The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Robert Jones And Molly Licklider Joined Michael Urpí & Xavier Urpí On "Today y Mañana!"

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Robert Jones of Leek & Thistle and Molly Licklider of Sew Molly joined Michael Urpí & Xavier Urpí On “Today y Mañana!” “Today y Mañana” airs every Thursday at 10:15 am on The I Love CVille Network! “Today y Mañana” is presented by Emergent Financial Services, LLC, Craddock Insurance Services Inc, Charlottesville Opera and Matthias John Realty, with Forward Adelante.

Good morning everyone and welcome to Today and Manana. I'm Michael, happy to be joined by Xavier on a beautiful fall day. A little warm, but still a good enough day. You can grab your cafe con leche. You can still have it warm. You can have it cold. You can do either one today. It's all up to you.

It's one of those days where you have the option, right? Exactly, exactly. Well, I mean, you have an option, but when it's cold, you like it warm. When it's really hot, you like it a little cooler. Although I could tell a little angst because a lot of people like fall people and i could tell they've been a little anxious because october didn't really provide too much fall weather at least in my opinion i thought it was really warm yes and now in november already we're about a week in november and it's been warm again and i think they're angry i think they're like we want

the cold you know we want to cuddle up and, you know, have a little fire going. And right now it's just like. If I remember, so, you know, usually I have my kind of full jackets that I put on, right? And I put them on and it's just so hot. I was like, I can't wear this, you know, because it's just. Well, last night I slept with the window wide open and I woke up, I was like, I'm actually like warm. I mean, I must have been like 62 last night.

No, no, there was no breeze coming at me, too. We had the window open. And I woke up this morning, and there's a particular smell that you get when you're kind of leaving from spring into summer, where it's like you smell the humidity and the warmth. And coming out of winter, you're like, oh, wow, I haven't smelled this in ages. I smelled it this morning. I'm like, wait a second, this is like November.

I shouldn't be smelling this until like May. Exactly. So it's kind of crazy. But as always, we are happy to be presented by Emergent Financial Services, powered by our wonderful sponsors, Charlottesville Opera, Craddock Series Insurance, Matisse Young Realty, and as always, FABA, the premier Latino business networking group here in Charlottesville.

As always, we always like to ask people to please share and like and subscribe. Nailed it. Well, I don't know about you, but I think we're ready. You want to just kind of like jump right into it with our first wonderful guest? I guess our first guest is Robert.

Robert. Robert Jones from Leek and Thistle. Robert, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, I'm happy to be here, and thanks for the invitation. No, it's our pleasure. Our pleasure. So before we start, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you kind of started Leek and Thistle. Sure.

So my wife, Mayla, it's her business. We're married, so it's all communal. But the food business is her idea. And I met her 30 years ago when she was running the catering operation on Martha's Vineyard. And she actually hired me into a job at that restaurant. We ended up sticking together. And we've been in Richmond area for 25 years. And she's always cooked during that time. People love coming to our house to eat and so uh when our kids were at a preschool they're like you know bring some food in for the operations and the teachers and she would bring in some food and they were like this is the best food anybody's ever brought us did you know that we have a commercial kitchen in this church that we run and at that point she had just started doing prepared food meals for friends of ours,

right? I remember this Lady Mary was our first customer, would come to our house to pick things up. So anyway, business sort of grew and grew. We started selling frozen prepared foods into farmer's markets, and things grew exponentially for a while. And this thing called COVID happened in 2020. And when all the restaurants shut down, people, of course, didn't quit eating. They still wanted good food, right? So the business sort of blew up at that point. And we had been working out of that church's kitchen basically for free for 10 years. They made a deal, right?

Take care of our Wednesday night dinners. Take care of us when we're hungry, and you can use our kitchen. Well, we simply outgrew the space. Looking around Richmond, and one of the top Italian tractorias decided to close in December of 20, and my wife had known the owner very well.

Her name was Victoria. Went in there to look at some equipment, and she had demoed two long shotgun shack buildings, taken out the middle wall, turned it into a beautiful restaurant, and said, I'm leaving. You can basically walk in here and take over the space. Wow. So we talked to the pharmacy next door. They were the landlord, signed a lease in February of 21,

and opened our doors on East Main Street in Richmond on June 4th of 2021. And so now, in addition to having a production kitchen to run the business out of, we now have a storefront and a retail shop. So we love our new space. We love being in downtown Richmond. Our existing clientele had been on the west side of town, gave us a chance to really open up and go to other parts of the city. And the response has been great. We've got hundreds and hundreds of people a week that enjoy our food,

not just in the Richmond area, but in an arc from D.C. and Baltimore down through Richmond down to Tidewater area through one of our distributor partners. So we basically are feeding a small but viable chunk of the area with restaurant-quality frozen foods every week. So when you say kind of retail, so basically if you walk into this place, there is already frozen foods that you can purchase? Yes. So you walk into what had been a restaurant, you're greeted by a bar as you walk in. On the left-hand side, we've got three very large frozen food merchandisers,

which contain on any given day 15 to 20 different soups and pints and quarts, various hummuses and dips and various snacks like that. We do breakfast and regular dinner burritos. We do tens of different main courses from all over the world, right? Curries and stews and traditional things like wellingtons and pot pies and fisherman's pies and all this stuff. We have a whole dedicated section of vegan and or vegetarian foods as well. And we've gotten very fortunate that some of our customers like our food so much. Richmond has a handful of Fortune 500 companies,

