January 15, 2025 • 51 mins
Making the decision to close our business was one of the hardest choices we’ve ever had to make, but it also became one of the most transformative. In this video, we share the emotional and practical journey behind shutting down our business and trusting each other to lead the way for our future.
From the fears and doubts to the lessons learned about partnership, faith, and love, this story is about more than just business—it’s about the power of trusting your partner and embracing a new chapter together.
💬 Join the Relationship Restored Online Community or learn more HERE!
🎙️ Got a topic you’d love for us to cover? Request it HERE!
📲 Connect with us:
Dre on IG: @itsdresmith
Bre on IG: @breannaaponte
Relationship Restored IG: @relationshiprestored
If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to like, comment, and leave a review! Your support helps us keep the conversation going!
From the fears and doubts to the lessons learned about partnership, faith, and love, this story is about more than just business—it’s about the power of trusting your partner and embracing a new chapter together.
💬 Join the Relationship Restored Online Community or learn more HERE!
🎙️ Got a topic you’d love for us to cover? Request it HERE!
📲 Connect with us:
Dre on IG: @itsdresmith
Bre on IG: @breannaaponte
Relationship Restored IG: @relationshiprestored
If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to like, comment, and leave a review! Your support helps us keep the conversation going!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, welcome back to the channel and to the podcast.
It's Drean Bree here and we are back with another video,
and we're in a different place because I am always
liking to try things, so we've tried videos a lot
of ways, and we decided, well really I decided, but
we both liked the idea of just being on a
couch and just chilling versus setting up any other thing
(00:22):
with all the cameras and all that stuff like that.
So for the foreseeable future, you're going to get videos
with us just like this, comfy at our crib, have
a conversation with you guys, have a conversation with each other,
and hopefully you enjoy that because it ain't changing anytime soon.
But this video. We're really excited to talk about this
because this is a major change in our relationship, like
(00:44):
a major change, like one of the biggest honest, like
honestly changes that we've had in a while, and we're
excited to talk about it, what it means, how we
support each other, how we had that conversation, and it's
really about Bree stepping away from what she's been doing
for the last seven years and living truly a soft life,
(01:07):
living truly a soft life, but it's also a lesson
of trust, a lesson of communication. So it's a lot
of different things we're going to talk about. But before
we get into that, we have a few updates for
you guys regarding Relationship Restore breaking you share some of
those updates.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Oh, it's so many things. So first of all, for
the Girls is back, y'all. We are filming our reunion
episode this month, so it's coming.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
We're excited. We have some new things happening.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
We have our community, our online community launching on Valentine's Day,
which is super exciting because it is for singles and
it is for couples. But we are going to be
having weekly live and virtual events. Drey and Ronder are
taking their show live so that you guys can virtually
be live virtually live live on YouTube so that you
guys can engage with them in real time while they're
(01:53):
filming the episodes, which is super exciting. Then we have,
obviously what we're talking about today, me working with the
Relationship Restored full time, which means we are going to
start doing events such as retreats in person, different meetups
in all of our different major cities where our members are.
It's just a lot of really exciting things. I feel
like there's one more thing that I'm forgetting.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
No, you're kind of looten at for the girls community,
real love scenario, and then we're back doing our things.
So everything is good and we're really excited. So I
want to hop right into it. Kind of mentioned that
she is now full time with relationship restored, and it's
been a journey for us to get here, and it
doesn't just start like.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
A few months ago when we made the decision.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
It kind of started when we first met, like our
whole trajectory of like working together, coming together, starting a
business together, me leaving and you doing it and then.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
All of that.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
So first I want to start with there's the beginning,
Like a lot of people don't know how we came
to work together in the first place or what we
were doing before, because I feel like that part of
the story lead into kind of the decision that was
made now.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, So it's actually crazy because seven years ago, literally
like seven years and a week ago, we made our
announcement on YouTube that we were starting our branding and
marketing business full time.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Drey left his.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Job and We put all of our time and energy
into our business, and we ran that business together for
six whole years before kind of parting ways. And if
we didn't part ways in the way that we did,
we wouldn't be where we.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Are right now. So should I explain that first?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So the major reason why we parted ways is that
Dre had gotten really great with podcasting production, content creation,
and you know, people were taking notice of this, and
he started kind of like dibbling in the podcast world
and he started working with Breakbeat Media, launched them pretty
much from scratch.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah, let me put a pin in that, and briefly
just talk about So when brit and I came together,
we were I was twenty two when you were twenty three,
or yeah, twenty three, I was twenty four. We were
in our young early twenties and we came together and
Brie had already been a very successful entrepreneur. She had
her own studio in Cleveland, had Shameless Hills, which maybe
(04:10):
she'll bring back for the community, maybe because people love
them classes she's going to She's god to.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Stretch a little bit more. It's been a while that
brought them out, got it.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
But she was doing a lot of amazing things in Cleveland,
And for me, I went to school for business and
I was working in property management. Was kind of like
managing a little small business within itself. But long story
short is that when Brie came to DC, she had
brought Shameless, but things weren't working out as plan and
we're looking for the next thing to do. And I
was like, well, you have been great at doing websites.
(04:44):
You built a brand for your business, Like, maybe we
should start consulting and helping people to like build their brands.
And this was in twenty seventeen and started doing it.
Consultations was twenty five hours literally, you.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Know, I think my consutations were three.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I did free comy fifty dollars services, so like the
consultations were fifty dollars.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
So it was like, all right, start small, build up
your clientele, all these different things, and it started to
pick up. And then as it was picking up, we
understood that Breed was great at the branding side and
the people side, but the business side as well was
more of my strong suit. And then the moment that
(05:26):
we made as much as with the business as we
made at my job.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Also side note, can we just say this real quick
because we realized this the other day. We were looking
at like our oldest system that like we did invoicing
for and we realized we made over half a million
dollars in our I think second year of being in business,
not really knowing that.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
No, it was close to it. Not quite that, but
close to it. Oh, if you add.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
One, no, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Year two we have made five Oh yeah, a year
two we made over half a million dollars. And that's
from people who, like we really had no experiens other
than like self taught figuring it out.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
It was really cool.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So if you go from doing like free calls and
fifty dollars consultations to.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Where we ended up like this.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
When I just ended, we had ten thousand, fifteen, twenty
thousand dollars packages that when you think of like the growth,
that's just so crazy.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
It was just so exciting.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
It is really crazy.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
But we came together, we did that and it grew
from Breed was more the branding side, dealing with the
clients all that type of stuff.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
I helped with.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Management, but I became more of the production side and
just back in of the business and it had us
ups and downs, but we did it full time for
six years together and it was an amazing experience just
to know.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
I think at that age we were like the only
people we.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Really knew who like legitimately were entrepreneurs full time. Didn't
have any other income but that and it for all
those who don't know. We started the business three months
into dating, moved in together.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
And started a business combined all of our finances.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Literally we got like married essentially.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah, just waiting for marras that was all Ben. It
didn't come with it, and it's so crazy. I guess
it paid off because we just knew when you know,
you know, yeah, but it was definitely a risk. But
I'll let you go ahead. You were very you were right.
With the production side, I got really having a podcast
and I produced it Don't Call Me White Girls Show,
how Breakbeat Media launch as a consultant. Then we launched
(07:30):
Real Relationship Restored, which was also like podcasts, and I
started consulting with other people's podcasts, which allowed me the
opportunity to join Urban One as the head of their
podcast division.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
But the main difference between us with our first business
is by like year three, it was very clear that
Dre wanted to go more corporate. I wanted to go
more personal brand. So we were butting heads a lot
on the decisions that we were because he wanted to
work with like the bigger clients, whereas I wanted to
work with more of like smaller personal brand clients.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
And that's kind of where when he took interest in.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Podcasting, I was like, Ooh, this is my opportunity to
take the business and do more what I want, which
is serving women of color and not having to work
with like the big corporations. And that was like when
what we had probably a year of running the business
like that.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
So Dre was in podcasting full time.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I was working with my personal brand folks, and I did.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Enjoy it a lot more than the corporate side.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
However, working with individuals is a whole other, you know,
a whole other challenge because people have personal things going on.
They're more frugal with their money because they it's their money.
They worked hard for their money, and so marketing has
to be different. Everything that I was doing how to
be geared and marketed differently. And I was learning that
(08:55):
because we were really blessed to when we launched our
business not really have to market. All of our clientele
came from word of mouth, and really it just came
from us showing up in our own personal brands. We
didn't really have to promote what we were doing. So
this was the first year, and this is like, you know,
after COVID had happened, and after things with like the
(09:16):
government are changing and people are starting to like think
about where they're putting their dollars, and so marketing needed
to be a real like I needed to get strategic
with marketing. And what I realized in us doing that
was that I did not like to post about my business.
Anytime that I would post business anything strategy related, no,
(09:37):
like they people were like, shut up, talk about your relationship,
keep showing us your life, show us the trip you
went on. So it was this thing where I kept
coming to Duray very frustrated and being like, anytime I
post something or I'm trying to push or market the services,
people are just like telling me to shut up.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Essentially, so I'm like they don't want it.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So I'm like, well, how can I continue to scale
the business if people are literally telling me, like my
analytics are telling me that they want my lifestyle they
want my relationship.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
They don't care about the business stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And so, to make a long story, to make a
long story short, what happened was I came to Dre
with this plan. We were going to invest twelve thousand
dollars into hiring this man who's going to build out
this system for me, who is going to help me
transition into high ticket sales. And honestly, Dre was super,
super understandable and patient with me because he he didn't
(10:34):
want me to do it, but he was like, if
this is what you feel like you need to do,
I guess that's.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
What we're going to do.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And you know, I prayed on it, thought about it,
and after some thought I came back to him and
I was like, you know what, instead of spending twelve
thousand dollars, I was like, I'm going to learn this
system myself. I'm going to diy the whole thing. I'm
going to find a coo, I'm going to find and
hire my own closers, and I'm going to do everything
that this person was going to do for me, but
(10:59):
do it on my own so that it feels authentic
and genuine to what I want my business to be.
