Hallie (00:10)
This is gonna be us laughing the entire time.

Host (00:13)
I love it. Welcome to the podcast.

Leanne (00:15)
Thanks. Leanne and Halle from Chomp.

Host (00:18)
Leanne are you from Kelowna? are from? the island's big island. is. What part?

Leanne (00:19)
Vancouver

Campbell River, so that's North So when you get the boat over from Horseshoe Bay over to Departure Bay in Nanaimo, you then go north for about an hour and a half.

Host (00:33)
Yeah, it's like surprising how big the island is when you actually compare it to countries in Europe or something the size of it. This is huge.

Leanne (00:41)
Yes. Huge.

a big, beautiful, rainy island. Yeah. It's gorgeous.

Host (00:47)
What was it like growing up in Kemble River?

Leanne (00:49)
it was good. I was a farm kid for the first five, six years of my life. And then, we, we moved a lot because my mom went into real estate. So as a realtors child, the number one investment in a realtor's life is real estate. So you tend to move quite a And then my dad was a commercial fisherman. So he couldn't do that anymore. he also became a realtor.

I was left to my own devices a lot.

Host (01:13)
⁓ yeah. The lifestyle of a realtor is insane. Very difficult to plan, I'd imagine.

Leanne (01:17)
⁓ 16

hour days like a lot for them.

Host (01:24)
that would have been before the days of easily Googling or the whole database of the they were doing everything paperback too,

Leanne (01:32)
Yes,

we're talking 1991. ⁓

Host (01:35)
man

let me just take a moment to process that you think realtor.ca right now you go on you can see every house that came up today this my side passion for the last 10 years i just love seeing all the houses every then you can see all the information right there real time but before that internet database existed how did they even know what houses came on the market they really

Leanne (01:56)
Newspapers. Yeah.

Yeah, it was print media. There was no internet. ⁓ I remember the first time my dad got a cell phone vividly. It was like this car phone and it was black and it actually had a receiver like a And it was on the of his giant white grand marquee.

Host (02:03)
So.

Leanne (02:21)
with red velvet interior. This car was And this car phone was in the middle. And we just thought it was the coolest thing. was like 1993 or something. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Host (02:32)
Yeah. I've been on that all the time.

holy smokes. I gotta ask, we gotta go back though, because when you said you grew up on the farm, was it hay? Was it animals? Was it an orchard? Horses. horses!

Leanne (02:44)
Horses.

so both my parents grew up on the Sunshine and my mom was into horses and showing horses. So she was into quarter horses. So we had quarter horses and paints and we lived on 10 acres in Black Creek. I had an older brother and an older sister, 10 and 12 years older. So I was essentially an only child because they left the roost when I was like six.

Host (03:04)
Hmm.

Leanne (03:07)
so my very first memories are living in Black Creek on a cute little farm and having horses

Host (03:13)
do you remember your first house you moved away from the farm? Like that would have been kind of a wild transition from 10 acres to what was the next house?

Leanne (03:21)
Well, I've got one of those really sort of bizarre memories where I can remember the exact layout of the houses I've lived in and the addresses a really my memory is kind of freaky that way. So I remember like the farmhouse layout, even though I was then, yeah, we moved to an area on the island called Oyster River.

which was only five minutes, no, sorry, it was longer than that, not a very far distance from Black Creek, but just a completely different demographic of I had to switch schools was a change for sure. And my brother had moved out my sister and I were 10 years I was the little stinker that was always ratting her out for.

Host (04:02)
But in high school.

Leanne (04:03)
Yeah

she was 16 and she was naughty so I was always ratting her out for like not being home and stuff and petrified at the dark so I'd go sleep on her floor and then yeah I remember one night she wasn't in there and it was like two o'clock in the morning and so I went down the hallway and ratted her my dad had to go looking for her.

Hallie (04:09)
you

Host (04:21)
⁓ shoot, I'm so upset with you.

Hallie (04:23)
yeah, yeah.

Leanne (04:24)
Yeah, definitely. was definitely a switch because we no longer had critters and like we had a dog, but we didn't have chickens and the occasional cow and just different it was a switch for sure.

Host (04:39)
Yeah, wow. And so then you moved around a bunch until the end of high school, I must say.

Leanne (04:44)
Sort

of. So once we were done in Oyster we moved and my dad quit fishing and became a realtor. We moved into Campbell what I playfully coined the Pink Palace because this was 1991 my God, that house, just a tragedy. It was one of those very, I don't know if you've been to Vancouver and heard of a Vancouver special.

Host (05:07)
No, okay, I've been to Vancouver but...

Leanne (05:09)
Yeah,

so they have what's called the Vancouver special where it's just exact same layout of a house absolutely everywhere. And it was in the 60s, 70s where this house was essentially established. It's this square house the exact same floor plan. There's streets of them. And in Campbell River, we had like the Campbell River equivalent of the Vancouver special. You saw this floor plan everywhere, but you go inside and my mother had chosen this lovely, lovely shade of pink.

On every wall, formal living room had white rattan furniture with floral print.

Host (05:45)
Were you allowed to sit on it?

Leanne (05:46)
Only when we had guests. Yeah. And then downstairs was like the pool table and the leather sectional and like the man cave and the big old school bookcase with the encyclopedia Britannica. absolutely. Yeah. So we're throwing it back here to like early 90s. see the millennial stuff on Instagram. That was my life.

Host (06:00)
So.

⁓ you know, it seems a bit contradictory to that. You're what your your mom being a real estate agent with painter house pink because that's not a very popular color.

Leanne (06:21)
I don't know. It's like, you know how you see videos of the moms that went through the rooster phase and they had roosters in their kitchen? Yeah. And the moms that went through sea mermaid dolphin theme in the bathrooms and those little bath pearl things that have oil in them? OK. So that's the aesthetic that we're going for here. OK. Tacky, late 80s. Yeah. wow. Yeah.

Host (06:46)
What an image, And so did you have any jobs growing up as a kid, as a teenager?

Leanne (06:47)
Aha.

Yeah, my first job I got when I was 15. And it was actually that's funny. My boyfriend really, really badly wanted a job at Arby's like so badly for the free food. I was like that's what 15 year olds are powered by, especially 15 year old boys curly fries. we were in there a lot and the manager of the store offered me a job. And my boyfriend was pretty pissed about that. it was across from the teen center.

Host (07:04)
friendly friend.

Leanne (07:18)
So I had to work Friday nights feeding kids from the teen center. It was terrible. And then that place shut down. So my next job was working in retail. And that was my shift into retail for the next five years of my was working at Workwear World. It was great.

Host (07:33)
Work, work, real world. Yeah. So you worked that high school and a little bit outside of high school. Yeah. And then what type of things were you into as a kid? Big Even after you left the first house?

Leanne (07:40)
Mm-hmm.

Horses. Yep.

For my 10th birthday, they bought me a horse. I ride my bike up to the barn and take care of Dinah. always been into animals. I love animals. Not super great at sports. Being extremely neurodivergent. I didn't have a lot of friends, so I definitely was more of a solo child.

the 3 p.m. TV show Run, saved by the bell. lots of solo time. played 12 years, Royal Conservatory, hated every second of it. I I was in Nancy Green Racing. so lots of played of stuff, lots of dabbling and stuff.

Probably my main thing that I always came back to because I was by myself a lot was baking though. Like a lot of baking. okay. Yeah.

Host (08:32)
you have a favorite recipe that you always think of when you think back your teenage years that you would like your go-to?

Leanne (08:40)
I was making a lot of pies. Mm-hmm. And bread. No, this was way before sourdough was like a trending thing. Yeah. We're talking like bread. Like sandwich bread, white Delightful.

Host (08:41)
Like from scratch.

sourdough or

like sound like loaf

That's amazing. Yeah. OK, I love it. then so when did you leave I have trouble saying that name. Marks. Marks.

Leanne (09:02)
essentially it was just

I did that until I graduated high school and then I went to UVic and didn't work obviously because I was in university and there was no way I could do

Host (09:13)
So that is that is your job? Yes.

Leanne (09:16)
yeah I didn't do anything

Host (09:19)
Did you take anything a specialty?

Leanne (09:21)
I what I really wanted to go into was forensic pathology but I haven't got the brain power for that because you need a lot of science and science was not great for me so I moved all my stuff into English. English lit writing journalism that sort of thing. none of it stuck for me though. I really winged high school. I didn't study for anything.

Host (09:24)
Mm-hmm.

Leanne (09:42)
Luckily, I was smart enough to get by and get good grades, school was very difficult for me. So I just sort of got it done and got out. And I only ended up doing one year at UVic because I ended up farting around and being loser. So I really wanted to move to Vancouver, the big city, and Yeah, famous last words. I'm now 44 and I would rather not. ⁓

Host (10:03)
Did you end up going to Vancouver? You're off. You're

in university.

Leanne (10:07)
Yeah,

yeah, I went to Vancouver and got a big girl job and ⁓ insurance. ⁓ yeah, my boyfriend at the time his family was big in insurance and they got me a job and

Host (10:10)
And what was your big girl? ⁓

What was that like?

Leanne (10:21)
It was good. It was good. I'm a natural administrator, very organized.

That I was organized? No, I had no clue. ⁓ But yeah, you put me in front of a computer and anything that has to do with data, and I'm very good. So.

Host (10:38)
That comes in handy if you're your own business. Okay, so how many years were you insured for? you still are?

Leanne (10:40)
huh, very much so.

Host (10:47)
Okay, so how okay let me rephrase the question then how many years were you in insurance in Vancouver?