and those guys maintain jets at the airport. And when they fly around the world on their excursions, a couple of them take our food with them all over the world to take care of the pilots and the flight staff as well. And it's just great. I often say that people are never going to quit eating or drinking, as we all know. So selling good-t tasting food that people can take home and put in their freezer and thaw when they need it they're getting the restaurant experience without the restaurant prices and they're also buying time by not having to prep and shop and

cook and clean up you know so a lot of families these days mom and dad are working everybody gets home and if you can save that 80- or 90-minute prep period to do whatever else it is you want to do. So, you know, we sell convenience and thyme and good flavors, and it's a local woman-owned business. All the money stays in Richmond, so it kind of checks a lot of boxes these days. So when you're making the prepared food, how does that work, cooking it differently versus, like, if you were making a dish straight from the restaurant?

It really differs not very much at all. The only thing that we do actively is we only put wheat and gluten in a couple things. So we kind of watch that. Other than that, it's simply, you know, we're making food that we would eat at home and simply scaling it up 20, 30, 50 times and then just doing precise weighing and batching. What makes it all happen is this great machine called a blast freezer that can take a huge amount of food and take it from a hot stove temperature down to minus eight Fahrenheit in about an hour. Wow. That's the trick. And this thing consumes a huge amount

of energy and blast out a massive amount of heat, but it makes the restaurant viable. And so it's simply what you do at home scaled up with a lot of containers. So it really is home-cooked food, and people love it. So, I mean, the beauty of this, from what I can see, is that the variety of foods seems to be those type of foods that, in some cases, maybe some people don't even know how to cook, right? And so when you go there, it's not like it's just a burrito and a couple of things and you get tired of it. So give us ideas for some of the dishes that you prepare. So two of you, when was the last time you guys made beef bourguignon or coq au vin at

home? Every day, what are you talking about? Well, actually, Michael and I don't really cook every day. Really complex curries, right? So before I met Mayla, she had gotten out of university in the U.K. and sort of run around the world for a while, and she picked up lots of cooking styles from people that she was hanging out with, and she can cook worldwide cuisine, but she really loves the Southeast Asian set of foods.

And she grew up in the U.K. as well, so exposed to a lot of things. So, yeah, we do high-end stuff. We do traditional things like chicken pot pie and shepherd's pie. We do this lovely Greek chicken bake that's got a load of tomatoes, garlic, onions, red chili flakes, and cinnamon and allspice, and then chicken thighs. It's got feta and dill on the top of it. This is just a magic dish. We do stuff from the Caribbean. We do a lot of Asian food. We will do things from England, like a Somerset pork and apple stew that our mom used to make, right? And it changes seasonally.

We have a sort of a set of core recipes that as the year goes by and ingredients come and go, we'll substitute in and then do riffs on those items. And this time of year, a lot of people like to enjoy the traditional holiday meal but don't want to cook it so we we make that entire meal available on either a fresh or partially frozen basis for people to pick up a day or two before the holidays give me turkey you know everything except your table and your guest basically we'll provide you with the entire kit and another avenue that we found that people love using our food for is say someone is just getting back from the hospital they've just families just had a child something's happened right people love to take food to people's houses that's a pretty big chunk of what we people people will come in and grab things you know my neighbors broke their leg and can't cook or whatever it is so food as a gift food as a time

saving thing so it really is cuisine from all around the world. Right. And, you know, I've been extremely fortunate in that I've been eating that food for the past 30 years. And it's treating me pretty well. And people love it. They like the convenience. They love the flavor. They just like being able to pay less than restaurant prices to eat restaurant-quality food at home. Exactly. That's the real trick right there.

There's no tricks. It's simply a simple thing. Good quality at a good price, right? So what does your daily routine look like? How many dishes can you and Mayla cook in a day? So at this point, I was never part of the food prep. Maybe food tasting? Yeah, well, you know, so I'm the drone in Mayla's hive, right?

Mayla runs the business, right? I work there, and I do the front end. And, of course, there's been a material support for years and years. But starting out, she was the chef. She was making everything. We're at a volume now where we've had a really talented chef named Danielle who came down to Richmond, I think in 2019 or 2020, I'm not sure, but Mayla had met her. And she is our chef now. She executes all of our recipes. Mayla's busy running the business. That's why she's not here today, right?

I mean, six days a week, she's at it from eight in the morning until eight at night, simply keeping the business going, doing the ordering, and running the operation. And so a typical day is we have our chef and we have three to four other people in the kitchen on a daily basis, and produce is coming in, meats are coming in, turned into delicious food. People walk into the shop and comment how great this thing smells, and I only notice that when I pull them to the parking lot every morning, I can smell the exhaust fan pushing it all out there in the neighborhood. But, you know, if you enjoy the smell of garlic and chilies and things roasting and that whole grandma's kitchen sort of flavor, that's what it smells like when you walk in.

There's something where we're cooking and preparing food five days a week full time. And that keeps our chef really happy because she has weekends off and how many professional chefs get a weekend off. Yeah and we're very the opposite. Yeah we're two days you're working. We're very lucky to have her she enjoys her work and she's been with us at our shop since we opened and before that and so you know it's very much a team effort and you know it's simple really if you team effort. And, you know, it's simple, really. If you can cook well and repeat it and keep it consistent, people like that, and they come back.