And This is when Drey said the amazing advice that
he gave where he was like, everything that you just
explained the million dollar goal and you know the high
ticket offers, and you know how many people you'd have
to work with per month. And he was like, does
that sound like a soft life to you? Because I
(11:22):
had transitioned the business from all about your brand to
self life CEO in order to help my entrepreneurs live
a soft life, and in me giving other people their
soft life, I was essentially removing my soft life. Like
I had a very free flowing schedule where I really
only worked like three days a week. And with this
(11:43):
new system and with the amount of team that I
had grown and everything I was doing, I was realizing
like I was working way harder than I ever had
worked before. And Drey and I knew at that point
that we wanted to start trying for a family, and
we've told job that we were like, we want to
start trying for baby number one.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
And so he just said this simple thing to me.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
He said, if all of this was happening right now
and you had two babies and like was pregnant, do
you feel confident that you were like goingn't be able
to deal with all of this, like how would you feel?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Would you feel stressed out? And I was like, I
never thought about.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
It like that. You know, I want to give my
perspective on that point too.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah, because there's a little deeper feeling involved in that
and the emotion that comes in it. So it's like,
first number one, I think you could. I think you
can support your partner and something, but also be skeptical
at the same time.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
And I definitely was there.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I did not like that.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
She did not like it at all, but because I
feel like it's my job also to challenge her ideas,
especially because she knows my background. I think sometimes if
you have like a spouse that's in a completely different
field than you or doesn't understand, that's one thing. But
it's like, I know what you're trying to do. I
understand business. Stay in this space because we were both
in it together. I'm in it right now. So I
(13:04):
would challenge her or be like that don't make sense
or I don't see how that's gonna work, and she
would get upset at me. But I was truly skeptical
because it just didn't feel like that was what she
was supposed to be doing at that moment. But I
also learned that sometimes people have their path and their
journey to finding something out or to finding revelation, and
(13:24):
you banging them on the head telling them no, or
you need to do this, or you need to look
at it that way, it's just not going to work.
They have to experience it for theirselves, and all you have,
all I would suggest doing is being supportive.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Through that process.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
But she decided to go through the stuff, and she
went through the changes and put all the time and
effort into it, and basically the main feeling that I
had was first I was looking at her and I
was just like, every day, you're like upset, You're like complaining,
You're like I'm angry, You're like frustrated because of everything
that's going on. And then she would communicate to me, like,
(14:01):
my goal is to make you know, a million dollar year,
million dollar a year, million dollar dollar a year, and
she's talking about what it would take to do that,
And at this point I had already communicated to her
that I didn't feel like a priority, and I wanted
to have a conversation at that moment because I'm like,
once we start having babies and all that stuff. I
know I'm going to go down the list. Just don't
(14:21):
forget about me, please, Like I'm still here. Still, don't
take me for granted. Can you show me love and
the times that you can and all those things. But
when she was explaining what it would take, I had
to communicate to her. I was like, that don't sound
like the lifestyle I want to live like, and you say,
and she would tell me that she wants to make
the million dollars in the business for us and for
(14:46):
me and for her, But I'm like, that's not the
life I want. If it's going to take all that
to get the million dollar a year, like I'm good
on that. Like we can have the quarter of a
million dollar a year and live a lot better life
versus a million dollar a year. And you got thirty
clients every month and it's this back and forth and
that back and forth. I'm like, you don't even like
managing teams and you talk about it's like all these
(15:09):
people that will be under you and doing all this stuff.
So once we had the conversation, I think it took
some time because there is a grieving process with that.
But I think one thing I know about Breed is
that she hears me when I talk, and even if
she doesn't like it, she'll go back and really like
think about it.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I do want to say this though, because I never
actually got out of the training process. So what I
was trying to explain to Dre was like, I know,
right now I'm not living softly, but it's because I
have a brand new COO, who a COO needs at
least six months of like really learning the business, learning
the team, and like working under you. So it's like
(15:45):
you're kind of doing their job and your own job.
And at the same time, I have closers and I
have you know, content creators and all these people who
like I'm overseeing, And I was like, let me just
get out of the training period and in once the
COO is doing what I'm doing now, I will be
able to live for your and it won't look as crazy.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
But here's when life kicked in so and this is
also shut up.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Here's also when we kind of knew is like the
first sign that we were supposed to do this at
this exact moment is ah He had asked me, he
was like, would you just like do relationship for stored
full time, Like, if it was making enough money for
you to leave your business and come over here, would
you do that?
Speaker 4 (16:31):
And I was.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I looked at him and I was like, are you
kidding me? Like what type of question is that?
Speaker 4 (16:35):
That?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Just that doesn't make any sense. Of course I would,
but that's not our reality. Like if I could do
that full time and make the same amount of money
that I make with my business, duh, Like.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yes, I would do that, but that's not where we are.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
And for me, I didn't even think of the option
of taking a financial like step back. I was like money, money, money.
I wanted to get the house, I wanted to do
all things because of the baby. And so in that moment,
I actually started to think about what my life would
look like if that happened.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
But I had told him.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I was like, I couldn't do that to Natasha, who
was my COO. I was like, she has worked so
hard to be in this role and be in this position.
I can't do that to her. And so to me,
it wasn't even an option. And like, how many days later,
maybe three, three or four days later, I get a
text from her and she was like, Hey, can we
(17:27):
talk and something about the text message like told me
like I already knew what it was. Get on the
phone with her, and she essentially gave me her notice.
She had a major shift of change with her full
time job and it was just something where it made
no sense for her to like pass that situation up.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
So I totally understood and was very happy for her.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
But the moment that she told me she needed to leave,
I immediately and my brain was like, I'm out of here,
Like you were the only thing that was keeping me
from doing this crazy thing that Dre had offered of
like you know, stopping about the money, like we'll be good,
Like do you want to do this?
Speaker 3 (18:05):
And she was my reasoning for saying no.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
And so when I told him that information, he was like, Okay,
we need to sit down and we need to talk.
And we went to dinner and that was the first
conversation that we had where we were even really.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Considering like what he was saying.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And what's funny is at that dinner I had came
up with like all these play and be options. I
was like, well, I can help with the relationship restore,
but I can still work with my clients, but I'm
not going to go for the million dollar a year.
I'm just only going to take clients as they come.
I'm not going to market. I'm not going to try
to grow it. But we're just gonna we're not going
to give up all that money, you know, like I can.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Still do both.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
And he was just looking at me like goodness, you're
not getting it, Like I don't think that's what you're
supposed to be doing. I think you're supposed to be
being obedient and really allowing me to lead in this way,
and like we work together and like do this. I
think this is what God wants for us. And I
was like, I'll think on it. I'll pray on it.
We go to sleep. The next day, we wake up
(19:05):
and he had a devotion, yeah, his daily devotional, and
he was like, I think this is for you. And
he said it to me and I was like, this
is crazy.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
This is another sign. So a long story short.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
The devotional was about Elisha following Elijah by burning his plows,
killing his cows and literally like giving up his farm
to go and follow Elijah's footsteps because that's what God
had called him to do. He called him to be
obedient to Elijah. And Elijah's calling. And at the end
of everything, Elijah and Elisha are like beyond blessed because
(19:42):
they followed God's orders and obeyed and ultimately ended up
being in a position way better than Elishah could have
ever imagined as a farmer, like just life flipped upside down,
just so blessed. And at the end the prayer was
like release your plan, b When you have God's.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Plan, that's the only plan that you need essentially, So
I was like, dang, Like okay, if I really really
gave this thing up, what would that mean for me? Right?
Because I was thinking about my identity.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I was like, for the last seven years, I have
built my brand as a brand strategist, as a brand coach,
as a social media strategist, as somebody who speaks on panels,
and like even now to this day, like yesterday I
got asked to speak at a conference and I was like.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
I gladly turned that thing down.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
But I wasn't in that space in the moment of
me picturing leaving this business aside, because I was like,
that's who I am.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
And it took a few weeks of me.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Andre having conversations of me, excuse me, of me picturing
my life, where like what would it look like to
just show up as me and just talk about the
things that make me happy on a daily basis my relationships,
my marriage, my lifestyle, travel, friendships, all of those things.
And what's crazy is started a post and like removed
(21:06):
the business stuff and just started showing up in the
relationship space. And this is the first time in over
a year that I have gotten growth on my social media.
I went from one hundred and three thousand to about
to one hundred and eight thousand followers in like a week,
which is crazy because I was stagnant for like two years.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, one hundred thousand followers.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
So yeah, let.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Me give the other side of it as well, like
from my preview and perspective, because everything that re said
is correct. But I want to go back first because
it now has made it seven years and as we know,
or if you don't know, seven is.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
What oh in the Bible, seven is the number that
means completion.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, so it's like, it's so funny that I told
Bret this the other day.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
I guess I use the wrong word. I said reset,
But it feels like we.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Almost have a redo that we can kind of take
everything we learn when we launch our first business and
kind of do it again, and it all is kind
of happening in the same way, which is very interesting.
So Number one is Brie had talked about this, me
telling her or sending her the devotional right, But when
we launched our first business, before we did it, I
(22:18):
was talking to Brie and Brie was like, I said,
you know, she did an amazing thing with Shameless, but
when she came to DC, it was, you know, trying
to figure it out. It was hard. And I was
telling her, you need to get a job. You need
to get a job. You need to get a job.
You need to work, you need to work. And I
was banging her, like banging it or shoving it down
her throat, like you need to work. I don't care
about this entrepreneur stuff. You got to provide for yourself.
(22:39):
You're an adult. And then one day I was just
in the shower and I feel like God spoke to me,
was like, she don't need to work.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
And I was like, say that again one more time.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
It's like, she don't need to work. So then I
came about the shower and I told her. I was like,
all right, we need to figure out something else, but
a job isn't the answer. And she kind of looked
at me like what, Like this is the same man
who the whole time setting up interviews for me, trying
to find jobs for me, and then you just all
of a sudden they're like, nah, you're good.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
So it comes full circle in this.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Moment to where I'm just like nah, like you're good,
and then also getting a sign to send her to
say like you don't gotta work. But briefly as we
lead into like now us working together with relationship restore
first giving some context. Relationship restore with something an idea
that I had maybe like.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
Four or five years ago, probably five years ago.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
It was definitely pre covid the idea that I had,
and it was to basically have this relationship community with
almost being like a relationship church to where people can
come fellowship, they can enjoy theirselves with one another, they
can have sessions to learn, they can connect, maybe meet
the love of their life, maybe meet their best friend.
But it also helps it not own only intimate relationships,
(23:56):
is friendships, family relationshipsitual relationship, and most importantly your relationship
with yourself. So I had this vision like way so
long ago, like so so long ago, and I will
always talk to Bri about it, but didn't know how
it would ultimately come about. And then once I got
heavy into the podcasting space and got really good at
it and learned that was my niche and that I
(24:17):
really understood it and know how to succeed in that space,
that's what prompted me to launch it first with podcasts
and as a podcast network, and that's where you have
the show with Bri and I called Worth the Weight
You Have for the Girls, And then me and Ronda
had real love scenario because Ronda was an old co worker.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
We used talk about relationships all the time, so we
thought that would be a good fit.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
And then when we launched, Brie was basically in it
because we took our Worth to Weight channel if you
followed us there before, and turned it into a relationship Restored,
and Brie was kind of in it, but she was
also having the other stuff that was occupying her time too,
so it made it tough to really do both, even
(24:58):
for us to have our own show consistently or for
her to help with the stuff behind the scenes. And
to make a long story short, is that as we
get to this moment that Brie is talking about, I'm
ready to like revamp and I'm learning a lot. I
took the job of Urban won, I'm learning how the
sausage is made at a larger level, so just understanding
where the direction needs to go. And I think that
(25:19):
all right, we established a podcast, now it's time to
launch the community. So as I was typing out the
business plan, I had everything for content.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Are we gonna do this content?