Leanne (10:52)
Let's see. Started when I was that was 2001. And then by 2013, I took a break it got pretty intense. I was managing a third party administrator. So that's somebody that like does all the work for the insurance company, it was a very intense business that I was working for. my cup was not being filled.

whatsoever. I was extremely stressed all the time working insane hours, drinking a lot, just super unhealthy but I was making crazy money so I started socking it all away. husband and I started living on one income and saving all of mine I quit and went to pastry school.

Host (11:37)
And where was your pastry school?

Leanne (11:40)
Institute of Culinary Art, yep. Wow. In Ramble Island.

Host (11:43)
So how long was that kind of in the back of your mind?

Leanne (11:47)
⁓

I fantasized about it from when I moved to Vancouver because my boyfriend, I had a lot of boyfriends. You'll see that in the podcast. Girlfriend never was without some dude. Somebody's dusty son. when I first moved to Vancouver with my boyfriend, whose parents were in insurance, he went to Pica and did the culinary program.

And I was just so envious because I had always wanted to go to cooking school because I loved baking from like, Ni hao to a graza.

Host (12:19)
And before that moment, did you even think of that as a career path?

Leanne (12:23)
No, no, I mean...

In the style of house that I grew up in, it was very much you are your career. being in food service in my world was viewed as sort of bottom of the barrel. You become like a prep cook and a greasy spoon. you're just a waitress and just a cook, which is really narrow minded. Sorry to my parents after they listen to this.

Host (12:48)
But it's a genuine.

Leanne (12:49)
It's

a generational thing, right? Whereas, When you ask somebody who's in their 60s plus about themselves, the first thing they tell you is their career choice. ⁓ I'm an insurance advisor. I'm a is not the first thing that I say when somebody asks me about myself.

I'm Leanne and I have a lot of things in my life, but my career is never the first thing I bring up. It just isn't. I'm usually like, I'm a My kids usually come, I'm a mom. I'm married. like cookies. Yeah, I like making recipes.

Host (13:18)
Love cookies?

how many years was that? But you were used to the intense, like an intense work and work.

Leanne (13:24)
It was six months intensive. Yeah, full time.

Yeah,

and I actually stayed with the company that I was and did their books still because they transition somebody into what I was doing for them enough. So I stayed on and did commissions and month-end reporting still while being in the kitchen for 40 hours a I'm a little intense. But.

Host (13:50)
Wow.

And then when that six months was over, what did that program like, was there an apprenticeship at the end?

Leanne (13:57)
In

a way, so my head chef in cooking school, it's really cool. You have three months of learning where you're in an environment of having your chef and he's teaching you the basics learning how to read and write recipes and learning the science behind then you go into production and you're in a production kitchen. You are producing

for a bakery, you're producing desserts for a fine dining restaurant. It's whoever thought up this model of a business is a fricking genius. Because we paid 20 grand to get into that school and then we are supplying them free labor.

Host (14:37)
because there somebody's buying right.

Leanne (14:40)
I know. Yeah, you're right. That is a great business freaking brilliant. And everything that the kitchen of the juniors in the first three months feeds the So all of us got free lunch, but that's test food that the rookies are making. Delish. we had frog's legs one day. That was never again. Thank you. No.

Host (14:55)
Yeah.

That was my first meal when I moved to China. But sitting there with a big frog on our plate going, OK, OK, here we go with chopsticks.

Leanne (15:02)
I

Did you like it?

Who decided to eat?

Host (15:10)
Frog

well cuz that was there that like I went and lived in China and so the owners of the School I was working up. There's a BC offshore school. We went to the traditional restaurant they would all eat out and it was like a delicacy this is a big meal and we all this GI at circle table and they come and give everybody their plate at the same time like in front of you that sort of And you're gonna you're not not gonna eat it

that's gonna be disrespectful or rude, so you just... You just eat whatever they gave you.

Leanne (15:40)
Okay, you know

what this is reminding me of that Indiana Jones movie where they're eating the monkey brains

Host (15:46)
Yeah,

we ate a lot of weird stuff. If not for our culture.

Leanne (15:48)
Not weird. I

say weird, it's just different.

Host (15:53)
It is weird from our perspective. Yes, absolutely.

But you know because it's not our normal and therefore it's... Yeah. I would classify it as weird. Like fallopian tube and stuff. I... It's not what we eat here and therefore it is strange to us. Yeah it was very... But you know it tastes like chicken. That's all I could remember.

Leanne (16:09)
heart path.

Crazy.

Host (16:15)
I remember that being like, man, is... And it tasted just fine. Tasted just fine. anyway, sorry to spotlight off of you you had But you don't... That's interesting because we don't eat a lot of frog... French cuisine? And is frog common in French? Like it's common in French cuisine? I've never been to France.

Leanne (16:28)
French cuisine was what we were taught.

Host (16:37)
Yeah. Cause you don't even see that on like cooking shows and stuff.

Leanne (16:41)
No, it's super traditional. It was like very old school. we had culinary instructors and they'd yell at you in French and yeah, it was pretty fun.

Host (16:50)
It's funny

because you squirm and get all funny with the idea of eating a frog, but it's basically like eating chicken wings. It's the exact same thing. Yeah, it's the little bones and the meat on the little... It's white meat on the little bones and it's basically giant chicken wing.

Leanne (17:02)
and chicken wings are delightful.

Yeah, yeah.

it was definitely a different experience. had to try. never been a very adventurous eater. I am now because of my husband. I was younger, I was very, I was going to say peculiar, which is on I was particular. So not an adventurous eater. Didn't like spice very much.

Host (17:31)
Spice bean

heat or spice bean flavors in general?

Leanne (17:34)
Pretty

much anything, that's why bodybuilder meals have been really easy for me.

Host (17:39)
It's like plain chicken with your broccoli and your-

Leanne (17:42)
Not a hard stretch. just, and stuff. But it did force me to try new luckily I was doing pastry, so we got to eat a lot of really great things. And that section of the kitchen was great.

Host (17:57)
Well, let's get back onto where life took you after that. it a court program? It was a program.

Leanne (18:00)
So program.

Proper word. Yeah. And you have to apply for it and interview for it. You have to do an interview to get in. Because they don't want to just take any kid off the street that's got some parent money, right? I the mother of the kitchen 100%. I sort of take that role. I was 30. Everybody else was like fresh out of high school. And they were doing trade

Host (18:18)
was about to say is that because you're older?

Leanne (18:23)
But my chef and I in the production kitchen got along like a house on fire. he essentially poached me from school to open up a cafe in Fort which was super cool. interviewed with the company that was opening this cafe. It was an indigenous Lellum in Fort Langley, unfortunately didn't survive the pandemic, but.

That's a story for another time. yeah, so Stefan and I got to work building this kitchen, building this cafe that had to have indigenous roots. We had to have some ties back to the indigenous culture with the types of ingredients we had in, but I sort of had carte blanche with the pastry menu, which I got to work on, which was so fun. he lasted three months working there.

And left you? Yep. Went to open up his own extremely successful pastry shop called Blacksmith. Shout out to in Langley. He has like three or four stores now, which is fantastic. And yeah, he left me. That stinker. So then I had to sort of figure out how to manage it after never managing kids. I had 15-year-olds working for me.

I wasn't really the manager I was just kind of like the acting manager so we were completely left to our own devices to figure that and it was fun it was a lot of fun working in the service industry is it wasn't the first time I'd done it ⁓ I worked in pubs when I was in between moving to Vancouver and finishing school well not you know quitting school

Yeah, it's like a whole other thing working in the industry. It's a whole different set of people, personalities. People are kind of more wild and funny. And when you meet somebody that's worked in service, you know that they've worked in service. They have a certain personality usually quite quick-witted, Yeah, it's just different. So that was really fun. But I got pregnant.

and not that that was a bad thing, but I got pregnant and so I went on maternity leave and when I came back they had hired a manager who I did not jive So I ended up going into the marketing ends of things. the Indigenous Corporation was

economic development arm of Kwantlen First So we various companies in this umbrella and I worked with them for eight years. completely out of anything to do with food.

Host (20:42)
are you still doing your insurance on the side so you so you're not doing insurance and you're not doing cooking for eight years

Leanne (20:46)
No.

Yeah.

And I felt very stuck in that job. I was also going through discovering some mental health issues at the same time. had my son that was 2017 and the following year in 2018, I was diagnosed with bipolar two.

That was a major shift in my whole life, was always feeling like ever since I was about 17, 18, that there was something off and I couldn't put my finger on a illness. I say I've learned how to tap into a positive

But with a fresh diagnosis, anybody who has been recently diagnosed with anything knows it's wild. You're your entire existence based on this it rocks you. It absolutely rocks The biggest thing for me that I was angry about was that I had not been diagnosed early on because it could have saved me a lot of experiences.

money, was my 20s were wild and it would have saved me from a lot of that. But then in the same vein think I experienced that and I lived that for a reason and it's built me into the character that I am today. so don't think I'd take it back and I'm glad that I had a late diagnosis and I'm glad that I had a great doctor who listened and

put me into the right channels in order to get a proper diagnosis and get some proper medication. And so now it's very well managed.

Host (22:20)
Would you feel comfortable explaining what bipolar, what that is?

Leanne (22:25)
Sure. So bipolar and bipolar two are two varieties of bipolar that you can have. The bipolar, the first one is the more intense one for way more manic episodes. So, you know, people think mania, they think you're going completely I wouldn't describe mania as going loco. You do definitely tend to not sleep. So there would be stretches of like not sleeping.