And the other thing I was going to say is one of the things, because my wife is a very good cook, and she cooks the same thing, kind realized, though, is like, you know, whether you like Asian or, you know, Mexican or Italian or Spanish or Cuban or whatever it may be, right? They all have different seasonings a lot of times. And so it's very expensive to buy all the seasonings that you may want for a particular dish, right? Sure. And then you say, okay, I make this dish, but, I mean, I don't usually cook this every day or these kind of dishes every day. So it becomes an expense to have all these herbs or whatever you may need in order to cook. So having it like this where it's like, boy, I can go buy an Asian dish or I can go buy beef bourguignon or I can buy else, where I don't have to buy all the ingredients in order to do that, and then it's just going to sit in the closet there for about a year until I do something else. I mean, it's, you know, you're right about all that,

but the real equation in there, it's the cost of the ingredients is one thing, but then there's the cost of you in terms of your time. You know, I mean, what is your time worth? What's two hours of your day worth? Beef bourguignon takes four or five hours to simmer, right? And then it's can you replicate that week after week and keep it consistent? So the beauty of what we do is with our base recipes, all the kinks are worked out. We know just how to put these things together. And we're not trying to make diet food or anything. We make healthy food, right? There's not too much of anything that doesn't need to be in there.

People will come in and they'll say, oh, Greek spiced chicken. How spicy is that? Well, you know, we're selling to the middle of the bell curve. Nothing is crazy spicy. Things are balanced. There's enough spice in there to make it taste like it should, but nothing is excessive. And so really balanced, fine quality is kind of the key word for what we do. And, you know, how do you know you're doing something right?

When people come back after 5, 10, 15 years and keep on buying the same stuff. Then they tell their friends about it. Something fun that we do as a creative outlet too is since we have our bar there and since I work in the beverage alcohol business, we do private dinners at our

bar as well for 8 people. Our chef likes to keep her creative skills going. And I used to work in restaurants. I don't want to work in wine again, but I like to think I do. So we do periodically. People will come in and book us up for a dinner for eight. It's five courses of food, six, seven, eight wines. And the doors are closed.

It's private. So people do it for birthday parties. They do it when family's in town. They don't want to get their house dirty. We have professional people, whether it's lawyers or bankers, entertaining clients. They can get a very high-level experience in a private room and have that for two or three hours, and that's a nice benefit of having the bar and being right in downtown. It's very accessible.

Now, do they get to choose the menu or is the menu whatever you think is right? Yeah, we, since we don't have a standard menu, any time when a client books an event, I'll go to Danielle, our chef, and say, you know, Danielle, I need a menu for, you know, eight people on whatever it is, November 20th. And generally what we do is we'll pick out a little,

a couple starters and then a cheese course. For the main course, we give them an option of two things. We'll say we can do X or Y, red meat poultry, red meat fish, or we'll ask the client, do you have anything? We give people a choice on the main course. But beyond that, they're coming in to experience what we do. So we basically make a seasonal menu, shoot it out ahead of time. Is there anything here you have a problem with? We'll do some back and forth on it. But generally people like what we do, and the vast majority of those dinners is repeat business

and just regular clients that want something to happen. And that's been a lot of fun. It keeps us here later at night, but it's very enjoyable. And you had mentioned before the show started about the wine bar and how you like to manage it. What kind of got you a little bit into wine? You know, to be honest, not wanting to go to graduate school. So I grew up in Roanoke, and I had a degree that basically qualified me to go to graduate school, right,

and didn't really want to do all that. So I'd been working in restaurants, waiting tables, and I figured out something really quick, right? When you're a server in a restaurant, in effect, you're a commissioned salesperson. You're working on 15, 20%. And if you want to make more money, you sell more stuff. How many main courses can you really eat at dinner, right? I mean, one. You can drink a lot more wine or cocktails. So learning how to sell this product, first of all, was making some more cash. Then you work at better and better places. And before you know it, this snowball rolling downhill gets really big, and it turns into a career path.

And I started to pay attention to wine in the late 80s, and through the mid-90s, things took off. I moved around the country, worked for Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta for a while, and been working in the importing business for the past 23 years. But for people who are really curious, who like to eat and drink and don't fit into a general office style of work, food slash wine is a really great business to be in. You get to run around the world. Everything you do is built around hospitality and it doesn't really seem like work, to be honest. I work for a Virginia-based importer, and what I really do is I talk to people and I buy them lunch and dinner right now, show people wine, run up and down the Northeast, go into the Southeast and just talk to people about wine, beer, sake spirits, do a little

sales stuff. I was in town last night doing a dinner over at the Wine Guild, right? That's why I'm in town today. Great local wine shop there, and our company works with them. And so we had 24 people in for a dinner featuring seven German Rieslings and some traditional German food. And that's work, and how about that? That's tough work. And these dinners, are you the one that chooses the wine?

Absolutely. Right. So Danielle, in these situations, the chef always goes first. So Danielle makes a menu. I'll look at the menu, pick up the general theme on it, put together an arc of wines that will complement it very well. And then during the meals, people come in and sit down and i'm basically the mc for the night right i'm behind the bar leading the service team and uh they come in not just for dinner but they come in for a they come in for a show honestly they're coming in for entertainment as an

ancillary part of their meal and they get full explanation of what the wines are where in the world they come from what do they taste like and how does it fit into this dish. And it's not just picking a wine for each dish, but looking at the menu as a whole and figuring out how does each one flow into the next, what precedes and what follows it, making sure it all is very well knit together. That's what separates simply picking wine to go with a meal versus having a cohesive dinner experience, is making sure that the flow is right and that the intensities rise and fall at the right time so that you've got this seamless progression up and down for the meal.

