Growing Up in Silicon Valley

Mary and Ann are sisters, eight years apart, with two brothers in between them and parents who raised them to make their wildest dreams happen. They grew up in what is now known as Silicon Valley, the epicenter of tech, wealth and opportunity. But their childhood was centered around family, hard work, and making memories... thanks to their parents.

They are both entrepreneurs now, with a myriad of small businesses between them and they both left the land of tech-based opportunity for product or served based businesses in Nashville and rural California.

This podcast episode was recorded in February 2021.

Mary: Welcome to Boots and Bangles! We are the Small Business Sisters. I’m Mary Heffernan of Five Marys Farms.

Ann: And I’m Ann Williams, founder of Yearly Company.

Mary: Welcome to the Boots and Bangles podcast, the Small Business Sisters. Today, on our first episode, we are going to talk about growing up in Silicon Valley.

Ann: Yes, a lot of people don’t know that Mary and I grew up in such a tech heavy area. And I think it’s kind of funny that we are now product based entrepreneurs. But we take so many lessons from growing up in that area.

Mary: And when we were growing up there, it wasn’t called Silicon Valley. It was called the Bay Area. It’s between San Francisco and San Jose, in Northern California. It was a great place to grow up. It’s just changed so much since we were little. And Ann and I are actually eight years apart.

Ann: It’s hard to believe.

Mary: I’m the oldest and we have two brothers in between, James and Jerry, and Ann was the baby. I was eight years old when she was born. My brothers were six and four. And we called her Baby Ann.

Ann: Still do!

Mary: Right from the beginning and still do, literally my phone says ‘Baby Ann.’ Her Auntie name is Aba for Auntie Baby Ann, because you can’t just not call her Baby Ann. But in those eight years a lot changed in the Bay Area. Really between growing up, like our high school experiences were really different.

Ann: Very different.

Mary: Yeah. We went to the same high school. Our brothers went to Catholic school. Ann and I went to another.

Ann: Yeah, the difference in our experiences, I mean, our parents came to Menlo Park because it’s a beautiful town. The weather everyone will tell you is absolutely amazing.

Mary: It’s like perfect all year long.

Ann: It pretty much is.

Mary: No humidity, there’s no bugs.

Ann: No humidity, no bugs. It is a lot different from Tennessee. But it was just a beautiful place to grow up and had great schools. Our dad was a lawyer for many, many years at the same firm. So it was just like a very stable and honestly kind of idyllic childhood.

Mary: A lot of the families we were friends with had been there for generations, but it was honestly more like a small town when we grew up there. And that was how we were raised, you know, is everybody riding their bikes around, you know, we lived in the country. So there was no sidewalks. My dad got us a golf card at one point, we just drove the golf cart around town and picked up neighbors.

Ann: Yeah, we once, well I was little, but bought a trampoline from a neighbor and rolled it down the street to bring it home. It had like no guards on the edges. You know, it’s just the springs.

Mary: I negotiated my babysitting money, I think I paid like 50 bucks. So that trampoline, it was totally worth it.

Ann: But I think one of the things I’ve thought about lately is that the area was so different back then. And we grew up with kids and families who are from different, you know, backgrounds. Like my friend’s dad’s were all different professions. And you’re definitely exposed to a ranch of incomes and lifestyles. Now it’s pretty much tech-based, I think pretty much everyone there is somehow involved in tech. And we’ve really seen the rise of that happening like throughout our high school and middle school years. High school for me. And it was really eye opening and really interesting. I mean, all of those stories you hear about Google and Facebook and all of those companies being you know, formed in garages, a lot of that was happening in the towns around us where we grew up.

Mary: Yeah. So in the year 2000, I graduated from college, I went to school in Virginia at the College of William and Mary, moved back home to take the MCAT. I remember looking for an apartment and it was like $3,000, you know, for a studio apartment even then. So luckily, I serendipitously ran into friends on the sidewalk who were looking for a tutor for their son in exchange for living in their little guest cottage. And that’s kind of how I got on the path of starting academic trainers and not going to medical school. But it worked out really well for me to you know, have my own place that I could afford, which is so hard for people, even today. It’s just gone up from there. But in 2000, you were, still in high school?