You're sort of in hyperdrive, I would say.

Host (22:51)
This is with bipolar 2? With both. With both.

Leanne (22:53)
Yeah, in the regular bipolar though, your mania episodes can go on for like a year. If you're unmedicated. They can go on for a very long time and they're very destructive. You can completely uproot your entire life. You can move to another country. Just reckless behavior. You ruin relationships. You get very self-sabotagey. Picking fights with absolutely everybody. The things that you can say are pure vitriol. that you would not normally say.

and you tend to black out from the experience and not really know what's going on. Just spews of information coming out of your brain, then you have no way of compartmentalizing any of it. Whereas bipolar two has more depressive episodes and the depression is dark and deep and all encompassing. And there was a lot of suicidology that was interacting in that for me.

So getting myself on medication I needed to in order to save my life and continue to be a mother and a wife and be on this planet. It was imperative because I was down the rabbit hole as deep as you could go. So almost feel, I'm sure people that have would argue, I almost feel that

Being in a manic state is easier in a way because you aren't thinking horrible things about yourself all the neither one is And I strongly feel like anybody with a mental health illness needs to get properly diagnosed in the proper channels and get a medication that your system agrees it sucks for the first few weeks going on to something because you don't feel like yourself. And there's foggy states and

It's because your brain is starting to get the chemicals, your brain and body, I should say, because there's, you know, serotonin, norepinephrine, all of these different things going on in your system that are not regular. You're getting more of one thing and less of another and everything's arguing. Your whole entire system is arguing with itself. when you find a proper medication that agrees with all of that and is able to sort out the fighting and

put it in its little boxes, it's amazing. It's absolutely amazing because now I get to use this wild brain of mine for cool shit. when you can tap into it, it's just like ADHD. It's a superpower. When you can tap into that ADHD, I watch my husband do it all the time. It's a fricking superpower. He can be a plumber, he can be a carpenter.

He can be all of these different things. If he's interested in it, he's an expert. And I don't know, I think it's a gift. So I'm glad I have As weird as that is.

Host (25:24)
No, I think that's awesome. You know, I have so many questions regarding it one or the other or is there kind of a gray zone in between a depressive state and a manic state?

Leanne (25:35)
There's

gray zones for sure. There's gray zones? Mine's more like a heartbeat when you think about it. So I'll have spikes of manic, and then I'll have lower spikes of depression. And because I take my medication, it leaves me in the gray zone. What kind of line. The midline. Yeah.

Host (25:39)
What do you mean by that?

it kind of like

takes away the peaks and the valley. Can you could you could you logically or like consciously feel it an episode coming on but then not be able to like you know it's coming but you just can't do anything about it in that moment.

Leanne (26:00)
100%.

And I can articulate it, but I can't control it. That's the craziest thing. I recently experienced, we tried to decrease my meds because the side effects kind of suck. ⁓ Well, they really suck, I shouldn't say kind of. it's, know, brain feels great, but the rest of my body is just sort of like shit in the bed sometimes. So we decreased my dosage.

and I had hallucination. Apparently, but not that I could so easily recognize. And that hallucination spiraled me. I was like...

Host (26:30)
Have you had one before?

Like you're seeing things or hearing things?

Leanne (26:42)
You

completely invent something. then all of a sudden that's not actually what happened. And it was so simple. My daughter came in to my bedroom and she was wearing her house coat and had her hair in a towel like she'd just gotten out of the shower. And I said, oh, how was your shower? And she's like, I don't have a shower. And I'm like, why are you wearing a towel on your head then? And she looked at me hard and was like, what?

And I closed my eyes and I opened them again and she was ready for school.

Host (27:16)
What the he-

Leanne (27:18)
And I was like, OK, I need clearly to go back to bed because this is wild. And then what that did was it literally took me back into my 20s with all of these different situations that I had imagined that I thought were real.

Host (27:37)
How would you know they're not real? Exactly. she was there to say, don't have it on.

Leanne (27:42)
And then I was like, maybe I was imagining this. Maybe I was dreaming it. So I asked her later in the her to recollect it. And she told me exactly what had happened. And I'm like, OK, so that was 100 % me imagining it. So when you think of hallucinations, you think of doing acid and the walls breathing and the trees coming to life on your wall. Nope. Nope.

When it's an actual hallucination, it is just like your imagination taking over and creating a situation that isn't actually true. And it can be very detrimental. There are very many situations that I could tell you about that I 1000 % invented that could have been extremely dangerous or detrimental to me. They're wild and it spiraled me. And I just went right back. I upped the titration on my drugs and I was like, nope, nope, nope. We are not doing this. We will just suffer.

with the side effects and have a clear brain because that is so crappy.

Host (28:36)
Wow, I'm absolutely blown away right now. and just the reflection of life after that moment, like that epiphany you had.

Leanne (28:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it was crazy. Absolutely crazy. And then I was saying to my husband, do you remember when this happened? He's like, yeah. I mean, I just thought you didn't want to date me anymore. So you were like making shit up. ⁓

Host (28:59)
So is your husband able to realize, or does he see it more? Yes. he aware of it now? What a beautiful connection to have with somebody, hey? Yeah.

Leanne (29:07)
Very in tune with me,

We're very lucky. We've worked extremely hard at our marriage, and it's extremely successful. I'm very lucky. Wow.

Host (29:16)
extremely.

Well, thank you for sharing. but in a really fascinating way. Like how often do you get the privilege to talk to somebody, you know, like open like this? It's like the first time that I've been able to talk to or, you know, openly talk to a bipolar two individual. Yeah. And my, like, we could probably talk for three hours about this because my mind's just twirling with a thousand and two questions.

Leanne (29:26)
Crazy, right?

Mm-hmm.

Host (29:50)
I have so many questions about like especially being ⁓ And we don't have to get into into this I'm just sharing my questions and let it be what it'll be but I'm like because just females with our hormones

and our monthly cycle and how he feels crazy and then premenopause we're getting we're similar age we're getting close to and it's like ⁓ like it's got to be so complicated absolutely it's just the whole other layer of complication with with everything is there much research well there's barely any research with females past 40s in the medicine community but with how it affects

that might affect you as you age in life?

Leanne (30:31)
Not that I have found. Other than that, because of so much of the hormone fluctuations when we go through menopause, that it's quite possible that I'll have to switch the kind of drugs that I'm on because they won't speak to my body and my brain the way they do now because of the amount of hormones that are currently going through me. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why being possibly in perimenopause at the looking into HRT and then thinking, well, how is that going to impact my meds?

so I'm going to go. I actually have an appointment to start delving into that. yeah.

Host (31:03)
beautiful time to live that we are able to talk about it and discuss it and be like yeah like this is what it is and just the fact that you're able to to talk about it and then be so aware and in tune with yourself to be able to like watch you know i'm assuming there's things you watch out for to see if the drugs are working or not and that you have that toolkit

Leanne (31:26)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Host (31:28)
That's pretty powerful.

do you think you had this your whole life? Or did it come in more like when you hit puberty or in your 20s?

Leanne (31:35)
early 20s, late, late teens. ⁓ was when I went to university. Time went a lot of things. I think that that stressor, in the words of Criminal Minds, ⁓ I think that that stressor was what made it hit if you look at my pattern of behavior as a child and through my teens, and then when I went off to UVic, there's like a.

Host (31:41)
That's a common start showing up. Yeah.

Leanne (32:02)
Hard shift in behavior. Hard shift. And just went from being this very conservative, almost mousey child, quite shy, not a lot of friends, very much kept to my loner, to the polar freaking opposite. Partier, wild, very poor decision making.

Host (32:19)
I'm assuming like partier type.

Leanne (32:25)
Very much surprised I didn't wind up in a Just Friday, book a flight to Vegas, go drop $5,000 kind of behavior. ⁓ That's probably one of my tamer stories. So yeah, that's a podcast for another time.

Host (32:33)
Wow.

⁓

You could have your own podcast of your journey and your stories. I'm sure it would help a lot of people. Is there like a good, do you have a community of individuals who are going through a similar thing? Nope. media or anything?

Leanne (32:57)
No,

mean, my personal Instagram, ⁓ my personal Instagram was for a number of years sort of my outlet. I had it open public and I just sort of shared in Instagram stories. then I had some creeps in there and I shut it down as, know, yeah, some creepy ex-boyfriends and stuff. So I put it back to private and stopped sharing my life.

Host (33:13)
matter of time. ⁓

Leanne (33:24)
Essentially it's, my whole world is chomp now for social It takes up a lot of time. So I don't really even have the capacity to delve into any of my stuff on my other channel. I love talking about it because I think that it helps rid of the stigma behind mental health. So many people think that if you've got a diagnosis, you've got something wrong with you. And I think that that's not the truth at all.

I think that it's just, like I said, an untapped superpower and you just need to learn how to hone it.

Host (33:55)
The other interesting thing that I think of once you really get to know somebody, how many people in life have you met that don't have something? Of some like, whatever it may be, whether a mental illness or a physical ailment or childhood trauma, like everybody's got something. Yeah, we all got something.

Leanne (34:11)
Everybody has their stuff.

And it's your especially if you have children, to work on healing yourself from anything that is, in your DNA that feels wonky, for lack of a better word. But yeah, my biggest goal was not passing on my trauma to my children, especially my daughter.

that's been like since the day she was born, that has been my biggest motive in life is to ensure that she is happy, healthy, likes herself, you know? Yeah. Because by the time I was her age, there was not a lot of love going on in this body.

