008: Anne Marie & Roger Jackson – Creators of ‘Through the Sea’

Title: Anne Marie & Roger Jackson – Creators of ‘Through the Sea’

Guests: Anne Marie Jackson, Roger Jackson

Peter: Welcome to the Biz and Life Done Well podcast, where we explore what it means and what it takes to do business and life well. I’m your host, Peter Wilson. If you’re like me, you’re intrigued by stories of common people who have achieved uncommon success in business and and life. Join me as I interview fascinating people about how they got started, their successes and failures, their habits and routines, and what inspires them. Today, my guests are Anne Marie and Roger Jackson of Through the Sea.

Thanks for coming to the podcast.

Anne Marie: Thanks for having us.

Roger: Thank you for having us, Pete.

Peter: You bet. Tell me a little bit about yourselves.

Anne Marie: Well, we’re very young, and we’ve been married twenty years. What? Yes. Isn’t that crazy? No.

Yeah. So we probably were like, what, 10 when we got married?

Roger: Not quite.

Anne Marie: Roger keeps reminding me that I am in my forties and he’s still in his thirties, but he will only be able to say that for a few more weeks.

Roger: Yes.

Anne Marie: We’re parents of two boys, Milo and Finley, and we’ve been living in Seattle for thirteen years now.

Roger: Yep. Moved out here for jobs, both designers by trade. I’m an industrial designer, Amory, textile designer. Both got moved out here for specific jobs and kind of never looked back since.

Anne Marie: Yeah. We had been working in London after graduating university, and that was such a crazy rat race. We did love London and it’s a great place for a young couple, but as we wanted to start a family and move up with our careers, Yeah. We put a fleece out there and it came back really wet because it was in Seattle.

Roger: That’s a good point. It was

Anne Marie: a soggy one. We exchanged one gray rainy city for another. But we love Seattle, and, yeah, we’ve been here thirteen years, and we’ve grown our family here and managed to twist my parents’ arms, and they live here now as well. My sister actually is in Portland, so we’re taking back your country one person at

Roger: a time.

Peter: Obvious accents. I’m sure the audience loves the British accents as well. We all do. Where is it that you all grew up?

Roger: Yeah. Ironically, like twenty minute drive apart, but not knowing that until we actually met at art college. So I’m from a small town called Thrappston. About 3,000 population, kind of a country village. Amory’s from

Anne Marie: I’m from Northampton, is a market town which is about 60 miles north of London. And it was the capital of shoe making industry. And so we provided all the shoes for the world. Wow. It’s a busy little market town, but it’s not quite London.

Roger: It’s

Anne Marie: still countryside. They call us the Cockney Farmers.

Peter: That sounds fun. On the table here we’ve got a huge selection of home goods

Roger: Mhmm.

Peter: From a company called Through the Sea. And I recall having lunch with you all in August

Anne Marie: Yeah.

Peter: Where this was more than a dream Mhmm. But not a reality. No. Now it’s a reality.

Roger: It’s And

Anne Marie: I said it’s a bit like pregnancy, but something’s growing. You don’t see it for a while, and now we’re, you know, we’re about to give birth. So we’ll see how it goes.

Peter: So the name of your new company Mhmm. Is Through The Sea. I’ve mentioned that several times. And I think the Instagram is Through The Sea. Is that right?

Okay. Which is one of your primary and I think your website is throughthesea.com. Yep. I know it is. Let’s talk about through the sea.

What is through the sea?

Anne Marie: So I had worked in the, home design for Nordstrom and Anthropology and Lands End and Fashion. And that’s where I got my industry experience for designing table top goods. So I’d created a lot of beautiful linens and bedding over my career. And I’d always wanted to start my own line of print and pattern driven products. So, we had this desire, but we didn’t really have the why, why we were going to do And I knew that there were things that were really important to me.

I love the sea and the ocean. Being from England, we’re an island people.

Peter: Mhmm. Lots of water.

Anne Marie: Lots of water. And here in Seattle there’s lots of water as well. My nine year old at the time was saying to me, he’s like, Oh mommy, I’ve got a good name for you. And he cracks open his Jesus storybook Bible to the Exodus story. And it talks about God taking His people on a path through a sea.

There is oppressors behind them and they don’t know how they are going to make a way forward, but we believe in a God that can part the waters and make a way. That’s a bit like our business. Didn’t really know what we’re doing.

