Ep 029: Single Parenting, Alternative Education, and Supporting Moms in Business with Amy Kuphal

Amy Kuphal is a Fitness Business Owner turned Digital Entrepreneurship Coach who specializes in helping heart-centered entrepreneurs build businesses that give them time, financial, and location freedom while making a positive impact on the clients they serve. Outside of working with her coaching clients, Amy is a homeschooling mom to her 11-year-old daughter, an avid traveler, and a coffee fanatic! 

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Website: amykuphal.com

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Creators & Guests

Host

Jennifer Hayes

Host

Rick Hayes

Guest

Amy Kuphal

Amy Kuphal is a Fitness Business Owner turned Digital Entrepreneurship Coach who specializes in helping heart-centered entrepreneurs build businesses that give them time, financial, and location freedom while making a positive impact on the clients they serve. Outside of working with her coaching clients, Amy is a homeschooling mom to her 11-year-old daughter, an avid traveler, and a coffee fanatic!

NL

Editor

Natalie Long

What is The Relational Parenting Podcast?

Welcome to the Relational Parenting Podcast! I’m Jennifer Hayes – a Parent Coach and 20 year Childcare Veteran. Each week I sit down with my own father (and cohost), Rick Hayes, and discuss the complicated issues that parents face today, as well as some of the oldest questions in the book. From the latest research and the framework of my Relational Parenting Method, we offer thought-provoking solutions to your deepest parenting struggles.
Relational Parenting is an evidence and experience based parenting method created by me - Jennie. After 20 years in the child care world, in every scenario you could possibly imagine, I realized one thing: EVERYONE was prioritizing the behavior and performance of a child over their emotional well-being. This frustrated me to no end and when I re-visited the latest research, I realized there was a better way. I started applying the principles I'd been learning in my own self-work, parent-child relationships, and partnerships, and I started gobbling up all the new research and books I could get my hands on. When I saw the results of putting these practices into play with the children I was taking care of - the difference in myself AND the kids I worked with was ASTOUNDING.
I am SO PROUD to be presenting Relational Parenting to the world. I can't wait to hear about your own journey. From Parents-to-be to the seasoned parenting veteran - there's something here for everyone!

Jennie (00:00.986)
and

Awesome. All right. Hello, Amy. Welcome to the podcast.

Amy Kuphal (00:07.724)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jennie (00:09.93)
Yeah. So we are here with Amy Kufall this week. She is a mom. She is a fitness trainer, right. And you are also now a digital entrepreneur coach, helping other women create online businesses. And yeah, and so I want to start with parenting. I want to start with you have a very unique parenting journey that I think will

benefit so many of our listeners. So I would love for you to share with us the journey that got you on this path to entrepreneurship in the first place.

Amy Kuphal (00:51.14)
That sounds good. Thank you again for having me on. Yes. So, parenting journey, I think like most of my life takes its turns and it's an interesting journey. I had my daughter at 25, so beautiful. I had my wonderful daughter, started out as a single parent, been a single parent ever since. And so of course, as a single parent that comes with like a lot of responsibilities, your life is super busy, all of these things. So...

I, at the point that I had her actually, I was working as a personal trainer. And this is pre-COVID. So as a 20 something personal trainer, I had a beautiful schedule of eight to five in the morning and then about five to eight PM at night. And when you're young and you're 20 something and you have no one that you're responsible for, that completely works. Now I have this daughter that I'm responsible for. It was able to work for a little bit because I was with her in the middle of the day.

Jennie (01:37.451)
Right?

Right.

Amy Kuphal (01:47.68)
And then I could just work. She was with my parents for the morning and the evenings when I would do my personal training. But then as she started to get three, four years old, I went, oh my gosh, there's no way. And the only education that I had known was public education. So in my head at this point, I said, okay, I'm working five to eight in the morning, five to eight at night, and my daughter's gonna be in school from eight to three. I'm never gonna see her if this is the career path that I'm on.

Jennie (02:14.731)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (02:17.492)
And as devastating as it was to leave personal training, because it was definitely a profession that I felt fulfilled in, my biggest role at that point, of course, all of us know the second you have a kid, the biggest role at that point is, is your child. So my degree is in education, and specifically health and fitness education. So I decided to go back to education as reluctantly as that was. I went back to education.

Jennie (02:27.331)
Great.

Jennie (02:31.038)
His mom, yeah, yeah.

Papa Rick (02:31.262)
Yeah.

Jennie (02:43.66)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (02:45.096)
and got a job I was teaching for eight years in public ed, just in order to match her schedule. During that time, I as a, I don't know how much, too much we wanna get into it, but I was that high school student that was like a 4.0, like stayed up till 3 a.m. writing papers and like full tiers, like tiers, just to get up at five to do it all again. And not because I cared about the material.

Jennie (03:03.723)
Yep.

Amy Kuphal (03:12.964)
more because this internal pressure, this obligation, and I was making myself so stressed, and it really was not a healthy time for me. And so I knew my perspective as a student, and it was not great. And then now seeing it from the teacher role, I saw another level of intensity that I knew I didn't want for my own daughter. And I didn't want her to experience all of the things that I did. And

Jennie (03:19.915)
Yeah.

Jennie (03:27.191)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (03:36.445)
Hmm.

Jennie (03:36.514)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (03:41.708)
if there's time for a quick story here around that, is that one of the things that, and again, I didn't, let me answer. That sounds good. One of the pivotal moments that happened to me when I was 16 and I didn't realize at the time that it was such a pivotal moment, but reflecting on it as an adult I now do, is that as I mentioned, I would be perfectionist to the extreme.

Jennie (03:44.162)
Yeah, absolutely. We've got time, we've got time. So yeah. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (04:08.592)
You know, if the teacher said this many word paper, that's how many I had or more. And just felt like I was constantly trying to keep up for an end goal that I. Yeah. Hmm. Very much so. Yeah. For an end goal that.

Jennie (04:17.805)
Would you say people, please? Yeah. Achieve the thing to please the adults and get the reward. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (04:27.484)
Yes, and this feeling that I had to be that. And at the age of 16, I ended up getting diagnosed with melanoma. And I ended up having to spend a week in the hospital. I went through surgery. They almost had to skin graft. I was in a wheelchair afterwards. And everyone around me was like, while I was in the hospital, I went into Dana-Farber. And the whole time they were like, oh my gosh, you must be devastated. You must be so scared. You must be upset. The...

only thing I felt during that entire week was relief, because it was the only time in my life that no teacher was shoving work at me. I didn't have to keep my room clean. And for me that, you know, you think as you're 16, I guess nothing's that much of a wake up call, but you would think that would be a wake up call, but it wasn't until I reflected on it as an adult, because after that week, I got right back to what I was doing. Reflecting on it as an adult, I said,

Papa Rick (05:03.028)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (05:17.6)
Right.

Amy Kuphal (05:22.456)
Oh my God, it took a cancer diagnosis for me to feel like I had permission to take a break.

Jennie (05:28.962)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (05:29.392)
It was the groundwork for a realization for a moment, right? It was the universe laying the groundwork for that.

Amy Kuphal (05:33.244)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (05:37.928)
100% and I just knew I didn't want that for my daughter. I knew I didn't want her to have that kind of external pressure to perform For material that she was probably going to forget later anyways to be honest Yeah, yeah

Jennie (05:49.322)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (05:50.376)
Yeah, if you don't use it, you lose it. Yeah. And so it was, you use the word obligation. I'm sorry. You use the word obligation. It was, it wasn't an internal, uh, goal oriented, I'm going to do this thing. It was like, I have to do this for some reason. So that's much less pleasant. You know, you. Yeah.

Jennie (05:53.191)
One material that you can learn.

Jennie (06:10.122)
be worthy to get the grade to make the people in my life, to make my adults happy because they've told me this is the box I have to check in order to be successful, to get into college, to get a job, all the things.

Amy Kuphal (06:12.666)
Yes.

Papa Rick (06:16.26)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (06:17.686)
Yes.

Amy Kuphal (06:23.632)
Yeah, that's exactly it. Yep. Yeah, so it's

Jennie (06:25.502)
Yeah. We share, we share our story. I don't think we touched on this when we had our phone call. Um, cause I don't think you had ever told me your cancer story. I had cancer. I was also 4.0 valedictorian, um, staying up studying, doing the things like to get the grades, to please the people thinking that was the only way to be successful in my life. And I was also diagnosed with cancer.

I was 17. And when you say, when I was going through it, it didn't phase me. And in fact, it was borderline felt good. Because you were completely taken care of. You were completely seen and held and loved exactly as you were, the mess that you were, et cetera. And you finally got a break.

Papa Rick (06:56.712)
17 yeah

Amy Kuphal (06:57.662)
Wow, so yeah.

Papa Rick (07:09.777)
relief.

Amy Kuphal (07:10.188)
Yeah, yes.

Amy Kuphal (07:25.677)
Yeah.

Jennie (07:25.694)
Um, and then later on reflecting on it, I've personally had a complete fucking meltdown. Um, but at the time I was going through it, I was invincible and cancer, like cancer, what, like nothing can kill me. Right. And then you reflect later and you're like, Oh, I could have died or it could have been so much worse.

Amy Kuphal (07:44.224)
Yeah, yeah. And you know what? Same. There was no, but again, we chatted briefly prior to recording this, but there, at least for me, was a sense of knowing that I was going to be fine. There was not there was not any question in my and my parents were crying. Of course, they're devastated. Their child just got diagnosed with melanoma. And not only that, they had said, had you not come in when you did, if you had come in two weeks later, we'd be having a different conversation. So

Jennie (07:57.377)
Yeah.

Jennie (08:11.755)
Yeah, yeah.

Papa Rick (08:12.505)
Oh my.

Amy Kuphal (08:13.952)
It was, but, and so they were very upset because, you know, it's their child, the entire time there was a knowing that I was going to be fine, there was never a question.

Jennie (08:23.906)
Ditto. I never thought that I was... Like treatment sucked, surgery sucked.

Amy Kuphal (08:26.078)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (08:27.676)
Was that the youth? Was that the obliviousness of youth, the invulnerability? Or was that, or was, you know, looking back on it, was that more of a knowing in your heart kind of thing, a certainty?

Amy Kuphal (08:42.436)
I think it was a knowing. I mean, I shouldn't even say I think it wasn't knowing. To get into the background of that a little bit is from a very young age, I've always .. I just recently found out there's a word for it. It's called clarecognizant. Found this out last week. I had never heard this word before in my life. So it's a thing. And so from... yes, yes. And I had just again, just recently heard this word. And from a very young age...

Jennie (08:56.598)
Yeah. So, yeah.

Instead of clairvoyant, it's claircognizant, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (09:11.224)
have had experiences leading up to things that would have been devastating news, had experiences leading up to them to allow me to have a knowing once that moment arrived. And essentially what had happened prior to my cancer diagnosis at age 16, for the month prior to having that diagnosis, I started having dreams. Like at night I would have these dreams and I would be doing completely normal things in my dreams. So in my dream, I'm almost watching myself.

And I'm watching myself wash the dishes, but as I'm watching the dishes there was just this knowing that I had cancer I'm like, okay So and every night no matter what I was dreaming this dream also had this knowing that I had cancer now in my awake life, I started noticing Relay for Life t-shirts everywhere and just like Things just lighting up in my day-to-day life and I'm like, this is weird and Started to get to the point over that month that said

I'm gonna get cancer. I'm getting all of these signs, like wake up Amy, here they are, here they are. So at this point I'm like, how do I sit, how do I, do I go to the doctor and say, oh, I think I might have cancer? And they'd be like, like what? Like leukemia? Like what kind? Okay, what signs do you have? Nothing, nothing, nothing. I had no evidence to show them outside this knowing.

