PP 296: Going for Simple with Amy Mewborn

Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. I’m so happy that you’re here to join us today. I’m thrilled to introduce my friend, sometimes a client, but I don’t even want to call you a client, Amy, because you’re more friend and client in my opinion. 

Welcome Amy Mewborn to Positive Productivity. Listeners, Amy is the founder and CEO of amymewborn.com, her journey has just been incredible. So Amy, I just want you to take it from here and jump right in it.

Amy Mewborn: Great. Well, thank you so much for having me. First of all, one of my favorite things to do is just to sit and chat with you. Because I find that so often, we have so much to share. We’re both techie people, and really, I think enjoy sharing resources. And that’s one of the things I love about podcasts. So for me, I spent over 15 years in finance. I had what was once my absolute dream job. I worked with some of the coolest business owners in all of the country. I had clients that owned dealerships, Chucky E. Cheese’s Franchises, tech companies. One of my clients was the founder of the Venturi Wind generator. So it was really an awesome position. Except after a number of years, I just was kind of burnt out. I felt like I was helping build everyone else’s wealth, but I was going to a job and not necessarily getting one. I wasn’t necessarily building my own family’s wealth. I was getting a great paycheck, but I wasn’t doing anything we’re building, anything that was going to continue to sustain or support us later in life. 

So I found fitness, and I found a modality and business model that I thought really made financial sense. I had really wanted to be a business owner for years. But as a finance girl, I could not make the leap without knowing that I could replace my income. It was just way too scary for me to ever imagine leaving a six figure job and not knowing that I knew how to replace it. So I launched two fitness studios and a consulting business. I sold the studios in March of 2017. I had run them for about seven years. It was an amazing experience, but the day that they sold, it was a wonderful, wonderful day because it really took a lot of the pressure off. For years, I’d had a staff of about 30 women, and there were a lot of times where I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. So now, I like to help women build successful, profitable businesses without having to hustle as hard as I did. I want them to have a lot of fun and the freedom that we all really believe is what we’re supposed to get from building our own businesses.

Kim Sutton: I have to ask, listeners, Positive Productivity does not mean perfection, and Penny is chiming in to our chat today. I had to ask, Amy, what do you think about the word hustle?

Amy Mewborn: So I will tell you that it’s really funny that you asked that today because I’ve kind of been doing some pondering on it. And it’s a word that at first, in my business, I wore like a badge of honor that I was constantly working my tail off, and I was constantly hustling. And eventually, that word became almost like the bane of my existence. I became an entrepreneur so I could spend more time with my friends, my family and my parents. And both of my siblings are all over the country so I really wanted as an entrepreneur to be able to do more with them. And I felt like for the first probably five years of my business, if I wasn’t working, I felt guilty. I’ve kind of outgrown that over the past couple of years, and it came down to a point where I was talking to some people not too long ago and I was telling the story of when I was kind of hustling for that seven figure income to hit a million dollars. But the million dollars was a gross number. It wasn’t what I got to take home. And the harder I was working to get to a million dollars, the less I was taking home because the more I was hiring people and putting it into the business. And I think that was the moment where I realized that hustle was not a good word for me anymore.

Kim Sutton: I don’t want to say I love it, because there’s that pain that goes along with everything that you just said, because I have gone through that whole journey. But maybe the better way to say it is I completely relate. And actually, just this morning, I was talking to my husband about exactly what you just said. It’s like there’s a lot of people out there who are getting multiple six figures, the seven and eight figures, but we don’t see how much money they’re spending when they share how much money they just made.

Amy Mewborn: Yes. And that was when I was making probably about four or $500,000 a year gross. I was bringing home probably two to three times more money than I was when I was making almost, I was making about 900 gross. So when you think about how many more resources have to go in, how much more staff you potentially have to have, how many more hours you’re working. And for me, I often felt like I was juggling 8 million balls in the air, and I was afraid that one of them was going to drop.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely. I want to jump back a little bit to when you own your fitness studios. When you had them, were you managing your 30 employees? Did you have managers to help you manage?

