the bossbabe podcast - 5. Biohacking, Daily Routines & Handling Rejection With Darby Jackson, Founder of Après

Episode Date: March 20, 2019

In this week’s episode, Natalie interviews the Founder of Apres, Darby Jackson! Darby explains how she transitioned from spanish major to successful beverage entrepreneur, the real hustle behind-the-scenes and how learning moments can be found in failure. She chats openly about how she deals with imposter syndrome (even today) and how her celiac diagnosis pushed her on her entrepreneurial path. Darby shares important biohacking and self-care tips, morning routines, learning to listen to your body and how personal and company growth are intertwined! This episode is sponsored by Aprés. On-the-go post workout? Looking for a quick snack to get you to your next meal? Après is designed from the ground up to give back to your body with clean, plant-based ingredients. Head to drinkapres.com and use the code BOSSBABE15 for 15% off.

When you start your own business it's almost like therapy on steroids and you have to get you to know yourself and your strengths and your weaknesses really fast. What's so different than I thought is how intensely present you need to be because one small click away from where you really want to be could take you down a road and you wake up and are like, how the heck did I get here? And how did my business get here? Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm your host for this week's episode, Natalie Ellis, CEO of Boss Babe, and I am really excited for this. It was an amazing interview to record. We talk about

imposter syndrome and how to really get the courage to be unapologetic enough to follow those big goals, including pitching for investment and dealing with rejection which brings me straight on to this week's quote. Be so confident in who you are and where you're going that no one's opinion, rejection or behavior can rock you and that really is the key to it all. Believing in yourself, being unapologetic about what you're working towards and letting all that negative stuff just pass by but listen I know it is way easier said than done so here's a little tip for you to start boosting your confidence every single day so in your notebook what I would love for you to do is take a page and write at the top why me then fill that page with all of your achievements awards positive feedback powerful moments moments, everything that makes you feel confident, powerful, and shows you that you're so capable of achieving these

massive goals. And what this does is completely roots your confidence in things you've already been able to achieve in the past, which statistically makes you way more likely to achieve these goals that you've laid out. I also really, really love to put my favorite client testimonials in here too. And just referring back to them makes you feel so good and realizing that the work that you're doing is having such a massive impact. So now that you're feeling confident and pumped up, are you ready to dive into the world of being a badass and going after what you really want? I'm interviewing Darby Jackson. She is an amazing friend of mine and she knows a thing or two about wellness, biohacking and high performance. Darby is an Olympic level athlete, turned health coach, turned beverage entrepreneur and she's actually the

co-founder of Apres, the incredibly Instagrammable protein shake that you always see stocked up in the boss whip office. Darby's company is also a sponsor for this episode and I want to share with you what they call the APRE way and it's all about replenishment and honestly I think that's something us ambitious women need to learn how to do a little more. So APRE say that they believe replenishment has the power to change us. Replenishment is a movement even when it's still it's a take care of yourself mindset that comes in all shapes and sizes. It's the power nap that we take proudly, the midday walk around the block blasting hip-hop on do not disturb mode, the healthy home-cooked meal that fuels our late night work in session

or the spin class that we walked in yawning and walked out glowing. It's whatever you need at any moment in time that makes you feel like you again. And I don't know about you, but that just warms me up and makes me really feel like I want to go and replenish, look after myself, tune into self-care. And this really does sum up APRE. So APRE is a plant-based protein shake that fills you up with basically everything you need on the go. So not only do I love that it's dairy free, but it's packed with really healthy fats, which are really the key to sustained energy. You know, I'm a big fan of putting oil, butter in my coffee. And the fact that this has coconut oil blended into it is just another amazing thing that I love about it. There's no sugar crash or