Jennie (10:21.63)
Right. You're 16. You're like, you're like, no one, no one's going to listen to me. Like, yeah.

Papa Rick (10:25.546)
Yeah.

Jennie (10:31.263)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (10:31.561)
Exactly.

Amy Kuphal (10:33.548)
So I didn't say anything to my parents, I didn't say anything to the doctors because I'm like, I don't wanna look like a Looney Tunes here. They're gonna be like, how? And I'm not gonna know. I got out of the shower one day, I was drying off and I was drying off with a towel, drying off my leg and I saw what I thought was still a speck of dirt on my ankle and I'm like, how did that, I just like got out of the shower. So I went to wipe it off and it was a dark black freckle. And in that moment I went, ha ha, that's it.

That's the cancer that I've been knowing for a month. And it's almost like, it's almost like, yes, it was on my left ankle. And I'm like, there we go. Finally, the physical proof has shown up for something that I've already known. So I had went to, we had looked up a dermatologist and I went to her and I said, okay, here's the thing. I didn't tell the whole backstory. But I'm like, here's the thing. I have this spot on my ankle. I want to get it taken off. I think it's probably cancer. She did nothing short of laughing.

Jennie (11:03.532)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (11:04.849)
on your ankle.

Jennie (11:12.907)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (11:15.152)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Kuphal (11:30.5)
patting me on the head and saying, no, honey, like you're 16. Like that happens when you're older, like head on home.

Papa Rick (11:38.022)
Yeah. You're not in the mainstream.

Amy Kuphal (11:40.104)
Nope. And she goes, the borders look clean. You're good. And I just, I went home, but I could not shake it. So I went, I went to my mom and I said, we need to go over her head. We went over her head. I ended up finding a surgeon. They took it out. And that's the surgeon that said after the biopsy came back, had you waited two weeks later, this would be a different conversation. It was going deep, not wide. We needed a skin graft. So it's this knowing that I think has been ever present for as long as I can remember. Yeah.

Jennie (12:03.901)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (12:05.652)
So it wasn't like this huge thing you'd been ignoring for five years or anything. It was just a little spec.

Amy Kuphal (12:09.1)
No, it was not there the day before and it was there when I got out of the shower.

Papa Rick (12:14.392)
And by the time it was there, the guy was like two weeks more and this would be different. Wow.

Amy Kuphal (12:19.072)
Yeah, just because they said it was spreading so rapidly, deeply.

Jennie (12:23.018)
Yeah, it would have gone into your lymph nodes.

Papa Rick (12:23.142)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (12:24.516)
that. Yeah, then we would be looking at radiation. Yeah. So but it's trust your gut. That's the moral of this story is like when you know something, don't ignore it. I think we all have this sense of, you know, one more.

Papa Rick (12:26.592)
Scary. There but further grace.

Jennie (12:35.211)
Yes!

Papa Rick (12:38.088)
Well, we're in such a scientific age.

Jennie (12:38.642)
intuition or gut feeling or yeah, like you people dismiss, especially if you're a kid or a teenager, the like, oh, that's not what science tells us is normal. So probably not. Like you just don't know anything that like that, that condescension of children. And I'm not like kids make shit up all the time, especially when they're little, like,

Amy Kuphal (12:40.708)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (12:49.678)
Yes.

Amy Kuphal (12:53.596)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jennie (13:06.398)
People have, like kids have imaginations and I'm not saying everything that comes out of your mouth, your kid's mouth is gonna be a cancer diagnosis, but there's, we dismiss people who we think, whether it's an adult or a child, we dismiss people's gut feelings and intuition simply because there's no physical evidence yet. And people do it to themselves because it's done to them as children.

Papa Rick (13:07.936)
Exactly.

Papa Rick (13:29.288)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (13:29.397)
Yes.

Jennie (13:34.698)
And so they stop listening to themselves. They stop listening to their inner knowing and their intuition and their gut feelings about things. And they start people pleasing and checking boxes that other people have decided makes a good life. And then you turn 25 and you look around and you're like, I literally hate everything I've built. Like, what am I doing with my life? Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (13:55.44)
Yes. And I didn't want that for my daughter, right? And I did, you know, and so I think part of the way I parent for sure is parenting against that.

Jennie (14:03.884)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (14:05.416)
There's a place for both, you know, the science, I can calculate the trajectory of my satellite so I can hit this comet going by, you know, millions of miles away to get certainty. You know, people crave certainty. And we were just talking before about it's messy coming, there's all kinds of external influences and the rest of life is messy. You know, science is a way to...

Jennie (14:10.358)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Papa Rick (14:33.468)
neaten things up, not disparaging science at all, you know. If we're gonna, if we're gonna figure this out and be responsible, we need to be able to track this down. So you discard things that aren't reliable, but it's still there. It's not that it doesn't exist. You know, when the scientists tell you poo poo, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. That just means it's outside their expertise.

Amy Kuphal (14:35.68)
Right. If it weren't for science, I might not be here. Exactly.

Jennie (14:36.901)
Mm-mm.

Right?

Amy Kuphal (14:57.438)
Yes, I agree.

Amy Kuphal (15:01.464)
But yeah, so I do, I think that kind of leads back to two and the question you're asking of how I got to where I am parenting is that, so I've had this experience and like you just touched upon, the experience of being a child that in the setting, without ruffling too many feathers, in the school setting, there's the teacher, how you're up and I've been there and the students.

Jennie (15:23.419)
Yeah. We did a whole education series. Please ruffle feathers. Whole public education.

Amy Kuphal (15:27.332)
Right, and the students, here we go, and the students are less than, and they're taught to always look to that adult figure for the answer and to stop taking their own voice as valid. And I knew, especially after going into teaching myself, I knew that was not the path that I wanted for my own daughter. And that's why, so she went to public kindergarten, she went to public first grade.

ever since she was in kindergarten, even as a single parent. And it was one of those things that I'm like, I don't know how this is gonna work out. How, as a single parent, can I work full-time on the sole income earner for my house and homeschool my daughter? And who the heck is she gonna be with during the day? But from the moment I enrolled her in school, I had the full intention of starting to put pieces in place to be able to pull her. And that ended up happening at the start of her second grade year.

Papa Rick (16:05.285)
Yeah.

Jennie (16:16.31)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (16:20.616)
That's so healthy where it's like, you don't get overwhelmed because it's not all there now. It's like, okay, there's a set of steps I can take here. And so we'll do this, grab a thread to start untangling things. And maybe you have to grit your teeth for a while you get all the other pieces in place, but yeah, but there's, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. That's, you know, it's a great attitude.

Amy Kuphal (16:30.045)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (16:39.179)
Yes.

Amy Kuphal (16:42.468)
Yeah, yeah. And I think things start to fall into place. I've always found this too in my own life. Things start to fall into place once you put that intention out there. And in ways that you wouldn't expect either. And it's after I had made the declaration in my own mind that I was going to be pulling her out and homeschooling, a couple of circumstances fell in place. One being my mom's job moved from the town that it was in to a town that was one town over from the center that I ended up sending my daughter to. So for me, I'm

Jennie (16:52.014)
Hmm.

Papa Rick (17:09.628)
No way. Wow, that's really rearranging things, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (17:12.656)
Right, and it's just, I think again, it comes back to that thing where the universe is working in your favor when you put the intention out there. So it ended up being that my mom was going to work at the same time that my daughter would need to get dropped off 10 minutes away from her work.

Jennie (17:18.946)
Yes.

Yes.

Jennie (17:29.55)
Perfect. Right?

Amy Kuphal (17:29.672)
So, I mean, stuff that you can't predict. So just keep taking that step forward and things put themselves in place.

Jennie (17:36.086)
I always say that the universe can weave a, like weave, I can manifest, I can picture this is where I wanna be or this is the goal or this is what I want my life to look like. The universe will weave the circumstances together and create something better than I could have created. Like if I were in charge of the whole process, like the universe will weave it.

Papa Rick (17:36.68)
When you get too many cards...

Amy Kuphal (18:02.068)
Yes.

Jennie (18:04.118)
in a much more beautiful, like succinct way and be like, yeah, yeah. Yes, that's our job, right? Is to trust the process and then yeah, that's hard.

Amy Kuphal (18:07.312)
Yeah, and it's trusting, it's trusting, isn't it? It's like, when it's not going as quick as you want, it's trusting, like, no, it's still coming together.

Papa Rick (18:07.7)
much smoother way, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (18:17.847)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (18:19.945)
When you notice too many coincidences strung together, it's time to wonder.

Jennie (18:24.842)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (18:26.045)
Mm-hmm. That's when I go, I'm not the only thing at play here. Okay. I get it

Papa Rick (18:29.627)
Yeah.

Jennie (18:32.492)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (18:34.66)
That's quite a story. And you've done this, you say you've been a single parent the whole time. I mean, that's tough, finding time to work and to parent. It seems like the ideal situation is to have a couple of people raising children so that you can kind of divide labor and there's more resources to go around. And that's a particular challenge. I'm glad you're working in that space.

Amy Kuphal (18:55.809)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (19:01.228)
I'm lucky I have a very supportive family. My parents actually live in the same town as me and my sister lived two towns over until about a year ago. She actually, I'm in a townhouse. I'm in a townhouse. Now this is great. I'm in a townhouse and she moved in two doors over from me. So two stoops down with her two boys. She has twin two-year-old boys now. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Papa Rick (19:09.128)
Hahaha!

Papa Rick (19:17.277)
Oh my god

Jennie (19:17.431)
Yes.

Papa Rick (19:22.056)
So you have a village, you're building a little village, right? To raise the child. That's great.

Jennie (19:22.542)
Oh my gosh.

Jennie (19:29.55)
Amazing. So what is your, so now, so your daughter now goes to a learning center. So it's like, describe that for people because it's not public school, but it's like some version of homeschool, but in like a group setting.

Papa Rick (19:30.912)
It is, it is.

Amy Kuphal (19:47.3)
Yeah, so essentially what's, it's a very unique, it's a unique place. And essentially what it was is, of course, when you go down the rabbit hole of anything, when I was starting to look at, you know, homeschooling and unschooling Facebook groups and what resources were available to me, because I knew that I could not be that traditional homeschool mom that was going to the park dates at 10 a.m. and that was organizing all the activities because I had to work. That was the reality. So I just started searching out.

Papa Rick (19:48.128)
Hmm.

Jennie (20:01.932)
Yeah.

Jennie (20:10.868)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (20:16.56)
what options are there. And I happened to stumble upon this amazing location that's about a half an hour from my house. And essentially what it is, is it's the only way I just, and I always say to my daughter, my daughter's Cali, and I would always call it school, but then I never know quite how to call it for people that are not familiar with it because it's not a school. Essentially what it is really it's just a drop-off center. So they were ages five to 18.

All the kids that get dropped off there are registered homeschool kids. So as my daughter's parent, I'm the one that's responsible for all of the education for her. They don't do anything like that. The only thing that I could kind of resemble it to is like if you dropped your child off at a play date, you're not gonna expect the other parent to do anything. So they have, how it's set up is they have five different staff members that they actually just call staff, they're not teachers.

Jennie (20:47.95)
Okay.

Jennie (20:59.596)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (21:09.204)
And it's a bizarre, especially as a former teacher, it was like so bizarre for me to see this place because I walked in for the first tour and like one of the staff members was like sitting on the couch reading a book. Like the other one was out back playing an instrument. The other one was painting. And as a former teacher, I always felt like I had to look like I was on. And even if the children were independently doing their work I had to like have a clipboard and like walk around and like look like I was, I don't know, like even when they're totally.

Jennie (21:30.399)
Yeah.

Jennie (21:35.714)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (21:37.52)
Supervised.