I think that if it had been more recognized back in the 90s, that maybe I would have had a different experience, maybe a little less hate in myself. I get to watch my daughter grow up with this beautiful confidence. And the way she looks at the world and looks at other people is so much more

and non-judgmental the best way I can describe it. She's just free of all those that we grew up with of so much judgment and it's I think it'll be a really cool thing to watch her grow she's wanting more human interaction. These kids don't want to be on their phones all the time and

you know, they want to have experiences and it's really cool to see that it might be coming right back around, which would be beautiful.

Host (35:47)
I agree with you. I do think that this next generation growing up, they're growing up with parents who are completely addicted. We're all addicted to our phones and our screen time that they might be the generation that grows up and it's like...

I was sitting at the Rockets game last night and I looked down the row and it's the middle of play and there's five people in a row on their phones watching and scrolling. I'm like, why come to the game? Why are you at the hockey game? You're not even watching it. You're sitting there on your phone. And my daughter made a comment this is so...

Leanne (36:24)
You go out for dinner and look around and everybody you'll see groups of people out for dinner. Socializing I put in air quotes and every single one of them is on their phone.

Host (36:35)
I call it occupying

the same space.

Leanne (36:38)
It's wild.

The addiction.

Host (36:41)
I do think

these younger kids who are growing up in this might be the ones that swing the pendulum back to be like, no, that's my hope anyways.

Leanne (36:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, it'd be really nice if the internet blew up. I mean, some aspects yes and others no. ⁓

Host (36:53)
In some aspects.

Okay so let's get back to your life journey here. you're now... What brought you to Kelowna?

Leanne (37:04)
Pandemic. Like a lot of people. 2021, my mom's health was declining quite rapidly and we were really worried about her. And mom and I had always, I've always wanted to live in the Okanagan between here and a Soyuz. She had bought some property up in Rock Creek, just up the hill from Rock I was up here a lot with my daughter because

Host (37:05)
yeah!

Leanne (37:26)
She decided that she didn't want to be sleeping as a baby. So I would pack everything in the truck and head up here and my mom would help me so that I could actually I had incredibly bad postpartum depression. So just from sheer lack of sleep. So mom would take the baby and I would go to bed and it was delightful. And so during COVID, mom was a snowbird and she was down in Arizona and had a incident.

with her health and was in the hospital for three days and we were like, okay, that's enough. You're not gonna live and all over by yourself anymore. Let's make the move. I had given my husband five years to get shit together on the coast we were ready. So we listed the house. Mom and I made the decision to do it and we had both sold our places and bought the new one in March and moved in June.

2021 and it was that quickly. Wow. And I got to keep my job and go remote. so I moved up here with the kids and my husband did sets. So he was he's an electrician so he was doing 10 on 4 which was brutal for our family. Just brutal. That was the hardest year we've ever had we're very we're one of those families that were always in the same room together. Like we're in the bedroom and all four of us are on the bed.

watching a show or everybody might like, why do we even have a big house? We just migrate room to room like a little flock of ducks. It's hilarious.

Host (38:40)
Go family.

Leanne (38:48)
I got a new early 2022. But before the summer of 2021 when we first moved was baking a lot again because it's comfort. had been baking quite a bit since having the kids. And I love teaching. So I was teaching my daughter how to bake, not my son. He doesn't teaching Adelaide how to bake sort of thing.

was teaching myself how to make sourdough again and just getting back to my training and learning different things. And I had a dream. is going to sound super cheesy. I had a dream I had a cookie company. And it was called Chomp. And they were big, thick New York style cookies. And it was just an overnight success. And I dreamt up the colors.

Host (39:33)
Is this

a dream or a premonition?

Leanne (39:35)
Yeah,

the colors and what I thought I wanted for design and everything. I told my husband, is very used to crazy Leanne shenanigans, and he's like, OK, like a good husband should be. But also like, God, could you just not start a side hustle when I don't even live there yet? mom and my dad and pretty much everybody close to me kind of rolled their eyes like, here she goes.

fire, people. I am going to make this a thing. And so within two months, I had my logo designed by a great friend of mine that I used to work with, Peter Arkell. If you're ever looking for incredible graphic design, I would hit him up. Indigenous Company. ⁓ We did marketing together. He was like my Yoda. He's just a fantastic man. So talented. Very, very good photographer as well.

Host (40:14)
to work with him at.

Leanne (40:24)
yeah, we worked on my branding and I just started. I was like, fuck it, let's go. my website and designed it myself, designed all the packaging myself. I was literally making stickers and putting them on bags and just went out to everybody I knew and I was like, bye cookies.

Host (40:46)
No! ⁓ okay, okay.

Leanne (40:49)
No, I remember, and this was out of my house, my little oven and 5-quart stand mixer. We're not talking any sort of fancy stuff. very small. Yeah. And it's fun when I look back on the photos, I'm like, sweet baby Jesus, how did anybody buy that crap? So ugly. But people are buying it because they love me.

Host (41:00)
small bats cooking.

Terrible.

Leanne (41:13)
And not because I had any sort of cookie talent, faith, lots of faith. But I kept going because I was like, I have naysayers and I am powered up here. People think that I will fail and screw them. I am not going to fail. And I just pushed it like a lot. But naturally I didn't, I wasn't cramming things down people's throat like an MLM and I wasn't paying for any advertising. I was into fitness.

And I really wanted to compete. we moved here, I'd actually done my first competition.

Host (41:44)
Is it power lift? Body? Sorry, you had said that earlier.

Leanne (41:45)
no bodybuilding. yeah

obviously cookies are a dessert and they're like a great way to celebrate coming off and I thought yeah I'm gonna do bodybuilding shows there's a there's a market here this isn't me inventing the wheel this has definitely been done other cookie companies out there that do giant cookies that people buy at the end of a

I thought I'm going to get connected with some of these people and go to these shows and expose the brand and make some I started doing that and it was very intimidating and I'm naturally, believe it or I completely overwhelmed at these things and bestie is the opposite. She is extremely extroverted when it comes to social situations everybody thought it was hers.

I was so offended. I could see that. was like, ⁓ rude. Everybody thinks this is Shelby's and it's mine. Now I really don't give a shit. You can work my booth. I don't care. can think it's yours. That's golden. As long as the brand is out there, I don't care about any of that stuff. I care about the brand and how that looks and the product, the product quality, There's very little ego left in this for me, which is huge.

And but it was very ego driven at the beginning, very ego driven. I was the cookies. The cookies were me. And everywhere I went, I talked about the cookies. I put a deckle on the back of my car. I was very driven for it to be successful. And it was I had to scale it back a number of times because I couldn't handle the volume. Yeah, we were producing we me were producing a lot of cookies in that little kitchen. And

I did the big jump and moved to a commercial kitchen that I rented. Shout out to Janelle who owns flour and That was definitely a huge move for me was paying for a rental space to have her beautiful little kitchen couple of days a week. And I just kept at it. And with our economy, it definitely started to suffer because it's a luxury item. don't just buy expensive gourmet cookies.

For fun, they're not cheap. They're not a Subway you just get them for your kids. I mean, you definitely can get them for your kids. And we have a lot of people that come in for their kids. But you know what I mean. It's not a cheap product. are. They're six ounces. It's a meal. Yeah. And if you look at the calorie count on the website, you might question eating the entire thing in one sitting. But I dome them. They're great.

Host (44:01)
52.

Hallie (44:01)
Thank you.

Leanne (44:13)
I definitely felt like it was starting to sort of for me. And I was starting to sort of lose the love because I couldn't afford to scale. And I've always known in my head how I've wanted this to go. And I could feel like it wasn't going to progress because of the lack of funds and the lack of money that people have right now.

We're all strapped. We're all trying to afford groceries. And I personally have cut out Starbucks because I, first of all, American, second of all, $6 for a coffee? Get out of here. That's ridiculous. So, and I was like, you can ask Callie. I was like a Starbucks connoisseur, but I looked at how much I was spending and I was like, good God, woman, cut that out of the if I'm cutting out

my six dollar coffees then people aren't going to be buying a seven dollar cookie. So I was getting pretty negative about it and still doing the bodybuilding shows and sort of just limping it along this past spring I was down on the coast doing the bodybuilding show I do every year this booth set up beside me of this brand I'd never heard of, creamer rice company

So I'm like all set up and I'm watching this couple who I've seen before, but I don't really know who they are they're from Kelowna as well. Our paths have crossed and they've actually crossed. And I didn't even know it at this point in a hilarious way we can get into. But.

I'm watching this little woman setting up all this booth stuff and these two men just standing off to the side yapping watching her set up the whole booth and I'm thinking to myself DICKS.

Host (45:49)
You

Leanne (45:51)
And so I go around to fill out my water bottle and I'm like, nice, making the woman do all the work, And she laughs and she's like completely every time. we sort of just, I don't know, we just naturally hit it immediately and chatted throughout the day. And that was Halle.

And the crazy part of this story is, I get all emotional when I think about it. The craziest part of this whole thing was the night before. Ugh, I hate that I get emotional thinking about this. I was in my hotel room with my best friend. We're just scrolling, eating candy, smoking that's what I I'm looking up angel investors, because I'm like, the only way that Chomp is going to survive is if I have an influx of cash here.

I have somebody who believes in me, believes in the brand, wants to see it fly. And that's the only way it's going to live on because I can't afford to do this anymore. I can't dig myself into a financial hole, get a second mortgage, all that kind of stuff. I'm not going to put my family at risk financially here for something that I've dreamt. I mean, a lot of people do that and kudos to them, but I couldn't risk my mental health, my husband's mental

my home, all of those things for something that felt.

dangerous, uncertain. if I had somebody else that believed in me, absolutely, because I was very much a one woman show at this point. next day after I met and her emailed me on their way back to Kelowna and asked if I'd ever thought about having an investor.