Ann: Yeah, starting. I graduated from eighth grade in 2000.

Mary: You’re a baby.

Ann: We always laugh about this because my husband, Pat, is actually a little bit older than Mary. So whenever we talk about these years, I’m like, oh yeah, Pat would have been out of college. So I graduated from eighth grade and went, you know, off to the same high school that Mary had gone to, the little Catholic school in our town, a sacred heart school. But you know, a California version of a Catholic School, which is pretty easy going, co-Ed, no uniforms. I had the most amazing experience there. But looking back, I realized just what was really going on in the world of tech at the time. I mean, we had everything we could ever need as kids, we were very fortunate. But there were families with multiple homes and planes, and you know, just living a very different lifestyle. And we were exposed to that, I was exposed to it very early. And it was such a good lesson, because our parents were just friends with everybody, did not care who did what, you know, didn’t focus on that.

Mary: They never got wrapped up in it.

Ann: Never got wrapped up in it. And if any of us had gotten wrapped up in it - they would have very quickly, you know, told us that we couldn’t have out with those kinds of people anymore. If we’re acting, you know, wealth was more important than integrity, and just being good people and good friends.

Mary: Yeah, and growing up, I mean, we were very fortunate. But, you know, my dad worked really hard to provide for us and it must have been hard for him to feel like he had to compete, because there were so many people that were just all of a sudden, like, the world was changing. And, you know, there’s a lot of income levels in Silicon Valley that are crazy. But I think that’s when we saw my dad’s work ethic, was you know, he was up at 5 in the morning, every morning, his car was the first one in the parking lot at work every day. He would still come into all of our rooms before he went to work and give us a kiss goodbye. And he’d get home in time for dinner, but he worked a lot. He really instilled in us that like nothing is going to be given to you, you know. I remember there were times asking for something and he’d just look at me like, ‘yeah?’ like ‘you’re going to pay for it?’ and it’s like, yep… I need to work a little more.

Ann: I had maybe a little less of that being the baby.

Mary: That’s true.

Ann: By the time they got to me, there was a little more, you know, spoiling going on there. But there were still plenty of times when, you know, I had a job in sixth grade sweeping hair at the local hair salon. I remember loving it and being like, I can make my own money. My brothers, our brothers, were coming in and stealing money out of my drawer constantly.

Mary: You were the bank!

Ann: They called me Bank of Ann.

Mary: They had told my mom for weeks that they’re just getting their lunch money from the B of A, and she’s like, ‘oh, they’re so responsible getting their own money out of a debit card.’ And she thought the B of A was the Bank of American, but they actually meant the Bank of Ann.

Ann: Yes. They owed me a lot of money. So those were the early days… I wonder if I charged interest?

Mary: Our brothers worked at the gas station.

Ann: Yes, I remember begging dad to work at the gas station. Mostly because I thought their uniforms were cool. And he was like ‘No, you’re a girl.’ I think I was like 14, like you’re not going to work alone at the gas station.

Mary: You had to work in the dark, like the 5AM shift. But we all had jobs. I had two jobs, all of high school. I did my own kind of entrepreneurial stuff. I did Mary’s Summer Fun Camp in the backyard. My mom was always super helpful. I remember coming up with these crazy ideas. She would never say like ‘that’s too much work.’ But like, I can’t imagine how much work that was for my mom - for me to have 30 kids in her backyard all day during the summer. But, she was you know, in there baking bread with them and making lunch and she was always really supportive of, you know, encouraging us and helping us to kind of learn to provide for ourselves.

Ann: Yeah.

Mary: But we all had jobs, which was not the norm.