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Because that's like my background, Like we're gonna shoot this,
We're gonna do that, We're gonna have this series. And
then like I had the vision and the revenue goals
outlined everything.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
But then when I got to.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Community, I knew the vision overall for what I wanted
to be, but the intricacies of it, I was like,
I need breathe. That's like what popped in my head,
Like I need her for this, Like and what's wild
is everything. I always say preparation is still progress to people.
So even if you are preparing for something, sometimes it
(26:01):
doesn't feel like you're progressing, But if you are preparing,
then you are still progressing because you're going to be
able to use what you learn and what you gain
somewhere in your life that's gonna propel you forward. So
I say that because Bree was doing a soft life
CEO community and she had learned this system, the circle system,
and built the community and was run there for almost
(26:23):
like half a year, right it was like no year, yeah,
a full year of doing it. And who would think
that that knowledge, that understanding, that experience would then translate
right into the community for relationship restore And she was
able to know what to do immediately once I laid
all right this division and she was like, oh, oh,
(26:43):
you gotta do this. She like built it in a
day or something like that, and I.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Was literally like an hour. It's like okay.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
And that's the thing with the balance is like I've always.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Been big picture thinker, vision, I can see how everything connects.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
I feel like my.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Not I mean, my passion, but also one of my
greatest skill sets is problem solving.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
But Bri is an I don't want.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
To say executioner, You're executor, not executioner you No, she's
an executor. Like Bri, if she knows she can get
it done. It could take me three days, she could
do it in an hour. Like that's how well she is,
how well she does that. So for us to come together,
it's that perfect balance of like big vision execution. And
(27:30):
I knew in order for this vision to come to
life because it's such a big vision that I feel
like it's God ordained and it's going to impact and
help so many people that we have to work on
it together and utilize our strengths together. And I think
all of the time with us working together, understanding our
own nuances, how to communicate all those different things helped
(27:51):
us and let us and build us up to this
point to where we can make this truly successful well.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Because the other thing too, is before we were both
running a business together, but we had two totally different
visions for that business, so that caused the headbutting. Whereas
now we're going back into business together, but the vision
is the same. So now we're building the same vision
and we're just using our own strengths and essentially meeting
(28:20):
the other person's weaknesses. So that way, it's like we're
doing the things that we enjoy doing the most, that
we're the best at doing, and removing the things that
we don't enjoy. We have a team in place for
you know, assisting in all of those things. So it's
really awesome because we're both being able to work in
our superpower towards the same vision and the same goal.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
So I think that was the biggest difference from all
about it.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
All about it was a business that we ran together
with two different visions, ultimate visions, so we were kind
of driving in this direction, whereas now we're going forward
in the same one.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah, and I think sometimes too, we think we know ourselves,
but it's kind of like a quote that my coaches
said one time, we're all like t bags.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
You don't know what's in us.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Into a place in hot water, Like you hypothetically and
theoretically think you would do certain things in certain situations,
but until you're in it, you don't truly know. So
it's like, I think part of launching our first business
was even learning ourselves, like of what we were good at,
what we weren't good at, how we could work. Like I,
(29:22):
before you know, we started the business, I was technically
in sales, so I was like, oh, I can sell
and do this, and I'm a pretty good salesman, but
Breed for what we were doing was a way better salesman,
and I don't think she actually had ever been in
a sales position, but we learned that through doing it.
So if we were laying it all hypothetically, it would
(29:43):
be like, oh, Jerry would do this because he's done
it before, and b would do this, But actually doing it,
our mindset change when it came to it, and we
had to learn each other's strengths first and then second,
marry our unmarry ourselves from what we thought it was
is going to be or what it should be. So
it's just a lot of learning lessons now going into it,
(30:04):
we truly understand, like what our roles are, what our
strengths are, how to communicate things, what the expectations should be,
and it's just an exciting experience like doing something with
your partner. I know there are a lot of people
who go into things and they like to keep everything
separate and money to finances to business, and that's for
(30:24):
good reason, because it is tough and it's a challenge
to try to merge all those things together. But when
you're aligned, it's really cool to be working on the
same thing together. And for us to go after this
dream and this purpose that I feel like God has
put in us together.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
It's really cool, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
And we would love to know what questions you all have,
because you know, we've been working together obviously for a
very long time, but now in like a new and
different capacity. And if you're out there and you're in
a relationship and maybe you're thinking of working together, or
if you are working together you're having issues, let us
know what topics or questions you guys have because we
would love to create more videos on that for.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
You all and join the community too.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, but one question for you that I wanted to
talk about, like what was your true mindset? And I
want to give my mindset too into actually letting go
of your financial contribution. I guess solely to the household
in what you were doing, because we own all of
our businesses together. I wouldn't be excuse me at Urban
(31:30):
One without Breed and all the help that she's given me. Like,
so we all consider or Brie and I consider everything
we got together as being a group effort for the
most part, But your individual contribution from a financial standpoint, like,
what was your mindset like letting that go?
Speaker 4 (31:48):
Was it fearful? Was it scared?
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Do you think do you think I would treat you
different or demand something of you. Like, what was your
process with that?
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, I'm still processing because the one of the other
things that happened that we didn't mention is I think
the day after we made the decision to go all in,
we woke up and we had gotten like a five
thousand dollars which ended up being like sixty five hundred
dollars brand deal with.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Like a with I think it's like contract things, but
we got a brand deal.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah, like a brand deal together from like a relationship thing.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Like they were like they reached out to Dre.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
It was like, hey, we want to do this with
you and your wife, and it was kind of like
a reminder that we were like, oh, wait, we have
this whole other source of income that we don't really
ever count on because it's so random, which is like
Dre gets booked for different modeling gigs, and then we
both get influencer brand collapse and deals and there's a
(32:44):
substantial amount.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
It's not you know, small deals.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
But we never were aggressively going to go after that
as a source of income. Once we decided we were
going all in on relationship restored, and we're also trying
for baby. I was like, this is the perfect opportunity
to take the influencer brand deals seriously and sign with
a legitimate agent and really make sure that I'm creating
(33:08):
quality content that aligns with brands, because that is another
stream of income. But the fact that that was my
initial thought let me know that I was super fearful
of letting go of my income because.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Why was that my first thought?
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Like, why was I even though we said give this up,
go all in on this plan, my first instinct was okay,
but money.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Okay, but money, and the money thing has nothing to do.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
With me feeling like you would treat me differently because
we've been we've done this before, and it's been a
thing where I don't know, neither of us have ever
put each other in a space of feeling differently because
you're making more than or less than or whatever. But it,
more so for me, was a lifestyle thing. Like me
(33:52):
and Dre look at our budget every single month. We
know exactly how much money we need to live the
life that we want. And what I didn't want is
for me to regret making the decision because our lifestyle changed.
So what I had to ask myself was if it
takes a year of sacrifice.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Would I still be happy without all of those things?
Speaker 2 (34:11):
And when I asked myself that, the answer was yes,
of course, because we don't need a lot to be happy.
It's bare necessities, right, like, as long as we're eating
and we're happy and healthy, Like, we don't need all
of the things that money can buy. But travel is
something that we've had the luxury of like doing very frequently.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
And again, when I was in that mindset of thinking like, okay,
well what did it look like if we couldn't take
the trips or do the things.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
I immediately went to, well, I've gotten brain collabs where
people let me come and stay at their places for free,
so I could still do collaborations. And it all just
kept going back to me thinking of other ways to
supplement my income. And that allowed me to know that
I was really, really fearful of it. And now that
we've made the decision, because the we made the decision
(34:57):
in December, like at the top of December, and I
gave thirty days notice to all my clients, to my community,
to my social media, I let everybody know that at
the end of December, there will be no more self
life CEO and all about it or all about your brand.
And after I did that, me and Dreward crack it up,
the outpour of people that reached out was like.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Oh my god, wait before you end, I just need
a website or before you go, you did a logo
for me back in like twenty eighteen. Can I get
the renderings for this? Can I get that?
Speaker 2 (35:28):
And I was just like overwhelmed with emails and text
messages and DMS of people that wanted services or that
were following up from a service that ended and closed,
you know, forever ago. So the month of December, I
really have been in a space of like I'm trying
to process losing my business, but at the same time,
the business isn't gone because I'm still working with all
(35:49):
these clients and I'm getting people closed out, and so
it was kind of stressful because I'm trying to step
into this role for Relationship Restored and show up for
him and the relationship restore a team, but I'm still
actively working with clients. So even now, second week of January,
I still have two clients that before I can you know,
fully be done, I have to close them out. And
(36:09):
I think that the processing of really letting go of
the income of the business, of that identity is going
to happen after I close out those two clients, because
it's kind of like you can't grieve something until it's
actually time to grieve. I'm still working with people and
I'm still in the mix. I still have the emails
and the website is live. I think once all of
that goes down, then I'll be.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Able to really process.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
And I think that for me, I wouldn't have made
the decision if I didn't know wholeheartedly that we would
be okay financially and that you wouldn't treat me different.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
So that's kind of where I am.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
It's like, I trust you and our relationship for it
not to be an issue. But at the end of
the day, I'm human and I'm still processing the feeling
of letting go of that income and trying to feel
safe in that, especially because we've actually been making investments
and buying a lot of things lately and I haven't
(37:03):
felt fearful, like, oh, I shouldn't get this. I think
we've done a good job of putting ourselves in like
a financial space to be comfortable and to know like
we don't need to make twenty thousand a month immediately,
you know, we don't need to supplement that income and
feel the backlash of like letting it go because we've
(37:23):
done such a good job with like saving and things
like that.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
So I feel good in that.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
But again, it's still a process, and I would love
to do a follow up video on that after I process,
but I'm still trying to figure it out.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Still figure it out.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, I mean, I think it made some good points,
and that's it always started, and Breed knows. For me,
it's always like the money thing, Like I am frugal
when it comes to stuff, but I'm very money conscious
about like the decisions that we're making, how we're setting
up our future. And for me, it was like, first
(37:57):
her happiness, well, let me start with this. For me,
I was like, as long as it's me and breathe, like,
whatever the circumstances is, even if things got real bad
and we had to move to Florida with a mom
or I had to moving to my parents, like it
wouldn't be ideal for us, but as long as it's
me and her, like, I'll be fine. So with that
being my baseline and knowing that if I'm with my person.