Host (47:02)
uncertain.

Leanne (47:18)
And I read the

Host (47:19)
Did

they know this? No. At the time?

Leanne (47:21)
No. Nothing.

Host (47:22)
I got goosebumps.

Hallie (47:24)
Yeah.

Leanne (47:24)
The whole thing is kismet. It's like, and I get emotional when I talk about it because it literally fricking angels, right? Yes. And not to say that there has not been hard times in the past eight months, because there absolutely has been. There's been tears, there's been anger, there's been a lot of personal growth getting my ego out of the way because there's a lot of ego tied to a brand.

Host (47:33)
meaningful.

Leanne (47:49)
It's your brand is you and you need to remove yourself from that in order for it to be really successful. That's hard. It's so hard to do because it's your baby. Literally, I said to my therapist, this is my baby. I'm literally giving my baby to somebody and hoping that they're going to take care of it as well as I do. And that's scary as shit. So I read what they said and said aloud to myself, holy shit.

Host (47:56)
to do.

Leanne (48:13)
OK, universe, I see you. And for the record, folks, manifestation is a real thing. You can't just be saying to yourself, I wish for more money. That's not how it manifestation is a real So I met with them the following Tuesday. all live in Kelowna, which is really cool.

So I

went over to Halle's home and sat at their big beautiful island and got into it. And we talked about what I'm looking for, what they're looking for, what that would look like, what a partnership would look like. And then they put together an offer. I think it's a quote from the Godfather that it's an offer I couldn't refuse. I can't remember, but literally an offer I could not refuse. I would have been an idiot.

like it was a win-win.

Host (48:57)
Can we turn to you, Hallie, and ask, do you remember that day? What was it about? Can you take me through that day of meeting her and just what was going through your mind? And then when did that idea come? Like, hey, we should invest.

Hallie (49:01)
yeah.

Well,

it was pretty crazy actually. My husband and I were extremely sick. Extremely sick when we were at this show, but we were bound and determined to get it done. And when Leanne had passed and had said that comment about the boys just standing around, I'm like, I like this so owning ⁓ something like Chomp.

It's always been a dream of mine as well. Like I've always thought about a little coffee shop or whatever, because I've always been in the service industry. So it was just kind of one of those things that I'd always dreamt about in a sense.

talking with her and Shelby throughout the day and just, you know, getting to watch her and see her as a person. really clicked with her. I really liked her. And so when my husband and I were driving home, always wanted to do something like a cookie company, but he doesn't know how. He doesn't know anything, the first thing about baking and whatnot. And Leanne can tell that little part of the story after. So we just started talking and...

He asked me straight out, he's like, what do you think about investing? I'm like, ⁓ my God, yes, yes, yes, yes. because I had also, we bought a couple of the cookies at the show and we had tried them out and I of course fell in love with them. So for me, it was a super easy decision. I'm like, yes, email her, let's find out what she's looking for, what, you know, like if she's even looking for investors or wants a partner, we didn't know. It was just like, we'll see.

That's exactly how it happened. And then the day that she came over, I mean, it was just something clicked for both of us. was like, my God, this is my soul sister. Wow. ⁓

Host (50:41)
And so that was the kind of that fell in line for you to be able to open up a brick and mortar. Was that the next step? What was the next

Hallie (50:46)
Yes. No, it wasn't originally.

Well, we had just basically partnered up. My came in with the investment. Well, him and I, should So he silent partner. And Leanne and I were going to do the work. And so we just kind of went from there. Just start making cookies, start advertising, doing different things, working together, That was basically what

what we were gonna do, just stay at the rental kitchen and just produce cookies and see where it went.

Leanne (51:16)
Yeah, it was just.

so simple. major other than we wanted to redo the was fantastic We wanted to sort of pull the product away from the bodybuilding industry being our main target audience our main target audience is actually families. My demographic on Instagram is females to

60.

Hallie (51:41)
Absolutely.

Leanne (51:42)
So maybe that's the demo that we should be targeting our marketing towards rather than, know, yes, the bodybuilding shows were great, but I needed more exposure. The brand needed more local exposure. Despite having, you know, the Trump mobile, we really needed more brand recognition, more exposure markets. Let's market the crap out of this and see where this goes. So literally the two of us were schlepping cookies all over the Okanagan the entire summer. ⁓

I don't

Hallie (52:16)
And

it was so much work. first I was like, yeah, let's go. is fun. it's like, my goodness. ⁓

Host (52:24)
A

lot of respect for those market people.

Leanne (52:27)
The

Hallie (52:27)
People

that do it all the time, every weekend, multiple times a week, I'm like, here's to you.

Host (52:34)
It's almost

all of them. It's their side hustle. Exactly. full-time job.

Leanne (52:38)
Yes.

Hallie (52:39)
So what was also really good for us is because my husband has been in business for over 25 years. So he really knows kind of the business side of things and that's where he comes into play with us. We're good, know, like Leanne is the recipe development and all this stuff. These are all her beautiful, I call her mind beautiful, her beautiful mind. She comes up with such incredible things. it's her and I that, you know, make this come to life. And he does.

sure the money side and the numbers and the stuff like that. mean Leanne and Todd get along really well as well they're both excel people. They love excel. They live in excel. I do not. the other kind of interesting thing if I can bring this up is my husband is also bipolar. So

Host (53:21)
Now

I gotta ask like one or two. Now I know the difference.

Hallie (53:23)
He's

two, but he's mixed state. he's very much up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. His moods can change very, very quickly. He can be very, very happy. In the next second, I'll talk to him, and he's very, very cool. In the same moment, seconds, seconds. he's a very, very cool person, and intense, and He's a very interesting man, very, very intelligent. So they get along.

Host (53:34)
in the same day, same moment.

Hallie (53:48)
very well because their brains are much the same. So we were sitting around having a meeting one day and Leanne was chatting away and she was on her and she's like, I am listening. I'm great at multitasking because I'm bipolar. And Todd looks at me and I'm like, my God, so is Todd. now I have two of you.

Host (54:08)
You

Hallie (54:09)
So it's been pretty cool to watch the two of them, know, be able to connect on that level that I just never can. never could because they know each other that way. They know their, you know, the feelings and whatnot. So it's been pretty interesting.

Leanne (54:28)
It's a cool dynamic because dealing with your husband and you just want to bash them because they're just being frustrated. No. Well, you know, when the spouse is being super frustrating and, know, like I can recognize behaviors in him I do myself so I can be like, that's the bipolar. It's come back around in five minutes. And so I'm able to sort of help deescalate.

Host (54:35)
It's more my husband dealing with me.

Oh, interesting. he the first person in your life you've met that's bipolar as well?

Leanne (54:58)
And And him and him. We drove home from getting from buying all the kitchen equipment and the two of us just yapped for like two hours about all of our experiences because there's no you can tell your spouse or your best friend or whatever and they can can listen and be engaged but they can't relate. There's nothing like meeting somebody else with your same oddity and being like ⁓ and then I did this the other one nods yep I did that too. ⁓

Hallie (55:27)
laughter because I knew what they were talking about.

Leanne (55:28)
A of laughter. And because

it's not funny, it's not even remotely funny. A lot of our experiences that are similar aren't even remotely funny. They're dark. But you laugh because you're relieved.

Host (55:38)
It's the connection. The warmth of the connection.

Leanne (55:41)
Yes, we have a great banter too. He tolerates me. I'm very silly and I make fun of people all the time. And he's very serious and doesn't like to be made fun of. And I poke the bear all the time. But he tolerates me because has to. ⁓

Hallie (55:54)
yeah, we both.

It has to.

Host (56:00)
So

so if you're schlepping cookies all summer, is that what brought on the idea of a brick and mortar? Because you're like, I don't want to be doing that.

Leanne (56:09)
Halle can take it from here.

Hallie (56:11)
So no, that's not how it happened. So it happened actually before summer. ⁓ okay. My husband. So the cream of rice that we were talking about.

Host (56:15)
Okay.

Is this

a previous business or a

Hallie (56:21)
No,

this is our business that we have as well. My husband has multiple businesses. So Cream of Rice is where Helix Foods and it's fairly new. We launched it last fall. anyways, so that's again why we met was being at the trade show. so Todd has been looking for a warehouse store all the Cream of Rice and whatnot.

as we were starting to grow our cookie company and needing more time in the bakery and stuff, and we were just like, we were working stupid hours because we only have this set time that we can be in there. just trying to get everything done for each market, each order, each whatever. So, kind of sat down and all talked about it and we started looking for space. We were looking more for like bakery slash warehouse, not really a storefront at the.

at the time, but we thought, oh, if we can put a little storefront, that would be amazing, right? Why not? So we looked at a few different places and they weren't really great. We found one out by the airport. It was lovely, but it would have been a lot of work to put in to finish it up. And so we found this, our now our location we went in there and it's perfect place for a storefront, perfect place for the bakery. Oh yeah, it's a great area. So we went in there and

Host (57:26)
This is such a good.

Hallie (57:31)
Leanne and I were both like, fuck yeah. This is going to be it. We had such a of it. So that was just before summer. And we got the keys to the new place July 1. ⁓ was such a dump. it was just so. Was that like a gas fireplace store or something like that? a dump.

Leanne (57:42)
Dump.

Host (57:42)
Such a

before.

Did they leave a bunch of their stuff there?