Absolutely. And that's what I really, really like doing. I do a lot of education in my job and other professional things that I'm part of. So people find wine knowledge fascinating, and for people who are curious, it's great because you'll never get to the end of the road learning about this you know beverage alcohol writ large is a is an endless journey and you know the real question is how far down the road can you get before your time is up right

exactly i mean you realize how many variety of wines there are and then i also love your appreciation of comparing the wines because i think sometimes in american culture this is so much a generic thing of just like, oh yeah, I'll just drink the wine without food or with food, but just any wine, they don't really pay attention to that. You go to Europe, especially like Italy, there's much more emphasis on pairing wines.

You know, like this wine will go well with this meal. I think it also adds to the experience of eating and drinking and then when you combine them, you understand why exactly certain wines are paired with food. It increases I'm trying to look for a word, but it enhances the flavor of the meal and the wine sometimes. It does, and when it happens right, both the wine and the food benefit from it.

It helps your understanding of that topic if you stop thinking about wine as a beverage in a glass and think about it simply as a condiment on the table, right? If you look at every sauce in the world, it has an acid component, right? There's wine, there's mustard, there's vinegar, there's something tart in every sauce, right? Wine is low pH. Wine has high acid. And so your comment about Italy, right, this, you know, that's a very regional thing. You know, there's a worn-out saying in our business, right grows together goes together if you're ever stumped for looking at what matches

and you've got a dish in front of you the easiest question is where does that dish come from specifically and what is the local beverage where that comes from usually those two go pretty well together exactly so regionality and pairing is the easy and the foolproof way to go right but if you've done this long enough you can say you know, they do this thing in Tuscany called Bistecca Fiorentina, right? It's a big T-bone. It's got salt and lemon on it, right? Young Sangiovese goes with that

because the salt and the lemon juice decrease the perception of acid in that Sangiovese. So you don't just have to put Sangiovese with that course. Any kind of see-through, bright red, red wine that's got tart fruit is going to work with that. So that could be

Nebbiolo, could be Pinot Noir, Gamay, whatever, something light. So the matching is a very loose thing as opposed to a rigid set. If the worst thing happens and a guest doesn't like a pairing, it's like it doesn't really affect me.

I say the food's good, the wine's good, just don't mix them in your mouth anymore. You don't have to sauce the food in your mouth every single time, but if you like it and it works, the food will adjust the structure of the wine, the wine works with the food, and you end up getting flavors out of the two that weren't there originally. That's the real magic part of it. And it's brilliant. You know, it's, again, what a great way to make a living and make your way through the world when you can work in a business that people are coming to you to have a good time and most people don't bother to get knowledge about this topic. And so it seems a little esoteric or mystical to them.

You know, people always say, I don't know how you learned all this. I say, well, what do you do? You're an architect. You weren't born knowing that. You had to learn that. Anybody can learn anything. It's a question of how much time do you want to put into it. But great business. Wonderful. Well, Robert, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Before we

let you go, where can people find you? People can find us on East Main Street, downtown Richmond, the 2100 block. We're four blocks east of the old train station. They can find us at Leak Thistle on Instagram. We have a website, leakthistle.com. Any general web search. But I will tell you this.

There's two other Leak and Thistles scattered around the United States. There's one in Newton, a suburb of Boston. We get calls from there frequently. But if you do Leek Thistle RVA as a search, you'll find us. And we run our shop Tuesday through Saturday from 11 until 7. So we're sort of an early pre-gaming wine bar and food kind of place. Come down and see us and say hello. Absolutely.

Absolutely. That sounds fantastic. Well, thank you so much. Yes, thank you very much for coming on say hello. Absolutely. That sounds fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on, Robert. Great time. Thank you. I just got hungry. Not thirsty, too, though? It's too early to say that.

When people watch this show, maybe it'll be 5 o'clock, so it'll be perfect. But you know what? It's interesting because when you think about it, it's how we, in our right, depending on what mom cooks, we sit there and it's like, okay, which wine do you think will go well tonight with that, right? So we do the same thing, not probably in the quality that Robert.

Well, Robert made a good point, though. Find where your dish comes from and see what local kind of, either local wine or local drink that people have that you can pair it with. Like, for example, yes, Italian food, probably I'd say about over 90% of the time they're drinking wine with it. But, for example, you go to Austria or Germany, right? Let's say you're having

bratwurst, you know, with, like, cabbage. At that point, you might say, well, instead of actually drinking wine, let me drink a beer. What's a local German beer? Because, in the end, you'll realize how well, instead of actually drinking wine, let me drink a beer. What's a local German beer? Because in the end you'll realize how well those pair together as well. So it's not just about... I mean, listen, the generic thing that people can

always start with is what we always recommend. If it's fish, try to find a white wine. If it's more meat-based, look towards a red wine. And then once you start from there, you can kind of just build, figure out which wines you like with what, and then you can find your niche of, okay, yeah when i have this meal i want this wine that's right right and and as we know i mean everybody has different palates so some people say this is

a great one of people's like now i'm not crazy about it but but the important thing is pairing it with food because i've always felt like i enjoy my wine so much better just when i'm eating um yeah i rarely just drink i mean we've lucky, though. We have the same pretty much taste in wines. Whenever it's like, oh, this is a good wine, and we're both like, this is a good wine, and then every once in a while, I'll drink a wine, and I'll look at pops, and pops will go, and I'm like,

I didn't like that one. So thankfully, we have... Exactly, yeah. Well, from one fantastic guest to another, we're very happy to be joined now by Molly. Is it Molly Licklider? Yes. Is that how you pronounce it?

