Punk Principles with Meghan Smith of Melody Note Vintage

00:01:15:05 - 00:01:23:15 Aram Those who don't know, who are you and what do you do? 00:01:18:21 - 00:01:39:17 Meghan Smith Some people know me as Megan Smith, and I own a vintage store in Palm Springs called Melodie Vintage. Some people know me as Ida slapped her and I was involved with the Rad City Roller Girls. And then there's a whole separate section of people that know me as Megan from Empty Records. So most of these people do not even know my last name in that instance. 00:01:38:16 - 00:01:41:23 Meghan Smith That's a pretty good summation of who I am. 00:01:41:03 - 00:02:08:13 Aram So you've been involved in a lot of subcultures, stuff. 00:01:44:22 - 00:02:08:13 Meghan Smith Like I'm obsessed with youth and teen subcultures in general. 00:01:49:03 - 00:02:08:13 Aram So how did you get into it? Like, tell us about like, what was your first kind of entry point into? Because I know so much of your story is based in like music and the kind of punk scene. Like what was the entry point for you? 00:02:00:00 - 00:02:30:06 Meghan Smith I really wanted to go to my first punk show in like 83, and I think it probably I didn't get the nerve up to actually go until maybe late 83, 84. I mean, punk rock is scary at the time, right? I think punk rock now is not scary. 00:02:18:02 - 00:02:30:06 Aram What I first heard about punk, it was like, you know, I was a little, little, little kid. And maybe it's through the eyes of youth. I was like, Holy shit, like this. These are scary people. 00:02:27:19 - 00:02:30:06 Meghan Smith And of course now. 00:02:29:10 - 00:02:55:02 Aram It's like, I'm older. Maybe it's age has caught up with me, maybe the scenes caught up with you. But yes, when I go to a punk show, I'm not like, Oh my God, I'm more like, Oh, I'm tired. 00:02:38:22 - 00:02:55:02 Meghan Smith Yeah, Hopefully the opener doesn't suck. I think that I think by 14 or 13 I was like, okay, there's a punk scene in my town. I'm going to find somebody that wants to go to a show with me and I'm going to go to a punk show. 00:02:55:00 - 00:03:01:07 Aram What was the attraction? 00:02:57:06 - 00:03:29:03 Meghan Smith I mean, I think that's for everybody, right? You look at like RPO and Journey and Air Supply and you look at what's popular at the time and you are like, is that for me? Is that the music that I'm going to listen to? And then you start to go, Oh, there has to be something else out there for me, something that feels like me, like, you know, when I interview somebody to work for me, one of the stipulations is you cannot play the song Africa in the store. 00:03:23:20 - 00:03:53:16 Meghan Smith And like, that's an interview question. It's not even a question. It's like, I will fire you. I will actually fire you. And so when you have a brand like that, then that is on everything that you do, the music in the store, how you talk to people, how you act, how you treat people, it's everything. So I think I was a little afraid to go. 00:03:45:13 - 00:04:18:07 Meghan Smith And in the end it's like, this is the dumbest thing. So I went to the show with a friend of mine are we lost our ride somehow? And the opening band from Kansas City drove us, drove to like 13 year old girls home in a band. Van. The total opposite direction didn't do anything nefarious and drove us and dropped a sophomore like you. 00:04:10:09 - 00:04:18:07 Meghan Smith The keys to your house. Are you cool? That is my entry point into punk rock and I just dove in. 00:04:16:14 - 00:04:18:07 Aram And you're from. 00:04:17:16 - 00:05:01:06 Meghan Smith I'm from Omaha, Nebraska, and I moved to Seattle in 1988. We said, Really good timing of like getting to see all the Minneapolis sound stuff, all the hardcore bands, which the Midwest is its own thing because a band might only come to one place. So you're meeting people from Kansas City, you're meeting people from Chicago, you're meeting people from Lincoln and places in Iowa, Des Moines that are all maybe converging at one show. 00:04:44:10 - 00:05:01:06 Meghan Smith Suicidal Tendencies is not going to go to every po bone town in the middle, but in the middle of the Midwest, they're going to go to one spot and everybody is going to converge in that one place for a night. 00:04:55:00 - 00:05:20:23 Aram I know for me, that idea of like driving six or 8 hours to see a show, to watch a band play for 30 minutes or like 20 minutes and then drive all the way back, That was just totally normal for my friends and I when we were kids. 00:05:08:23 - 00:05:20:23 Meghan Smith It'd be better if you could try to see them in the next town a little closer, if you could like get two shows out of it. But, you know, but. 00:05:15:16 - 00:05:45:04 Aram That's not the normal teenage experience of, of like go on the super long road trips and like going to these intense things, seeing bands for 30 minutes like that idea of the mobility of people going all converging on one place just to be a part of something for 30 minutes or 45 minutes, well. 00:05:33:13 - 00:05:45:04 Meghan Smith Hopefully they're playing longer than 30 minutes so that you don't jump them out in the parking lot when they leave with their shit. Right. But getting on the band. 00:05:41:13 - 00:06:04:14 Aram Depending on the band. But that idea of like the mobility and like that. Speaking of culture, like what was it what what did that do for you when you were young? Like that kind of all in like, of course we're on a drive to go see a show. Do that. 00:05:54:13 - 00:06:27:12 Meghan Smith I'll still do that now, though. Like, that's not that weird for me to drive 3 hours to see a band do it less because of the pandemic. But oh, I used to fly across the country to go see bands. Totally. If you want a good experience, you have to work at having a good experience. You can't just sit on your ass in your home and assume that magically you're going to have a great life experience. 00:06:16:13 - 00:06:27:12 Meghan Smith This is not how it works. 00:06:20:05 - 00:06:53:23 Aram Well, I feel like I think you hit on it like not. And then I want to say this is exclusive to like punk or hardcore, but like a lot of people from punk and hardcore seekers, they're seeking something like going out and making it happen. Yeah, While you're involved in punk and hardcore, what was the entry point into vintage? 00:06:36:05 - 00:07:09:18 Meghan Smith Oh, I mean, you don't want to look like anybody else, right? It's the it's the early eighties, so everything is pastel and fluffy and girly and lacy. And that is not at all. So, you know, it's the Midwest, it's cheap, right? So like I used to go to thrift stores would be like the ten cent rack, the 25 cent rack, the 50 cent rack. 00:07:00:11 - 00:07:21:05 Meghan Smith And if something was $2, you'd be like $2. But I mean 335 an hour. So that's almost too, you know, it's like an hour and a half of work, you know, or less than that, right? So I think, you know, you buy forties black dresses and you cut them really short. Are you buying, you know, seventies maxi dresses and you're cutting them in the minis? 00:07:19:21 - 00:07:57:03 Meghan Smith I mean, I destroyed so much cool clothing because there's tons of it. The seventies is not that far away from like 84, like it just happened. So I mean, I destroyed bellbottoms that people would kill for now because they were sledge slits on them. But you're not going to wear a bellbottom you're a punk rocker, you're going to cut them off and you're going to make them in shorts. 00:07:42:19 - 00:08:18:19 Meghan Smith I had like every weird beer shorts at like 15. That's a part of it, right? Is just like going into a really bad parts of town that like, your parents would freak out. And honestly, like before the Midwest, you kind of learn like, mind your own business, leave people alone. Let them do what they're doing. Most of the time they will let you do what you're doing and you go about your business. 00:08:09:06 - 00:08:38:23 Meghan Smith And I've never really had that much of a problem. You know, if you're known to be respectful, you can go into different cultures, you can go into different neighborhoods, acknowledge the people that are there, say hello or good morning, nod. Most people will leave you alone overall. 00:08:25:01 - 00:08:38:23 Aram So you're out there, You're you're seeking out music, but you're also seeking out clothing. And yeah, and part of that whole thing. How did you end up going from Omaha over to to. 00:08:36:12 - 00:09:09:06 Meghan Smith Get away from my parents? That was like as far, you know, you reach a point where it's like your parents will be like, Well, we'd love to get the key to your apartment. And you're like, Why would I give you a key to my apartment? Like, I want to come home and you're going to be in my apartment. 00:08:49:09 - 00:09:32:21 Meghan Smith So I drove as far away and I just got really lucky. I moved there in 88, like right out of high school and the grunge scene was literally just about to happen in another year or two. I just got really lucky to get to have those experiences for $5 or whatever, which. 00:09:12:10 - 00:09:32:21 Aram Is so crazy that you were seeing these shows for $5. 00:09:15:13 - 00:09:49:15 Meghan Smith People like people will say something along lines like that too. I'm never going to have experiences like that. And it's like you're going to have really cool experiences that I'm never going to have because I'm older and I'm just not going to have those. Like if you decide that somebody else is having a cooler experience than you, you're dead in the water. 00:09:34:02 - 00:10:23:18 Meghan Smith All right. Which gets into the not being open to experiences. Like if we sit right here and just watch the world go by, we're not going to have great experiences. If you want to have them, you have to go like foster friendships, make yourself uncomfortable, and sometimes things suck and then you're like, okay, this sucks. We need to leave. 00:09:54:06 - 00:10:43:23 Meghan Smith Right? And knowing that boundary for yourself. But even sucky experiences can end up being when you're with your friends, they make a good story or something funny that you tell five years ago and that makes you a more interesting person. But as far as like, you know, you want to look different. You want to be different. Maybe that's not the case now because like, maybe you come into punk rock and you're like, Well, I'll just go to a hot topic and I'll get like a stud bracelet, and then I'll like, do my hair if that is not available to you, right? 00:10:24:13 - 00:10:48:04 Meghan Smith If the only way you can get weird clothes is by like sending away for a catalog that's photocopied and piling over this and like, trying to figure out, okay, I think I can come up with like $40 to get a pair of monkey boots. That's what you do, right? I mean, it's harder you've to work at it. It's more difficult than, like, just going to the local store. 00:10:48:04 - 00:11:04:22 Aram Yeah, totally. Where I'm talking about, like, my experiences when I was young, about, like, getting catalogs, like, from record labels. Yeah, like, whatever, you know, like, distros we'd order from or any of those things. Like there was a certain like even as you were talking about, like getting this photocopied thing and I want to get these boots and I have to figure it out. 00:11:04:22 - 00:11:10:10 Aram When you're saying that I was like, Oh, I look back with such fondness of those times and just. 00:11:09:04 - 00:11:50:10 Meghan Smith Reading the back of maximum rock and roll and being like, okay, this band describes themselves as listing every band I love, but you're going to send away for a record that might not sound anything like those bands at all, but or you're going to join a band because they are like 95 and negative approach and a bunch of other stuff and you're like, Oh, like all those bands like that can be a cool band or the shittiest band or like, ever. 00:11:39:01 - 00:12:08:16 Meghan Smith And you have to take that risk of like having to send this dipshit $5 and hope that he has his shit together to send me a record, you know? Which I mean, I definitely sent money to somebody where I'm like, I'm never going to see that again. Like, it's never going to happen. 00:11:59:06 - 00:12:08:16 Aram But I love that. Like what? Like everything you're saying, I'm like, totally like, you. 00:12:03:13 - 00:12:08:16 Meghan Smith Work at it. 00:12:04:01 - 00:12:23:05 Aram We have to work at it. But also you've got to take a leap of faith. You just got to like you go out and try stuff. But all of that stuff, when I think about it now, I don't want to ever say like, you know, if a younger person's watching this, it's like, Oh, well, because you have more access to stuff, you have a lesser experience. 