Hallie (57:53)
There was it was it was gnarly it was it was really not pretty

Host (57:58)
because if you would have had to then fully reno the whole thing.

Leanne (58:01)
Hi.

Hallie (58:02)
We had to put the entire kitchen in. We had to do everything. scratch. From scratch. And we did it in six weeks.

Host (58:09)
You got a connection in the... ⁓

Leanne (58:10)
Shout out

⁓

Hallie (58:15)
Our GC. Yeah, right.

Host (58:16)
Any other shout-outs?

Hallie (58:18)
there was a lot. We had a lot of help. Yes. We have a lot of friends. it was great. way people came together and just made it happen.

Leanne (58:20)
god.

It was just beautiful. We had a lot of happy tears.

Hallie (58:30)
⁓ yes, a lot. So yeah, so July 1st and then you know we were in baking by the middle of August and then we had our soft opening September 1st the rest is history for now but yeah it was pretty cool.

Host (58:42)
It's so exciting. I

feel so good in there too. Yeah. I hit up your soft opening by chance actually. We go to Crumbs and Roses. And then as I was walking out, I was chatting with June. She likes to talk and I was walking out and I saw there's balloons outside or something. Or what did I see? No, there's a decal on your store. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The decal looks so good.

Hallie (58:48)
Amazing!

Right?

Leanne (59:04)
before.

Hallie (59:06)
you

Host (59:07)
And I was like, Graham, that's that cookie place. So we got in the car and ripped over there and Graham and I went in, we're like, what? Your color is so nice. Yeah. Then the display.

Hallie (59:15)
It's pretty cool,

And

that's like the other thing with Leanne and I, everything.

Host (59:22)
You're a little monster

dude. Yeah! Just love it.

Hallie (59:25)
Right? But we have everything so similar. Like we both that the teal color was both of our favorites. it's just like really.

Leanne (59:33)
So many things. So Halle sent me a video of her home before she and Todd moved in together. And she had that exact teal color over her house. Everywhere. She's like, check this out. Showed me a video. I was like, creepy.

Host (59:46)
Did it bring back pink memories of right?

Leanne (59:50)
Luckily no teal balls. But yeah, the similarities between the two of us are similar upbringings, close in age, people think we're sisters constantly. It's a daily thing. Very connected, yes.

Host (1:00:01)
chemists.

Hallie (1:00:03)
We say the same thing at the same time. We send the same text at the same time to each stuff like that. It's pretty wild. Yeah, it is. Very connected.

Leanne (1:00:12)
Yeah, very connected.

It's ruffled some feathers. yes. ⁓

Hallie (1:00:16)
It has.

Host (1:00:17)
If I fold whose feather?

Leanne (1:00:19)
Oh, we've

got people in our lives that have been like, what the hell? As people very special.

Host (1:00:28)
they wish they had a connection like that probably.

Leanne (1:00:30)
It's very special. We're very lucky. whole thing between the two of us has been extremely easy. I really like this cup. Well, I really like this cup. None of that at all.

Host (1:00:37)
success story.

Hallie (1:00:43)
We have sent each other the same things from Amazon when we're looking for something. It's like, what do you think of this? And we'll literally send the same link something that we want.

Leanne (1:00:52)
Give me a cookie

jar on my birthday that I had looked at on Amazon a week before and not told her. The identical fricking cookie jar. It's just weird.

Host (1:00:59)
I

That is weird.

Leanne (1:01:01)
And when we're working in the kitchen and I get there after my regular job, I come in and we're together for like 5, 10 minutes and Todd is like, OK, bye. ⁓ god, there's two of them. See you later.

Host (1:01:11)
Ha ha!

Hallie (1:01:14)
yes.

He says, there's two of them. I've got two of them now. Yes you do.

Host (1:01:19)
And so are you able in that space, do you make or process the cream of rice in that space? It's just storage.

Hallie (1:01:25)
So yeah. it's

that's where so we have Amazon in POs every week and then UPS and them come and stuff up from there. Yeah. And it gets shoved off to Amazon from there. So. cool. Yeah. So we've got a whole shipping desk in the back. So that's for both our cookies and for the cream of rice. yeah, we have a whole production going in there between the between the cream of rice and the cookies. It's pretty cool. That's really

Host (1:01:51)
And so yeah, so you haven't been open too long. I guess when this episode airs, you'll be open for a while. do you envision for the brand and all that looking forward?

Hallie (1:01:53)
No.

Leanne (1:01:56)
Right. ⁓

Hallie (1:01:56)
Yeah.

Well, the thing is with our brand, it's such a brand from You look at these other bigger cookie companies and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I'm not saying that. But they get so big that they have to start using cookie presses and that kind of thing. But we will never do that. It will always be made by hand. Because there's something to be said about the human touch, about the energy from a human.

into a cookie, into anything you do, the It just brings out so much more in things.

Host (1:02:29)
Have you

learned to be a better baker through Leanne?

Hallie (1:02:32)
I'm different.

I've always been a baker. I've always been a cooker. So yeah, just different ways of doing things, which is really kind of the other thing. We just instantly in the kitchen just jive. We don't even have to speak. we just never get in each other's way. a connection. It's pretty, like I said, it's just wild. A lot of times at home with my kids or whatever, and I'm just like, get out of the kitchen. You're in my way. You're at whatever.

That never happens with her and I. Never. We don't even have to talk. whatever the other person is doing, if something's going on, like we have stuff in the oven, and they're doing something there, and I'm over here doing dough, then she takes off to do something, and the beeper goes. And so she knows I'm going to get it. It's just, yes. It's a really cool dance. Yeah. Yeah.

Host (1:03:21)
do you have like a set number of cookie flavors you do and then seasonal?

Hallie (1:03:26)
Yes, basically. So we have the chocolate chunk that we always have, the Biscoff Crunch, Reese's Beast. Those are kind of our staple cookies right now. And then we've got the, we brought in the new lava cake. We dabble in different flavors, depending on the month. Yeah. And this looks cool because yeah, we had our sixth set, or our five set, I should say, and then a cookie of the month.

we're changing that menu up all the time because we can, because we've got our own kitchen, our own bakery, and all the time in the world to be able to do that. that's given this one, okay, let's try this. Because when we were renting the kitchen, you have such a set time to get everything done, wasn't, she couldn't do her.

dabbling in this and that, whatever. And now I just watch her. It's really cool just sitting there watching her. And she'll be like, she'll just turn around and she'll grab this and grab this and put it together and try it. And she's like, do we like And it's always a yes. There's never anything that she makes that is not a or like, yeah. So it's just, it's really fun watching come alive for her too and watching what she can do.

Host (1:04:29)
Is there a trade secret into getting your cookies to bake properly with them being that thick and then not being in the puddle? 100%. Isn't there? Yes. Because whenever I have one, that's what I think. I'm like, how did this not ooze and how is it cooked through?

Hallie (1:04:36)
There is definitely.

Yeah, there's definitely a secret.

Leanne (1:04:49)
And we're not daring.

Hallie (1:04:51)
So

yes, so in that case, yes, she has definitely taught me different things. exactly. yeah, it's been cool.

Host (1:04:56)
techniques yes

I love cutting your cookies. I've told you this in the email.

I love cutting your cookies into like chunks. But I mean, cut you just break it and they're all different, love chunks, I call them. And then you keep them in the freezer and then you just eat when you walk by. And then your cookies over vanilla ice cream. Your cookie crumble on vanilla ice cream. You just put so like cookie crumble. Oh my God. So good. So good. Oh, yeah. And you could have

Hallie (1:05:08)
Just break it.

Leanne (1:05:18)
I've heard that.

That's actually one of my ideas.

Host (1:05:28)
Somebody needs to do this at the market like a Sunday bar like a buffet and then you just have the chopped cookie crumble flavors

Leanne (1:05:35)
Want to come work for us?

Host (1:05:40)
can have that at your place, can have soft serve. ⁓

Hallie (1:05:43)
Trust

us.

Leanne (1:05:43)
We have so many ideas for next summer.

Hallie (1:05:45)
many ideas.

Host (1:05:48)
what do you see as ways to expand it into get more of a community staple when you think of klona you think of

Leanne (1:05:53)
Well, that's

what we're working on. There's certain avenues that we're really wanting to get into. Wedding industry's huge here. So we're gonna start working on some marketing and advertising. I do cookie boards, so we call it cookie cootery. did one for Movement Okanagan

beautiful. full suite of Chomp cookies in a board, all chopped up. So you just take a wedge of whatever looks the best to you. Oh, can just pick it up. Oh, yes. And then it. Or you pick it up. Yep. And then it's in a beautiful charcuterie box, like a wooden box that you return later. And so we just, I just go to town on it. I decorate it. really cool, which I really, that's untapped.

Host (1:06:18)
order the board.

Leanne (1:06:34)
Nobody else does that and I want that to be a thing. So I did a wedding last month, two boards, and then I did Movement Okanagan. I've done a few of but not nearly what I would like to be doing one of those a couple times a week, because I just think they're so fun.

Hallie (1:06:51)
Yeah, they are.

Host (1:06:52)
Just think of those long tables and

then you have like this narrow wood board coming down the middle of it just full of... sitting there and you're just nibbling over it.

Leanne (1:07:00)
Exactly. Exactly.

It's great for weddings. It's great for baby showers. It's Christmas time. for anything. Yeah.

Host (1:07:09)
to go parisola with hot

Leanne (1:07:11)
Mm-hmm.

Host (1:07:12)
This is fun, like you got such a fun brand, it's fun.

Hallie (1:07:15)
It is fun.