Molly Licklider. No one pronounces it right, so there you go. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, okay. I'm glad I'm lucky. All right. So we're happy to be joined by Molly Licklider from So Molly.

Molly, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. No, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure, absolutely. Yeah. I'm so glad he's the one that was saying the name because I said, I'm just not going to Well, you know, I was silly because usually every time you come on and ask, like, oh, how do you pronounce your last name? This is what I did do on camera.

But then as introducing before, like early in the show, I said Molly Licklott. I was like, oh, man, I really hope that's how you pronounce your last name. I know. My maiden name was much easier to pronounce. My married name is a little bit of a word jumble, but it's okay. Well, it's all good. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself word jumble, but it's okay. Well, it's all good. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you kind of started So Molly? Yeah.

So I guess back in, it's kind of like a twofold. Back in January, I started bringing headbands, like I'm wearing today, to work. And I started having a lot of my friends and my coworkers say, like, I love these things. And I was like, really? They're like, I love these things. And I was like, really? Yes. Yes. And for a while I was in a struggle of like building confidence in what I was doing. And I had just so many people telling me like, I love this. Like you should, you know, you should really like look into making something of this. And at the same time, my brother was planning a fall festival and he was on the board for that. And so he was like, I really need vendors. Like this is the first time we're doing it out in Fluvanna County, the Fluvanna County fall festival and he was on the board for that and so he was like I really need vendors like

this is the first time we're doing it out in Fluvanna County the Fluvanna County fall festival and so he was like you have till September and I need a vendor and I'm like okay and so my dad and I got together my dad's also very handy and crafty and we were like well we should both do a booth and I was like well my co-workers said they really like what I do what if I just make something out of this and that's kind of where it went from being like oh that's so molly like s-o molly to being like that's so s-e-w molly so they kind of started the creation of it and I had my first craft fair back in September at the Fluvanna County Fall Festival and it went really well and I just kind of was like let's do this oh wow so what got you to sew your first headband so um actually I began back um in 2020 my husband and I were about to get

married and I wanted to get him a really good wedding gift and I was like what can I get him that is different and so my my mom has passed and my dad said if you want to loan you your mother's sewing machine and I was like I'm going to teach myself to sew and so everyone thought like that's crazy you're going to teach yourself to sew and I was like yeah I'm going to teach myself to sew so I went on YouTube handy dandy YouTube and I taught myself how to sew and I made my husband a quilt for our wedding um and then from there I just kind of kept going and kind of kept sewing and sewing and sewing quilts are pretty ambitious yeah and that's what everyone yeah so and then from there I started making Christmas gifts and all sorts of stuff um and

then I'm a nurse um so I am always looking for like practicality in my job and so I made a headband and I wore them to work and people were like I love these and so then all my co-workers wanted them and it kind of spread from there so yeah so when you're making headbands do you kind of make a set of like a number of headbands do you do like requests online how does that kind of work yeah so um right now all my patterns have been kind of based off of like like when I go to the store or when I buy fabric I think about like the people in my life and I think about like oh like you know my friend would love this style like this is her favorite color or and that's kind of how I base everything right now or I have a friend who's really into gardening and so I got gardening fabric and I was like she would love this and kind of from there I've built like a customer base

right because there's not just one gardener out there um and so I've been making like sets of like 15 to like 30 of every fabric that I buy um and then kind of I've been basing it off of to like where I'm like selling so I sell on Instagram a lot. And I'm also selling at the, like, farmer's markets and stuff. Absolutely. Yeah. So what would you say for younger generations? Because I feel like sewing is becoming a bit of a lost art. Yes.

I think, you know, a lot of people just kind of like older generations do how to do it and then less than people do. Because now everyone just kind of buys their clothes and buys their blankets and stuff like that. What would you tell younger people is, like what what do you find so enjoyable about sewing I think that um for sewing I like I think that we live in a world where there's lacking a lot of joy and sewing brings me so much joy like when I sit there I sit in front of a big open window and I watch you know birds, and I listen to music I like, or I listen to podcasts, like this one, and I, you know, I, in my, like, in my soul, I just feel so good about what I'm doing, and when I, like, I, my love language is definitely gifting, so when I

give someone, like, something I made, I feel like it's just, like, me giving them, like, a big hug, and being, like, like, look, I took the time and the effort, like, I feel like it's just me giving them a big hug and being like, look, I took the time and the effort. I feel like it means more than something that's just like, hey, I went and bought you this item. What are some of the other things that you sew, for example? I also

sew head clips, little hair ties. I make ornaments. I also make Christmas hair ties. I make ornaments. I also make Christmas stockings. Oh, okay. That's going to be big in the next couple months. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I make baby blankets. I make table runners, all sorts of stuff. I also, last year, I got more into embroidery, too, so I do both now. Oh, okay. Yeah, so I also embroider hand towels and blankets and shirts and things like that. Is the embroidery handmade or is there also a machine that does it? No, so I'm actually in the process of learning digital art. So I do it in an embroidery machine, but I've been teaching myself how to do digital art.

