one of the things that's hard as a parent is to get comfortable watching your kids be uncomfortable. And he just gave you a steady diet of problems and was totally comfortable when you were uncomfortable. He didn't come in and try to help you. He gave you the satisfaction cycle of knowing that. I'm the kid of an entrepreneur and then I started my own business. And so having a resource constrained environment is such an important learning environment. And then we go and make a bunch of money and get a bunch of resources and don't have the guts to create a resource constrained environment. I'm talking to myself. I'm not talking at you. But that's the thing, I think.

Katie Flannery:

No, that's hilarious in a way because literally just talked about this with my husband yesterday. We were doing just a long drive and that was his point, because he grew up pretty poor. And he was saying, "I think part of my success is because I had nothing. We had to go ask family members for enough money to get bread for dinner." And he is like, "How can we try to raise our kids in that mindset?" And I was like, "Well, I mean, you don't only want to feed them bread for dinner." So how do you find that middle ground of I want to be able to give my kids so much, but yeah, lacking, to some extent, I really do think builds character.

Tiffany Sauder:

Totally. This is such a silly thing, but my oldest is 14. And I'm saying to her all the time, "I have four more years of you in my house, and my job is to help you learn how to solve problems." So that's what we're doing right now. I'm not going to be giving you the answer. And I have a very dominant personality and so it's easy for me to just say, "Here's the steps. Go do the things and please be as efficient as possible and don't make a mess."

That's the easiest way for me to parent. But she had to do a project through school to give back. I think it was for student council or something. And I was like, "I'm not going to help you. I'm not going to come up with the idea. I'm not going to figure out how to get the resources. I'm not going to figure out where you're going to take it. You're going to make the phone calls. If you need me to do something, I'm here as a resource. Like, mom, I need you at two o'clock to go take me to this place. This is your project and you are going to do the things."

And so she decided to make cupcakes for the nursing home down the road. And she's like, "Well, where's the number?" I was, "I don't know." I was like, "I just don't know." And then she's like, "What do I say?" I'm like, "I'm not sure." You know what I mean? Hold up. And she got up, she's like, "Which door?" I was like, "Don't know." And she pushed the intercom and she called me from her phone. "They're not coming." But that's where I'm like, I'm finding I can microsolve all that stuff for her if I'm not careful, because it's helpful, it makes it go faster. We cannot recreate the fullness of the environment that you and your husband grew up or that I did. I was the oldest and so I really experienced the leanest years of my parents' entrepreneurship and financial journey way different than my younger siblings. But I do think we have to find ways where we ask our kids to solve hard problems, because there's not a lot of hard things to solve if we're not careful.

Katie Flannery:

Just really putting them completely in the driver's seat and taking that mentality. I'm a resource, but most of it's on you.

Tiffany Sauder:

So what role does your mom play in all of this? I can imagine she has an interesting seat to this journey.

Katie Flannery:

She is probably like the family therapist. She's really just been the support. I mean, just an absolute rock over the years. And I can't speak highly enough of my mom. She's absolutely phenomenal. She's always been the one to really help me when it seemed, at the beginning, we have no money. How do we buy product? How do you keep the lights on? She was really just a good one to talk to and say, keep moving forward. And rather than looking at this big scary product or problem, break it down into smaller things. Just focus on things that you can fix, that you do have an ability to change.

Don't worry about things that are completely out of your control because that's just going to cause you to spiral. So she has zero day-to-day activities in the business. I mean, she's a neurologist, so she lives in a totally different world than we do, but knows everything, because again, I mean, dad and I talk about the business all the time. Even still to this day, now that I have my own family, have moved out, whenever we do family dinners, about half of it is usually talking about the business. And she's always game to partake and to just be a big part of that.

Tiffany Sauder:

So is your husband in the business or does he have his own career or stays home with the kids or what does that look like?

Katie Flannery:

He's got his own career.

Tiffany Sauder:

Okay.

