What even is a Life of And?

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:00]:

So there's this thing in podcasting where sometimes you take an episode from somebody else's show and drop it into your own feed. So that is what we're doing with this episode. I've never done this before, but I was recently interviewed by Nikki Llewellyn. She has a top podcast called Gut Science. And I just thought the conversation was so good, which is maybe so narcissistic, but I felt like it was just like an awesome overview of, like, how did I even get started on this crazy podcast? What is the life of and what is the impact that I hope to have in the world? And I just felt like, what? It's like a 25 minutes snapshot into all the things I have been thinking about for like, the last three years. So I thought, let's just go ahead and drop it on the feed. It remind you guys about what we're doing, about why this pursuit of a life of and is important, and why the hard work is the work that we choose every dang day. So here is our first drop from Nikki Llewellyn's gut plus science.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:01:05]:

And that's what you're about ready to walk into. Thanks for listening. And all day long, we react to the most ordinary things in our lives, and it fills up a huge part of the bucket of our relationships, what we talk about, what we're dealing with, what we're responding to. And we don't have systems in place to make that stuff happen almost automatically.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:01:25]:

Hey, it's Nikki Llewellyn Gregory, and you're on gut plus science. You're in for a fast paced storytelling action item, rich leadership growth experience. I hope you make this podcast a habit. I consider it a leadership mentoring tool. Learning together makes us better together, and that is how we change the world around us. Let's get to it. Hey, it's Nikki back on gut plus science. And today I have Tiffany Souder with me.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:01:50]:

I would say Tiffany and I have known each other for years, but until recently, we've kind of gotten to know each other a little bit more, working together on some projects. It's been fun. And Tiffany is the CEO of Element three. She's the host of the Scared Confident podcast. And let me tell you what she's all about in a couple of sentences. So she loves figuring out how to build companies where people love to work, living and building and teaching a life of and which. That's what we're going to hone in on today. And investing in people who are humble enough to learn and confident enough to believe they can.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:02:24]:

That sounds so fun. I feel like that's so many episodes that we could talk about. You know, maybe we'll have you back soon, but today, yes, we're going to talk about living and leading a life of. And so I think the best way to get the context on Tiffany, some people might be like, what do you mean? Is I was at your lunch party for your show, because our producer, we share the same producer, Scared Confident. You had this amazing launch party, and I don't really know the story behind the making of the show, like, why Scared Confident became a thing. But I know that it really ties to what we're talking about today around living and leading a life of Anne. So just help us, like, get this groundwork for understanding this.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:03:03]:

Yeah, well, right before. Well, thanks for having me on, Nikki. It's great to kind of get to chat about the early days a little bit again. So right before this conversation, I did a call with someone who's trying to figure out if they want to get into the podcasting world or not. And so I was giving them an overview kind of, of my show. And I said, you know, I'm just starting year four. Year one was really. I think it was 50% therapy for me, you know, chance to externalize and sort of see my own story in a little different way.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:03:32]:

And instead of paying a therapist to listen, I just, like, committed to a podcast. And it meant every single week, I was going to have to push record, and I was going to have to, like, figure out what to say. And I started to just pay attention to, like, my feelings, my thoughts, in a way that is not natural for me. I'm very tasky. I'm very, like, you know, external things are all taken care of, but, like, internal self care is not my superpower. And so I think it really became a forcing function for that. I started it, like, a lot of podcasts in 2020, and I just had my fourth kid. She was a total surprise.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:04:07]:

I turned 40 years old. My husband and I were leading through an enormous amount of just uncertainty. We were both executive leaders, and everything in our house broke. And I was just in this place of just, like, man, everything I thought I knew is just gone, what is happening? And I felt really uncertain, and fear started really yelling loud at me. And so I was in a conference room, and one of our copywriters at element three said these words, scared, confident. And I was like, I've never heard two words more perfectly summarize what my whole life has felt like. This tension between stepping into new things, being a young entrepreneur, deciding to have a big family, fighting like hell for my marriage. Like, all these things.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:04:50]:

Like, I was so afraid, but I always got to this place where it's like I either faked it or I actually believed I was confident. So in this sort of season of fear that I was going through, I was like, I'm just gonna. I want to live the rest of my life totally out from underneath this word fear. And I don't know how to do that, but I'm just gonna start pursuing whether or not what it's saying to me is true or not. And so that's really what the first, I think, year was all about. Washington. How do I look fear in the face? How do I put my face, my head, sort of in the mouth of the lion? And all these things that fear was saying to me, they're either true or they're false. And I found this power in just exposing it with a lot of what started out of timid, very timidly started exposing it, and I started to just realize, man, the louder I shout what fear is saying to me, the less power it has over my life.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:05:45]:

And so what happens when we do that, you know?

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:05:48]:

So you said therapy. Do you know how many podcasters have found their podcasting experience? They've said that, like, that. That it's therapy. So, because I wanted to know, like, what has happened since launch day? Like, what did you expect? And that has happened versus, like, what's been surprising. Did you know it was going to be a therapy session when you hop on the mic? I sure didn't.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:06:08]:

No, I think not at all. I also think, you know, you think when you create content, I think in every other aspect of content creation, like writing a book, it's like, more of a period type of experience. Like, I wrote a book. This is my declaration to the world. I thought about this really hard. I edited it a thousand times. Like, it's published, period. And podcasting is very much like dot, dot, dot, where it's like this.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:06:32]:

It's this uncovering and discovery. And I think my show has certainly evolved since I started it, and I'm finding that becomes true of a lot of shows. It's like, it evolves as you evolve. Because I got the end of the first season, I was like, I don't want to just talk about fear the rest of my life. I don't want to be the fear girl. I'm, like, over it. I feel liberated, like, I am ready to fly. That's what I want my show to be about, not about fear anymore.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:06:57]:

I'm like, I don't want to just talk about fear. And so I started, that's where we got to the life of and where it was like, now that I'm. I've always added ands into my life, but it was like always this wrestling with fear before I got there. And so once I was like, I'm like, literally free of this. I have a toolbox now. I know what it feels like when it starts to approach my body. I have. I know how to make it go away.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:07:21]:

That was when I started to see. Now I can live fully inside of my dreams, inside of my vision, inside of what I hope for. And that's where life of Anne's really came was from that process. And as I started to, like, look in my own life and family and ingredients of how life has come together for our family, I think I started to realize I have a very unique toolbox and perspective on what it looks like to do a two career family in the year 2024. I grew up with a stay at home mom. I find a lot of working moms did today. Their mom stayed home. It just looked different then.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:07:58]:

And we're in this season of so much opportunity for so many different kinds of people, and help and resources is so accessible, but we're still really struggling. And I think we're financially rich in places where we're internally very poor. And I started to realize, I think I can help families, and it's been a really fun journey then. So today, what scare confident is, is it's tools, resources, and encouragement for two career families that came from an origin of me wanting to be liberated from being like, what if I told everybody around me how big the dreams were in my head, in my heart? I'm afraid they would melt because they look at my life and think, oh, my word, she's already doing so much. And I just wanted to do more, and I wanted to do it in a way where our family was intact. We were, you know, proactive in our lives and not just reacting to a bunch of chaos. So.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:08:43]:

So one quick thank you. I've always, in, like, the bottom of my soul or heart somewhere, struggled with the fact that I've paid two coaches to help me write a book and not done it. And I'm like, what is wrong? Like, I am a very, like, my number one strength is activator. Like, I have no issues with, like, let's get rolling. But you just help me. I now know why it's like, the dot, dot, dot that you explained in podcasting is like, it's this ever evolving agile thing. And I am not a, like, I always say, excellence over perfection, just this constant pursuit of, like, mamba mentality, right? Like, that fits my life. And that's why I was like, I just can't, I don't know, I just, but what if.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:09:24]:

And this and podcasting, like, I feel that when you said the dot, dot, dot, it just allows you to just be agile. So I love that backstory. And then can we talk about, when we say living a life of ant, how about what that looks like manifested? You know what? So people are like, okay, yeah, but give me examples. So, you know, you talked about your mom, stay at home mom. Now, you know, that was how you grew up. But now you're in a two career executive household, four kids. One was a surprise. Like, give us in your world examples of, like, what that looks like today for you to live a life of antennae.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:10:00]:

I guess there's probably a couple of different aspects to that. One is, like, when I sat and I thought about, you know, I don't know, the last 20 years, the things I wanted to do, it's like, I wanted, the first thing I was doing is like, I chose to get married. So one of my aunts was, I was a wife. We wanted kids. And so one of my aunts was a mom. I started a business when I was 25. So one of my aunts was entrepreneur. And as I was, like, building the business, one of the questions I had was whether or not an and could be that we had a big family.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:10:26]:

And to me, big family means more than two kids. And I had some really meaningful conversations with women who said, I regret allowing my career to decide how many kids I had. And so I remember saying, okay, I'm not going to have that regret. But instead of that regret, what I have is the challenge of figuring out how I'm going to add that and to my life. How will I add mom to a big family? And then I'm a helper. In my heart, I love putting myself into growth situations, because when I'm uncomfortable and I learn it and I fail and I get better, then I know I have, like, a bigger bucket to share with other people. And it gives me courage to, like, keep going. When my knees are skinned and my elbows are bloody and I kind of tired and I want to quit is I'm like, I'm learning and I will have more to give other people.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:11:17]:

And so one of my things I wanted to do was like, I want to be a board member, and I want to learn from other industries and other leaders and give of myself in that capacity. I want to be an investor in businesses that I care about, but most importantly, leaders that I believe in. And I want to be able to mentor them and tell them the things I wish I had known when I was on this journey. And so when you have these things you want to do, oftentimes what happens is you look at your capacity and say, I have to say no, because I can't figure out how. I can't figure out how to add that and into my life. And so, as I have, I'll be 44 this year. My kids are from 15 to three years old. My husband is in the biggest job of his career and has the most demands on him ever.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:12:05]:

There are things that I now say no to, that I used to say yes to, because they don't fit inside of my values, our values as a family and my priorities as a mom and a woman and an executive. And there are things that I've added to my priorities because I've figured out how to do that. And I think that what can happen in this, like, season of midlife is that we make bad exchanges. We are doing things that we don't want to do. We're doing things we're not qualified, we're not uniquely qualified to do. And we're saying no to the dreams of our heart, to the desires of our, you know, energy, to the, like, calling on our lives because we cannot figure out how. And a life of and is saying, I'm going to figure out what to give up so that I can get what I want. And I'm going to do the hard things that align with the outcomes that I'm expecting in my life, and not the hard things that are regretful and reactive and chaotic.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:13:01]:

And that takes a level of discipline and organization and the willingness to look ahead and be growth minded and to scale the environment of your household so that more can fit into it without there being less intimacy in your marriage, without there being less relational quality with your kids, without there being like, less of the things that you really, really care about. So that's a life of. And in three minutes, not 30 seconds, but that's what I mean is that, like, we all were born with these ands that we want, and we start to say no to them, not because we don't want them, but because wanting them feels dangerous. It feels scary. It feels like then I am opening myself up to the failure of not. And so we just stop looking ahead and we stop dreaming, and we stop wanting, we stop wishing and we just deal.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:13:50]:

I just typed out, stop saying no to the dreams or once because you think you can't do it. You know, we have this like, made up thing. I just, I always screenshot. My favorite thing about social media is, like, when I find, like, inspirational things, I'm not really in it to, like, keep up on lives as much, but I. This inspirational quote today that I found, you won't learn and grow when it's easy. You will learn and grow when it's messy. So when it's most difficult, you're growing. And it's so true.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:14:17]:

It's what you're saying right now, that so many people that you run away from doing the stuff because you're not going to take the risk or you're not going to put yourself in a place that's hard. But like you said, you talk to so many people in reflection that say, I wish I would have had and we only get one shot, you know, it's why originally on my other podcast, addicted to betterment, we had Eminem's lose yourself on there. Cause I'm like, obsessed with that song. But lose yourself it is. I believe that. And some people are like, no, I'm gonna come back like 20 times. Well, okay, but this time, this time you only got one shot this time. And so you don't wanna look back and say, I wish I would have.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:14:56]:

When really, the tough wasn't really that tough. Like, it's just you putting yourself out there to do it right. And so how do we live this life of. And I know that you're on a journey not only building element three, but you're building scared, confident as a business. And part of what you have is a, like, learning modules, your online courses up and live. Maybe a great way to kind of give us insight into that, but also give great takeaways for, like, nuggets. Today is like, can you share some of the core teachings in the course for our listeners?

