 So you had you had a HELOC and you had your MBA. So were you using your house as like a manufacturing hub for all this? I was actually. Yeah there was something in California past just the year before, year or two before, called the Cottage Food License, which enabled any person to make a food product at home up to certain revenue threshold. So before that a lot of the farmers market vendors you would see would have to go to like a certified kitchen in order to make their food and so this enabled people to just make it at home as long as their place was inspected and approved by the county. Gotcha so you had to have people come into your house and just like look at everything. Yeah to do the whole like certify it and then I started a little factory there. I would you know it was like a small it was a small unit like it was basically a one-bedroom upstairs and then downstairs I had a garage so I converted the garage into a warehouse made the product upstairs and then took my mom out of retirement she flew up and we were just making the tea. And was it just you two? Us manufacturing because we didn't trust anyone else with the recipe and my mom is very protective of this recipe too. Yeah she was just like she's like no one else is seeing this we had like a binder of all the recipes and I was like oh I'm thinking of hiring XYZ person and she's like no like you have to protect this so she flew up and she would make all the drops. What year was this? This was 2015. Okay And so at that time are you just going e-commerce? No no no no so I hadn't even gotten to the point where I quit my job so I did all this like behind the scenes I'm like doing all this but I'm not like you know part of it is also a confident thing to say like I'm starting a business. Okay it was really hard for me to get there and so it was more like I'm starting this project I'm starting this. Why was that hard? Like there was so much involved in having a business like also the failure around if it doesn't work and I mean this whole thing is all on you. Yeah it's all on you and it was a lot of pressure yeah for me and also just feel like at that point you know I was so like low in confidence I feel I was I'm confident in some ways but also like oh I don't have the right connections like who do I think I am to like manufacture a food product I don't know anything about you know. The imposter syndrome. Yeah absolutely so like there was a lot of things around that where I just didn't want to admit that it was like a business but I think the tipping point for why I decided to leave is that I ended up like having a lot of vacations stacked up and then every five years at eBay you get a one-month paid sabbatical and I was just hitting like my four and a half year mark and so I basically went to my manager and said you know I was just very honest about it but I was like I kind of want to leave to start this to see if I like working on this project of mine and he took a look at it and I mean I understand because it's like T pressed into like cute shapes basically and he's like it's like kind of like. Wait did you ask for this advice? I was just telling him like hey I'm leaving because I want to do this you know I was actually gonna leave because it was four and a half years in so I was actually just gonna leave the company without taking this sabbatical I was just like I want to do this so I talked to my manager to just have this honest conversation around it and I think in his mind and he you know even verbally said like oh like T pressed in shapes okay like oh you're like you're serious about it because before he would see it around the office and she was like oh like you're serious about this like okay well why don't you just you know take your sabbatical earlier and your vacation and see if you really actually enjoy doing it before committing to this. Great advice and so the hybrid. Yeah but I think the real hook for him was he thought I was like gonna be fatigued on it or you know I wasn't gonna follow through with it and I would come back so I think that was like the the angle there. But what a fantastic opportunity that you had that you could take this time while still earning a paycheck and you know you have a substantial safety net under you. Yeah and that's the thing though like he gave you a safety net which which for someone like me is the worst thing like I don't want that at all I'd be like cut at all but that's me that's a me thing. Well the safety net was like I had a month in I had a month in change right to like month and a half maybe to really explore this but the pressure was you like are you gonna do this or not. Right. You know are you gonna really do this or not so. But the safety net allows for that pressure right the safety net allows for you to say am I gonna do this yeah or not if you have no safety net then it's pretty cut and dry you're gonna do this. Yes it's true. And I think that's that's the thing that lingers in the mind of yeah you know working any of it wasn't so bad. Yeah I mean I sounds like it went the right way. But I also like got to that point because I was working on things beforehand where you feel like you're in a boat you have one foot in one boat another foot in another boat because both are very demanding like you know your startup or beginnings of startup and you're you know it's like it's like a demanding job so I felt torn I like knew I had to walk away from one or the other so anyways I got this time back to really explore if I liked it and I caught the bug so hard that month and a half I just loved every aspect of it I loved the unknowns I loved how challenging it was and after that month and a half I just knew that this was the path for me. So at that point did you even bother going back at all or you just emailed like hey thank you so much peace. Yeah basically I yeah I had to go so after that. I love that story because there's so many people we get the question I was in my Instagram DMs earlier today people were like oh like when do I leave my job and this is now a good clip that we can tell people but it's also the fact that you caught the bug once like once you were doing it yeah and I think most people overlook that they they think they're gonna quit their job and they're just gonna live in fear and it sounds like for you it was fearful at the beginning until you did it and then you were like hooked. Yeah I was hooked I mean I knew before I loved working on this that was there but everyone's waiting for a silver bullet like doesn't exist yeah millions in sales or like one day your Shopify just goes like nuts and you know change that ding all the time yeah that never happened you know I maybe had $20,000 in sales not enough to like leave your job but it wasn't about that for me it was just like I have to do this like I love it. I mean a fire had been lit yeah and it sounds like you know it more so than than anything had ever incentivized you or given you drive at eBay you now found that and so yeah it's it makes sense why you would immediately pursue it if that's the fire that lives inside of you then yes go wholeheartedly into it yeah and that was it you know so from that point on it was I mean it was a grind in every sense of the word because they told you like I didn't understand what financing a company entailed or raising capital or angel investment so those are all terms I actually had to learn while making the tea drops packaging it you know figure out packaging shipping orders and we didn't start on e-com I like had it e-commerce shop but I'm not saying we had sales