Katie Flannery:

Yeah, he's in law enforcement, so he has his own demanding career. So that over the last couple years has been a very interesting, I think, road to navigate. Two young kids and both of us in high demanding careers, time-wise, energy-wise. He was a patrol officer. He just got out of that into detective recently. But as a patrol officer, I mean, his schedule changed every six months and you have to be at work from this time to this time. If you need to call out, somebody else is going to get called into that spot. So there's that, I think, I don't know, I see it with all of his friends too. Nobody ever wants to call out sick. They don't want to do that to their peers. So it falls on the moms then. If the kid is sick, you're going to have to miss work. You're going to have to figure out how to get that problem solved. So it's difficult. It's definitely, gosh, it's probably been the hardest couple years of our marriage with young kids. But the flip side, though, I wouldn't change it.

Tiffany Sauder:

So you have two, and you said one and three. So what do you guys do for daycare, or for childcare? They go to daycare, you have a nanny? What does that look like?

Katie Flannery:

That is where the family business side played a huge role for me. I cannot speak enough to how important it was that at the end of the day, my boss was my father. And so if I said, "Hey, I got to take the kids in at seven, I can't make it to work until eight." He said, "That's okay, we can make this work." So I had a tremendous amount of flexibility with my schedule that really helped us through this. My husband just switched schedules, so now he has more of a seven to five thing, and we just basically worked it out with our daycare. He could drop the kids off a little bit early so he can still make it into work. I can pick them up at the end, which is an ideal situation, because for the longest time, the difficulty with my profession typically starting at 5:30 in the morning, you're not going to find a daycare that'll take kids at 5:00 AM. It's not going to happen.

Tiffany Sauder:

Well, and it's hard on the kids too to rip them out of bed at 4:30 in the morning. That just starts to create a bonkers environment. So you're up early and probably need to go to bed early. How do you make time for the marriage? We have four kids. I have a husband with a really big career too, and you have to fight early for your relationships to stay close, or it can be really hard to stay connected.

Katie Flannery:

Oh, it's impossible. I mean, I think we've both kind of agreed with each other. Right now is probably going to be the hardest point of our lives, because it's almost impossible to find that time. For the last year, actually, his schedule was, he was working weekends, because that was helping us with figuring out the drops at daycare during the week. So then, that meant that we pretty much didn't see each other at all. I was working Monday through Friday and then I had the kids by myself Saturday, Sunday. It was really, really tough. So I mean, I think what we try to do, but you fall into these traps of not wanting to ask for help. But we always have to remind ourselves like, hey, look, we have a good friend group. My parents live relatively close. We just need to ask for help and say, "Hey, can you guys watch the kids for a couple hours so we can go have a date?" And if you can at least do that once a month, I mean, God, that's better than nothing.

Tiffany Sauder:

Right. One of the concepts I've been introduced to has been so helpful for me. And if you've gotten as far as you have in a career like what you're doing, you're like an achiever, I want to do the best, I want to do the max. Instead of thinking about what's the most I can give my marriage, it's like what is the minimum that we're both going to commit to that's going to happen no matter what? So two hours once a month with no kids, where we're both rested. That means it's like, we're going to do that and that's going to be the minimum for the next year.

It gives you something to look forward to. Finding a friend that you can switch with so that you don't feel like you're the burden, but it's like, "Hey, we both need this in our marriage. Let's hold each other accountable to this decision. Let's get it on the calendar for the next three months." It's so important. I want to encourage you in it because it can be hard to have any energy left over, creativity left over, time. Even wanting to get out your calendar and put one more thing on it sort of makes you want to do something crazy because life is so scheduled, but it's really important for sure.

Katie Flannery:

Yeah, it is funny how it's almost like, when you take away the spontaneity, that can't happen as easily as it did pre-kids. And so there is this weird, like, really? I have to schedule a date with my husband? But yeah, if you don't, it won't happen.