00:12:18:23 - 00:12:23:05 Aram It's just a different experience. 00:12:20:04 - 00:12:23:05 Meghan Smith It's a different way. You got to where you can't sit in your house, though. 00:12:22:16 - 00:12:26:05 Aram Totally. But it was magical having to hunt things down. 00:12:25:17 - 00:12:59:13 Meghan Smith Oh yeah, You still have to do that now. I mean, so now when I go to like, house shows or underground shows at the age that I met, now I just pretend like I'm somebody's parent. If you walk in with that attitude of like, Yeah, I'm the drummer's mom, like, get the fuck out of my way. Well, no one questions. 00:12:44:17 - 00:13:06:05 Meghan Smith Why are there old people at the show? And you, you know, you'd go to shows and there'd be somebody like 30 there and you'd be like, What is a 30 year old doing at the show with all these, like, 21 year olds? And it's like, maybe they're here because they really like music, right? That is not how your 21 year old brain or 22 year old brain works. 00:13:05:17 - 00:13:37:05 Meghan Smith But now that I'm in my early fifties, if I want to go to a show and somebody has their entire backpack full of beer and they're smashing into me, I'm like, Hey, like, I'm trying to see my kids band. Stop hitting me with your beer. They're immediately like, Oh, oh, sorry. Here, let me get out of the way. 00:13:23:23 - 00:13:57:02 Aram My opinion, all, all ages shows is different now, or the way I come at it is different. Like I remember when I was like 16 or 17, I was like all ages shows because I wanted to be able to go, Wow. And now I'm like, No, all is just shows. Like, it's okay. Yeah, I'm in my late forties. 00:13:38:12 - 00:13:57:02 Aram Yeah, Remember, it's all ages. 00:13:41:12 - 00:14:18:01 Meghan Smith But if there's a band that you want to see that's opening for another band and that's where they're playing near your town and you want to see them, that's still a life experience, right? I mean, I haven't been to a straight Ed show for a while, but I went and saw a band that I loved that opened up for Power Trip. 00:13:58:08 - 00:14:18:01 Meghan Smith I'm not a power trip fan, but I don't care. And I literally said to my boyfriend, he's like, Why would I want to do that? And I was like, Well, we're going to go see Destruction Unit. That's why we're going to go All the kids were like, What are those 250 year olds doing at the show? 00:14:14:20 - 00:14:18:01 Aram So you move to Seattle. 00:14:15:21 - 00:14:18:01 Meghan Smith 88. 00:14:16:12 - 00:14:43:09 Aram 88. So you make you make the leap there. What were you doing when you got there? 00:14:21:12 - 00:15:11:18 Meghan Smith Bullshit. Like you can't have a part time job in Seattle now, but you could like you want to write shitty poetry and like pull coffee and work 20 hours and, like, play guitar. You can do that or like, be in a shitty van. But like, any art takes time, right? So like, painter, guitar player, like whatever it is that you want to do, fashion designer, whatever it is, you need a job where you don't have to work 50 hours a week so you can work on your craft. 00:14:52:12 - 00:15:14:06 Meghan Smith Seattle used to be a town like that, right? And also, like it rains a lot. You've got better musicians, better painters, better writers because they're in there stuck in their house. I mean, name a shitty job. I've had it, I've pulled coffee, I've worked retail, I took care of Alzheimer patients. I worked in the offices as an adult. 00:15:12:09 - 00:15:40:09 Meghan Smith I had a really good friend of mine that started a small record label and worked for him and met another guy. And, you know, you just you start meeting people they know, you know, about music and, you know, to talk to people and, you know, no one has the Internet, right? So like when I explain to somebody, like, here's how you book a tour with a fax machine that is like, Oh, what? 00:15:33:08 - 00:16:11:03 Meghan Smith And they're like old punk guys that are like, Oh, you used to book a tour with a phone dealer? Yeah. Do you don't a phone dialer? Someone has a credit card that their dad doesn't use and you use that to book a tour. That is not how the world functions. When I did the pre-interview, one of the things I was talking about was the fact that normal offices, normal business leaders think that punk rockers are the least responsible people. 00:15:58:15 - 00:16:35:20 Meghan Smith But in reality they're usually the most creative know how to do the most with the least amount of money, know how to think outside the box, to actually get shit done. It's just they have a preconceived idea about what punk is that they can't get over that for themselves to realize they could save money and have something more interesting if they could open their mind a little bit. 00:16:27:01 - 00:16:35:20 Meghan Smith And I notice that a lot when I worked in offices. 00:16:29:13 - 00:17:01:13 Aram Especially that idea of kind of like figuring out yourself, doing things on a shoestring budget, all of that. So at what point did you go from working kind of shitty jobs or maybe you kept working, but what point did you start doing music as like as your source of income or a source of income? 00:16:47:18 - 00:17:01:13 Meghan Smith 94 It seems like a really long time ago now, but I think I still own clothes from 94, so maybe it's not really, but. 00:16:55:16 - 00:17:01:13 Aram Where are you doing vintage at all? Like, yeah, good point. 00:16:58:08 - 00:17:30:05 Meghan Smith So I started selling vintage kind of on the side and probably like 88, 89. It's just a way to like make rent, right? So I mean, from that creative like, okay, rent is due in 13 hours, okay, You have 8 hours to make rent. Now, how, how are you going to do that? Right? So, I mean, I always tell like our kids, like the first thing that you always buy when you get paid is back potatoes. 00:17:26:10 - 00:18:01:10 Meghan Smith Now, they don't understand that right back potatoes are shelf stable and then you don't have any more money at the end of the week. You can do a lot with a bag of potatoes, which I think at the time was like 279 or 250 or whatever. For a bag of potatoes you have some basic seasoning and a little bit of butter or whatever it is that you use olive oil, you can feed yourself for that next two days or whatever. 00:17:51:03 - 00:18:35:08 Meghan Smith So I probably would not be selling vintage without punk rock because I didn't make a lot of money. I mean, we ran a shitty punk rock record label. No one is making a lot of money, which, you know. So yeah, So I would I started selling vintage to pretty much every vintage store in Seattle, and it finally took me to like in my forties or I was like, Why are all these people making money off of me? 00:18:16:20 - 00:18:43:14 Meghan Smith Like, they're not any smarter than I am. And that's a really hard confidence thing to get. Like you started your business and there has to be a moment where you're working for somebody else and you go, They're not more creative than I am. They're not smarter than I am, and they don't actually know anything more than what I know. 00:18:40:22 - 00:18:53:16 Meghan Smith Why can't I go do what they do? Why can't I go do what they do and do it better? 00:18:45:12 - 00:19:19:11 Aram Yeah, I was just talking about this with with Chef Tanya. The idea that and certainly not that this was happening to you, but the idea that sometimes when people have like a business or a store or whatever kind of business, that there can be a kind of psychology where they want to make other people feel like they can't do it, like they have some kind of hidden knowledge so that you just stay in a space of servitude to them, or that you're you're providing something for them that they probably know you could do on your own, but they don't want you to know that. 00:19:16:16 - 00:19:39:12 Aram And sometimes other people do that to you, but sometimes you do that to yourself. You just assume there's an expertise or ability that you can't reach too. And you got to figure out like, actually, no, I could do this. 00:19:26:23 - 00:20:07:16 Meghan Smith The average person who acts like they're an expert doesn't have the 10000 hours into what they're claiming to be an expert at. Right. Like what? What does somebody come in the store to, like, pay me for? You're actually paying for somebody that's got 30, 40, 50000 hours into what I do. That's what you're that's what that's what people pay for. 00:19:50:15 - 00:20:07:16 Meghan Smith They're not paying for like to walk in a store and hear halfway decent music and buy something. That's not really what people are paying for. 00:19:58:20 - 00:20:14:10 Aram Can I can I add something to that? Sure. When we first went into your store, so when Monica and I went in first, Monica was like, Whoa, because she's got a great eye for. 00:20:08:23 - 00:20:14:10 Meghan Smith Yeah, that's her passion for one of her passions. 00:20:11:06 - 00:20:36:00 Aram For real places. But I walked in as a as a punk who goes to record stores, and I was like, Oh, this person is serious. And that idea where it's like, you go into a store like that and you're paying someone money because you're paying so much money for stuff because you know what's in there, You know, what's in those four walls is actually worth something based on that person's experience and legacy and expertise. 00:20:34:17 - 00:20:36:00 Meghan Smith And taste. 00:20:35:11 - 00:20:36:00 Aram And. 00:20:35:15 - 00:21:14:18 Meghan Smith Taste. You work at a record store and you talk to somebody about music. You have to trust their taste. They come back to you over and over and over again. You're you're paying for someone's taste, right? So you walk in, fall out, and they go, Oh, you bought that seven inch last week. One of those guys is the bass player. 00:20:54:19 - 00:21:34:17 Meghan Smith He plays drums in this other band and you might like them. You can't just take that. You have to have somebody that understands your taste. That could be literature, that could be cars, clothes, tattoos, anything. Right? You can't just take anyone's like view of style and taste without them also understanding you, right? You want a customer one time or do you want a customer for a lifetime? 00:21:22:23 - 00:21:34:17 Meghan Smith Totally. And that's a totally different logic of anything that you sell well. 00:21:29:17 - 00:21:57:05 Aram And to push on that, like I love what you said about record stores because like with Monica and her traveling, she'll say, Hey, do you want to go in this record store? And I'll just pop in and out in 30 seconds because I walk in and I just look at the wall like, you know, the wall. Yeah, I look at the wall and I see what's on there. 00:21:45:14 - 00:21:57:05 Aram And I will make my decision whether or not I'm going to spend 30 minutes or an hour there. 00:21:49:19 - 00:21:57:05 Meghan Smith And then you go, Hey, I need more time. 00:21:51:07 - 00:22:16:08 Aram Totally. And Monica will be the same about stores. And the value of someone's expertise is so deep. And those are the people that you should be investing time and money in. So I'm interested in your thoughts on this. If we think about people who are trying to properly value themselves. From your perspective, how does someone like charge their worth or ask for their worth? 00:22:09:12 - 00:22:35:06 Meghan Smith Well, my interest is not casual. My interest in music is in casual. My interest in literature is not casual, but valuing yourself, I mean, that is the most complicated thing, right? Because like, if you don't think you have value, no one thinks you have value, right? So we're talking about like working for other people and like going out on your own. 00:22:30:01 - 00:22:51:04 Meghan Smith There are people that only want to work for somebody else. They don't want to take that risk. They want to come there. They want to in and out, and they want to go home. Right? And that's totally okay. Everybody thinks their own time is valuable and no one else's time is valuable. And you see it over and over and over again. 