(38:20):
I could be with my person anywhere and we'll be good.
Then that let me know, Okay, cool, the love is there.
The love is good. I got my person with me.
Then after that it was like really evaluating financially where
are we. We were in a pretty good position, and
we did a great job over the past couple of years,
or just simplifying our life, even like in our home,
(38:42):
whether that's throwing clothes away, just like only having the
essentials around, because we have a lot of junk. Like
people just in general, we have a lot of jump.
And I watched a video where it was talking about
different things like all right, takes a bunch of stuff
and lock it away for six months and see if
you ever go to use it, and if you never
go to use it, it's probably doesn't need to be
(39:03):
in your house at all because you don't use it anyways.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
So it was just simple things like that.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Not only financially but in our lives, and we were
just and I just looked at that and was like,
we don't need a ton to be happy. We just
need each other. We need to be comfortable, especially to
be able to eat how we like to eat, because
we both like to eat. That's like the most important
thing for us is like, all right, we like to
eat this good food. But outside of that, it's like
(39:30):
we don't need a ton and luckily or we're blessed
to have built a brand and a following to where
that allows for a lot of opportunities for us too
to travel and.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Do some really cool things.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
So for me, I looked at her happiness and her
state of being and I was just like, where you
are right now with this thing is just not where
I would want you to be, Just how.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
You're walking around the house to huffing and puffing.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
And then especially with us planning to have a KI,
like I want you to have that flexibility to be
a mom and be around And not only that is
your skill set is like so amazing that it actually
brings value to what we're doing with relationship restored. It
would be different if you, like were somebody who wasn't
(40:18):
in that field at all or like, but the fact
that your skill set is like basically hiring like a
high six figure employee to come work.
Speaker 4 (40:26):
With the company essentially like free for free essentially helps.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
I want to talk about that because I do think
that and this might be helpful for those of you
out there who maybe you're in like a career space
where maybe you're thinking of shifting or going to a
different company or whatever. But for me, when I really
had to ask myself, I was like, what am I
losing and what am I gaining by making this decision?
And the thing I was most fearful of wasn't even financial.
(40:54):
It was more purpose driven. And I was like, why
would God God have me go through all of the
experiences I've gone through to become such an expert? And
like I use that word strongly because like I am
really really good at what I do and I haven't
(41:15):
been able or I haven't had a client who I
haven't been able to like you know, take from point
A to point B every single time major transition and transformation,
and I do it so effortlessly that I was like,
why would I give that up? Like if this is
a skill set, if this is a passion and a
purpose that I have, why would I give that up?
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Like that was what I felt guilty of.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
I was like, how many people will I not help
by making this transition? And so when I looked at
it like that and then to Dre's point, I was like, wait,
I would literally be doing the same thing that I'm doing.
I would just be doing it for our internal business,
our internal talent and team and brand and and all
(42:00):
of those things. But what that business is going to touch,
the amount of people that it's going to impact without
me having to do these services.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
One on one, there's going to be a greater impact.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
And when I looked at that as saying, like, I'm
taking my purpose, I'm taking my passion and my skills
and my talents to grow this thing that is going
to impact thousands of, hopefully millions of people in their
relationships and in their everyday lives. Like that's such a
bigger impact that I then I could have made in
just branding and social media with helping people grow their businesses.
(42:32):
And so when I was able to reassign my purpose,
then I was like, Okay, now I feel at peace.
And I had made a post on social media talking
about how the idea of leaving my business to do
relationships store a full time seemed crazy, but since I
made the decision, I had been at such peace with it.
And that was the conversation, the internal conversation that I
had to have with myself.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
To get to that point.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Second thing I want to talk about, because Drey mentioned
what we need to be happy, is I think that
I allowed myself to feel peer pressure by other friends, family,
people on social media, thinking that in order for me
to be successful, in order for me to be happy,
in order for me to do things the right way,
(43:15):
that we had to have this house. And so the
money what had really nothing to do with happiness. It
more so again goes back to lifestyle. I was like,
I want the house that I want. The house that
me and Dream want is really expensive. It's about four
to five mil Okay, So we were like, we don't
how much money you need to put down on the
(43:36):
type of house that we want. And so I was
trying to do everything in my power to make the
money versus sitting back and asking myself what the house
even meant.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Or what will it feel like to have that house.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
And so when I really started to picture that, I
started to think of all my friends who have the
big houses, who are like, oh my gosh, it sucks
for maintenance, like trying to keep that big old house clean.
Everybody in the mama wan to come and stay with you.
All the time, and it's like added pressure. Then you
have all the random things that break or things that happen.
Then you have just the random upkeep that you don't
(44:09):
necessarily have when you have like a luxury apartment, like
if something, you know, a pipe burst, or you got
to mow the lawn, or you know, you have a
pool that you have to maintain and pay for yourself.
And when I really thought about what I enjoy on
a day to day basis, and when I looked at
a house versus an apartment, the apartment had everything that
I wanted, and I was like, the only thing that
(44:31):
the house has is more space, but it's just me, Andre.
And then I was like, even thinking of baby, we
have an extra bedroom in our apartment that could be
a nursery. It's just that I wanted the nursery and
the office and the big closet and the content space
and all of the things, but that's not what's really needed.
And so when I took a step back and looked
(44:52):
at what I wanted and what truly makes me happy,
I Andre both felt that where we live right now
is the best place we could possibly be.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
All the things that are important to us like our gym, like.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Whole foods, like the movies, like the restaurants we can
just walk to. And when I pictured myself as a
new mom, I think for my wellness, if I had
a big, brand new house, I would be overwhelmed with projects.
I would constantly be obsessed, because you know how I
get when it's like things aren't aren't done, And I
think I would be isolated. I think I would feel
(45:25):
kind of alone because I would have to put my
child in a car and drive somewhere just to get anywhere,
Whereas here you just go right downstairs. There's a whole
mommy community here, like it is just everything's walkable and
it's comfortable, like this is home to us.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
And so when I.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Really thought about it, I was like, I don't want
that house right now. I just felt like I needed
it right now to feel how I thought I should
feel before having a baby. And when I reevaluated all
those things, I realized that we already had exactly what
we need, and that even gave me more comfort with
trying for baby number one, because I no longer felt
(46:03):
like I needed to prepare, which was nice because anyone
who knows me knows.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
I'm a planner and I like to prepare.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
So when I came, when I came to peace with
just being like we have everything that we need, it
made my decision that much clearer and that much easier.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Yeah, and that's really the reason why I felt comfortable
with the decision, is like I wanted us to live
a lifestyle that we were just happy with and I
feel like she deserves it too, Like she puts in.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
A lot of hard work. Bree is very.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Dedicated in what she does. And as I said before
when we both met, we have nothing to our names,
and where we are in our lives right now is
a testament to both of our inputs and investment into
one another. So again, me getting this position as an
executive or urban one is not just a journey thing.
It's a US thing because I wouldn't be here without her.
(46:57):
So it's like you reaped the big and if it's
of everything that I get, because it's part of what
you contributed to me.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
In our lives.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
And I always say this to people, is that if
you want to get the most out of partnership, you
have to fully invest into partnership because some people don't
get the most out of partnership because they don't put
one hundred percent into partnership. If you lean one hundred
percent percent into it, that's when you'll get the most
out of it. So now we're at a point in
our lives which I had set out, Like I said,
(47:29):
I'm a very long term person, and I had already
said this when I was like nineteen or twenty.
Speaker 4 (47:35):
I was like, by thirty, I'm gonna be straight.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
And what I meant by straight is not like we're
tired or anything, but I'm gonna have like my career established,
I'm gonna have like my love life and wife established,
and I know exactly what I'm gonna do, and everything's
going to be smooth.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
So right now we're at a point to.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Where we know exactly what we're going We know exactly
what we want to do with the rest of our
lives and how we want to impact the world. So
now it's just about building that up in order to
succeed in that space.
Speaker 4 (48:05):
And we're really excited for it. And I'm excited for
this journey. I'm excited for.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Her to be able to, you know, go into being
a mom and doing things like that and not feeling
the pressure because you can't it's hard to fathom or
really talk about it on this video about what it
feels like to being a home with somebody who's like
really unhappy at moments or like really struggling with something
(48:31):
or really frustrating frustrated with something. It disrupts the house
and it shakes the house and it's just not a
good feeling. So now being in a completely different space,
a lighter mood, the conversation is different, Like even our
work conversations are way different than what they were years ago.
It's like just true genuine excitement about what we're doing
(48:51):
and really is just a story about as we end this,
about faith in that, you know, whatever God has put
in my mind as a vision and in our hearts
to do together, that it's all going to work out.
That's why we're not stressing about money. I think it's a.
Speaker 4 (49:08):
I can't quote versus.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Right now, but it's I think it's in a New
Testament maybe Matthew or something like that, but essentially he
says like, you know, look at the flowers and all
their beauty and how God, you know, provides beauty for
them to where they're here today and gone tomorrow, Like
if he does that for something that's so minuscule, it
doesn't matter, why wouldn't he do that for you? So
(49:32):
essentially it's that story of face. So even when breeds
like we're investing in things and not worried about money,
it's like, hey, if we truly believe that this thing
is going to be our future, when we're not going
to look back and say two hundred dollars that we
spent that one day, did it that was the thing
that made us, you know, live in this tent or
(49:53):
something like that. It's like, if we truly believe, then
we're going to be smart about the things that we're getting,
but we're going to invest not worried about what could happen.
So definitely a story of faith. It's a story of trust,
us trusting one another and our abilities and our commitment
to the goal, but also us trusting that we won't
(50:13):
treat the other person differently make them feel bad for
whatever change and role or contribution to the household it
may be, because that's so important. It's like if you
want somebody to do something and you say you support them,
the backhanded compliments, the backhanded comments, like that's never going
to work and it's just going to create resentment and
more problems. So we trusted each other not to do that,
(50:36):
and it was just communication, like communicating our vision, our
desires to one another and giving each other the space
to really digest what we heard and be able to
come back to each other and communicate again. Because that's
the thing I don't think people really talk about in communication,
is the digestion of like what was initially said. It's
(50:57):
like it's not just one conversation. That conversation could go
for months or you know, even a year or so
to just digest and really get to the conclusion of
whatever's being talked about.
Speaker 4 (51:10):
So we're super excited.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
We would love for you to support us in what
we're doing with Relationship Restored. And it's really just by subscribing,
watching these videos, watching the shows, and joining our community.
