Kelly: What's up, you guys are listening to Velvet’s Edge Podcast. I am here with Melody Godfred, who is the founder of Fred and Far. Hi Melody.
Melody Godfred: Hi Kelly.
Kelly: Thank you so much for coming on today. I'm so excited to have you.
Melody: I'm so excited to chat with you. It's great to be here.
Kelly: I've actually been following you for over a year now. I found you on Instagram because you started this company that just promotes self-love and it's all based around the self-love movement. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about Fred and Far?
Melody: Sure. Fred and Far is a self-love movement that's powered by the self-love pinky ring. The story behind the ring is in 2015, I had reached every milestone that I had set out to accomplish. My early life, I went to school, I became a lawyer, I had twins which was amazing, I got married, I had a home. Even though reaching every goal I had set, I wasn't happy and that was very jarring for me because I had always thought if I do everything I'm supposed to do, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is happiness.
What I realize is that in pursuit of all of those goals, I ended up losing sight of who I am, my authentic self. I stopped taking care of myself because I was constantly in service to others whether they were clients or my kids or friends and I felt very lost. I needed a daily reminder to practice self-love and self-care. Jewelry was something that I always use to commemorate milestone. I thought, what if I create a ring with the singular intention of being a reminder of my commitment to myself and I'll wear it on a ring on a finger I've never worn a ring on before.
Every day it would be my way of making sure that I was as important my own life as everyone and everything else was. That's really how it started. It started from a very personal need and when I saw that it worked for me, I thought it might help other women as well. Even though I had no experience in jewelry, I knew that if I got this message out, I would be able to help women and that's where we got started back in 2016.
Kelly: I love that so much. I have to tell you I was reading your bio on fredandfar.com. When you said the part about that your life you had hit all of these milestones and you were married, you were successful, you had kids which everyone thinks just like you said, if I get these things, then I will be happy. I was reading that and I started crying. It obviously really resonated with me today, but I feel like that is so true especially in our society because we're such a society of doers right now, and just thinking if we reach these milestones, we’re going to find our happiness and that has not been true for my life either. I've really found it fascinating.
Melody: There's a lot of pressure put on women especially to achieve certain labels in order to qualify their worth.
Kelly: 100%.
Melody: Even the process of getting married, the man decides, the man proposes, the man puts a ring on you to signify that you belong to him. That puts a lot of pressure on women either, married women who realize they're not completely fulfilled just because they achieved the wife label, and then other women who either don't want to get married or who haven't found the right person yet. I really thought that by using a ring, we could reclaim this idea that our worth is tied up in this idea of belonging. If it's going to be tied up in that, why not belong to ourselves?
Kelly: When you say belong to yourself, can you talk a little more about that? What is your life? You said you were giving a lot in your life before you had this epiphany. What did that look like?
Melody: I come from a long line of women who are queens of self-sacrifice. If there is an opportunity for me to martyr myself in service to someone else, I would do it. That could mean responding to client emails at one o'clock in the morning because that's when they emailed me. That could mean not letting my husband be a father because I thought I could do it better and trying to do everything by myself. That can mean not setting boundaries with friends who needed almost like a therapy type relationship where my needs weren't even part of the equation.
In every aspect of my life, if there is a way for me to sacrifice myself to make someone else feel good, I would do it. What's interesting now is being the founder of this movement and being the person behind the social media, I engage with women from all around the world on a daily basis. They tell me their stories. I follow every customer, everyone who I interact with on social media I follow them so I can give them support, but I don't feel depleted anymore because I have boundaries and because I make sure that in any given day, instead of just taking care of other people, I'm also taking care of myself.
That means taking time away from my phone. That means making sure I'm drinking water. That means taking a few minutes to journal to clear my head or listen to music, which is something that ever since I was a child was the most therapeutic thing for me. I have found the things that I need in order to replenish my energy, and that exploratory period of figuring out what your needs actually are is the most powerful piece of self-love.