00:22:50:00 - 00:23:27:23 Meghan Smith It's always better to just assume that, like, every job is hard. Do I think that being a dishwasher is a hard job? Probably depends on the day too. But to the average person, they look at that and they're like, That's an easy fucking job. Only stupid people will get that job. There's a guy called Pete Dishwasher that literally created his entire fucking life on the fact that he likes washing dishes and wrote a fanzine about it and wrote a book about it. 00:23:12:12 - 00:23:43:07 Meghan Smith And he's very obviously not stupid, but somebody that would see him would be like, Well, he's just a stupid fucking dishwasher. You don't value yourself. No one else is going to value you, no one else. And it's a fine line, right? Like, do I think my time is worth $150 an hour now? Do you think your time is worth the time of a lawyer? 00:23:31:15 - 00:24:04:09 Meghan Smith I suppose it depends on the situation right there. It's not like if you come in and I put you in a pair of jeans. It's not exactly that you're buying a pair of jeans. You're buying my time for free. Right. That's wrapped into the price of that item for me to tell you what looks good on your body, what does not look good on your body and why. 00:23:50:13 - 00:24:06:10 Meghan Smith And that is totally different than at some point in your life. You've gone and you've tried on something and the salesperson said every single time, it looks great. It looks great. It looks great. Yeah, we've all felt that way in our life. And then you buy a thing and then you go to your car and you're like, Why did I buy that? 00:24:06:10 - 00:24:41:08 Meghan Smith What am I doing? Right is really weird. When I tell somebody that does not look good or the cut is wrong for your body, I think we can do better. They're like, Oh, okay, you're going to do better. You're not just going to tell me it looks shitty. I'm not going to be like, Yeah, that's shitty. You look shitty, your body looks shitty. 00:24:25:14 - 00:24:50:23 Meghan Smith Yeah, I instead go like, Here's what I like about it. Here's what I don't like about it. I think we can do better. Let me pull a couple more things for you. Like you're leaving. If you buy nothing, you're leaving with the knowledge of understanding. Like what looks good on your body. That is a total foreign concept in our world right now, right? 00:24:43:06 - 00:25:14:05 Meghan Smith It's the same as going in a record store. I could walk into a bookstore and say, I need a book to go on vacation, and they're literally going to tell me a book that I'm going to fucking hate, right? You've to ask them, like, What kind of books do you like to read? Tell me your top favorite five authors. 00:24:58:14 - 00:25:25:21 Meghan Smith Like, what is the last book that you read that you couldn't put down? And then they go, Okay, I kind of know your taste. You can't value your own time and know when you're an expert. No one else is going to do that for you. Right? So, like you were a therapist, how many hours do you have to work in therapy to be considered a therapist? 00:25:19:16 - 00:25:25:21 Aram Thousands. 00:25:20:15 - 00:25:25:21 Meghan Smith Right? 00:25:21:07 - 00:25:25:21 Aram Yeah. 00:25:21:17 - 00:25:53:22 Meghan Smith A doctor has to be like, the reason you go into residency is that you have 10000 hours. Do you want to go to a dentist that doesn't have 10000 hours of expertise to drill a hole in your teeth? Absolutely not. Right. 00:25:34:02 - 00:26:13:18 Aram So what's interesting about what you just said is if someone goes to a doctor and is like you have to pay a ton of money for a doctor or a surgeon or a dentist, they're like, that's part of the expectation. Let's say someone's a painter and they're charging X amount for for a painting. And people are like, I can't believe they're charging this amount of money for this painting, or someone goes to a vintage store or someone goes to a record store and sees a great record on the wall. 00:25:56:15 - 00:26:13:18 Aram Yeah, I think the idea of like wanting to get things for cheaper maybe because also it's like, you know, you just don't have the money and you want something that requires all of that, I think. 00:26:06:06 - 00:26:13:18 Meghan Smith But you can be honest about that too, right? 00:26:08:10 - 00:26:47:07 Aram Totally. When it comes down to like people from a career perspective, like charging their value, there's a question I get all the time. Like people are always asking me like, how do I charge my value? And the way that I always ask people is like, are you a real expert? Like, do you have real expertise? And if people say, I think so, there's a lot of people of the same level of expertise. 00:26:29:12 - 00:26:47:07 Aram I say, okay, charge mid range. And if they say, Yeah, well, I'm good at what I do, I don't know if it's an expert charge, charge lower end and then build up. Yeah. And if people are like, oh no, I'm an expert, I'm like, you should charge a lot of money. 00:26:41:04 - 00:27:17:05 Meghan Smith The people that I interact with who really tell me that they're an expert, I say the total opposite. Like I'm a student of life, I want to learn I'm a sponge. There's always more to know. Like you're not going to know everything about what you do at your job, right? You're not. And that's totally okay. I mean, even if you built it yourself, soon as you bring another person in, it changes a little bit and it changes a little bit. 00:27:09:05 - 00:27:35:08 Meghan Smith And that is going to be, if you always look at the world as you're a student of life and you want to know more, you put yourself also at the same level as sort of everybody else to admit, like, Yeah, I don't know anything about that, but I would love to hear about it. Tell me all about it totally. 00:27:29:01 - 00:27:42:20 Aram I think the greatest, like experts that I've met, like experts that I've met, are the people who don't view their expertise as being finite to that moment. 00:27:38:09 - 00:27:42:20 Meghan Smith Of course. 00:27:39:00 - 00:28:16:03 Aram Where they're like, Oh yeah, I'm an expert and I'm still growing, learning, changing, going back to the idea of like valuing yourself. So I think valuing yourself is as much it's, it's, it's as easy as putting up a shingle or putting like a sign in the ground that says, This is how much I'm going to charge. Yeah. And then being willing and able to move with that, like, hey, maybe you get a ton of people right off the bat. 00:28:02:14 - 00:28:34:15 Aram They're like, Holy crap, I can't believe how little you're charging. Here's a ton of business. Suddenly you're underwater and you're like, I've got too much work. Yeah, and I can't do a good job. Great charge a little bit more or hey, I'm charging a premium, but I'm getting a ton of work. Or maybe charge a little, little less. 00:28:17:23 - 00:28:34:15 Aram I think it's like you got to be able to just start. You got to start. You got to throw a number out there and then grow and develop. But I really encourage people like, I just love what you're saying about that. Like when you said, Hey, like history, it's not just it's not just a bunch of stuff on a shelf. 00:28:32:12 - 00:28:56:23 Aram It's all of my historical knowledge that I've learned over the years. Yeah, like value your knowledge, value what you know, and then put a price out there and just being able to shift with the needs of the market because no one's going to value if you know by yourself. And I think what you're saying about that is just like dead on, like one of the most important things I think anyone could hear. 00:28:50:15 - 00:29:14:06 Aram So going back to living in Seattle, when you were doing the vintage stuff, at first just kind of make rent. 00:28:58:03 - 00:29:14:06 Meghan Smith How did you decide business as a side hustle? Side hustle. I've been side hustling before. They call that side. 00:29:03:14 - 00:29:14:06 Aram So you got the side hustle. Were you just going out to like other vintage shops and like sauce and stuff? A garage sales and selling up like. 00:29:10:17 - 00:29:40:19 Meghan Smith Yeah, well, I mean, you're, you know, the goal is always to get the things for yourself, Right? Right. So you want to trick out your house, you want to get new plates, you want to be different. I don't you know, I don't want things that are plastic. I don't you know, that's and there's that's no shade to anybody that they want that in their life. 00:29:31:10 - 00:29:58:08 Meghan Smith They're like, I can buy all of my dishes at IKEA, you know, it's like, well, but you're eating food off of that. Like, is that how you for the rest of your life? Like, you don't know what's in that? You don't know what's in old, old dishes either, right? Like, maybe don't eat off of those too. They might have led in them. 00:29:49:21 - 00:30:19:18 Meghan Smith Right? So it's all these little things in your life. So you go to yard sells, you refine the fact that you're like, I don't need this, but somebody else is going to want this right? So it just kind of started to work out that way where like if I needed an extra couple hundred dollars, I could make a couple hundred dollars without doing anything nefarious or illegal in a few hours. 00:30:12:06 - 00:30:38:11 Meghan Smith Right. So and you just you get better at it and better at it and becomes more refined and you learn more and you you know, I just look at life like it's just a tool belt, right? And you're just like, oh, I learn a new thing and I like, put that in my pocket and I do this. And that's just like you just begin to pick that up as you go along. 00:30:29:13 - 00:30:38:11 Aram How did you like back then? How did you learn about, like, about, like brands and clothing and all these things? Was it just like kind of a shared You just. 00:30:37:15 - 00:31:16:14 Meghan Smith Take now you just pick it up as you go. You know, somebody makes a lot of money off of you and you go, I shit, I'm not going to let that fucking happen again. And you make a lot of mistakes, right? Like, that's the problem, I think in our society in general is everyone's so afraid of making mistakes, of getting egg on their face. 00:30:56:02 - 00:31:16:14 Meghan Smith And it's like it's how you fucking learn. Mistakes are how you learn. Like if you work in an office and I used to train people and I'd be like, It's okay, just don't destroy the whole company. It'll be fine. Like, don't fuck anything up so badly that we, like, lose a client or anything like that, you know, jumper in the place down. 00:31:13:15 - 00:31:38:08 Meghan Smith But overall, it's how you learn. You see, you can see someone walking around, like in an office, like a piece of paper who does nothing. And no one really knows. They do. They don't make any mistakes, but nobody really they know they're not doing anything either. That is a problem with our society. What are most of the things that you've learned that to define yourself are not the things you did right, it's the things that you did wrong? 00:31:35:01 - 00:31:38:08 Aram Totally. 00:31:35:16 - 00:31:59:06 Meghan Smith I don't know. I hate to be like Google in my day, but like, I feel like in the last 15 to 20 years, maybe more, that like there's a computer in your pocket all the time. I had to learn all this stuff and just make mistakes. It's like you buy something and somebody makes a lot of money off of you and you go, All right now. 00:31:53:18 - 00:32:04:06 Meghan Smith And you know, that's how you learn to value yourself, right? That is a way to letting somebody take advantage of you is a really great way to learn what your value is. 00:32:03:13 - 00:32:48:11 Aram It seems so much higher stakes now to make mistakes, because when I was young and when you were younger wasn't the Internet. And so like mistakes that you would make would not necessarily be broadcasted on the Internet. Sure, of course. And done in public. Sure. Either by you or by other people. And also the level of criticism people would get would be back in our day would be more centered around people you actually knew or kind of, of course, rather than thousands of people having the ability to criticize you that you don't know. 00:32:31:20 - 00:33:03:15 Meghan Smith Yeah, but also, like everybody loves somebody who's truly being genuine. Oh, absolutely. And so it's a really fine line. Like a guy called me grandma today on the Internet and I literally was like, Did the day that I'm a grandma, everyone will fucking know, including you. And I don't even fucking know you. You're not insulting me. I am of the age, but I'm not there yet. 00:32:53:15 - 00:33:03:15 Meghan Smith And the day that I am, I'm an a bore. The shit out of you with vintage fucking children's clothing you will know Fucking first to know. 00:33:01:15 - 00:33:15:19 Aram Going back to the learning though, and I totally agree with you. The most interesting people I know are the people who have the most scars, who made the most mistakes. Many of my favorite people are the people who are like, Oh my God, that thing. I screwed up 10,000 times to get to the thing that I. 00:33:14:13 - 00:33:15:19 Meghan Smith Yeah. 00:33:15:14 - 00:33:37:07 Aram Or I had. I had a rough life story. I had a tough family situation or I had this. 00:33:19:13 - 00:33:54:22 Meghan Smith Be riding a bike. I fell off like eight times or skateboarding right? No one magically is like, Yeah, I just got on the skateboarder and I was fucking Tony Hawk. I was a fucking pro. No, learning to play guitar, learning to do anything. It's not like you got a guitar and all of a sudden you're like Vietnam. I'm like, the greatest guitar player ever. 00:33:39:13 - 00:34:28:15 Meghan Smith No. What's the what's the guy? The crossroads. Robert Johnson. Okay. Robert Johnson goes to the crossroads. The story is that he went to the crossroads and the devil came and taught him how to play guitar. No. He went to another town and shacked up with a different lady for like two years and just played guitar. Then when he came back, he was like, Oh yeah, I just went to Crossroads and I talked to the devil. 