bloating after you drink it. It just really helps you fuel up and drive towards your goals which sounds pretty boss babe to me so if you head to drinkapres.com that's drink a p r e s dot com and use the code boss babe 15 you're going to get 15 off i really recommend getting a case of the vanilla and a case of the sea salt chocolate trust me on that those are the best flavors and you'll get a free delivery on both of them. Throw some in your workout bag, keep some in the office fridge, make sure you've always got some on the go because they are the lifesaver that I guarantee you're going to be using. So with that, let's just dive in. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself, confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own

vision of success. Darby, I'm so, so excited to have you on the podcast. So for those of you who don't know, Darby is a really good friend of mine and also the owner of our amazing podcast sponsorship. So I'm really excited to dive into this so you can all find out a little bit more about Apres and what they're up to and why I'm so obsessed with the product. So welcome, Darby. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here as well. This will be really fun. I was just saying before we hopped on that this is just a great excuse for us to catch up and chat. And we always have such great conversations that revolve around trying to stay sane as entrepreneurs. So I know everyone on this podcast is going to be able to relate.

Totally. Last time I saw you was on that rooftop movie theater event that you sponsored. I dropped some apres off. And then afterwards at about 11 o'clock when I left, I actually went straight to Erewhon grocery stores to help the guys stock the shelves overnight. The beverage industry is insane. And there's a lot that you need to do to help your product move in grocery. And one of those is just being really scrappy and actually going to the store overnight to help them put your product in a place that's really visible. So things have been crazy, very crazy. That is insane. And also it's such an example of the hustle. And even when your business

looks like on the outside, everything's so polished, you're on shelves, you're killing it, like the hustle and the passion that goes in behind the scenes. It's just so nice to be able to hear that. So thank you for sharing that. I would love to let everyone into your journey a little bit more because you have such an interesting journey. Where did all of this entrepreneurship thing start for you? I think it started when I was five. You're me. You are literally me. My dad is an entrepreneur. My mom is an entrepreneur. My father-in-law is an entrepreneur. So I've been surrounded by it from day one. I had a small business when I was really young, where I'd go to people's doors and I'd ask for their change. And then I'd take it home. I'd take

it to the bank for them. And then I'd turn it into dollar bills. And then I'd charge them a percentage to do that for them. That was one of my very first businesses. I had lemonade stands. I was always the number one Girl Scout cookie seller. So it's been in my blood for a very long time. My story is really interesting. I grew up speaking Spanish, actually. So my parents put me in an immersion program where every single subject was in Spanish, math, science, music, all of it. So I actually didn't even write an essay in English until I got to high school. I spoke English at home with my family, but everything else was in Spanish. So I was a little behind in the English writing department, which is pretty funny, but I was also a water polo player in high school. And then also in college, I was

big into playing sports, obviously, went to UC Berkeley and played water polo there. I was a Spanish major. And funny enough, I actually had to take English as a second language my freshman year. Oh my God. My English writing skills were so poor. So here I was, you know, I've been very motivated, always got top marks in school, but my English writing was pretty poor, but was a true athlete, very, very dedicated to my sport. I'm a Capricorn. So I think you are too, right, Natalie? And tried and true Capricorns are, we're workhorses. I've always been that way. So my focus was water polo. And that was what I was going to do're workhorses. I've always been that way. So my focus was water polo. And that was what I was going to do with my life. Really. I was training for the Olympics

and I didn't go to my high school prom. I wasn't in a sorority. I didn't have like a big social life outside of that because that had always been my focus. Long story short, I ended up quitting playing water polo halfway through college. It was no longer something that I was willing to make those massive sacrifices for. Continued to study Spanish and minored in peace and conflict studies, actually, with the intention of then going into the Peace Corps. Both of my parents were in the Peace Corps, and I wanted to follow suit and try and save the world with my Spanish background. At that time, I ended up meeting my husband in college and didn't want to be away from him for two years and decided instead to get a job out of college here in San Francisco. And I was a translator for the World Cup, which was really fun and had a little bit of entrepreneurialness to it.