We're very early on with that. But I can digitalize onto a machine and teach like my machine like how to stitch out everything on like different materials so anytime you want to learn how to sew something new you go right to youtube yeah that great handy that great handy tool i know yeah it's incredible because our mom does that sometimes too where she wants to learn how to like cook something or make something at first thing it's always like youtube and it's like so many like thousands of channels of like some random person, you know, from like, I don't know, like, you know, she'll find it from these random places and it's like,

yeah, this is how I make, you know, this thing. And my mother will watch it for like 10 minutes. Yes. You know? Yeah. It's great. It is amazing. I mean, because, I mean, it's true.

Like in the old days, the way it happened is, you know, your grandmother would teach you, right? Someone would teach you. This is how you sew, et cetera. So you would learn, right, from you were, you know, your grandmother would teach you, right? This is how you sew, et cetera. So you would learn, right, from you were, you know, a young child, and then either you did it when you got older or you didn't, right? But in today's world, it just seems like there's so much you can learn.

And just a quick, you know, just a quick, we used to have this car called the PT Cruiser, right? And the battery died, right? I've changed batteries in cars a million times, right? I go change this battery, it's like, I couldn't take this thing out. It's like, how does this battery come on? So I went on YouTube and the guy says, yeah, these PT Cruisers are a pain in the neck because you got to take those, a piece of equipment in the back, you know, part. They had to dismantle this whole thing to take out the battery. And I said, take out the YouTube. Cause I was like ready to bang that thing off it's like how can i not take this battery off yeah so it's it's just great it's like no matter what it is it seems like you can

find it yep and and and and just watch somebody do it because there's a difference between you know sometimes you look at a book and they see the steps but there's a difference but watching somebody do and say yeah oh wait a minute yeah i i see that I see what they're doing yeah that was also my um my aunt Debbie she lives up in New Jersey and she is like the only other person I know who is like an avid quilter and always has been and so when I decided when I went about this like oh I'm gonna make this quilt I called her and I was like hey how do I do this and she was like well and she did send me a ton of books in the mail. And she was like, but I think your best bet, because we live so far apart, is, you know, I think for all the extra fill-in-the-blank questions you have,

she's like, you really should go to YouTube. And she recommended a ton of different channels and everything. And that kind of led to that, of me being like, oh, okay. Or how do I fix this now that I've destroyed it? Like, how do I dig myself out of this hole before I spend more money on fabric how long did it take you to sew the quilt so my first quilt oh gosh I think it took me four months yeah and I actually um I'm crazy when I when I decided I'm going to do something like this I jump head in and so quilting like stitching the top of a quilt is different than like actually quilting it a lot

of people will have their quilts sent out and have like somebody with what's called a long arm sewing machine actually quilted for them but me being me I was like well I don't need to do that I'll also quilt it myself so I did the whole thing start to finish which took me four months wow so yeah yeah so when you're making your headbands for, how long does it take you to kind of like sew a headband? So now I can make about, I've timed myself, I get to make 15 an hour. Oh, wow. Yeah. But we did not start that way.

It was like three an hour at the beginning. I imagine, yeah. Yeah. But I also, like I was saying earlier, I also work as a nurse. So I really kind of, on my days off, I put it on the calendar for like my husband and I, I'm like quilt or sewing day. And I'm like, I'm working, I'm in the office. So like on those like two to three designated days a week, those are kind of like, I really, my time is so valuable to get that stuff done. So yeah. So this is really kind of like a hobby. That's a business, right? So it's something

as you said, I mean, you're a nurse. That's already a career path that is, I mean, there's a lot of work and there's a lot of tension and this is kind of a way for you to get away from that and say when I start doing my sewing I do things that are creative

and make you feel better, right? Yeah. Also, it's been with my dad doing the first craft fair with me. My dad does woodworking. And so I would spend a lot of time at my dad's house with my stepmom and him. And the three of us would do all of our crafts together for all the fairs. And it was really a good quality family time. And now we're preparing. We're doing a market at Christmastime. And so now we're going through're doing um a market in the christmas time and

so now we're like going through that again where i'll be like all right let me load everything up let's you know have a family day sitting around the table and kind of just like chatting and having a good time together eating lunch together and we call it like a working day well i remember when my um my wife's mom was around um before christmas they would do these christmas angels right and they'd spend you know i mean just? And they'd spend, you know, I mean, just hours and days, you know, creating, you know, obviously the whole body, the angel, the hair. And it was just amazing to watch them both do it, you know, because, you know, my wife's, you know, my mother-in-law, my wife's mom,

she, you know, she also sewed, right? So she would teach my wife how to do things. And they just, you know, it's just, it's interesting, like I said, it was just, you can see their creative juices. When they did that, by the end of the time, they just felt better about themselves, right? Because, especially the finished product,

you look at it and say, wow, that's really nice. And they also love to fish for the compliments, you know? Show off the good look. Oh, so beautiful, You did so good. And then they go show someone else. Yes. Well, it's part of it. I know.

You just created something by hand and the finished product. I would see the whole piece going. It's like, I don't know what that's going to look like. But then at the end, it's like, whoa, this is really nice.