Amy Kuphal (21:39.028)
Right, even when they're totally behaved and self-sufficient, you had to look like you were earning your spot. And here I am walking to this place and like this teacher, it's not even teacher's house number. Right, and now this guy's laying on the couch and like the other one's like working on his own artwork and there's like 40 to 50 children just like running around like in the fields and there's a gaga ball pit and like they're doing arts and crafts. And I'm like, what is this place?

Jennie (21:42.476)
Yeah.

Oof. The amazing salary that they pay teachers. Oh. Ha ha ha.

Jennie (22:06.507)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (22:06.944)
And but basically that's what it is. And it's just a drop-off center and the purpose of the staff there and what they'll say is they say, we don't intervene with the children unless there's a safety issue or unless they come to us and they ask for something. So if they were to come and say, hey, there's a guitar here and you know how to play, could you teach me? Yeah, but otherwise they're just free to conduct their own day. So it's definitely different.

Jennie (22:25.502)
Hmm.

Jennie (22:30.902)
Yeah. How do they get their work done in that?

Papa Rick (22:32.372)
So how? Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Accreditation is where it was the first thing that came to my mind as a linear scientific sort.

Amy Kuphal (22:41.228)
So since, yeah, no, right, and so many people have this question, especially like friends of mine that are in the public school realm, is so they're not a school. So they're not an accredited school so that there's nothing in that sense that they have to do. And then from my own perspective with my daughter, it would be the same as if she was staying home. So essentially what I did personally is.

Papa Rick (22:46.716)
Yeah, that sounds interesting.

Amy Kuphal (23:06.184)
she's super independent. She's kind of like me in the sense that she I have to kind of like rain her back sometimes But I would yes. Yes, which made it easier, right? But essentially all I would do for her is I would just I gave her like a homework notebook She would have her math her science her reading Monday through friday I would send her with that send her with her work and i'm like, it's your responsible by friday to have this To have this all complete. We're gonna check it over on friday, but it's you

Papa Rick (23:11.813)
internally motivated.

Jennie (23:16.354)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (23:34.996)
And I always just put it as, yeah. And so she was super independent. And I always just put it under the perspective of, this is, homeschooling is a privilege. It's costing me thousands of dollars to send her to this center. That as a single mom is not like I had some extra money. And it's costing me a lot of time to organize the materials for her. So if she wasn't holding up her end of the bargain, she knew it was much easier for me to outsource that to public.

Papa Rick (23:35.112)
That's great training right there.

Jennie (23:35.534)
Hmm. Yes.

Jennie (23:46.401)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (23:57.375)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (24:02.528)
That's right. You can go to school any day, sweetie pie.

Amy Kuphal (24:05.296)
Yeah, and then I don't have to be the one doing it. And I think she knew that. She knew that. And what was great, though, is that she found her own rhythm, which is really cool. And so some weeks she would come to me, and at the start of the week she'd say, Mom, you know what? I'm really looking out Friday off. I'm just going to load up on my work Monday through Thursday so I can have a chill Friday, she would say. And she could organize a structure for a day. She liked to start by reading. So she would take her book out. There was a beautiful tree she would sit under. And she'll read her book under the tree. And then she'll have her snack. And then she'd go.

Jennie (24:05.452)
Yeah.

Jennie (24:13.355)
Yes.

Jennie (24:24.512)
Yeah.

Jennie (24:33.646)
Hmm.

Amy Kuphal (24:34.304)
Maybe comments that so she really found her own flow, which is nice to see.

Papa Rick (24:37.78)
That's like, that's like idyllic. You know, there's gotta be a unicorn and a couple of elves in the background there, you know, that's great.

Jennie (24:39.007)
Yes!

Jennie (24:43.467)
Right?

Amy Kuphal (24:43.552)
I'm telling you, like, I think everyone needs to walk into this place because I still laugh when I go there. None of the kids or staff wear shoes.

Jennie (24:51.734)
Good. I hate shoes. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (24:52.884)
It is so funny to me, like, does not matter, dead of winter, these children are just like running in like the fields, like shoeless. And so I always thought it was so funny. I'm like, oh my God, like these kids, like there's like no shoes at this whole place. So then I pulled up at the end of this school year, pulled up to drop my daughter off. And so she gets out and goes, two of the staff members, it's a husband and wife, they pull up in their little outie. Wife gets out of the passenger seat, no shoes to start. She's not even wearing them to start. Husband gets out.

Papa Rick (24:55.168)
Hahaha!

Jennie (25:00.61)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (25:21.352)
No shoes. And now they're walking into work, both of them, shoeless. And I'm like, oh my God, I said to my daughter, Kelly, I'm like, did they ever, I'm like, do they have shoes? And she goes, I don't think that the wife, she goes, I don't think she even brings them. She goes, the husband does, cause sometimes he gets up on the roof and does some construction stuff, but they really don't wear them. Yes.

Papa Rick (25:31.38)
Hahaha!

Jennie (25:37.966)
Mmm.

I mean, they've proven like, they've proven, especially in small children, like babies and toddlers, when like they're learning to walk and establishing like foot health and balance, it's detrimental to the physical development of the foot to put your kid in shoes all the time, like let them run around barefoot. And it's also, it's bad for adults too. Like if you're not wearing good, solid, spacious, supportive shoes, like,

Papa Rick (25:40.721)
Never seen her with him, I don't think so.

Amy Kuphal (25:51.424)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (25:51.699)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (25:56.001)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (26:04.451)
Yeah.

Jennie (26:10.23)
We were not meant like my feet are still messed up from my 20s wearing heels. Like I still get plantar fasciitis, right? Like I have to wear like special shoes now to like just be comfortable during the day because of what I did in my 20s to my feet. It's ridiculous. Um, but no, I just love that. I love that.

Amy Kuphal (26:16.3)
So worth it.

Amy Kuphal (26:25.476)
Right. Yeah. Yeah, no, not them.

Papa Rick (26:28.656)
I've heard runners say that too. You know, they've, I've heard runners talk about that. It's better to run barefoot. If only the soles of your feet were as tough as the soles of shoes sometimes, right? You know, once in a while you want to be able to, when you're just out and around. Yeah.

Jennie (26:33.857)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (26:35.245)
Yeah.

Jennie (26:40.814)
Well, and they have those like barefoot shoes now where they, it's like you, each toe has its own nook and like it's supposed to, yeah, it's supposed to have you hold your foot in its natural stance. And then it feels like you don't have a shoe on, but there's something between you and the ground. So you're not like destroying your feet, but yeah. I love that. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (26:44.905)
Yeah, yep, they do.

Amy Kuphal (26:49.365)
The water shoes look amazing.

Papa Rick (26:50.524)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (27:06.956)
These kids will grow up with tough feet.

Papa Rick (27:07.415)
So this is a learning center. This sounds like a really interesting place.

Amy Kuphal (27:12.404)
Yeah, it's cool. And it's cool that they hire staff. What I loved as well is that they hire staff with a variety of interests and skillsets. So one of the staff members actually a working musician. So he does gigs at night and then comes there and is staffed during the day. So it's cool because he just lives his life as he would if he were home, but the kids get to experience, oh, he was just out in the field playing guitar. Like, that's kind of cool. Like, do you want to show me how to do that?

Jennie (27:20.728)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (27:22.345)
Okay.

Jennie (27:28.995)
Hmm.

Jennie (27:35.276)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (27:41.288)
And what I loved as well and didn't realize it prior to sending her, but you know, as she's been there a couple years now, is that there's so much teaching that goes on between the older kids and the younger kids. So she, we have this little like keyboard at home. And so she, I came in the other day and she's playing this song. Like I have never sent this child to piano lessons. I have never done anything like this. She's playing the song and I'm like, oh my gosh, baby, like how did you learn how to play piano? And she goes, one of the 16 year old kids was playing and I asked if she could show me.

Jennie (27:52.13)
Yes.

Papa Rick (27:52.48)
Sure.

Amy Kuphal (28:10.484)
and we spent the day learning piano. And it's cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the only rule too, which is great, because we talk about, you know, public school, she had all the rules. The only rule there is essentially don't do things that are going to be harmful or hurtful to other students. And outside of that, there's not really rules. And what's, yeah.

Papa Rick (28:12.948)
This really is a community. It really is.

Jennie (28:29.342)
Yeah. I love like, sorry, that rule and the one that you said initially where you said that they don't intervene unless there's a safety issue or the kids ask for help with something. That, like I'm going to quote you on that. Like that's going to be one of the snippets that I pull out of this episode because that's such a foundational

Amy Kuphal (28:44.44)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jennie (28:59.566)
parenting thing that I try to teach people is kids really don't need us that much they need us to keep them safe and they and maybe teach morality and kindness and empathy but more than anything They just need us to model it if we are kind and Empathetic towards our children. They will learn that's how you treat people that the way I'm being treated is how I'm going to treat people

Papa Rick (29:16.163)
Nudge here and there.

Amy Kuphal (29:18.709)
Yeah.

Jennie (29:26.77)
And so it's less about instilling and teaching, and it's more about just being and embodying what you want your children to be and embody, and then watch them literally just magically be that thing, and then let them explore. Like public school steals. Like I understand that it's a necessary thing for a lot of people, and it's a great thing for a lot of people, but...

Papa Rick (29:33.588)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (29:36.391)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (29:50.992)
If you're going to get organized about it. Yeah.

Jennie (29:54.19)
the way the structure of our education system right now steals the way, steals childhood. It steals the natural way that children learn, the natural way that children engage with one another, especially at different age levels and like the benefits of kids, you know, an eight year old talking to a 16 year old all day and 16 year olds learning like how to educate someone or teach.

Amy Kuphal (30:15.321)
Yeah.

Jennie (30:21.97)
imparting wisdom. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (30:22.112)
and to care for kids that age, yeah.

Papa Rick (30:23.792)
It's a little tribe. It's like a little tribe. It's really, it's really a cool model. You know, is there's you teach a 16 year old and then they teach six, eight year olds, you know, before they move on and. It's so, it's so right. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (30:30.134)
Yeah.

Jennie (30:35.01)
Yes.

Amy Kuphal (30:38.676)
And it's funny too, and people would, you know, I have parents, so she did go to kindergarten and in first grade, so she still has a lot of town friends that are still public school. And when I was telling them about this center, that was one of the big concerns that they had. They said, aren't you fearful? That school is age five to 18. She's gonna be intermixing all day with teenagers and she's eight. And so of course there's this little fear like, oh, she's probably gonna get exposed to some language earlier than I would like or some topics earlier than I like.

But for the most part, because this is how they've all grown up, there was no bullying at all. There was no bullying. A lot of the older kids took the younger kids under their wing. It was just, and I think too, it was on acres and acres of forest. So it's a beautiful campus. They have a couple rooms and like this schoolhouse looking thing. But otherwise, it's just acres of forest. So if there's a conflict with another kid, you're not stuck in a classroom with them for the rest of the day and every day to come.

Jennie (31:14.274)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (31:15.292)
Yeah, yeah.

Papa Rick (31:30.42)
Wow.

Amy Kuphal (31:38.168)
You have acres of land to go play on if this kid's bugging you, you just get away. And I, yeah.

Papa Rick (31:42.964)
There's enough kids, it's a good size group. It's not 10 kids and you're not stuck with them. It's like you can go hang out with somebody else. And if everybody, and there's rules, if there is some kind, if there's an understanding, it's kind of building a culture. The people running the center kind of have to build a culture with the kids so that there's generally somebody right there to intervene if somebody gets ignorant or, you know, to not childlike.

Amy Kuphal (31:47.979)
No, right.

Amy Kuphal (31:53.427)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (31:59.081)
Yeah, 100%.

Amy Kuphal (32:08.52)
Right. And they did. And they had weekly meetings. So like their weekly Monday meetings, they would bring up any areas of concern that any of the students have. So it was kind of like a public forum sort of thing where they could voice them issues that they were having. Yeah.