Most women, by the time you reach your mid 20s or 30s, you're very disconnected from the question of what makes you happy, what are your needs–because you're so busy just doing, doing, doing. Creating that space to explore yourself and get to know yourself and then building a lifestyle that supports your needs, that's really the heart of what self-love is all about.
Kelly: I love that too because I feel like a lot of times, I don't know if it's as women or just as people in general, were put into these boxes of what our lives should look like and it puts you so out of touch as far as what your journey should be. For instance, my life looks a little different than other people because I'm 36 and I'm single, I'm not married. That has been this year a really big thing for me to accept about myself and my journey because it was so beat into my head that I should be by now.
That just hasn't been the path that's worked out for me. It's an interesting thought to think about getting to know yourself, getting to know what works for you, and actually finding your own specific journey.
Melody: Exactly. That's--
Kelly: Go ahead. Go ahead.
Melody: It's different for everyone. The most incredible thing is how unique each one of us is. What I always say is that each of us is one in approximately eight billion. There is no one else like us and what a gift that is to be able to contribute to the world in a way that no one else can. Finding power in that uniqueness is really special as opposed to feeling left out or alienated because you didn't follow the herd.
Kelly: When you started Fred and Far, you said it was by accident, you weren't setting out with the intention of starting a company?
Melody: There was no plan at the beginning to start a company. I already had a company. I have a resume writing and career counseling company. I was already busy working on that and helping people in that way. There was just something really transformative and in less than a month of wearing the ring, I started doing things for myself that I hadn't done in five years.
Kelly: Like what? What were you doing?
Melody: Simple things like, wow, I'm a really creative person. Why haven't I gone to a concert or gone to an art museum or explored culture in any capacity since I went to law school? I grew up playing the piano for 15 years. There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't play the piano. In my house, I have a piano gathering dust. Little things, things that I knew would reconnect me to the version of myself that existed before I thought that achieving was the most important thing in the world.
Kelly: I read on your website something you're talking about who we are before we gather all this dust–who we are as kids. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Melody: Absolutely. One of the most informative experiences of my life was having twins because when you have twins, you get to experience two people born into the exact same environment and yet, as you get to know them, you realize that from birth, they are absolutely who they are. Regardless of what we give them, the environment we create for them, the nurture we give them, my daughters are night and day. That was really what opened my eyes to the idea that we are born who we are.
We are fully formed. What comes from that point forward is a lot of cultural conditioning. The pain and trauma of being a teenager, all the responsibility that comes as we go into adulthood and all of these external things that happen end up as you mentioned, putting the layer of dust on that true self, that essence, that authentic being that is born into the world feeling perfectly whole in all of our good parts and bad parts and whoever we are, we accept it when we're born and then we go through this period of forgetting.
I think what's really incredible is as you get to know yourself, you get to revisit those experiences that maybe added dust around your authentic self and heal yourself and reclaim yourself and go back to that person you were when you were born. That journey is different for every person as I've noticed. Yesterday we started a self love challenge on our Instagram page. The first day of the challenge is about authenticity and rediscovering that authentic self. We asked women to take a picture of their childhood and use it as their home screen on their phones as a reminder of who they were before.
Seeing these women's pictures and reading their stories, I've been in tears for the past 24 hours. I could cry right now when I think about how a picture could just take you back, and take you back before anything happened to you, and reclaiming that person and becoming that person again. I think we can all do that. My goal with this movement is to give women the tools to do that because I know it's really easy and we get a lot of messaging, especially right now that says, love yourself, take care of yourself. What I'm interested is answering the question of how.
Kelly: Me too, because I think a lot of times people go, "I want to do self care, and it's like I'm going to go get a massage." Those all can be ways to do it but it doesn't have to cost a million dollars there's a deeper part of it too–the authenticity piece being a huge one.
Melody: Yes. That's why I wrote the book, The ABCs of Self Love because I think that as you noted it, there is a lot of value in practicing self-care that involves putting on a face mask or taking bath, but I think the self-care that's going to heal you internally has more to do with evaluating your thoughts and experiences and deciding who you want to be as you move forward.
