June 29, 2020 • 50 mins
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Side Hustlers podcast. My name is Carla Maurie.
I am your host from my Heart Radio. The whole
point of this podcast is to sit down with people
who follow a passion outside of their day job, people
who are crazy enough to launch their own business. And
I have talked to over a hundred people and every
single week I am amazed by the ideas that I
(00:23):
get from everyone and how they launched their idea and
launched their business. And this week's guest is no different.
So we're gonna get into Anastasia in a second. But
my day job is hosting the Carla Maurie and Anthony
Show on one or six point one Kiss FM in Seattle.
You can listen live on your I Heart Radio app
if you're not from Seattle, or you can catch the
podcast version wherever you get your podcast to search for
(00:43):
Carla Maurie and Anthony. This week's guest is Anastasia and
she is the creator of cooler cloth. What is cooler cloth?
It's a peak cloth. Yes, you heard that right, a
peak cloth. It's amazing. So the whole idea of cooler
cloth is that you're going on a hike and you
don't want to bring toilet paper with you. You don't
(01:04):
want to litter. You want to have something that works great,
And Anastagia will get into the science behind it. But yeah,
it's a pea cloth. But she's inspiring how she got
to where she is and she's unbelievably grateful for the
people who support her company, and you're gonna love her story.
And as this episode is posting for the very first time,
I'm currently camping and hiking and using my pea cloth
(01:27):
for a lot of people. You know, why are you when?
Do you know what you want to do? And this
is something you want to do you're talking about and
do it. I'm a hustles side side hustle love. Do it.
I'm a hustlesde side hustle do it. I'm a hustle
side side hustlove. Come on ask about me, yo yo.
It's the side Hustless podcast we call The Route. So
(01:48):
this is an extra special episode for me because our
guest is a former park ranger and anyone who knows
me really knows that I am obsessed with park rangers
and I refer to myself as Ranger Maurie. And I
don't think that our guests today, I knew what they
were getting into. Hi Anastasia, Hi Carla, Marie, thanks for
having me. I had no idea what I was giving
(02:09):
myself into. And earlier today is like, by the way,
I'm obsessed with park Rangers and sent you my Halloween
costume and you were probably like, oh God, this is
gonna be weird. I thought it was amazing, and it
was actually a relatively realistic Park Ranger costumes. So it
is a park Ranger approved I will take it. But
that is obviously not the reason you were on this
podcast today. You have it was a side hustle. Now
(02:31):
it's your full time job and you do other things
other than cooler cloth, and I want you to explain
what cooler cloth is because I know you're gonna do
better than I will. Yeah. So cooler cloth is the
very first of its kind. It is an anti microbial
pea cloth for all the places you go and I
(02:52):
have go in quotation marks. It is a leaves no trace,
zero waste, reusable toilet paper option for anybody who squats
when they pee. I created this product due to frustration
with finding toilet paper in the back country when I
(03:14):
was out there backpacking, and I read an article about
people using a pea cloth, and my very first thought
was that's disgusting. So, I mean, I'm sure anyone who
heard you say you have a peak cloth the probably
what I mean. That was my sister's reaction when I
told her, But she's never been in a hike in
her life, so she doesn't get it. Yeah, what is it?
(03:34):
Pretty common reaction. So if that's your reaction right now,
that's totally normal the idea behind a pea cloth, and
anybody who hikes or camps or does anything outdoors will
know that there's limited options. You can either pack in
and out a bunch of toilet paper, which means you're
also packing out your dirty toilet paper. You can leave
(03:56):
dirty toilet paper on the ground in fragile alpine environment
switches a no go. Or you can attempt to drip dry,
which doesn't love anybody feeling great. Let me tell you
something about that. There was a hike I did Yosemite.
It was like an all day hike, and I had
my camel back and I was just rugging my water,
like not really thinking what was going to happen. After
(04:19):
I drank all the water and I must have beat
on the way down from that like ten times. Everyone
wanted to kill me, but I was like, I don't care,
I'm going and I my pants were soaked. It's disgusting,
but like, you can't aim it. It's my pants, my shoes,
like and and granted you're not helping me pe properly,
but still it's then like all over my leg it's
(04:40):
off exactly, It's it's everywhere. And that was just a
day hike. So imagine if you are out there for
multiple days at a time, hygiene becomes an issue. Carrying
in and out your waist becomes an issue. And I
read this article years ago about people using a pea
cloth and I thought that's disgusting. But I was also
(05:03):
teaching backpacking at the time as an instructor with a
nonprofit here in Washington State called Washington Outdoor Women, and
I remember thinking, Okay, Anastasia, don't knock it until you try.
And I went out and I bought this ugly old
scrap of fabric and I decided, I'm gonna at least
test this out and see if I like it. I
(05:25):
was stunned to find that it was a total game changer.
For me, and I started recommending using a peak loth
to everybody, all of my students, in fact, people who
took my classes years ago. They will come back and
see me now, and the first thing they will all
say is, we remember you talking about the peak cloth.
Like I became such an advocate for this. It was
(05:47):
in two thousand and sixteen. I was on a backpacking
trip with my husband in the wind River Range of
Wyoming and I was actually taking a photograph of my
ugly pea cloth as a joke to send to a friend.
I had this crazy idea that I was gonna make
a whole line at Christmas cards with pea clods on
(06:07):
that to send to a friend as a joke. And
I had positioned this piece of fabric on my trekking
pole and we were in this It was at sunset.
I mean, it could not have been more picturesque except
for the fact that I was taking a photo of cloth.
And it was literally like this lightning bolt moment where
(06:29):
all of a sudden, this idea just popped into my
head and just said, why isn't that a real piece
of gear? Like has anybody ever done that? Has anybody
ever taken a product and designed it to be intentionally
used for hygiene, something that looks cool, so that maybe
people are less squeamish about the idea, something that feels
(06:51):
more intentional. Well, there's so much, so much hiking and
outdoor gear out there, Like it's almost shocking that it
took till for someone to think about and actually do it.
I totally agree. And the thing that boggled me as
I thought about this and as I looked at all
the gear that I had here, I have this five
hundred dollar tent to three hundred dollars sleeping bag, and
(07:12):
yet the one piece of fabric that I'm literally putting
in contact with the most sensitive part of my body
looked like something I had pulled out of a rag
bit at Jiffy lou. So it was it was like,
you didn't make sense to me. And at the time,
I was a police officer, I had transitioned from being
(07:34):
a park ranger. I gotten laid off very sadly, I'm
sure broken. So I was laid off from my park
ranger job in two thousand and twelve, and then I
became a police officer working for the railroad. So it's
actually working as a railroad. I was working as a
(07:54):
railroad cop. Okay, so what does that entail? So you
you go park ranger railroad cop to making peak cloths
like that is quite the journey. And granted there's much
more in between. We'll get to that, but what is
the day to day for our railroad officer? A railroad police.
It's actually one of the oldest branches of law enforcement
in the country. And I like to tell people to
(08:14):
imagine that the railroad is like a huge city. It's
just really narrow and it sort of weaves itself in
and out of a bunch of other cities. So anything
that would happen in any normal city environment, a lot
of times it ends up on the railroad tracks. A
huge part of what we did as railroad police officers
(08:36):
was just education. Most people don't know that it's actually
illegal and also super dangerous to trespass on railroad tracks.
People do that all the time for Instagram picks, and
there's a lot of really really avoidable fatalities that can
be prevented by just simply not being on the tracks.
So that was a lot of what I did, and
I got to do that job for about five and
(08:58):
a half years. It was great. But I've just always
been this really adventurous, outdoorsy person and I was looking
down the barrel of do I want to spend the
next thirty years patrolling railroad tracks? I mean with the
with the park ranger job originally, like you can move
park to park, and you're obviously outdoors and in the environment.
(09:19):
And granted, while you loved that job doing that forever
as a as a railroad officer, Like you're saying, you're
looking at that, that's kind of draining forever, I think
it was. It was draining. And I had always been
a very entrepreneurial kid, and when I was very young,
I would start all these businesses all the time, and
I I had, I had a juice delivery business before
(09:43):
it was cool, and like, you know, it makes me
laugh now because if I had kept up with that,
I'd probably be some like billionaire juice tycoon now. I mean,
I was doing juice and I actually it was so funny.
I actually found the price list that I had come
up with the other day. Oh it was like two
dollars for a quart of hand squeezed juice. And we
(10:06):
would deliver muffins and juice and then I had a
pet sitting business. I mean it was always like I
tried to launch a skincare line with the juicing, which
is like a huge thing now, pet care business, which
you've got Wag and all of those apps skincare. I mean,
that's just obviously. I was always like a little bit
(10:27):
too late, or maybe I was too early, and I
would have an idea and I would feel myself really
in that creative flow, and then I would instantly try
to figure out, how is this possible? And instead of
allowing the answers to come to me and sort of
being open to the possibilities, I immediately would argue for
(10:48):
my limitations, and I would get afraid of the money
aspect of things. That was a huge fear of mine.
I would look at other people who had skin care lines,
for instance, and say, well, they're no room for me.
And so I killed all of those ideas, and it
was really sad. I look back on them now and
I just think, wow, if I had taken a few
(11:10):
more steps, like what could have been possible, Well, you're
doing something amazing because not only are you giving people
a product that they desperately need, but you're also helping
the environment while doing it. But the path to cooler
cloth wasn't the easiest. So what made you quit your
job as a railroad officer? So I had always sort
(11:31):
of looked at people who were doing these really cool,
adventurous things, and I dreamed of a career in the
outdoor industry, and I thought that the people who got
to do that had been given some sort of a
lucky code that I hadn't been given, right, And so
I had had the idea for Coola in two thousand
and sixteen. This was in January of two thousand and seventeen.