I was heading up their nonprofit sector, which I started from the ground up. So very interesting start to my career to now be a beverage entrepreneur from a Spanish major at UC Berkeley. How does that even happen? That's where this goes next. So when I was in college, I was actually diagnosed with celiac disease. And celiac, as most of you probably know, is an intolerance to gluten. So I really had to think about the way that I treated my body and how that affected my play as a water polo player, and then also just my mental function and my energy in school. So I had to give up all gluten, and I started to really nerd out on nutrition, fitness, and wellness. It was something that turned pretty negative for a while, to be honest. I dealt with a lot of issues with food, had a pretty intense eating disorder for some time. But I used health and

wellness as a way to rebuild my body and my brain from the ground up. And what I mean by that is it's easy to put yourself on a really strict diet regimen, a really strict fitness regimen, but that's not what fitness and wellness is really all about. It's what's happening with your relationships. How stressed are you? Where is your anxiety stemming from? And I learned that in the process of healing from my eating disorder and found that I wasn't the only one that was suffering from something like this. So many of my friends, so many other women were dealing with insecurities around their body image. What does being healthy really mean And how extreme in one direction or another do I go while not being a total crazy psychopath and only eating kale all day? So I was doing that and I

decided that I wanted to make that my full-time career. I wasn't sure how I was going to do it, but I had this call. I had this pull towards fitness and wellness. And I really wanted to, I wanted to make change. I wanted to influence women's lives. And I wanted to change the way that we're perceived in our body image and the expectations around how we should look. I felt that it was really unfair. So I got my health and wellness certification while I was working full time. I went to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition so that I could become a health coach. And I got certified as a personal trainer. After that, I used those certifications to build my own fitness and wellness practice.

So what I did there was I worked one-on-one with women to help them repair their relationship with food in their body. So like I said before, it's not just drinking kale smoothies and pounding away on a treadmill all day. That's not synonymous with health. There's a lot that I skipped over there around the transition from working full-time to starting my own business. But that's how I got into this fitness and wellness world. I love that. At what point did you then decide or have an idea to create a product-based company? Because obviously we know there's two kinds of businesses, product and service. It's a lot easier to start a service-based company and to scale that up. So what made you then decide to plunge even further into a product-based business and take on that journey?

I was health coaching and I was working with women one-on-one. So not over the computer. I was actually meeting with them in person and I was really, really hands-on with what I was doing. I loved it, but I found it to be pretty exhausting. I turned from a health coach into a bit of a therapist for people. And I learned a lot. I got really clear on what this modern wellness consumer wants. But if I was going to meet with people one-on-one in the way that I was, I wasn't going to be able

to scale that up. And I also, I wanted to have more influence in the fitness and wellness world. So I started to experiment with a couple of different things. I started doing some television segments on KTVU, which was a local Northern California news channel around fitness and wellness. I've always loved public speaking. So it was something that I was really drawn to and had a lot of fun doing. I then started doing some consulting for some local fitness and wellness startups in Silicon Valley. So I was helping them build programs for their customers that they could then put onto a mobile app and get people to feel healthier faster. While I was doing that and growing that business, my now co-founder of Apre actually found me.

So he had the initial idea for Apre, which was there's nothing post-workout for women. And there's a growing need. There's a growing market in boutique fitness. This is not the consumer that's walking out of SoulCycle drinking bulk and biceps protein drink. So his fiance had followed me as a health coach and said, hey, why don't you reach out to Darby? She has a bunch of clients. She's probably going to tell you if this is a good idea or not a lot faster than you just making one-off calls to women to try and get an understanding of what they'd want from a product like this. So my co-founder, Sunny, and I sat down almost three years ago now, actually, over coffee.

I had no idea who he was. I got this random email from him that was, hey, I'm thinking about making a drink. Can I take you to coffee and ask you a couple of questions? I thought, OK, this is weird. Sure. Sat down with him. And within the first five minutes, I said to him, the number one question I get from all of my clients is what do I have after I work out? And I don't have a clean and convenient recommendation for them.