The community is gonna be so much fun. It's gonna
be so dope. I can't wait to launch it. It's
like one of the major parts of the vision of
Relationship Restored. So if you are single, you're a couple,
you live in Alaska, South Africa, I don't care, DC,
(51:37):
please join is there'll be a space and time for
each and every one of you.
Speaker 4 (51:42):
So we're really excited. I know Breed is super excited.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
And we actually have to go because we have a
relationship restored.
Speaker 4 (51:48):
Meeting we do well.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
We'll talk to you guys later. Make sure you keep
tuning in and peace.
Hey, guys, welcome back to the channel and to the podcast.
It's Drean Bree here and we are back with another video,
and we're in a different place because I am always
liking to try things, so we've tried videos a lot
of ways, and we decided, well really I decided, but
we both liked the idea of just being on a
couch and just chilling versus setting up any other thing
(00:22):
with all the cameras and all that stuff like that.
So for the foreseeable future, you're going to get videos
with us just like this, comfy at our crib, have
a conversation with you guys, have a conversation with each other,
and hopefully you enjoy that because it ain't changing anytime soon.
But this video. We're really excited to talk about this
because this is a major change in our relationship, like
(00:44):
a major change, like one of the biggest honest, like
honestly changes that we've had in a while, and we're
excited to talk about it, what it means, how we
support each other, how we had that conversation, and it's
really about Bree stepping away from what she's been doing
for the last seven years and living truly a soft life,
(01:07):
living truly a soft life, but it's also a lesson
of trust, a lesson of communication. So it's a lot
of different things we're going to talk about. But before
we get into that, we have a few updates for
you guys regarding Relationship Restore breaking you share some of
those updates.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Oh, it's so many things. So first of all, for
the Girls is back, y'all. We are filming our reunion
episode this month, so it's coming.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
We're excited. We have some new things happening.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
We have our community, our online community launching on Valentine's Day,
which is super exciting because it is for singles and
it is for couples. But we are going to be
having weekly live and virtual events. Drey and Ronder are
taking their show live so that you guys can virtually
be live virtually live live on YouTube so that you
guys can engage with them in real time while they're
(01:53):
filming the episodes, which is super exciting. Then we have,
obviously what we're talking about today, me working with the
Relationship Restored full time, which means we are going to
start doing events such as retreats in person, different meetups
in all of our different major cities where our members are.
It's just a lot of really exciting things. I feel
like there's one more thing that I'm forgetting.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
No, you're kind of looten at for the girls community,
real love scenario, and then we're back doing our things.
So everything is good and we're really excited. So I
want to hop right into it. Kind of mentioned that
she is now full time with relationship restored, and it's
been a journey for us to get here, and it
doesn't just start like.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
A few months ago when we made the decision.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
It kind of started when we first met, like our
whole trajectory of like working together, coming together, starting a
business together, me leaving and you doing it and then.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
All of that.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
So first I want to start with there's the beginning,
Like a lot of people don't know how we came
to work together in the first place or what we
were doing before, because I feel like that part of
the story lead into kind of the decision that was
made now.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, So it's actually crazy because seven years ago, literally
like seven years and a week ago, we made our
announcement on YouTube that we were starting our branding and
marketing business full time.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Drey left his.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Job and We put all of our time and energy
into our business, and we ran that business together for
six whole years before kind of parting ways. And if
we didn't part ways in the way that we did,
we wouldn't be where we.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Are right now. So should I explain that first?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So the major reason why we parted ways is that
Dre had gotten really great with podcasting production, content creation,
and you know, people were taking notice of this, and
he started kind of like dibbling in the podcast world
and he started working with Breakbeat Media, launched them pretty
much from scratch.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah, let me put a pin in that, and briefly
just talk about So when brit and I came together,
we were I was twenty two when you were twenty three,
or yeah, twenty three, I was twenty four. We were
in our young early twenties and we came together and
Brie had already been a very successful entrepreneur. She had
her own studio in Cleveland, had Shameless Hills, which maybe
(04:10):
she'll bring back for the community, maybe because people love
them classes she's going to She's god to.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Stretch a little bit more. It's been a while that
brought them out, got it.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
But she was doing a lot of amazing things in Cleveland,
And for me, I went to school for business and
I was working in property management. Was kind of like
managing a little small business within itself. But long story
short is that when Brie came to DC, she had
brought Shameless, but things weren't working out as plan and
we're looking for the next thing to do. And I
was like, well, you have been great at doing websites.
(04:44):
You built a brand for your business, Like, maybe we
should start consulting and helping people to like build their brands.
And this was in twenty seventeen and started doing it.
Consultations was twenty five hours literally, you.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Know, I think my consutations were three.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I did free comy fifty dollars services, so like the
consultations were fifty dollars.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
So it was like, all right, start small, build up
your clientele, all these different things, and it started to
pick up. And then as it was picking up, we
understood that Breed was great at the branding side and
the people side, but the business side as well was
more of my strong suit. And then the moment that
(05:26):
we made as much as with the business as we
made at my job.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Also side note, can we just say this real quick
because we realized this the other day. We were looking
at like our oldest system that like we did invoicing
for and we realized we made over half a million
dollars in our I think second year of being in business,
not really knowing that.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
No, it was close to it. Not quite that, but
close to it. Oh, if you add.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
One, no, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Year two we have made five Oh yeah, a year
two we made over half a million dollars. And that's
from people who, like we really had no experiens other
than like self taught figuring it out.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
It was really cool.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So if you go from doing like free calls and
fifty dollars consultations to.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Where we ended up like this.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
When I just ended, we had ten thousand, fifteen, twenty
thousand dollars packages that when you think of like the growth,
that's just so crazy.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
It was just so exciting.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
It is really crazy.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
But we came together, we did that and it grew
from Breed was more the branding side, dealing with the
clients all that type of stuff.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
I helped with.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Management, but I became more of the production side and
just back in of the business and it had us
ups and downs, but we did it full time for
six years together and it was an amazing experience just
to know.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
I think at that age we were like the only
people we.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Really knew who like legitimately were entrepreneurs full time. Didn't
have any other income but that and it for all
those who don't know. We started the business three months
into dating, moved in together.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
And started a business combined all of our finances.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Literally we got like married essentially.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah, just waiting for marras that was all Ben. It
didn't come with it, and it's so crazy. I guess
it paid off because we just knew when you know,
you know, yeah, but it was definitely a risk. But
I'll let you go ahead. You were very you were right.
With the production side, I got really having a podcast
and I produced it Don't Call Me White Girls Show,
how Breakbeat Media launch as a consultant. Then we launched
(07:30):
Real Relationship Restored, which was also like podcasts, and I
started consulting with other people's podcasts, which allowed me the
opportunity to join Urban One as the head of their
podcast division.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
But the main difference between us with our first business
is by like year three, it was very clear that
Dre wanted to go more corporate. I wanted to go
more personal brand. So we were butting heads a lot
on the decisions that we were because he wanted to
work with like the bigger clients, whereas I wanted to
work with more of like smaller personal brand clients.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
And that's kind of where when he took interest in.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Podcasting, I was like, Ooh, this is my opportunity to
take the business and do more what I want, which
is serving women of color and not having to work
with like the big corporations. And that was like when
what we had probably a year of running the business
like that.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
So Dre was in podcasting full time.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I was working with my personal brand folks, and I did.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Enjoy it a lot more than the corporate side.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
However, working with individuals is a whole other, you know,
a whole other challenge because people have personal things going on.
They're more frugal with their money because they it's their money.
They worked hard for their money, and so marketing has
to be different. Everything that I was doing how to
be geared and marketed differently. And I was learning that
(08:55):
because we were really blessed to when we launched our
business not really have to market. All of our clientele
came from word of mouth, and really it just came
from us showing up in our own personal brands. We
didn't really have to promote what we were doing. So
this was the first year, and this is like, you know,
after COVID had happened, and after things with like the
(09:16):
government are changing and people are starting to like think
about where they're putting their dollars, and so marketing needed
to be a real like I needed to get strategic
with marketing. And what I realized in us doing that
was that I did not like to post about my business.
Anytime that I would post business anything strategy related, no,
(09:37):
like they people were like, shut up, talk about your relationship,
keep showing us your life, show us the trip you
went on. So it was this thing where I kept
coming to Duray very frustrated and being like, anytime I
post something or I'm trying to push or market the services,
people are just like telling me to shut up.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Essentially, so I'm like they don't want it.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So I'm like, well, how can I continue to scale
the business if people are literally telling me, like my
analytics are telling me that they want my lifestyle they
want my relationship.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
They don't care about the business stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And so, to make a long story, to make a
long story short, what happened was I came to Dre
with this plan. We were going to invest twelve thousand
dollars into hiring this man who's going to build out
this system for me, who is going to help me
transition into high ticket sales. And honestly, Dre was super,
super understandable and patient with me because he he didn't
(10:34):
want me to do it, but he was like, if
this is what you feel like you need to do,
I guess that's.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
What we're going to do.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And you know, I prayed on it, thought about it,
and after some thought I came back to him and
I was like, you know what, instead of spending twelve
thousand dollars, I was like, I'm going to learn this
system myself. I'm going to diy the whole thing. I'm
going to find a coo, I'm going to find and
hire my own closers, and I'm going to do everything
that this person was going to do for me, but
(10:59):
do it on my own so that it feels authentic
and genuine to what I want my business to be.
And This is when Drey said the amazing advice that
he gave where he was like, everything that you just
explained the million dollar goal and you know the high
ticket offers, and you know how many people you'd have
to work with per month. And he was like, does
that sound like a soft life to you? Because I
(11:22):
had transitioned the business from all about your brand to
self life CEO in order to help my entrepreneurs live
a soft life, and in me giving other people their
soft life, I was essentially removing my soft life. Like
I had a very free flowing schedule where I really
only worked like three days a week. And with this
(11:43):
new system and with the amount of team that I
had grown and everything I was doing, I was realizing
like I was working way harder than I ever had
worked before. And Drey and I knew at that point
that we wanted to start trying for a family, and
we've told job that we were like, we want to
start trying for baby number one.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
And so he just said this simple thing to me.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
He said, if all of this was happening right now
and you had two babies and like was pregnant, do
you feel confident that you were like goingn't be able
to deal with all of this, like how would you feel?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Would you feel stressed out? And I was like, I
never thought about.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
It like that. You know, I want to give my
perspective on that point too.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah, because there's a little deeper feeling involved in that
and the emotion that comes in it. So it's like,
first number one, I think you could. I think you
can support your partner and something, but also be skeptical
at the same time.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
And I definitely was there.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I did not like that.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
She did not like it at all, but because I
feel like it's my job also to challenge her ideas,
especially because she knows my background. I think sometimes if
you have like a spouse that's in a completely different
field than you or doesn't understand, that's one thing. But
it's like, I know what you're trying to do. I
understand business. Stay in this space because we were both
in it together. I'm in it right now. So I
(13:04):
would challenge her or be like that don't make sense
or I don't see how that's gonna work, and she
would get upset at me. But I was truly skeptical
because it just didn't feel like that was what she
was supposed to be doing at that moment. But I
also learned that sometimes people have their path and their
journey to finding something out or to finding revelation, and
(13:24):
you banging them on the head telling them no, or
you need to do this, or you need to look
at it that way, it's just not going to work.