(11:53):
I was heading home from snowshoeing at Steven's Pass area.
My mom and my husband and I were the car.
It was a beautiful, perfect day, no snow on the road,
and somehow we hit a patch of black ice and
the truck went spinning into the path of an oncoming
semi truck and into the opposite lane of travel. Obviously
(12:16):
there's a happy ending, because here I am to this day,
I honestly can't even explain how we lived. It was
like a catastrophic shift for me in my life in
the best way. In that moment where we were spinning
across the highway. I realized, looking back and reflecting on it,
(12:38):
that I didn't have any fear in that moment. It
was the surreal slow motion like that people talk about,
like everything's in slow motion. That's what it was like.
And I felt like this disbelief that it was happening,
but there was no fear. And suddenly I came back
to my life where I if I was being honest
with myself, I knew I was playing small and not
(13:00):
utilizing my full potential. And I looked at all the
fears that were preventing me from doing anything, and I realized,
if I didn't have fear in the one moment where
I was literally looking at my own mortality in the face,
then is it possible that all the fears I have
about pursuing this dream, is it possible that they're all
(13:22):
just manufactured in my mind? Am I the one making
them up? Am I the one getting in my own way?
At that moment, I decided to just start taking little steps.
I was not ready to yet leave my police job.
I had already had the idea for Coola, but instead
(13:43):
of arguing for reasons why I shouldn't pursue it, all
of a sudden, none of that mattered. I didn't need
to know the answers anymore. I didn't know how to sew.
I'd never done anything in the textile industry, but I
just started making phone calls. And and that's one thing
that I recommend to all entrepreneurs is you don't need
to know everything, but like somebody out there does, and
(14:04):
you do know how to make a phone call. Yeah,
and you can piece it all together. I mean, anyone
who in this podcast, we'll talk about the fear that
they felt and why they didn't jump right away and
then eventually they did. And I think you explaining it
the way you just did is the perfect way to
explain it. All of your fears are manufactured. Now. I'm
not saying go quit your job the moment you're hearing
this podcast. Come up with a slight plan, I mean,
(14:27):
or hey, quit the job, but don't blame me or
on the station and when it goes wrong, but come
up with some sort of a plan like you didn't
the next day after you were no. It took it
took me months to really get to the point. And
I like to think that I got myself to the
point where it was scarier not to pursue this thing
(14:48):
that I had created than it was to stay put.
But you didn't want another one of your business ideas
being snapped up exactly. It was like, no, life's too short.
I don't want to kill it again, and I don't
need to know all the answers. I just need to
trust that this is going to work out. And so
I started buying fabric. I found a friend who knew
(15:08):
how to sew, and she showed me how to sew
a straight line on a surgery and it's a type
of sewing machine that is used to basically bind two
different pieces of fabrics together. So the very very first
coolas that I ever sewed, and it wasn't even called Coola.
Then I was just making squares in the beginning. I
(15:30):
didn't have the name right away, and I just started
reaching out to people and asking them their input, like
what would you want this product to be like? I
started asking people who were outdoorsy, if you could design this,
what would it be like? And I started taking all
those ideas, and soon my squares got better and better,
(15:50):
to the point where I was able to actually give
them to people without feeling embarrassed. About what the product
looked like. And then the next thing I knew, I
was making prototype. Some people were buying the prototypes, and
people were like excited about it, and all of a sudden,
things just it was like the answers were coming at me.
Instead of me needing to know the perfect plan. That
(16:13):
has to be an amazing feeling after everything you had
been through and search for. There are moments where I
was laying on my couch in the beginning just crying,
thinking I was the biggest idiot on the planet for
wanting to pursue a peacloth company like I mean, I
(16:34):
I still remember it was like the day before I
launched the website, and I remember thinking, okay, Anastasia, there's
two possible scenarios here. Option one is that people are
going to think you are just like the laughing stock
of the outdoor industry and that you're a complete bozoh.
Option two is that people are going to think you're brilliant.
(16:56):
And I remember thinking to myself, well, either way, I'm
going down in a blaze of glory, so I might
as well just do it. And I remember when I
made the website live for the very first time, I
funded the sort of startup costs of buying my first
huge order of custom fabric by doing a pre sale,
(17:17):
and a friend of mine had placed an order within
the first minute of me. You know, all I did
was I posted it to Facebook, like I had no advertising,
and I just remember sitting actually in the room where
I'm sitting right now, and I was just so sick
to my stomach with nerves that I was just going
to like that I had like ruined my life, Like
(17:38):
you know, it's just so silly now like looking back
at it, and I just like sat here and cried
and cried because it was the whole dream, it was
coming true and there was just so Yeah, there was
so much beauty in that. Yeah, and it is still incredible.
I Like you're saying, yeah, oh, it's just a peacloth,
(17:59):
but like, really, it is your passion, it's your dream,
and it's helped so many people. And I said it earlier.
You're keeping litter off the trails and out of the environment.
And it's way bigger than just a square cloth. It's
it's so much more. It is, and we've actually really
the focus that we've been doing right now is doing
these cool as for a cause tell us about So yeah,
(18:22):
So we are giving money to different organizations, organizations that
provide opportunities for people who may not have the opportunity
to get out backpacking normally. So we're working with partners
like the Venture Out Project. We're just recently working on
a design with a nonprofit called Come Alive Outside that
(18:45):
helps kids get outside. We give money to the Washington
Trails Association, working on something hopefully with the Washington National
Parks Fund, and so yes, me too. So you know,
it's so incredible how you can create something that can
become Yes, it is a piece of gear, but it
(19:06):
can also be a vessel through which you can really
have a positive impact on the world in a much
bigger way than you originally intended for sure. And where
does the name Coola come from in the first place? Which,
by the way, if people are listening right now and
they're like, you keep saying cooler, but what is happening
is k U l a So they get a k
(19:28):
U l a cloth dot com or cooler cloth on
Instagram to check out what we're talking about. But where
does the name coola come from? In the very beginning
of creating this product, I knew I needed a name
for it, and I knew it needed to be a
good name. I didn't want it to be a name
that sounded like a joke, because a lot of hygiene
products sort of have this like, yeah, this giggly thing,
(19:50):
and I wanted it to feel intentional, not like it
was something silly. I was listening to a podcast with
Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanks, and she was talking
about how when she named Spanks, she had heard that
you needed to have a K sound in the name
of your product, and so I was sitting Kardashians crush it. Yeah,
(20:15):
but like Coca Cola, Q Tip, there's a lot of
big companies that have like this hard K sound. So
I was sitting at my kitchen table and went to
my trusty advisor Google and I googled mountains that start
with K and I found a mountain. The very first
(20:35):
one I saw was a mountain named Coola Congret. And
that mountain is in Bhutan, which is a country that
I had visited just before I got laid off from
my job as a propreacher. So immediately there was like
this connection because my trip to Bhutan was a really
pivotal moment in my life. Now, all of a sudden,
(20:56):
there's this connection to the name Coola. So then of
course I do the next step and I google the
word Coola and I find that the word kula means community,
and I just thought, oh my gosh, that's it. Vam
that and and that is what I had envisioned from
the very beginning, is that I wanted the product to
feel so intentional that when people saw somebody else with
(21:19):
a Coola on the trail, that it would just be
an instant connection. And I hear stories all the time.
I'll get emails or Instagram messages and people will say,
you won't believe this. I saw somebody with a Kola
on the trail and I said hi, and it's just
like it's an instant Yeah, it's listen to me, that's
mind blowing. Yeah, I know. I know the feeling of
(21:41):
for me when I connect people who have been in
this podcast with one another, I get that like that
same feeling of like, oh my god, like I'm like
it's like a little fairy like you connected people and
it's the coolest thing to be able to connect people.
And before we get more into the cooler cloths. I
want to talk about how we got connected because that's
a huge part of the podcast for me of how
you know, people get connected after being on the podcast
(22:03):
or how they come to me. And you came to
me through Rammy from the ground up Socks, So he
was on months ago, and then I had him on
again after our our social distancing kicked in to talk
about what he was doing with socks for docs. So
you and Rammi are also connected with David from Rainier
Watch correct, who was on the podcast that you guys
already got your own little community going out there. We
(22:23):
gotta get involved in what you guys are doing. So
how did you all get connected? So that's an even
funnier story. So the other side of what I do.
I'm a lifelong classically trained musician, and when I was
in the process of leaving my job, and I won't
get into this story too much because that would be
(22:46):
the world's longest podcast ever. A friend that I met
through a very serendipitous series of events. She and I
we started carrying a violin and a piano up into
the mountains to go perform sunrise serenades for nobody. So
it's sort of just like to pull that rug out
(23:06):
from underneath both of us. So I'm a musician and
we are a small duo called the Musical Mountaineers, and
we perform these beautiful concerts and now actually a lot
of our music gives back to Washington National Parks Funds. Yeah,
we performed at a benefit concert at ben Royal Hall
(23:27):
last year and we're doing that again in October. So
everything we do is really like benefiting parks. And what
can people go, like, when do you still do the Sunrise?
We we do. We never announce them because of Leave
No Trace, which really sort of goes in alignment with
Kula as well. And at this point, if we announced
(23:48):
a concert like hey, this is where we're going to
be at Sunrise, there's a good chance that a lot
of people would show up. And in order to sort
of maintain the purity of what we're doing, we don't
want it to be a show. It's more just for
the experience that if somebody happens to be there, If
that happened to me, I'd be like, what is happening
right now? This is wild? Yeah it is. There have
(24:09):
only ever been a few people who found us because
obviously we're waking up at midnight to go hiking, but
it's usually a really emotional and special experience for all
of us when we encounter other people. So David, who
is the founder of mount Rainier Watch, he knows Rose
and so my musical partner Rose and her husband through
(24:33):
their college. And then I knew David through the Musical
Mountaineers because he shared our music a bunch of times.