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Tiffany Sauder [00:15:25]:

Sure. So the, the core of the life of and academy, which is the digital course, is really helping you learn how to be the chief operating officer of your household, which feels, on the surface, I feel like, pretty boring. But what I found was that we were reacting to the chaos of our environment and we did not have the ability to proactively manage the plans of our dreams. And so what that looks like is like laundry is not a surprise. That's not new information that there's going to be laundry every single week. It's not a surprise that every single day you're going to have to feed people at least two meals a day. They might have lunch at school. That's not a surprise.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:16:07]:

It's not a surprise that you need to put things in place to maintain and to grow your marriage. That's not a surprise. It is not a surprise that every single week the kids are going to need to be driven somewhere. It is not a surprise that your family is probably going to want to go somewhere for fall break. Like, these things are not surprises, but we act like they are. And all day long we react to the most ordinary things in our lives. And it fills up a huge part of the bucket of our relationships, what we talk about, what we're dealing with, what we're responding to. And we don't have systems in place to make that stuff happen almost automatically.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:16:42]:

Even filling your car up with gas, it is not new information that's going to have to be done when you work out all these kinds of things. I've essentially, over the last, it took me a couple of years, found every single part of our lives that are the most recurring, that are not surprise events that we can plan for. And I have put them into systems in our household. And that sounds like it must be like the von Trapp family, you know, on the sound of music and like I have a whistle and everybody. That is not what it looks like at all. It's actually surprisingly fun. But there are processes that run in our household, just like there are systems and processes that run in your business that allow us to be able to focus on the fun, just like your business can focus on innovation. When an invoice going out does not take a herculean effort, and it is something that happens in an almost completely automated fashion, you have a chance for your people to work on fun, real problems.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:17:35]:

And the same thing is in our household, when the most normal things happen with almost no lift, you get to spend your energy on creatively engaging with your kids, on having time, to be able to actually pursue time with your spouse, to like, decorate for a holiday, I don't know, the actual extra part of life instead of just maintaining the mundane. So that's the heart of what the life of and academy is, is it's on the own, the ordinary system, literally, how do you own the most ordinary parts of your life? With an incredible amount of intention, so that there's space and time for the extraordinary.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:18:07]:

I love that. Resonates with me so much. And for a second, when I could imagine you with a whistle in your house, with your kids, I was like, you know what we're gonna do? We're like, the call to action is anyone within a 60 miles drive. We're gonna do a tour and watch this. This is incredible. Like, I could see it for a second, but no, okay. I don't think the whistle is there. I just was, like, seeing that.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:18:25]:

That's really funny. But I am such a systems person as well, and I have never thought about it in the sense of a quote that I learned a long time ago. I guess today's quote day. Simple, not easy. Like, that's what I try to do, is, like, just this thing. We can make this thing simple. It's not gonna be easy, probably, but just simple.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:18:45]:

Simple.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:18:46]:

And I think systems like, what you're saying there is that. And so maybe we could just have listeners be thinking about, what are the things that, like, let's call it annoying. Like, the things in your life that you're doing laundry, right. It's, how do you just make it more simple? It's still, you gotta do it. Not necessarily easy. Sometimes it could be outsourcing, and maybe we could call that easy. Maybe the bill isn't easy to pay. But, you know, how do you build this, where the predictable things in our lives, like, they're just simple?