They have to experience it for theirselves, and all you have,
all I would suggest doing is being supportive.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Through that process.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
But she decided to go through the stuff, and she
went through the changes and put all the time and
effort into it, and basically the main feeling that I
had was first I was looking at her and I
was just like, every day, you're like upset, You're like complaining,
You're like I'm angry, You're like frustrated because of everything
that's going on. And then she would communicate to me, like,
(14:01):
my goal is to make you know, a million dollar year,
million dollar a year, million dollar dollar a year, and
she's talking about what it would take to do that,
And at this point I had already communicated to her
that I didn't feel like a priority, and I wanted
to have a conversation at that moment because I'm like,
once we start having babies and all that stuff. I
know I'm going to go down the list. Just don't
(14:21):
forget about me, please, Like I'm still here. Still, don't
take me for granted. Can you show me love and
the times that you can and all those things. But
when she was explaining what it would take, I had
to communicate to her. I was like, that don't sound
like the lifestyle I want to live like, and you say,
and she would tell me that she wants to make
the million dollars in the business for us and for
(14:46):
me and for her, But I'm like, that's not the
life I want. If it's going to take all that
to get the million dollar a year, like I'm good
on that. Like we can have the quarter of a
million dollar a year and live a lot better life
versus a million dollar a year. And you got thirty
clients every month and it's this back and forth and
that back and forth. I'm like, you don't even like
managing teams and you talk about it's like all these
(15:09):
people that will be under you and doing all this stuff.
So once we had the conversation, I think it took
some time because there is a grieving process with that.
But I think one thing I know about Breed is
that she hears me when I talk, and even if
she doesn't like it, she'll go back and really like
think about it.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I do want to say this though, because I never
actually got out of the training process. So what I
was trying to explain to Dre was like, I know,
right now I'm not living softly, but it's because I
have a brand new COO, who a COO needs at
least six months of like really learning the business, learning
the team, and like working under you. So it's like
(15:45):
you're kind of doing their job and your own job.
And at the same time, I have closers and I
have you know, content creators and all these people who
like I'm overseeing, And I was like, let me just
get out of the training period and in once the
COO is doing what I'm doing now, I will be
able to live for your and it won't look as crazy.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
But here's when life kicked in so and this is
also shut up.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Here's also when we kind of knew is like the
first sign that we were supposed to do this at
this exact moment is ah He had asked me, he
was like, would you just like do relationship for stored
full time, Like, if it was making enough money for
you to leave your business and come over here, would
you do that?
Speaker 4 (16:31):
And I was.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I looked at him and I was like, are you
kidding me? Like what type of question is that?
Speaker 4 (16:35):
That?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Just that doesn't make any sense. Of course I would,
but that's not our reality. Like if I could do
that full time and make the same amount of money
that I make with my business, duh, Like.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yes, I would do that, but that's not where we are.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
And for me, I didn't even think of the option
of taking a financial like step back. I was like money, money, money.
I wanted to get the house, I wanted to do
all things because of the baby. And so in that moment,
I actually started to think about what my life would
look like if that happened.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
But I had told him.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I was like, I couldn't do that to Natasha, who
was my COO. I was like, she has worked so
hard to be in this role and be in this position.
I can't do that to her. And so to me,
it wasn't even an option. And like, how many days later,
maybe three, three or four days later, I get a
text from her and she was like, Hey, can we
(17:27):
talk and something about the text message like told me
like I already knew what it was. Get on the
phone with her, and she essentially gave me her notice.
She had a major shift of change with her full
time job and it was just something where it made
no sense for her to like pass that situation up.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
So I totally understood and was very happy for her.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
But the moment that she told me she needed to leave,
I immediately and my brain was like, I'm out of here,
Like you were the only thing that was keeping me
from doing this crazy thing that Dre had offered of
like you know, stopping about the money, like we'll be good,
Like do you want to do this?
Speaker 3 (18:05):
And she was my reasoning for saying no.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
And so when I told him that information, he was like, Okay,
we need to sit down and we need to talk.
And we went to dinner and that was the first
conversation that we had where we were even really.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Considering like what he was saying.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And what's funny is at that dinner I had came
up with like all these play and be options. I
was like, well, I can help with the relationship restore,
but I can still work with my clients, but I'm
not going to go for the million dollar a year.
I'm just only going to take clients as they come.
I'm not going to market. I'm not going to try
to grow it. But we're just gonna we're not going
to give up all that money, you know, like I can.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Still do both.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
And he was just looking at me like goodness, you're
not getting it, Like I don't think that's what you're
supposed to be doing. I think you're supposed to be
being obedient and really allowing me to lead in this way,
and like we work together and like do this. I
think this is what God wants for us. And I
was like, I'll think on it. I'll pray on it.
We go to sleep. The next day, we wake up
(19:05):
and he had a devotion, yeah, his daily devotional, and
he was like, I think this is for you. And
he said it to me and I was like, this
is crazy.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
This is another sign. So a long story short.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
The devotional was about Elisha following Elijah by burning his plows,
killing his cows and literally like giving up his farm
to go and follow Elijah's footsteps because that's what God
had called him to do. He called him to be
obedient to Elijah. And Elijah's calling. And at the end
of everything, Elijah and Elisha are like beyond blessed because
(19:42):
they followed God's orders and obeyed and ultimately ended up
being in a position way better than Elishah could have
ever imagined as a farmer, like just life flipped upside down,
just so blessed. And at the end the prayer was
like release your plan, b When you have God's.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Plan, that's the only plan that you need essentially, So
I was like, dang, Like okay, if I really really
gave this thing up, what would that mean for me? Right?
Because I was thinking about my identity.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I was like, for the last seven years, I have
built my brand as a brand strategist, as a brand coach,
as a social media strategist, as somebody who speaks on panels,
and like even now to this day, like yesterday I
got asked to speak at a conference and I was like.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
I gladly turned that thing down.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
But I wasn't in that space in the moment of
me picturing leaving this business aside, because I was like,
that's who I am.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
And it took a few weeks of me.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Andre having conversations of me, excuse me, of me picturing
my life, where like what would it look like to
just show up as me and just talk about the
things that make me happy on a daily basis my relationships,
my marriage, my lifestyle, travel, friendships, all of those things.
And what's crazy is started a post and like removed
(21:06):
the business stuff and just started showing up in the
relationship space. And this is the first time in over
a year that I have gotten growth on my social media.
I went from one hundred and three thousand to about
to one hundred and eight thousand followers in like a week,
which is crazy because I was stagnant for like two years.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, one hundred thousand followers.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
So yeah, let.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Me give the other side of it as well, like
from my preview and perspective, because everything that re said
is correct. But I want to go back first because
it now has made it seven years and as we know,
or if you don't know, seven is.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
What oh in the Bible, seven is the number that
means completion.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, so it's like, it's so funny that I told
Bret this the other day.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
I guess I use the wrong word. I said reset,
But it feels like we.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Almost have a redo that we can kind of take
everything we learn when we launch our first business and
kind of do it again, and it all is kind
of happening in the same way, which is very interesting.
So Number one is Brie had talked about this, me
telling her or sending her the devotional right, But when
we launched our first business, before we did it, I
(22:18):
was talking to Brie and Brie was like, I said,
you know, she did an amazing thing with Shameless, but
when she came to DC, it was, you know, trying
to figure it out. It was hard. And I was
telling her, you need to get a job. You need
to get a job. You need to get a job.
You need to work, you need to work. And I
was banging her, like banging it or shoving it down
her throat, like you need to work. I don't care
about this entrepreneur stuff. You got to provide for yourself.
(22:39):
You're an adult. And then one day I was just
in the shower and I feel like God spoke to me,
was like, she don't need to work.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
And I was like, say that again one more time.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
It's like, she don't need to work. So then I
came about the shower and I told her. I was like,
all right, we need to figure out something else, but
a job isn't the answer. And she kind of looked
at me like what, Like this is the same man
who the whole time setting up interviews for me, trying
to find jobs for me, and then you just all
of a sudden they're like, nah, you're good.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
So it comes full circle in this.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Moment to where I'm just like nah, like you're good,
and then also getting a sign to send her to
say like you don't gotta work. But briefly as we
lead into like now us working together with relationship restore
first giving some context. Relationship restore with something an idea
that I had maybe like.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
Four or five years ago, probably five years ago.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
It was definitely pre covid the idea that I had,
and it was to basically have this relationship community with
almost being like a relationship church to where people can
come fellowship, they can enjoy theirselves with one another, they
can have sessions to learn, they can connect, maybe meet
the love of their life, maybe meet their best friend.
But it also helps it not own only intimate relationships,
(23:56):
is friendships, family relationshipsitual relationship, and most importantly your relationship
with yourself. So I had this vision like way so
long ago, like so so long ago, and I will
always talk to Bri about it, but didn't know how
it would ultimately come about. And then once I got
heavy into the podcasting space and got really good at
it and learned that was my niche and that I
(24:17):
really understood it and know how to succeed in that space,
that's what prompted me to launch it first with podcasts
and as a podcast network, and that's where you have
the show with Bri and I called Worth the Weight
You Have for the Girls, And then me and Ronda
had real love scenario because Ronda was an old co worker.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
We used talk about relationships all the time, so we
thought that would be a good fit.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
And then when we launched, Brie was basically in it
because we took our Worth to Weight channel if you
followed us there before, and turned it into a relationship Restored,
and Brie was kind of in it, but she was
also having the other stuff that was occupying her time too,
so it made it tough to really do both, even
(24:58):
for us to have our own show consistently or for
her to help with the stuff behind the scenes. And
to make a long story short, is that as we
get to this moment that Brie is talking about, I'm
ready to like revamp and I'm learning a lot. I
took the job of Urban won, I'm learning how the
sausage is made at a larger level, so just understanding
where the direction needs to go. And I think that
(25:19):
all right, we established a podcast, now it's time to
launch the community. So as I was typing out the
business plan, I had everything for content.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Are we gonna do this content?