Roger: Making it up as we go along

Anne Marie: for We knew the design side of things, but we didn’t know very much about production or marketing

Roger: Business, finance.

Anne Marie: No. And we’ve managed to make a way, and we have, yeah, like you said, some lovely products in front of us here today.

Peter: Tell us about the actual products that you have here today.

Roger: Mhmm. So we are launching with a small subset of products. Our two hero products are the table cloth and the placemats. And they’re they’re hero products because they really are symbolic of what we’re trying to achieve with our home goods, and that’s making life both beautiful but simpler and little less chaotic. So they’re our hero products because they’re wipeable and just really easy to clean.

So the idea is that with many tablecloths, they live more in the laundry than they do on a table. And this is a laminated tablecloth, which makes it spill proof and waterproof Mhmm. And wipeable. So family life with our bio kids, with our foster kids, it’s it’s never clean. It’s all life is typically messy.

And so it’s it’s a product that just lets you kind of enjoy dinner times, not stress about the spills that happen with orange juice and things like that. You just wipe it up and carry And similarly with the placemats, they’re wipeable as well, but they’re also heat resistant, which is important to us because we do a lot of our meals as family style. Mhmm. So we kind of bring the cast iron over to the the table, lay it down. So these are up to 280 degrees Fahrenheit.

Peter: So what is this? What it it feels like a hard board of some sort with a design.

Roger: It’s eucalyptus board with a melamine top, which makes it heat resistant Mhmm. And has our beautiful print on it. And they also have a cork backing, which makes them nonslip as well.

Peter: Wow. So how many designs so you is it the four designs that you have for

Roger: the We have kind of the two, prints. Okay. Lush Life and Terrazzo. Then we have two colorways in each.

Peter: I see.

Anne Marie: And I think it’s important to say that you can find, you know, wipeable tablecloths on the market. Sure. But most of them are really bright, garish colors, and the print and pattern is not always sophisticated and modern. Right. And because I have a design background with wonderful companies like Anthropologie and Nordstrom, I know what consumers want.

And we don’t necessarily want prints of bananas and cherries all over our So our prints are really sophisticated and they complement each other. We like the idea of people being able to personalize it a little little bit so they can mix and match. And I like print mixing, which they also pricksing. So, I want people to be a little bit playful and not so matchy matchy.

Roger: And

Anne Marie: that’s sometimes how family life is. Family is not just blood. Family is the people we love.

Roger: And

Anne Marie: it’s a mixing of people’s histories and heritage.

Peter: And all these designs are just really beautiful and very compatible. I mean, obviously, you’re a you guys are pros, so you know what you’re doing here.

Anne Marie: Yeah. The creation of the artwork was a labored over experience. Often when I worked in industry I’d only get like a day to create a piece of artwork. Whereas these, some of the Lush Life print, which is our tropical print, it took me a couple of weeks to make. That’s because I want the print to have longevity and to be really classic, so that it doesn’t go out of fashion and isn’t disposable.

Roger: So,

Anne Marie: yeah, I think that you can see that we care about the details.

Roger: Yeah. I’ll add in terms of caring about the details, the materiality and the longevity was something key to us. We could have used alternative plastics in terms of the laminating process that either wouldn’t have lasted as long as the one we’ve gone with, or they have chemical challenges to them like PVC, which is a common plastic that we use, but that’s Yeah. Chlorine based, and that’s not something we wanted to do. So all of our products are certified kid and food safe, which was important to us as well.

Anne Marie: And also, the placemats are handmade in The UK, twenty minutes away from where we’re from. We really love that, that we’re supporting industries in countries where things are moving away tends to be all out of China these days. And I love that I can pick up the phone and talk to Sue. She’s got the same accent as me, so I know what she’s saying the tone of her voice. Also with the table cloth, the cotton is grown in The USA, it’s printed in The USA, and then it’s laminated here, and then sewn in Seattle.

Peter: Yep. Well, you don’t I think that’s not very common. Just I recall when my kids were younger looking at things and saying, does everything come from China?

Anne Marie: Yeah. I think we could have done it definitely cheaper out of China.

Roger: Mhmm.

Anne Marie: But we care about the details, we want to have kind business practices, and we want people to have an ethical living wage

Roger: Yep.

Anne Marie: That are making our products.