00:34:03:18 - 00:34:28:15 Meghan Smith Not played guitar, did No, he just didn't do anything but play guitar for like two years. That's how he did it. It's no different from roller skating or skateboarding or any complex motor skill is going to be practice. 00:34:18:22 - 00:34:53:20 Aram Beyond the mistakes. So like, let's say like getting taken advantage of. How did you learn? Like literally learn about like, like, say, an old brand or like, you know, a material or like, how did you learn about that stuff when there wasn't like the Internet? 00:34:31:02 - 00:34:53:20 Meghan Smith You just start to trust your instincts, you know, You know, you meet people, you ask questions, they ask you questions, you start to like, glean a little bit. You start looking at tags, you connect them to another tag. And I still do it. Now. I'm like, Oh, there's something about this just feels a little older. So you start looking at like the stitching of things as you kind of go along. 00:34:52:14 - 00:35:14:18 Meghan Smith You pick up a little bit more information, a little bit more information, a little bit more information. You just put more tools in your tool belt and you just start gathering that information. So it's second nature. It's also second nature for me. Now when someone comes in the store and they'll be like, Oh, that's weird, having a button fly. 00:35:10:05 - 00:35:58:01 Meghan Smith And I will say, Well, you know, like zippers are really complex. Like they're really only about 120 years old. And it took a lot of people to figure out like how to make all those teeth. You don't think about it. You like go to the bathroom and you zip up flying. You go on with your day. Right. It took a lot of people, a lot of time to figure out how to make a zipper that functioned as a zipper, whereas buttons are thousands and thousands and thousands of years old, and they last forever because like, a button comes off your shirt, you don't throw it in the garbage, you throw it in like a little 00:35:43:22 - 00:36:22:05 Meghan Smith box with other like a button from a pigeon that you saw and some change and some safety pins and that button will go back out into the world when you're done with it. I'll literally be like, Well, when these were invented, the zipper didn't exist. And because the zipper didn't exist, everything was buttons. And before buttons, you know, you would wear like a sort of a tunic, right? 00:36:09:02 - 00:36:53:10 Meghan Smith So, like, you put your t shirt on today, you did not think about, like, hi, I wonder what I would have been wearing in 1600. You'd have put something billowy on and tied it. Men and women would have done that, and over time it would be like, Oh, well, maybe I don't need a tie, Maybe this. But like a thing that I just, like, put over my head and move on. 00:36:30:01 - 00:36:53:10 Meghan Smith I just share that with people. If they want to know, I'll just say, Oh, do you want to know why this is this way? And they either want to know or they don't. And that's, you know, and that's okay. And either one of those is okay. 00:36:42:20 - 00:36:53:10 Aram Monica might actually think, I wonder what I'd be wearing if I was in the 1600s. That's something she might think. We're we're getting dressed. All right. So tell me about your time with empty records. 00:36:53:04 - 00:37:18:07 Meghan Smith I started working there in 94, and I was there, I think just kind just shy of ten years. I gave a year's notice when I quit, which I think is possibly the only person that's ever worked at a record label that gave a year's notice. But I didn't want any of the bands to not like I didn't want them to. 00:37:13:08 - 00:38:05:11 Meghan Smith All of a sudden, like a month later, be like, Yeah, you're just not there. It's like you've a year, like to figure out your shit, whatever that is. Yeah, I mean, it was a really good experience. I think people don't understand how few women there were, and maybe that's easier for you to contemplate, But especially in hardcore, there's not a lot of ladies, there's not a lot of ladies running stuff. 00:37:37:12 - 00:38:32:21 Meghan Smith So now I do love it. There a lot. There's a lot more female booking agents, there's a lot more women booking clubs, there's a lot more. It's more likely that you go to a show. There's at least one or two women in the bands. There's a woman behind doing the sound that's a lot more common than it would have been in the nineties, where I probably could have counted almost every single woman involved in the industry at the time on my hands and toes is easily. 00:38:08:17 - 00:38:32:21 Aram It's it's wild how much it's changed in like a good. 00:38:14:01 - 00:38:32:21 Meghan Smith Oh yeah. 00:38:15:03 - 00:38:53:16 Aram It's almost like because as you're saying it putting myself back then it's like yeah like totally 100%. Oh yeah. The, the, I guess like the, the positions of like taste making and power and influence and making things happen. We're just all centered not just with men, but also like a certain demographic of men. 00:38:33:14 - 00:38:53:16 Meghan Smith Yes, most definitely. Most definitely. White, cis, gender across the board. Yeah. That could be like anywhere you would go in the world to a certain extent. 00:38:45:17 - 00:38:53:16 Aram Right. So what did you do at the label? 00:38:47:18 - 00:39:34:09 Meghan Smith Everything. There's like two of us. I did radio magazines, dealt with bands most of the time. The only areas that I didn't do were like the hardcore production artwork, album, artwork. Although all of that you always have to people proof. A record like that is one of the best things that you can learn in life is that especially if the person that's proofing it is the person that's been doing the Photoshop to create it, you need a second set of eyes. 00:39:20:18 - 00:39:57:03 Meghan Smith It's like you're going to have like the spine is going to be backwards and like, go home right now and look at your records and look at them all in a row and then like kind of go. The problem with putting out records in general is that there's so many mistakes to make. And unless somebody guides you a little bit, I remember I had sat down with a friend of mine and he was they were starting to put out records and I was like, Right, well, you don't want to do this and you don't want to do that. 00:39:48:04 - 00:40:17:18 Meghan Smith You don't want to do this, no one into that. And so he like, got the CD master and he was like playing it in his car. And then he was like, How come you didn't tell me that was a bad idea? And I was like, Because I never would have thought playing the master was a cool idea. Like, it never fucking crossed my mind to tell you not to do something that's stupid, right? 00:40:08:23 - 00:40:33:04 Meghan Smith So, no, because there's so many things that you're going to do wrong, There's no way to list them. All right? And so, you know, you're going to be like, well, it was supposed to be read in white splatter, but it came out pink. And the band is like all of our 40 fives are pink. We have 2000 like pink, 40 fives. 00:40:30:11 - 00:40:55:05 Meghan Smith And it's like, well, they were supposed to look like peppermints, but they don't look like peppermints. They look like bubblegum and that's just as you go, right? You make a mistake. You go, Oh, that was shitty. I'm not going to do that again. And you just you learn as you go. 00:40:49:16 - 00:40:55:05 Aram Well, I was going to ask you that because, like, you know, you were a rabid fan of music you loved. 00:40:55:05 - 00:41:04:05 Meghan Smith Yeah. Yeah. I'm still a huge record collector and. 00:40:57:14 - 00:41:04:05 Aram And you loved vintage stuff. Yeah, but all of these things. 00:41:01:07 - 00:41:04:05 Meghan Smith Were just kind of hand in hand in a weird way. 00:41:03:01 - 00:41:19:23 Aram Oh, I think they're. They are totally complementary to each other. But all of this stuff was just like, Oh, I'm super into this, so I'm just going to learn about it as I go. Trial and error figuring. 00:41:12:10 - 00:41:19:23 Meghan Smith Trial by fire, as they say. 00:41:14:02 - 00:41:39:19 Aram Yeah, I think so. But as you learned, you made something out of it. So like when you were working empty because like I grew up with empty being like an act of record label. Yeah, Yeah. And bands that were like, being put out were like bands that I was into. So like when, when Monica had told me, like, I, when I met you, it's it's not the thing you led with just. 00:41:33:01 - 00:41:39:19 Meghan Smith No and I don't lead with it now because literally someone goes what. 00:41:37:04 - 00:41:57:19 Aram I was superstar code but very specific to that. It's like so much of your story is just someone who's like, I'm interested in this thing and I'm just going to find out about it. There's no barriers. 00:41:48:11 - 00:42:27:22 Meghan Smith I'm just fucking diving now. I'm diving in the whole fucking way. It's not like you didn't. You don't meet somebody who's like, I'm a casual, hardcore punk fan. Yeah, like, who's that guy? Who is that guy? Yeah, Yeah. But I'm, like, also really into, like, ballroom music and jazz. No, you when you fall into that, like you are fucking in. 00:42:10:12 - 00:42:27:22 Aram Yeah, you're. 00:42:11:03 - 00:42:27:22 Meghan Smith You're in all the way. 00:42:12:12 - 00:42:27:22 Aram But some people are in, but they're in as on the sidelines. You were in, you were in the mix and you were making it happen. 00:42:19:12 - 00:42:42:15 Meghan Smith Doesn't in a personality flaw or like probably a defect really. But like the worst that can happen is you fall on your ass. That's the worst that could happen. You just dust your ass off and you just go about your business, okay? 00:42:35:06 - 00:42:42:15 Aram I like what you're like. Oh, is it a is it a character fault that I'm doing this? Like, No, no. 00:42:39:08 - 00:42:59:06 Meghan Smith It might be a flop, but it might be a flaw. Like, maybe the best parts of you are the most flawed parts of you. It just when you're younger, you're looking at the flawed parts of you and you're like, That's a flaw. Or as I look at it now, I'm like, And it's just like a lump bum. You're going to get some of those. 00:42:55:02 - 00:43:24:21 Meghan Smith My boyfriend broke his shoulder at like 51 years old, right? And I was like, We got to break something every once in a while just to prove you're using it. And he literally looked at me like, No, that's not how it's supposed to work. And I'm like, I'm not saying go run around, be totally careless and like, try to hurt yourself. 00:43:13:02 - 00:43:24:21 Meghan Smith But like, you got to use the equipment a little bit if you want to do and like, he's an aggressive bicyclist, you're going to fall off your bike every once in a while if it's not a big deal, Right? 00:43:24:04 - 00:43:46:15 Aram Life is for a living. When he said it's like, oh, maybe it's a fault. Okay. I think I think something like that could be a fault of like wanting to get and make stuff. If you're not willing to learn and be a student of the thing that you're involved in cause, you know, like if I think back in music because like a lot of people drive in the narrative where it's like, Hey, like, keep your weird ego out of this. 00:43:43:05 - 00:44:11:02 Aram Like, you know what you're talking about versus someone who comes in is like, I love this and I have an opinion and I could be totally wrong, but I'll learn from when I'm wrong and I'm going to make this thing better and I'm going to do better. Putting out a record with someone who can fuck up and be like, I totally fucked up. 00:43:57:22 - 00:44:36:00 Aram I own it, and either I'm going to correct it or whatever, versus putting out a record with someone who's a total jerk off and fucks up and just is like, but like, I don't think it's a fault to be to dive in and be like, I'm going to drive this even if I don't know what I'm talking about. 