April 23, 2025 • 45 mins
Let's talk about the path of becoming and evolving as an entepreneur.
Caryn Martinez, founder of many businesses including Clamshell Communications and Peppy Paws Play Yard discusses why she became an entepreneur, some of the various businesses she has created and how they evolved to her current models.
Check out Caryn's online writing group on Discord
Follow Marci Talks Money (and Life) wherever you get your podcasts to get the episodes as they post.
Visit MoneyMarci.com to check out other financial literacy resources.
Caryn Martinez, founder of many businesses including Clamshell Communications and Peppy Paws Play Yard discusses why she became an entepreneur, some of the various businesses she has created and how they evolved to her current models.
Check out Caryn's online writing group on Discord
Follow Marci Talks Money (and Life) wherever you get your podcasts to get the episodes as they post.
Visit MoneyMarci.com to check out other financial literacy resources.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Powered by Riverside FM. Welcome to Marcy Talks Money and
Life and I am thrilled to introduce my guest today,
Karen Martinez. I have known Karen for many years and
she has always been an entrepreneur, truly a serial entrepreneur,
because I don't think I know all of the businesses
(00:24):
she's created throughout the years. She's an editor and gross writer,
has been a piano, guitar and dance teacher, done horse
and tennis photography, published a creative writing and photography magazine,
had an entertainment agency, done social media and web development,
and is now the creator of Peppy Pause Player in Mesa, Arizona,
(00:45):
which is a dog park and space for dog training.
And I'm sure I miss some things, but please welcome Karen.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I'm so thrilled to have you here, because, as you know,
this is a podcas has to talk about money and life.
I think the various things you do fit in here
so well, talking about what made you create the businesses,
what made you decide when the businesses had reached their conclusion,
and what you were doing next. And I'm excited to
(01:17):
hear everything you've got to share with us.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Where would you like me to start.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I don't know. If you start at the very beginning,
we might be here a long time. But how about
how about you give us a synopsis of what late
led you to become an entrepreneur. I know you've worked
for other people at various times, but what led you
to wanting to mostly be creating these spaces and being
your own boss?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
You know? I think throughout my life a lot of
people have always said, Ooh, I don't know if I
could have my own business or be an entrepreneur. I
think it was a lot easier for me to envision
that because many members of my family owned their own business,
so I had the model of entrepreneurship and business ownership
(02:07):
my whole life, so it didn't seem unusual to me
to do that at all. And as a matter of fact,
my brother also owns his own business, so the family
does that a lot.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
And I'm going to try and talk him onto coming
onto my podcast as well, because he has different businesses
than you do.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yep, yeah, very different businesses. So I think the two
things that would be the most important to share are
the business that grew organically out of my experiences that
was my entertainment agency, and then the business I most
recently opened. It kind of grew out of my daughter's experiences,
(02:47):
but this was truly a business that we started from scratch.
So comparing those might be helpful to people, you know
and they're thinking of doing it. So when it came
to my entertainment agent, see, I actually started as an entertainer.
I was a professional belly dancer. And when I was
(03:08):
not doing that for a little while I had to
take some time off for health reasons, people would still
call me for jobs. Examples of the sort of jobs
would be weddings, showers, parties. I never did restaurants, but
restaurants would call me that sort of thing, and I
(03:29):
would recommend my friends who are also professional dancers. And
one of them said to me one time, you know,
you're like an agent. I should actually be paying you
for sending me on these jobs. And I thought about it,
and I said, I am like an agent. I mean
I was just there helping out my friends, but I
(03:52):
am like that. And I already had a website set
up the sort of thing where I was putting down
where we and we, I mean me and my friends
and my musician friends were going to be on the weekends.
I was promoting people in different kinds of arts just
for the fun of it. I had that already set up.
(04:14):
And this is when the internet was just invented. We're
still in the late nineties when it was just starting
to grow. So I said, all right, this is how
I'm going to set up my agency. And having worked
with agents before, I knew what I did and did
not want to do, and redid my website and I
(04:35):
started to get calls from out of state. At this point,
I was just doing Middle Eastern dance and music, nothing more,
and I'm like, why can't you find somebody in Los Angeles?
Literally just shout out your window. But people wanted to
book online. They wave even back then, they wanted to
(04:56):
do it. So I kind of was able to ride
that wa like surf that wave as it became and
with me making more and more connections in different parts
of the country with different types of entertainers, I ended
up having a super wide variety, particularly in certain cities.
(05:18):
I'm from Michigan originally, so actually in Michigan and Arizona,
where I'm from in California, where I knew a lot
of different people, but also in other places it well.
So we had every type of music, every type of
entertainment that we had, and that's you know, just I
(05:38):
guess I could say I was jumping on the web
at the right time, but it was I've really noticed
that people wanted to do that anyway I had. That's
how the business grew out of things that I had
already been doing, both professionally and just socially.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, remember, because I think there were a couple of
times where friends had asked me if they knew if
I knew of somebody or did something that I recall.
I was like, I know you're in Arizona, but and
you were able a couple of times to help me
look like I knew what I was doing, hooking someone
up with whatever entertainment it was. And that was fascinating
(06:20):
to me because the Internet was still so new. I
think that was that was Aol, not Facebook and the things,
and not LinkedIn, not these other sites that have continued
to make the world smaller.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It was. It was a really fun business to have
because it was literally my job to go to music
festivals and arts festivals and find new people. So I
can imagine for my business, I have to spend the
weekend at the jazz festival. Oh darn you know, it
was really great. I got the most wonderful We spent
(06:58):
a week at the Venetian Festival and Charlevoi, you know
where they have like three or four bands every single night.
That was like, got to do it for the business.
So but speaking of that, you've talked about social media.
So I owned the business as the various social platforms
(07:19):
were starting to open up. The first one that really
opened up that was of consequence was my Space because
if you'll remember, the original MySpace was a place where
musicians loved to share their work, and that was a
really good place to connect with people that I didn't
know before, you know, to find different musicians. That was
(07:42):
the first one. Eventually Facebook opened up, and I actually
have to say that as I learned these things, I
was helping other people to learn how to do them
as well. Facebook started to get big around the time
that I went on hiatus from the entertainment agents see
and I'll tell you that story. But when I decided
(08:04):
not to reopen the agency, I continued on with the
expertise that I had gotten about social media and continue
to teach that. So there were several years when I
was doing workshops, taking out clients one on one to
help them and attending and speaking at conferences about social
(08:31):
media marketing. So that grew out of knowing it from
the entertainment agency.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
It's amazing how one thing builds to another. I mean,
that's one of the things I tell people is as
you find a job, you may find it doesn't suit
you any longer, but there are skills that will help
you find the next, whatever that next is for you.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, it really, it really did that. I had it
for a while. Do you remember on when they're used
to have Twitter chats. Maybe you don't if you didn't
do it. I had for a while. The most popular one.
It was called ask Angel. My name in the entertainment
world was Angelek, and so it was ask Angel and
(09:15):
it was about social media marketing and it was big.
It was it was at a great chat that we
had every week. So that was again a while ago,
because they don't have that sort of thing anymore anywhere.
I don't think.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I imagine everything exists somewhere, but it's a matter of if
it's the right space for you, you may or may
not find it as easily as you know, especially if
you're not looking for it. It's not what you're looking
for right now, so you're not going to find it
once you look for it, once you do it. In fact,
possibly because we just spoke about it, now, if you
(09:58):
have any devices listening with AI, the next thing you know,
you're going to get five ads for it. But that's
just where technology is taking us. So you don't design
websites anymore.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I was doing that, okay. So here's something that I
do actually right now is I keep people's websites going.
So there's so many people they're at the end of
their career or their business just doesn't want that site
(10:34):
to go down. They can't afford to redo their site
in the way that would be wonderful to do, but
they don't want it to go crashy crashy. And right
now I don't have I don't think we specifically said that.
I had been doing web development through my company, climeshow Communications.