In the book, we talk about things like choosing happy thoughts because what happens to you isn't a choice but how you think about it, how you perceive it, how you internalize it–it's up to you. Giving tools to open that door, like, hey, I get to choose how I'm going to feel about something. I'm going to choose how I'm going to think about something. I'm going to set boundaries so that I protect myself. I'm going to question negativity when it surfaces. I'm going to know my narrative. I'm going to know my story so that I can find power in it instead of feeling like a victim. This is all self-care that involves working on your inner self. Once you do that, all the other self care becomes the cherry on top.
Kelly: Right. I think the picture as a child is such an interesting thing because I know I've done that in therapy exercises before, but what a lot of people don't talk about is, and it's something you've mentioned, I think it was either on your website, or maybe in the beginning of the book that I read, but what happens throughout our life, or all of those things, we do internalize all of that.
If you're not addressing it, you're just reacting to it later as an adult. A lot of times I find- I'll even find myself just operating out of fear in certain situations or something that's just such an old wound that I just haven't crossed that path or whatever or healed from. The childhood picture is interesting because, like you said, it's before the dust and when I read about that, I looked up a picture of myself and it made me cry, too. I don't know what that is.
Melody: It's so cathartic. It hits you really deeply.
Kelly: To see the innocence, maybe? I'm not sure exactly. I haven't really tapped into what that's about yet, but it's really, really interesting.
Melody: I think it's that pure self.
Kelly: Yes. Is there a reason that you've kind of angled Fred and Far towards women? Do you think like there's a particular deficit of self love and women or is it just people in general?
Melody: It was my own experience. I was really meeting my own need. When I thought about expanding it, I thought let's build this community for women who are all choosing themselves and choosing each other and being part of a community. I don't think that men suffer as much of an identity loss as they move forward in their lives because they're less likely to carry a mental load. That's scientific. When it comes to all the responsibilities of life that aren't clearly defined, it's women who step in and fill the gap and especially women who are mothers.
In a household with kids, for example, even though the mother and a father might both be working parents, it's the mother who's worrying about the birthday presents, who's worrying about scheduling the repair people, who's taking on all the little intricacies that make life flow. You don't have to be married to see that women do that. Women do it in their friendships, they do it in their families. That takes a huge toll if you're not practicing self-care and self-awareness.
Kelly: Actually, the ring, I should say the ring is beautiful. I just got one and I love it. I've been wearing it every day. It's the shape it's like an inverted triangle, right?
Melody: Yes.
Kelly: Why is that the emblem?
Melody: That's the emblem on the ring. It's also the symbol of our movement, it's in our logo. The inverted triangle is an ancient symbol of the divine feminine and we wanted to use that energy because it's within all women and it's up to us to tap into it. If you want to know why that's the symbol of the divine feminine, you just need to look down. It's part of female anatomy and where we get our power. A lot of times, women are shamed simply because they're women. There's something really powerful about reclaiming that energy for yourself.
Kelly: I love that.
Melody: Yes. We use the triangle. What's really interesting is, women who've joined us have really taken it a step further and added additional meaning to the ring. For example, we've had women share with us that the direction that they wear the ring has meaning to them. In a triangle, you have three points, the singular point they will face in when they want to protect their energy and they want to give their energy to themselves and then they'll face it out when they want to give their energy to the world, which I thought was really interesting.
Kelly: That's really interesting. Mine's down right now. I guess I'm taking all my energy in.
Melody: Yes, but that's what we need.
Kelly: I need it today.
Melody: It's fun to have that flexibility in how you wear it. You have other women who wear two at once. One of our special stones that we do sometimes is the Black Spinel so they'll wear the black ring and the white ring together to symbolize embracing all parts of themselves the lightness and the dark, which is really beautiful.