Tiffany Sauder:

It won't be like that forever too. I'm like a stage in front of you. It won't be like that forever. I promise. People tell me at some point my kids won't want me around. I feel like we're not there quite yet, but it's not that hard forever. But bad habits can start early and then suddenly it's like five years later and you do want a relationship and you don't know where to start. And that's, I think, where the marriage ends, and it's like, nobody meant for it too. It's just there wasn't anything there anymore.

Katie Flannery:

Last year was probably the hardest when he was working weekends because I didn't see him at all. And then when he got home, I'm exhausted. And what I wanted was like, hey, why don't you take the kids? I'm going to go to bed early.

Tiffany Sauder:

Yeah.

Katie Flannery:

I'm exhausted. I'm tired. And you fall almost into a roommate situation where it's not me connecting with you on a personal level. It's me saying, "Hey, I need you to wash all of the bottles and fold the laundry and then make the kids lunch for tomorrow. Thank you. Goodbye." We did start to fall into that trap, but luckily were able to recognize it and say, "Hey, look, we got to do something different, because this is not the path that we want to be on if we want the relationship to stay strong."

Tiffany Sauder:

My husband and I went through some hard times in our marriage, and I realized, oh, in the same way that I decided, no matter what it took, my company was going to be successful, I needed to be willing to make that same decision about my marriage. No matter what. No matter how tired I am, no matter what, I'm deciding that we're going to have an amazing marriage, which is going to mean sometimes I'm going to need to stay up 20 more minutes to do something kind for him or wash the bottles even though it's his turn. Because I could push myself till I was bleeding for my business, and I wasn't pushing myself with the same intensity in our relationship. And I had to admit that to myself. I would do anything for my business. It didn't matter what time I needed to leave, what airport I needed to be at, whatever, I would do it. And I did not care as much about winning at my marriage. And I then couldn't have said that, but it was true.

Katie Flannery:

I totally agree with you. So it is important to be able to take a step back and be honest with yourself. Am I doing enough? And sometimes, just be the first person to do that selfless thing where, because I fall into that a lot in my mind. I'm starting to keep track. Well, I did the bottles the last three times, so it should be, but it's like, at the same time, oh, don't do that, Katie, stop. Just if he's having a rough week, just do the bottles again.

Tiffany Sauder:

Totally. Someday we'll miss the bottles they tell us. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot to juggle. It's a lot for sure. So couple quick questions as we wrap up here. The premise of the show is scared confident, and it's looking at people's journeys and understanding, also, has fear played a role in your journey? And if so, what does it say to you when it's loudest? And so, it could be today or in your journey over the last 15ish years, how has fear played a role in your journey? And has it been productive or unproductive for you?

Katie Flannery:

I'd probably say both, to be honest. I mean, I think with some fear, it can definitely act as lighting that fire to drive you to say, whoa, okay, if I think this might happen. I mean, honestly right now is probably a good example. You got a lot of uncertainties economic wise, and we've got supply issues in the cattle industry. And so, there is in the back of my mind that fear of what is this year going to look like? But you can take it and then say, okay, I need to channel this energy into production. I don't exactly know what's going to happen, what this year is going to bring, but here are some things I can do that I think will shore us up against potential issues down the road.

But there have been times, I think, when the business was younger and more volatile where you can just get absolutely immobilized by fear and just freeze. Not be able to make any decisions or do anything because you can't get out of your head of, well, the sky is falling and I can't do this and this is out of my control. So I think it's been both helpful, in a way, but also very, very difficult and paralyzing at times.

Tiffany Sauder:

Are there any vignettes from the past that come to mind when you talk about freezing instead of being able to break it down and kind of solving, hey, what's in my control?