00:44:14:13 - 00:44:36:00 Aram I think it's only a fault if if you're not willing to learn from your mistakes. 00:44:18:14 - 00:45:02:02 Meghan Smith I think it's I think people can look at something like passion and think it's anger. It's like this is I'm not angry. Do the day I'm angry, you will fucking know I'm angry. I'm being passionate like I am passionate about what I'm talking about. And I think there is a confusion. There's probably five things in your life that you could talk about endlessly, right? 00:44:40:04 - 00:45:02:02 Meghan Smith Totally boring. And probably two of those are totally boring, right? To the outside world. Fucking fascinating to you and the person that you're talking with. Right. 00:44:49:21 - 00:45:02:02 Aram Going back to empty. What were some of the bands, if you look back like what are some of the and this isn't discounting any other band but were some of the bands that you feel like that the finest connection to or the greatest sense of like pride for having to be a part of? 00:45:01:22 - 00:45:46:03 Meghan Smith When I first came on, we were doing Cracker Bash and I still think that that is an amazing band, especially considering they don't get any credit for like really being one of the first sort of like emo punk bands they're really forgotten about. I really loved almost all of the bands when we would do something and Blake would really want to do it, and I kind of wouldn't want to do it. 00:45:26:09 - 00:46:22:05 Meghan Smith Most of the time we would, or if I wanted to do something and he didn't want to do it, we would usually just kind of agree to not do something right because like, if this is your passion and you enjoy it, you don't want to put out things. And that's can be complicated because you might love a band, you love them live, they go on record and they give you what they've created and you're like, This isn't what I thought this was going to sound like. 00:45:51:07 - 00:46:22:05 Meghan Smith And now I've committed to put this out and I want to be a good guy and I don't want to, you know, not stand with my original thought about something. And that can be a tricky area. I liked most the bands all super different. I think that was probably the biggest criticism was that we put out stuff that was all super different where I was always like, I don't want to be into a label that all sounds the same. 00:46:17:09 - 00:46:51:21 Meghan Smith I'm not interested in that at all. But yeah, I mean, I'm proud of the accomplishments and I'm proud even when a band would go on to another label, as long as they were honest about it. This is why you should only have a one record deal with bands, right? I think our attitude is always like we do one record deals and we raise your royalty rate for the next record, right? 00:46:40:17 - 00:47:13:08 Meghan Smith You have an incentive to stay, but an open door policy if you decide that you want to leave. Right. And that's how you stay friends with people. That's how you end up not fucking hating people in bands that you don't want to hate, Right? That can be complicated, especially in the early nineties where you've got a lot of major labels that are coming in. 00:47:01:10 - 00:48:03:15 Meghan Smith They're signing bands the entire groundwork is changing. And now that enough time has gone by, you know, a lot of guys in a lot of bands that went in, signed to a major that were like, Yeah, that was fucking terrible idea because they got money that they spent like dicking around in the studio when they should have just recorded the same way and taken that money, bought a van and bought merch and been smart like you're in a punk band or grunge band, you're not going to be Michael Jackson, you're not going to be Nirvana, you're not going to be Garth Brooks. 00:47:37:12 - 00:48:25:00 Meghan Smith I just covered R&B, rock and country. You're fucking not going to be any of those people. Those are once in a lifetime things. That is really hard, because here's the universal truth with all bands. All bands when you do great is because you are great when you do poorly, it's the record label, the distributor, the artwork, the person that recorded you, the distributor, the person that mixed it. 00:48:07:04 - 00:48:48:05 Meghan Smith It's never the band's problem. And that is a problem with bands and that is universal. All bands still fucking love you, but like, I love the band still. Well, if you go on Spotify and listen to Still Will for the best fucking bands to ever come out of Seattle, I could have given you a free record and offered to suck your dick and I still wouldn't have sold fucking records. 00:48:28:15 - 00:49:08:22 Meghan Smith Oh, people did not like that band. People did not like that bit. And now after the fact, people really like that band. Now they're like, God, these records are really cool and weird and strange. Couldn't fucking sell those records. No fucking way. Couldn't sell that. That's just you can be passionate and love something and think it's like one of the greatest things that you've ever done. 00:48:50:18 - 00:49:31:02 Meghan Smith People don't like it. All the stuff that we're talking about, right? Everything comes down to taste. So when you have a record label or maybe you do a fanzine, you open a store, you do anything along those lines in a creative area, you're selling your taste. Your taste doesn't give me for everybody know that now. You'll be far better in your life to be like our yum and our yuck are different. 00:49:18:22 - 00:49:45:20 Meghan Smith Your taste and my taste is different. And I don't need to have your taste. And that's really hard because in our society, we want to try to make everybody happy. I don't fucking want to make everybody happy at all. I'm not no interest in making everybody happy at all. And that comes down to like the clients that you pick. 00:49:40:07 - 00:50:06:22 Meghan Smith There's clients that you have or you're like, We're never going to make this client fucking happy. It's not because they're a pain in the ass, it's because your two views of the world do not meet up correctly whether the expectation was not set correctly or they're just not happy. If somebody is not happy, there's nothing you can do to make them happy. 00:50:03:12 - 00:50:36:07 Meghan Smith You're not married to them. They're just. They're client. Right? And yes, you need your clients and it's super fucking important. I need customers. But if I think that every person that walks in the store is my customer, that's dumb. Yeah. Not every single person that you take a meeting with is going to you're not going to hit the same connection. 00:50:24:05 - 00:50:50:23 Meghan Smith And sometimes you have to walk away from money because you know that it's just not the right thing. And that's really hard for people to do because you have to have money to pay people. You have to have money to keep the fucking lights on. You have to do all of that, right? But when it's the punk ethos, part of it that comes in is saying, I don't need you, I don't eat baloney. 00:50:46:09 - 00:51:14:10 Meghan Smith But like I'm using that as an example of like, I will tighten my belt and I will eat a baloney sandwich to not fucking work with you. And that is really hard for people to understand and that all comes from punk rock. All of that comes from punk rock. 00:51:01:02 - 00:51:29:14 Aram The worst mistakes I've made is when I've worked with people, whether musically or as a in the work that I do now, where I knew it wasn't right, but I did it for the wrong reasons, like it could be money or it could be ego, friendship, friendship, or whatever. But where I was like, There's a client that we took on years ago. 00:51:22:05 - 00:51:29:14 Aram It's the only client we've ever been fired from. And I remember thinking this is a bad idea. 00:51:27:19 - 00:51:36:10 Meghan Smith You probably knew that the second and second in first 5 minutes in, you were like, something about this does not ring for me. 00:51:35:06 - 00:51:55:06 Aram I knew it right off the bat, but where I looked at it was if I could just get over this hump, Then it opens up the door of working with this global organization would be good for the business. And I was like, You know what? I can manage this. And I couldn't manage it because it was too toxic, it was too crazy. 00:51:51:14 - 00:52:10:04 Aram And when we got fired from that from the client, I was like, super angry about it. I was like, This is so stupid, you know, fuck that guy. I was so angry. But then I was like, Actually, this is not that dude's fault. This is my fault. I knew I knew. 00:52:06:05 - 00:52:10:04 Meghan Smith He also did you a favor in the end. Huge now, huge favor. 00:52:09:03 - 00:52:10:04 Aram I'm very aware. 00:52:10:02 - 00:52:13:06 Meghan Smith Of the moment, but now he's very. 00:52:12:05 - 00:52:45:18 Aram Very, very happy. And that mistake has has continued to kind of like, kick me in, like kick me a little bit or elbow me in the side once in a while because it's like occasionally they'll still be some like reverberations from getting fired from that one client like Will, cause it's still like not get a contract or this and that because this guy was a total asshole. 00:52:29:17 - 00:52:45:18 Aram But the only person to be mad at was me because I was like, I knew I shouldn't have taken it. And then when I took it, I should have treated it a lot more like I was holding a grenade. It was such a good lesson for me as a business owner because like going back to putting out records for people that I'm like, I like you as a friend, but I know you're a jerk. 00:52:44:21 - 00:53:03:11 Aram Like, like outside of. 00:52:46:16 - 00:53:03:11 Meghan Smith Work with jerks. 00:52:47:14 - 00:53:03:11 Aram Right? But, you know, you can be friends with someone that you know is a jerk, but you just have a friend. 00:52:51:17 - 00:53:03:11 Meghan Smith But I want to work with you totally. I don't want to poke coffee with you. I don't want to be in a business meeting with you. 00:52:56:13 - 00:53:30:13 Aram I've been in bands with people that I knew were jerks that put out records for people that I knew were jerks. And but then it was like it became different when I was in the band. Or if I put out the record from like, now I'm exposed to your jerked ness in a way that I wasn't when we were just friends. 00:53:10:13 - 00:53:30:13 Aram It's kind of like dating someone and then realizing as you're dating them, it's like, What I liked is you as a friend is absent, as now that we're dating. And those lessons like that, kind of like listening to your gut instinct of like, No, don't do this. Don't work for that person. Don't take on that. 00:53:25:10 - 00:53:30:13 Meghan Smith Fucking hard lesson to learn. It is fucking hard lesson to learn. 00:53:28:13 - 00:53:54:04 Aram It is. And I've learned like I going back to one of the first things you said is like that, learning from mistakes. It's like I look at my life, but predominantly my career. It's like it's just a series of like, Oh, I never want that to happen again, or I never want to work for someone like that again. 00:53:44:13 - 00:54:17:05 Aram Or, Hey, I need I should make more money for this or like whatever it is. Going back to something you said earlier, it's like it's really my mistakes that I've learned the most from. Yeah. Until I found my groove of success. But let's go into that, into the next chapter for you. So you finish at the record label and then you went into kind of corporate life for a. 00:54:01:01 - 00:54:36:20 Meghan Smith While, right? I always had like, I mean, I always had like a side job, Like I would take like I'd be like, okay, I need to buy Christmas gifts. I'm going to go have a weird Christmas job or whatever, or I'll sell vintage on the side. So, I mean, I would kind of always like, like you work at a record store, but then you also, like, take care of an Alzheimer's patient for like two days a week. 00:54:18:18 - 00:55:10:18 Meghan Smith Like I used to go Saturday afternoon and I would work till Monday. People were like, How do you lose this money? And it's like, Well, I get paid to get paid like $8 an hour to sleep in like 90 to like, I think 335 is like the minimum wage, like $8 an hour to literally go somewhere to like sleep, you know, and cook for somebody and just make sure do their laundry I'd come on Monday and I'd take a shower and I'd go work in the record store. 