(10:54):
That's what came, you know, social media and then web
development along with it and everything. So right now I
don't have time to do that sort of web development thing.
But I have no problem because I have a little team,
you know, I'm doing this all myself. That the little
team and I can keep people's sites, you know, going
(11:19):
for them, so that at least they won't be embarrassed that,
oh no, my site is down and I really do
need at least some kind of presence, okay.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And then and then you created Peppi Pause, because that's
that's a passion project of yours, taking your dogs and
horses and showing them and competing.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
What happened with Peppi pas Player, which I'll explain, is
a private doggy playground where in Mesa, Arizona. This is
the first business I have ever had that was confined
to a location that's brick and mortar. Even we have
no bricks or mortar because we're completely outside everything else
that I've done, you know, editing for people, which I
(12:08):
still do. I mean, this is what I actually got
my postgraduate degree in, was editing and publishing, editing for
people entertainment agency, obviously helping people with social media. It
didn't matter where they were. I usually didn't meet people
face to face that we're my clients, you know, in person.
(12:28):
This one is really like truly hyper local, and we
live on an acre of irrigated property. So although we're
in Arizona, we have lots of trees and grass, a
lot of fruit trees, gardens, that sort of thing. Our
house is right in the middle of it. So our
backyard is a full, fully fenced half acre. So we
(12:49):
already had that. We also already had dogs, and we're
agility competitors. And by we, I mean my daughter Leah
has been doing this for many years and I have
been doing it for about a year. But we also
had the yard set up for dogs, and we had
(13:09):
we were collecting practice equipment and everything. And my daughter
was the one that first had the idea of a
dog care business in some way, and at first she
thought of, you know, like a daycare sort of situation,
but that didn't work for us. First of all, we're
in Arizona, so half of the year it's you can't
(13:33):
we're going out there.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Okay, So basically nine hundred degrees and dry, yes.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
And also another thing about me is I'm a very
chemically sensitive person, so having dogs, strange dogs in our
home be absolutely impossible for me. I have to keep
my home in a way that is completely healthy for me.
So but when we talked about it. It was really
the outside of things, and we came up with the idea,
(14:02):
which I found out while I was doing my research,
was totally unique of a doggy playground where people came
to interact with their dogs. So they came to play
and or train their dogs, bring their trainer. Some people
like to run around with their dogs and everybody gets exercised,
(14:23):
and they bring their kid, and some people they just
want to sit in the shade and we are actually
also very hands on if they would like us to be.
So some people come and sit in the shade and
we play with their dogs. They usually come for half
an hour at a time, and we came up with
that idea. This is the business for which we did
the business plan and really researched it and laid out
(14:48):
everything that we were going to do, and that's when
we found out that there isn't anybody that we know
that has anything like yet and were kind of learning
as we were doing. So in the past year and
a half that we've had it, we've dropped some ideas
(15:10):
and added some new ideas. So that's that's how that
started with that.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
And this is a lot different than community dog parks
where you buy a tag and you bring your dog
and maybe you go with a friend, or maybe you
go and you hope that the other dogs there are
friendly dogs, and you have no idea when you get
there whether you'll have time alone or not. When when
people come to you, they are renting your space for
(15:38):
whatever amount of time, and they might be the only
dog there, or what are the restrictions, And.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
We actually consider ourselves the service. People are not renting
the space in the same way they would if they
were at a sniff spot. If you've ever heard of
a sniff spot, it's a sniff spot is a net
like Airbnb and verbo our networks, and this company has
(16:06):
a special application people have on their phones and they
rent out or rent. Truly, you're just walking into some
person's yard that they set out for you, and that's
different from us. It's too bad we can't be listed there,
but we can't. It's a completely different thing. You're kind
of working, you know, with that, and they set up
(16:28):
how it is. We are a completely independent thing, our
own place, our own rules, our own one on one
scheduling with me, like you're always talking to a person
me being really strict about all the dogs being vaccinated,
us interacting with the dogs for people. We show people
(16:51):
there are different things that we can do, show people
what agility is like if they're interested in doing it,
you know, handling the dogs with them, show some interesting
things to do to the owners. We have a serenity
space with sniffing activities for the dogs to have funds
with sniffing activities, which is a calming sort of exercise
(17:13):
for them. We have all this kind of stuff that
we're hands on with. And now that I've explained that,
I can't. Oh, you're talking about the difference between us
and a public dog park. Yeah, about sixty percent of
our dogs are reactive dogs who can't go to a
public dog park. They've either been traumatized at the public
dog park by the other dogs or other people that
(17:37):
are there, or they were rescued dogs. We still have
a lot of dogs that were rescued. Now they do it,
but during the pandemic, and you know a lot of
reactive dogs that they need the private space. Other people
have perfectly social dogs, dogs that like other dogs and people,
but they still want to come and have the private
(17:59):
experience and not have the problems that you can have
at a public dog park and they come and bring
their friends. The best thing is and we have friend groups.
I want to I'm still trying to connect with a trainer.
By the way, dog trainers, if you're listening, we need
somebody that wants to train out of here that will
facilitate evaluating dogs for potentially being friends. Because when people
(18:21):
come with their friends and the dogs play together, they
do so much more playing and running around. You know,
they really enjoy that. So we'd like to doggy matchmake
and I would totally be doing that under the supervision
and evaluation of a professional trainer.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
And of course you'd have to be somewhat local Tamsa, Arizona, yes,
because it would be a little bit of a commute
for me in Michigan.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Well, if I become if I become a huge success,
we could franchise can til I watch a lot of
Shark Tank but which would be really great. But first
this has to be success.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
And do many people rent out your space to work
their dogs for agility training competitions?
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, so that's a slightly different thing that we do.
People that do agility usually don't have all of the
space and all the equipment that we have, and when
their agility clubs or classes that they're taking are on hiatus,
or if they just simply need to practice because a
(19:29):
meat is coming up, and especially if they need evening
because we've just we have lights. We didn't have it
our first year, but now we have some lights for evening,
which is important in Arizona when it's hot. Then they come.
We've got especially long sessions for them, so it gives
them time to move around the equipment, and we're very
strict about that. I have to say is that nobody
(19:53):
gets to play agility or play on the equipment except
for the super safe stuff like running through the tunnel.
But when it comes to the big equipment, you have
the not the dog, but the dog owner has to
have gone through at least one course from an agility
classer club that we recognize, and once you've done that,
(20:15):
then you can use it. But we have to make
sure that the dogs and the people are going to
be safe.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
And I think it's fascinating the way you turned a
passion project into a business and then what seems like
a new a new uh business model. So hey, people
who are passionate about their their dogs, and dog training
may want to want to look at this, but not
everyone's going to have a half acre.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
I don't know if we have a full acre. If
we only lived on a half acre, this would not
be possible.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Well no, no, I meant a half acre available for training.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, to do that, No, not everybody does. That's a
that's what.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
But what a what a great uh? What a great idea?
So hey, if you want to buy into a franchise,
reach out to Peppy. Pause and h yeah, have you
have you considered franchising? Have you looked into it at all?
Or you're still at a year older? You might be
kind of young for this.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
We're not first. We have to have the proof of concept,
like we have. No, we have no proof of concept
right here. We have to like show, oh yeah, this
will actually work. We'd be farther ahead. But as you know,
here's something that people will find in their lives if
they're trying to do businesses or services or anything like that.
(21:39):
Other parts of your life that must take precedence, you know,
get in the way. And in my case, I was
traveling out of state a lot for you know, seeing
my father at the end of his life and helping
out my family and we were like doing that. It
(22:01):
caused us to close down during the height of what
would be our most busy time and closing on people.
And I'm you know that you have to restart each time.
So now I'm restarting again pretty much. I mean, I'm
not starting from absolute scratch, but people are probably wondering,
(22:23):
you know, are they really going to be there? Are
they going to be open all the time? And I
have to re establish all the connections and everything so
and start up the advertising again. So that's what happens sometimes.