We had another woman order a custom ring with a pink sapphire because she was a breast cancer survivor and she wanted that pink to symbolize her journey as a cancer warrior. Just seeing how women take the ring and make it their own and make it like a constant symbol and reminder and source of power is extremely inspirational to me.
Kelly: Yes, I love all those ideas. It is so interesting when you do something for yourself like this maybe as a gift for yourself it just feels so much more powerful. I don't know, when I opened my box I was like yes, like it’s just really good to put on and do something for myself and just to have that reminder.
Melody: Yes and think about this too. We are a very, very, very small company. Every ring, every order is packed with intention and love. We look at your name, we think about you when we put the ring in the box, we really try to infuse it with so much intention and love. I really think women feel that when they receive the packages. It's different than when you just order something on Amazon or from a retailer.
Kelly: The packaging in general like the box actual box, the little notes you guys put in there, one of them says engagement ring is a commitment to another and then our pinky ring is commitment to self and then you kind of make your own little pinky promise to yourself which I mean I'm going to keep these cards just as another reminder too. Something else I loved that I read on your website is the whole process of how these are made. Everything involves supporting other women, doesn't it?
Melody: Yes. Throughout the history of the company, all of the people we've employed have been women. That energy, I think, has permeated every aspect of the brand from the design of the brand identity to the vibe on social media. We create tons of original content that speaks directly to women because we are women. It's not a marketing firm just coming up with self-love slogans. I tend to write most of the content in real-time. Whatever I happen to be feeling I'll write something about it. The most profound thing is that I will invariably always get a message or a comment or a DM that says, "Wow, I needed that today."
I feel like I'm tapped into this hive, this energy across all the women who've joined us. When someone needs something, I feel it. That intuition that I have within myself and that other women have like our intuition speaks to each other. I think if we all listened to that a little bit more, our culture as a whole would be very different.
Kelly: Yes. I think that also can tap in to like the trust in the universe to put you where you could be and feel what you need to feel and know that your journey is an important one.
Melody: Yes. I had no idea where this would lead me. When I started this company, the first month or two we had maybe one order a month or one order a week. When one person believed in us enough, one writer to write about it, who is on Racked, after that, we had 100 pieces of press around the world in a matter of two to three weeks. It's amazing because as a small company you think I have to hire PR people, I have to do this, I have to do that, but if you have an authentic message and you share it, it will resonate. I think that it's been incredible seeing how people have responded because when we started, there was no self-love movement.
No one was talking about self-love. As soon as we started there was this huge shift and a very necessary change. Now self-love and self-care are phrases that you hear almost everyday and people are thinking about. We're really proud to have been a part of that at the beginning.
Kelly: I think you make a great point when you say that we're never taught self-care. We spend all this time in school learning all of these things that we actually never apply in our adult lives. There's no class on how to take care of yourself or love yourself or anything like that. I guess it's a parent's responsibility, I don't know. Where is that supposed to come from?
Melody: Nobody thinks about it. No one talks about it. It's astounding to me because I have three kids now, two of them are girls who are six and a half and I see it starting to happen. I see them starting to worry about how they're perceived by others. I constantly share this messaging with them and give them tools to practice self-care and self-love but I don't think that's happening universally. I know that had I been given the tool, it would have made my teenage years and my college and everything after a lot easier because I had to learn it the hard way. Then here we are in our thirties having to heal from everything that happened.
My goal with this movement, this ring, this book, the way I talk to my kids, the messaging I put out to the universe, is I think, women as girls should feel whole. They should go into the world feeling like they don't need a partner to have worth, they don't need to sacrifice themselves to have friendships, and they don't need to change to conform with what society expects of them in order to be successful.
Instead, the more they can spend time in their inner world getting to know themselves and being confident about who that person is, the better able they'll be to make a positive impact on the world and be successful in their lives in the ways that really matter because the way you and I talked about, we reach every milestone and happiness wasn't waiting for us. The only guarantee you have is yourself. You're the only one who will be there throughout it all so why not get to know that person and take care of her.