Again, not going to chug and plug your nose with a protein shake for a football neck after you do a boutique fitness workout class. And my recommendation to them at the time was, if you have time, get some almond butter, spoon it in while you're driving to your next meeting, meal prep, which normally ends up falling through. So we were both very clear that there was a need in the market for a product like this. But what happened next is the real story. And it's really wild. I spent a lot of time talking to fitness studio instructors, personal trainer friends, and then also my customers, my clients to get an understanding of what they would want from a product like this, but even more importantly, what would they not want?

IE, it's got to be gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, low sugar. We had these really strict parameters around what we wanted our drink to look like on the inside. But we thought in our naivety three years ago that we could just take this ingredient list, put it in some water, shake it up and call it a day and be in market in three months. Oh no. Not the case. It ended up taking us a year and a half to get it right. I'm actually really happy that it ended up taking us that long because we were able to find some great partners to help us. And we were able to spend a lot of time getting to know our customer even better

and building a brand that spoke to them really deeply. And one of the biggest holes that I saw, not just from an ingredient perspective in the protein world, but was just messaging. And the messaging was so negative, especially when it came to women. Everything was positioned as a meal replacement, or this is going to tone you up, make you thin, exercise more, eat less. It tied beautifully into my overall mission as a human and what I wanted to do and the message I wanted to spread. And so we were able to build this really positive brand around a protein product and then also launch something that tastes great and has

a nutritional profile that I feel really good about. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place, so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and

making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to Kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's Kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. Yeah, and you've got so many things right with that prey so the first thing i love about is the packaging it is really chic and it makes you feel really really good but i also love the ingredients you managed to pack in there the fact that you've got fats in there is so important and it's often overlooked in a lot of these protein

shakes you throw some powder and you shake it up or you buy it like that and it misses the fats and it misses a lot of the nutrition. So actually you get the protein, but you get a sugar hit and that's kind of it. And it doesn't sustain you. And that's one thing that I do love. And I always keep it in my bag for whenever I'm on the go. And it really does satiate me.

And I really enjoyed working with your team over the past year to be able to see the new flavors come out. And it's been really amazing to watch. So I just want to call you out on that and just say massive congratulations because you've really killed it. But I'm sure your day to day isn't easy. When you're running any business, things can be crazy. But especially a product based business. I know how insane that can be with timing and all of the different factors. how is your day-to-day looking running this business? How does it make you feel? Well, a high level, it makes me feel really excited.

It's so fun. I feel so grateful that I've found something I'm so passionate about and that there's more meaning behind just bringing a product to market. It's really aligned, like I said, with my mission as a person. And that gets me very excited. But that doesn't mean that there aren't days or stretches of time where this is so incredibly intense. We've had to fundraise multiple times. We've had product issues. It took us a year and a half just to get this up and running. We actually relocated our business from San Francisco down to LA just a month and a half just to get this up and running. We actually relocated our business from San Francisco down to LA just a month and a half ago. That was a huge, huge thing. But for me, the biggest thing that I've learned and that's had such an impact on my day to day and that I've

really had to work on is when you start your own business, it's almost like therapy on steroids. You get to know yourself and you have to get you to know yourself and your strengths and your weaknesses really fast because you're being pushed harder than you've ever been pushed in your life. You're tired. You have to make a ton of decisions that are really important pretty quickly. And if you're not centered and grounded, rested, you're not going to make the right decisions. And you're going to end up being even more stressed and whacked out down the line.