Peter: Got it. I’m curious about the actual launch plan.

Roger: Mhmm.

Peter: Just from a sort of a business and marketing perspective. What what does that look like?

Roger: My experience working as a design consultant in a lot of design and technology fields Mhmm. Crowdfunding has been something that’s become more and more commonplace for a lot of startups. And so with my experience, it just seemed like the natural first step for us to go with a crowdfunding option. So we’re launching through Kickstarter. So I had a bit of experience, through my previous company with that.

We’d done a campaign on that that was successful in the past, and we’ve had clients use it as well. So that made sense for us.

Peter: So is there a is there a date when you’re going live with Kickstarter?

Anne Marie: We hope to go live on Monday. Yes. You have to get your your proposal approved, and I think that’s all approved now. And

Roger: Yes. Now it’s just a few minor tweaks. And then in terms of the marketing thing, it’s just lining up the right people to make them aware that the campaign’s going live at the right time and hopefully getting some buzz from that. And then we’ll see where we where we end up.

Anne Marie: Mhmm. And Kickstarter is a place that lots of designers spend a lot of time finding newness and ethically based businesses. So we really think those are our tribe, that’s our people that are going to sort of resonate with our story.

Peter: Yeah. Kickstarter is I’ve funded a few things on Kickstarter. There’s some great, great products on there. Yeah. I’ve seen it.

It seems like a and it seems you’re very far down the path. I mean, you already have products sitting right in front of me. Yep. So it’s not like we have this idea, so we’re gonna go on a Kickstarter. It’s like, no, we have this idea.

Anne Marie: We’ve got all of our partners lined up, ready to go, so we just need to say, okay, the Kickstarter was successful, and now we need to order this Everything is approved, and yeah, we’ll just place the order as soon as it finishes in December.

Roger: Great. That’s the advantage with our product is that we don’t have big tooling costs that a lot of kind of technology products would have. Right. So in terms of our goal, it’s it’s pretty reasonable, and it’s really about ordering the inventory that we have, but that we want to start selling.

Peter: So Kickstarter is, in some respects, kind of a a scaling slash financing solution. Yeah. Yeah. For you in this case. That’s great.

That’s I can’t wait to I can’t wait to see the campaign. We’ll be sure to have links to the Kickstarter campaign as soon as it’s live, and I’m sure if you follow through the sea as well, you’ll see the links. I’m sure you will be all over social media.

Anne Marie: I will be posting and reminding everyone probably daily on the Instagram and the stories.

Peter: Great. Great. So why, and maybe you’ve touched on it a little bit, but why did you start the company now?

Anne Marie: Okay, well, that’s a deep question. We get deep real quick. So two years ago we started fostering the process to become foster parents and we’ve had four little girls in our home over the last twelve months and we realized very early on that the system is so broken. There is brokenness within the biological family. There is so few resources.

Social workers turnover is very, very quick. People get burnt out. Foster families usually last a year and a half. Wow. Because there’s very little support.

And I said to Roger, we just have to leverage what we have in our hands right now, which is our design skills, to serve these kids from hard places and bring awareness to their plight. And the crisis that we’re in in The United States. There is about half a million kids in the foster care system in The USA, and about 100,000 children waiting for adoptive families. And it’s just heartbreaking. These are real kids that should be in families.

Yeah. So, with our story, we had one little girl that was with us for seven months who we really loved and adored. It wasn’t easy by any stretch, no.

Roger: Toughest year we’ve had.

Anne Marie: Yeah, was a really hard year. And we didn’t take any respite, we didn’t have many resources, we didn’t have experienced trauma therapists. I think we didn’t even acknowledge the word trauma. You think of just a child needing a safe, warm place and a parent, But they’ve faced real adversity in their life and seen things that children shouldn’t see, which causes damage to their brain. Their brains do not work in the same way as a normal attached child that has not experienced trauma.

So we had standard therapists that gave us standard parenting advice, which didn’t really work. And in fact it added fuel to the fire. So we got to the point where we called our agency and we said we really don’t know what to do. And they said, Okay, we’re going to go away and we’ll get back to you. And they called us a day later and they said, We have a family that has more expertise than you.

They’ve been fostering for a couple of years and we’re going to move that little girl. And I was devastated. It was like someone was taking my child away. It was like a child had died and I shut down for

Roger: It was a dark time.