Amy Mewborn: So one of the things that I talk a lot about is the need for a really good mastermind group and community of people that will help you look at your business from a perspective that isn’t your own. Because when you’re in your business day in and day out, you often get so used to running it the way you’re used to running it that you’re missing some really big stuff. So for me, when I had the two studios, I had part time managers, and then I had a whole bunch of part time staff. And in doing it that way, I did it because one of my biggest fears was that, if I had a bunch of full time staff, that if one of them ever left, I would be left high and dry. So I thought much like in finance, let’s diversify that risk, and let’s just spread it out between more people. And the problem with that is that’s not appropriate in most cases of business ownership. Because if you’re working with clients, we all tend to be very relationship oriented. So what one of my mastermind girls told me after I had been complaining for a year and a half about some staffing issues that I was having, she said: “When you brought this up a year and a half ago, it kind of looked like a problem that was part of the business problem. But now that you have the same problem a year and a half later, it seems to be like the problem is you and it’s not the business anymore. You have got to either make a decision that you’re going to just put up with it the way it is, or you’re going to suck it up and you’re going to hire a couple of full time managers that are the people that are there, and you don’t have a bunch of part time staff. You instead are paying a premium price for the people that are going to be there and going to get paid on the outcome of the business.” And as soon as I did that, that was when my life dramatically improved. I would say that it probably cost me the first year about $15,000 more per studio to have a full time manager and that the revenue went up by anywhere between 60 and $85,000. It was crazy.

Kim Sutton: Wow. I have to tell you, I muted right before you said it. And it’s a good thing I did. Because when you mentioned that, oh, I wish I could rewind while we were recording. But it was something about how sometimes the hardest issues to face are the ones that we put in front of ourselves. If it’s something along those lines. I was taking a sip of water and I choked on it because I do that to myself constantly. Constantly. Listeners, I have brought this up before because I’ve dealt with it in the past. But today, I have been dealing with a mouse with batteries that are dying, okay. And rather than get up and go change the batteries, I’ve been just shaking the mouse because I’ve been that, I’ve been hustling to bring up that word. I’ve been hustling today, and I haven’t changed the batteries. But it’s like, how much pain would it just alleviate if I just got up and changed the darn batteries. And there’s so many things like that. I love how you brought up the mastermind because there is that tough love that we so often need that comes from mastermind members. And it can hurt a little bit when we first receive it, but it’s so good.

Amy Mewborn: I think it’s almost a necessity. If you’re a six figure business owner and you’re genuinely trying to scale a lot of the challenges that you had in starting your business and getting it to six figures are way different than the challenge that you’re going to have to get it to 250 and to 500. I will tell you that I don’t think there’s anything more valuable in your business than having other people that are there that care about you, and they’ve seen your business growth. They can give you that honest to goodness feedback and support. And I often tell stories where my husband could give me a piece of advice every day for a year and a half. But if my mastermind girls tell me the same thing, all of a sudden, I take it from them. Whereas, I do the same thing. My poor husband is like, why? Why do you do that? But yes, they’re too close. Our spouses are too close, and they’re invested in what we do. Whereas, the people in your mastermind group are just people that care about you, and they’ve been there along the way so their advice is so valuable.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely. Now, have you been free masterminds in the past and paid masterminds?

Amy Mewborn: I have. I can tell you that I think that both can be successful. I feel that if you pay for something, you’re a lot more invested in it. I don’t think that a mastermind has to be a $50,000 mastermind to be wonderful and successful, but I do think that it is important that you have some skin in the game. I believe that it’s important, whether it’s free or paid, that there are some very, very, very crystal clear rules of the mastermind. And first and foremost, that if you’re going to be a part of it, that you’re going to show up and you’re going to participate. Because it’s not fair to your group if you commit to something, and then you just don’t really do the work.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely. I completely agree on that because you’re not just there for yourself, you’re there to support everybody else too.

Amy Mewborn: Honestly, I think that we all get the most satisfaction out of helping our people in our group more than we get from being helped ourselves. And it’s often amazing if you have done a good job picking the right mastermind, or building the right mastermind, that if you have the right people in the room, almost every conversation of every business owner applies to your business in some way, shape or form.

Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh, I so agree. I can’t tell you how many times, I mean, it’s countless how many times I’ve gotten the same amount, if not more value out of other people’s hot seats than I did out of my own.