So if hopefully now we can you know, keep rolling
and truly become successful. And then when you prove that
(22:46):
it can be successful, then you can go on and
you know have other people say, oh, I might be
able to replicate that.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
That is that is very cool. I mean I as
I said, I love that you could turn your passion project.
And you know, that's what happened with the entertainment agency.
It was a passion project of you dancing and then
of helping your friends and then you know, it just
evolved into a business. And this with Leah training and
(23:16):
then I don't know if you opened up Peppy Pause
before after you started training dogs yourself and it just
kind of kind of blossomed from the things you were
doing into a business model.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Now, I do have to say, here's an important thing
that I want to say to all the people listening
and everything. Doing that research and writing up that business
plan was like, it's really detailed, but it's really helpful.
I not only did it for Peppy Pause. We absolutely
had to do it for Peppy Pause. There was you know,
(23:51):
absolutely had to do that. It's part of getting your
LLC and your business anyway, to have the business plan.
But people were telling me this was coming out of
was it pre pandemic or coming out of the you know,
the pandemic just seems like one really really long month, right.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I don't know, I don't know how long you were
in the planning phase before you open the door.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
You actually opened the door. I'm not talking about Peppy
Pas right now, but the entertainment agency people were telling
me you really should reopen this now. The people that
were telling me this were entertainers number one and number two.
They were the people who used to get entertainment from me.
(24:40):
So those are the two people that were like, hey,
I know you've had this close for a really long time.
But we really, really, you know, despite everything that else
is around, despite everybody and his dog have websites and
social media and ways to connect it, we still needed agents.
So they were telling me this, but I was like,
I don't know if I'm seeing the need for it
(25:04):
for sure. So I spent a whole year not putting
money into it, except for buying a membership to one
of the organizations, the national organization with local chapters that
are for people who deal with events, you know, event planning.
And it was kind of fun because I went to
all their meetings for a year, which means that they
(25:25):
had great food because the caterers were always showing off
like a month or a year. But that really helped me,
and I looked into it. That really helped me to
know that it would not have been a good idea
to try and reopen it because guess who was not
wanting entertainment The people actually having events, So some people
(25:49):
wanted to have more jobs, but you can't like make
people want to hire entertainment like they used to before
two thousand and eight. And then it's a good thing
I didn't open it. I just remembered now a pre pandemic,
because what happened right after I decided not to open
it was the pandemic, right.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
So people wouldn't have had events and been hiring entertainers anyway.
I did actually go to some online events where they
did have some singers and stuff who were performing from
their own space on the camera and whatever else. It
was not obviously as engaging as being in person, but
it was still so that there was an event I went.
(26:29):
I went to actually a number of different things that
had various types of entertainment or celebrity guests or whatever else.
There were some not necessarily comic cons, but but speakers
and whatever else, and you'd have everybody's face on your
screen as they'd talk about various fandoms and famous people
(26:51):
that would come to some of them. So that was
kind of fun because even when you go to a
comic con and there are all these speaks, you can't
get to all of them. Some of them are at
the same time, some of the lines are too long,
and online they could see thousands of people at a
time to talk to them, so it was it was
(27:12):
interesting that way. It was interesting to see how well
we pivoted during the pandemic, but certainly for the type
of entertainers and events you were dealing with, they probably
weren't going to hire a remote person for for entertainment.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
There are a lot of cool things that were going
on during the pandemic that kind of got dropped afterwards, partly,
I think because of money at the time. A lot
of the places that were you know, doing you know,
video chatting with each other and video meetings and everything
had they're pricing really low for people. I was like
(27:51):
really involved and started my own two in writing groups.
A lot of people were home in a way that
they you know, weren't to be home later and had
time for the things that they really had a passion out.
So there's so many people that started writing their books
and working on their things that they really wanted to do.
(28:12):
Same thing with art as well, and you know a
lot of that. And I actually ran the Everyone Right group.
This isn't wasn't a business. It was just people that
got together and wrote together and then at the end
of an hour, you know, shared with each other. It
was just an accountability thing to do it. But a
(28:34):
lot of those different groups that were really big during
the pandemic ended up. They didn't, they didn't continue on afterwards.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Right, because all of a sudden you can start going places,
and well, life has places it wants you to go,
whether you're whether you're ready for them or not. I mean,
you've had this fantastic career of following your passion. You've
been You've been very fortunate that that you've been able
to pivot. But you also have multiple things you're interested in.
(29:09):
So you know, I'm teaching dance, I'm being a professional dancer,
I am finding jobs for other dancers. I'm you know,
you know, created your website for yourself, and now you
manage and maintain websites for other businesses. You know, even
if it's as they're closing, it's still these things just
(29:29):
roll one thing into another because because you're paying attention
and you're following the things that interest you and the
things where you see opportunities.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Can I give some advice to high school and college students.
I just thought it's going back from the beginning of
my career. Okay, So I was at Michigan State.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I gore yah yay, and I was a history major,
and I was a member of the undergraduate slash Graduate
History Association and and also the History Honor Society, and
in those we put on events.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
In fact, what was unique actually about the story department
at Michigan State, and I hope it's still that way,
is that they had the most amount of events where
students and teachers. When professors got together and the other
departments were really jealous and would the professors, how do
you have that? And they go, well, our students just
(30:28):
keep on the tradition. Anyway, that taught me how to
host events of either bigger ones or smaller ones. I
learned from the older students, and then I was an
older student and we were putting them on. That skill
(30:51):
helped me a lot out in life. So the advice is,
you know, to actually get involved in some organizations and
where you're actually volunteering and doing something, because some of
those skills follow you through your life, you know that.
And it started back when I was in college just
(31:14):
learning the rudiments of putting on different kinds of events,
and that just went on. Also, what happened is that
you talking about editing and publishing. Oh, can I tell
you this story? This is like a windy story and
we might have to pick this up a different way. Okay, So,
way back when I was a kid, for some reason,
(31:34):
I wanted to be a writer. For some reason, my
father always thought i'd be a really good editor. I
don't know if he thought i'd be it would be
a really great career, but he just thought that it
would be. But I went, I thought I would be.
I loved research and writing. I loved history, so I thought,
I know, I'll be a history major. I'll become a professor.
But when I came out to visit my friend, you
(31:58):
remember Ray, right, she was and Okay, so she was
in the Air Force. She went to the Air Force Academy.
She was in pilot training out in Arizona. I came
out to visit her, and while she was doing her
training all day, I took her car and drove around.
I checked out the ASU campus and saw Editing and
Publishing program Graduate certificate in Editing and Publishing. It was
(32:19):
through actually, either the History or the English department, because
people went on to get masters in those things. And
I'm like, well, this is really interesting. And I told
that to my dad and he goes, you should do it.
He goes, yes, you should apply. You'll be like this,
you'll be a great editor. I'm like, okay, but I'm
(32:40):
here in June and school starts in August. I'm pretty
sure this fire is old. Well, sure enough, they accepted
me into the program. There was a slot left, and
they said, well, we're really sorry that there's no teaching
assistant jobs for you. And I'm like, that's okay, because
you know, I I still want to go and you know,
(33:01):
my father would help to pay to you know, send
me in everything. And they and then one of the
PhD students dropped out of the editing job that she
had and they said, you know, you'd have to do
this job while you were learning. And I'm like, sure,
that's okay. And I became the managing editor for two
(33:23):
psychology journals at ASU, and I did it while I
was That was a great way to learn editing, Like,
way better than just doing it in the classroom.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
You don't tend to dip your toe in the pond.
You just fly off that pier and you're like cowabunga
here I am.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
That was great. That was great thing. So back when
I had been at Michigan State, my friends and I
had been thinking of a creative writing magazine and it
was like, Oh, I always wanted to do that. I
wanted to make that real, not just talk about it.