Anne Marie: It was a really dark time, and I know it was really hard for her because when she went to this new home she did not transition well, and that so called expert family only lasted six weeks. And she moved again. So at this point, my ears were open to finding out about dealing with trauma and National Angels came to light as an organization that started by this wonderful woman Susan Ramirez out of Austin, Texas. And what they do is they aim to minimize the moves that foster children have by providing mentorship, intentional giving and community around children care and their caregivers. And I thought, that is exactly what we wished we would have had.

If we would have had that support, then maybe this little girl wouldn’t keep moving from place to place. And so we started a dialogue with Susan and we got on like a house on fire. You know, our ideals just really were running parallel. And the really exciting thing is they’re growing so fast and they have how many chapters do they have?

Roger: They’re going to be up to 30 in the New Year, I believe.

Anne Marie: Yeah, so Susan’s vision is that every major metropolitan city has a chapter of National Angels, And Seattle is getting one in January, which So is really if you are a foster family and you are needing that extra support, I’d encourage you to reach out to National Angels.

Roger: See if there is a chapter where you Yeah. Are

Anne Marie: Find your local chapter and learn about TBRI, which is trust based relational intervention, is really good for dealing with trauma care.

Peter: Okay.

Anne Marie: Yeah, it’s different type of parenting.

Roger: I mean, we’d been foster parents for maybe nine months in total. Yeah. And I think it was just that realization that although we’re doing a great thing being foster parents, was there something else that we could do on top of that? Mhmm. And that’s where the discussion of, like, well, how do we use our gifts that we’re using for other purposes every day for our employers at the time.

We just started that discussion of like, well, is there something we could do as designers Sure. That could help the problem? I

Anne Marie: think that most people don’t know that there is a foster crisis happening in The USA. So even if we speak up to that, it’s a call to action for other foster families to step forward. You may be empty nesters, you could be a single mom. You don’t have to be married to be a foster family. And we need people to stand up.

Also, the reason we started with these table top goods was because we do life around the table and we believe that everyone is welcome to the table. No matter their opinions, their color, their gender, everyone is welcome And to the so it just felt natural we start there, because a lot of that healing we had with our foster daughters was at the table. That’s where they shared their stories. That’s where we prayed for their biological families, all the members by name. That’s where we fed them really yummy home cooked meals

Roger: that

Anne Marie: got their nutrition up. And

Roger: Yeah. It’s really hard as a family to get everyone together if it’s really not around food.

Peter: Right. Right. That’s true.

Roger: Typically, people wanna come together when there’s food. Exactly. Kids are all in their separate rooms. Yeah. It’s hard to connect our bio kids with foster kids and just start some of that relationship building.

And so the table, I don’t know, just became this

Anne Marie: Very symbolic. Right? Symbolic Yeah.

Roger: Meeting point for everything we were trying to achieve with

Peter: our family. So one of the things that I I probably should have prompted you on is this statement here on the front of the postcard. So what do you wanna tell us what that says and Yeah. It’s a bit of came about?

Roger: Of a slogan, home goods that do good. We had a business coach, which was a free service through

Anne Marie: Score.

Roger: Score in Seattle. Mhmm. And we were going back and forth with ideas, and he was like, you’ve really gotta try and distill this down a bit more simply. Mhmm. And that’s where the home goods that do good kind of tagline came from.

Anne Marie: It was him. He was like, you are basically just home goods that do good. That’s it. And I was like, Oh, thank you. We’ve been racking our brains over that for some time.

Peter: And I think there’s one thing you didn’t mention is that I saw somewhere that there’s actually a charity piece of your company.

Anne Marie: Yep. Yes.

Peter: So why don’t you tell us about that?

Anne Marie: So once the Kickstarter is finalized and we launch our own website, then we will be giving 10% of our profits to National Angels because we really believe in what they’re doing. Mhmm. And foster families really need their support.

Roger: Yep. So the funds, how they’re used by National Angels, it costs around $75 to get a child into their love box program.

Peter: Okay.

Roger: And then once they’re in the love box program, they’re basically paired with a a small group of volunteers, around six to eight people that consistently come around that foster family. So not just the foster kid itself, but the entire family, any other kids they have in the home. And they they do those points that Amory was talking about. So in terms of intentional giving, the foster family are able to say, hey, this month we’re in need of and it could be

Anne Marie: Shampoo or socks, you know,

Roger: the Anything things like that that. Maybe the kid is about to start soccer season Yeah. And they need shin guards or whatever it is. Yeah. So they’re getting intentionally purchased gifts for the for the specific task.