Amy Mewborn: You bet. Because, again, we’re all going through some very similar journeys. And often, if one of us is struggling with technology, often a lot of us are struggling with technology. If one of us is struggling with staffing, often a lot of us are struggling with staffing. And so the advice is always so valuable. I will tell you that one of the things that we started doing in our masterminds is that we would record the entire sessions. And it is tremendously valuable to go back and listen to those recordings, or go and have them transcribed so at least you have notes of all of the things that were discussed. But often, when you’re in the middle of these conversations, you don’t capture all of the nuggets. I just think it’s so important to be able to go back to it.

Kim Sutton: Just like podcast episodes. I’ve always thought it would be great if I could take notes during my episodes so I wouldn’t go back. But I can’t because if I’m going to be here fully engaged, just like in a mastermind meeting, then I have to be here listening and not trying to jot down all the nuggets right in the middle. I know much value out of re-listening. Listeners, I had to get over my dislike of listening to myself. You’re a podcaster now, is that just something everybody has to deal with? Or do you think there is anybody who actually likes their voice?

Amy Mewborn: I think that a lot of times, people that really are bothered by it are very proactive and don’t have education to try to kind of work some of those things out. I’m with you. I hate to see myself on camera, I hate to hear myself on audio. One of the things I do in my business a lot is I do a ton of videos and post them on YouTube. And it’s painful sometimes to go and watch the videos. I have some little quirks where I move my shoulders in a weird way, I move my head in a weird way, and I don’t like to see or hear certain things. But that doesn’t diminish the message. We all just have to realize, I think you said that it’s not about perfection. I completely agree that a lot of times, what’s coming out of someone’s mouth is so much more important than how it’s coming out of their mouth.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely. I’m not amused like in the haha way, but I’m amused that you don’t like watching them. Because when I was helping you put together some email series that had videos in them, I was actually studying your videos, Amy. I was like, wow, that’s really good. But I do have to share with listeners, Amy, you know that you taught me incredibly a lot. And I had entered our working relationship thinking that I knew a whole lot, but you actually saved me a whole lot of money just because I had bought a whole bunch of extra tools that I didn’t need. And I think that’s something that a lot of entrepreneurs also face. We just keep on getting this onslaught of emails thinking that it’s going to help us propel our business forward. We sign up for all these extra programs, and then somebody like me comes along, and they’re like, wait, you’ve got this. You only need it.

Amy Mewborn: Well, that I think is one of the biggest dangers as an entrepreneur nowadays is that we see all of these shiny technology pieces and we think that that piece is going to be the piece that’s going to help us get to the next level, or to get more sales, or to get more clients. And I will tell you that one of the things that I have spent hours over the past year is trying to simplify my business. I actually went into my Infusionsoft account and deleted boatloads of campaigns and tags. And I went in and evaluated every piece of software that I was investing in, especially if it had a monthly fee, and I found that so many of my pieces overlapped and I didn’t need half of what I was paying for. And when we’re talking about hustle, and we talk about gross income versus net income, isn’t it really important to try to keep the expenses down so more comes through to our family than gets sucked up in the business expenses?

Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh, yes. You and I haven’t even talked about this. I did the same thing this year. Deleted a whole bunch of campaigns, a whole bunch of tags in probably three quarters of my custom fields in Infusionsoft, and it felt so good afterwards. And then I’ve been undone unsubscribing to email newsletters. There’s been a concern that I’m going to insult somebody because I always look at my unsubscribe reports, I just do it. It interests me. I was concerned at first that I was going to insult somebody, but I needed to clean up my inbox. I’ve gone from having 3 to 500 new emails in the morning to maybe having 25 to 50.

Amy Mewborn: Wow, then you really cleaned yours up because I’ve been so proud that I got mine from like 500 to about 100. So yeah, you really did a good job.

Kim Sutton: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it took a lot of work. But it was also during a major email purge, probably once a month, I like to get my inbox down to zero. So when I’m doing that, I would like to have it at zero every night. But I also like to sleep, listeners, I’ve shared with you before that sleep has become increasingly important to me as it should to everybody. We need our sleep. So if it’s between zeroing out my inbox and getting the sleep I need, I know which one I’m going to do.