And then David Ramy and I sort of put together
our own little Pacific Northwest Founders group, which currently has
a membership of three. The three of us is the
(24:53):
three of us, and so we've been getting together once
in person and then now virtually just to encourage each
other and uh focus on things that are positive and
like getting our momentum going in a really good direction.
What kind of criteria do you need to get into
your group? Nothing, just here and be a Pacific Northwest
(25:14):
entrepreneur and send us a message and all all are welcome. Okay,
good to know just in case people are wondering, and
there have been plenty on this podcast, so we're going
to send them your way. But I love that you
guys are doing that. I love the importance of connection.
I always try to preach that of just connecting people
to each other and just knowing your connections and knowing
how people were kind of put into your life is
(25:36):
a cool thing to step back and see. So the
fact that you have that that kind of story is
really cool, but cooler coth till this day? How many
have you sold? Oh my gosh, so I if I
had to estimate, we've probably sold over fifteen thousand of
them at this point. Okay, so then the anesthesia who
(25:58):
was sitting there scared to launch the website, right like,
looking back at that moment and knowing now fifteen thousand
have sold, there's that close to fifteen thousand people. I'm
sure people have a bunch. That's how many people you
have touched just by making cloth. When you think about it, like,
that's wild. I am a totally sappy, sentimental person and
(26:23):
not a day goes by when I do not literally
like feel the energy of that. And literally there are
days where I will just sit and weep with the
most profound sense of gratitude that I could possibly describe.
Are you getting emotional right now? Yes? I have right now,
and not that I love that you're crying, but I
(26:44):
love that you are actually emotional. It is so special
to me. I really feel like nobody was there for
the moments when I was crying on my couch wondering
if this was possible, But like I hold those moments
with me, and anybody who's an entrepreneur knows that, Like
(27:07):
when somebody purchases your product, like there's they're making a
conscious decision to support you because they believe in what
you're doing, and that is something that I savor to
this day. I mean, we we do a lot of
stuff at Coola now that's really fun where we I mean,
we just launched a little online academy so that we're
(27:30):
doing online pictionary classes and like finding ways to continue
to support people even though maybe we can all get
together in person. And I write notes as much as possible.
It's hard at this point with so many orders that
go out to write a handwritten note in every single order,
But any time that we can find to appreciate somebody else,
(27:55):
we we really do that. And it's honestly just totally
shocking and amazing, really really cool to watch it grow
and be able to impact other people's lives, not only
the nonprofits that we're support. But we put art on
the kulas and they're beautiful. Like who thought that I'd
ever be saying a peak cloth is beautiful? But they're
(28:16):
they're so beautiful, And every single one that's purchased gives
back money to the artist who created it and who
who does create them. So we work with a variety
of different artists, so there is no magic sauce to
getting your art on a kula. It just sort of happens,
(28:36):
like we'll discover these artists and reach out to them
and see if they're interested, and I just love the
variety that we have. I try not to give any
direction at all to the artists because I love the
idea of the kula being this blank canvas and like,
what what are they going to create? Just seeing all
(28:56):
the creativity that has been sort of brought up through
this one little product is exciting to me. So then
what made you think to do that? Because originally you
said you were just caughting fabric? What made you think
to work with artists? So I had always wanted to
and I didn't know how because I didn't know how
to actually how do you even print art onto fabric?
(29:19):
I mean, I did not know any of these answer.
I don't have any idea, and you you sort of
look at these moments and you think that their coincidences,
But then you sort of look at them and you
don't think that their coincidences. And I happened upon a
production studio totally quotes by chance and reached out to them,
and they ended up having the capability and being able
(29:42):
to tell me how this was going to be possible.
And so I feel like all along the way, the
right people have shown up to bring the vision to life.
I think that's what I've been good at, is holding
the vision and believing it's possible without needing to know
the answers. And one thing I really tried to do
as an entrepreneur is be solution focused, not problem focused.
(30:06):
So if I'm trying to fix something or figure something
out and I don't know the answers, typically what happens
then is I'm amplifying the problem and I'm not even
in the vicinity of the solution. And i do a
lot of stuff that maybe it seems woo to some people,
but I'll write what I want onto a board and
(30:28):
just walk away from It's amazing yeah, and just be like, Okay,
I know what's going to happen. I don't really know how,
but I'm sort of excited and I'm anticipating this answer arriving,
and I kid you not every time the answer shows up.
That is a great pro tip right there. So then
the microbial part of it, what obviously you didn't just
(30:49):
get any random fabric you obviously did. There's some science
behind this. How did you figure that out? That was
again happening to meet the right people. I literally called
a fabric mill and ended up on the phone with
the CEO of this fabric mill, not even realizing I
was on the phone with the CEO talking about my product.
(31:12):
Oh yeah, I had no clue and people, I honestly
feel like not knowing anything in the textile industry gave
me such a huge advantage because I wasn't going into
any conversation with a preconceived idea that well, they aren't
going to take me seriously. I was later told by people, oh,
as a small company, you'll never be able to get
(31:33):
anywhere in the textile industry because they won't even talk
to you. And I just remember thinking, well, everybody's talked
to me so far, like I haven't. If you don't
have that planet in your head, then like you're just
open to whatever. And so I ended up talking to
this woman who owns She and her family to own
a fabric mill in the United States, and they were
(31:54):
able to sort of help me come up with a product.
It's a customed as line products. So one side of
the fabric is waterproof and it's able to be printed.
On the other side is a special fabric that's super
absorbent and it's specifically designed for hygiene, and it's antimicrobial
(32:15):
because it is infused with silver ions. So it is
physically do any of that myself and I but I
did actually get the chance to talk to scientists and
I learned a lot about silver. And there's types of
silver that are bad for wastewater systems, and then there's
(32:36):
types of silver treatments that are inert and won't hurt
the wastewater treatment systems. I know way more about fabric.
It's than like anybody. Now when you think about everything
you just said, how much is rooted into this and
at the top of it it's a peak cloth like
it's just so there's so much that goes into things.
But I think that your message will help people understand, like,
(32:59):
don't be scared, you'll figure it out. If you have
an idea, just go with it, because you're going to
regret not going with the idea. Yeah, I would totally
recommend for people to spend time visualizing what they want
to create and make it as real feeling as you can,
Like you can find the feeling of where you want
(33:23):
to go from exactly where you are right now. And
that's what I did with Kula is I would sit
there and I would visualize people hiking with Kulas on
their backpack and like what that feeling would be like.
And I was able to find that feeling without it
actually having happened yet. And when you can find the
(33:43):
feeling and allow the feeling to be enough, then all
of a sudden, you're tuned to the frequency of the solution.
And that's when these incredible moments of quote unquote chance
to start flowing into your life and you meet the
right people, and you become a cop who had zero
(34:03):
clue how to sew or zero experience in the textile industry,
all of a sudden, having a company that makes like
a very specific textile and then all of a sudden,
thousands of them are sold. I mean, it is wild,
and but I think the other thing that excites me
is that it's possible for everybody. I went from knowing
(34:26):
absolutely nothing, absolutely you could not have gotten more further
away from me knowing nothing, like I still can't even
sew a button. So I hope that that can be
an example for others that you don't need to be
an expert or know a lot about a certain thing
(34:47):
figured out. Yeah, if you have an idea, just find
the feeling of the idea, believe it's possible, don't argue
for your limitations, and then just see what happens, like
start making phone calls and google things. Have you been
a speaker at events because I think you need to?
I okay, yeah, I love. There is nothing that excites
(35:10):
me more. And Kola is a physical representation of the
story of my own sort of awakening to the potential
that I always had, like just didn't think I had.
And so for me, the larger part of Kola is
sharing that with others and giving them a glimpse of
(35:32):
that in themselves as well, because I think that every
single person has it, and every single person has an
idea or something that they can bring to life, and
I hope more people do because it's what a great
world that will be. Yeah, well, you're super inspiring to
listen to. And I think that one day when I
have an event, I'm going to hire you to speak
(35:54):
at it. So when we can't have events, it'll happen well,
and I will play my violin. Yeah. Event people are like,
what is going on? There's a violinist talking about pea cloths,
and yeah, the best I'm very confusing to Somebody told
me once that I was like a conundrum in an
in an oxymoron in a juxtaposition description. I love it.
(36:22):
When you were launching cooler Cloth, you had already quit
your job as a railroad officer, but you were teaching
backpacking lessons what you're still doing. So are one of
them your side hustle? Now, Like, is one of them
your day job? What is it? I would so I
would say, now cooler cloth is more of my day
job and doing the music backpacking right, Writing, I love writing.
(36:47):
I've been working on a couple of poetry books actually
because why not, Because moment I tend to just like
follow the creative flow. And I'm like, I like to
imagine life as a river, and I always ask myself,
am I flowing with it? Or am I trying to
swim upstream? And I always like to be flowing with it?
(37:11):
And I think that everything's connected. And some days writing
poetry feels good to me, and so I might not
do much with Coula that day because for whatever reason,
the idea that I need for Coola is going to
come to me through poetry, and then maybe I move
into violin music. I've actually, I would say, now my
(37:33):
my side hustle, of my side hustle is that I
actually play my violin at adventure elopements. So that yeah, okay,
So I personally think that an elopement is something that
happens more on this side of the country. I don't
think that the city people on the opposite side of
the country know what that is. So an adventure elopement, actually,
(37:55):
I'll let you explain it. I know it's when people
like will Elope for their wedding, but it's more planned.