I've had to teach myself to really slow down and to allow myself to step away from the business, to leave at a reasonable hour, to carve out time, to sleep longer, to meditate, to take a vacation. I actually hadn't taken a vacation in two years and finally booked a trip to Bali in a couple months that I'm so excited about. It's going to keep me sane. I love everything you mentioned. And it's so true when you were talking about on a high level, it makes you feel so excited because honestly, when there's no one getting you out of bed, you have to wake up and be so excited to leap out of bed and work on your own idea. And I think that's the real importance of working on something that makes you so lit up and feel so aligned with your personal mission. I know I can

definitely relate to that. I was just journaling this morning and I actually was writing all of the things that I'm really grateful for about my morning and I actually was writing all of the things that I'm really grateful for about my company and the fast growth. But I said, what I realize is as your company grows fast, it requires you to grow even faster. So you've got to say no more frequently. You've got to go slower when you really feel like going faster. You've got to look deep within yourself, even if you feel uncomfortable doing it. And that entrepreneurship really pushes you to just become a master of your own personal growth if you're willing to flow with it. Because every single day we're having to show up for our team, for our community, for our clients.

And to not be able to look within and grow yourself first and do the work yourself, it's so hard to show up. So I love everything you said that. And I really want to dive into your routines because I know we just nerd out on this so much. And you always give me so many great tips to take away. You mentioned meditation being one, and that's definitely one of mine. I think meditation is so important. And there's a few reasons why I love it, but this ability to be able to look within and search within yourself even more for who you are, what you want, and also just that ability to calm your mind. So in the moment, but also in moments that might stretch

you. I think when you meditate, it actually does allow you to have more perspective. But I would love to know what your non-negotiable self-care rituals look like. Yes, love this. Like I said, this is what's keeping me sane. So I am an early riser. I always have been. I think that's because of my swimming and water polo background. We were in the pool at five o'clock in the morning since I was 10 or 12. So I get up around five every morning. The morning is when my mind is the most clear, when I feel the most refreshed. I've taken a couple of tips from Brendan Burchard, who I know you love too. He's such a genius. And I don't look at my phone for the first 60 minutes of my morning, more specifically my email, right? Your email is a place for other people's agendas,

not your own. So I want to make sure that I start my day focused on what I need. So I wake up, I make myself some coffee in the morning, normally with some adaptogens, ashwagandha, and reishi, lion's mane are normally the things that I add in there. Sometimes a little coconut oil and ghee or butter for a bulletproof. And then I sit quietly in front of, my husband got me a small red light machine for Christmas from Juv which I'm so excited about red light is incredible I don't quite understand yet what it does but I just feel really good when I do it so I sit in front of my red light machine and I use headspace and I'll meditate for 10 15 20 minutes and I like to pretend like I have this beam of golden light going through the

top of my head, filling up my body, making me really strong for the day. And then any negativity is going out through the bottom of my feet. That's my grounding. That's my meditation in the morning. And then a couple times a week, I'm going through some courses with a woman named Lacey Phillips. She runs a company called To Be Magnetic. And I've fallen in love with the courses that she has, one of which is called Shadow. And it's all about exploring the shadow side of yourself. Meaning, what are the big blockages that are stopping you from becoming the best version of yourself. And it makes you go really deep and it takes a lot of work. Actually, one of the exercises is to reach out to close friends and family and ask them truthfully, what are things that I do that bother you? What are things that I do that I could be

better at? And it gets really real and raw, but you learn quickly where you can improve. So I've been carving out 30 minutes or so in the morning to go through those exercises. And it's been very, very transformational. You know, one of the things that I've learned about myself is that I, my shadow side is that I don't feel like I'm smart enough to be doing what I'm doing. And I've had to use meditation. I've had to use my morning routine and the team of amazing women and mentors that I've built around me spending time building myself up is so important. And then I normally get in a workout. So I love boxing. It's my new obsession. So I normally go and box, shower and then head straight into my office. I am obsessed with you. Can I just say that? So there's a few things I want to touch on about what you just said. The first thing I just want to really appreciate you for saying, sometimes I don't feel like I'm smart enough to be doing what I'm doing