Ann: And I think when we talk about the good old days, if you think about that, like childhood growing up on that street, I mean, we had neighbors who were best friends and we just went back and forth between houses. Our mom did the afternoon pick up, the other moms did the morning, because Jannie sleeps in and we love that. But it was like, we just had a lot of freedom, but also, you now, expectations with the responsibilities that came along with that. But we were so encouraged to try things out and figure it out and solve your own problems. I think that resourcefulness was something that our parents like inadvertently taught us that was going to lead us to this entrepreneurial life.

Mary: Yeah and our mom was a stay at home mom, but she was like, the best at it ever. She had her own life. You know, she always loved to socialize with her friends. She was a super-crafter, sewer, knitter, she was always getting together with different groups and working for the schools. Our parents loved to socialize and have dinner parties and see their friends. It wasn’t like we were the center of the universe, you know, I think it’s similar to what we do now. More with work and with socializing, but like, we have our own lives and our kids fit into that life. I remember the pediatrician told us that, when we first had Francie, ‘Okay, this baby’s coming into your life. You’re not walking into her’s.’

Ann: Yeah, that’s not the message very much anymore. That’s a good pediatrician.

Mary: Yeah. I think it models for your kids to grow up and do something productive, not, you know, cater to your kid’s desires.

Ann: Yeah, there was definitely a messages, like, obvisouly we are the center of their world, they loved us so much. And we’re so good to us and gave us everything. But, it was not the message that we got to make all the choices like we were the parents in the situation. Like, all in all, they did have their own lives. It was more important for them to be able to teach us those lessons and not to do everything to cater to us. And I definitely saw growing up in those families where the parents had worked really hard to earn this lifestyle. And then the kids all of a sudden became in charge. It was like, they’re kind of spoiling themselves by spoiling their kids.

Mary: I think one thing we really noticed too, as the years went by, parents really catered towards their kids, and it was really like everything, like what activities do you have this weekend, birthday parties, keeping your kids entertained. Where we were like, here’s some dirt and a golf cart, go have fun, for like five years. But, you know, I think it really sets a standard when kids graduate from college when they’ve just ben catered to the entire time. There’s no place to start. There’s no started job out of college, where you’re catered to by anybody. When it’s all about the kids. it’s all about, you know, entertaining them and keeping them happy and keeping them engaged.

Ann: Building a resume.

Mary: It is, yeah. You know, they flop in the world like, wait… who is catering to me and I’m not living in this crappy apartment, like I lived a lap of luxury my whole life. I think that’s really important. You know, when my parents bought an old house, I was nine. You were one.

Ann: When we moved in, I was three, but I guess, was I that young when they were -

Mary: When we bought it, yeah. My mom loves old houses and historical things. And she found this old house above blocks. It had 175 broken window panes and it was set for demolition, which is Silicon Valley is, you know, all you do now is demo a house and build a new one. And my mom found this house and was like, ‘I want the whole thing. I want to restore it.’ And she asked the guy at the demolition sale if she could buy the house after - she must have called dad at work, ‘Okay, here’s what I’m thinking.’ Dad was a saint because he went along with this. They bought this old house, no plumbing, the chimney had fallen down, the windows were all broken.

Ann: There was a beehive the size of a refrigerator in one of the attics.

Mary: Yeah, because the lady who lived there had eaten TV dinners and thrown them in at attic for years. We called it the haunted house. We were like scared of it. But also thought it was kind of cool. Yeah. And my parents bought that house and then bought a lot on the street when we moved to the house. I’ll never forget that day. We got to stay home from school, it was raining, and they’re moving this house on plywood and all these wheels and it took us a long time to fix that house up. So we rented a little two bedroom house while we were fixing it up. And honestly, that’s partly what’s kept Brian and I in our tiny cabin - because in looking back on my childhood, those years in that two bedroom house with four of my siblings in the same room was like some of the most memorable days of my life.