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Because that's like my background, Like we're gonna shoot this,
We're gonna do that, We're gonna have this series. And
then like I had the vision and the revenue goals
outlined everything.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
But then when I got to.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Community, I knew the vision overall for what I wanted
to be, but the intricacies of it, I was like,
I need breathe. That's like what popped in my head,
Like I need her for this, Like and what's wild
is everything. I always say preparation is still progress to people.
So even if you are preparing for something, sometimes it
(26:01):
doesn't feel like you're progressing, But if you are preparing,
then you are still progressing because you're going to be
able to use what you learn and what you gain
somewhere in your life that's gonna propel you forward. So
I say that because Bree was doing a soft life
CEO community and she had learned this system, the circle system,
and built the community and was run there for almost
(26:23):
like half a year, right it was like no year, yeah,
a full year of doing it. And who would think
that that knowledge, that understanding, that experience would then translate
right into the community for relationship restore And she was
able to know what to do immediately once I laid
all right this division and she was like, oh, oh,
(26:43):
you gotta do this. She like built it in a
day or something like that, and I.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Was literally like an hour. It's like okay.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
And that's the thing with the balance is like I've always.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Been big picture thinker, vision, I can see how everything connects.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
I feel like my.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Not I mean, my passion, but also one of my
greatest skill sets is problem solving.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
But Bri is an I don't want.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
To say executioner, You're executor, not executioner you No, she's
an executor. Like Bri, if she knows she can get
it done. It could take me three days, she could
do it in an hour. Like that's how well she is,
how well she does that. So for us to come together,
it's that perfect balance of like big vision execution. And
(27:30):
I knew in order for this vision to come to
life because it's such a big vision that I feel
like it's God ordained and it's going to impact and
help so many people that we have to work on
it together and utilize our strengths together. And I think
all of the time with us working together, understanding our
own nuances, how to communicate all those different things helped
(27:51):
us and let us and build us up to this
point to where we can make this truly successful well.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Because the other thing too, is before we were both
running a business together, but we had two totally different
visions for that business, so that caused the headbutting. Whereas
now we're going back into business together, but the vision
is the same. So now we're building the same vision
and we're just using our own strengths and essentially meeting
(28:20):
the other person's weaknesses. So that way, it's like we're
doing the things that we enjoy doing the most, that
we're the best at doing, and removing the things that
we don't enjoy. We have a team in place for
you know, assisting in all of those things. So it's
really awesome because we're both being able to work in
our superpower towards the same vision and the same goal.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
So I think that was the biggest difference from all
about it.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
All about it was a business that we ran together
with two different visions, ultimate visions, so we were kind
of driving in this direction, whereas now we're going forward
in the same one.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah, and I think sometimes too, we think we know ourselves,
but it's kind of like a quote that my coaches
said one time, we're all like t bags.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
You don't know what's in us.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Into a place in hot water, Like you hypothetically and
theoretically think you would do certain things in certain situations,
but until you're in it, you don't truly know. So
it's like, I think part of launching our first business
was even learning ourselves, like of what we were good at,
what we weren't good at, how we could work. Like I,
(29:22):
before you know, we started the business, I was technically
in sales, so I was like, oh, I can sell
and do this, and I'm a pretty good salesman, but
Breed for what we were doing was a way better salesman,
and I don't think she actually had ever been in
a sales position, but we learned that through doing it.
So if we were laying it all hypothetically, it would
(29:43):
be like, oh, Jerry would do this because he's done
it before, and b would do this, But actually doing it,
our mindset change when it came to it, and we
had to learn each other's strengths first and then second,
marry our unmarry ourselves from what we thought it was
is going to be or what it should be. So
it's just a lot of learning lessons now going into it,
(30:04):
we truly understand, like what our roles are, what our
strengths are, how to communicate things, what the expectations should be,
and it's just an exciting experience like doing something with
your partner. I know there are a lot of people
who go into things and they like to keep everything
separate and money to finances to business, and that's for
(30:24):
good reason, because it is tough and it's a challenge
to try to merge all those things together. But when
you're aligned, it's really cool to be working on the
same thing together. And for us to go after this
dream and this purpose that I feel like God has
put in us together.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
It's really cool, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
And we would love to know what questions you all have,
because you know, we've been working together obviously for a
very long time, but now in like a new and
different capacity. And if you're out there and you're in
a relationship and maybe you're thinking of working together, or
if you are working together you're having issues, let us
know what topics or questions you guys have because we
would love to create more videos on that for.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
You all and join the community too.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, but one question for you that I wanted to
talk about, like what was your true mindset? And I
want to give my mindset too into actually letting go
of your financial contribution. I guess solely to the household
in what you were doing, because we own all of
our businesses together. I wouldn't be excuse me at Urban
(31:30):
One without Breed and all the help that she's given me. Like,
so we all consider or Brie and I consider everything
we got together as being a group effort for the
most part, But your individual contribution from a financial standpoint, like,
what was your mindset like letting that go?
Speaker 4 (31:48):
Was it fearful? Was it scared?
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Do you think do you think I would treat you
different or demand something of you. Like, what was your
process with that?
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, I'm still processing because the one of the other
things that happened that we didn't mention is I think
the day after we made the decision to go all in,
we woke up and we had gotten like a five
thousand dollars which ended up being like sixty five hundred
dollars brand deal with.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Like a with I think it's like contract things, but
we got a brand deal.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah, like a brand deal together from like a relationship thing.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Like they were like they reached out to Dre.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
It was like, hey, we want to do this with
you and your wife, and it was kind of like
a reminder that we were like, oh, wait, we have
this whole other source of income that we don't really
ever count on because it's so random, which is like
Dre gets booked for different modeling gigs, and then we
both get influencer brand collapse and deals and there's a
(32:44):
substantial amount.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
It's not you know, small deals.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
But we never were aggressively going to go after that
as a source of income. Once we decided we were
going all in on relationship restored, and we're also trying
for baby. I was like, this is the perfect opportunity
to take the influencer brand deals seriously and sign with
a legitimate agent and really make sure that I'm creating
(33:08):
quality content that aligns with brands, because that is another
stream of income. But the fact that that was my
initial thought let me know that I was super fearful
of letting go of my income because.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Why was that my first thought?
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Like, why was I even though we said give this up,
go all in on this plan, my first instinct was okay,
but money.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Okay, but money, and the money thing has nothing to do.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
With me feeling like you would treat me differently because
we've been we've done this before, and it's been a
thing where I don't know, neither of us have ever
put each other in a space of feeling differently because
you're making more than or less than or whatever. But it,
more so for me, was a lifestyle thing. Like me
(33:52):
and Dre look at our budget every single month. We
know exactly how much money we need to live the
life that we want. And what I didn't want is
for me to regret making the decision because our lifestyle changed.
So what I had to ask myself was if it
takes a year of sacrifice.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Would I still be happy without all of those things?
Speaker 2 (34:11):
And when I asked myself that, the answer was yes,
of course, because we don't need a lot to be happy.
It's bare necessities, right, like, as long as we're eating
and we're happy and healthy, Like, we don't need all
of the things that money can buy. But travel is
something that we've had the luxury of like doing very frequently.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
And again, when I was in that mindset of thinking like, okay,
well what did it look like if we couldn't take
the trips or do the things.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
I immediately went to, well, I've gotten brain collabs where
people let me come and stay at their places for free,
so I could still do collaborations. And it all just
kept going back to me thinking of other ways to
supplement my income. And that allowed me to know that
I was really, really fearful of it. And now that
we've made the decision, because the we made the decision
(34:57):
in December, like at the top of December, and I
gave thirty days notice to all my clients, to my community,
to my social media, I let everybody know that at
the end of December, there will be no more self
life CEO and all about it or all about your brand.
And after I did that, me and Dreward crack it up,
the outpour of people that reached out was like.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Oh my god, wait before you end, I just need
a website or before you go, you did a logo
for me back in like twenty eighteen. Can I get
the renderings for this? Can I get that?
Speaker 2 (35:28):
And I was just like overwhelmed with emails and text
messages and DMS of people that wanted services or that
were following up from a service that ended and closed,
you know, forever ago. So the month of December, I
really have been in a space of like I'm trying
to process losing my business, but at the same time,
the business isn't gone because I'm still working with all
(35:49):
these clients and I'm getting people closed out, and so
it was kind of stressful because I'm trying to step
into this role for Relationship Restored and show up for
him and the relationship restore a team, but I'm still
actively working with clients. So even now, second week of January,
I still have two clients that before I can you know,
fully be done, I have to close them out. And
(36:09):
I think that the processing of really letting go of
the income of the business, of that identity is going
to happen after I close out those two clients, because
it's kind of like you can't grieve something until it's
actually time to grieve. I'm still working with people and
I'm still in the mix. I still have the emails
and the website is live. I think once all of
that goes down, then I'll be.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Able to really process.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
And I think that for me, I wouldn't have made
the decision if I didn't know wholeheartedly that we would
be okay financially and that you wouldn't treat me different.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
So that's kind of where I am.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
It's like, I trust you and our relationship for it
not to be an issue. But at the end of
the day, I'm human and I'm still processing the feeling
of letting go of that income and trying to feel
safe in that, especially because we've actually been making investments
and buying a lot of things lately and I haven't
(37:03):
felt fearful, like, oh, I shouldn't get this. I think
we've done a good job of putting ourselves in like
a financial space to be comfortable and to know like
we don't need to make twenty thousand a month immediately,
you know, we don't need to supplement that income and
feel the backlash of like letting it go because we've
(37:23):
done such a good job with like saving and things
like that.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
So I feel good in that.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
But again, it's still a process, and I would love
to do a follow up video on that after I process,
but I'm still trying to figure it out.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Still figure it out.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, I mean, I think it made some good points,
and that's it always started, and Breed knows. For me,
it's always like the money thing, Like I am frugal
when it comes to stuff, but I'm very money conscious
about like the decisions that we're making, how we're setting
up our future. And for me, it was like, first
(37:57):
her happiness, well, let me start with this. For me,
I was like, as long as it's me and breathe, like,
whatever the circumstances is, even if things got real bad
and we had to move to Florida with a mom
or I had to moving to my parents, like it
wouldn't be ideal for us, but as long as it's
me and her, like, I'll be fine. So with that
being my baseline and knowing that if I'm with my person.
(38:20):
I could be with my person anywhere and we'll be good.
Then that let me know, Okay, cool, the love is there.
The love is good. I got my person with me.
Then after that it was like really evaluating financially where
are we. We were in a pretty good position, and
we did a great job over the past couple of years,
or just simplifying our life, even like in our home,
(38:42):
whether that's throwing clothes away, just like only having the
essentials around, because we have a lot of junk. Like
people just in general, we have a lot of jump.