It's like you're just running away, right, Yeah. And there's
this whole culture of adventure elopements here in the Pacific
Northwest where people actually hike back into these incredible destinations.
Usually it's just a couple. Sometimes maybe they have a
couple of adventurous family members or friends with them, but
(38:18):
it's usually very small. And I am probably one of
the only violinists in the world that I know of
who's nuts enough to bring a violin in a backpack
out into who knows where, And so people actually hire me.
And I got ordained as an officiant, and so people
will actually hire me now to go back into the
(38:39):
back country. You play violin for them and and do
weddings that I just I honestly like I do that
just because it's so much fun and I get so
much joy out of like bringing music and nature to people.
I really believe that we connect more deeply with ourselves
in nature, and so for me, it's it's all intertwined.
(39:03):
And you're still doing backpack lessons on top, I am
still doing backpacking. Yeah, So I teach with a with
a non backpacking backpacking lessons. You're not teaching people how
to use backpacks. Yeah. I teachum with a nonprofit called
Washington Outdoor Women, and they do a workshop every September.
So I teach backpacking there and then Coola has we've
(39:23):
actually held a couple events. So we did an event
last year called Coola Palooza and I taught backpacking there.
And then we're actually gonna be doing a virtual backpacking class.
That would be so cool. When is that you have
that set up to people? We don't have the dates yet,
but if you go on the Cooler Cloth website under events,
you can sign up for a virtual class. And we're
(39:44):
trying to make all the classes either free, donation based,
or really accessible to all people, because that's important to us.
So sure, and if it's something you've always wanted to
do and you're kind of hesitant about it, this is
a great virtual is a great way to kind of
tiptoe into in techn Yes, that's awesome. Do you have
big goals for Coola? Do you have wholesale already? Is
(40:05):
that a plan you want to do? Is there things
like that that you're writing on your board that you
want to happen? Yeah, absolutely so. A few months ago,
I like, obviously at the very beginning of Coola, I
think I wrote Coola in r E. I write like
on my board and I can't give too many details
about that, but let's just say that it's not like
(40:27):
not necessarily out of the realm of possibility. Okay, And
so I'm doing I have a few retailers that sell Coola.
The thing that really excites me is just watching other
brands use coolas. So we're doing a lot of custom
ones for other gear companies that sell backpacks actually, and
(40:49):
we're doing a lot of coolers for a cause, and
we have these events now and so it's just sort
of growing and growing, and I love to watch that.
I love finding. Somebody once asked me how did Coola
grow so quickly? And my response to that is always
(41:13):
the same. It's that I didn't need Coola to grow
quickly like I found. Yeah, I didn't force it. I
just let it go. And I don't try. I mean,
people are going to kick me when I say this,
But I don't try really hard like I mean. I
I say that. When I say that, I mean that
I do work hard. I mean like this is seven
(41:37):
live and breathe right, like it's my fabric, baby. But
I allow things to happen rather than trying to force
something to happen. When you try to force something to happen,
you're actually focused on the lack of that thing as
opposed to being like that thing is going to happen,
and I don't need it to feel whole about who
(42:00):
I am. Like that doesn't affect me, and so then
what happens is like because I just naturally feel sort
of happy and satisfied and abundant where I am, things
move really quickly for me. I love that piece of
advice because one of my favorite pieces of advice that
I ever got was don't set goals. And it's like, wait,
what what do you mean don't set goals? And it's yeah,
(42:20):
obviously have dreams and things that you want to do,
but when you have this end goal, anything else cool
that comes your way, it's not your goal, so you
just ignore it. But really, these are amazing opportunities. So
I think between the two of us, don't set goals
and don't try hard, we would crush talking seriously, it
would be like a dream team, because I I really
(42:42):
do think if you are setting I mean, I'm gonna
go out on a limb here and just get into
how woo I am. But like, I don't even set
monetary goals. I don't set anything like that, because to me,
that is playing small, Like why would I say I
only have this limited amount of abundance that I want
(43:05):
to achieve. If I do that, I'm cutting off infinite
possibilities that can happen infinite. And I don't know about
anybody else, but like the idea of playing with finite
abundance versus infinite abundance on one is definitely more fun.
And when I say abundance, it's not just money for me,
(43:26):
it's joy and laughter, actions, yea connection, and like impacting
people's lives and doing things that matter, and like just
creating something that makes people feel good, like this past
March when COVID hit I was not prepared for the
(43:46):
response to a reusable toilet paper we Yeah, I needed
to ask you about this because this was a very
hot commodity. I'm sure when toilet paper went off the
shelf it was crazy. And I had made some good
purchasing decisions last year that actually had us set up
purchasing decisions that were terrifying for me, Like spending twenty
(44:10):
dollars on fabric was terrifying for me. But had I
not done that, I would have had zero inventory whatsoever.
And so I sort of like look back on that,
and I'm like, oh my gosh, like the perfection of
you know, I trusted it at that moment. I was like,
you know what, this is going to work out. I
don't know how, but I'll come up with the money whatever.
(44:32):
And then March happened and we were getting just unprecedented
amount of orders for our small company, and that it
was really really exciting. It was also scary because I
realized the bigness of things and the sort of limited
nous of my inventory, and so I really had to
(44:56):
do a lot of practice around just releasing those fears.
And I feel like that's what entrepreneurship is. It's like
you have these fears and worries and doubts, and you
release them and then you come back to who you
truly are, because that person can't be affected by a
pea cloth. They can't. Are you the one packing at
the orders or does it come from where they're printing them?
(45:17):
So I no longer am the one packing up the
orders in the beginning I was. That became quickly unsustainable.
When I was on a vacation with my husband in
Death Valley and we were literally driving around in I
had a tiny Honda at the time with a inventory
of Kula's in the trunk and a label printer, and
(45:39):
we would like go on a hike and then we
would frantically drive to sell service so that I could
print up labels and like Malekula's. Oh it was it
was sort of uh, I mean, it was a great
problem to have. Was also I was not able to
have any life whatsoever other than packing boxes and shipping.
(46:00):
So we transition to using a third party fulfillment center
last May, and that has given me the ability to
focus on like the larger picture of things, like I
didn't get into the peacloth business because I wanted to
own a distribution center. So exactly, and so many people
have been in this podcast talk about in the beginning, Yeah,
(46:20):
you have to do it, you have to you have
to be in there in the beginning. Obviously, who are
you going to pay to do it in the beginning anyway,
But just knowing how it works and and being the
one to literally hand deliver those first products is the
coolest thing. But eventually your time is better served somewhere else, yes, Yeah,
And it gets to a point where you realize that
you are slowing down the growth of your own company
(46:42):
by trying to do everything, and in the beginning I
was writing notes on every single order that went out
and the like. That became unsustainable for me, which is
a great problem to have. It was also a little
sad for me. And so now when an order it
comes in, even though I can't necessarily write a personal
(47:03):
note to people, I do try to go through the
orders and even write emails to people. If they leave
a little note in the order, I'll usually write something
back to them, and just to find a small way
to let people know that I appreciate them. Well I
think they I think they know you appreciate them, especially
to anyone who's purchased one. Listen to this podcast. That's
really cool to hear your story. And I hope they do, because,
(47:24):
like you said, you didn't want it to be a
gimmicky product. So at Phase Value and someone here's peak Cloth,
they're like what, But then you hear everything that went
into this and your story, it's just it really is
incredible and almost like I don't want to say it
doesn't match the product, but like when you think peak cloth,
you don't think the amazing inspiration that has gone through
you and what you've put into this, so I have
(47:46):
to get to tell the story. Well, me too. And
it's so funny because when people think of cooler now,
I don't think that they think p like are we
have like a real the active Instagram that honestly, quite
honestly has almost nothing to do with cooler cloth. It's
more just funny stuff, uh that we enjoy. And I
(48:10):
think that most people when they think of Coola, they
think of connection and community and all the organizations that
we've been able to help in the process, And the
fact that it happens to be a pea cloth is
sort of like, yeah, that's that's what it does. But
I hope that everything that goes into it does make
people proud to put it on their pack. That was
(48:34):
what I envisioned from the beginning, is I wanted something
that people could clip to their pack and they feel
some sense of pride in that. And maybe it's through
what the coolest supports, or maybe it's just through knowing
a story about an entrepreneur who followed a dream and
maybe they're doing the same thing. But I think each
of us has that capacity within us to create something
(48:57):
that makes a difference. Well, you definitely did, and I'm
glad you got to talk about on the podcast. Anastasia,
Thank you so much for being here. Everyone needs to
go check out cooler cloth dot com, cooler Cloth on
Instagram to support follows, see all the things you're doing.
I'm sure you're going to do a million more things,
and to check out all the backpacking stuff you've got
going on. So thank you for being here. I appreciate it.
(49:17):
It was so much fun talking with you. Thanks. Thank
you so much for being here and listening to the
Side Hustlers Podcast. Support Anastasia it's cooler cloth dot com.
You can always hit the link below in the description
to check her out, support her, follow her journey. If
you know any artists, or if you are an artist
who want to be a part of the Cooler Cloth
journey and want to get your artwork on a cooler cloth,
(49:40):
you can reach out to Anastasia. Thank you again for
being here. I appreciate you. Side Hustlers Podcast at gmail
dot com with your questions, comments, concerned, guest suggestions, whatever
it may be. This podcast has been produced by Houston
Tilly and until next week, keep hustling and be a
good human, letting them to death,
Welcome to the Side Hustlers podcast. My name is Carla Maurie.