Wouldn't that be great? So when I finished the ASU program,
I did get a job editing, but I'm like, I'm
(34:03):
going to start this and I did, and uh that
was uh that was Expression Magazine.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
It's just I'm I'm in awe, I'm in a I've
known you through much of this, but but just the
fearlessness and you know, the following your passion and uh,
you know, and you bring along other people with you,
like you have you have this company that still manages
these websites, and you still have these people, whether they're
(34:35):
part time or you know, and this is just a
side hustle for but you're creating jobs for other people
as well. When when you're doing these things, you're looking
for a trainer that would want to work out of
of Peppy Pause. You're still running writing groups to help
people with their passions that may or may not go further,
you know, other than the writing group. And that's fine too.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
It's just jobs. When I had the entertainment agency, obviously.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yes, yes, when your job is finding people jobs, you
do tend to create a few jobs.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Was the creative writing magazine was a stepping stone for
other people to get you know, published further because for
a lot of people especially, things are different now with
the Internet. But back then the publishing industry was very
much like lemmings. If one person said yes, then the
next one might and the next one might. So if
(35:29):
you got you know something in an independent magazine like me,
even though we are like who are we? I mean,
we weren't even nationwide. We were in forty bookstores, which
was pretty cool Internet to get them in there. We
were in the whole Borders chain as Borders was expanding,
but still but the fact is is that I had
the degree by my name said that I was an editor,
(35:51):
and I had accepted them. So then when they went
to go to a bigger magazine, a national magazine, they
could say, well they liked me, maybe you should look
at my stuff, and so they off, they went on
and got bigger, bigger published.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Was there self publishing back then, not like there is now,
because if you were to self.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Publish, let's say a book or something, there was self
publishing of magazines. You know, for sure, it was expensive
to do, but if it came to books, you'd be
literally printing your own book. It's kind of like it
was just wasn't as as it is now. I think
it was a lot more expense. And now when you
(36:35):
talk about self publishing, well, you can self publish for
the entire world to read on a website, and that
that kind of reach they didn't have at all. You
didn't have you you'd have to to get that kind
of reach, you'd have to be in a national or
international magazine. So it's really in fact, when I first started,
(36:59):
they didn't even have the word processing, so I couldn't
have laid out my own like the Expression magazine. I
couldn't lay it out myself. I didn't have the soft
That would have been a very bad financial decision to
invest in that software because you could see how it
was changing, changing, changing, So if I had invested in that,
(37:21):
I would have invested in something that I didn't need
a few years down the line. But that means I
had to pay somebody to lay it out as well
as to print.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
It, which was still cheaper than buying the software and
the equipment to do it at that point.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Yeah, remember when we had resumes coming out of college.
You didn't like if you wanted your resume to look nicer,
you didn't type it up yourself or print it on
your own computer. You'd still go to a print shop
and they had to lay it out and do that
for you.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Well, we had dot matrix printers, so it didn't look
nice if you printed it on your own.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Well, I had a nicer printer than that. I had
the daisy Wheel, so I made type.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah. Now you look at what we do with these
laser jet and ink jet printers, and we can have
eighty five different fonts. If you wanted a different font
on yours, did you have to change the ball?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
You know, I never did because I just used the
standard one you made on my Flywheel printer. That it
was just like a Times New Roman. That Times New
Roman was more like that type look everything. I actually
kind of feel like I had a nicer by the
time I was in grad school, I had a somehow
nicer printer. But by that time they had laser printers.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Right by that time, laser printers were out and you
could do all kinds of fonts when you had the
dot matrix, but it was still a dot matrix printer,
and so there was you know, you saw the pixels.
You saw the little dots that made up each letter.
I think we still have some banners somewhere that we
made on dot matrix printers. Oh really, well, they were
(38:56):
much better for banners than printing it out on regular
paper and taping them together. It's unbelievable where technology has
gone in our lifetime and where it's continuing to go.
Who would have ever thought the cell phone?
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Oh that was a that would talk about a childhood dream. Well,
not only having a cell phone, but this odd taita
where is it? I can't say that.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Oh, yes, you watch You're dick Tracy.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
You know when we were in fourth grade and we're like, oh,
what if we could like talk on our watch and
watch things on it? Of course, now you know you
can't watch anything on your watch.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
But well that's just because our eyes are a little
bit older than they were when we were in fourth grade.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
That was That was actually And you know, my father
lived until he was ninety three, and when people would
ask him, like, the greatest invention his he actually would
say it was the cell phone was the greatest invention,
because it was the greatest invention for a lot of things.
The greatest safety invention to connect you anywhere when you
(40:05):
need help. It was like one of the things that
was really great and the greatest way to keep in
touch with people. That's what he said. Now, my grand
my grandmother always said it was the airplane because she
saw that invented in her thing. It because you could
just go anywhere so quickly. But yeah, no, I.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Think i'd probably even even with all the things we have.
But the cell phone is only great because there is
the Internet and everything behind it. Because we're talking a smartphone,
not just not just the fact that your phone can
go with you anywhere, but that you have access to everything.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah, the smart having smartphones is really really wonderful. Although
the idea that you do have something that at least
with voice, can connect everywhere, I think it was the
most important thing. And then having the computer on your
phone is that sort of thing. So I do that.
I'm also not somebody, of course, maybe because I had
(41:04):
my career doing that. So many people are criticizing, you know,
social media, and I'm like, you know, the concept. You
can't say that the concept is bad. It could be
badly executed, but I also think that that is a
fantastic concept. The people that I was friends with in
(41:27):
high school and college are scattered everywhere around the country,
the people and some people I've truly lost track of
people that I had met when I was in graduate
school and then they went overseas to do things, and
I've nowadays people don't lose track of people like they
used to because of connections on different social platforms.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
And yet you moved out to Arizona, we'll just say
a few years ago, and yet we've still stayed in contact,
though it helps with your family still back in Michigan.
You were coming to Michigan typically a couple of times
a year.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
You and I would have stayed connected anyway, and we
don't really interact a lot on social Actually, you and
I would have stayed connected. I'm still connected to my
friend Ray who I mentioned earlier, and she lives out
in rural Colorado where they don't I mean, she's not
on social because she's her Internet is crappy, so like,
(42:26):
and I'm still connected with them. But some of my
other friends from school, we can keep up with each
other and be part of each other's everyday lives in
a way that we couldn't have. You know, if there
was if there were no Facebook. It is truly a
great thing for people that are in different parts of
the country to like be able to keep up with
(42:50):
each other throughout the throughout their lives, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
And it allows for jobs and stuff that never existed before,
and the potential of remote jobs that works better for
editing than dog training.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Well, the Internet for sure, I mean I could help people.
I mean I sent entertainers all over the country from Arizona.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
That's that's amazing. We should probably wrap up, but I
have had the best time talking to you and catching
up and talking about these wonderful things. And I hope
the listeners enjoy it as well. And maybe this will
give some people the courage to follow their passions and
create the jobs the businesses that they feel are lacking
(43:39):
in their community, or are just the things that they
would love to be doing.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
And I would say too, I'm assuming that you'll put
like somehow in the show notes contact information. If you
know you're a person.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
That just oh no, I'm going to hide you. I'm
going to say never heard of her before.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Well, yeah, if they have questions about anything that I've said,
you know, whether the somebody like our age that are like, well,
I might want to start something or you know somebody
who's you know, like ooh, I'm in college now whatever
it is, just you know, get get in touch with me.
(44:15):
I'd be happy to to talk about me.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
To use an email address or a contact to Peppie
Pause or how would you like that?
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Well, now that is really interesting because for most people
I'd send them to the Clamshell Communications. But if they
for some reason have questions about Peppi Pot, can you
put two addresses or is that too?