Amy Mewborn: Honestly, I think the key to all of us living a better life is realizing that we can always do more. You could always spend more time at your computer, you could always make a few more sales calls, but I have learned over the past couple years that I have got to make time for my workouts. I used to be a person that went to sleep between 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning. And now, we do our best to have everything off. And we’re asleep ideally by 11:00. And I’m way better about implementing things than our systems where I can better predict my day, and my day allows me more free time.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely. I know what some of the tools that you use in your business, part of the microwave in my background. Kids come home from school and they start cooking popcorn. At least they’re not burning it.

Amy Mewborn: I love it.

Kim Sutton: I just had to share really fast Amy, one of my mastermind calls, my son put a bag of popcorn in the microwave upside down. Okay, I never knew what would happen when he did that. It’s not good. Let’s just leave it that way. So what I say at least is not burning anything. Cooking skills from his mama. I know what some of the tools that you use in your business, but would you mind sharing what some of your favorite tools are with the listeners?

Amy Mewborn: Sure. I’ve used Infusionsoft at this point since 2010. And I normally recommend that if someone’s just starting in an online business, I recommend that they go and find something like an Active Campaign or ConvertKit as a great place to start, because I think Infusionsoft is way more than most of us ever need. And at the time that I started using it, there weren’t a lot of other really good options. But I will say that I have been so impressed with a lot of things that Infusionsoft has been doing to improve the program, and really stay cutting edge. Some of the other things that are huge to me, I actually just eliminated lead pages out of my business, which I had had for about six or seven years, and I replaced that with Thrive Themes. And Thrive Themes is like $220 a year. I now use it for my entire website. I use it now for building quizzes, and assessments for my clients. I’ve been doing [inaudible] coaching programs. And a lot of the premise on that is about learning more about your clients through surveys, questionnaires, that kind of thing. Thrive Quizzes does that so well, and it’s so inexpensive. I’m a huge advocate of ScreenFlow, which is what I use for all of my video recording and audio recording. I love Zoom. And honestly, I feel like if you have a really good CRM, you have a way to collect payments, and you have something like Zoom or something that you can have communication with your clients. I think that’s just about all you need nowadays.

Kim Sutton: Are you still using Slack and Trello?

Amy Mewborn: I do. I use Trello with my assistants, and Slack as well. I instituted Slack when I had my team of 30. Because I would wake up in the morning and my team would often have blown up my email. And the managers in particular, I could sometimes get 8 to 15 emails every day from each of them. I found myself going back and wasting a ton of time trying to find things where Slack is like this big message board. And it is amazing in terms of communicating with your team as a whole, with one person, you can break it up however you want. But I think it is a game changer for someone that is working with a team and wants to have constant communication and a record of the communication.

Kim Sutton: I love how you brought up records. Now, I have to say I had a client who was a little bit difficult, and not you, you know that, who preferred Slack. I got this stigma attached to the sound it makes when you get a new message. So I had to turn off my Skype for a little bit after that ended. But now, I’m really loving it. Exactly like you said, it was a little bit cumbersome to me at first because I felt like I was always having to scroll through conversations for the teams that didn’t know how to use it properly. And I think there is a proper way and an improper way breaking it down into specific categories and stuff what you’re talking about. But when used properly, it is incredible. When not, it can just be another mess like email. But I think that really goes with any system.

Amy Mewborn: I just think that anything that we can do to streamline and keep communication in the same place as much as possible, the better we’re all going to be. Because I don’t know about you, but I swear that my husband and I feel like at least one time, every three days, we have to call a company about some type of customer service fail and we get billed for something that wasn’t a real charge. Yesterday, we found out that our homeowners insurance went up by $200, and they couldn’t tell us why, and all of those things. I feel like it’s really important to have a place where you’re keeping records of all of that. Because every time we used to keep them on paper, or keep them on a bill or whatever, we could never find it. And now, we even have like a Slack channel where we keep all of our customer service communications. So that way, every time we get off the phone, we write down, okay, on this day, at this time, I spoke to this person in this department, and they told me this, and it was on a recorded line. And if we have to go back to it, this is what you need to know. Those are things that a lot of times, you don’t think about how to use your technology to make your life easier. But I think that one of the most important things is really looking at the tools that we have, and using them to make our lives simpler, instead of more complicated.