00:54:45:20 - 00:55:10:18 Meghan Smith I think that I've always kind of had sort of like side jobs that if I tried to take like a side job, it empty where it would be like an actual corporate job, there's no way I was going to make them happy, right? And so, like, I was way too deep in bucking the system that I could only take little part time jobs on the side. 00:55:09:11 - 00:55:49:02 Meghan Smith Also, like I'm going out and drinking a ton. So, you know, I ended up very randomly taking a job with people that I'm still friends with now. And I started there at seven in the morning and I worked until noon and this is at the beginning of the Internet, right? So like, this is when people thought the Internet is like a thing that 13 year old boys are going to be super into it. 00:55:32:12 - 00:56:09:14 Meghan Smith No one's going to have the Internet Right. Like that is going to be a thing that like your kid is into and you have to kick them off the phone because it's like, do, do, do, do. Right. That's the time period. So it worked out perfect for me, working out the record label. And that's the very it's the very beginning of the Internet. 00:55:52:03 - 00:56:36:02 Meghan Smith eBay started while I worked there. Google started while I worked there. It was perfect, but also like I went to work drunk. I mean, like, I know that for a fact because I would like work there in the morning and then I would work in empty and then I would go to a show and I would literally, like I had it timed perfectly how long it took me to, like, get out of bed and end up at work with a bunch of other super weirdo, you know, dudes would hang out there, like into the evening and they would be like, their wives would call like, and they'd all be playing Doom or whatever, like in 00:56:26:01 - 00:56:54:03 Meghan Smith a group. And I would be like, All right, Marcus, you got to go home. Your wife's called me three times now. I cannot put her off anymore. You fucking got to go home. I mean, I remember the day someone was like, Hey, if you're looking for, like, a cool new search engine, there's this thing called Google. 00:56:40:17 - 00:56:54:03 Aram It was the earliest of early. 00:56:42:10 - 00:57:17:01 Meghan Smith Days. It's the wild fucking West for sure. So, I mean, I would. I'd go there and I mean, I remember drinking a big glass of water when I got to work, and then I was like, Oh, no, I'm I'm like, I just reactivated the gin from the night before with a glass of water and I'm like, okay, so just act normal and you're cool. 00:57:04:09 - 00:57:40:19 Meghan Smith But yeah, I mean, I was going to rock shows like four nights a week, five nights a week. And at the time, because I worked so much like the first time in my life were like, I really had money. Yeah. Like if you were in a band and you drank and I was at a show, it would be more likely that I would literally just walk up with like two shots each for the band, just set them down and walk away. 00:57:24:21 - 00:58:10:17 Meghan Smith Because, I mean, I worked constantly. I mean, I worked I was working like ten hour, ten, 11 hour days. And that was actually really perfect. And I was really burning it at both ends, ended up getting really sick. I got strep and mono and it just put me in my fucking tracks. I mean, they let me come into my office job like I would come work for like 3 hours or something to, like, keep my insurance and I mean, like, I don't remember eating for, like, a year. 00:57:51:09 - 00:58:10:17 Meghan Smith I mean, I know I ate, but, like, I don't remember it. I have no like, I ran into somebody as an adult and they're like, Oh, I thought you became a junkie. You were so thin. And I was like, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I was just I got sick. I just got super sick. So that sort of made me kind of like 20 years old. 00:58:09:10 - 00:58:32:14 Meghan Smith I was like, okay, you have to take care of yourself. You have to like, eat two meals a day and you can't, like, just smoke a pack of cigarets and then maybe at two in the afternoon, like eat and then go drinking like and that's how I ended up kind of in the corporate world accidentally, where like I became an office manager and then I would come in and I was kind of bossy and kind of a dick, which is sort of what people want. 00:58:32:08 - 00:59:08:13 Meghan Smith An office manager is like someone that won't take shit from anybody and knows how to come in and like babies sit there like all it is. You work with bands, you're a babysitter, you're an office manager, you're a babysitter. They're not any they're not different, same exact qualifications. It's like, be organize, kind of have your shit together. Don't take too much shit. 00:58:56:02 - 00:59:08:13 Meghan Smith Still be nice, still be soft. That's all you got to do. That's that's how it happened. And it's the same job. It's just no one understands. It's the same exact job. They have no idea. 00:59:05:02 - 00:59:56:13 Aram Anyone that's on the show that that comes from like punk or hardcore always. They're like, Oh, when I got my first real job, I realized I already knew how to do it because that's what I learned. Being in a tour van or putting out records or like I had a skill that wasn't just portable. I actually already knew how to do this job because I did it managing like five people or a record label. 00:59:26:00 - 00:59:56:13 Aram Yeah, booking tours or whatever. 00:59:27:17 - 00:59:56:13 Meghan Smith But you have to like write it on a resume and you have to like tell somebody like, yeah, I can like order coffee. I mean, literally, they think that's a hard part of the job. 00:59:37:15 - 00:59:56:13 Aram And somebody said earlier, it's like, well, if employers could kind of open their open their mind to people from the punk world, they they'd see like this crazy talent pool that isn't represented on a resume. 00:59:47:21 - 01:00:26:01 Meghan Smith Oh, at all. It is like literally, like spray painting and heard you're like, you have to you have to change somebody's perception of what they think that skillset is, which really gets down to the fact that it's really easy for men to do that. It's really fucking hard for women to do that. And so, like any guy would just walk and be like, Yeah, like of course I know how to do Photoshop and take photos and do your social media and run all of your computers and do your I.T. department This guy doesn't even he's going to go home and be like, Okay, what's the first thing you do when you work in I.T.? 01:00:23:20 - 01:01:02:08 Meghan Smith You just tell people to restart their computer, okay, I can do that. That is something that women will not do. And women probably need to do that more, which is like, yeah, of course I know how to do that. Any guy knows how to do everything and this is not shitting on women, this is not shitting on men. 01:00:39:23 - 01:01:29:03 Meghan Smith I just think we should take a page from that fucking book of like, I know a guy who literally got at Adobe who did not know how to do anything at Adobe at all, lied in the interview and then literally went home when he got the job and was like, okay, I got the huge ass book and I'm all I'm going to do for the next like three days is just do that and never would cross my mind to be like, Oh yeah, not totally. 01:01:11:20 - 01:01:29:03 Meghan Smith Not to do that. 01:01:14:16 - 01:01:29:03 Meghan Smith You know exactly what I'm talking about. 01:01:16:14 - 01:01:29:03 Aram I literally like exactly what you're talking about. Like, we. 01:01:19:14 - 01:01:29:03 Meghan Smith Need to do that more. 01:01:21:03 - 01:01:44:10 Aram I, I think that like, just from a societal point of view, like men being encouraged to, like, walk in and, and completely be like, oh yeah, of course. Versus like from a societal point of view, the message that men and women have gotten about acting like that are very different. Like one was sure one would be a Well, of course you do that and the other would be like, How dare you do that? 01:01:41:08 - 01:02:04:06 Aram And I, I just think people should walk in to situations with the idea of whatever. I don't know. I'll learn. 01:01:48:04 - 01:02:29:12 Meghan Smith Like if we're just talking about like, music or like working in punk rock, right. When you work in that, you have to know more than the guys. You have to know more than all the fucking guys. Totally. Every single time. Totally right. And that is sort of a bummer because you're really there's a bar that like, here's the bar for the guys and here's the bar for the ladies, and you need to be up above that bar and no more than everybody else so that people will take you seriously. 01:02:17:15 - 01:03:03:20 Meghan Smith And that I think it's changed a bit. Especially, I think at least in music, it's it's a lot more standard if you go to the tote in Australia, you can't book a show if there's not a woman that is on the bill, right? If you're a bunch of guys in a band and you don't book at least one other woman that is on the show, the show does not happen and that is you have to make that a policy of your club to make that happen. 01:02:44:10 - 01:03:03:20 Meghan Smith I talked to guys are like, Yeah, there's always going to be like some shitty band that's on that's got a woman in it and it's like, Well, okay, hold on a second. How is she going to get good if she doesn't get to get out there and fucking play, right? So that is a different way of looking at it. 01:02:59:17 - 01:03:30:12 Meghan Smith The way that you get good playing music is by playing shows. It isn't like, Well, I learned to play guitar and I found a guy that played drums and were magically great. No, you've to go out and suck and be shitty and rooms. That's how you work on your craft and that could be anything that you do in life. 01:03:19:13 - 01:03:30:12 Meghan Smith We have to change that idea That is like only men know about music. I shouldn't have to know more than everybody else. 01:03:27:16 - 01:03:54:23 Aram I know that you mean more than just in music. But like I see this in the corporate world a lot where it's like the expertise that women have to bring to the table to be considered a peer is often far higher than like what the average other man at work would have to have. So I think that's like prevalent in in all spaces. 01:03:44:19 - 01:03:59:13 Aram And something that blows my mind is like going back to the musical thing. I mean, I can say factually for myself, I'm a terrible musician. Like, terrible, that's bad. I could bear only play guitar and I know there are men shouldn't. 01:03:57:06 - 01:03:59:13 Meghan Smith Stop you from being in a band. 01:03:58:10 - 01:04:22:14 Aram Oh, absolutely. But it hasn't I I'm a terrible guitar player, and I can tell you on it. But like, the idea that being not good at something, but I'm a guy, I still have more options than someone who's a much more talented and is a woman or comes from another marginalized space within punk and hardcore. That's still a thing. 01:04:19:03 - 01:04:59:04 Meghan Smith That translates into like your business. If you walk into a conference room and there are no people of color, there are no women in the room, there is no one that is indigenous in the room. Does it mean that every single meeting that you go into there has to be like one indigenous Canadian in the room? No, it's acknowledging when I walk in a room who is in this room, Right? 01:04:45:19 - 01:05:23:16 Meghan Smith That's just stopping and thinking. It's not like everything you do has to change. It just means, Oh, the more I acknowledge that don't look exactly like me. The more I become open to situations, the more I start to kind of look like we don't hire any older women here. That's just, you know, like when you start to expand that kind of thing, you start to look at things. 