Speaker 1 (44:36):
I think I can do anything. I just have to
figure out how, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
I do the Clamshell Communications one and the Peppi Paus
one and that way I can kind of, you know,
because I have a feeling that it might be more
people talking about that then Clamshell than Peppi Pie. By
the way, everybody that's listening, Clamshell Communications is the name,
the writing editing website, social media company.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Just all encompassing. When you do a lot of things,
it's all yeah, well great, okay. I wanted to thank
you again. I appreciate you being a guest, and who knows,
maybe we'll talk in the future because you probably have
more stories to share I do okay. Thank you Karen
(45:29):
and listeners. It has been my pleasure to be talking
with Karen and to be talking with you. And you
got this. See yeah,
Powered by Riverside FM. Welcome to Marcy Talks Money and
Life and I am thrilled to introduce my guest today,
Karen Martinez. I have known Karen for many years and
she has always been an entrepreneur, truly a serial entrepreneur,
because I don't think I know all of the businesses
(00:24):
she's created throughout the years. She's an editor and gross writer,
has been a piano, guitar and dance teacher, done horse
and tennis photography, published a creative writing and photography magazine,
had an entertainment agency, done social media and web development,
and is now the creator of Peppy Pause Player in Mesa, Arizona,
(00:45):
which is a dog park and space for dog training.
And I'm sure I miss some things, but please welcome Karen.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I'm so thrilled to have you here, because, as you know,
this is a podcas has to talk about money and life.
I think the various things you do fit in here
so well, talking about what made you create the businesses,
what made you decide when the businesses had reached their conclusion,
and what you were doing next. And I'm excited to
(01:17):
hear everything you've got to share with us.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Where would you like me to start.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I don't know. If you start at the very beginning,
we might be here a long time. But how about
how about you give us a synopsis of what late
led you to become an entrepreneur. I know you've worked
for other people at various times, but what led you
to wanting to mostly be creating these spaces and being
your own boss?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
You know? I think throughout my life a lot of
people have always said, Ooh, I don't know if I
could have my own business or be an entrepreneur. I
think it was a lot easier for me to envision
that because many members of my family owned their own business,
so I had the model of entrepreneurship and business ownership
(02:07):
my whole life, so it didn't seem unusual to me
to do that at all. And as a matter of fact,
my brother also owns his own business, so the family
does that a lot.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
And I'm going to try and talk him onto coming
onto my podcast as well, because he has different businesses
than you do.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yep, yeah, very different businesses. So I think the two
things that would be the most important to share are
the business that grew organically out of my experiences that
was my entertainment agency, and then the business I most
recently opened. It kind of grew out of my daughter's experiences,
(02:47):
but this was truly a business that we started from scratch.
So comparing those might be helpful to people, you know
and they're thinking of doing it. So when it came
to my entertainment agent, see, I actually started as an entertainer.
I was a professional belly dancer. And when I was
(03:08):
not doing that for a little while I had to
take some time off for health reasons, people would still
call me for jobs. Examples of the sort of jobs
would be weddings, showers, parties. I never did restaurants, but
restaurants would call me that sort of thing, and I
(03:29):
would recommend my friends who are also professional dancers. And
one of them said to me one time, you know,
you're like an agent. I should actually be paying you
for sending me on these jobs. And I thought about it,
and I said, I am like an agent. I mean
I was just there helping out my friends, but I
(03:52):
am like that. And I already had a website set
up the sort of thing where I was putting down
where we and we, I mean me and my friends
and my musician friends were going to be on the weekends.
I was promoting people in different kinds of arts just
for the fun of it. I had that already set up.
(04:14):
And this is when the internet was just invented. We're
still in the late nineties when it was just starting
to grow. So I said, all right, this is how
I'm going to set up my agency. And having worked
with agents before, I knew what I did and did
not want to do, and redid my website and I
(04:35):
started to get calls from out of state. At this point,
I was just doing Middle Eastern dance and music, nothing more,
and I'm like, why can't you find somebody in Los Angeles?
Literally just shout out your window. But people wanted to
book online. They wave even back then, they wanted to
(04:56):
do it. So I kind of was able to ride
that wa like surf that wave as it became and
with me making more and more connections in different parts
of the country with different types of entertainers, I ended
up having a super wide variety, particularly in certain cities.
(05:18):
I'm from Michigan originally, so actually in Michigan and Arizona,
where I'm from in California, where I knew a lot
of different people, but also in other places it well.
So we had every type of music, every type of
entertainment that we had, and that's you know, just I
(05:38):
guess I could say I was jumping on the web
at the right time, but it was I've really noticed
that people wanted to do that anyway I had. That's
how the business grew out of things that I had
already been doing, both professionally and just socially.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, remember, because I think there were a couple of
times where friends had asked me if they knew if
I knew of somebody or did something that I recall.
I was like, I know you're in Arizona, but and
you were able a couple of times to help me
look like I knew what I was doing, hooking someone
up with whatever entertainment it was. And that was fascinating
(06:20):
to me because the Internet was still so new. I
think that was that was Aol, not Facebook and the things,
and not LinkedIn, not these other sites that have continued
to make the world smaller.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It was. It was a really fun business to have
because it was literally my job to go to music
festivals and arts festivals and find new people. So I
can imagine for my business, I have to spend the
weekend at the jazz festival. Oh darn you know, it
was really great. I got the most wonderful We spent
(06:58):
a week at the Venetian Festival and Charlevoi, you know
where they have like three or four bands every single night.
That was like, got to do it for the business.
So but speaking of that, you've talked about social media.
So I owned the business as the various social platforms
(07:19):
were starting to open up. The first one that really
opened up that was of consequence was my Space because
if you'll remember, the original MySpace was a place where
musicians loved to share their work, and that was a
really good place to connect with people that I didn't
know before, you know, to find different musicians. That was
(07:42):
the first one. Eventually Facebook opened up, and I actually
have to say that as I learned these things, I
was helping other people to learn how to do them
as well. Facebook started to get big around the time
that I went on hiatus from the entertainment agents see
and I'll tell you that story. But when I decided
(08:04):
not to reopen the agency, I continued on with the
expertise that I had gotten about social media and continue
to teach that. So there were several years when I
was doing workshops, taking out clients one on one to
help them and attending and speaking at conferences about social
(08:31):
media marketing. So that grew out of knowing it from
the entertainment agency.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
It's amazing how one thing builds to another. I mean,
that's one of the things I tell people is as
you find a job, you may find it doesn't suit
you any longer, but there are skills that will help
you find the next, whatever that next is for you.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, it really, it really did that. I had it
for a while. Do you remember on when they're used
to have Twitter chats. Maybe you don't if you didn't
do it. I had for a while. The most popular one.
It was called ask Angel. My name in the entertainment
world was Angelek, and so it was ask Angel and
(09:15):
it was about social media marketing and it was big.
It was it was at a great chat that we
had every week. So that was again a while ago,
because they don't have that sort of thing anymore anywhere.
I don't think.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I imagine everything exists somewhere, but it's a matter of if
it's the right space for you, you may or may
not find it as easily as you know, especially if
you're not looking for it. It's not what you're looking
for right now, so you're not going to find it
once you look for it, once you do it. In fact,
possibly because we just spoke about it, now, if you
(09:58):
have any devices listening with AI, the next thing you know,
you're going to get five ads for it. But that's
just where technology is taking us. So you don't design
websites anymore.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I was doing that, okay. So here's something that I
do actually right now is I keep people's websites going.
So there's so many people they're at the end of
their career or their business just doesn't want that site
(10:34):
to go down. They can't afford to redo their site
in the way that would be wonderful to do, but
they don't want it to go crashy crashy. And right
now I don't have I don't think we specifically said that.
I had been doing web development through my company, climeshow Communications.
(10:54):
That's what came, you know, social media and then web
development along with it and everything. So right now I
don't have time to do that sort of web development thing.