Ann: Yeah, those were some of my earliest memories, like little flashes. I mean, I was like two or three, but I can physically remember being in a sleeping bag on the floor or watching TV in that living room. And we slept on mattresses in one bedroom on the floor.

Mary: I was always like using graph paper to figure out how I could rearrange the mattresses. At one point your crib mattress was like at the door and you were rolling into the bathroom floor and dad would come in and pick you up and he’s like, Mary, you have to move the baby’s bed. She’s like sleeping on the cold tile.

Ann: Yeah. Anytime I hear about people renovating a house now. And I mean, I would fall into this category. You know, people think ‘Oh, we have to be comfortable and have everything we have.’ And then I think like my parents did it with a two bedroom house with four kids. I don’t know how they did it, but they did.

Mary: And we loved it. It was great.

Ann: Yeah, kids don’t care about space.

Mary: And when we moved into the house that they live in now, which is beautiful. We love going home. We love that house, but it literally took 20 years to get to that point. When we moved in, it was like barely letting the electrical be turned on.

Ann: Longer than that because Jannie wanted to redo that kitchen. You know, our home. And she finally got her like dream kitchen renovation when I had Brennan. So I was 27. So it took 24 years.

Mary: No, it’s true. It was just doing a little bit at a time as they could do it. On the weekends, one little project at a time. But, that also taught us a lot of you, you know, you don’t just get what you want when you want it. Mom had to prioritize what projects do I need? And what do I want done? You know, we were kind of along for the ride. But yeah.

Ann: Yeah, that’s such an amazing example. The other day when I was visiting mom and dad, they showed me that window in the den, that little room. And mom said they couldn’t find a window that would fit there. They went to a salvage yard and got a french door with glass that was gonna match up and she had the guy cut it down and put it in. He was like laughing at her, but it worked. Versus somebody being like, ‘Oh, we have to get a custom window.’ I mean, yeah, it was resourceful and they figured it out and made sure that it kind of went with the period of the house because it takes a lot to restore a home that’s vintage.

Mary: Yeah, and really do it well.

Ann: And they did it the right way. It takes being our age now to understand what that actually entailed… while having four kids running around.

Mary: Yeah, it took 25 or 30 years to get there. So in 2000, I moved back. Ann was just entering high school. I think that was actually a really fun time for us. Because growing up, I was like your second mom. I would wake up in the night and get you bottles, like I loved having a little baby sister. And then by the time I was in high school, you were like of annoying.

Ann: Excuse me? Yeah, I had to pay the fee to hang out in Mary’s room. I had to rub her feet, not like for 10 minutes, the entire time. That was the only reason I was allowed to be around her when she was really cool, because she was the yearbook editor. But then, yes, those were our golden years. It was like Mary came back from college and would bring me lunch at Sacred Heart. And ‘oh, my sister is bringing me lunch today.’ And I would get to have lunch with her. My friends were like ‘that’s so cool.’ You know, ‘your sister has like a business.’ She pulled up her lifted Jeep or lifted Tahoe at the time. And that was definitely a lot of fun. But I mean, a lot had changed in that amount of time.

Mary: Yeah, I remember being worried about the kids you were hanging out with because it was so different - like vacations and yachts. And when I went to that same high school years before, all my friend’s parents were plumbers and tradesmen, and then all of a sudden, you are surrounded by CEOs of all these huge companies and living the life a high schooler shouldn’t.

Ann: Yeah. I was exposed to, I mean I’m so grateful, but some of those experiences and travels I got to do with friends in high school were unreal. I got to travel around the world and go on these trips. I had been on private planes, which is something most people don’t get to do in their life. My parents the entire time were like, ‘The second you get an attitude about this, you are not going on these trips.’ But it was such a good lesson for me because granted, those were all great friendships and like I have, you know, had so much fun with those friends, but I saw some different family dynamics and what that kind of wealth can do to your family. You know, it’s not all good. Growing up with that much excess so quickly can be a bad thing. It also reminded me, like my friends, even the ones who let’s say that more than us, still wanted to come to our house after school. They knew my mom would be there making a huge bowl of popcorn with an entire cube of butter. And that she was present and that our house was like safe and just felt like a home. And that stuck with me for a long time. Like, yeah, they still want to come to our house even though our house didn’t have the dream kitchen, or we weren’t the kids with the pool or all of the amenities. People were like, wow, you have such a great place to come home to, your siblings are so much fun, and your parents are great. Your parents are home and you’re having dinner every night. Like that’s what felt really important.