Papa Rick (32:12.788)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (32:19.792)
Yeah. Peer pressure. Yeah. What a great, what great preparation for being out in the world around other people, how to deal with other people, how to, how not to treat other people. Golly, that's true. That's model.

Jennie (32:19.874)
Yes.

Amy Kuphal (32:28.278)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (32:31.87)
It's such, like, such a more...

Amy Kuphal (32:31.948)
But yet we still get that question of, is your kid socialized? How are you gonna socialize them? I'm like, oh lordy. Ha ha ha.

Papa Rick (32:37.608)
Yeah, yeah.

Jennie (32:37.706)
It's like my kids socialization is more realistic than yours. Like, this is a more real world setting. Yeah, or older kids or like there's such a hierarchy with age that is instilled in us in public school and being in a grade and I'm older than you or this, you know, like, you're only around kids your age. It's like the intermingling.

Papa Rick (32:43.261)
Yeah!

Amy Kuphal (32:43.38)
Wait, he's not afraid of adults. Oh my god, I know.

Amy Kuphal (32:57.515)
Yes.

Jennie (33:02.806)
of different age groups and different interests, being exposed to a professional musician and not just teachers who all went to school for essentially the same things. And yeah, that's such a more real world, real world setup. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (33:14.956)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Papa Rick (33:16.345)
Artificial.

imposed, artificial, you know, the, you know, suddenly I'm, I'm real curious about this. I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to learn up on this. So what happens when they go to college, right? Do they have the prerequisites for getting into your average state university in the country and prove, and whatever proof is required?

Amy Kuphal (33:20.941)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (33:28.836)
Yeah. So.

Jennie (33:36.139)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (33:38.912)
So they do. So that again, all falls down to like everything with this. So the center is just the only like, and it's nothing legal about it. The only thing that would be like if I dropped my daughter off at her friend's house every single day. So they really have nothing to do with the education process. The education process again falls on me. So as a homeschool mom, I'm the one that has to submit. I submit to the town, which is this is interesting too. So I submit to the town.

So our school superintendent has to review my plans at the start of every year, I'm gonna let him know XYZ or the topics that we're gonna cover. Here's the way that I'm gonna show you that she's achieved it. And then at the end of the year, I submit, I just do a digital portfolio, cause it's easier for me, but you can do anything. So you just have to submit something showing that your child's learned these things that you said that they were gonna, yes. Yeah, yeah. And then they just say like, looks good or not.

Papa Rick (34:23.452)
Yeah. There's a curriculum and documentation and plans. Yeah. Okay.

Amy Kuphal (34:34.984)
Looks good, you're all set to go ahead for the next year. So that's how we've been doing it. A lot of the questions that I do get actually from, again, a lot of the public school parents, because she's still really close with a lot of them, is how's she gonna get, that's the big one, how's she gonna get into college? The interesting thing that people don't realize, and so they say, oh, you're still gonna plan to homeschool through high school. Yes, definitely, especially knowing how my high school experience was, for sure.

Jennie (34:59.694)
All right.

Amy Kuphal (35:01.824)
But what's interesting is that as a homeschool student, she can still qualify for what's called dual enrollment. And I don't know if either of you ever did dual enrollment. It was an option when I was in high school, but I didn't take advantage of it just because again, my high school schedule was so full. But essentially starting at 14, depending on the college 14 or 16, you can enroll in what's called dual enrollment. So essentially it's pretty much all paid for except for a small fee as you can start taking college level classes at.

Papa Rick (35:01.993)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (35:31.54)
at colleges and getting college credit for it, but it's funded through your high school. So as a parent, I wouldn't have to pay for that. So my thought and my plan, at least with her, is that if you're gonna take freshman level biology, if you were a regular school student anyways, why don't I have you at 16 take it at a community college for next to nothing, you're getting college credits by the time you hit 18.

Jennie (35:33.015)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (35:38.606)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Kuphal (35:56.972)
they're not gonna look at what your high school looks like because you've got two years of college education under your belt. And then it's just a matter of transferring into the university that you wanna go to. If that's the direction she goes anyways, who knows what college is? That's another story, but who knows what that's gonna look like a couple of years from now.

Papa Rick (36:01.2)
Yep. Yeah.

Papa Rick (36:05.712)
Yeah.

Jennie (36:08.983)
Well, and if that

Papa Rick (36:12.094)
Exactly.

Jennie (36:12.314)
Even without that though, like homeschool kids go to college all the time. Like homeschooling, there's no like, in fact, colleges like homeschooled kids. They tend to be more well-rounded than public school kids. Yeah. Like.

Amy Kuphal (36:16.757)
Oh yeah, yeah.

Papa Rick (36:18.836)
Yeah, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (36:22.194)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (36:26.528)
Independent, yeah.

Papa Rick (36:28.156)
Well, definitely. I forgot, I forgot that the learning center was not, was not the schooling, you know, so she, so she's homeschooled and they did have dual. Well, in Illinois, I was on the school board in our little town and they were looking at dual enrollment and we, and it was too complicated. I was pushing for it, but our high school district overlapped three junior college districts in Illinois.

Amy Kuphal (36:36.386)
know.

Amy Kuphal (36:41.481)
Okay.

Amy Kuphal (36:53.788)
Okay.

Papa Rick (36:54.636)
And so it was, it was like, wow, we got to do all these different deals with everybody because somebody lived in this corner of the county or whatever. So that never happened for us. But then our neighbor, uh, I had neighbor kids go to, uh, go to, when they went to college, they were competing against kids who had, who were, had half their credits done already because of dual enrollment and they're like, I was from podunk Illinois and, uh, you know, I got to, I got to go through all the stupid freshmen stuff.

Amy Kuphal (37:02.151)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (37:16.594)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (37:24.744)
Uh, it was, there was a lot of people doing that even, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

Amy Kuphal (37:25.599)
Yeah.

Jennie (37:25.783)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (37:30.656)
And I think too, it's like to fit a dual, I would have loved him. I mean, of course I would have loved doing dual enrollment. It was available to me at the time, but I just couldn't fit it in. So now we're looking at homeschool kids that have a free schedule essentially and don't have to try to fit those college classes in around a high school curriculum.

Jennie (37:42.358)
Yeah, yeah.

Papa Rick (37:43.177)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (37:48.24)
Yeah, yeah, that sounds like a great system. That sounds like a great solution. And there'll be, and there'll be hope hyper socialized, you know, there'll be so far ahead on that end of the spectrum, end of the skill set.

Jennie (37:53.654)
So.

Jennie (37:57.374)
Yeah. Yes. Well, unable to handle socializing in anywhere, not just in their grade, not just with their professors, but literally in any situation they're plopped into an adulthood, they'll be able to navigate that.

Amy Kuphal (37:59.341)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (38:04.271)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (38:04.531)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (38:11.572)
Yeah, like parenting.

Amy Kuphal (38:13.468)
Yeah, and that was the biggest thing I found as a high school teacher. It was a funny story of one of the first kind of introduction to all of this too. And prior to homeschooling my daughter now, I knew nobody that homeschooled. And to the point that I'm like such a weirdo, but like I would I joined all like the Facebook groups, like homeschooling groups to try to like just watch from the sidelines and I would show up for like they'd be like, oh, we're doing a park day like during the summer at 10 a.m. I would like bring my daughter and like we would just like play at the park and like watch.

Jennie (38:33.664)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (38:41.912)
these like homeschool families like, oh, like sit, cause it was so foreign. It was so foreign to me. And so we did that and I was still working as, I'm like, I don't.

Papa Rick (38:43.712)
Sure. Check them out. Check them out.

Jennie (38:46.093)
Yeah.

Jennie (38:49.506)
But good for you, like hell yeah. There's a lot of people who, if no one in their circle was a homeschool advocate, they would be like, no, that's weird. I'm not gonna do that. I don't wanna be, yeah, good for you.

Papa Rick (38:52.052)
Let's research.

Amy Kuphal (38:59.028)
Right, right. And so that was the extent. It was just kind of spying on these other families at the park, but then, so weird. I'm like, are they normal? Like, are these kids really weird? They were a little weird, but my daughter's a big weirdo too, so it's totally fine. But the big exposure came was as I was teaching high school, I ended up halfway through one of my teaching years, I got two high school students placed in my health class, both of which had been unschooled.

Papa Rick (38:59.316)
Yeah.

Jennie (39:03.678)
Yeah. You gotta watch for this, you gotta be like, huh, is this something I want?

Papa Rick (39:03.836)
Yeah. Hahaha.

Papa Rick (39:08.undefined)
I'm spying on this.

Yeah!

Jennie (39:12.129)
Right?

Amy Kuphal (39:27.924)
So kind of difference, just, I don't know how familiar your audience is with like homeschooling and unschooling, but essentially homeschooling is more curriculum driven. Unschooling is really, there's a wide range of what unschooling can be, but it can range. Yeah, so it's very, there's like radical unschooling, which like I'm not in here, Adriana, but like it's out there. And then there's, everyone, there's something, there's something for everyone, but essentially, so unschooling is less curriculum driven and it's more student led.

Papa Rick (39:48.598)
That sounds bad. Radical in school.

Jennie (39:56.854)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (39:57.928)
So their parents are not explicitly teaching reading, necessarily not explicitly teaching math or science, but they perhaps might choose to like strew items around the house, or if they're baking say, oh, come on over and join me. But it's more letting the kids learn through life versus having any structured curriculum. So the two kids that got plunked in my health class, both of which had never been to public school before, now they're 16, 17 years old, have no experience with public school.

Papa Rick (40:18.132)
Okay.

Amy Kuphal (40:26.872)
have no history of like being curriculum led. And now they're plunked in my class. And I'm like, oh my God, what's gonna happen? These two boys, it was two brothers, were the most impressive students I had ever come across in my eight year career. And the thing that stood out to me most was that by the time most high school kids get to 16 and 17, there's of course a rare few that would still talk to me, but a lot of them are like, you're the teacher. And like,

Papa Rick (40:31.912)
That doesn't sound like fun.

Papa Rick (40:41.916)
No kidding. No kidding. Wow!

Jennie (40:43.22)
Hmm.

Papa Rick (40:54.89)
Ha ha ha.

Jennie (40:55.404)
Yep.

Amy Kuphal (40:56.6)
just no eye contact. The second the bell rang, they were out the door. They wanted nothing to do with me as their teacher, you know, a couple, but really just like I was the teacher, they were the students, it's different. These kids, from the first day that they were in my classroom, the bell would ring, they would stay after, they would have conversations with me, they were making eye contact, they were super personable. And I'm like, oh my God, these kids are just different. So we had the parent night.

Papa Rick (41:03.572)
No, I can't.

Papa Rick (41:21.68)
Very poised, very composed. Yeah.

Jennie (41:25.815)
Mm-mm.

Amy Kuphal (41:26.856)
and their mom came in and she said, Oh, I'm so and so, you know, my two boys are in your class. And I probably like jumped right on this one. I'm like, oh my God, I've been thinking about homeschooling my own daughter and like, I have so many questions. And she's like, nice to meet you. And I'm like, okay, like after, we're now best friends. Right, I don't even think I said my name. Like lots of questions for you. So I said, after this parent night's over, I said, would you be open for me?

Jennie (41:42.518)
Right?

Papa Rick (41:43.527)
Hi, I'm Amy.

Jennie (41:45.739)
Right?

Amy Kuphal (41:54.188)
to me sending you an email and meeting for coffee at some point, I'm really looking to homeschool my daughter and I just don't know where to begin. So now we're like such good friends. But it was from that moment that I, well, pretty much I said that. And I'm like, your kids are so impressive, so impressive. And we ended up getting talking about what she did and that's when I had first learned about unschooling and kind of her philosophy and that philosophy of unschooling.