because I know there are so many women sitting listening to this and you said that and they just thought, wow, she feels like that too? Because I do. And so many people are too afraid to share that on social media, but so many of us suffer with imposter syndrome every now and then some self doubt can creep in and we tell ourselves this. And just for you to be able to acknowledge that as such a successful entrepreneur, who by all standards has their shit really together to be able to acknowledge that and say that be vulnerable in that way is so powerful. And I really respect transparency so thank you a couple of other things you said we actually collaborated with Brendan Burchard recently so if any of you are listening and you're members of the society make

sure you go and check that success kit out because what Darby was talking about is actually in the success kit so I encourage you to dive in and learn all about his routines because he's incredible and the juve light I really recommend this too I love red light I like to think of it as a human charger like the way we would charge our iPhones we can use the red light to like charge up ourselves and just generally make us perform better and it's also just a nice side effect that it makes your skin feel really nice and so that's really exciting I love your morning routine and I love that you're doing this work on your shadow self. Do you feel like in a morning doing that kind of work and really going deep and reflecting puts you in a good state for the day ahead or a more vulnerable state? How does that

affect you? For me right now, it's working. It's kind of like my morning pump up. It gets me really charged up for the day. It reminds me that I can do this. And what's so different than I thought about starting a company is how intensely present you need to be in every single meeting and every single decision and email that you're sending. Because one small click away from where you really want to be could take you down a road and you wake up three months later and are like, how the heck did I get here? And how did my business get here? And you're managing people too. And we're having really intense conversations, especially right now we're in the middle of a fundraise and you've got to be so on in conversations with investors. So it's like, how do I shut off the noise? How do I pump myself up? tell myself, yes, I can do this. I can be here.

I'm smart enough. I know the answers to these questions. And right now it's really working for me. But I had a lot of changes in my routine as I've changed, as my needs have changed. I've gone through times where I haven't worked out for a couple months because my body's just felt exhausted. So that hasn't been a part of my morning routine or where I'm doing a different kind of meditation or changing up what I'm eating in the morning. I'm fasting or I'm not fasting. I've given up coffee a couple of times because

my adrenals have been fried out. So it really depends on where I'm at emotionally and physically. And do you think meditation helps you listen to your body more and understand when you need more or less something? Yes, it does. It makes it easier for me to hear those pings, those like intuition gut pings that tell me that I'm doing the right thing. And if I don't meditate, then it's harder for me to feel and understand, especially I do a lot of creative work around our brand and mood and tone. And if I'm not in the right place, my gut doesn't guide me in the right direction, especially when it comes to that creative aspect of what we're building. I love that. I am obsessed with your routine and there's definitely things I'm going

to steal out of that. And so speaking of, what does it look like for you when you come home in an evening? How does your routine change? So this is why I'm really strict in the mornings because my evenings, I don't really have much of an evening right now, to be honest. I'm working pretty late. I mean, I work till probably seven or seven thirty and then I come home and I'm married I have the most wonderful husband on the planet it's really important to me to spend time with him so we cook we spend time hanging out on the couch sometimes I'll try and get a little bit of reading in but it's really just family time and cooking I love to cook it really helps release tension for me yeah that's the exact same for me like when I come home I don't have a routine, but I just love to spend time with Stephen and cooking and just

kind of giving him that attention as well. How do you find managing like the two of you being so ambitious in a relationship and making that work and making sure that you have time for each other? We're always learning and trying new and different things, but he is so incredibly patient and a lot calmer, if you will, than I am. I can run pretty anxious and really, really high energy, which is fabulous for what it is that I'm doing. But he helps me take it down a couple notches, especially when I get home and I'm just so amped up. He's a lot calmer and smoother. For the first four years of our relationship, we were in a long distance relationship. He was playing baseball. And so

we really didn't get to see each other a lot, but that forced us to work on our communication. So we were always talking, hopping on the phone, texting, and we haven't lost that. So whether we're actually together or I have 10 minutes in the middle of my day, I'll just give him a call. Hey, this is what's going on. I'm feeling this way. Can you calm me down? Or I just nailed this presentation. I'm so excited. So we're just, we're always talking and communicating and we get really deep too on how we're feeling. Are we still on our path and our mission? And why are we working so hard? What's the real point behind the long days that we're putting in? And it's so that we can have the freedom that we want to have