01:05:10:06 - 01:05:23:16 Meghan Smith You shift your perception when you walk in a room of like what that looks like. 01:05:14:20 - 01:05:31:12 Aram Yeah, totally. And also that idea, like when you're like, hey, like, maybe, maybe we should start adopting that idea of just being like, Yeah, I could do that. I, I want people to feel that anything they don't know, they should be able to learn. And like you do not need to be an expert in something to go down that path. 01:05:30:17 - 01:05:51:04 Aram You should just be able to go and figure it out because that's like it's kind of like the way of punk. It's just like going, Go figure it out and then go and do it. 01:05:37:21 - 01:06:13:11 Meghan Smith And I watched the The Go-Go's documentary where, like the bass player was like, Yeah, I just told them I knew how to play bass. Then I went and got a lot of speed, and then I literally spent two days on speed and I just learned every single bass line until my hands were so cramped. And then I just passed out. 01:05:55:15 - 01:06:15:09 Meghan Smith Yeah. And it's like, that is exactly the fucking attitude that more of us need to take because like, all right, I'm just going to cram. I'm going to cram for it so hard that I'm just going to be proficient at it. And I think we need a little some things in life you can't cram for. That is the truth. 01:06:14:11 - 01:06:27:14 Meghan Smith Like you can't take no toes and like, read a book and take a test like some stuff. You got to actually, like, learn but learn the stuff. 01:06:22:21 - 01:06:46:16 Aram Yeah, but you could learn like you could learn the first steps to get you in the door. Like. Like, Yeah. This story about the Go-Go's is like, Yeah, I mean, yes. You know, I'm not going to take, like, speed to do it, but like, yes, just say yes. Just do your thing. Just like, jump into it and figure it out and not for everything. 01:06:38:23 - 01:06:46:16 Aram Like, for example, I can't learn how to be an acrobat in two days, but nor do I want to. And of course. 01:06:44:03 - 01:06:47:19 Meghan Smith I will break a leg right in India, in the hospital. 01:06:46:19 - 01:07:08:18 Aram Yes. It's not going to be good. 01:06:48:00 - 01:07:08:18 Meghan Smith Men maybe need to take the I know everything down and women need to be able to take up. I know more than you think I do. And somehow we need to have those things meet. Yeah, a little bit more in the middle. And I don't know if that's exactly the right way to put it, but. 01:07:06:10 - 01:07:28:23 Aram No, I think you've hit it like I, I like I love when people are like, Yeah, I can do that. Like, I'm going to figure it out. I don't like when people bullshit like and as being a business owner, I've definitely had grifters come in like I think of this one grifter that came into our company was like kind of claiming they had all these advanced degrees and could do all this stuff. 01:07:28:18 - 01:07:49:07 Aram And I was like, Oh wow, that's so cool. 01:07:30:16 - 01:07:49:07 Meghan Smith But then you figure out like, Oh, you really don't know anything. 01:07:33:10 - 01:07:49:07 Aram Over time we figured out they didn't know anything. And it's like, I'm not the kind of employer that's like, show me your degrees. Like, I'm like, okay, like, I don't assume someone's going to be enough of a psycho to come in and lie. Lie? 01:07:42:21 - 01:07:49:07 Meghan Smith Yeah, of course. 01:07:43:21 - 01:08:06:12 Aram So after a while, I was like, Oh, you are so full of shit. And it, it added up over time and we ended up like doing an exit, but like up until the point where someone's like, bald faced lying, I kind of like the idea of people being like, Oh yeah, I can do that. And then they just figure out how to do it. 01:08:01:23 - 01:08:06:12 Aram Yeah, that's cool. 01:08:03:01 - 01:08:27:17 Meghan Smith Some people are good at stuff that like is not within their exact wheelhouse. Like that's how you figure out you're really good at something, right? I mean, I. I just thought, Oh, I'm going to turn 50 and I'm either going to try to do this or I'm not going to do this. Right. Like 50 is the dividing line of like it's now or never. 01:08:24:01 - 01:08:54:19 Meghan Smith It's do or die. I need to do this while I still have the energy to fucking do this right. I talked to some new last week who's like young playing guitar, wants me to band and it's like, do you want to be in a band in your twenties or do you want to be in a band sleeping on somebody's floor in your forties? 01:08:41:03 - 01:08:54:19 Meghan Smith And she was like, That is a really good way to look at. 01:08:44:05 - 01:08:54:19 Aram It's like that's where. 01:08:45:02 - 01:09:07:01 Meghan Smith There's a time and a place for everything. And being in a band in your twenties is the most ideal time to do that, right? And it's also kind of like things that look really good on a 15 year old look, a little less going on 25 year old look a little let's get on a 35 year old. I try to not talk about shit that I don't know about. 01:09:04:14 - 01:09:25:18 Meghan Smith When I used to go to other towns or I would meet bands. I think the best thing is like, just be cool. You have to tell everybody like who you are, but the people that would not treat me right and then would be like, Oh, I didn't realize that you're on a record label and I would be like, Yeah, you just you already showed me that you're who I don't want to work with. 01:09:21:19 - 01:09:49:11 Meghan Smith And your band is like, just, okay, So the fact that you couldn't just be cool to me and be cool to everybody, that's how you figure out who you want to work with, right? Like, that's not about punk rock. That's like every area of your life. You kind of go, I want to be around cool people. I don't want to be around dicks. 01:09:43:00 - 01:10:12:08 Meghan Smith That was sort of like our motto with the label. I felt the same way about coaching roller derby. It's like, this is my hobby and I from in my hobby, I don't want to be around assholes. I'm not interested in being around people who are dicks, who are assholes, who are not cool to people. And the more you filter your life to always be that way, where everybody you work with, where you're like, I don't want to work with dicks, I don't want to work with assholes. 01:10:10:02 - 01:10:34:13 Meghan Smith You start to just make your whole life like that. You can make your whole personality that your life is so much easier when you just make that as a decision. Yeah, in your life like that, assholes not interested. 01:10:22:08 - 01:10:34:13 Aram Totally. Totally. 01:10:23:15 - 01:10:34:13 Meghan Smith And everyone can be an asshole for a couple hours. I'm talking about asshole every day. 01:10:27:21 - 01:10:34:13 Aram It's their baseline. It's. 01:10:29:00 - 01:10:54:01 Meghan Smith Yeah, it's their personality, right? Not like, Oh, that person was in a bad mood That's out of character. They're going to go home. They're going to cool off. They're going to be fine. Yeah, that I have no problem with. 01:10:41:01 - 01:10:54:01 Aram Let's let's talk about melody. 01:10:42:16 - 01:10:54:01 Meghan Smith No one about. 01:10:43:22 - 01:10:54:01 Aram It, okay? All about it. 01:10:45:16 - 01:11:22:20 Meghan Smith So I needed a weird name because I'm really into music and I was like, All right. And I don't. Japan people constantly think my name is Melody, which I just respond to now, and they don't know the name of my store. And I thought I was in Japan. You'll see like a cat with a piece of kanji in its mouth, and that's the name of the store. 01:11:04:17 - 01:11:49:17 Meghan Smith And I thought, Oh, Americans aren't stupid. They'll get the name of my store. No one has any. And they'll be like, What's the name of your store? And I'll be like, Well, it has melody notes and it says Vinit, that's the name of my store. Now, also, if you name your business something that has a woman's name in it, that will be your name. 01:11:23:01 - 01:11:49:17 Aram Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:11:24:03 - 01:11:49:17 Meghan Smith I just answer to it now. I am just. 01:11:27:15 - 01:11:49:17 Aram So what was the decision to go from it being this side hustle to a thing where because I turned. 01:11:32:06 - 01:11:49:17 Meghan Smith 50. 01:11:32:19 - 01:11:49:17 Aram Turning 50. 01:11:33:13 - 01:12:06:00 Meghan Smith Turning 40, I'll Tell you what the fuck happened. I was driving cross-country with a girl friend of mine and she was driving, and I was like, Goddammit, I fucking hate when you drive. I want to be the driver. And she's like, Shut up. So why don't you plan your 50th birthday party where you're sitting there? I was like, Oh, it's a really good idea. 01:11:49:20 - 01:12:29:20 Meghan Smith So I was I knew I was going to try to open the store and I thought, Be perfect. I'll have the store open. All I'd love to do. But honey and radioactivity, I don't know if you know those bands, but martini and radioactivity to Bonneville, Pappy and Harriet's 50th birthday party. Like, if you're going to do it, don't fuck around. 01:12:09:08 - 01:12:49:13 Meghan Smith Go all out. It's exactly what we did. Except for we did it leap year, day of 2020. Which means that's the last time anybody saw anybody. So I have friends like that party sustain them for two years. So yeah. So I opened and I was open for 31 days and I mean, I changed my whole life like corporate job, all the money on, the line, like everything on the line. 01:12:38:03 - 01:13:11:03 Meghan Smith And then I was like, okay, well, I like crying and I like wine. So this pandemic and I closed. I drove back to Seattle. I didn't know what the fuck else to do. You know, my partner and I go back and from Seattle to here, so like more winter here, more summer there. And I mean, I just set the burglar alarm and, like, went home and was like, okay, stuff might need toilet paper. 01:13:05:00 - 01:13:40:00 Meghan Smith Like, I don't fucking know, like, I just talked to IKEA bags and just put a bunch of shit in the IKEA bags and like, threw the shit in the trunk of my car and, like, drove to Seattle. Didn't know if I was going to reopen, didn't know if I was going to pay to get out, at least didn't know what I was going to do. 01:13:21:07 - 01:14:00:16 Meghan Smith And I had just somebody and then I felt fucking terrible. And then I was also like, You've only worked for me for ten days and I'm still feeling this like, so difference between when you hire somebody for somebody else and you hire somebody for yourself and it is, I have hired tons of people in offices for like, I'm your office manager and I fucking hire people. 01:13:45:03 - 01:14:21:14 Meghan Smith They seem nice. I'm sure they're fine. They're not my employee. Like, I don't have to sign their check. I don't have to not pay myself to pay them right when I'm here and are still friends. But I felt fucking terrible. And then I was also like, We're all in the same house together. Why are you beating yourself up about somebody you've known for ten fucking days? 01:14:04:20 - 01:14:26:09 Meghan Smith You know, like so, Yeah. So I closed for like six months or something. I don't like, I had some fucking miracle on the business. People always come in. They're like, How long have you been in business? And I'm like 31 days before the pandemic. And they're like, Oh, that sucks for you. And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, it does. 01:14:26:10 - 01:15:06:14 Meghan Smith But it's made me, it's made me bring back all my own. Like all the old punk rock sort of things you fall back on, which is like running lean, being smart, being conservative, which is a really hard thing when we're talking about corporate America not embracing punk. Punks are fucking conservative. They're not conservative politically. They are conservative about money being economic, getting the most bang for your buck, like being smart. 01:14:55:07 - 01:15:34:20 Meghan Smith So it's made me fall back on all of those lessons of like the using your brain, making sure you stay in business, being smart about what you buy, being smart about how you treat your customers, always going back to like being nice to people. Do you want a customer one time? Do you want a customer for a lifetime? 01:15:15:23 - 01:15:40:04 Meghan Smith And there are people that only come once a year, so you should treat them like they're a regular, even though you only see them. They might only see you one time a year. But I want to treat you like I'm super excited that I only get to see you once a year. It's a different way of looking at a customer and everything, right? 01:15:36:21 - 01:16:02:08 Meghan Smith It's made me smarter, hungrier, Want to know more? 01:15:41:16 - 01:16:02:08 Aram So when you first started the store pandemic, you shut it down, but then you reopened it again and shut it down again, right? 01:15:47:08 - 01:16:02:08 Meghan Smith Yeah. So I was able to reopen in the summer and then Palm Springs closed a second time. And the reason why is because everybody was coming to Palm Springs, because we had outdoor dining. 01:15:57:21 - 01:16:02:08 Aram Right. 