I am your host from my Heart Radio. The whole
point of this podcast is to sit down with people
who follow a passion outside of their day job, people
who are crazy enough to launch their own business. And
I have talked to over a hundred people and every
single week I am amazed by the ideas that I
(00:23):
get from everyone and how they launched their idea and
launched their business. And this week's guest is no different.
So we're gonna get into Anastasia in a second. But
my day job is hosting the Carla Maurie and Anthony
Show on one or six point one Kiss FM in Seattle.
You can listen live on your I Heart Radio app
if you're not from Seattle, or you can catch the
podcast version wherever you get your podcast to search for
(00:43):
Carla Maurie and Anthony. This week's guest is Anastasia and
she is the creator of cooler cloth. What is cooler cloth?
It's a peak cloth. Yes, you heard that right, a
peak cloth. It's amazing. So the whole idea of cooler
cloth is that you're going on a hike and you
don't want to bring toilet paper with you. You don't
(01:04):
want to litter. You want to have something that works great,
And Anastagia will get into the science behind it. But yeah,
it's a pea cloth. But she's inspiring how she got
to where she is and she's unbelievably grateful for the
people who support her company, and you're gonna love her story.
And as this episode is posting for the very first time,
I'm currently camping and hiking and using my pea cloth
(01:27):
for a lot of people. You know, why are you when?
Do you know what you want to do? And this
is something you want to do you're talking about and
do it. I'm a hustles side side hustle love. Do it.
I'm a hustlesde side hustle do it. I'm a hustle
side side hustlove. Come on ask about me, yo yo.
It's the side Hustless podcast we call The Route. So
(01:48):
this is an extra special episode for me because our
guest is a former park ranger and anyone who knows
me really knows that I am obsessed with park rangers
and I refer to myself as Ranger Maurie. And I
don't think that our guests today, I knew what they
were getting into. Hi Anastasia, Hi Carla, Marie, thanks for
having me. I had no idea what I was giving
(02:09):
myself into. And earlier today is like, by the way,
I'm obsessed with park Rangers and sent you my Halloween
costume and you were probably like, oh God, this is
gonna be weird. I thought it was amazing, and it
was actually a relatively realistic Park Ranger costumes. So it
is a park Ranger approved I will take it. But
that is obviously not the reason you were on this
podcast today. You have it was a side hustle. Now
(02:31):
it's your full time job and you do other things
other than cooler cloth, and I want you to explain
what cooler cloth is because I know you're gonna do
better than I will. Yeah. So cooler cloth is the
very first of its kind. It is an anti microbial
pea cloth for all the places you go and I
(02:52):
have go in quotation marks. It is a leaves no trace,
zero waste, reusable toilet paper option for anybody who squats
when they pee. I created this product due to frustration
with finding toilet paper in the back country when I
(03:14):
was out there backpacking, and I read an article about
people using a pea cloth, and my very first thought
was that's disgusting. So, I mean, I'm sure anyone who
heard you say you have a peak cloth the probably
what I mean. That was my sister's reaction when I
told her, But she's never been in a hike in
her life, so she doesn't get it. Yeah, what is it?
(03:34):
Pretty common reaction. So if that's your reaction right now,
that's totally normal the idea behind a pea cloth, and
anybody who hikes or camps or does anything outdoors will
know that there's limited options. You can either pack in
and out a bunch of toilet paper, which means you're
also packing out your dirty toilet paper. You can leave
(03:56):
dirty toilet paper on the ground in fragile alpine environment
switches a no go. Or you can attempt to drip dry,
which doesn't love anybody feeling great. Let me tell you
something about that. There was a hike I did Yosemite.
It was like an all day hike, and I had
my camel back and I was just rugging my water,
like not really thinking what was going to happen. After
(04:19):
I drank all the water and I must have beat
on the way down from that like ten times. Everyone
wanted to kill me, but I was like, I don't care,
I'm going and I my pants were soaked. It's disgusting,
but like, you can't aim it. It's my pants, my shoes,
like and and granted you're not helping me pe properly,
but still it's then like all over my leg it's
(04:40):
off exactly, It's it's everywhere. And that was just a
day hike. So imagine if you are out there for
multiple days at a time, hygiene becomes an issue. Carrying
in and out your waist becomes an issue. And I
read this article years ago about people using a pea
cloth and I thought that's disgusting. But I was also
(05:03):
teaching backpacking at the time as an instructor with a
nonprofit here in Washington State called Washington Outdoor Women, and
I remember thinking, Okay, Anastasia, don't knock it until you try.
And I went out and I bought this ugly old
scrap of fabric and I decided, I'm gonna at least
test this out and see if I like it. I
(05:25):
was stunned to find that it was a total game changer.
For me, and I started recommending using a peak loth
to everybody, all of my students, in fact, people who
took my classes years ago. They will come back and
see me now, and the first thing they will all
say is, we remember you talking about the peak cloth.
Like I became such an advocate for this. It was
(05:47):
in two thousand and sixteen. I was on a backpacking
trip with my husband in the wind River Range of
Wyoming and I was actually taking a photograph of my
ugly pea cloth as a joke to send to a friend.
I had this crazy idea that I was gonna make
a whole line at Christmas cards with pea clods on
(06:07):
that to send to a friend as a joke. And
I had positioned this piece of fabric on my trekking
pole and we were in this It was at sunset.
I mean, it could not have been more picturesque except
for the fact that I was taking a photo of cloth.
And it was literally like this lightning bolt moment where
(06:29):
all of a sudden, this idea just popped into my
head and just said, why isn't that a real piece
of gear? Like has anybody ever done that? Has anybody
ever taken a product and designed it to be intentionally
used for hygiene, something that looks cool, so that maybe
people are less squeamish about the idea, something that feels
(06:51):
more intentional. Well, there's so much, so much hiking and
outdoor gear out there, Like it's almost shocking that it
took till for someone to think about and actually do it.
I totally agree. And the thing that boggled me as
I thought about this and as I looked at all
the gear that I had here, I have this five
hundred dollar tent to three hundred dollars sleeping bag, and
(07:12):
yet the one piece of fabric that I'm literally putting
in contact with the most sensitive part of my body
looked like something I had pulled out of a rag
bit at Jiffy lou. So it was it was like,
you didn't make sense to me. And at the time,
I was a police officer, I had transitioned from being
(07:34):
a park ranger. I gotten laid off very sadly, I'm
sure broken. So I was laid off from my park
ranger job in two thousand and twelve, and then I
became a police officer working for the railroad. So it's
actually working as a railroad. I was working as a
(07:54):
railroad cop. Okay, so what does that entail? So you
you go park ranger railroad cop to making peak cloths
like that is quite the journey. And granted there's much
more in between. We'll get to that, but what is
the day to day for our railroad officer? A railroad police.
It's actually one of the oldest branches of law enforcement
in the country. And I like to tell people to
(08:14):
imagine that the railroad is like a huge city. It's
just really narrow and it sort of weaves itself in
and out of a bunch of other cities. So anything
that would happen in any normal city environment, a lot
of times it ends up on the railroad tracks. A
huge part of what we did as railroad police officers
(08:36):
was just education. Most people don't know that it's actually
illegal and also super dangerous to trespass on railroad tracks.
People do that all the time for Instagram picks, and
there's a lot of really really avoidable fatalities that can
be prevented by just simply not being on the tracks.
So that was a lot of what I did, and
I got to do that job for about five and
(08:58):
a half years. It was great. But I've just always
been this really adventurous, outdoorsy person and I was looking
down the barrel of do I want to spend the
next thirty years patrolling railroad tracks? I mean with the
with the park ranger job originally, like you can move
park to park, and you're obviously outdoors and in the environment.
(09:19):
And granted, while you loved that job doing that forever
as a as a railroad officer, Like you're saying, you're
looking at that, that's kind of draining forever, I think
it was. It was draining. And I had always been
a very entrepreneurial kid, and when I was very young,
I would start all these businesses all the time, and
I I had, I had a juice delivery business before
(09:43):
it was cool, and like, you know, it makes me
laugh now because if I had kept up with that,
I'd probably be some like billionaire juice tycoon now. I mean,
I was doing juice and I actually it was so funny.
I actually found the price list that I had come
up with the other day. Oh it was like two
dollars for a quart of hand squeezed juice. And we
(10:06):
would deliver muffins and juice and then I had a
pet sitting business. I mean it was always like I
tried to launch a skincare line with the juicing, which
is like a huge thing now, pet care business, which
you've got Wag and all of those apps skincare. I mean,
that's just obviously. I was always like a little bit
(10:27):
too late, or maybe I was too early, and I
would have an idea and I would feel myself really
in that creative flow, and then I would instantly try
to figure out, how is this possible? And instead of
allowing the answers to come to me and sort of
being open to the possibilities, I immediately would argue for
(10:48):
my limitations, and I would get afraid of the money
aspect of things. That was a huge fear of mine.
I would look at other people who had skin care lines,
for instance, and say, well, they're no room for me.
And so I killed all of those ideas, and it
was really sad. I look back on them now and
I just think, wow, if I had taken a few
(11:10):
more steps, like what could have been possible, Well, you're
doing something amazing because not only are you giving people
a product that they desperately need, but you're also helping
the environment while doing it. But the path to cooler
cloth wasn't the easiest. So what made you quit your
job as a railroad officer? So I had always sort
(11:31):
of looked at people who were doing these really cool,
adventurous things, and I dreamed of a career in the
outdoor industry, and I thought that the people who got
to do that had been given some sort of a
lucky code that I hadn't been given, right, And so
I had had the idea for Coola in two thousand
and sixteen. This was in January of two thousand and seventeen.