And then they these volunteers come around and help in terms of the respite that the foster family needs. They can come in. We heard a fantastic story, down. We’re at a recent charity gala for National Angels, and one of the stories we heard was this child that was really struggling. The the foster mom at the time was really struggling with some of the behavior Mhmm.

Some of the destruction that was happening in her home. Mhmm. And the love box crew, the volunteers came around and said, hey, we know of a boxing club locally. Let us come down. We’ll pick up the the boy.

Yeah. We’ll take him out and do the boxing, and then we’ll take him out, have him fed, and then we’ll bring him back. So not only was this kid able to more appropriately express themselves Yeah. But the foster family was getting kind of a three hour window to themselves. Yeah.

Some of that respite that they can have with their own bio kids and things like that. And as a result, the the kid is not having those destructive tendencies in the home. He’s not medicated anymore. They’ve they’ve come off their medication, which was to try and stop that behavior. Their concentration has gone up in school.

Their grades have gone up in school. And I think it just speaks to the power of when you have volunteers, it’s not a big ask, right? We’re talking like an hour or two a week. Yeah. But that can be monumental in a kid’s life that hasn’t had those opportunities, that hasn’t had that community, those mentors to really show them a different a different way forward.

Anne Marie: And we’ve we’re fully aware that not every family can be a foster family. But there are ways that we can all help foster children. So that might mean going into a school and saying, hey, are there some kids that need reading with? Or, you know, buying the socks for the love box. There’s so many ways that we can serve.

And these are our children. Those are all members of our nation. So we need to step up.

Roger: You can also buy home goods to provide funds.

Peter: Can support through

Anne Marie: the sea, I think you’ll find lots of education and resources on our Instagram and That’s

Roger: a big part of it as well, is us just bringing greater awareness to the problem, but also pointing people in the right direction for ways to help.

Peter: That’s so that’s such a powerful story. Are you ready for the crazy success you’re gonna have with this?

Roger: I don’t know.

Anne Marie: Well, it’s we’re quite apprehensive Yeah. Because we’ve really invested everything. And like I said, it’s like a a third child or and we just don’t know how it’s

Roger: going to That’s part of the story we haven’t discussed really was how we got the funds to really start this and the time. So as we mentioned earlier, we moved out here four jobs. My job was with a company called Teague, and I’d stayed with that company for the entire time in Seattle. It’s eleven and a half years. Wow.

I had aspirations of taking the CEO’s job in the in the future. I had no desire to leave. Was super content and we were doing I mean, we were just working on some incredible projects. Yeah. Amazon, Google, like all all the Starbucks.

Big tech companies you can imagine up here in Seattle, Starbucks. And it just came about that we’d had a rough period financially, and we were gonna have to make some cuts. And it Yeah. And it really dawned on me that I was gonna have to be a part of this. And sure enough, it came around ironically on Good Friday is when I heard the good news.

Was I was given

Peter: appointment why they called it Good Friday.

Roger: Yeah. I was given an appointment for early Monday morning, a one on one, and I’d I’d really processed what that had meant, especially over that weekend. So sure enough, Monday came, and I had the the black envelope

Peter: Yeah.

Roger: With a severance package in front of me and I was being laid off. And I think, I don’t know, we we’ve tried to look at it as a positive Mhmm. From the get go. I’ve really seen it as an opportunity. It’s like, okay.

It’s maybe gonna take time to get a new job. Mhmm. So what what can we do with the time that we have and the severance package that we have? I mean, we could we could be wise maybe and save it or invest it or do those other things or

Anne Marie: Blow it all up.

Roger: Hide it under our bed for a rainy day or blow it on table cloth and places.

Peter: Or take off and go to Hawaii for a few days. Could have done that.

Anne Marie: But it was really a blessing because I had been to the point where I was wanting to start a business, and I had the name, and Roger had already designed the logo for me. And I was really frustrated. And I was like, I want a business partner that can really help support the design process, but also is a little bit more process orientated than I am.

Peter: And

Anne Marie: so I had been praying about that, and I wanted someone who had the same kind of faith as me, who cared about children from hard places and also was an expert in their field. And that was the answer, guess. Roger Jackson came to work for me.