Mary: Yeah, I think if anything I really learned from being there, especially as an adult with young kids, is that money does not buy happiness and bigger houses do not buy happiness. When Brian and I were in our first little starter home that was actually a little bigger than the house we live in now, I remember by the time we had our second daughter, Maisie, I was like ‘Wait, we’re supposed to grow into a bigger house,’ like where are we supposed to put all this stuff. We were just caught up that is what you’re supposed to do - like buy bigger and have nice family vacations and working so hard to do all of these things that we thought we were supposed to do. You know, in service based businesses, working hard and a lot of our friends were in much higher income brackets than us, and we were always working hard and trying to, you know, not compete with them because we could never, but just like trying to live that lifestyle and then we kind of made it a lot easier to make the decision to leave that because we were the happiest in that little house. You know, we loved our neighbors, everybody would just hang out in the cul-de-sac and have beers. We didn’t need more space. But once we kind of got caught up in that, like, wait this is what we’re supposed to do, right? It felt like someone we had to do. But the people that you see, you know that you think have it all, they don’t have it all.

Ann: No.

Mary: And that is really clear when you see these extreme wealth divides.

Ann: Yeah, I think that was just a constant reminder. It’s been so helpful looking back on that in our businesses, like yes, you want to grow and it’s exciting to have more customers and some more things, but like revenue doesn’t equal success. Write-ups in magazines don’t equal success. Can you go home at the end of the day and feel good about what you did? And how you did it? And are you prioritizing the things that matter. Our parents surrounded us with those kinds of people like my godmother, Ann, comes to mind. Our mom’s best friend, who passed away when Brennan was just six months old. But, you know, the Skidmores, they were like, our parent’s best friends, and they would take each other’s kids. They had plenty, they had a beautiful home, they worked really hard for it. But there’s just never any competition. It was very, like you know, they did supper clubs and just kind of all felt like they were on the same playing field and never remembered at all that anyone was talking about what anyone else had. It was very open and sharing. We all went to the same schools. I just feel like that’s missing a little bit now.

Mary: Yeah, I think it’s more rare. But, you know when you find those friends who have the same priorities as your family, they fit in like family, that’s just something to hold on to. And we are lucky, we do have those families that we grew up with in the area because we knew them since, you know, we were little and we made, my parents are great at maintaining friendships. And there’s a lot of great people who live in the Bay Area. I think I just commend them for raising kids there because I think it can be a lot harder, even though it’s the land of opportunity. There’s a lot of filtering that you kind of have to do, and that’s hard, it’s a lot of work.

Ann: Yeah, I mean we love traveling out there. It’s beautiful, if you an afford it. And it’s, especially when your parents are there, and you’ve been living there for a long time. But, it can feel like a rat race. I think it’s just remembering like what goal you’re reaching towards. Is it a bigger house? Is it this or the other? What dreams are we pursuing? For me, it was kind of an easy out because I went to Vanderbilt and fell in love with Nashville. I was like, wow, this is so cool. I felt like it was a big city that had an airport, so I could always go home. And I felt for college saying I’m going to go to Nashville, because I will never leave California. Like there’s no way I’m going to live there. And then I met my husband in a bar and was like, you know what, I kind of love this town. And this guy seems great. And he’s from here. And just felt very, like easy. I had the scope of wealth knowledge from the Bay Area. So that when we bought a house, I was like, you can buy a house for you know, this much money and you can send your kids to private school. It all felt like just a little bit more attainable. I still felt like it was kind of going bak in time a little bit because there were some opportunities there that we could kind of get in at a different level. We love Nashville, and I also love California, but it taught me that juxtaposition. You know, when people say Nashville is getting so crazy expensive. I’m like, let me tell you, look at a listing in Menlo Park and you will be surprised.