(11:53):
I was heading home from snowshoeing at Steven's Pass area.
My mom and my husband and I were the car.
It was a beautiful, perfect day, no snow on the road,
and somehow we hit a patch of black ice and
the truck went spinning into the path of an oncoming
semi truck and into the opposite lane of travel. Obviously
(12:16):
there's a happy ending, because here I am to this day,
I honestly can't even explain how we lived. It was
like a catastrophic shift for me in my life in
the best way. In that moment where we were spinning
across the highway. I realized, looking back and reflecting on it,
(12:38):
that I didn't have any fear in that moment. It
was the surreal slow motion like that people talk about,
like everything's in slow motion. That's what it was like.
And I felt like this disbelief that it was happening,
but there was no fear. And suddenly I came back
to my life where I if I was being honest
with myself, I knew I was playing small and not
(13:00):
utilizing my full potential. And I looked at all the
fears that were preventing me from doing anything, and I realized,
if I didn't have fear in the one moment where
I was literally looking at my own mortality in the face,
then is it possible that all the fears I have
about pursuing this dream, is it possible that they're all
(13:22):
just manufactured in my mind? Am I the one making
them up? Am I the one getting in my own way?
At that moment, I decided to just start taking little steps.
I was not ready to yet leave my police job.
I had already had the idea for Coola, but instead
(13:43):
of arguing for reasons why I shouldn't pursue it, all
of a sudden, none of that mattered. I didn't need
to know the answers anymore. I didn't know how to sew.
I'd never done anything in the textile industry, but I
just started making phone calls. And and that's one thing
that I recommend to all entrepreneurs is you don't need
to know everything, but like somebody out there does, and
(14:04):
you do know how to make a phone call. Yeah,
and you can piece it all together. I mean, anyone
who in this podcast, we'll talk about the fear that
they felt and why they didn't jump right away and
then eventually they did. And I think you explaining it
the way you just did is the perfect way to
explain it. All of your fears are manufactured. Now. I'm
not saying go quit your job the moment you're hearing
this podcast. Come up with a slight plan, I mean,
(14:27):
or hey, quit the job, but don't blame me or
on the station and when it goes wrong, but come
up with some sort of a plan like you didn't
the next day after you were no. It took it
took me months to really get to the point. And
I like to think that I got myself to the
point where it was scarier not to pursue this thing
(14:48):
that I had created than it was to stay put.
But you didn't want another one of your business ideas
being snapped up exactly. It was like, no, life's too short.
I don't want to kill it again, and I don't
need to know all the answers. I just need to
trust that this is going to work out. And so
I started buying fabric. I found a friend who knew
(15:08):
how to sew, and she showed me how to sew
a straight line on a surgery and it's a type
of sewing machine that is used to basically bind two
different pieces of fabrics together. So the very very first
coolas that I ever sewed, and it wasn't even called Coola.
Then I was just making squares in the beginning. I
(15:30):
didn't have the name right away, and I just started
reaching out to people and asking them their input, like
what would you want this product to be like? I
started asking people who were outdoorsy, if you could design this,
what would it be like? And I started taking all
those ideas, and soon my squares got better and better,
(15:50):
to the point where I was able to actually give
them to people without feeling embarrassed. About what the product
looked like. And then the next thing I knew, I
was making prototype. Some people were buying the prototypes, and
people were like excited about it, and all of a sudden,
things just it was like the answers were coming at me.
Instead of me needing to know the perfect plan. That
(16:13):
has to be an amazing feeling after everything you had
been through and search for. There are moments where I
was laying on my couch in the beginning just crying,
thinking I was the biggest idiot on the planet for
wanting to pursue a peacloth company like I mean, I
(16:34):
I still remember it was like the day before I
launched the website, and I remember thinking, okay, Anastasia, there's
two possible scenarios here. Option one is that people are
going to think you are just like the laughing stock
of the outdoor industry and that you're a complete bozoh.
Option two is that people are going to think you're brilliant.
(16:56):
And I remember thinking to myself, well, either way, I'm
going down in a blaze of glory, so I might
as well just do it. And I remember when I
made the website live for the very first time, I
funded the sort of startup costs of buying my first
huge order of custom fabric by doing a pre sale,
(17:17):
and a friend of mine had placed an order within
the first minute of me. You know, all I did
was I posted it to Facebook, like I had no advertising,
and I just remember sitting actually in the room where
I'm sitting right now, and I was just so sick
to my stomach with nerves that I was just going
to like that I had like ruined my life, Like
(17:38):
you know, it's just so silly now like looking back
at it, and I just like sat here and cried
and cried because it was the whole dream, it was
coming true and there was just so Yeah, there was
so much beauty in that. Yeah, and it is still incredible.
I Like you're saying, yeah, oh, it's just a peacloth,
(17:59):
but like, really, it is your passion, it's your dream,
and it's helped so many people. And I said it earlier.
You're keeping litter off the trails and out of the environment.
And it's way bigger than just a square cloth. It's
it's so much more. It is, and we've actually really
the focus that we've been doing right now is doing
these cool as for a cause tell us about So yeah,
(18:22):
So we are giving money to different organizations, organizations that
provide opportunities for people who may not have the opportunity
to get out backpacking normally. So we're working with partners
like the Venture Out Project. We're just recently working on
a design with a nonprofit called Come Alive Outside that
(18:45):
helps kids get outside. We give money to the Washington
Trails Association, working on something hopefully with the Washington National
Parks Fund, and so yes, me too. So you know,
it's so incredible how you can create something that can
become Yes, it is a piece of gear, but it
(19:06):
can also be a vessel through which you can really
have a positive impact on the world in a much
bigger way than you originally intended for sure. And where
does the name Coola come from in the first place? Which,
by the way, if people are listening right now and
they're like, you keep saying cooler, but what is happening
is k U l a So they get a k
(19:28):
U l a cloth dot com or cooler cloth on
Instagram to check out what we're talking about. But where
does the name coola come from? In the very beginning
of creating this product, I knew I needed a name
for it, and I knew it needed to be a
good name. I didn't want it to be a name
that sounded like a joke, because a lot of hygiene
products sort of have this like, yeah, this giggly thing,
(19:50):
and I wanted it to feel intentional, not like it
was something silly. I was listening to a podcast with
Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanks, and she was talking
about how when she named Spanks, she had heard that
you needed to have a K sound in the name
of your product, and so I was sitting Kardashians crush it. Yeah,
(20:15):
but like Coca Cola, Q Tip, there's a lot of
big companies that have like this hard K sound. So
I was sitting at my kitchen table and went to
my trusty advisor Google and I googled mountains that start
with K and I found a mountain. The very first
(20:35):
one I saw was a mountain named Coola Congret. And
that mountain is in Bhutan, which is a country that
I had visited just before I got laid off from
my job as a propreacher. So immediately there was like
this connection because my trip to Bhutan was a really
pivotal moment in my life. Now, all of a sudden,
(20:56):
there's this connection to the name Coola. So then of
course I do the next step and I google the
word Coola and I find that the word kula means community,
and I just thought, oh my gosh, that's it. Vam
that and and that is what I had envisioned from
the very beginning, is that I wanted the product to
feel so intentional that when people saw somebody else with
(21:19):
a Coola on the trail, that it would just be
an instant connection. And I hear stories all the time.
I'll get emails or Instagram messages and people will say,
you won't believe this. I saw somebody with a Kola
on the trail and I said hi, and it's just
like it's an instant Yeah, it's listen to me, that's
mind blowing. Yeah, I know. I know the feeling of
(21:41):
for me when I connect people who have been in
this podcast with one another, I get that like that
same feeling of like, oh my god, like I'm like
it's like a little fairy like you connected people and
it's the coolest thing to be able to connect people.
And before we get more into the cooler cloths. I
want to talk about how we got connected because that's
a huge part of the podcast for me of how
you know, people get connected after being on the podcast
(22:03):
or how they come to me. And you came to
me through Rammy from the ground up Socks, So he
was on months ago, and then I had him on
again after our our social distancing kicked in to talk
about what he was doing with socks for docs. So
you and Rammi are also connected with David from Rainier
Watch correct, who was on the podcast that you guys
already got your own little community going out there. We
(22:23):
gotta get involved in what you guys are doing. So
how did you all get connected? So that's an even
funnier story. So the other side of what I do.
I'm a lifelong classically trained musician, and when I was
in the process of leaving my job, and I won't
get into this story too much because that would be
(22:46):
the world's longest podcast ever. A friend that I met
through a very serendipitous series of events. She and I
we started carrying a violin and a piano up into
the mountains to go perform sunrise serenades for nobody. So
it's sort of just like to pull that rug out
(23:06):
from underneath both of us. So I'm a musician and
we are a small duo called the Musical Mountaineers, and
we perform these beautiful concerts and now actually a lot
of our music gives back to Washington National Parks Funds. Yeah,
we performed at a benefit concert at ben Royal Hall
(23:27):
last year and we're doing that again in October. So
everything we do is really like benefiting parks. And what
can people go, like, when do you still do the Sunrise?
We we do. We never announce them because of Leave
No Trace, which really sort of goes in alignment with
Kula as well. And at this point, if we announced
(23:48):
a concert like hey, this is where we're going to
be at Sunrise, there's a good chance that a lot
of people would show up. And in order to sort
of maintain the purity of what we're doing, we don't
want it to be a show. It's more just for
the experience that if somebody happens to be there, If
that happened to me, I'd be like, what is happening
right now? This is wild? Yeah it is. There have
(24:09):
only ever been a few people who found us because
obviously we're waking up at midnight to go hiking, but
it's usually a really emotional and special experience for all
of us when we encounter other people. So David, who
is the founder of mount Rainier Watch, he knows Rose
and so my musical partner Rose and her husband through
(24:33):
their college. And then I knew David through the Musical
Mountaineers because he shared our music a bunch of times.