Kim Sutton: I am going to have to borrow that, Amy. I have been calling our cable company for three years now, telling them that we don’t watch cable. I don’t want it, but I need to keep my phone and internet. I mean, with this many kids, I can’t get rid of the landlines, unfortunately. So every time they’ve come back and said: “Well, if you get rid of cable, your price is actually going to stay the same because you need that bundle deal.” Well, I finally talked to somebody last weekend who finally told me, no, you can get rid of cable and save $100 a month. And I just wish I had that whole record of conversations now. Like, really? Were you just telling me this so I wouldn’t get rid of cable? Or was it really an offer out there? Because $100 a month times 12. I mean, $1200 a year on cable that we don’t even watch, and that’s huge for three years.

Amy Mewborn: And you just said that you’ve had the same problem for three years. So that’s $3600 in the blink of an eye on something that you weren’t using.

Kim Sutton: Exactly.

Amy Mewborn: Well, one thing, the reason we started doing that is because we had some similar issues with phone companies, and it was actually a phone, internet and cable situation. And I had all of this dialogue. I was actually doing a lot of this stuff by chat because I now take screenshots of everything when someone tells me something. So I took all these screenshots and put them in a letter, and sent it to the Federal Trade Commission, and filed the complaint. And you would be amazed at how quickly a company is willing to jump through hoops and find you a solution when you have all these lies in writing and you send it to the FTC.

Kim Sutton: Wow. I don’t just have a feeling, I know you just saved listeners a lot of pain.

Amy Mewborn: I hope so. Because that’s one of the things that Mike always says, he tells every phone company or every company that he ever calls, he’s like, look, I’m a good cop. You do not want to get a bad cop.

Kim Sutton: That’s awesome.

Amy Mewborn: Yeah. Just help me. Because I promise you, you do not want to talk to her.

Kim Sutton: So when my husband figured out some years ago that when telemarketers call, well, it used to be the case that they couldn’t hang up on you, and so he would have full out dialogues with them about, or like relationship counseling, he would just start asking them not inappropriate questions. But are you married? You have kids? How’s it going? Just kidding. He would have one hour conversations with these people. And then our twins were born, when one of them called and woke up both twins, he actually put the phone in between them and just let them cry. I know it’s not appropriate, but hang up, because they couldn’t hang up, but he just let them. I mean, it sounds horrible about my kids. Please, no, it was only a couple of minutes and he was making bottles. But yeah, we got a kick out of it. That is so not Positive Productivity. But yeah, we got a kick out of it.

Kim Sutton: Well, have you ever read the book Delivering Happiness?

Kim Sutton: I haven’t.

Amy Mewborn: Okay. So it’s Delivering Happiness. It is by Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos. And I think it’s required reading for just about any business owner, because it really talks a lot about Zappos and their corporate culture, and a lot of the things that they tried to instill into their customer service reps and everything. And he tells stories about how he would call his own team pretending to be someone else, and he would call the customer service department and say he wanted to order a pizza or whatever. Zappos does shoes, they don’t do pizza. He would grade his customer service reps based on how helpful they were to the customer even if it wasn’t a topic that they could really help with.

Kim Sutton: Oh, that’s brilliant.

Amy Mewborn: It was funny.

Kim Sutton: One of my favorite movie scenes is Miracle on 34th Street, where a girl who wants something for Christmas and she asks Santa and Santo, she knows his shop doesn’t have it, but he knows another shop does. And I love that. I mean, talk about awesome customer service right there just, yeah. I had to be careful how I said that. I’m sure you understand why.

Amy Mewborn: Oh, of course.

Kim Sutton: Parents, I’m on the lookout for you. Do you have any other awesome book recommendations that you can offer to listeners?