Kelly: Right. I think it was such an interesting thing for me. Last year, I had a really busy year with work. One of the consistent messages that I get from people is, "You're killing it. You're killing it." I was so busy and so throwing myself into everyone else and everything else that I was really-- Because I felt terrible inside, truly. It's so interesting that you can look from the outside like you are just killing it and successful and all that stuff but feel like shit really.
Melody: Fred and Far has been a really interesting place to explore those feelings because it's a self-love company but in order for it to grow and succeed I've compromised myself and my well-being many, many times. Around the holidays, there is this one day where I was trying to do a promotion on the website and it wasn't working and people were sending me angry emails. I just went on Instagram Stories and I was bawling. I was like, "Hey, I'm one person. I'm trying to do my best. I'm sorry that free gift didn't add to cart the way it's supposed to." I'm just doing my best.
I constantly have to remember that as much as I love this business and I love the women of this tribe, if I'm sacrificing myself and not taking care of myself in order for it to exist, I'm not living my truth and I'm not honoring the message that I'm sharing with the world. In fact, it was funny, a few days ago, a friend of mine who's a guy messaged me and goes, "Hey, you want to go to a meditation class today?" and my first thought was I don't have time to meditate, I have this to deal with. Right? But it was January third I was like, "Okay. It's the beginning of the year I should go.”
After we went he took me to coffee and he looked me in the eye and he said, "I have to call you out on something." and I'm like, "What is it?" he's like, "You're the head of a self-love movement but you haven't been taking care of yourself lately. You need to take care of yourself better." I was like, “Wow,” he really-- First of all, and again I'm going to cry because how rare is it for someone to actually witness you in that way and have the love to take you to a class and then gently tell you after that they're worried about you.
He did that for me. It was like a reset because as an entrepreneur and anybody who's working, it's really easy to burn out because of all the things you think you have to do. What I hope is that through this movement, through the ring, through the book, through all that Fred and Far does to try to make self-love and self-care actionable that we make it a little bit easier for women to remember themselves.
Kelly: How do you have boundaries because I know as a small business owner myself, it's really hard because you don't always have the resources of other people helping so you're doing a lot of it. Then you also have three kids and a husband so how are you drawing the line somewhere to take care of yourself in the midst of all that?
Melody: I think a lot of it has to do with having a very flexible relationship with the future. I've stopped requiring specific outcomes to happen in order to be happy. As a business owner, you may set key performance indicators like, "Okay, we have to do this much in sales" or we have to grow our email list by this much or Instagram post have to get this many likes or comments in order for us "successful". I've done away with all of that because what I have found is when I'm too specific about where I need to be in order to feel successful, I end up feeling like I'm drowning because I simply have too much on my plate.
In order to do that, I still set goals but they're more fluid and they also have a lot more to do with how I'm feeling. If I'm feeling good and productive and happy and I feel like I'm making progress then that's successful for me. I don't ever require perfection. It's all about the journey. It's all about the progress. Then with regard to balancing my kids and work and my relationship and myself, the more I can schedule things the better. I know, for example, that Mondays and Wednesdays, I have full workdays. I know that Tuesdays and Thursdays I pick up my kids from school so I could spend half a day with them.
I know that on the weekends, I'm not going to work no matter what. Fridays are my day where I have to get in a class, I need to take a long walk, whatever it is that I can get in I do that on Fridays. I'm lucky because I work for myself and I'm able to craft a flexible schedule. I know that a lot of women don't have that flexibility. That's a privilege I'm very aware of but I think everyone does have- they always say like, you have the same number of hours in a day as Beyonce. We all have 24 hours. Instead of scrolling on Instagram for an hour, watching Netflix for an hour, what could you do for yourself that's actually going to make you feel good instead of not? Because we all spend a lot of time on our electronics. What I have found is when I do things that don't involve electronics, that's when I'm recharging my battery. Last night I made cookie dough for my kids.