And then David Ramy and I sort of put together
our own little Pacific Northwest Founders group, which currently has
a membership of three. The three of us is the
(24:53):
three of us, and so we've been getting together once
in person and then now virtually just to encourage each
other and uh focus on things that are positive and
like getting our momentum going in a really good direction.
What kind of criteria do you need to get into
your group? Nothing, just here and be a Pacific Northwest
(25:14):
entrepreneur and send us a message and all all are welcome. Okay,
good to know just in case people are wondering, and
there have been plenty on this podcast, so we're going
to send them your way. But I love that you
guys are doing that. I love the importance of connection.
I always try to preach that of just connecting people
to each other and just knowing your connections and knowing
how people were kind of put into your life is
(25:36):
a cool thing to step back and see. So the
fact that you have that that kind of story is
really cool, but cooler coth till this day? How many
have you sold? Oh my gosh, so I if I
had to estimate, we've probably sold over fifteen thousand of
them at this point. Okay, so then the anesthesia who
(25:58):
was sitting there scared to launch the website, right like,
looking back at that moment and knowing now fifteen thousand
have sold, there's that close to fifteen thousand people. I'm
sure people have a bunch. That's how many people you
have touched just by making cloth. When you think about it, like,
that's wild. I am a totally sappy, sentimental person and
(26:23):
not a day goes by when I do not literally
like feel the energy of that. And literally there are
days where I will just sit and weep with the
most profound sense of gratitude that I could possibly describe.
Are you getting emotional right now? Yes? I have right now,
and not that I love that you're crying, but I
(26:44):
love that you are actually emotional. It is so special
to me. I really feel like nobody was there for
the moments when I was crying on my couch wondering
if this was possible, But like I hold those moments
with me, and anybody who's an entrepreneur knows that, Like
(27:07):
when somebody purchases your product, like there's they're making a
conscious decision to support you because they believe in what
you're doing, and that is something that I savor to
this day. I mean, we we do a lot of
stuff at Coola now that's really fun where we I mean,
we just launched a little online academy so that we're
(27:30):
doing online pictionary classes and like finding ways to continue
to support people even though maybe we can all get
together in person. And I write notes as much as possible.
It's hard at this point with so many orders that
go out to write a handwritten note in every single order,
But any time that we can find to appreciate somebody else,
(27:55):
we we really do that. And it's honestly just totally
shocking and amazing, really really cool to watch it grow
and be able to impact other people's lives, not only
the nonprofits that we're support. But we put art on
the kulas and they're beautiful. Like who thought that I'd
ever be saying a peak cloth is beautiful? But they're
(28:16):
they're so beautiful, And every single one that's purchased gives
back money to the artist who created it and who
who does create them. So we work with a variety
of different artists, so there is no magic sauce to
getting your art on a kula. It just sort of happens,
(28:36):
like we'll discover these artists and reach out to them
and see if they're interested, and I just love the
variety that we have. I try not to give any
direction at all to the artists because I love the
idea of the kula being this blank canvas and like,
what what are they going to create? Just seeing all
(28:56):
the creativity that has been sort of brought up through
this one little product is exciting to me. So then
what made you think to do that? Because originally you
said you were just caughting fabric? What made you think
to work with artists? So I had always wanted to
and I didn't know how because I didn't know how
to actually how do you even print art onto fabric?
(29:19):
I mean, I did not know any of these answer.
I don't have any idea, and you you sort of
look at these moments and you think that their coincidences,
But then you sort of look at them and you
don't think that their coincidences. And I happened upon a
production studio totally quotes by chance and reached out to them,
and they ended up having the capability and being able
(29:42):
to tell me how this was going to be possible.
And so I feel like all along the way, the
right people have shown up to bring the vision to life.
I think that's what I've been good at, is holding
the vision and believing it's possible without needing to know
the answers. And one thing I really tried to do
as an entrepreneur is be solution focused, not problem focused.
(30:06):
So if I'm trying to fix something or figure something
out and I don't know the answers, typically what happens
then is I'm amplifying the problem and I'm not even
in the vicinity of the solution. And i do a
lot of stuff that maybe it seems woo to some people,
but I'll write what I want onto a board and
(30:28):
just walk away from It's amazing yeah, and just be like, Okay,
I know what's going to happen. I don't really know how,
but I'm sort of excited and I'm anticipating this answer arriving,
and I kid you not every time the answer shows up.
That is a great pro tip right there. So then
the microbial part of it, what obviously you didn't just
(30:49):
get any random fabric you obviously did. There's some science
behind this. How did you figure that out? That was
again happening to meet the right people. I literally called
a fabric mill and ended up on the phone with
the CEO of this fabric mill, not even realizing I
was on the phone with the CEO talking about my product.
(31:12):
Oh yeah, I had no clue and people, I honestly
feel like not knowing anything in the textile industry gave
me such a huge advantage because I wasn't going into
any conversation with a preconceived idea that well, they aren't
going to take me seriously. I was later told by people, oh,
as a small company, you'll never be able to get
(31:33):
anywhere in the textile industry because they won't even talk
to you. And I just remember thinking, well, everybody's talked
to me so far, like I haven't. If you don't
have that planet in your head, then like you're just
open to whatever. And so I ended up talking to
this woman who owns She and her family to own
a fabric mill in the United States, and they were
(31:54):
able to sort of help me come up with a product.
It's a customed as line products. So one side of
the fabric is waterproof and it's able to be printed.
On the other side is a special fabric that's super
absorbent and it's specifically designed for hygiene, and it's antimicrobial
(32:15):
because it is infused with silver ions. So it is
physically do any of that myself and I but I
did actually get the chance to talk to scientists and
I learned a lot about silver. And there's types of
silver that are bad for wastewater systems, and then there's
(32:36):
types of silver treatments that are inert and won't hurt
the wastewater treatment systems. I know way more about fabric.
It's than like anybody. Now when you think about everything
you just said, how much is rooted into this and
at the top of it it's a peak cloth like
it's just so there's so much that goes into things.
But I think that your message will help people understand, like,
(32:59):
don't be scared, you'll figure it out. If you have
an idea, just go with it, because you're going to
regret not going with the idea. Yeah, I would totally
recommend for people to spend time visualizing what they want
to create and make it as real feeling as you can,
Like you can find the feeling of where you want
(33:23):
to go from exactly where you are right now. And
that's what I did with Kula is I would sit
there and I would visualize people hiking with Kulas on
their backpack and like what that feeling would be like.
And I was able to find that feeling without it
actually having happened yet. And when you can find the
(33:43):
feeling and allow the feeling to be enough, then all
of a sudden, you're tuned to the frequency of the solution.
And that's when these incredible moments of quote unquote chance
to start flowing into your life and you meet the
right people, and you become a cop who had zero
(34:03):
clue how to sew or zero experience in the textile industry,
all of a sudden, having a company that makes like
a very specific textile and then all of a sudden,
thousands of them are sold. I mean, it is wild,
and but I think the other thing that excites me
is that it's possible for everybody. I went from knowing
(34:26):
absolutely nothing, absolutely you could not have gotten more further
away from me knowing nothing, like I still can't even
sew a button. So I hope that that can be
an example for others that you don't need to be
an expert or know a lot about a certain thing
(34:47):
figured out. Yeah, if you have an idea, just find
the feeling of the idea, believe it's possible, don't argue
for your limitations, and then just see what happens, like
start making phone calls and google things. Have you been
a speaker at events because I think you need to?
I okay, yeah, I love. There is nothing that excites
(35:10):
me more. And Kola is a physical representation of the
story of my own sort of awakening to the potential
that I always had, like just didn't think I had.
And so for me, the larger part of Kola is
sharing that with others and giving them a glimpse of
(35:32):
that in themselves as well, because I think that every
single person has it, and every single person has an
idea or something that they can bring to life, and
I hope more people do because it's what a great
world that will be. Yeah, well, you're super inspiring to
listen to. And I think that one day when I
have an event, I'm going to hire you to speak
(35:54):
at it. So when we can't have events, it'll happen well,
and I will play my violin. Yeah. Event people are like,
what is going on? There's a violinist talking about pea cloths,
and yeah, the best I'm very confusing to Somebody told
me once that I was like a conundrum in an
in an oxymoron in a juxtaposition description. I love it.
(36:22):
When you were launching cooler Cloth, you had already quit
your job as a railroad officer, but you were teaching
backpacking lessons what you're still doing. So are one of
them your side hustle? Now, Like, is one of them
your day job? What is it? I would so I
would say, now cooler cloth is more of my day
job and doing the music backpacking right, Writing, I love writing.
(36:47):
I've been working on a couple of poetry books actually
because why not, Because moment I tend to just like
follow the creative flow. And I'm like, I like to
imagine life as a river, and I always ask myself,
am I flowing with it? Or am I trying to
swim upstream? And I always like to be flowing with it?
(37:11):
And I think that everything's connected. And some days writing
poetry feels good to me, and so I might not
do much with Coula that day because for whatever reason,
the idea that I need for Coola is going to
come to me through poetry, and then maybe I move
into violin music. I've actually, I would say, now my
(37:33):
my side hustle, of my side hustle is that I
actually play my violin at adventure elopements. So that yeah, okay,
So I personally think that an elopement is something that
happens more on this side of the country. I don't
think that the city people on the opposite side of
the country know what that is. So an adventure elopement, actually,
(37:55):
I'll let you explain it. I know it's when people
like will Elope for their wedding, but it's more planned.