Leanne (1:07:16)
Yeah, it's

fun. We don't get people in that don't want cookies. ⁓

Host (1:07:20)
Why do you

not smile when you enter? Cookie.

Hallie (1:07:21)
Everybody is so excited.

Leanne (1:07:24)
Yeah,

our favorite though is people that come in, never been in before, a little trepidatious, the cookies are large, a little bit intimidating thing because you're not sure which one you want. Yes. You've never had them. It's expensive. It's $7 cookie. What if you don't like it? They go to the car with their little bag and their one cookie and they sit in the car and we can see them. so when Halle and I first started, we'd

Host (1:07:37)
is true.

wait,

Hallie (1:07:48)
You can't see us.

Leanne (1:07:53)
They'd be hiding behind the counter, watching them in their car, complete creeps. you see the bite. And the head go back. And the eye roll, because that's everybody's ecstasy. Then they get out of the car, and they come back in, and they buy more cookies. In the same five-minute span.

Hallie (1:08:03)
Everybody does it.

And it has happened numerous times. It is.

Leanne (1:08:14)
It's the best.

Host (1:08:15)
What a good feeling.

Leanne (1:08:16)
Yeah. It fills my cup. It is exactly what I've always been wanting. that creative outlet for me. I get do it with somebody that I absolutely adore. We're making people happy. We're making a beautiful product. It's a win, win, win. There's no downside to this other than the fact that we are out of the house a lot.

and standing on pavement for 12 hour days and stuff like that. My son was complaining this morning that you're never home.

Well, I'm like, you're always playing video games.

Hallie (1:08:46)
Exactly. He just wants you there.

Host (1:08:49)
come play video games in the the bake shop. He does. You know another untapped market too is that like a big thing that I've noticed because my kids are pretty young is that birthday party people are getting away from cakes. Yes. And I think it's just a COVID thing like you're doing like your individual.

Leanne (1:08:51)
He

⁓

Hallie (1:09:06)
We have a lot of people that come in for birthdays now.

Host (1:09:10)
Yeah,

little cookie things.

Leanne (1:09:11)
Well, and we do minis as well. So you don't need to get the giant cookie. You could get the two and a half ounce cookie. Yeah. Yeah.

Hallie (1:09:18)
OK, we'll just do a really quick thing. Yeah. Because my life isn't quite as quite as extravagant as hers, I don't think.

Leanne (1:09:25)
I'm also a yapper.

Hallie (1:09:28)
So ⁓ born and raised in Salmon Arm. Beautiful. So very local. Never moved. up in the same house, up in the mountain, on acres. I'm the youngest of three girls. we were all two years apart. My mom and dad are still together and are still as in love with each other as they were back then. I have very.

Host (1:09:30)
⁓

Hallie (1:09:48)
extremely, my husband calls us the Brady Bunch because my family is extremely close. And I'm talking my immediate family and the extended family. I have so many cousins, so many aunts and uncles and blah, blah, blah. And we're all like this. And it's funny because, And I grew up always thinking that's how life was. Everybody had this. Your norm. Because it was my norm. growing up and.

Host (1:10:03)
That's so beautiful.

What, it was you?

Hallie (1:10:14)
learning that that's not how it was was very it was very traumatizing for me when I learned that you know when people get married it's not for life like there's so many people that would get divorces and stuff and I never I never because I always saw my parents right

Host (1:10:28)
How old, and your extended family seems stable too. How old were you when you had that little epiphany?

Hallie (1:10:33)
I was pretty old, I was probably 12 or 13 when I was like really like holy crow, what's going on in the world, right?

Host (1:10:41)
to that because I just said I was just talking to my husband about this the other night. I was at, I won't tell her tell her name, but it was grade five. Yeah. I was at a friend's house and it was the first time in my life where I experienced an argument. Not like ⁓

Hallie (1:10:44)
Right.

Really?

Host (1:10:57)
Bickering with your brother right like that petty stuff, but actually like her parents were fighting in in the kitchen Yeah, like hiding in the bedroom, and I did not understand and they were going through it and I am I it rock

Hallie (1:11:08)
Exactly.

It did with me too, like I just was like what? You're kidding me!

Host (1:11:16)
The shelter

child. Like we just grew up in love. Yeah. And then you realize, like she experienced, she goes, I experienced that every day. Wow. And I remember thinking like, that feeling that I had in that environment. Right. How would, what type of person would you be if you lived in that every day? That energy in that.

Hallie (1:11:34)
Exactly.

And I never had that. And I love that I never had that. No, not at all. yeah, I mean, I'm going to give you the really condensed version of everything. I started working in the service industry when I was 13 at a high-end restaurant in Salmon Arm. Oh, good for you. I know. basically, I didn't stop. My parents will say to this day, they never knew me from 13 to 18 because I was either working or I was in school.

Host (1:11:40)
Yeah, not completely.

I'm

Hallie (1:12:02)
⁓ Always gone. I started as a bus girl when I was 13 and moved up quickly to waitressing and went dabbled in different restaurants. Unbelievable. think everybody should have to do it. Yeah, everybody should have to do it. It was, I love it. I love the industry. my boyfriend at the time, we started dating when I was And then my life changed very quickly right at.

Host (1:12:03)
like waitress?

What?

Hallie (1:12:27)
right after grad, I ended up getting pregnant. So I had three babies with my ex-husband very young. We were married by 20, by 28. I went through a lot over the years. I've gone through so many different jobs, industry for years, years and years and years. And then I got out of that for a while, went into legal. I actually went to Okanagan College here and got my

Legal Administrative Worked for a law firm for a while, and then I worked in management. I managed three newspapers in Salmonarm. And then Tolko in the lumber industry. At mill? Yeah. ⁓ not at the mill, though. At the head office. I was in the accounting department so yeah, I've dabbled in a lot of different things. the service industry, food industry is definitely my passion.

love talking to very good at reading So it's fun to interact. Like all I'd have to say is hello to you and I'd know exactly how to talk to you. Right. And so I did a lot of management in as well as serving. I still served, but I would manage head or front of house. Head of house. I was head of house, you know? current husband we, kind of gave up love.

after a few years and I just said, know what, I'm just going to be a single mom and live my life. And then some mutual friends introduced us and we met and married in 10 months.

Host (1:13:46)
Mmm, is that like early mid-30s?

Hallie (1:13:49)
No, this was,

we've only been married for two and a half years. Yeah, we've together for three and a half years. It's very very fast. wow. Yeah. It's going really good.

Host (1:14:00)
You've got you've had a lot of jobs so many ⁓ skills that you've learned. Yeah

Hallie (1:14:02)
That's a lot of

Yeah,

it's been wild. Yeah.

Host (1:14:10)
And now you kind of get to put all of them to work. All you think of your hospitality, your administration. Did you do bookkeeping?

Hallie (1:14:12)
Exactly.

No,

no, was more into payable. Yeah, accounting with that kind of stuff.

Leanne (1:14:22)
Okay.

Host (1:14:23)
Okay.

Probably

like working for a lawyer very organized

Hallie (1:14:29)
Yes, I can't I I can be very organized. I am very organized when I want to be but She's more the paper girl than I am. I'm more the hands-on. I do that. I like the grunt

Host (1:14:41)
I that most of our paper now is, like you were saying, computer, data, Excel.

Hallie (1:14:46)
So that's where her and my husband are really good at that. And I just leave it up to them because I'm just like, you guys can do your brain thing together. And I like getting my hands dirty. That's where I thrive, is doing things and getting in there and whatever.

Host (1:15:02)
That's so cool. Yeah. What a story you two have.

Hallie (1:15:05)
I know. And it's like we've known each other for our entire lives. we were talking back when we were teenagers and we had the same bloody wallet, like the chain link wallet. No way. Yes, like everything. We dressed the same, like everything.

Host (1:15:19)
It

feels like you've known each other forever. But it's been what? ⁓

Hallie (1:15:23)
Not even a year. It's

been 10 months. months. don't even know. been more than that. April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November. Almost eight months. Yeah, it's only seven months. Holy shit.

Leanne (1:15:26)
So.

Yeah, it's wild. It's wild. Probably the coolest thing that was very early on was our kitchen dynamic, the kitchen dance. Everybody knows what the kitchen dance is. I'm not surprised you're already talking about this, but like, you know, have one with your spouse, either you're like, you groove together or you want them to get the hell out. Yes. just immediately, we just jived immediately.

Host (1:15:36)
I'm saying.

Hallie (1:15:46)
talking about.

Leanne (1:16:00)
I barely had to train her. You know what I mean? When somebody is coming in and they're learning how to make whatever it is you're making, there's some training components there.

Host (1:16:12)
What you're saying is you baked a lot.

Hallie (1:16:15)
Well yeah, but not the way she begged.

Leanne (1:16:16)
Yeah, yeah, it was

just a natural easy.

Host (1:16:20)
Okay wait,

do you have the same taste of music? Makes the playlist easy for the-

Leanne (1:16:23)
Yes.

Yeah.

Hallie (1:16:26)
We literally, yes.

Leanne (1:16:28)
It's so funny though, there is a genre of music that I like to listen to on my own that I will never impose on anyone because it's very aggressive. Yeah, was, She may have gone through an emo phase. But yeah, that is the only genre that, and neither one of us are huge on country, but.

whole 90s alt rock thing, big on that. Dance music, big on that. We've actually been listening to a lot of jazz ⁓ when the spots open, because it's just so easy and mellow. Because if we listen to today's top hits, it's just the same songs over and over where we get that.