Roger: Full time.

Anne Marie: And our family therapist that we use when we have foster kids and dealing with grief and loss, she reframed it for us. It was such a wonderful opportunity for us to have time to deal with that loss of the little girl, and to regroup with our kids, and just get ready for the next placement. Yeah. So really, it has been positive all the way around, but challenging for sure.

Roger: Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny, like, being there for so long and doing that commute every day Yeah. Downtown, you you forget about the simple things in life that you can miss out on, like just riding the bike to school with the boys. And so the summer was awesome for that.

Like, I really got to just bond with them. Simple thing like a five, ten minute walk or bike ride to school and packing their lunches. Like, all those things that I was up and out of the house and then I was getting back in late with the job. It’s been a blessing on that front as well.

Peter: So it’s brought maybe some peace or more peace or just zen or just I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, it sounds like a crazy adventure guys run.

Roger: I don’t know. A healthy balance.

Anne Marie: Yeah. Some balance and some excitement.

Roger: And some stresses, some unknowns. We, I mean, we are winging it as as we go.

Peter: We’re all winging it, Roger. Let’s be honest here. Totally. Aren’t we all winging it? So, wow, that is an amazing story.

And I I just have no doubt that, it’s gonna turn out just I mean, it’s already turned out. I mean, we met in August, and you didn’t have any of this stuff there. And now we’re

Roger: We had a mood board. Yeah. We had some pretty pictures. And

Peter: now we’ve got all this materials here. So it sounds like a crazy journey, but just a journey that sounds like you’re doing it for all the right reasons. Right?

Anne Marie: Yep. I want everyone to have a stylish table. I want people to be encouraged to invite people to their table, feel competent at hosting. And, you know, we’ve been the foreigners that have had to be on the outside when we moved to The States. So, we had people invite us for Thanksgiving and host us.

And and I would like other people to extend that as well from their table and make people feel welcome.

Peter: If I were to give you both a reset button, what’s the one thing you would do differently?

Anne Marie: That’s a hard one. I mean, not starting fostering. Putting the blinkers back on maybe. No. No.

Not at all. I think I think it has changed our hearts and expanded our hearts and we’ve grown as individuals. We’ve become more compassionate and less judgmental. You first get into fostering and you think, well how could these parents do this to these children? This shouldn’t be happening in America.

And then you realize it’s cyclical and they have been treated the same way and your judgment falls away and it’s replaced with compassion. And judgment is not going to help anything. So I think if we could have had a layer of compassion from the beginning, I think that would have been, that would have served everyone a lot better.

Roger: Yeah. From a business perspective, it’s maybe a little tough to say just yet. Maybe in a few months we might be like, hindsight will

Peter: Save it up.

Roger: Will teach us something that we should have done differently. I think Google is amazing. Right? Yeah. Like we I have Googled so many things from making sure all our labels have the right requirements The legal.

All the legal stuff. I Yeah. I mean, I spent a day just reading washing instruction legal requirements. Right? And it’s not like we know people.

Right. It’s just we know Google and and we know how to type stuff in. So that that’s been huge for us. Wow. But We’ll come back.

Yeah. Think

Peter: We’re gonna interview guys again after this Kickstarter’s fully funded and Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Roger: Part two. Yes.

Peter: Yes. For sure. Part two. So what does business done well mean to you? So the title of our podcast is business and life done well.

I kinda leave the interpretation open, but I would be just I’d love to hear what you all think about that.

Anne Marie: Yeah. I’ve been curious about that because I’ve been part of corporate America for the last fifteen years. Yeah. And I I you know, Starbucks just had three fifty layoffs yesterday at their corporate office, and that can be brutal. We’ve all been parts of layoffs.

I said to a friend, Is there a way to do your business so it is in align with your core values? And I think our core values is people really matter. Everyone is equal. People are given a purpose in life, and we should help people see their purpose and help them to be able to walk in their purposes. So I think business done well for me is treating people well.

Yeah, it’s all about people. And I love people, so that’s why.

Roger: Yeah, I think of some of the principles we’ve tried to build this company around Mhmm. Is trusted, kindness, and for us specifically creative as well. So to think through problems creatively, find the right solutions, treat people with kindness, whether that’s the vendors that are helping us to fulfill this, whether it’s on the opposite side of this when we start having customers and how we respond to their needs. Mhmm. Kind to

Anne Marie: the environment.