Jennie (42:03.906)
Right, you don't know it yet, but we're about to be besties. Ha ha ha.

Amy Kuphal (42:23.296)
It was really cool and watching those kids for the next couple years in their high school career was interesting too, in that they were both brilliant. One of them loves reading the other one super strong in math, but the one particularly that was strong in math would get in trouble all the time and get low marks because he wasn't showing his work. And now since his mom and I are friends, we would chat about this and he's getting C's and D's and she goes, he's brilliant in math and he does it all in his head and writes it down. And when I asked her about that, she goes,

Papa Rick (42:50.608)
Yeah, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (42:53.196)
Yeah, because our math was always in the car. She goes, I would shoot a math problem out to him in the car as I was driving. He would figure it out, work it out, see it in his mind, work it out, and say the answer. So he just wasn't trained in how to explicitly show the steps that were going on. And because of that was getting the answers right all the time, but receiving low marks.

Papa Rick (43:03.441)
Wow.

Papa Rick (43:08.233)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (43:12.892)
He would, well, he was having to learn the structure and the curriculum. Yeah. That's another skill.

Jennie (43:13.998)
I hated showing my work.

Amy Kuphal (43:16.948)
Yeah.

Jennie (43:18.838)
My brain worked faster than my pencil could write. And so showing my work slowed me down from like, I would lose the answer because I would do it so fast in my head, especially like trigonometry. I could flip-flop the numbers and the Xs and the things and be like, and like get an answer in my head. And then I had to go back on tests and then write out, like I would go through and answer everything. And then I would go back through and write out the work that we had to show. Because if I did it,

Amy Kuphal (43:26.796)
Yes.

Amy Kuphal (43:31.972)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (43:48.57)
while I was going through it, it literally slowed me down and messed me up.

Papa Rick (43:53.34)
It's like, it's like writing a police report. Well, first the lady came around the corner and then the other car came from this direction at this speed. And yeah, it's no fun trying to recreate the math. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (43:53.496)
break.

Amy Kuphal (44:01.205)
Yeah.

Jennie (44:01.795)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (44:05.84)
what you already know and what yeah so it was there was a lot of exposures like that and again once the timing was right thankfully I was all the pieces were in place I was able to pull her and then we've been homeschooling since

Jennie (44:05.866)
Yeah, yeah, right.

Jennie (44:19.842)
Well, and so with that transition of you, did you pull your daughter out at the same time that you left teaching to start your businesses? So you continued teaching. So you pulled her out, and then how long did it take for you to be like, I'm leaving this space, this isn't for me?

Amy Kuphal (44:31.633)
Yes, that was painful.

Papa Rick (44:35.07)
Re-Rebel.

Amy Kuphal (44:36.401)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (44:39.694)
That's right.

Amy Kuphal (44:41.22)
Yeah, that was hard. That was hard. And I actually was trying to, it was almost a little bit of hiding parts of myself because how do I show up every single day in this profession as a teacher when I really don't agree with the direction that things are going to the point that I pull my own kid out and I'm like, no.

Papa Rick (44:50.656)
Sure.

Jennie (44:50.958)
for sure, yeah.

Papa Rick (44:57.297)
You are.

Jennie (44:58.206)
Right? My kid doesn't go here, but...

Papa Rick (45:00.24)
Yeah, completely re- Yeah, completely rejecting everything you're- Yeah, that's gonna raise eyebrows.

Jennie (45:05.508)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (45:07.248)
Yeah, so I kind of was a couple people within my department knew I homeschooled and you know my direct overhead boss knew But again, I was a single mom. I couldn't quit my job So now it's like okay, so I would joke with her. I'm like baby. I'm like I freed you I'm like now I just got to free myself so Free the kid first so it was about

Papa Rick (45:25.892)
That's right.

Jennie (45:27.386)
Hmm. Oh, I set you free and now I got to work on. Yeah. Oh, that's so powerful.

Amy Kuphal (45:30.952)
Yeah, so and it was again, it was just I put the intention out there and I said, you know what, I'm going to work on getting myself out as soon as I can, but it's not possible yet. So it was about another two and a half years before I was able to leave and start my own business.

But yeah, I wanted it.

Papa Rick (45:49.972)
That's still pretty quick. Well done.

Jennie (45:51.81)
Well, so how did you, so you left, you left to be a full-time, you started with fitness, right? Fitness for, did you start with fitness for moms specifically? Or did you just leave to be a full-time trainer?

Papa Rick (45:55.312)
Nicely done.

Amy Kuphal (45:59.608)
Mm-mm.

Amy Kuphal (46:04.51)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (46:08.656)
So I worked, so I, there's enough in this world for you guys. No, you know what? The honest answer is when I first started my business, I would take anyone that wanted a trainer because I needed clients. Right, yeah, right. And as a trainer, we're skilled to train any age, any gender, of course.

Papa Rick (46:09.424)
And what about dads? Go ahead. How sexist. I'll be right back.

Jennie (46:09.55)
I'm sorry.

Jennie (46:22.294)
Right, right. If you will pay me, I will drain you.

Papa Rick (46:27.144)
That's right.

Amy Kuphal (46:35.148)
But once I started developing my own business, then it's when I started really being able to niche down a little bit and not only being able to select who I wanted to work with, but I was finding that the more I was putting content out there, the more I was attracting my ideal clients anyways, because they saw themselves in me. I was also juggling career and child and having to, you know, go through all that. So I think you pull those people in. But yes, yeah.

Papa Rick (46:53.149)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (46:59.136)
There's, you get that, that's the non-tangibles we were talking about before, right? The non-scientific stuff.

Amy Kuphal (47:05.148)
Well, and so much of personal training, like hairdressing or anything, is yes, it's the skill of fitness, but it's also the rapport. And I would find I would have these guys come in as clients and I'm like, how is that sports team doing with cars? Right. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm like an idiot. Like I don't even know like what to talk about.

Papa Rick (47:21.217)
Yeah, that's right. How's your car running?

Amy Kuphal (47:28.576)
Whereas with the moms, like it was so easy because I'm like, oh my God, your kid was sick last night. Okay, well what else happened? You know, how much did you do before 10 a.m.? Okay, me too. So it was just an easier flow.

Papa Rick (47:30.28)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (47:33.84)
Yeah.

Jennie (47:36.846)
Well, I'm being able to serve. Like when you have things in common, you're able to see where that person is coming from and you can serve them so much better in their training as well. Like, and you meet, you not only are meeting physical needs but mental and emotional support as well. And training is fucking mentally difficult. Like you, a lot of emotions come up when you're doing hard work, like physical work. And so,

Papa Rick (47:46.644)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (47:47.276)
Yes.

Amy Kuphal (47:52.729)
Huge.

Papa Rick (47:57.628)
Motivation, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (47:58.018)
Yes.

Jennie (48:04.638)
Of course you want to work with people where you can relate and have empathy and be like, my kid has been sick too. And like, let's be in this together. When we, we've talked before this about, I want to, I want to spotlight your, your philosophy of, because I think this is another thing that drew the, the draws the right people to you, draws the right clients to you is specifically that your goal was, is to, was to help moms and women.

Amy Kuphal (48:04.996)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Kuphal (48:10.018)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (48:11.518)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (48:13.365)
Yeah.

Jennie (48:34.538)
And you being a single mom from the start, knowing exactly how hard it is, exactly how time consuming it is, exactly how like, what a juggling act it can be to try and balance like being a mom and being an entrepreneur. Like you knew for you that your physical workout time was a level of self care, physical care that helped you show up.

as a mom or as an entrepreneur, healthier and more capable of playing all of those roles with that foundation under you. And I feel like that has served as well, like has served the people that you work with.

Amy Kuphal (49:05.668)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (49:11.52)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Kuphal (49:22.28)
Yeah, and of course I have not always been perfect. But on the times that I was doing it, you're a better parent. And I think I was lucky in that I grew up with fitness and from a very early age, my dad was coaching our sports and he was enrolling us in road races. So it's always been something that has been weaved throughout my life. And it's always been something that I knew I could go to when things were hard. And it was a stress reliever more than anything else.

Jennie (49:22.402)
that philosophy. No, nobody's perfect.

Yeah.

Papa Rick (49:30.58)
Yeah.

Jennie (49:35.351)
Yeah.

Jennie (49:39.115)
Yeah.

Jennie (49:46.827)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (49:51.316)
Hmm.

Amy Kuphal (49:52.088)
But what I find is interesting is now training women that was not their upbringing and actually convincing them, I know that it seems like everything in your life is pulling up and you have not a second of time, but this extra thing that's going to take more time is going to still be super helpful.

Jennie (49:58.327)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (50:08.164)
Yeah, yeah, we talk about that in other in other, well, other podcasts, other situations too, where I saw a thing the other day where, or a guy, a person was talking about fitness and well, you know, there's, uh, heart attacks and high blood pressure in their health problems. But on the average, a person who exercises is going to outlive a person who does not exercise and stay active. You know, that there's.

Amy Kuphal (50:14.412)
Yeah.

Jennie (50:35.676)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (50:37.612)
And making that part of your makeup is just better all around. And we're always talking about parent heal thyself. You know, you can't pass along things you have not learned yourself. So anything that promotes yourself being a more a more whole person is not selfish. It's making you a better teacher, a better role model for your kids. And yeah, yeah. And I enjoyed and I enjoyed your explanation about men, too. That's the best explanation I've ever heard.

Amy Kuphal (50:57.064)
Yeah, yeah. They watch what we do. They watch what we do.

Amy Kuphal (51:05.568)
It was just like struggle.

Papa Rick (51:05.808)
about why guys don't go to girls exercise classes. They just don't fit. Would, wouldn't it be great if you could teach the guys to talk like that? You know, share and quit stuffing things and yeah, that's right. Exactly. Ooh, ooh, there you go. Make it a meat market. No, there'd be some advantage stuff. You could get guys in there too. You know, but it, but it would be, but it wouldn't.

Amy Kuphal (51:14.024)
Yes, it would. Maybe it wouldn't be single.

Jennie (51:17.678)
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Jennie (51:23.511)
Right?

Amy Kuphal (51:27.382)
Maybe I should start training guys. That's what's gonna happen.

Jennie (51:29.646)
There you go. That's how you'll find one.

Papa Rick (51:32.656)
It wouldn't be the physical, it wouldn't be the exercise thing though. It would be the social, the socialization part would be the training. Yeah, that might be a better room. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (51:37.436)
Yeah, yeah, I think we'll keep them separate. I think it's a better idea.

Jennie (51:44.578)
But that physical foundation too is like in our, I don't think I've mentioned to the pyramid in a really long time, but I have the relational parenting, the relational developmental pyramid that I created. And at the bottom is, I know I need to, or I'll need to, yeah, get a graphic up on the screen of,

Papa Rick (52:02.304)
We need to get up behind you.

We need a graphic or something.

Jennie (52:12.45)
physical needs being the foundation of our human existence, right? And we can't really do anything else well unless our physical needs have been met. And so, like, I teach parents that when your child is born, their primary needs are physical, right? They need to eat, they need to sleep, they need to be cleaned up, they need, like, and they need to be held and touched and feel secure and safe and all of those things.

And then we can move up into the mental and emotional wellness, the cognitive, the social, all of those things. But if our physical needs aren't met, and even toddlers, I mean, you see this in toddlers, you see this in yourself. If you get hangry, you're not your best self. For most people, some kind of workout, physical movement, physical fitness, taking a walk, like nature, meeting our physical needs, making sure we're well-nourished, all of those things.

Papa Rick (52:51.454)
Yeah.