Amy Mewborn: Yes, I am an avid reader. So first of all, right now I’m reading Denise Duffield-Thomas’s Lucky B. And if you haven’t ever read it before, it’s a lot about women and our mindset blocks around money and kind of how we sometimes stand in our own way. And women, we struggle with pricing our services as high as we should because we’re afraid that we’re going to out price someone or something. I think that book has been so valuable to me. I read The Big Leap, probably at least every six months to a year. And it’s a lot about upper limit problems where we tend to self sabotage our lives when things are going too well. I will tell you that I do that frequently so it’s really very good for me to sit down and remind myself of some of those habits. I love the book Essentialism. I think that if you’re running a business and you’re struggling with getting everything done, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read in terms of helping you identify where you should really be spending your time and your resources. And then one of the books that I just have been reading that I think is amazing is called Profit First. And it really changes how, as an entrepreneur, you look at money, and you look at your gross revenue, and your net income, and how you’re going to help provide for your family while still running your business.

Kim Sutton: It’s great. You are not helping my reading list at all.

Amy Mewborn: Thank you. I’m sorry. I literally, at any time, I have probably four or five books going on. I actually am reading High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard, as well. There’s so many. And for me, I don’t know about you, but my perfect day in the summer is to lay by a pool with a mimosa, and a great book or an umbrella, an umbrella drink and a great book. So I have started piling up the books that I plan on reading this summer.

Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh. Okay, I am also reading High Performance Habits. I’m about halfway through. Yeah, absolutely loving it. I just finished reading The Big Leap for the first time ever.

Amy Mewborn: What did you think?

Kim Sutton: Absolutely amazing. And the part that got me the most, and I actually did a podcast episode about it. Listeners, that will be in the show notes at thekimsutton.com/pp296. The one one of my biggest issues is worrying.

Amy Mewborn: Uh huh.

Kim Sutton: So that section really got me, part of the cat in the background. I’m also reading, and I’m really trying to be better about only reading one book at a time. But right now, I’m reading three or four as well. Worthy by Nancy Levin, which also addresses women and financial obstacles. It’s increasing your self worth to increase your net worth. So I’m very fascinated by, which one was that? Essentialism? Delivering Happiness? I’ve been writing them all down actually. Even though I usually try not to write it down, but I wrote down all of them that you just said.

Amy Mewborn: So the Lucky B is the one by Denise Duffield-Thomas and it’s just called Lucky B. And it’s the B is a whole word that I don’t want to put out, you have to put an explicit reading on your podcast.

Kim Sutton: I think I’ve only had one or two of those so far. I’m trying to finally make it through. I’ve started reading it three or four times. I’m trying to finish Awaken The Giant Within by Tony Robbins. I think I’m getting the right, Unleash The Power Within, one or the other title. It’s amazing. I’m absolutely loving it, but it’s just so thick and I like the satisfaction of getting through, oh and Lingo by Jeffrey Shaw.

Amy Mewborn: I never read that one. As we’re talking. I’m looking through my bookshelf, and I also have a ton of Chicken Soup For The Soul books. I don’t know about you, but I’m an insomniac. So a lot of times, I will lay in bed in the middle of the night while everyone else in my house is sleeping and I will grab a book. And what I love about the Chicken Soup For The Soul books is that there’s always a positive message at the end of each little story. And each story’s only like 10 minutes so I can read just a little bit at a time and not just be like, I have to keep going and keep going.

Kim Sutton: Oh, I love that. I haven’t picked up one of those in years. Yeah, I’m gonna have to do that, so thank you.

Amy Mewborn: I still love them. It’s amazing. If I’ve had a really bad day and I’m down in the dumps, I’ll put on really mellow music and I’ll just sit and read a Chicken Soup For The Soul for a little while. It’s just amazing how just changing your mindset and changing your emotions at any given time can make you so much more productive.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely. I just brought up a book called Lingo. Jeff Shaw actually recommended that I listened to a song called A Million Dreams. It’s from The Greatest Showmen soundtrack. I will play that song multiple times throughout the day. I’m hooked on it now. I think my kids are sick of hearing it.

Amy Mewborn: It was so good. So for Christmas, my brother got us the MoviePass. So it’s 999 a month, and you can do unlimited movies in the theater. So it’s amazing, and we love it because I’m so cheap that that is not something that I would have spent money on. I would say that in our 17 years together prior to having MoviePass, we’ve literally seen four movies together. And now, we do at least two a week. But The Greatest Showmen is by far the best one we’ve seen on MoviePass since we started in December. And it is one of the best stories for entrepreneurs. Just because you got to see how PT Barnum really pulled himself up out of the depths of just being a very, very poor child to building this amazing thing that well outlived him.