Mary: Yeah, I think that’s true everywhere. Now, you know, it’s not just because it’s Silicon Valley. I think so many - our culture is just designed now to think, well, let’s keep up with the Joneses. You know, let’s keep getting bigger and better. And that’s nothing new. It’s been around for decades. But I think it’s really important to remember that when you step away, you look at what priorities are important to you. And it’s the memories you’re making as a family and it’s the gritty days and the late nights on the couch and good meals together around the table. Those are really the things that you remember about childhood and that I want to make sure I’m giving my kids and those things don’t cost money. In my opinion, that’s kind of the secret to life.

Ann: Yeah, I think we know that because we felt it in our own childhoods. I remember like some of that furniture we had for so many years that Mom, I’m sure she wanted to redecorate and do this, that, and the other, but it was like our kids are doing handstands on the couch and we’re running around the yard that didn’t have grass - the backyard was just weeds for years - but they weren’t stressed about what anyone thought about the yard and they also knew that we were find and we were having a good time. Sometimes I think it’s so easy to get caught up in like, ‘What are the neighbors going to think? We haven’t done our landscaping.’ I worry about that stuff and I live in a much more suburban area than Mary, obviously. But I remind myself like this past summer, or during quarantine, we put in a stock tank pool in our yard, which is like, kind of redneck. It’s like, you know, let’s put in something our kids are going to play with, who cares, it’s not a real pool. And it definitely gets kind of gross. We have to filter it out. But they had the best summer with that. And it was, you know, $150 bucks. And it was just a reminder, like, the kids are going to love this. It’s fine. It’s temporary. Let’s like lean into the stuff they enjoy going. Who cares about the wet floors, who cares that the yard doesn’t look perfect?

Mary: Yeah. They don’t need much. I think, you know, it’s easier said than done. Because I remember those feelings, being in a small house thinking I’m bursting at the seams. I need more space. And it wasn’t until we, you know, took the steps to work harder and save more money to buy a bigger house that at one point kind of looked around like, gosh, this house is beautiful. But I kind of missed that smaller house. And then now that we live in this tiny house, I have no interest in wanting a bigger house. Because I’ve done that and seeing that it’s not going to make me a happier person or make my family happier. But I do think it’s hard. You know, it’s so easy to be like, ‘Oh, just appreciate your small house and the memories you’re making.’ You’re like, yeah, my cupboards are overflowing. But it’s a lot easier to look back and to say it hindsight.

Ann: And I will say that we have a little more square footage because we’re in Nashville. So, I’m not knocking a larger house because it can be nice to have all of your stuff somewhere. But it’s also with the knowledge that it’s an investment long-term for us. And also, you know, we spend most of our time together as a family on one couch. There’s one couch in the house that my girls curl up on and ask me to sit with them and watch TV. You now, you feel like, oh we have an upstairs, a playroom, and this, that, and the other. But, they are going to end up under your feet no matter how many square footage you have, which is a good thing.

Mary: I think it’s so funny how people just really have that expectation that you’re happier in a bigger or nicer house. Because remember last time I visited you, and a couple people on Instagram were like, do you feel bad that your sister’s house is so much nicer? And then I was like, ‘No, I don’t. I’m really happy for her.’ I love visiting her house, you now, it’s totally different styles, right? Yours is minimalist and white and spacious. And mine is cluttered, and saturated, and cozy. And yeah, those are the lives we live. But I don’t feel any like, oh, I wish I had more square footage.