Katie Flannery:

Yeah, this is not my best moment, and thank God that my dad is fantastic. We're in Northern California. We did have a customer in San Diego, which is Southern California, need product, and they needed it ASAP. I just loaded about 200 pounds of meat into my car and I said, I'm going to drive it down there. And part of it was, I think, me running away from everything else I had going on. I didn't have to personally drive this meat to San Diego, but I was freaking out about something and I was like, I need to leave the environment. I just need to take some time for myself, figure my own brain out, and maybe I'll drop off some meat in San Diego at the same time. Luckily this was pre-kid, so I could literally make a decision at seven in the morning. I'm getting in my car and I'm making a 10-hour drive to San Diego right now. And it was like, I was able to package it as like, oh, I'm helping the business. But no, I just freaked out and I ran away.

Tiffany Sauder:

It's so important to see those moments in ourselves. Yeah.

Katie Flannery:

Well, and I think it's also important. I think what I needed was just a break, just get away from the environment. And sometimes it's difficult to admit that, and so, I think as I have gotten older, I am able to do a better job of saying, hey, I need to take a half day, or I'm going to work really hard this morning, get everything done that I need to get done, and then go to the gym. Do something that refocuses me, because if I'm out of wack, it's going to spiral.

Tiffany Sauder:

So one of the things I like to reflect on, the questions I like to ask is, what advice would you give your 24-year-old self? If the younger version of you was listening to this story, what advice would you give her?

Katie Flannery:

Just keep moving forward. I think if anything, it would probably be more along that mental health vein of pay attention to yourself. I think you can get sucked into everything else in your life. For me, the business, everything was obsessed with the business, making sure that it thrives as well. But you are an integral part of that, so recognize that you need to focus on your own self care too sometimes.

Tiffany Sauder:

That's great advice. When you read your bio, a lot of times it's said, hey, you're in a very male dominated field and it's not an area where there's a lot of women. What do you hope your career says to other people who are watching you?

Katie Flannery:

I think to throw that concept of male dominated, female dominated out the window. I mean, at the end of the day, who cares? I really wouldn't want anybody to not pursue something that they love because there's this weird feeling of, well, as a gal, I don't belong there. Or as a guy, that's not my world. I just think that is such an unfortunate aspect of society sometimes that really doesn't help anybody.

Tiffany Sauder:

I love it. I find I'm often the last one to notice that I'm a girl. Like, oh yeah, I am. That's not that relevant the way that I think about myself.

Katie Flannery:

I think it's important not to focus on that. Part of why I have excelled in this industry is that it was, I never gave it any other thought. Dad certainly didn't treat me any differently and didn't not put me in certain situations because I was a girl. Everything that he was doing, he had me do. For the longest time, it really wasn't even in my brain, like do I belong in this industry? It was just like, no, this is what I do. This is what my family does. This is what I'm good at. This is my expertise.

Tiffany Sauder:

It was probably more brought into consciousness by other people's observation of the story versus your own narrative into the story. Yeah, totally. Totally. Well, thanks for coming on Katie and sharing your story. I really appreciate it. We're cheering you on. It's really special to hear how you've worked so hard and now you're also building a family. And wanting both of those things out of life can be complicated, but I can tell you it's worth the fight.

Katie Flannery:

That's what I'm hoping for. Just keep moving forward,

Tiffany Sauder:

That's right. Keep moving forward. Awesome. Well, anything, Katie, you want to share as far as letting people know where they can learn more about your company or if they wanted to taste some of your amazing dry-aged beef where they might be able to find that?

Katie Flannery:

Yeah, we have a website, it's flannerybeef.com. And on the educational side, I try to put a lot out on our social platforms on Instagram and TikTok, just kind of talking about our industry, and so that's a fun way, I think, to try to just learn a little bit more about our little niche world.

Tiffany Sauder:

Awesome. Thanks so much. Appreciate you coming on.

Katie Flannery:

Yeah, thank you.

Tiffany Sauder:

Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confident. Until next time, keep telling fear, you will not decide what happens in my life. I will. If you want to get the inside scoop, sign up for my newsletter. We decided to make content for you instead of social media algorithms. The link is waiting for you in show notes, or you can head over to tiffanysauder.com. Thanks for listening.

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