Jennie (53:07.394)
That is the foundation of our wellbeing. And then you become a, you know, better, excuse me, better mentally, more healthy emotionally, able to regulate your nervous system, et cetera. And then you can give those things to your children. Then you can offer co-regulation. Oh, my toddler's freaking out and screaming. Okay, well, I'm regulated, so now I can help regulate them. But if you're not regulated, if you're not taking care of yourself.

Amy Kuphal (53:30.099)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (53:35.938)
when chaos occurs in your environment, you're gonna lose it too, and you're just gonna feed into and make everything worse. So like, parenting requires you to be able to like, take care of yourself, establish that physical foundation, that health, that mental and emotional health to stand on, to parent from.

Papa Rick (53:42.344)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (53:43.586)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (53:59.112)
Yeah, I agree 100%. Yeah.

Jennie (54:03.394)
I think it's such a huge support for the women that you work with if they happen to be moms as well. To not only encourage that piece of it and whatnot, but it's also like, it's a form of like, it's like you deserve this too. You deserve to take care of yourself, not just be taken care of everybody else. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (54:22.344)
Yeah, and that's the biggest objection. I'm going to tell you that right now. There's the guilt, and I'm sure it's people know as I'm not saying something that's new here, is there's a guilt among a lot of moms for taking time out for themselves.

Jennie (54:36.822)
Yep. Or spending money on themselves, investing in themselves. Yes.

Papa Rick (54:37.019)
Exactly.

Amy Kuphal (54:39.056)
Yes. Yeah. Yep. The whole thing. And they're like, well, I shouldn't, I should really just be paying attention to my kid. Your kid's going to like you a whole lot better as if you take care of yourself. Your kid doesn't want you cranky three hours when they could have you two hours, but good, you know?

Papa Rick (54:41.458)
or time.

Jennie (54:50.294)
Right? Yes.

Papa Rick (54:55.652)
And they're going to learn that too. If they learn, if they see you, especially if I would think if they see the transition between mom used to not be so, so regulated, I love that word regulated because it's not, it's kind of, it's a control, but like within a band in my mind, you know, it's like, yeah, you don't have to be rigidly, you know, right here, but it's like when things, when people, kids start throwing bricks, it's time to intervene kind of regulation. You know, it's like, Hey, calm down. And so, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (55:01.429)
Yes.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (55:10.506)
Yeah.

Jennie (55:10.539)
Yeah.

Jennie (55:20.334)
Right, right.

Papa Rick (55:25.548)
If your kid notices that transition from unregulated to regulated and why, then that's, you know, hey, you've just taught your kid something important. And then doing it every day after that, it's, you know, it's good to have the moment, but then it's the day to day, okay, let's keep this going. That's the real challenge a lot of times.

Jennie (55:29.195)
Hmm.

Amy Kuphal (55:34.051)
Yeah.

Jennie (55:39.613)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (55:41.128)
Staying habits, yes. Yeah. And I think that comes and that comes for a lot of people. Of course, people start, you know, most people start with me when in a personal training capacity from wanting to change something about themselves physically. You know, I want to gain muscle, I want to lose weight, I want to whatever it may be. But the people that stick long term are the people that understand and see that it's that is such the surface level of it. That's really not what it's about.

Jennie (55:45.311)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (55:56.008)
Yeah.

Jennie (55:56.888)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (56:05.884)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (56:08.724)
And once you get that, I think that's when you become a lifetime fitness person. Yes.

Papa Rick (56:11.976)
You get so you miss it. When you just, you have to make yourself, at least for me, you have to make yourself do it for a while. And then if you hang in long enough, however long it takes you to make it a habit, and if you hang in long enough, then all of a sudden it's like, ah, God, I need to go for a run, you know, or whatever.

Jennie (56:12.246)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (56:20.554)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (56:25.314)
Yeah.

Jennie (56:26.135)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (56:31.644)
Yeah, and how do you make it enjoyable? And that's the big question too. How do you make it enjoyable is what I would always encourage people is if it's painful from the start, if you are going way above where you should from the start, nobody wants to put themselves through pain. So how do we find those things that you enjoy now and then build upon them so that it becomes something that is a lifelong habit for you? Yeah.

Jennie (56:32.034)
Yes.

Papa Rick (56:36.201)
Yeah.

Jennie (56:43.8)
Right?

Jennie (56:50.398)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (56:51.612)
Yeah. I miss karate. I gotta, I gotta, I've been up. I've been a dumpster for a while. I need to go back to doing something like that. You hate, you hate going, you hate going for a while. And we noticed that in the car riding back and forth. We, other kids and I all did karate together. Jenny and I, we, it's, it's like, uh, we were always grumbling on the way there, you know, but we were all like, okay, we did it, you know, yay. We accomplished something on the way home. You know?

Amy Kuphal (56:56.172)
Do it.

Jennie (56:57.57)
Go back.

next.

Jennie (57:19.602)
Yeah. It's it's also like physical health is like, that's just one way that it feeds your mental health is like you feel accomplished. You feel like you're like, Oh, I did the hard thing. Like, yeah, it's hard. Yeah. Like, I didn't want to do it. Like I didn't wasn't like, Oh, this is gonna be enjoyable. But not everything in life is enjoyable. So if you can force yourself to train through something that's

Amy Kuphal (57:19.837)
Yeah, and you feel good.

Amy Kuphal (57:34.509)
Thank you.

Jennie (57:45.586)
not particularly your favorite thing, but you know that on the other side of it, it's going to be amazing, you're going to feel so much better, then you're able to navigate your life and with that mindset as well as like, when hard things happen in life, it's like, I don't necessarily want to address this. But I know that on the other side of it, it's going to be beautiful. It's going to be I'm going to be so much better or my kid is going to be so much better or, you know, whatever. And it literally makes

Amy Kuphal (58:06.768)
Yeah.

Jennie (58:12.502)
Like you live in your head your entire life. Like all you have is this, right? Your environment is your environment. You don't know what's gonna happen out here, but what you have is this to live with for the rest of your life. And if this is miserable, every single day, no matter what amazingness is going on in your environment, you're not gonna enjoy it, not to its fullest capacity, or as often as you could be because you're pissed off here, or you're sad, or you feel like shit, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (58:17.892)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (58:39.689)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (58:42.324)
Yeah, it affects everything. Yeah. Rewarding is the, is the word I use. You know, it's not fun, you know, going and beating on each other at karate and hard physical exercise, it's not exactly fun, but it's rewarding is, is what keeps you coming back is it's like, yeah, the ability to go, yeah, okay, I can get over the hump of having to take the time and make the, make the arrangements and, or the expense or whatever is the obstacle.

Amy Kuphal (58:42.754)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Kuphal (58:49.656)
All right.

Amy Kuphal (58:58.498)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (59:06.286)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (59:11.372)
And it's, yeah, but I, I'm glad I do it and I keep doing it. You know, there has to be some reward. Yeah. There you go.

Jennie (59:15.298)
ROI, the return on investment is what matters. Yeah. Right. Speaking of which, I didn't even mean to do that. But you so you started originally as an entrepreneur as a personal trainer, and you have now transitioned kind of naturally because through people seeking your advice into a digital entrepreneurship coach. Yes.

Amy Kuphal (59:15.543)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (59:20.344)
Speaking like a business owner. Hey.

Amy Kuphal (59:42.204)
Yeah, so that was it was yeah, so very much true. I have been personal training. Like I said, I got first got certified in 2011. So when I was doing it when my daughter was little, little did that jumped into teaching for a good chunk been back personal training for the last couple years running my own business. And I have known for again, as long as I can remember that I really, really want to have a fully remote business. And I love traveling. My daughter loves traveling.

We just got back actually in May from Costa Rica. That was our last little trip, but beautiful. And I'm like, I want a job that I can work from anywhere. Like it's something that's so, it just always been a calling of mine. And especially since she doesn't have a traditional school schedule. So we don't have to have two weeks off here. Like we can vacation whenever we want. We could go for a month if we felt like it and live somewhere because yes.

Papa Rick (01:00:12.926)
Oh cool.

Papa Rick (01:00:18.365)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:00:30.35)
whenever you want.

Oops.

Papa Rick (01:00:35.261)
Anywhere with decent internet, right? Isn't that ubiquitous? Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:00:37.02)
Yeah, which like so many places now, right? Yeah, so it's kind of over the last year, I've really been having this pull of, you know, her schedule is not holding us back. Her curriculum can be done from anywhere. I'm the one, again, I'm the one with my career now that's holding back the opportunities for us. So again, just like when she was younger, just like when I knew that I wanted to homeschool, I said, okay, I don't know how this is gonna happen.

Papa Rick (01:00:50.448)
Yeah. Wow.

Jennie (01:00:50.762)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:00:55.272)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:01:04.3)
but I'm gonna put the intention out there. I'm gonna start putting pieces in place to make this happen with the goal of 2024. And I've had this for the whole year. The goal is to start 2024 fully digital, right? So nothing more in person. So I said, okay, so now I need to just start thinking that's the end goal, how do I backtrack? So I have invested in business courses and I've taken a lot of business courses over my life, but really doubled down on them lately. And specifically looking at how to take what I was doing, personal training, and make it digital.

There's certainly a lot, and I've looked at other companies that are doing this, there's certainly a lot of people that are doing fitness in the online space. There's also a lot of objections. So a lot of people, especially people that I've talked to, they said, they get it's great, but I'm nervous that I'm not doing it right, or I just wanna actually have you there, or I won't show up at the gym if I don't have an appointment with you, so that's great.

Jennie (01:01:45.582)
Mm.

Papa Rick (01:01:55.38)
Sometimes it's the people, like you said, it's the reinforcement of the people. Sure.

Amy Kuphal (01:01:59.356)
Yeah, yeah, right. So there's been a lot of like, so there's been a lot of like stuff that's making it tough and but I've continued to say, okay, well, I know that this is the direction that I'm looking to go. Let me just keep putting the pieces in place. But the thing again, we talked about at the beginning of this conversation is there's a knowing that's inside you. And what I have found happening over the last six months as I've been transitioning to digital is

Papa Rick (01:02:14.176)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (01:02:20.589)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:02:28.532)
It's almost feeling like as I'm building out those systems, as I'm building out those frameworks, it's like I'm putting one foot on the gas while simultaneously having the other foot on the brake. And it's been this like, and like in my head I'm going, well, this is what I went to school for, this is what I'm trained in, this is all of the things that my skillset is. Of course, this is what my digital business is going to be. It's gonna be in fitness, this is what I do. But there's just this, and the only way I can describe it, just this feeling of like,

Papa Rick (01:02:38.048)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (01:02:38.572)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:02:52.576)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:02:58.236)
Nope, that's not it. And I was trying to ignore it, I guess, a little bit because, you know, I don't know, logic, I guess we're trying to just say this is what I do, and was just kind of forcing it forward. And then over the last month or so, I had four people now reach out to me and say, I've kind of been watching you from the sidelines, growing your own business, and I'm straight, right? I'm like, look it, creeping on me now. So people, well, that's a, you know what, side story, and I'll finish this story, but side story is

Jennie (01:03:00.64)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:03:19.086)
Like you did.

Jennie (01:03:22.283)
Right?

Amy Kuphal (01:03:26.72)
We don't know always who's watching us, which is interesting. You might think that we're putting, especially with this content, with the podcast, you're thinking, oh my gosh, like nobody's, you know, like in our commenting or whatever it gets in our own head, there are people watching and taking it in. And so that lesson was learned quickly over the last month.

Jennie (01:03:28.898)
People are watching, yeah.