Ann: You could do it if you wanted to. But I think that is a little bit of something that’s going on right now, especially on Instagram, is assuming that because someone has something different than you, they think you should have it too. Like, I can call Mary and be like, oh, guess what, we bought this house and this is how I’m decorating it and she’s excited for me and it’s like that’s so fun because she can tell that I love it. But, I’m not telling her she should do it or that she’s living her life wrong by not having the same things that I have. I think we all need to let that go.

Mary: Yeah, and just also, you know, love what you have, make the most of it, take a space and slap some paint on it and move some furniture around. I know it’s easier said than done. But, I think it’s just we need to get away from this, like, oh gosh, look what they have. It’s bigger. It’s prettier. It’s shinier. It’s cleaner. It’s not a competition and life’s about the memories. It’s not about the pretty photos you put on Instagram, right? You know, like what are your kids going to remember? What I remember from my childhood are those days crammed together on that floor and our mattresses and running around the mud because we had no landscaping and those are my best memories.

Ann: Yeah, and I remember mom being a night-owl. She’s a total nigh-owl, which is where we get it.

Mary: Like a 2AM nigh-owl.

Ann: Yeah, like a serious night-owl. Ah, I won’t tell her age, but it’s a shock because she looks so good. But, I remember at like 10PM her being like, she would just get this inkling, ‘Do you want to move your room around?’ Or like one time she let me stay home from school to paint the floors in my room. And I mean she would be like, ‘Oh, is that a cough? Are you coughing?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I think I need to stay home.’ And that was another thing that was so fun about growing up in that house, like I mean she’s a great mom, but like she wanted to be with us. I think because she prioritized having her time and her life too. But yeah, like a sick day was not like, ‘Oh, you’re home and you’re in my way.’ She was like, ‘Do you want to paint this thing with me?’ And she gave us - we could sew and paint and like there was a room in the house at one point that had a board that didn’t have paint. We just wrote all over it.

Mary: Yeah, she gave us tempura paints and we just like did whatever we wanted to do. That was so much fun.

Ann: I mean, just having that freedom and having everything that didn’t have to be perfect all the time was really fun.

Mary: She really modeled like, not keeping up with the Joneses. Like, I’m creating a home here and it’s going to be cozy and although she has fabulous taste and her house is beautiful, it was always about where are my people going to be comfortable? Yeah, and I mean that’s what everybody in our family says. My aunts and cousins are like, the food tastes better at Jannie’s house and the sheets are cleaner at Jannie’s house.

Ann: Yeah. There’s something about how fluffy the beds are.

Mary: She makes everything that cozy. And it’s because she doesn’t stress about how this looks to the outside. She just focuses on making a welcome place where anybody who walks in the door feels welcome.

Ann: Yes, it’s never formal or over the top. And you know, you never feel like you’re late, because everything happens kind of late. But I just try to model that with my kids and remind myself of those special little moments. And you can do it in a range of lifestyles and a ranch of places. I mean, obviously, Mary and I carry these same thoughts with our own families in a very different lifestyle. I love that her kids are outside all the time, and muddy and dirty. And when my kids visit, they’re in heaven. In Nashville, it gets a little colder, a little hotter, a little buggier, and we just don’t have as much free range space, but my. kids are hanging out in the driveway with the neighbors in the drainage ditch half the time. We laugh that like, we don’t need to take them to playgrounds because they’re building a stick pile and climbing the fence into the neighbor’s yard and just give them that little bit of freedome.

Mary: And they’ll possibly remember that drainage pit way better than if you bought them a fancy play house. They will. That’s what they remember. So we both - when Ann went to school in Nashville, I was still in the Bay Area. And Brian and I met in the Bay Area, he actually lived like six blocks from my parents in Menlo Park, which was shocking, because there weren’t a lot of single people living in that area anyway. But he had bought a little starter house, it was a disaster. It was a house he could afford and he knew he could fix it up. But it was like, there were racoons living in it, the realtor wouldn’t even go inside for the open house. And luckily, I met him right after he’d done a lot of the heavy lifting. And we got to do the fun, like bathrooms an the kitchen together. And then we started our family there. And it was in 2013 that we were kind of itching for a getaway somewhere else to take the kids, both our families have agricultural roots. But, Brian really grew up in agriculture, and wanted to have that tie to something with a little more land. So it’s a whole other story how I ended up on the ranch. But in 2013, we left the Bay Area and made a huge life change. And it was really amazing, because people, you know, a lot of people wanted to be in the Bay Area and thought like, wait, you’ve worked so hard for this. How are you just walking away?