so we can build a beautiful family so we can support the people around us and really making sure that we have our broader mission always in mind rather than, oh my God, I'm working 12 hours a day. This is so exhausting. Yep, you sound exactly like me and Steven. He's also the calmer one. And sometimes I get so hyped up and amped up. And he's like, oh god, Natalie's about to have a mad half hour. Like, let's just let her go. I'm exactly the same. I get so hyped about stuff. And he just has this really calm, grounding energy that no matter what's going on like I swear the building could be burning down around him and he's like okay cool like let's just figure this out he never sees issues or stress he always just sees like oh we can figure that out yep no worries like

it's hilarious but what we did was the same we sat down and like tried to understand what really matters to us and what our core values are as a couple so that whenever we feel like we're veering off track we can bring it back and so what we realized is why a couple so that whenever we feel like we're veering off track, we can bring it back. And so what we realized is why we're doing this is we want to create a great life for our future kids. We also want to be able to support our families back home. We fly them out here to stay with us and those things are quite expensive.

So being able to have money to do that, to be able to go on nice vacations and switch off whenever we want, we go away every single quarter because that was just one of our core values, travel and things like that. So I think once you both understand the mission for your relationship, being able to rally around that is a lot easier. And there's definitely been times where we've been misaligned. I've thought I was working towards one thing and he the opposite. And I think when you're not having that deep communication and

being able to be upfront and honest, that's where issues can come in. So I love that. and I think when you're not having that deep communication and being able to be upfront and honest that's where issues can come in so I I love that and I think that's really really good advice it's a question I get asked a lot like how do you manage that it's not always easy it isn't there can be hard times yeah sure that's the thing I think sometimes we see other people's lives on social or we see how they behave on stories and think that's the way it is all the time. And it's just not. I have meltdowns every now and then, but I'm not going to pick up my phone and do a story during it. We're all human. So I love to acknowledge that. And I think this podcast has probably been a really good insight into the truth of running a business. Totally. I'll jump in with a quick story on that. The realities behind starting a business. I think I've told you this one before, Natalie. When we were raising our

first fundraising round for Apre, I'd never done a fundraising pitch in my life. I had no idea what I was doing. And we went and pitched one of the premier venture firms led by this incredible woman that I've just looked up to for years and years. We went and pitched her and it was such a big fail on my part. I was all over the place. I had no idea how to answer her questions. I felt like I was very unprofessional and I left and I just bawled. I was so upset with myself, but that was such a learning moment for me. I went home. I wrote down all the questions that she asked me. I went home, I wrote down all the questions that she asked me.

I wrote down my perfect answers to all of those questions. And then I made my husband practice with me and rehearse how I would answer those. So now when I'm doing a pitch, I've got my speech, I've got my answers pretty down pat because I fell flat on my face when we first started this. Oh my God, I love that. I feel like that's such a Capricorn thing to do as well.

I'm going to run home. I'm going to write down all of these questions. I'm going to perfect it. But that's a really good tip for a way people can take those kind of down moments and use them to best advantage because you're so motivated to do better in those moments. That's right. I love it.

Well, Darby, thank you so, so much for coming on here and sharing your routines I feel like everyone's running out there to watch the success kit or get by a juvelite I wish I had a discount code I don't we'll work on that but where can everyone find you and more importantly where can they buy a prey yes so a prey is at drinkaprey.com you can purchase us on our website and then we're also on instagram at drinkapres apres is a-p-r-e-s by the way and then I'm on instagram at darbyjackson so you can come follow along there great and I'll make sure to share your handle below in the show notes so if any of you are interested just go below and click and thank you so so much I'm sure we'll have you on again really soon thank you this

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