And I watched a video where it was talking about
different things like all right, takes a bunch of stuff
and lock it away for six months and see if
you ever go to use it, and if you never
go to use it, it's probably doesn't need to be
(39:03):
in your house at all because you don't use it anyways.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
So it was just simple things like that.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Not only financially but in our lives, and we were
just and I just looked at that and was like,
we don't need a ton to be happy. We just
need each other. We need to be comfortable, especially to
be able to eat how we like to eat, because
we both like to eat. That's like the most important
thing for us is like, all right, we like to
eat this good food. But outside of that, it's like
(39:30):
we don't need a ton and luckily or we're blessed
to have built a brand and a following to where
that allows for a lot of opportunities for us too
to travel and.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Do some really cool things.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
So for me, I looked at her happiness and her
state of being and I was just like, where you
are right now with this thing is just not where
I would want you to be, Just how.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
You're walking around the house to huffing and puffing.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
And then especially with us planning to have a KI,
like I want you to have that flexibility to be
a mom and be around And not only that is
your skill set is like so amazing that it actually
brings value to what we're doing with relationship restored. It
would be different if you, like were somebody who wasn't
(40:18):
in that field at all or like, but the fact
that your skill set is like basically hiring like a
high six figure employee to come work.
Speaker 4 (40:26):
With the company essentially like free for free essentially helps.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
I want to talk about that because I do think
that and this might be helpful for those of you
out there who maybe you're in like a career space
where maybe you're thinking of shifting or going to a
different company or whatever. But for me, when I really
had to ask myself, I was like, what am I
losing and what am I gaining by making this decision?
And the thing I was most fearful of wasn't even financial.
(40:54):
It was more purpose driven. And I was like, why
would God God have me go through all of the
experiences I've gone through to become such an expert? And
like I use that word strongly because like I am
really really good at what I do and I haven't
(41:15):
been able or I haven't had a client who I
haven't been able to like you know, take from point
A to point B every single time major transition and transformation,
and I do it so effortlessly that I was like,
why would I give that up? Like if this is
a skill set, if this is a passion and a
purpose that I have, why would I give that up?
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Like that was what I felt guilty of.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
I was like, how many people will I not help
by making this transition? And so when I looked at
it like that and then to Dre's point, I was like, wait,
I would literally be doing the same thing that I'm doing.
I would just be doing it for our internal business,
our internal talent and team and brand and and all
(42:00):
of those things. But what that business is going to touch,
the amount of people that it's going to impact without
me having to do these services.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
One on one, there's going to be a greater impact.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
And when I looked at that as saying, like, I'm
taking my purpose, I'm taking my passion and my skills
and my talents to grow this thing that is going
to impact thousands of, hopefully millions of people in their
relationships and in their everyday lives. Like that's such a
bigger impact that I then I could have made in
just branding and social media with helping people grow their businesses.
(42:32):
And so when I was able to reassign my purpose,
then I was like, Okay, now I feel at peace.
And I had made a post on social media talking
about how the idea of leaving my business to do
relationships store a full time seemed crazy, but since I
made the decision, I had been at such peace with it.
And that was the conversation, the internal conversation that I
had to have with myself.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
To get to that point.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Second thing I want to talk about, because Drey mentioned
what we need to be happy, is I think that
I allowed myself to feel peer pressure by other friends, family,
people on social media, thinking that in order for me
to be successful, in order for me to be happy,
in order for me to do things the right way,
(43:15):
that we had to have this house. And so the
money what had really nothing to do with happiness. It
more so again goes back to lifestyle. I was like,
I want the house that I want. The house that
me and Dream want is really expensive. It's about four
to five mil Okay, So we were like, we don't
how much money you need to put down on the
(43:36):
type of house that we want. And so I was
trying to do everything in my power to make the
money versus sitting back and asking myself what the house
even meant.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Or what will it feel like to have that house.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
And so when I really started to picture that, I
started to think of all my friends who have the
big houses, who are like, oh my gosh, it sucks
for maintenance, like trying to keep that big old house clean.
Everybody in the mama wan to come and stay with you.
All the time, and it's like added pressure. Then you
have all the random things that break or things that happen.
Then you have just the random upkeep that you don't
(44:09):
necessarily have when you have like a luxury apartment, like
if something, you know, a pipe burst, or you got
to mow the lawn, or you know, you have a
pool that you have to maintain and pay for yourself.
And when I really thought about what I enjoy on
a day to day basis, and when I looked at
a house versus an apartment, the apartment had everything that
I wanted, and I was like, the only thing that
(44:31):
the house has is more space, but it's just me, Andre.
And then I was like, even thinking of baby, we
have an extra bedroom in our apartment that could be
a nursery. It's just that I wanted the nursery and
the office and the big closet and the content space
and all of the things, but that's not what's really needed.
And so when I took a step back and looked
(44:52):
at what I wanted and what truly makes me happy,
I Andre both felt that where we live right now
is the best place we could possibly be.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
All the things that are important to us like our gym, like.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Whole foods, like the movies, like the restaurants we can
just walk to. And when I pictured myself as a
new mom, I think for my wellness, if I had
a big, brand new house, I would be overwhelmed with projects.
I would constantly be obsessed, because you know how I
get when it's like things aren't aren't done, And I
think I would be isolated. I think I would feel
(45:25):
kind of alone because I would have to put my
child in a car and drive somewhere just to get anywhere,
Whereas here you just go right downstairs. There's a whole
mommy community here, like it is just everything's walkable and
it's comfortable, like this is home to us.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
And so when I.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Really thought about it, I was like, I don't want
that house right now. I just felt like I needed
it right now to feel how I thought I should
feel before having a baby. And when I reevaluated all
those things, I realized that we already had exactly what
we need, and that even gave me more comfort with
trying for baby number one, because I no longer felt
(46:03):
like I needed to prepare, which was nice because anyone
who knows me knows.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
I'm a planner and I like to prepare.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
So when I came, when I came to peace with
just being like we have everything that we need, it
made my decision that much clearer and that much easier.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Yeah, and that's really the reason why I felt comfortable
with the decision, is like I wanted us to live
a lifestyle that we were just happy with and I
feel like she deserves it too, Like she puts in.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
A lot of hard work. Bree is very.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Dedicated in what she does. And as I said before
when we both met, we have nothing to our names,
and where we are in our lives right now is
a testament to both of our inputs and investment into
one another. So again, me getting this position as an
executive or urban one is not just a journey thing.
It's a US thing because I wouldn't be here without her.
(46:57):
So it's like you reaped the big and if it's
of everything that I get, because it's part of what
you contributed to me.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
In our lives.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
And I always say this to people, is that if
you want to get the most out of partnership, you
have to fully invest into partnership because some people don't
get the most out of partnership because they don't put
one hundred percent into partnership. If you lean one hundred
percent percent into it, that's when you'll get the most
out of it. So now we're at a point in
our lives which I had set out, Like I said,
(47:29):
I'm a very long term person, and I had already
said this when I was like nineteen or twenty.
Speaker 4 (47:35):
I was like, by thirty, I'm gonna be straight.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
And what I meant by straight is not like we're
tired or anything, but I'm gonna have like my career established,
I'm gonna have like my love life and wife established,
and I know exactly what I'm gonna do, and everything's
going to be smooth.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
So right now we're at a point to.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Where we know exactly what we're going We know exactly
what we want to do with the rest of our
lives and how we want to impact the world. So
now it's just about building that up in order to
succeed in that space.
Speaker 4 (48:05):
And we're really excited for it. And I'm excited for
this journey. I'm excited for.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Her to be able to, you know, go into being
a mom and doing things like that and not feeling
the pressure because you can't it's hard to fathom or
really talk about it on this video about what it
feels like to being a home with somebody who's like
really unhappy at moments or like really struggling with something
(48:31):
or really frustrating frustrated with something. It disrupts the house
and it shakes the house and it's just not a
good feeling. So now being in a completely different space,
a lighter mood, the conversation is different, Like even our
work conversations are way different than what they were years ago.
It's like just true genuine excitement about what we're doing
(48:51):
and really is just a story about as we end this,
about faith in that, you know, whatever God has put
in my mind as a vision and in our hearts
to do together, that it's all going to work out.
That's why we're not stressing about money. I think it's a.
Speaker 4 (49:08):
I can't quote versus.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Right now, but it's I think it's in a New
Testament maybe Matthew or something like that, but essentially he
says like, you know, look at the flowers and all
their beauty and how God, you know, provides beauty for
them to where they're here today and gone tomorrow, Like
if he does that for something that's so minuscule, it
doesn't matter, why wouldn't he do that for you? So
(49:32):
essentially it's that story of face. So even when breeds
like we're investing in things and not worried about money,
it's like, hey, if we truly believe that this thing
is going to be our future, when we're not going
to look back and say two hundred dollars that we
spent that one day, did it that was the thing
that made us, you know, live in this tent or
(49:53):
something like that. It's like, if we truly believe, then
we're going to be smart about the things that we're getting,
but we're going to invest not worried about what could happen.
So definitely a story of faith. It's a story of trust,
us trusting one another and our abilities and our commitment
to the goal, but also us trusting that we won't
(50:13):
treat the other person differently make them feel bad for
whatever change and role or contribution to the household it
may be, because that's so important. It's like if you
want somebody to do something and you say you support them,
the backhanded compliments, the backhanded comments, like that's never going
to work and it's just going to create resentment and
more problems. So we trusted each other not to do that,
(50:36):
and it was just communication, like communicating our vision, our
desires to one another and giving each other the space
to really digest what we heard and be able to
come back to each other and communicate again. Because that's
the thing I don't think people really talk about in communication,
is the digestion of like what was initially said. It's
(50:57):
like it's not just one conversation. That conversation could go
for months or you know, even a year or so
to just digest and really get to the conclusion of
whatever's being talked about.
Speaker 4 (51:10):
So we're super excited.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
We would love for you to support us in what
we're doing with Relationship Restored. And it's really just by subscribing,
watching these videos, watching the shows, and joining our community.
The community is gonna be so much fun. It's gonna
be so dope. I can't wait to launch it. It's
like one of the major parts of the vision of
Relationship Restored. So if you are single, you're a couple,
you live in Alaska, South Africa, I don't care, DC,
(51:37):
please join is there'll be a space and time for
each and every one of you.
Speaker 4 (51:42):
So we're really excited. I know Breed is super excited.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
And we actually have to go because we have a
relationship restored.
Speaker 4 (51:48):
Meeting we do well.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
We'll talk to you guys later. Make sure you keep
tuning in and peace.
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