But I have no problem because I have a little team,
you know, I'm doing this all myself. That the little
team and I can keep people's sites, you know, going
(11:19):
for them, so that at least they won't be embarrassed that,
oh no, my site is down and I really do
need at least some kind of presence, okay.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And then and then you created Peppi Pause, because that's
that's a passion project of yours, taking your dogs and
horses and showing them and competing.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
What happened with Peppi pas Player, which I'll explain, is
a private doggy playground where in Mesa, Arizona. This is
the first business I have ever had that was confined
to a location that's brick and mortar. Even we have
no bricks or mortar because we're completely outside everything else
that I've done, you know, editing for people, which I
(12:08):
still do. I mean, this is what I actually got
my postgraduate degree in, was editing and publishing, editing for
people entertainment agency, obviously helping people with social media. It
didn't matter where they were. I usually didn't meet people
face to face that we're my clients, you know, in person.
(12:28):
This one is really like truly hyper local, and we
live on an acre of irrigated property. So although we're
in Arizona, we have lots of trees and grass, a
lot of fruit trees, gardens, that sort of thing. Our
house is right in the middle of it. So our
backyard is a full, fully fenced half acre. So we
(12:49):
already had that. We also already had dogs, and we're
agility competitors. And by we, I mean my daughter Leah
has been doing this for many years and I have
been doing it for about a year. But we also
had the yard set up for dogs, and we had
(13:09):
we were collecting practice equipment and everything. And my daughter
was the one that first had the idea of a
dog care business in some way, and at first she
thought of, you know, like a daycare sort of situation,
but that didn't work for us. First of all, we're
in Arizona, so half of the year it's you can't
(13:33):
we're going out there.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Okay, So basically nine hundred degrees and dry, yes.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
And also another thing about me is I'm a very
chemically sensitive person, so having dogs, strange dogs in our
home be absolutely impossible for me. I have to keep
my home in a way that is completely healthy for me.
So but when we talked about it. It was really
the outside of things, and we came up with the idea,
(14:02):
which I found out while I was doing my research,
was totally unique of a doggy playground where people came
to interact with their dogs. So they came to play
and or train their dogs, bring their trainer. Some people
like to run around with their dogs and everybody gets exercised,
(14:23):
and they bring their kid, and some people they just
want to sit in the shade and we are actually
also very hands on if they would like us to be.
So some people come and sit in the shade and
we play with their dogs. They usually come for half
an hour at a time, and we came up with
that idea. This is the business for which we did
the business plan and really researched it and laid out
(14:48):
everything that we were going to do, and that's when
we found out that there isn't anybody that we know
that has anything like yet and were kind of learning
as we were doing. So in the past year and
a half that we've had it, we've dropped some ideas
(15:10):
and added some new ideas. So that's that's how that
started with that.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
And this is a lot different than community dog parks
where you buy a tag and you bring your dog
and maybe you go with a friend, or maybe you
go and you hope that the other dogs there are
friendly dogs, and you have no idea when you get
there whether you'll have time alone or not. When when
people come to you, they are renting your space for
(15:38):
whatever amount of time, and they might be the only
dog there, or what are the restrictions, And.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
We actually consider ourselves the service. People are not renting
the space in the same way they would if they
were at a sniff spot. If you've ever heard of
a sniff spot, it's a sniff spot is a net
like Airbnb and verbo our networks, and this company has
(16:06):
a special application people have on their phones and they
rent out or rent. Truly, you're just walking into some
person's yard that they set out for you, and that's
different from us. It's too bad we can't be listed there,
but we can't. It's a completely different thing. You're kind
of working, you know, with that, and they set up
(16:28):
how it is. We are a completely independent thing, our
own place, our own rules, our own one on one
scheduling with me, like you're always talking to a person
me being really strict about all the dogs being vaccinated,
us interacting with the dogs for people. We show people
(16:51):
there are different things that we can do, show people
what agility is like if they're interested in doing it,
you know, handling the dogs with them, show some interesting
things to do to the owners. We have a serenity
space with sniffing activities for the dogs to have funds
with sniffing activities, which is a calming sort of exercise
(17:13):
for them. We have all this kind of stuff that
we're hands on with. And now that I've explained that,
I can't. Oh, you're talking about the difference between us
and a public dog park. Yeah, about sixty percent of
our dogs are reactive dogs who can't go to a
public dog park. They've either been traumatized at the public
dog park by the other dogs or other people that
(17:37):
are there, or they were rescued dogs. We still have
a lot of dogs that were rescued. Now they do it,
but during the pandemic, and you know a lot of
reactive dogs that they need the private space. Other people
have perfectly social dogs, dogs that like other dogs and people,
but they still want to come and have the private
(17:59):
experience and not have the problems that you can have
at a public dog park and they come and bring
their friends. The best thing is and we have friend groups.
I want to I'm still trying to connect with a trainer.
By the way, dog trainers, if you're listening, we need
somebody that wants to train out of here that will
facilitate evaluating dogs for potentially being friends. Because when people
(18:21):
come with their friends and the dogs play together, they
do so much more playing and running around. You know,
they really enjoy that. So we'd like to doggy matchmake
and I would totally be doing that under the supervision
and evaluation of a professional trainer.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
And of course you'd have to be somewhat local Tamsa, Arizona, yes,
because it would be a little bit of a commute
for me in Michigan.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Well, if I become if I become a huge success,
we could franchise can til I watch a lot of
Shark Tank but which would be really great. But first
this has to be success.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
And do many people rent out your space to work
their dogs for agility training competitions?
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, so that's a slightly different thing that we do.
People that do agility usually don't have all of the
space and all the equipment that we have, and when
their agility clubs or classes that they're taking are on hiatus,
or if they just simply need to practice because a
(19:29):
meat is coming up, and especially if they need evening
because we've just we have lights. We didn't have it
our first year, but now we have some lights for evening,
which is important in Arizona when it's hot. Then they come.
We've got especially long sessions for them, so it gives
them time to move around the equipment, and we're very
strict about that. I have to say is that nobody
(19:53):
gets to play agility or play on the equipment except
for the super safe stuff like running through the tunnel.
But when it comes to the big equipment, you have
the not the dog, but the dog owner has to
have gone through at least one course from an agility
classer club that we recognize, and once you've done that,
(20:15):
then you can use it. But we have to make
sure that the dogs and the people are going to
be safe.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
And I think it's fascinating the way you turned a
passion project into a business and then what seems like
a new a new uh business model. So hey, people
who are passionate about their their dogs, and dog training
may want to want to look at this, but not
everyone's going to have a half acre.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
I don't know if we have a full acre. If
we only lived on a half acre, this would not
be possible.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Well no, no, I meant a half acre available for training.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, to do that, No, not everybody does. That's a
that's what.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
But what a what a great uh? What a great idea?
So hey, if you want to buy into a franchise,
reach out to Peppy. Pause and h yeah, have you
have you considered franchising? Have you looked into it at all?
Or you're still at a year older? You might be
kind of young for this.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
We're not first. We have to have the proof of concept,
like we have. No, we have no proof of concept
right here. We have to like show, oh yeah, this
will actually work. We'd be farther ahead. But as you know,
here's something that people will find in their lives if
they're trying to do businesses or services or anything like that.
(21:39):
Other parts of your life that must take precedence, you know,
get in the way. And in my case, I was
traveling out of state a lot for you know, seeing
my father at the end of his life and helping
out my family and we were like doing that. It
(22:01):
caused us to close down during the height of what
would be our most busy time and closing on people.
And I'm you know that you have to restart each time.
So now I'm restarting again pretty much. I mean, I'm
not starting from absolute scratch, but people are probably wondering,
(22:23):
you know, are they really going to be there? Are
they going to be open all the time? And I
have to re establish all the connections and everything so
and start up the advertising again. So that's what happens sometimes.
So if hopefully now we can you know, keep rolling
and truly become successful. And then when you prove that
(22:46):
it can be successful, then you can go on and
you know have other people say, oh, I might be
able to replicate that.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
That is that is very cool. I mean I as
I said, I love that you could turn your passion project.
And you know, that's what happened with the entertainment agency.