There's something about putting my hands in the dough and touching something that's so tactile and so real. That was energizing for me. I had forgotten what that felt like because it's been a while. I spend most of my time on the computer, on my cell phone. I think having those tactile, in real life experiences are a really powerful way to reconnect with yourself and reset your nervous system.
Kelly: I think it was actually-- I was about to quote something and I was like oh, wait I think it was in your book. The thing about the repetitive movement like, gardening or what you're saying about the cookie dough, I struggle with meditation. I've talked about this on the podcast a lot but I'm getting a little better. I can do up to 10 minutes now, which is huge for me.
But my brain just wants to go back to work or all the to-do lists. Doing something, sometimes an act that is really helpful in a good way for me to get back in touch with what am I feeling. And it’s like, Hi Kelly instead of just like moving through the day.
Melody: It's so true. It's amazing. Gardening is something that I would always make fun of my parents for doing. They spend their whole weekends gardening. For the longest time, I would just look at that and be like, really? You compost a weed? What are you doing? Last month I did a whole weekend project where I redid our front lawn because it was looking horrible. I spent two days with my hands in the dirt and it was electrifying. It's as though every cell in my body woke up.
Kelly: That is so crazy because I think the same about gardening. I kill every plant that I have [laughter]
Melody: But at least they're giving me a little bit of life in the process.
Kelly: Right, exactly. Let's talk a little more about the book. I did start it yesterday and it's a simple read, which I love, especially something at night or in the morning sometime. You can pick up. It's the ABCs of, what is it called? The ABCs of Self-Love. Each letter has a specific word to focus on. Then you have these little activities after or little action things to do that I love.
Melody: Thank you [crosstalk].
Kelly: A is like authenticity and abandon.
Melody: Yes that's all about connecting with your true self and getting rid of the dust that we talked about. B is boundaries. C is a play on like the four C's. Anyone who wants to buy a diamond you hear the four C's, the four C's. We have our own four C's, which are clarity, commitment, creation and community. It's all about kind of reflecting within and then building a world around you that nourishes what you feel you should be doing with your life–that clarity piece. D is daily dream. This is something that was really powerful for me because I'm very practical. I live very much in the real world. I realized I wasn't spending any time dreaming. I set an alarm on my phone–a calendar alert with one of my best friends. Every day at five o'clock, we would have to spend 15 minutes dreaming and text each other our dreams.
Kelly: I love that.
Melody: Having that practical application that doing piece where it's not just okay, here's an idea but actually having something you could do to execute on it, I think is where real self love lives. It's why I wanted to write this book because for the past three years, I've been exploring a lot of concepts. I thought how amazing would it be to have all of that live in one space and make it interactive so that women can pick a letter a day or a letter a week or whatever pace makes sense to them, learn a little bit about the theme and then do something in the moment that will help them connect with the idea and really make it part of the fabric of their being?
Kelly: I feel like a lot of times, the difficult part for people is okay, do you want to do some things for myself or get to know myself and they just don't know how. This is a really good start to have some activities and go through a couple practices to help with that process.
Melody: We're going through the challenge we started yesterday. We're going through it on Instagram a letter a day. I think seeing other people engage in the activities is really, really powerful because you feel like you're not alone. I think a lot of women, even though we're surrounded by other people, feel really lonely sometimes. Knowing there's a place you can go where there are other women who share your values and who are also willing to be vulnerable and share themselves has been really powerful.
A few weeks ago, I found out that a member of our tribe was moving to Virginia Beach. It was kind of an uncertain move because she didn't know anyone there. I said, "You know what? Let me see who from Fred and Far lives there and let me connect you" and I did. They're going to get together now.
Kelly: That's cool. That's a positive way that if I was going to say that social media, I feel like we have this false sense of connection a lot of times with people because of the way our society works right now with Instagram and all of that stuff but it's based on likes and just thinking you know someone's full story but that's a really cool way to use it as a community and for real connection.