Hallie (1:17:09)
Thank

Host (1:17:11)
Yeah,

it's like the same 100 song.

Hallie (1:17:13)
Exactly.

Leanne (1:17:13)
There's

so much Sabrina Carpenter you can listen to before you want to like stab your ears out. So yeah, we've gone just to like smooth jazz. That's cool. Which makes me want to be in New York on a rainy day drinking out a cappuccino. ⁓

Host (1:17:27)
Yeah, with a cookie.

Cookie's specifically designed to dip into like a coffee where it's not soft enough that it falls apart in your coffee, but in such a way that like absorbs, crunchies how to absorb it, so you Do you know what I'm talking?

Leanne (1:17:46)
Bisc

off crunch.

Hallie (1:17:46)
Biscoff crunch definitely. Yeah. you've got to do the biscoff crunch.

Host (1:17:48)
Tragically.

Leanne (1:17:52)
That's like the cult favourite.

Hallie (1:17:54)
Absolutely. That's a staple. And that cookie. to try that.

Leanne (1:17:59)
The background story on that cookie is so cool. I designed that cookie with a widow, a bodybuilder that I was acquaintances with, huge customer, very successful bodybuilder, always ordered cookies. And I had a cookie on my menu called Scores a Lot. So it was like score bar That's my favorite chocolate bar.

Host (1:18:02)
Let's hear it.

Yeah.

That's one Graham had, yep.

Leanne (1:18:22)
Mike would order this cookie the time and he tragically passed away and his widow reached out to me and said, I don't know if you'd be open to this, but I would love to make a cookie for his like design a flavor. And I was like all over it, absolutely. he was a remarkable human, just one of those enigmatic

people that you wanna know, larger than life kind of personality. And Cindy is just a darling. So we worked together, I developed different flavors, sent them off to her, she tried them all, she tried them with the kids, and they decided on the Mike Mayo, which was score, biscoff, chocolate chunk. then I asked her, would you mind if I put this on the menu? Because this cookie is fire. And she was like, absolutely.

very quickly became the favorite at every single place I took it. Always sells out. It's just such a great flavor combination with that Biscoff cookie, that crunchy, buttery, cinnamony cookie, and the score bar, the toffee. I was having this thing where everywhere I was taking it, if it wasn't a bodybuilding show and people didn't know who Mike Mayo was, they're like, is there mayonnaise in this? And I was just OK.

Let's let's rebrand this cookie because it's had its time in this in this in the spotlight with his name and his honor. I'm going to have to rename it, unfortunately, and I want to keep it on the menu because it is such a hot seller. let's rename it to the Biscoff Crunch. In hindsight, I sort of wish that I had renamed it to like something to do with score. it is the Biscoff Crunch. is definitely to this day one of the number one sellers.

that cookie is fire. I don't ever get sick of it. And we make it in mini form too. by the way, are danger zone. Because you feel like, ⁓ it's just a little cookie. They're also calorie laden. And yeah, you can eat the whole bag. And then it doesn't feel nearly as guilty as a big cookie. But then you've just had four cookies.

Hallie (1:20:05)
yeah.

Leanne (1:20:24)
Their danger zone. weekend's worth of calories. Their danger zone. Bye.

Hallie (1:20:27)
but they're so good. They're so good.

Host (1:20:29)
And the mini

Leanne (1:20:30)
For

the soul. And mini chunks. The mini chunk cookies are also fire. I don't know why those taste as good as they do. But there are recipes that don't turn out. are. I had a dud yesterday. Took it home. it with the family. All of us went, nope. wow. Yep.

Hallie (1:20:37)
They just do.

happen very often.

Leanne (1:20:49)
No, I don't know what's wrong with it, but it's just a nope. Yeah, it's just not to the capabilities of.

Host (1:20:52)
But you recognize it.

Do you find that with you had mentioned earlier with putting your ego aside that you're able to it into something like you can just recognize that this is this isn't this isn't going anywhere by the lake

Leanne (1:21:07)
Surprisingly,

that's been the easiest process for me is the flavors have never been anything about me. They've been what I think people will like. do put in stuff that is my favorite type of stuff. That's the whole reason I brought the score The peanut butter one is very first recipe I ever wrote. Still the same recipe.

Little fluctuations here and there, little increase in the flour, change the type of flour, eggs, more eggs, overwhelmingly, the cookies have never been ego. It's been brand. And I have really had to check myself a number of times to be like, who is speaking right Is it Leanne who wants this business to soar, or is it her ego that wants all the credit? And I let that go.

And it's been hard because I've got a team now. It isn't mine. It's ours. And the baby is growing and the baby's doing well. She's thriving. And I'm so grateful. there is that fight in yourself to be like, My company. And I do correct myself a lot when I'm talking about stuff because I get very impassioned when I'm sharing the product with people. I'm like, and I did this and I did this. And I'm like, wee.

Hallie (1:22:18)
And she will literally stop in conversation and look at me and go, we are laughing. And I'm not the one that is going to take offense to it because I know it's a process. And I've told her from day one, this is your baby. This is your baby. This is your I. ⁓ yeah, of course it is.

Leanne (1:22:24)
Yeah, I'm just stirring.

Host (1:22:35)
that she's trying though.

Leanne (1:22:39)
Yeah, it's funny though. I'm like, this is not But I do get very, like if you come into the store and you want to know about the cookies and you want to hear about the flavors, I'm your gal. I will tell you all about it. I have my little maniac moments where I'm sure that my eyes probably look a little crazy town. And I'm like, I'm going to do this. And Halle's like, OK. Sure.

Hallie (1:22:41)
We.

Host (1:23:02)
Ha

Leanne (1:23:04)
Re-teaching myself how to make Swiss meringue the other day, because I was like, and we're going to And she's like, ⁓ OK. And then yesterday, what was I talking about? ⁓ I can't remember what I went off on yesterday. I was changing. I was making white chocolate ganache taste like whipped cream.

Hallie (1:23:16)
Right.

she was on. She was just...

Host (1:23:23)
Could you do it? And you did it? I did it.

Hallie (1:23:25)
She did it.

Leanne (1:23:26)
I know I'm so excited.

Hallie (1:23:28)
Pretty good.

Leanne (1:23:30)
These are the things that light my soul.

Host (1:23:32)
I don't like white chocolate ganache,

Leanne (1:23:35)
Chocolate

ganache is garbage. don't know whoever decided that was a good thing, but no, it's trash.

Host (1:23:39)
It

tastes like whipped cream.

Hallie (1:23:40)
It tastes like

whipped cream. It tastes like whipped cream. It's so

Leanne (1:23:44)
because I want to do a Black Forest cookie. But a big component of a Black Forest cake is whipped cream. I call it whipper, and I need to stop calling it that. What? It's your thing. I know. But people are like, what the hell is whipper? It's Yeah.

Host (1:23:57)
It's like chomplingo. ⁓

goodness, that'd be so funny if had... If he got that big wall, he'd be like chomplingo. It's like whipper and be hilarious.

Leanne (1:24:06)
There'd be a lot of words on that wall. There'd

be a lot of words that we shouldn't say on the podcast on that wall. There's a lot of inappropriate language.

Hallie (1:24:11)
a It's

really funny too because we have a lot of customers that come in and they'll be like, holy fuck. ⁓ sorry, excuse my language. I'm like, you're in a bakery. ⁓ There is always colorful language flying around.

Leanne (1:24:25)
F

word has probably been said about 30 times today. We also make a lot of noise the two of us. yes. There's a lot of weird noises that come out of us in the middle of things. Just grunts. I know what certain things are. One of my friends has joined the chomp crew. She, I think you met her yesterday at the coffee fest. I did. Mode.

Host (1:24:35)
Bye.

I was like, wait, mo? Mode. mode. say that again? Mode. Like mode coffee. Monique.

Leanne (1:24:50)
She's French.

Nope. She was at the Trump booth yesterday.

Hallie (1:24:55)
M-A-U-D-E.

Host (1:24:58)
wait her name is Mo. Yeah okay because there's a coffee vendor called

Leanne (1:25:02)
Mo.

Hallie (1:25:02)
no way. that's hilarious.

Host (1:25:05)
from mode. No, her name is mode because I went up and I was like, are you? Yeah, because I hadn't met you before. she's like, no. OK.

Leanne (1:25:07)
Yeah.

Yeah. She's

the cutest. But she'll be in the kitchen with us. And concerned if people are OK. That is like her thing. And Halle will make some sort of weird ass noise. And a lot of people will look at her. I'm like, oh, that's just blah, blah, blah. And she's like, And Halle's like, yup.

Hallie (1:25:14)
Yes, she's adorable.

Leanne (1:25:35)
⁓ Just ignore her. just grunting and groaning. It's all good.

Host (1:25:35)
Bye!

Hallie (1:25:37)
Just that.

Host (1:25:39)
Like

when you get to know a baby's cry, everybody else just sounds like a cry, you're like, no, that's his dirty diaper. That's his needs milk.

Leanne (1:25:48)
You what's the

craziest thing about that is when you watch videos from when they were like one and two when you could understand them completely and you watch it back now and you're like what the hell was my child saying? how did I understand their language? I could translate that. yeah.

Host (1:26:01)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Well, should we wrap or? Thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Thanks so much to meet the two of you. I just love what you have going on.

Leanne (1:26:06)
Yes.

Hallie (1:26:15)
Yeah, that's amazing. This has been great.

Host (1:26:18)
Anytime. I do feel like there's a part two in a year or two. I know I'm craving cookies.

Leanne (1:26:24)
probably. That'd good.