It was a passion project of you dancing and then
of helping your friends and then you know, it just
evolved into a business. And this with Leah training and
(23:16):
then I don't know if you opened up Peppy Pause
before after you started training dogs yourself and it just
kind of kind of blossomed from the things you were
doing into a business model.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Now, I do have to say, here's an important thing
that I want to say to all the people listening
and everything. Doing that research and writing up that business
plan was like, it's really detailed, but it's really helpful.
I not only did it for Peppy Pause. We absolutely
had to do it for Peppy Pause. There was you know,
(23:51):
absolutely had to do that. It's part of getting your
LLC and your business anyway, to have the business plan.
But people were telling me this was coming out of
was it pre pandemic or coming out of the you know,
the pandemic just seems like one really really long month, right.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I don't know, I don't know how long you were
in the planning phase before you open the door.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
You actually opened the door. I'm not talking about Peppy
Pas right now, but the entertainment agency people were telling
me you really should reopen this now. The people that
were telling me this were entertainers number one and number two.
They were the people who used to get entertainment from me.
(24:40):
So those are the two people that were like, hey,
I know you've had this close for a really long time.
But we really, really, you know, despite everything that else
is around, despite everybody and his dog have websites and
social media and ways to connect it, we still needed agents.
So they were telling me this, but I was like,
I don't know if I'm seeing the need for it
(25:04):
for sure. So I spent a whole year not putting
money into it, except for buying a membership to one
of the organizations, the national organization with local chapters that
are for people who deal with events, you know, event planning.
And it was kind of fun because I went to
all their meetings for a year, which means that they
(25:25):
had great food because the caterers were always showing off
like a month or a year. But that really helped me,
and I looked into it. That really helped me to
know that it would not have been a good idea
to try and reopen it because guess who was not
wanting entertainment The people actually having events, So some people
(25:49):
wanted to have more jobs, but you can't like make
people want to hire entertainment like they used to before
two thousand and eight. And then it's a good thing
I didn't open it. I just remembered now a pre pandemic,
because what happened right after I decided not to open
it was the pandemic, right.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
So people wouldn't have had events and been hiring entertainers anyway.
I did actually go to some online events where they
did have some singers and stuff who were performing from
their own space on the camera and whatever else. It
was not obviously as engaging as being in person, but
it was still so that there was an event I went.
(26:29):
I went to actually a number of different things that
had various types of entertainment or celebrity guests or whatever else.
There were some not necessarily comic cons, but but speakers
and whatever else, and you'd have everybody's face on your
screen as they'd talk about various fandoms and famous people
(26:51):
that would come to some of them. So that was
kind of fun because even when you go to a
comic con and there are all these speaks, you can't
get to all of them. Some of them are at
the same time, some of the lines are too long,
and online they could see thousands of people at a
time to talk to them, so it was it was
(27:12):
interesting that way. It was interesting to see how well
we pivoted during the pandemic, but certainly for the type
of entertainers and events you were dealing with, they probably
weren't going to hire a remote person for for entertainment.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
There are a lot of cool things that were going
on during the pandemic that kind of got dropped afterwards, partly,
I think because of money at the time. A lot
of the places that were you know, doing you know,
video chatting with each other and video meetings and everything
had they're pricing really low for people. I was like
(27:51):
really involved and started my own two in writing groups.
A lot of people were home in a way that
they you know, weren't to be home later and had
time for the things that they really had a passion out.
So there's so many people that started writing their books
and working on their things that they really wanted to do.
(28:12):
Same thing with art as well, and you know a
lot of that. And I actually ran the Everyone Right group.
This isn't wasn't a business. It was just people that
got together and wrote together and then at the end
of an hour, you know, shared with each other. It
was just an accountability thing to do it. But a
(28:34):
lot of those different groups that were really big during
the pandemic ended up. They didn't, they didn't continue on afterwards.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Right, because all of a sudden you can start going places,
and well, life has places it wants you to go,
whether you're whether you're ready for them or not. I mean,
you've had this fantastic career of following your passion. You've
been You've been very fortunate that that you've been able
to pivot. But you also have multiple things you're interested in.
(29:09):
So you know, I'm teaching dance, I'm being a professional dancer,
I am finding jobs for other dancers. I'm you know,
you know, created your website for yourself, and now you
manage and maintain websites for other businesses. You know, even
if it's as they're closing, it's still these things just
(29:29):
roll one thing into another because because you're paying attention
and you're following the things that interest you and the
things where you see opportunities.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Can I give some advice to high school and college students.
I just thought it's going back from the beginning of
my career. Okay, So I was at Michigan State.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I gore yah yay, and I was a history major,
and I was a member of the undergraduate slash Graduate
History Association and and also the History Honor Society, and
in those we put on events.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
In fact, what was unique actually about the story department
at Michigan State, and I hope it's still that way,
is that they had the most amount of events where
students and teachers. When professors got together and the other
departments were really jealous and would the professors, how do
you have that? And they go, well, our students just
(30:28):
keep on the tradition. Anyway, that taught me how to
host events of either bigger ones or smaller ones. I
learned from the older students, and then I was an
older student and we were putting them on. That skill
(30:51):
helped me a lot out in life. So the advice is,
you know, to actually get involved in some organizations and
where you're actually volunteering and doing something, because some of
those skills follow you through your life, you know that.
And it started back when I was in college just
(31:14):
learning the rudiments of putting on different kinds of events,
and that just went on. Also, what happened is that
you talking about editing and publishing. Oh, can I tell
you this story? This is like a windy story and
we might have to pick this up a different way. Okay, So,
way back when I was a kid, for some reason,
(31:34):
I wanted to be a writer. For some reason, my
father always thought i'd be a really good editor. I
don't know if he thought i'd be it would be
a really great career, but he just thought that it
would be. But I went, I thought I would be.
I loved research and writing. I loved history, so I thought,
I know, I'll be a history major. I'll become a professor.
But when I came out to visit my friend, you
(31:58):
remember Ray, right, she was and Okay, so she was
in the Air Force. She went to the Air Force Academy.
She was in pilot training out in Arizona. I came
out to visit her, and while she was doing her
training all day, I took her car and drove around.
I checked out the ASU campus and saw Editing and
Publishing program Graduate certificate in Editing and Publishing. It was
(32:19):
through actually, either the History or the English department, because
people went on to get masters in those things. And
I'm like, well, this is really interesting. And I told
that to my dad and he goes, you should do it.
He goes, yes, you should apply. You'll be like this,
you'll be a great editor. I'm like, okay, but I'm
(32:40):
here in June and school starts in August. I'm pretty
sure this fire is old. Well, sure enough, they accepted
me into the program. There was a slot left, and
they said, well, we're really sorry that there's no teaching
assistant jobs for you. And I'm like, that's okay, because
you know, I I still want to go and you know,
(33:01):
my father would help to pay to you know, send
me in everything. And they and then one of the
PhD students dropped out of the editing job that she
had and they said, you know, you'd have to do
this job while you were learning. And I'm like, sure,
that's okay. And I became the managing editor for two
(33:23):
psychology journals at ASU, and I did it while I
was That was a great way to learn editing, Like,
way better than just doing it in the classroom.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
You don't tend to dip your toe in the pond.
You just fly off that pier and you're like cowabunga
here I am.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
That was great. That was great thing. So back when
I had been at Michigan State, my friends and I
had been thinking of a creative writing magazine and it
was like, Oh, I always wanted to do that. I
wanted to make that real, not just talk about it.