Kim Sutton: I watched the trailer, and I wanted to instantly buy it, but I didn’t realize it was still in theaters.

Amy Mewborn: Honestly, I sat there and cried at the end. I just sobbed. It was not meant to be a sad movie, it just was a case of, you just really loved to see how it all unfolded.

Kim Sutton: The Pursuit of Happiness gets me that same way too.

Amy Mewborn: Yes, I totally understand.

Kim Sutton: I do have to ask what movie theater chain is that for?

Amy Mewborn: So MoviePass is for any movie theater chain. For the most part, I believe that AMC does not participate, but it’s moviepass.com. It’s one of the best things you can do for date night. The only real catch is that you can’t reserve your movie online, you have to go and you reserve it through the app when you are there at the theater. So there’s a few steps that you have to take to do it. But I will tell you that if you and David, or anyone in their spouse, or their significant other or their friends are looking for something fun to do and not spend a lot of money, it’s the best deal around.

Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh, yeah. And actually, for Christmas this year, I told my husband that he’s getting monthly date nights that we actually go out. In January, we missed February, it should have happened, but it just didn’t.

Amy Mewborn: Sure.

Kim Sutton: And it has to happen in March, I am definitely going to have to look into that, to go totally off topic. Just for a quick second, I have to share, we have only gone to see maybe three or four movies as well. The first movie that we ever went to see was a Harry Potter movie, and he had never seen Harry Potter or read the book. Something sad happened at the end of the one that we went to see, I’m just gonna say that because I hate to be a spoiler. If anybody hasn’t seen them and wants to watch, my husband started laughing in the middle of a packed movie theater. And then a whole bunch of other men started laughing because all of the women were crying. And all of a sudden, all these women just start standing up and screaming that they better shut the heck up. Only it wasn’t the woman sitting next to me and told me that I better shut my husband up. He wasn’t my husband then, and that was the first time that I ever got upset at my husband. And we weren’t even married yet. I thought he was choking on a soda. But no, it started as like a choke sound. And then it just turned into like, blah ha ha ha, that’s exactly how it was. So yeah, I don’t take him to sappy movies. Anything since then, if it was at all drama with a possible sad, I’ve watched it at home, or I’ve gone to the theater alone because I wasn’t going to get beat up because of my husband.

Amy Mewborn: My husband, we’ve been together 17 years, I’ve never seen him cry ever. I always say he has a heart of stone, and I’m mostly exaggerating. But I take him to the movies. And it’s like, he has no filter. If he has a question about the movie, he will just say it completely out loud. And he’ll look at me and he’ll be like, so who’s that character? And what are they doing? And I’m like, do you not realize that there are like 50 other people that are trying to watch this movie?

Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh, he and my husband would get along great. They would totally be feeding off each other during a whole movie.

Amy Mewborn: So note to self, we can’t take our husband to movies together.

Kim Sutton: Yeah, yeah. When I come out to visit you with him, we’ll use the MoviePass and leave them, whatever they do. Amy, this has been an absolute pleasure chatting with you always. So thank you so much for coming on. Would you mind sharing with the listeners where they can find out more about you online and connect?

Amy Mewborn: Sure. So you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, any of the above. And most of my little name tags are Amy Mewborn, A-M-Y-M-E-W-B-O-R-N. Or you can find me on my website, and that’s amymewborn.com.

Kim Sutton: Thank you so much. Listeners, you can find the links in the show notes again at thekimsutton.com/pp296. Amy, do you have the last piece of parting advice or golden nugget that you can offer to listeners?

Amy Mewborn: I think the biggest thing is keep your business as simple as you can to get done what you want to get done, and find someone that has done what you want to do successfully and go and ask them to be a mentor or a mentee. Go and find people that can help you grow your business to what you want to do, because most of us genuinely want to help and support each other. We just want a community of people that are minded and all want to work together toward the same goal, so just go get support.