Roger: Kind to the environment. So the choices we’ve made in terms of materials and all of that. Mhmm. I think that helps us sleep well at night Mhmm. Knowing that we are trying to tick as many boxes as we can.

Mhmm. And that helps us in terms of that business and life done well, is finding that balance and knowing that we’re being honest with ourselves and authentic as we move through this.

Anne Marie: Yeah. In the arts and crafts movement, honesty and truth to materials was really important. I think we’ve got away from that. We have an awful lot of things posing as one thing when it’s something else. And so, with our product, I wanted it to have this truth to materials.

So, we’re using really lovely fabrics. We’ve got the linens, we’ve got the cork, and our table cloth, it’s not just a flat plastic, it’s got a nice linen sort of slub and feel to it. So, truth to materials and true in our business practices and Honesty.

Roger: Mhmm.

Anne Marie: Honesty is the best policy. That’s what my mom told me.

Peter: Who inspires you and why?

Anne Marie: I’m really inspired by some of the foster parents that are doing the really hard things that don’t give up. I’ve

Roger: got

Anne Marie: a particular friend who has two kids of her own. She’s adopted two girls from China and she tells me I’m never done. And she’s had three foster daughters, and she continues, she does the real hard work. We’re just designing, we’re making things pretty.

Roger: But

Anne Marie: I’m inspired by those people who really are impacting lives.

Roger: Yeah. I think when we think of the brand and things like that, it’s people that have paved the way for us to be able to do the things that we’re trying to do. So you can think of Toms in terms of that Yeah. Really pioneering that kind of profit for purpose Mhmm. Business model.

I think of

Peter: Tom shoes?

Roger: Yeah. Yeah. K. Elon Musk as well. Mhmm.

Maybe not some of his work ethics. I know he I know he’s kind of a twenty four seven kind of guy. But the that desire, that craving to say things can be done differently and we can impact the world in a positive way Mhmm. By finding finding alternative energy sources and showing that if you communicate clearly, if you care about the quality of the product you’re bringing to market, then people will buy into that because people do care about the details. They care about that.

And I think the success that Tesla has had in the automotive industry, I think you will see them have a similar impact in solar in terms of the roofing business. I don’t know if you’re Mhmm. Fully aware of what he’s doing there. But I think people like that that just challenge the status quo in terms of how things are done. Design

Anne Marie: matters. That’s something that we always say, design really matters and it can change the world. We are unique as humans because we are always creating and we are made to be creative. Right. And know, animals, birds just make the same kind of nests over and over again.

And you know, we can think through the problems. And, yeah, it’s a really unique process.

Peter: Yep. Are you guys ready for the wild success? I mean, I’m

Anne Marie: Well, we’ve already got a lot of friends and family that are standing alongside us and cheering us on. There’s been so many people that have been part of that process, so we’re really thankful for them. And, yeah, we hope we have massive impact. We really want to be able to support National Angels, their initiative to wrap that community around kids and family in care. So we had better be successful.

We’ve got a really big problem on our hands here in The US. So this is one way to tackle it. And this is just our way of tackling it. We’re using our skill sets to just make an impact. This is all I know how to do, make pretty patterns and color things.

That’s what you get. That’s the way I serve this issue.

Peter: But you’re one of the world’s top experts at it. I mean, you know, I mean, just looking at these patterns, it’s it’s amazing

Roger: what I think you said someone may be a bit biased.

Anne Marie: I do love what I do.

Peter: What is what is one book that you all would recommend?

Anne Marie: I really like Imperfect Courage by Jessica Honiger. And in that she has a business called Noonday Collection and it’s a socially conscious fashion brand. And her story also involves adoption, and she just encourages everyone to go scared. We are all scared, we all have fear, but march on forward anyway. And she’s got some really wonderful stories and insights in that book.

Yeah.

Roger: Yeah. This one might be a little out of left field, but Pete Carroll’s Win Forever

Peter: is it’s a good book.