Wouldn't that be great? So when I finished the ASU program,
I did get a job editing, but I'm like, I'm
(34:03):
going to start this and I did, and uh that
was uh that was Expression Magazine.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
It's just I'm I'm in awe, I'm in a I've
known you through much of this, but but just the
fearlessness and you know, the following your passion and uh,
you know, and you bring along other people with you,
like you have you have this company that still manages
these websites, and you still have these people, whether they're
(34:35):
part time or you know, and this is just a
side hustle for but you're creating jobs for other people
as well. When when you're doing these things, you're looking
for a trainer that would want to work out of
of Peppy Pause. You're still running writing groups to help
people with their passions that may or may not go further,
you know, other than the writing group. And that's fine too.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
It's just jobs. When I had the entertainment agency, obviously.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yes, yes, when your job is finding people jobs, you
do tend to create a few jobs.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Was the creative writing magazine was a stepping stone for
other people to get you know, published further because for
a lot of people especially, things are different now with
the Internet. But back then the publishing industry was very
much like lemmings. If one person said yes, then the
next one might and the next one might. So if
(35:29):
you got you know something in an independent magazine like me,
even though we are like who are we? I mean,
we weren't even nationwide. We were in forty bookstores, which
was pretty cool Internet to get them in there. We
were in the whole Borders chain as Borders was expanding,
but still but the fact is is that I had
the degree by my name said that I was an editor,
(35:51):
and I had accepted them. So then when they went
to go to a bigger magazine, a national magazine, they
could say, well they liked me, maybe you should look
at my stuff, and so they off, they went on
and got bigger, bigger published.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Was there self publishing back then, not like there is now,
because if you were to self.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Publish, let's say a book or something, there was self
publishing of magazines. You know, for sure, it was expensive
to do, but if it came to books, you'd be
literally printing your own book. It's kind of like it
was just wasn't as as it is now. I think
it was a lot more expense. And now when you
(36:35):
talk about self publishing, well, you can self publish for
the entire world to read on a website, and that
that kind of reach they didn't have at all. You
didn't have you you'd have to to get that kind
of reach, you'd have to be in a national or
international magazine. So it's really in fact, when I first started,
(36:59):
they didn't even have the word processing, so I couldn't
have laid out my own like the Expression magazine. I
couldn't lay it out myself. I didn't have the soft
That would have been a very bad financial decision to
invest in that software because you could see how it
was changing, changing, changing, So if I had invested in that,
(37:21):
I would have invested in something that I didn't need
a few years down the line. But that means I
had to pay somebody to lay it out as well
as to print.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
It, which was still cheaper than buying the software and
the equipment to do it at that point.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Yeah, remember when we had resumes coming out of college.
You didn't like if you wanted your resume to look nicer,
you didn't type it up yourself or print it on
your own computer. You'd still go to a print shop
and they had to lay it out and do that
for you.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Well, we had dot matrix printers, so it didn't look
nice if you printed it on your own.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Well, I had a nicer printer than that. I had
the daisy Wheel, so I made type.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah. Now you look at what we do with these
laser jet and ink jet printers, and we can have
eighty five different fonts. If you wanted a different font
on yours, did you have to change the ball?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
You know, I never did because I just used the
standard one you made on my Flywheel printer. That it
was just like a Times New Roman. That Times New
Roman was more like that type look everything. I actually
kind of feel like I had a nicer by the
time I was in grad school, I had a somehow
nicer printer. But by that time they had laser printers.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Right by that time, laser printers were out and you
could do all kinds of fonts when you had the
dot matrix, but it was still a dot matrix printer,
and so there was you know, you saw the pixels.
You saw the little dots that made up each letter.
I think we still have some banners somewhere that we
made on dot matrix printers. Oh really, well, they were
(38:56):
much better for banners than printing it out on regular
paper and taping them together. It's unbelievable where technology has
gone in our lifetime and where it's continuing to go.
Who would have ever thought the cell phone?
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Oh that was a that would talk about a childhood dream. Well,
not only having a cell phone, but this odd taita
where is it? I can't say that.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Oh, yes, you watch You're dick Tracy.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
You know when we were in fourth grade and we're like, oh,
what if we could like talk on our watch and
watch things on it? Of course, now you know you
can't watch anything on your watch.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
But well that's just because our eyes are a little
bit older than they were when we were in fourth grade.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
That was That was actually And you know, my father
lived until he was ninety three, and when people would
ask him, like, the greatest invention his he actually would
say it was the cell phone was the greatest invention,
because it was the greatest invention for a lot of things.
The greatest safety invention to connect you anywhere when you
(40:05):
need help. It was like one of the things that
was really great and the greatest way to keep in
touch with people. That's what he said. Now, my grand
my grandmother always said it was the airplane because she
saw that invented in her thing. It because you could
just go anywhere so quickly. But yeah, no, I.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Think i'd probably even even with all the things we have.
But the cell phone is only great because there is
the Internet and everything behind it. Because we're talking a smartphone,
not just not just the fact that your phone can
go with you anywhere, but that you have access to everything.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah, the smart having smartphones is really really wonderful. Although
the idea that you do have something that at least
with voice, can connect everywhere, I think it was the
most important thing. And then having the computer on your
phone is that sort of thing. So I do that.
I'm also not somebody, of course, maybe because I had
(41:04):
my career doing that. So many people are criticizing, you know,
social media, and I'm like, you know, the concept. You
can't say that the concept is bad. It could be
badly executed, but I also think that that is a
fantastic concept. The people that I was friends with in
(41:27):
high school and college are scattered everywhere around the country,
the people and some people I've truly lost track of
people that I had met when I was in graduate
school and then they went overseas to do things, and
I've nowadays people don't lose track of people like they
used to because of connections on different social platforms.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
And yet you moved out to Arizona, we'll just say
a few years ago, and yet we've still stayed in contact,
though it helps with your family still back in Michigan.
You were coming to Michigan typically a couple of times
a year.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
You and I would have stayed connected anyway, and we
don't really interact a lot on social Actually, you and
I would have stayed connected. I'm still connected to my
friend Ray who I mentioned earlier, and she lives out
in rural Colorado where they don't I mean, she's not
on social because she's her Internet is crappy, so like,
(42:26):
and I'm still connected with them. But some of my
other friends from school, we can keep up with each
other and be part of each other's everyday lives in
a way that we couldn't have. You know, if there
was if there were no Facebook. It is truly a
great thing for people that are in different parts of
the country to like be able to keep up with
(42:50):
each other throughout the throughout their lives, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
And it allows for jobs and stuff that never existed before,
and the potential of remote jobs that works better for
editing than dog training.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Well, the Internet for sure, I mean I could help people.
I mean I sent entertainers all over the country from Arizona.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
That's that's amazing. We should probably wrap up, but I
have had the best time talking to you and catching
up and talking about these wonderful things. And I hope
the listeners enjoy it as well. And maybe this will
give some people the courage to follow their passions and
create the jobs the businesses that they feel are lacking
(43:39):
in their community, or are just the things that they
would love to be doing.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
And I would say too, I'm assuming that you'll put
like somehow in the show notes contact information. If you
know you're a person.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
That just oh no, I'm going to hide you. I'm
going to say never heard of her before.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Well, yeah, if they have questions about anything that I've said,
you know, whether the somebody like our age that are like, well,
I might want to start something or you know somebody
who's you know, like ooh, I'm in college now whatever
it is, just you know, get get in touch with me.
(44:15):
I'd be happy to to talk about me.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
To use an email address or a contact to Peppie
Pause or how would you like that?
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Well, now that is really interesting because for most people
I'd send them to the Clamshell Communications. But if they
for some reason have questions about Peppi Pot, can you
put two addresses or is that too?
Speaker 1 (44:36):
I think I can do anything. I just have to
figure out how, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
I do the Clamshell Communications one and the Peppi Paus
one and that way I can kind of, you know,
because I have a feeling that it might be more
people talking about that then Clamshell than Peppi Pie. By
the way, everybody that's listening, Clamshell Communications is the name,
the writing editing website, social media company.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Just all encompassing. When you do a lot of things,
it's all yeah, well great, okay. I wanted to thank
you again. I appreciate you being a guest, and who knows,
maybe we'll talk in the future because you probably have
more stories to share I do okay. Thank you Karen
(45:29):
and listeners. It has been my pleasure to be talking
with Karen and to be talking with you. And you
got this. See yeah,
Host
Marci Grossman
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