Melody: Instagram has its- and all social media, it has its pros and it's cons. I think the sooner you can let go of the idea that you are defined by your following or your engagement, the more free you will be to actually have an authentic experience that other people will connect with and want to be part of. It's hard because Fred and Far, all of our followers are real and that is a very rare thing. Today is social media Wednesday and I also don't use any bots to go like or follow other accounts. We don't really grow. We kind of stay in the same place because we lose people and we gain people.
For a while that really bothered me because I thought hey, if we're not growing, what does that mean about the company–but it doesn't matter. What matters is that the people that we do reach are being positively impacted. That's really why I'm here. Self Love for me has been a lot about learning what my story is and what my goal is as a human being on this planet. It's really to empower other people men, women, children whoever it may be by giving them the power to see themselves and find power and strength in who they are. As long as I feel like I'm doing that, whether we have 24,000 followers or 50, I know that I'm making an impact.
I think there's a lot of pressure that's imposed on people if you have an Instagram account. Even if it's a personal account, you only have 200 followers. You still want to feel like people are liking you and commenting and that you're doing a good job. I think that's an unnecessary layer of stress given that there's so much real stuff to be stressed out about right now.
Kelly: I totally agree. I think there are positives and negatives. It's hard when you make a business out of it. I find myself having to really set some boundaries with it because it really fuels my blog business now. I can get very disconnected from myself and just live in that world. I'm like wait, wait, wait. Speaking of the stuff that you guys are doing on Instagram, you do have a lot of self-care resources or self-love resources on your website and then on Instagram. I'm going to put a blog together just to let people know where to find your book. Is it out yet?
Melody: Yes it's available on Amazon. If you search for Melody Godfred, it'll come right up. It's The ABCs of Self-Love. It's also available on our website at fredandfar.com.
Kelly: I'll link to that on velvetsedge.com too. Obviously, if you guys wanted to check out the rings, which I highly suggest, even if it's a gift for you. If you and your bestie want to go in on it, Valentine's Day is coming up, that would be a great gift for you but those are available on fredandfar.com. Like you said, there's a couple different options of the kinds you can get. Correct?
Melody: Yes. Right now I think we have the originals up and then we are able to do custom orders with different stones. We'll be launching a new stone, fingers crossed in the next week or so. People should stay tuned. That will be a new stone we're offering for the first time.
Kelly: Thank you.
Melody: I just want to say I really appreciate your platform and that you're providing resources and taking the time to shed light on us. Thank you so much Kelly.
Kelly: No, thank you. I was just about thank you for doing this. For me it's January and it's Velvets Edge. I'm putting some focus on self-love. I just try to do what I'm going through as what I talk about on the blog and stuff. After Christmas and the holidays, man, I was just like, "I got to take a step back from all this. You need to buy this. You need to get all this." Although I just go buy the ring.
Melody: What's so funny is I struggle with that. I don't like selling. Selling feels so awful to me.
Kelly: I know, it's hard.
Melody: If you look at our social- there barely any pictures of the ring because I don't like pushing it. I think it finds women when they need it and they buy it when they're ready.
Kelly: I agree.
Melody: I don't need to sell it but if there's one closing thought I can offer to your listeners it's that it's January. You're going to be bombarded with a lot of "New year, new you." They're going to feel all this pressure to go on a diet or make a drastic change in their lifestyle. The truth of the matter is, your mantra in this year should be "New year, true you." Forget about a new version. Just be yourself and devote time to figuring out who that is.
Kelly: Yes, "New year, true you." I might have to adopt that.
Melody: Please do.
Kelly: Mine was "go big or go home," but maybe I'll try both.
Melody: Yes, well I think going big there's no bigger thing than you can be than your authentic self.
Kelly: Hey, that is- see? That works together.
Melody: Takes a lot of guts.
Kelly: Yes.
Melody: Yes, it does.
Kelly: It is so true. Melody thank you so much for doing this with me. It was so good to actually get to talk to you.
Melody: My pleasure.
Kelly: You guys check out everything we talked about on VelvetsEdge.com. I'll have that up as soon as this podcast comes out. Thanks for listening.
Melody: Thank you.