Because even the eyes, they would paint the eyes. I definitely do that to my husband. I'll be like, look I made another headband but he's a good sport so he'll always be like, oh it looks so great and it's like the 400th like the 400th one I've made

and he's like, oh wow and I'm like, thanks but it's been really it's just been a wonderful creative outlet for me Do you have any ideas to potentially expand in the future like storefront or taking a step by step I guess that would be like kind of the hope I'm kind of um so like I said in January you know I've really this has been like such a confidence

builder for me like for a long time I mean I've always been a crafter so for years and years and years I was I've always told myself like oh my So for years and years and years, I was, I've always told myself like, Oh, my stuff's not good enough. And so this past year I had a lot of people come to me and they were like, no, it is. And so now it's kind of, I'm just letting, you know, nature take its course. And I'm telling myself like my stuff is good enough. And, um, I'm kind of just letting what happens happen. And so I'd love to see that one day. Right. But I'm still in the foundational phase right now. Um, which is like also a very exciting point to be in because I'm just allowing this to you know this flower to blossom and in the way are there any like Christmas shows that you're gonna be at over there because I'm my next question oh really oh because I know I know that

they're you know usually say you guys coming? Because usually, well, my wife will. I mean, yeah. There you go. I'll look for you. I might drive her there. But I know that typically, right, in like November, they start coming out? Yes. So I'm doing the Charlottesville City Market, like their Christmas festival.

Okay. I'm going to be there on November 30th, december 7th and december 14th the one over on water street okay um and that one's i think nine to one so also is this like special which is those okay i guess it's just doing the farmer's market but kind of special is that what it is yeah so they have like a different sign up um process so some people sign up for the farmer's market and for the christmas christmas festival um but they are like total like it's run by the same obviously charlottesville city but it's um like two different entities so like some crafters like my my dad is like a christmas crafter so he is solely doing the christmas craft fair um so yeah they it's like a whole different sign up

sheet so you'll probably still see some of your normal vendors like your food vendors. You'll have a lot more craft vendors and festival vendors. Wonderful. Looking forward to it. That was November 30th, December 7th, and 14th that people could find you here? Three weekends. Three Saturdays.

We'll see it up there. So Molly. You'll see it. It'll be So Molly. That's it. You'll see it. It'll be so Molly. That's it. You know it. And so online, if people kind of want to look through, you know, your headbands and your little crochet things, where can people kind of look for those? So I'm on Instagram. Instagram?

Yeah, it's S-E-W underscore Molly, M-O-L-L-Y. And then I've had people even reach out to me on there via messenger and um you know express an interest of like hey you know can i'd love to buy this now and yeah and i've been pretty got it so the best way for them to kind of like look through your inventory and contact you is through the instagram yeah and that's where i post a lot of my inventory first got it or like upcoming things i've already started posting my christmas stockings on there um so people kind of have an idea. And then normally if people like will reach out to me on there first,

I'll meet up with them prior to, so they kind of have first, first come first serve. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, Molly,

thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure. Keep it going. I like, oops. I like when people kind of do the old-fashioned stuff of sewing. Hopefully people kind of keep that alive, you know, sewing, crocheting, and all that stuff. So keep it up.

Good luck. Yeah, I can't wait to see you guys November 30th. Or the 7th or the 14th. 14th, yeah. We won't let you know. It was a surprise. Perfect. Awesome.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for coming. Appreciate it. Yes. Wonderful. So before we kind of close up the show, Pops, I know you kind of wanted to share a little bit about your finance idea.

Well, your finance opinion post-election kind of. Well, I mean, as you know, I mean, because you know, I mean, you're part of our meetings, right? And so before the election, one of the things we said is like, okay, so let's pull back a little bit here on the risk. We don't know exactly what's going to happen, right, whether one entity wins or the other entity wins because they did have slightly different approaches to the economy, right? And depending on who won, that was going to set the tone for what we thought would happen, right? The one thing i

will say is i and this was again this is certainly my opinion but i thought both uh both policies were somewhat inflationary um so since in this case i mean obviously trump uh has been declared the winner his policies are and and we've seen we literally saw that the first day after he got elected right Why is it inflationary in my opinion, right? So in other words, everybody expects him to raise tariffs, right? Tariffs is a big thing, right?

Which means that you're going to be paying more for products coming into this country, right? What happens the very first day? The first day, the stock market goes crazy, right? Meaning, goes up a lot. And bonds, interest rates, rise dramatically. I mean, we had a big rise in interest rates yesterday. What does that tell you?

That tells you that, yes, people think we're going to have inflation, therefore interest rates are going to go up, and the markets are going to do very well because we're going to have a quote-unquote economic boom. I think all that is premature because right, because let's face it, I mean, Trump's not even in the office yet. He hasn't raised any tariffs that I know as of today. Well, nothing's happened yet. Exactly. So the market is predicting what's going to happen.

Now, I also have to, you also see it and go, well, is Trump really just going to simply go out there and say, hey, I'm raising tariffs on everybody? No, I think they just create negotiations. I mean, the countries know we now have a president who's going to raise tariffs on your particular products unless you begin to buy our products. So if there's an interchange there, right, that is a positive interchange. They say, okay, I won't raise tariffs on your product, but this is what you have to buy from us. Well, that scenario opens up the idea that we're going to be producing more, right?

So the economy is going to be actually working a little better, right? And I also think that from a perspective of different administrations, and we saw this in his four years previous to that, he is, I think, from perspective of the economy, small companies will do much better in this environment. That doesn't mean that large companies won't. It doesn't mean large caps won't and growth companies won't. Growth companies will do very well also.