Ann: Or what went wrong? Like, how could you possibly be leaving?

Mary: Yeah, they were shocked, like, what happened? Why are you leaving? And it was really easy for me to leave this life that we created that was comfortable. I could go and get my hair done every week. We had a nanny and a housekeeper and things that we worked so hard for. But, I kind of had gotten burned out on it. And, I’m like, you know, we’re not experiencing these nitty gritty family experiences. And as soon as we bought this ranch and went up on the weekends, to this tiny house that was nitty gritty, that was what Brian and I were so drawn to. This is how we want to spend our days with our kids. So it was really easy for me to leave, because I was kind of burnt out, especially being in the service industry. You know, we were, it’s a land of opportunity. And we were making good money off of all of these families in tech, that wanted to pay anything for great experiences for their kids. And that’s kind of what we’ve always based businesses on - like seeing a niche and selling it. And that was easy to do in the Bay Area. There’s a lot of niches to fill that people will pay for whatever great service you provide. It has to be awesome.

Ann: Yeah.

Mary: It doesn’t have to be cheap. So we left that opportunity, which was scary, but providing service based businesses with Yelp reviews and demanding customers and demanding children. It was like, yeah, I can leave this. I’m comfortable leaving.

Ann: And I think that innovation in the Bay Area is something that we are so grateful for. Because, we saw, I mean tech is fast. Things rise and fall and are exciting. And, you know, people are constantly talking about these unicorns in these companies. And can you believe, you know, what has happened overnight. You know, there’s a lot of years between behind those stories, but we didn’t grow up necessarily with parents as entrepreneurs, but we grew up in an area where things changed quickly and we saw people make things happen. And it just felt like there was so much opportunity, so much access to information, and I watched Mary create these businesses one after another and act like it was easy - which, it’s not. Not act like it was easy, but make it look easy I should say. And it gave me that like, okay, I can do that. And I think another part of it was our household, but maybe even the area as well. I never felt like because I was a girl. There wasn’t any limitation. I mean, i know that sounds kind of naive because of lot of people face a lot of challenges being a female in the workforce, but in our household, there was never a ‘oh, even though you’re a girl, you can do this.’ I never got that. There’s no commentary about gender. I mean our dad is like, ‘Your mom is truly the head of the household.’ I mean she works so hard. He’s always given her so much credit for raising kids and being home and doing all the hard work. And it just gave us this sense that, yeah, you can have a job, you can go do whatever you want. You can make money. You don’t have to wait around for someone to give you permission. And that is a really cool feeling. And I think it’s something that has never held us back in the things we’ve received.

Mary: Yeah. I think mom and dad were really great at that. And if we wanted something they were like, go for it. But they didn’t give it to us.

Ann: No.

Mary: They made us work for it. But they supported us along the way.

Ann: Yeah.

Mary: Alright. Well, thanks for joining us on this first inaugural episode of Boots and Bangles, the Small Business Sisters.

Ann: Yeah, that gives you a little bit of background just in the way we grew up. I know I’ve had people say like, how are you guys from the same family? Mary’s like pulling animals out of other animas. And I am living more of a suburban life in Nashville. But we had some amazing memories and love where we came from and always, you know, want to be able to talk about what a great job we think our parents did and what a cool place it was to grow up. But it’s definitely taught us some lessons that we’ve taken with us into our lives now.

Mary: It has. So the city sister and the country sister will be back for episode 2. Thanks for joining us.

Ann: Thanks!