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Tiffany Sauder [00:19:13]:

I find people deciding what to eat is, like, a really overwhelming thing because they literally imagine, like, I could eat anything in the world. What groceries am I going to buy? So I have a formula for our grocery order most weeks, unless I have, like, a lot of creative energy, and it's two proteins. We eat a lot of produce. Two proteins, two carbs, five veggies, five fruit, and two fats. And I can always make meals out of that. I buy two proteins, two carbs, five veggies, five fruits, two fats, and it totally made it where I wasn't like, wow, let me. And I use instacart for everything. Like, let me just scroll, like, every possible thing I could possibly do.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:19:51]:

And it's like, if I have a rice, a sweet potato, a ground beef, a salmon, a bunch of fruit, a bunch of veggies, and, like, an avocado and some peanut butter, like, we. I can figure out how to feed the family. And so that's the place where, like, literally on my phone, I have that formula. And so I can order groceries very quickly, and it doesn't have to become this 45 minutes thing. And, you know, sometimes I go to Trader Joe's and buy, like, 14 sauces so that we have some, like, interesting things to eat. But it's like, it does not need to be award warning culinary experience. This is about us not going out for dinner because that's expensive to nice restaurants. It's putting a bunch of crap in our bodies if it's fast food.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:20:32]:

And eating at home is just a big part of creating a family environment for me. It's just a big part of my childhood and big part of the way I want to craft our family experience. And so it gives me stuff to work with. So even something like that is just makes something that I think can be so, like, like we're rewriting the Declaration of Independence instead of just, like, just get some food in the house and make it. And put some salt on it.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:20:56]:

I love it. I love it so much. Okay, so since we're. We're gonna have a little intermission here to talk about life hacks for a second. This might be my own selfish need, but we're just going to throw it into this episode, then we'll come right back. And it's all part of living a life of. And before you said instacart, I was like, oh, I want to know, like, what are her favorite, like, life hack things? So for me, um, I learned this new way when I travel. When I come back from traveling, I feel so much better if my house is cleaned and I have groceries, right? So for me, my house cleaner gets rescheduled to the day before we come home.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:21:30]:

Cause, like, we already have that on a schedule, right? And so she comes on the day before we get home, and my groceries are ordered, and they are coming that day we get home. Right. So I'm like. Cause I used to be so stressed out coming back, and I'm already like, okay, my email inbox is terrible. And just all the things you go on vacation and sometimes you don't even want to go on vacation because you come back to this. Ah, so you said Instacart and that. So that's like a life hack. What are some of your other, like, life hacks? Just real quick?

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Tiffany Sauder [00:21:55]:

Well, I think on the trip thing, I always have our windows washed, our carpets cleaned, and my knives sharpened. When we go on spring break, I have, like, you know, I have somebody either who helps us or my ea or a neighbor just, like, let those people in the house so that stuff is done. Same thing. I don't want. I don't want it done when I'm home. And then the house just looks, like, incredible when we get home, an app that I use for laundry that I'm kind of a crusade about is poplin poplin. And for a dollar a pound, you can send your laundry out. I mean, literally, for less than $40 a week, you're probably getting everybody's laundry done, and it comes back washed and folded in 24 hours.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:22:36]:

And I'll put a link. I'll send you a link. And people can get 21 load free, essentially.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:22:42]:

Listeners, aren't you so glad? Aren't you so glad that I asked this question? Keep going, Tiffany.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:22:46]:

I actually have a podcast episode that's like 18 minutes long that will tell you all of my tips and tricks on how to do it well. So I'll get those links to you, and we can include those. But it's like, it's literally for my family of six. I estimate I get six to 8 hours a week back. And how would your life change if you did that? There's two that came to mind. One is super silly, but it's kind of in the. It's not kind of. It's in the laundry vein.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:23:12]:

So we have all girls in our house, and my teenagers are like, we're all the same size, and so our underwear was getting all mixed up, and it was driving me crazy. And so I'm like, this is. I'm done with this. So I decided the color everybody will have. So my underwear are all black. My oldest daughter has prince, and my third daughter has all lululemon. And it's just. I just replaced everybody.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:23:34]:

My point in that silly example is people will say, like, sending our laundry out doesn't work because then everything comes back combined, like, all the underwear in one stack, whatever. And I'm like, no, I made that problem go away. Like, this is how now everybody knows literally everybody in the house can sort the laundry because they know the program. And so it's just kind of like a sub hack. The other app I really love on my phone is an app called felt cards. Felt. My husband and I just get to go to a lot of really cool things. We get invited to some special events, and it's an app on your phone, and you can send a custom card.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:24:13]:

It accesses the photos on your phone, obviously. And it's kind of like an accordion style. There's eight panels, and it looks like a polaroid. Picture each one. And so I can easily, like, on the way home from an event, upload the photos, type in a little message, and just push send. And it's like, for me, it's easier than having a stack of cards. And, like, all the. The hand stuff is very sweet, but to me, it's a little lighter lift, and I can just, like, kind of habit.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:24:43]:

Stack it with, like, the right home, and it's like, it's done, and then three days later, it shows up, and it feels very custom and cool.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:24:48]:

So that's awesome. You said habits. Stack it. Do you love atomic habits? The book?

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Tiffany Sauder [00:24:53]:

You know what's so funny? I've never read the book, but I get his newsletters, and I've read so many quotes. I feel like I've read the whole book, so it's so good.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:25:01]:

It's one of the ones that I reread. It's, like, one of the very few that I reread. I feel like you would love it.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:25:07]:

I need to read. I feel like I know the concepts because I have picked up all the little quotables, but I need to read the whole thing.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:25:13]:

You're like siblings from another mother or something. That's funny. Okay, so next up, we want to just kind of come back to some of these learnings, and you were sharing about the course and some of the, like, what the course is meant to do as a leader in your company, as a leader in the companies that you invest in. How do you, like, empower, inspire your team members to live this out? Because this is honestly an incredible benefit of being part of a company that you're working in. Right. So all the people that work there. Just curious, like, how do you activate a life of Ann to help people that you lead?

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Tiffany Sauder [00:25:49]:

Well, I mean, I don't know. The companies I'm a part of, I let them have access to the academy for free. That's one very practical way. I think they see me live it out. I mean, I'm very vulnerable on my podcast, and I'm also very vulnerable in my leadership style. And so I've been open about where I've stumbled and how we've kind of found the toolbox to put things back together. Um, and I also think when you have grace for yourself, it teaches others to have grace for themselves, too. And, you know, I talk about building companies people want to work at, and I think it's about having the luxury of having the long view on people and having the long view on your own organization.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:26:31]:

You know, I'm. We will remain independent of any outside investor forever because we get to decide, you know, what growth rate we want to pursue, what's right for our people, what our team is ready for. And I think that all that allows us to help people step into a life of. And that's so good.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:26:49]:

Thank you for that. So Scared Confident. Like, I shared. How. How long ago was that that you launched? Was about four years.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:26:55]:

Yep.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:26:56]:

Yeah, about four years ago. Gosh, time flies, right? As you just, it doesn't feel like that long ago at your party, but okay, it's been four years and just some of these like unexpected learnings. And then, you know, one of the things is, I don't know, I'm curious, like, when you sought out to do the podcast, like, did you think it was going to become this focus for a lot of your time? Like growing this business under Scared Confident? Now it is. What is the future of Scared Confident?

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Tiffany Sauder [00:27:21]:

Yeah. I didn't know that I would continue to have vision for it to become kind of where we're going now, but my vision is for it to be the leading resource for two career families that we are seen as the place where you can learn from other stories, where we have the tools and resources to literally help two career families say, life has never felt so good and we're saying yes to things that are giving us energy, we feel close to our kids, we feel committed in our marriage, and we have extra space for the things and people that we want.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:27:58]:

This has been fantastic. I think we're going to move over to our lightning round where we can learn just a little bit more about you, the personal side of you. We've done this since day one of the show and we've started with the same question for seven years. So we'd love to hear your contribution to our ever growing recommended reading list. Your favorite book of all time or a favorite recent read.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:28:20]:

I think favorite book of all time is the hard thing about hard things. It's just a real life look at. Just because it's really hard doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. Ben Horowitz is who wrote it. Every chapter has like a lyric from a rap song, which is fun. It's a little irreverent, but when I read that, it was like, this is exactly what growing a business felt like to me. And the fine, fine, fine, fine line between success and failure, I feel like he speaks to that in a way that is more clear than I had ever heard. Um, because it's a fine line and.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:28:57]:

That book seems totally on brand for who you are and this everything we're talking about. Okay, next question. So between the ages of, let's call it eight and 18, tell us about your hobby that you spent a lot of time on and. Or your life, like, the way, you know, just things that you spent time on. I learned about this myself, and I guess it's coming back into your life.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:29:19]:

It was a ten year, four h er. In my small town where we grew up, this was, like, a very big thing, was to be in four h. And, um, I was probably most accomplished at sewing. It's called clothing. And then there was, like, this fashion review part where you went on stage in front of judges, and you modeled what you made so that it, you know, like the tailoring and how you styled it, and there was a certain way that you needed to walk and turn. And I loved all of that. I loved the competition of it. I love the creativity of it.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:29:48]:

I loved learning fit and tailoring and color and all that stuff. I just loved it. For whatever reason, the last couple weeks, I got my sewing machine back out, and it's like riding a bike. I literally remember how to do all of it. And so I've been making, like, barbie clothes with my girls, and it's been really fun to teach them. I don't know why I have this creative itch right now, but it's been fun.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:30:10]:

Oh, that's awesome. And then there was a grand finale that happened at 18. That kind of ties into this. You probably got to wear one of those dresses.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:30:17]:

I'm guessing I was the fair queen, which was a big surprise. It was really fun. I really loved it. I love to be the center of attention. And so that certainly scratched that itch. But you're at the fair all week, and you hand out, you know, it's just. It was fun. I loved it.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:30:34]:

And where was this? Where did you grow up?

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Tiffany Sauder [00:30:36]:

So I grew up in Rem. It was Jasper county, which is, like, on the northwest side of the state, like, south of the region a little bit.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:30:43]:

And for those that might not be local to us in Indiana, Jasper county is, like, southern Indiana. Yeah. Cool. Okay. And then if you could pick anywhere in the whole wide world to recharge, I think it's so important to always ask, like, how are you recharging? And, like, what are you doing to take care of yourself? So maybe this will put a next trip on your list, or you already have it, but where's that place that just gives you that sense of, like, recharge and makes you just feel all the feels?

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Tiffany Sauder [00:31:07]:

Yeah, it's probably the mountains in Utah, and it's probably not by myself. It's. I think it's. With my family, it's just like, I think as a family, you kind of have to learn where you are your best. Are you beach people? Are you city people? And ours is skiing out in Utah. I think there's something about being so active in that season, where in the midwest, it's usually like a very sedentary time of year, which doesn't always put us all in our best place. And it's just fun. It's adventurous.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:31:36]:

It's a little uncomfortable because you can be cold, and it's just, like, fun. We love it. We're just really, really, really good out there. So it'd probably be the mountains of Utah.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:31:45]:

That's awesome. Last question. How can our listeners connect with you after the show? What's the best way?

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Tiffany Sauder [00:31:50]:

Yeah, you can always find me on LinkedIn. I post pretty consistently there about my life, and if you really want to look like inside my life, my kids and my house and the antics of a life of. And you can also look for me on Instagram. I post pretty regularly there, too.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:32:10]:

So here's my truth. You can act on from my conversation with Tiffany. It was so good, and I just want to learn more of her tips and tricks. It's just like, man, she's got it all figured out, it seems. So we need to go and figure out this educational resource that she's brought to life about living a life of. And I'm all in for it. So I want to keep learning. But here's my truth.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:32:27]:

You can act on from today's conversation. Number one, look fear in the face and address it. Number two, do the hard things. Number three, stop saying no to the dreams or wants because you think you can't do it. Stop it. And number four, for the regular things in our life that are predictable, build systems for them. We can make life simple. It's figuring out what is the problem that we're trying to solve and creating a system for that.

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Nikki Lewallen Gregory [00:32:55]:

Just like the underwear story. Loved it. All right, we'll see you next time.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:33:00]:

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.

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