Jennie (01:03:40.854)
Yes. And we would like for those people to be more brave, please, and share the show. No, I'm kidding. Hit the like button. I know, I know, I know. No, it's okay. I'm teasing. I'm a watcher. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:03:47.072)
hit the like button, share button. No, right. Yeah, right. So they're there and so we know you guys are there. We know you guys are there watching us right now. Oh God, I just jumped right in. But so these, so over the last two years that I've been growing this, over the last month or so, I've had four people individually separate, not connected in any way, reach out to me and say, hey, like I've been watching you grow your own business and it seems like you're doing really well.

Papa Rick (01:03:51.021)
They're gonna convince themselves they're doing research. Leave them alone.

Amy Kuphal (01:04:16.776)
I'm looking to start my own business too. Would you mind just jumping on a call with me? Can I just pick your brain on a few things? I don't even know where to start. So now this happened the first time and I'm like, oh my God, of course, yeah, let me just figure it out. It was scheduled in. I jumped on a call. At the end of that call, I'm like, oh my gosh, that felt amazing. And the girl that I was speaking to on that call at the end of the call was like, oh my gosh, Amy, thank you so much. I feel like I have so much clarity in where I'm going. I feel like I was super stuck before, but now I have a plan of action going forward.

Papa Rick (01:04:22.432)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:04:44.712)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:04:46.404)
What can I do? How can I repay you for this? And me, now, I'm not thinking this is my business. It was not even crossing my mind. I'm like, the repayment is go out and be successful. Like, I'm doing this just because it's something that's made a difference in my life. If I can share it, wonderful. Great. That happened again. Next call. Can I pick your brain? Sure. Okay. Have the call. Oh my God, that was amazing. Like, how could it? So now four times this has happened to you. And I'm not such a quick learner, I guess. This is the point of this story.

Jennie (01:04:56.535)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:05:01.505)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:05:15.08)
After four times, I was like, oh, this is the thing.

Jennie (01:05:18.111)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:05:20.468)
You're not being very businessy, right?

Jennie (01:05:20.575)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:05:23.356)
So, right. So me and I'm like, oh my gosh, thinking I'm just like, just random. Right. And, and I don't think across my mind because as much as I have the learned experience of growing my own business, as much as I've taken my share of business courses, I think in my own head, I was like, yeah, but I'm a personal trainer. Yeah, but I'm trained in education. I didn't go to business school, but I've grown my own business.

Papa Rick (01:05:26.304)
How do you do that? Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:05:42.undefined)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get.

Jennie (01:05:44.342)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:05:48.523)
Right, but you've done it.

Amy Kuphal (01:05:49.8)
Right, so I think it just never, it never crossed my mind until I had that number of people reach out to me and say, can you help me with this? And the help was successful, that it made me go, oh, this was the missing piece. So the whole time I'm pumping the gas and the other foot was the brake was because I was going down a path that I was not meant to be on. And so I still have one-to-one in-person clients and I'll still keep that for the ones that are truly aligned with, you know, my values and what their goals are.

Jennie (01:05:58.847)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:06:00.724)
Yeah. Oh, aha.

Amy Kuphal (01:06:19.464)
but absolutely starting to now open up that channel for digital entrepreneurship in order to be a coach or to be a mentor to people that are looking to grow their own business as well, yeah.

Papa Rick (01:06:24.061)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:06:28.904)
Yeah. Monetize being a mentor. Because that's what it is. It's the, oh, there's an old joke about a guy with an old engine that wouldn't start, and they brought back the old mechanic. And he had a little hammer up here, and he went over, and he hits the engine in just the right place, you know, and gets it started. And it's like, yeah, and sends him a bill for like $10,000. It's like, no, it's not the hammer blow you paid me for. It's knowing where to hit the engine that you're paying me for. Yeah.

Jennie (01:06:29.516)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:06:46.73)
Hmm.

Jennie (01:06:55.266)
It's the 30 years of experience, yeah, that I knew the one spot to hit, yeah. Just because I can do it fast doesn't mean that I'm any less worth, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:06:56.008)
Exactly.

Papa Rick (01:06:58.268)
You know, yeah, yeah. So you're completely stuck. That's right. You're not paying me for the time. Yeah. So that's great. I'll be, yeah. And we all know what happens when you start putting things in place, you know, so look, look forward to, I gotta, I'm going to watch it. Don't even subscribe to your stuff. And yeah, you know, may need that service. Cause that I'm finding that to be true too.

Amy Kuphal (01:07:01.065)
Okay.

Amy Kuphal (01:07:04.656)
Right. Your car is running. Yeah.

Jennie (01:07:10.434)
That's Business School 101.

Amy Kuphal (01:07:17.357)
You should!

Papa Rick (01:07:24.584)
is you think of yourself in channels or in lanes, you know, and I think the school thing we were talking about, that's kind of, you know, you're going to go be a factory worker. Our school system is kind of arranged towards reproducing reproducible parts, you know, and the kind of learning center that your daughter's going to is like, you know, what do I want to do next? It teaches you to be a lot more flexible, I think.

Amy Kuphal (01:07:28.36)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:07:36.331)
Eh, eh.

Amy Kuphal (01:07:46.377)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:07:53.16)
Right, and that you're not one thing. Like I think so much of us define ourselves as one thing. Right, all of us are multifaceted, and that's beautiful too, is all of the people at that center, they teach skillsets, not that they necessarily had a huge education on, but they had life education on, and they have skills that are transferable to these kids, which is so cool.

Papa Rick (01:07:53.38)
and another value. Yeah.

Jennie (01:07:55.158)
And to think, yeah, think for yourself. Yeah. Yes.

Papa Rick (01:07:58.506)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:08:09.201)
Exactly.

Papa Rick (01:08:13.528)
Yeah. Education, education is great. But boy, if you're a musician, you know, if you can pick up a guitar or a piano, I guess you can't pick up a piano, but if you can pick up a musical instrument and yeah, that's right. I'll make that for the guy. You can pick up pianos.

Amy Kuphal (01:08:22.689)
If they see me for personal training, then they might be able to. Plug for that business. Hey!

Jennie (01:08:23.804)
tiny piano.

Jennie (01:08:29.322)
Right? It means like, well, I can pick up a piano. I know most people can't pick up pianos, but I can.

Amy Kuphal (01:08:33.857)
I'm sorry.

Papa Rick (01:08:37.376)
I'm sorry.

Amy Kuphal (01:08:37.988)
I don't know about you, but...

Jennie (01:08:42.178)
with proper form and, and a few weeks of training, you could do it. Oh my God. That's your next reel is you lifting a piano. That's yeah.

Papa Rick (01:08:42.313)
That's funny.

Papa Rick (01:08:47.92)
You too.

Amy Kuphal (01:08:48.22)
You can do it. You too can pick up a piano.

Amy Kuphal (01:08:54.036)
Right?

Papa Rick (01:08:58.288)
If nothing, it would be a good little animation in a digital space or something like that. Somebody, some little girl picking up, you know, eight-year-old girl picking up a piano, or at least one end of a piano.

Amy Kuphal (01:08:58.34)
So funny.

Jennie (01:09:00.942)
That'd be cute, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:09:03.115)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Kuphal (01:09:09.923)
There you go.

Jennie (01:09:12.913)
All right. Yeah, I love it.

Papa Rick (01:09:13.589)
This has been really enlightening. This is good. I don't know if we entertained anybody else, but I've had a lot of fun. It's been good to meet you, Amy.

Amy Kuphal (01:09:20.571)
Thank you, thank you, you as well.

Jennie (01:09:20.734)
We kind of show up to entertain ourselves and then hope other people find things entertaining. No, we're-

Amy Kuphal (01:09:27.452)
I want to join the party.

Papa Rick (01:09:29.212)
Well, if we don't like it, I think there's zero chance anybody else will like it. If at least we like it, then at least, you know, then at least two people liked it. Three people, if we have a guest.

Jennie (01:09:33.286)
Yeah, somebody likes it. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:09:38.396)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:09:40.886)
One, hopefully in reality, we want parents to be able to have access to content that is tangible and can be used at home, to ideas and philosophies that maybe they've never been introduced to and want to think about or start exploring, and then to also hear real conversations with real parents who are navigating the world.

Um, and they're, you know, there are homeschooling parents, there are unschooling parents, there are public school parents, there are private school parents, there like, and there's a million different facets to being human, to being a parent, to how, you know, what you learned and what you experienced growing up and, you know, what parts of that you want to take and keep, and what parts of that you want to undo and do differently with your kids. And hopefully like we're inspiring.

Amy Kuphal (01:10:11.492)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (01:10:30.898)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (01:10:37.006)
people to choose their path intentionally. To what was the word, the phrasing you used, Amy? By design, yeah. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:10:48.456)
Yeah, and that was kind of what you're, yes. And that's the conversation that we had prior to hitting record too, is like so much of the picture and it's so much of, I think, what drives me and it's living in alignment. So the phrase that I always use is that we're creating a life by design, not by default. And we had chatted and I shared that story with you guys too about how it's so easy to fall away from that life of design.

Jennie (01:11:06.679)
Yes.

Jennie (01:11:14.893)
Yes.

Papa Rick (01:11:14.897)
It is.

Amy Kuphal (01:11:15.188)
And before you realize it, you think you're living your life by design, but you end up at a place that was so different from where you thought you were going to be. And it happens slowly. And that's the scary part. So a lot of the work that I do with women, whether it's personal training or now through business coaching, is figuring out what does your life by design look like and how can we get you there?

Papa Rick (01:11:24.412)
Yeah, yeah.

Papa Rick (01:11:37.972)
Yeah. There's a lot of stuff. I mean, it takes effort. It takes, it takes, it doesn't take planning. It takes that, uh, you mentioned a moment ago, it takes that moment where you develop the intention, right? And then, uh, yeah, they are. They are seeing, being around kids is very educational if you let it be, you know, and then once you get there, once you get the intention,

Jennie (01:11:38.09)
Yeah, and staying on track.

Amy Kuphal (01:11:41.934)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:11:52.344)
That happens when kids, the kids are the truth tellers. Kids, there's no bigger realizations than.

Jennie (01:11:55.57)
Right? The mirrors. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:12:03.253)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (01:12:06.952)
Then you gotta be open to the Twitter. You gotta be, it's, I think of it as like being on a leaf in a stream or you jump in a boat and you get in the stream and you'll learn to feel when you're, am I paddling upstream? Am I going with the flow? You know, where is this taking me? And you have to be open to, you know, you can't, you can't really start with the end in mind. Boy, I'm gonna have to go write something about that, you know, cause you do kind of have the end in mind. I know, I know I wanna be somewhere.

Amy Kuphal (01:12:27.692)
Right.

Papa Rick (01:12:35.368)
but you may not know, be able to put a pin in a map exactly on where it is. And so you gotta be open to the path, you know, taking whatever path you're led to.

Amy Kuphal (01:12:35.41)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jennie (01:12:42.286)
Well, on the route, there's a lot of ways to go to get to a destination. So you can, you can have your destination visualized, but there's, there are a million paths that you can't see. There is no map. You're right. There's a destination in your mind, but there's a million paths to get there. And the universe is going to take you down the ones that you need to go down in order to be prepared to be the person to handle the destination.

Amy Kuphal (01:12:42.902)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:12:47.2)
Hmm. Yeah, yeah, something about that.

Amy Kuphal (01:12:52.609)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Kuphal (01:13:00.19)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:13:03.845)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:13:12.88)
And if you're on the right path, it'll, you know, have a little faith, you know, you will get there, it may not look like you the way you expected or a way you're familiar with that's what, that's what I like about this whole medium, you know, I'm, I'm information super highway information at your fingertips was the Microsoft thing at the beginning of the internet, making this available to parents and to anybody else, everybody does research, everybody's figuring.

Amy Kuphal (01:13:18.538)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:13:41.06)
And boy, this is such an effective tool. I really appreciate your addition for myself and for the parents out there who are looking for another way to do it. And we'll think of this as a helping them inch up on this. Yeah. Checking in.