It's like you're just running away, right, Yeah. And there's
this whole culture of adventure elopements here in the Pacific
Northwest where people actually hike back into these incredible destinations.
Usually it's just a couple. Sometimes maybe they have a
couple of adventurous family members or friends with them, but
(38:18):
it's usually very small. And I am probably one of
the only violinists in the world that I know of
who's nuts enough to bring a violin in a backpack
out into who knows where, And so people actually hire me.
And I got ordained as an officiant, and so people
will actually hire me now to go back into the
(38:39):
back country. You play violin for them and and do
weddings that I just I honestly like I do that
just because it's so much fun and I get so
much joy out of like bringing music and nature to people.
I really believe that we connect more deeply with ourselves
in nature, and so for me, it's it's all intertwined.
(39:03):
And you're still doing backpack lessons on top, I am
still doing backpacking. Yeah, So I teach with a with
a non backpacking backpacking lessons. You're not teaching people how
to use backpacks. Yeah. I teachum with a nonprofit called
Washington Outdoor Women, and they do a workshop every September.
So I teach backpacking there and then Coola has we've
(39:23):
actually held a couple events. So we did an event
last year called Coola Palooza and I taught backpacking there.
And then we're actually gonna be doing a virtual backpacking class.
That would be so cool. When is that you have
that set up to people? We don't have the dates yet,
but if you go on the Cooler Cloth website under events,
you can sign up for a virtual class. And we're
(39:44):
trying to make all the classes either free, donation based,
or really accessible to all people, because that's important to us.
So sure, and if it's something you've always wanted to
do and you're kind of hesitant about it, this is
a great virtual is a great way to kind of
tiptoe into in techn Yes, that's awesome. Do you have
big goals for Coola? Do you have wholesale already? Is
(40:05):
that a plan you want to do? Is there things
like that that you're writing on your board that you
want to happen? Yeah, absolutely so. A few months ago,
I like, obviously at the very beginning of Coola, I
think I wrote Coola in r E. I write like
on my board and I can't give too many details
about that, but let's just say that it's not like
(40:27):
not necessarily out of the realm of possibility. Okay, And
so I'm doing I have a few retailers that sell Coola.
The thing that really excites me is just watching other
brands use coolas. So we're doing a lot of custom
ones for other gear companies that sell backpacks actually, and
(40:49):
we're doing a lot of coolers for a cause, and
we have these events now and so it's just sort
of growing and growing, and I love to watch that.
I love finding. Somebody once asked me how did Coola
grow so quickly? And my response to that is always
(41:13):
the same. It's that I didn't need Coola to grow
quickly like I found. Yeah, I didn't force it. I
just let it go. And I don't try. I mean,
people are going to kick me when I say this,
But I don't try really hard like I mean. I
I say that. When I say that, I mean that
I do work hard. I mean like this is seven
(41:37):
live and breathe right, like it's my fabric, baby. But
I allow things to happen rather than trying to force
something to happen. When you try to force something to happen,
you're actually focused on the lack of that thing as
opposed to being like that thing is going to happen,
and I don't need it to feel whole about who
(42:00):
I am. Like that doesn't affect me, and so then
what happens is like because I just naturally feel sort
of happy and satisfied and abundant where I am, things
move really quickly for me. I love that piece of
advice because one of my favorite pieces of advice that
I ever got was don't set goals. And it's like, wait,
what what do you mean don't set goals? And it's yeah,
(42:20):
obviously have dreams and things that you want to do,
but when you have this end goal, anything else cool
that comes your way, it's not your goal, so you
just ignore it. But really, these are amazing opportunities. So
I think between the two of us, don't set goals
and don't try hard, we would crush talking seriously, it
would be like a dream team, because I I really
(42:42):
do think if you are setting I mean, I'm gonna
go out on a limb here and just get into
how woo I am. But like, I don't even set
monetary goals. I don't set anything like that, because to me,
that is playing small, Like why would I say I
only have this limited amount of abundance that I want
(43:05):
to achieve. If I do that, I'm cutting off infinite
possibilities that can happen infinite. And I don't know about
anybody else, but like the idea of playing with finite
abundance versus infinite abundance on one is definitely more fun.
And when I say abundance, it's not just money for me,
(43:26):
it's joy and laughter, actions, yea connection, and like impacting
people's lives and doing things that matter, and like just
creating something that makes people feel good, like this past
March when COVID hit I was not prepared for the
(43:46):
response to a reusable toilet paper we Yeah, I needed
to ask you about this because this was a very
hot commodity. I'm sure when toilet paper went off the
shelf it was crazy. And I had made some good
purchasing decisions last year that actually had us set up
purchasing decisions that were terrifying for me, Like spending twenty
(44:10):
dollars on fabric was terrifying for me. But had I
not done that, I would have had zero inventory whatsoever.
And so I sort of like look back on that,
and I'm like, oh my gosh, like the perfection of
you know, I trusted it at that moment. I was like,
you know what, this is going to work out. I
don't know how, but I'll come up with the money whatever.
(44:32):
And then March happened and we were getting just unprecedented
amount of orders for our small company, and that it
was really really exciting. It was also scary because I
realized the bigness of things and the sort of limited
nous of my inventory, and so I really had to
(44:56):
do a lot of practice around just releasing those fears.
And I feel like that's what entrepreneurship is. It's like
you have these fears and worries and doubts, and you
release them and then you come back to who you
truly are, because that person can't be affected by a
pea cloth. They can't. Are you the one packing at
the orders or does it come from where they're printing them?
(45:17):
So I no longer am the one packing up the
orders in the beginning I was. That became quickly unsustainable.
When I was on a vacation with my husband in
Death Valley and we were literally driving around in I
had a tiny Honda at the time with a inventory
of Kula's in the trunk and a label printer, and
(45:39):
we would like go on a hike and then we
would frantically drive to sell service so that I could
print up labels and like Malekula's. Oh it was it
was sort of uh, I mean, it was a great
problem to have. Was also I was not able to
have any life whatsoever other than packing boxes and shipping.
(46:00):
So we transition to using a third party fulfillment center
last May, and that has given me the ability to
focus on like the larger picture of things, like I
didn't get into the peacloth business because I wanted to
own a distribution center. So exactly, and so many people
have been in this podcast talk about in the beginning, Yeah,
(46:20):
you have to do it, you have to you have
to be in there in the beginning. Obviously, who are
you going to pay to do it in the beginning anyway,
But just knowing how it works and and being the
one to literally hand deliver those first products is the
coolest thing. But eventually your time is better served somewhere else, yes, Yeah,
And it gets to a point where you realize that
you are slowing down the growth of your own company
(46:42):
by trying to do everything, and in the beginning I
was writing notes on every single order that went out
and the like. That became unsustainable for me, which is
a great problem to have. It was also a little
sad for me. And so now when an order it
comes in, even though I can't necessarily write a personal
(47:03):
note to people, I do try to go through the
orders and even write emails to people. If they leave
a little note in the order, I'll usually write something
back to them, and just to find a small way
to let people know that I appreciate them. Well I
think they I think they know you appreciate them, especially
to anyone who's purchased one. Listen to this podcast. That's
really cool to hear your story. And I hope they do, because,
(47:24):
like you said, you didn't want it to be a
gimmicky product. So at Phase Value and someone here's peak Cloth,
they're like what, But then you hear everything that went
into this and your story, it's just it really is
incredible and almost like I don't want to say it
doesn't match the product, but like when you think peak cloth,
you don't think the amazing inspiration that has gone through
you and what you've put into this, so I have
(47:46):
to get to tell the story. Well, me too. And
it's so funny because when people think of cooler now,
I don't think that they think p like are we
have like a real the active Instagram that honestly, quite
honestly has almost nothing to do with cooler cloth. It's
more just funny stuff, uh that we enjoy. And I
(48:10):
think that most people when they think of Coola, they
think of connection and community and all the organizations that
we've been able to help in the process, And the
fact that it happens to be a pea cloth is
sort of like, yeah, that's that's what it does. But
I hope that everything that goes into it does make
people proud to put it on their pack. That was
(48:34):
what I envisioned from the beginning, is I wanted something
that people could clip to their pack and they feel
some sense of pride in that. And maybe it's through
what the coolest supports, or maybe it's just through knowing
a story about an entrepreneur who followed a dream and
maybe they're doing the same thing. But I think each
of us has that capacity within us to create something
(48:57):
that makes a difference. Well, you definitely did, and I'm
glad you got to talk about on the podcast. Anastasia,
Thank you so much for being here. Everyone needs to
go check out cooler cloth dot com, cooler Cloth on
Instagram to support follows, see all the things you're doing.
I'm sure you're going to do a million more things,
and to check out all the backpacking stuff you've got
going on. So thank you for being here. I appreciate it.
(49:17):
It was so much fun talking with you. Thanks. Thank
you so much for being here and listening to the
Side Hustlers Podcast. Support Anastasia it's cooler cloth dot com.
You can always hit the link below in the description
to check her out, support her, follow her journey. If
you know any artists, or if you are an artist
who want to be a part of the Cooler Cloth
journey and want to get your artwork on a cooler cloth,
(49:40):
you can reach out to Anastasia. Thank you again for
being here. I appreciate you. Side Hustlers Podcast at gmail
dot com with your questions, comments, concerned, guest suggestions, whatever
it may be. This podcast has been produced by Houston
Tilly and until next week, keep hustling and be a
good human, letting them to death,
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