But I think small caps in this time frame will begin to do better. Now, it's going to take a little bit of time because if interest rates go up, again, those small companies are paying a lot more in interest rates than the larger corporations. change in how this economy is moving along, because I think his goal and his expectations are to really improve what we're seeing from a lower level, meaning smaller company base, loosening some restrictions, right? I think that's also good. If he makes energy a little cheaper, meaning obviously in this case, you know, oil and obviously the alternative energy of maybe nuclear, I think that will help, right? Because when you think of large companies can afford a lot more than small companies. Small companies' energy is a big factor. Interest rates are a big factor, right? So I think if you make those energy cheaper, those companies will be able to come back, right?

If interest rates begin to come down a little bit, those companies will come back. And again, the beginning influence will be higher rates, good stock market. May I interject? No, go ahead, please. So with Trump winning, how do you think it will affect what the Fed might do with interest rates? So I think the Fed's talking today.

I think they might still do a 25 basis point cut today. Are they going to decide to cut today? I think today. So that might happen today, but I think they may hold off because at this point you do have, I mean, first of all,

if you looked at the underlying inflation, the inflation really hasn't, you know, it's come down dramatically from the nines and the sevens, right? But it's not at the 2% level, which would have felt like to have, right? Frankly, I've always been, as you know, it's like, why is it 2% when it can't be zero? I mean, why do we have to have inflation in the first place?

So I think they might do the 25 basis points today, but I think they may hold off. I don't think for the rest of the year, unless the numbers really dramatically come down, I think they may hold off and see we have somebody new, we have a new policy here. Because let's face it, if Kamala had won, I think the expectation was that it would have been have somewhat similar to the Biden administration with a few, you know, changes here and there, but somewhat similar, right? Trump, it's a whole different type of policy, right? So I think they may hold back. But I think But I think from the perspective of, you know, the investment portfolio, you know, they're two dramatic different portfolios,

right? And so, like I said, I think that we have already seen over the last four or five years, you know, small stocks have not performed as well as growth and large cap. Large caps have did very well. Growth have done very well in the last two years. Small caps have not, right? And I mean, dramatically not as well as the other two. And I think that's going to change, you know, in the coming years. And I think the good thing, too, is that there was a lot of, I mean, we could see from our own clients a lot of uncertainty because you didn't really know the outcome of the election, what it was going to be. It was hard to kind of predict a little bit. And I think people were kind of just a little nervous.

They're like, well, what should I do with my money? I just keep in cash. I think at least now, post-election, at least you kind of basically, okay, at least I know who's president or who's going to be president and kind of get a better sense of what's going to happen. At least now you can adjust. Because I could tell people were very kind of like nervous and like, oh, what's going to happen?

At least now, you know, it's like, okay. And let's be honest, that happens, I mean, unless an incumbent president wins, right, that happens every time. And you'll see it. I mean, there's an enormous move in the markets one way or the other when a new president the day after the election, right? Because people say, okay, this is what they talked about, and therefore I know exactly what's going to happen now, right? But in particular in this one, I think most people were a little more cautious and see what's the outcome going to be. And once the outcome happened, I think people right away said, okay, I am it, in one day we had a microcosm of what I think is going to happen for a small period of time, which is the expectation of some inflation into the system here, but also an economy that's going to start to boom again. So I think all that is positive. And let's be honest, from the perspective of if you bring back more jobs into this country, right, tax revenue goes up.

Tax revenue goes up. That's good for everybody, right, because you don't have to borrow as much. So I think overall, if the economy begins to grow more, you get more revenue. Right. And therefore, I think in that case, eventually interest rates begin to come down. Interesting. So a lot of stuff to talk about in the coming months. That's a countdown.

As you know, we talk a lot more in our meetings, but that's in the summary. Exactly, yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that, Pops. It'll be interesting. For me, this is always fun because now it's a change, and so you need to then sit back and readjust your strategy as to, okay, what do we need to do next? Absolutely. Well, thanks for sharing those, Pops.

You're welcome. So actually next week we've got another fantastic guest coming. We're going to have the Valley Mobley. I think they are a coffee shop, but I don't want to 100% say that just in case I'm wrong. I think. They might be. But, yeah, they in case I'm wrong. I think. There might be. But, yeah, that should be on next week. I don't know whether it's going to be you and me, someone else.

Yeah. You know, we'll keep that on the open. This way we'll surprise our wonderful viewers. Who's coming next week? Exactly, exactly. But, as always, we are very happy to be presented by Emergent Financial Services, powered by our wonderful sponsors, Matisse Young Realty, Craddock Series Insurance, Charlottesville Opera.

Thank you, Pops, for always being here and providing your wisdom and your thoughts. Thank you. Thank you to Judah behind the camera for making us look good. I love Seville and, of course, always the biggest thank you to our wonderful viewers who watch

and support us. Again, I always have to kind of put a little apology. I'm not on Facebook or Instagram, so my heart goes out to anyone who is liking the show or watching. Thank you to everyone. Hopefully next week Alex can give the shout-outs to them. Like, hey,

here's who watched last week. Thank you. But thank you again for everyone watching. Thank you to our wonderful guests. We look forward to seeing you next time. But until then, hasta mañana. Bravo, boys. Thank you.