Amy Kuphal (01:13:46.577)
Yeah. Thank you.

Amy Kuphal (01:13:54.876)
And it's checking in. Yeah, it's checking in. And that's it for all of you. If your audience, if your audience members, if we have former teachers in here or current teachers, and that's right. So they'll get this one. It's what I wasn't doing in my own life over the last two years of my business was formative evaluation. So within the education space, right, so we know within the education space, there's a summative evaluation. We're checking things out at the end. That's going to be our big test. That's our unit test.

Jennie (01:13:58.398)
Yes, along the way.

Papa Rick (01:14:06.112)
Ha ha ha!

Jennie (01:14:15.298)
Yes.

Papa Rick (01:14:15.408)
formative evaluation.

Amy Kuphal (01:14:24.684)
but are we performing those formative evaluations along the way to see, yes, we have this goal that we're looking to achieve, but are we actually on track and how are we checking it? And that was where that story that I shared with you guys came up was that I wasn't doing that. I had the goal in mind of I wanna build this business so that I can have location freedom, so that I can have financial freedom, so that all of these things can be put in place. And in my head, that was because yes,

Papa Rick (01:14:29.146)
Okay.

Papa Rick (01:14:35.996)
Yeah, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:14:53.264)
I want that, but I also wanted that for my daughter. And I think a lot of that, which is a deeper conversation, maybe for another time, is that as a single mom from the start, not only did I not know anyone at homeschool, I didn't know anyone else that was a single parent. So I became a single parent very unexpectedly and went, oh my God, so now I'm pregnant with my daughter and I knew I was going to be a single parent. And so of course, like everybody.

Papa Rick (01:14:57.098)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:15:08.084)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:15:08.364)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:15:11.087)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:15:19.476)
I'm like, start Googling, which is like the worst thing to do when you have a problem, like get off Google. So I was like Googling single parent and like they're like, your kid's going to be doomed. Like you're going to be on assistance and their kids are going to be, you'd have all these issues. And now that was my only perspective. So now it's like part of, I think what's my motivation for sure is that making sure that I and she are not.

Jennie (01:15:34.646)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:15:43.796)
a statistic of all of those things and proving to her that, you know what, yeah, we've been just the two of us from the beginning, but we can do it. And I think again, that's where that formative piece and that story that I shared with you guys comes in place where it's, I hustled. I think like any of us when we started a business, I hustled and we had chatted about, for like a year straight, it was like head down on the computer, working super hard. And what we had chatted about was that moment for me that came up where my daughter,

Jennie (01:15:45.921)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:15:45.925)
Mm-hmm.

making it work. Yeah.

Jennie (01:15:57.452)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:15:59.952)
It's worked. Yeah.

Jennie (01:16:05.334)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:16:12.312)
came over and so this is like again, just reveal how deep and like the hustle mode I got into and what I hope your audience learns from my lesson and doesn't do themselves. Well she came over to me and she said, mom, can we play? And now I'm busting my butt to create this business for her and for us to give us this life that we're looking for. And she came over and she said, can we play? And this is Monday afternoon. I said, oh my God, yeah, like great, we will. Open up my Google Calendar.

Papa Rick (01:16:34.141)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:16:41.288)
searched through like disgustingly jam-packed schedule that pretty much didn't leave me like a minute to pee or eat. And I'm like, ugh, looking, looking like, and I'm like, okay, it looks like Thursday at three. So without a thought being given to it, I turned to her and I said, okay, Thursday at three o'clock, how's that sound? Like, we'll play Legos then. And she, sweet, sweet kid goes, okay, mom, and turned and walked away. And seeing the back, yes, seeing the back of that beautiful child's head,

Jennie (01:17:05.576)
Uhhhhhh

Papa Rick (01:17:05.584)
Oh

Amy Kuphal (01:17:10.956)
Walking away, I felt like Mike Tyson just came into my house and just sucker punched me in the gut

Papa Rick (01:17:11.964)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:17:17.467)
A moment, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:17:19.432)
And there's, I think kids just, they make you have these wakeup calls. And I said, Oh my God. In the, with the intention of creating something for her, I just created a life that was not by design that for sure was by default, because I wasn't doing those checking, checking in points that I encourage my clients to do now is I wasn't checking in and I got to a point that my life looked very different from what my intention was. And it took that moment for me to realize that.

Jennie (01:17:31.703)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:17:37.373)
Yeah, yeah.

Jennie (01:17:44.172)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:17:49.076)
And at that point, you know, we had discussed, that was when I said, I don't even care. Like every bit of work and wait, I shut my computer. I walked over to her and I said, you know what, baby, like I just found out I have some time right now. Why don't we play? And it was in that moment, kneeling on the floor with her playing Legos that I made a promise to myself and I made a promise to her in my head. It's gonna be different. It can't be that way. We have to be able to build a business without it looking like that, you know?

Papa Rick (01:17:59.753)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:18:14.078)
Yeah, so many. Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:18:14.216)
Yeah, that's a really beautiful parenting moment. You know? They do, they do, little stinkers.

Amy Kuphal (01:18:17.912)
They wake you up, those kids. They have a funny way of just making you realize all the things, don't they?

Jennie (01:18:22.246)
If you listen, there are hundreds of people who would have had that exact same moment and they would have left the penciling in, they might've felt a pang of guilt, but been like, well, that's just how it is right now and kept going versus like checking the hustle, checking like, yes, you have to hustle to build a business. Yes, it takes grunt work. Yes, it takes time away. But for you to have children and to pencil them in three days later.

Papa Rick (01:18:25.672)
Well, yeah. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:18:33.916)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:18:36.904)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:18:45.3)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:18:51.714)
for playtime, like that's not balance. That's not healthy. That's not, and like, yes, you might spend time building something and it will take, you will have to devote more time to that thing, but it shouldn't be a hundred percent ever. It shouldn't be so much of your time that you're abandoning your relationships. Like your relationships are what make life worth living.

Amy Kuphal (01:18:52.104)
Unacceptable. Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:18:54.752)
learning experience.

Amy Kuphal (01:18:57.634)
Yeah.

And it was, yeah, I know.

Amy Kuphal (01:19:19.048)
Yes, it's boundaries, right? It's boundaries, which are tough for people, of course, but they're so essential. Because the to-do list, we all know, the to-do list never ends. Whether you're a parent, whether you're an entrepreneur, and I think that was my mentality too, and I'm sure others have felt this way too, is I think I was coming at it with the idea that if I just keep hustling fast enough, I'm gonna eventually get to the end of the to-do list and then have time.

Jennie (01:19:21.367)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:19:24.958)
Yeah, you've got to have that check. Yeah, it'll take over your life. Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:19:25.448)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:19:45.578)
Yeah. What you want. There's no end. Yeah. Yep.

Papa Rick (01:19:48.244)
Someday.

Amy Kuphal (01:19:49.081)
But as quick as we check them off, the more things come on. So if we're not planning that break time in there, it's not gonna happen.

Jennie (01:19:55.67)
Yes.

Papa Rick (01:19:57.312)
It's tough. And that's the, that's the essential skill. I mean, we start off with good first principles, you know, work hard, be really organized. You were executing, you know, okay, this is great. You know, until, until something comes in from left field that might be a higher principle that you might be ignoring. It's like, well, nobody's going to die if I don't go play Legos for a couple hours, you know, or however long it takes to, you know, minister to my daughter, to parent my daughter.

Amy Kuphal (01:20:03.587)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:20:16.322)
Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:20:20.736)
Right, right. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (01:20:26.704)
my child and it's, it's a struggle. We know that that's, uh, we all get off track and it's good to watch videos like this with nothing else, just to remind, you know, remind ourselves it's okay to have a moment and you know, go play with your kids. That's right. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:20:39.768)
Go play with your kids. Everyone listening right now, go play with your kids. And they're only that little for so long. And that's the thing, it's like work will always be there. The to-do list will always be there. They're not always gonna be little.

Jennie (01:20:42.808)
Right?

Papa Rick (01:20:47.932)
Yeah, that's a high. Yeah, yeah. Growth rarely comes. It's also good to get into those. It's good to get in those situations because growth comes from pain. All these moments are always like, ah, I shouldn't have done that kind of moments, you know? So.

Jennie (01:20:51.262)
Yeah. Your kid's memory, you only have...

Amy Kuphal (01:21:00.204)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:21:01.047)
Right?

Jennie (01:21:05.058)
But then it sticks and you're like, yeah. And you're like, oh, this has to change, done. Yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:21:05.18)
Yep, yep, and it changes you. Yeah, and it sticks for sure.

Papa Rick (01:21:08.7)
Yep. That's what makes it stick. Yep.

Amy Kuphal (01:21:12.948)
Yeah. And that was about a year ago actually is when that happened. And to that day, I will tell you, I have a hard stop every single day. And I actually set an alarm on my phone that has this like beautiful little chiming noise alarm that goes off every single day, which is my 15 minute wrap up, close out, make my little to-do list for the next day, close out, shut everything down because that's, it needed to be that clear for me. Otherwise with my own person, I would just keep going.

Papa Rick (01:21:25.256)
Ha ha ha.

Jennie (01:21:30.966)
Mmm.

Papa Rick (01:21:39.484)
Yep. Time and time. You have to time box. Yeah. Cause that's the finite thing. We can't make more time. Right.

Amy Kuphal (01:21:41.759)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:21:42.742)
I'm the same way, I'll just keep going to bedtime. If I get hyper-focused, yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:21:46.932)
Yeah, yeah, and then you wake up and you start it again. Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:21:49.34)
Then you feel bad in the morning, you know, and yeah.

Amy Kuphal (01:21:51.648)
Yep.

Jennie (01:21:54.546)
Okay, I would love, we, every time we have people on, like we could talk, I could talk to you for at least another hour, but we have to, yeah. We have to end it. I also really have to pee. Sorry. So, yeah, Amy, tell everyone, first of all, is there anything we didn't cover? And if there is like,

Papa Rick (01:22:01.148)
Yeah, we are scheduled another one schedule another office.

Amy Kuphal (01:22:05.7)
Wrap it up.

Papa Rick (01:22:10.292)
Well, thanks for that information.

Jennie (01:22:24.05)
Is it well, period. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you? Okay. Tell right. Tell everyone tell everyone where they can find you follow you etc.

Amy Kuphal (01:22:26.596)
We covered all the things. We probably covered more than we probably should have covered. Like, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Papa Rick (01:22:30.388)
Like Walmart, you walk in, you always walk out with more than you intended.

Amy Kuphal (01:22:40.58)
Yeah, so the best place to find me, I recently just started a new page on Instagram. Instagram has always been my number one hangout spot when it comes to social media. So that page now, it's just my first and part of my last name. So it's A-M-Y-K-U-P-H. So that at Amy Coofe and that's on Instagram. That's the best way I'm there every day.

Jennie (01:22:56.91)
Awesome.

Papa Rick (01:22:58.248)
Henry Koofe.

Jennie (01:23:01.646)
Okay, awesome. And we'll have your website and everything linked in the show notes. And yeah, thank you so much for being here with us, for taking time out of your Friday to be here and chat with our audience. We appreciate you.

Papa Rick (01:23:12.82)
Been great.

Amy Kuphal (01:23:19.212)
Thank you for having me, I appreciate it as well.

Jennie (01:23:21.618)
Yeah, awesome. All right, everybody, let's see. I have a new tagline that I've been using. It is happy parenting and good luck out there.

Papa Rick (01:23:21.728)
Hehehe

Papa Rick (01:23:33.192)
Hahaha

Amy Kuphal (01:23:35.544)
I love it. Thank you. Take care.

Papa Rick (01:23:37.6)
Bye everybody.

Jennie (01:23:38.786)
Bye.