Roger: I’m a big sports fan, but I think what Pete really centers on and you can apply all of the principles to a business as well. This isn’t about making your sports team win, But the the clarity of having a philosophy, living it through day by day in all the choices that you make is critical. And I think that’s something, even if Amri wouldn’t admit it, it’s maybe a trait or a character we’ve taken on board with this is that we do have a a good sense of what we’re trying to do, and it’s it’s impacting every choice we make from the place that we choose to get our cardboard boxes from, from the type of print we’re creating, from the mills that we use, who is selling our product. Like Mhmm. There are a lot of options out there for all of those services.

But being clear on our philosophy, being clear on what we’re trying to achieve and the ethics and the authenticity behind it is leading us to clear choices in each of those options.

Peter: So it’s making some of the decisions easier.

Roger: Yeah. Yeah. Because you have a philosophy that you can fall back upon.

Peter: Right.

Roger: I think and also from a personal standpoint, I just if you have the opportunity even just to watch Pete Carroll’s press conferences, I make a point of doing it just from, this might sound weird, but a people management skill set. His ability to talk about, the entire organization, whether that’s the the kick guy, the star quarterback, the owner. He there’s an authenticity to the his relationship with each of those people and how that manifests with the words that he chooses and the way that he praises and builds those people up to achieve what they’re fully capable of achieving. I think that’s something we’re hoping to do in people as well. We’re we’re here to encourage others that foster care can be an option for them.

They can be foster parents. And if that’s not in the path, then we have other avenues and other statistics and ways to impact kids in foster care.

Anne Marie: I think we both really loved Bob Goff’s Loved Us as well. And we can get at times preachy, but that’s not going to help anyone. It’s actually, you know, taking the bull by the horns and doing something. Getting some skin in the game risk and doing something. So we really love just doing something now in faith and just being sure that we have a Father in heaven that is with us on this, and he’s doing this with us.

We’re just yeah. It’s a great He’s very humorous.

Peter: Yes. Yeah. That’s a that’s a great book, Love Does. I’ve had an opportunity to hear him in a very small group of about 40 people at the Pepperdine Law School.

Roger: Mhmm.

Peter: And he just is super inspiring and Incredible storyteller. And and a little wacky crazy.

Anne Marie: Yeah. He doesn’t have a plan, and he just goes and does stuff. And I think that gave us a little bit of confidence because we were like, okay, we can work this out as we go, because you know, you can get ahead of yourself, like, who’s gonna do fulfillment, and who’s gonna, you know, who our retail partner’s gonna be, just tackling things and working it out as you go.

Peter: So if we wanted to step alongside you all and help out, what are the are the best things? I think I might know the answer, but I’d love to hear it from you all.

Anne Marie: Talk about us on social media, and thank you for having us here to do this podcast, purchase our products. Mhmm. We’d like the opportunity to be able to host gatherings where we speak about foster care and our experience, and then also sell our products. I think meeting with people face to face is really powerful, and making connections. Like I said, I love people, so really it’s just an excuse to meet some more people.

Peter: Yeah. You’re by the way, Anne Marie is just smiling really big here. Know

Roger: you can’t see

Peter: it on the audio, but big smile.

Anne Marie: I’m a number seven.

Peter: Big smile. Oh, okay.

Anne Marie: Yeah. Okay. Enthusiast.

Peter: Got it. Got it. That’s the Enneagram. I don’t even know if I said it right. But Yep.

Yep. Okay. I’m not sure where I fit on that. I’ll get back to you.

Anne Marie: Roger’s a number nine, so he’s a great supporter

Roger: to have. Yeah.

Peter: Are you do you buy into the Enneagram?

Roger: I filled out a quiz at the request of the wife, and that’s as far as I got. But she is very much enthralled by the concept of it. Let’s say that.

Anne Marie: Yeah. I’m learning more.

Peter: Yeah. Good. So kind of in closing, what what else do you wanna tell us? Is it was there anything else we haven’t covered that you really wanna share with us today?

Anne Marie: Buy some products. Love some children from hard places. Also love their biological families really hard. They may not have had that before. That looks like making them a turkey box, sending them flowers, telling them you’re you’re with them and you’re for them, because there’s nothing more magnificent than seeing a family healed and reunited.

Peter: Well, thank you all for coming today and being on the podcast. I’m just honored to have you here today.

Anne Marie: For having us, Pete.

Roger: Thank you.

Peter: Thanks for listening to this episode of Biz and Life Done Well with Peter Wilson. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most of the other popular podcast platforms. Please tell your friends about us and leave us a review so even more people will find out about us. Thanks again. We’ll see you soon.