01:15:58:14 - 01:16:50:10 Meghan Smith And so people that had been trapped in their house, I mean, I knew people that moved to the desert because they were like, Well, I'm trapped in my house in Portland or Seattle. I might as well be somewhere I can be outside. And that was I know that was a secondary problem. So we closed again and I went home and, you know, made bagels and made more sour dough. 01:16:21:21 - 01:16:50:10 Meghan Smith And you learn about yourself like that. This was that was the perfect time. If there's a thing in your life where you were like, If I don't work, I'm going to do X, Y, Z. If you didn't take that as the opportunity to do that, then you weren't using your time totally. Like, I only had one thing. I was like, I'm going to fucking learn how to make bagels and I fucking make Miller bagels now because I need them every week and gave them away for free. 01:16:50:02 - 01:16:54:17 Meghan Smith Right. 01:16:50:21 - 01:17:20:07 Aram So financially though, how did you survive? 01:16:55:11 - 01:17:20:07 Meghan Smith I had a little savings because I thought, what if I'm bad at this? Which is totally not how people work. So I had three months of rent and the like. Maybe I'm shitty at this. I had made a little bit of money in that month, obviously, and then I got the small $6,000. It's not a lot, but 6000 bucks. 01:17:17:15 - 01:17:39:15 Meghan Smith That helped for another couple of months. And then I just went to my friends and I was like, Hey, I'm going to reopen at some point. Do you want to get do you want to spend $75 and get a $100 gift card? Do you want to spend 50 bucks and get a $75 gift card? Never expires. You can have it forever. 01:17:35:11 - 01:18:24:07 Meghan Smith That helped. Give me another of rent. And now, like I do not function without a certain amount of money in my bank account because I like to have a year of rent and bills in the bank at all times. I have a year of burglar alarm payment, phone payment, internet payment, Spotify, rent insurance, sitting in the bank at all times. 01:18:05:16 - 01:18:24:07 Aram But how did you build that back up? So when you opened up, like opened up, opened again. 01:18:10:00 - 01:18:49:06 Meghan Smith So people really wanted to buy stuff. Yeah, you all got fat or you all started running marathons. No one's the same. Yeah, I had a beautiful woman come from Canada and she she she came from Vancouver. She kind of talked to me a little bit in the store, but there were other people in the store, and as soon as we were alone, she's like, I need I haven't left my house for a year and a half, like my clothes don't fit. 01:18:35:14 - 01:19:02:04 Meghan Smith And I was like, Oh, cool, let's just decide. This is going to be emotional labor right now. Let's just accept that this is going to suck. It's going to be hard and we're going to be okay. Yeah, just accept that. Now I have guys too that like they'd been a 32 USA, 32 Levi's their whole life and they're in a 33 or a 34. 01:18:54:22 - 01:19:11:16 Meghan Smith And I'm like, You know what? Let's just get you looking good right now. No one has to know what size your pants are. Just let's just make you look good right now. So it's confidence is part of it, making people feel good. And some people know, right? They come in, they know what they like they try it on and they buy it. 01:19:11:16 - 01:19:56:14 Meghan Smith But the some people need the emotional support of a soft landing when maybe they started running marathons and their body changed. Maybe they were like me and they started baking bagels and their body changed like everybody needs a soft landing. And people were really wanting to go out and spend money. So we would open and I'd get tons of people and then we would close again. 01:19:39:14 - 01:20:13:00 Meghan Smith And I just was really conservative and I just I didn't spend money. I just was like, I'm going to always make sure. And now I always have enough in my bank account for a year of anything I need. And then I this year I decided to put ten K away and I'm going to try to put ten K away as just what if money I just call what if money and I have a plan for it doesn't have an earmark. 01:20:04:12 - 01:20:32:14 Meghan Smith It doesn't have it doesn't need to be a thing. It's just in a savings account for business and rainy day fund, whatever. So I try to just be really careful. 01:20:17:10 - 01:20:32:14 Aram So now that you're you're like back, We're back. The things have opened up enough. How does one run Like a vintage store? 01:20:24:17 - 01:20:32:14 Meghan Smith Like like a lot of laundry? 01:20:26:21 - 01:20:32:14 Aram Well, ask how do you find time in your life to go out and, like, hunt things down and find. 01:20:31:18 - 01:20:55:15 Meghan Smith I go to a wholesaler. So that's one of the main things that I do, is I have a wholesaler that I go to four or five times a year and that helps a lot. It's like going to Costco, but it's just vintage clothing. Yeah, and it's it's a dig and it's dirty and it takes a level of time. 01:20:53:23 - 01:21:16:16 Meghan Smith But you have to also like, you know, it's like go to Costco, like, okay, we need popcorn and we need laundry detergent. So I do go with the plan. I'm like, okay, I need these sizes of wranglers and I need this knot. And they don't all of that. I also close in the summer, so in another week I'll be closed. 01:21:11:21 - 01:21:38:21 Meghan Smith I have secret spots that I go to in Oregon and I have spots that I go to in Washington State, and I also do all my repair work. So I just packed all my sewing stuff like what I what I'm going to take to a seamstress, but also what I think I can get done over the next few months. 01:21:28:07 - 01:21:51:20 Meghan Smith And I'll do kind of my bits of shopping as I go. So as I'm going up, like I'll stop at the Buffalo Exchange and go through all the Levi's really quickly. And you know what I can sell isn't what somebody else can sell. And that's sort of part of how you price things, who you're in competition with. Do you think you're in competition with them? 01:21:47:21 - 01:22:12:12 Meghan Smith Like I learned from playing sports and I compete with myself. I want to be the best me. We are you and I. You could open a store next door. We are not in competition. I mean, NSA is a door is a door away from me. And we do something so different that when someone comes in, they're like, I need a dress for a wedding. 01:22:10:22 - 01:22:54:16 Meghan Smith I go, You know what? I'm not your place. Yeah, They're like, Oh, but sell dresses. And I go, I know, but that's not what I do, right? That's what she does. That is what she specializes in. That's what she's really good at. Right. So when you start talking about like leaning into your strengths and also knowing somebody else's strengths, I know all of the other sellers, I know what they sell. 01:22:31:23 - 01:22:54:16 Meghan Smith And I have no problem saying you want a sixties caftan. It's not what I do. You should go here. This is what they specialize in. And they're always like, Oh, it's really nice that you can like help each. And it's like, Why not, right? It's a huge fucking pool to piss in. Why would I not want to help somebody? 01:22:54:04 - 01:23:19:00 Aram Yeah, but that's not everyone's. I don't want to say. So that's. 01:22:57:03 - 01:23:19:00 Meghan Smith My prerogative. 01:22:58:04 - 01:23:19:00 Aram We're like, on the flip side, you and I could go anywhere and meet, like, 20 other are like, Oh, no, fuck everyone else I'm only going to do. Yeah. So. 01:23:07:03 - 01:23:42:17 Meghan Smith And I don't want those people in my life. Yeah, I want you in my life for a short amount of time, right? Like, I mean, when you're talking about punk rock and you're talking about mentorship and you're talking about things that are like big into what it is you're going to help other people. You want to book a tour, That person over there knows how to do a tour. 01:23:27:19 - 01:24:03:07 Meghan Smith I know how to do a tour. Everybody helps everybody else. You want to put out a record, you want to start a company, right? You want to start a company. You want to start a store. Ask people questions, don't open a store and do what I did and then go, Wait, when was the last time you actually worked retail? 01:23:45:15 - 01:24:24:19 Meghan Smith Which is exactly what I did. I was like, Oh yeah, like you. There's things that you need to like run a store. And I had to sit down and go, But if you're smart and you're confident, you're like, dumb people run stores. That's how I look at everything. Is there somebody stupider than me that seems to be able to do it? 01:24:09:23 - 01:24:52:00 Meghan Smith And I know I'm smarter than and they're successful. If you look at the whole world like that, I'm way fucking smarter than that. So I should be able to figure it out. So I was I was like, Hey, when was the last time you work retail? Okay, the nineties. Okay, so some things have changed since the nineties. So like you'll get a modern register and they will help you do that, right? 01:24:34:07 - 01:25:10:11 Meghan Smith Okay, you're not a good bookkeeper, but this old punk rock friend of yours is a really killer fucking bookkeeper. All right, Pay that person like I'm not doing my own taxes. I do everything myself. Bookkeeping, taxes, fucking no, you know, And now I'm to the point where I need somebody to help do selling. I'm at a level because you're like, How do you do that? 01:24:58:00 - 01:25:29:04 Meghan Smith So like, people come in the store and I'm like, Do you know how to take your jeans? And I go, No. Like the average dude is like, No, I don't wear don't, don't mix red with stuff. That's what guys. No, put black together. But then you explain to them like, Hey, your favorite punk rock t shirts are your favorite rare t shirts shouldn't get washed with your denim. 01:25:18:14 - 01:25:52:05 Meghan Smith And they go, Oh, why not? I just put all the same colors and it's like, your denim is being the shit out of your rare t shirts and they're not going to last as long. Put your soft things in the same color and your rough things like your denim not together. That is a thing that a dude goes, Oh, that makes perfect sense, right? 01:25:40:02 - 01:26:27:11 Meghan Smith It's taking it beyond just like put white with white. Because. Because here's the thing. Men wear their clothes until they disintegrate off of them. And if you can explain to them a way to extend the life of, the clothing that they love, I cater to women, but my men's wears is more important and takes more work. There's less of it, there's less quality, there's less of it that's in good condition. 01:26:07:07 - 01:26:27:11 Meghan Smith I'm amazed there's other dealers that are around me that have like never come in my store. And I always think that's so fucking weird because I'm like, I went to everybody. I went to everybody within 50 miles of where I was opening my store. I didn't introduced myself. Not trying to be your friend. I went through everybody's fucking prices. 01:26:25:18 - 01:26:47:20 Meghan Smith I'm into everybody's shit. I was like, There's no fucking way I quit a fucking corporate job. Take all of my savings and open this business and fucking close. Yeah. Whereas I think some people are like, Oh, well, you know, I'm not going to make it. And they just made up their mind that they weren't going to make it or they tried to make it happen. 01:26:44:11 - 01:27:28:08 Meghan Smith Like there's nothing that you can do to make me close. That is not the energy that you fuck with at all. I just made up my mind. I'm not fucking closing. I'm going to beat the fucking best. Why would you want to do a thing and then only kind of be okay at it? I want to be the best I want to be the best at what I do. 01:27:07:12 - 01:27:28:08 Aram Well, speaking of being the best of what you do, let's talk about becoming an accidental Tik Tok influencer. 01:27:13:12 - 01:27:28:08 Meghan Smith Oh, okay. Have you spent any time on Tik Tok? 01:27:17:19 - 01:27:28:08 Aram I have never literally ever even opened Tik Tok one time. 01:27:20:15 - 01:27:57:19 Meghan Smith Okay, so when people would come in the store, they're like, Oh, I heard about you on Instagram. And some people say, Oh, I you know, I heard about you on Tik Tok. And I would be like, Here, I'm not on Tik Tok. Like, I don't know what you kids are doing over there, but I know and at the time I had a young shop assistant who's down to clown. 01:27:42:18 - 01:28:18:01 Meghan Smith She's very wild. That's she does vintage on the side is down the clown. She's fucking down the clown. She was like, You know, you're really into education. You should do educational videos and I was like, Yeah, no, fuck that, whatever. And then because I take two months off a year, which people think is totally bizarre, I was doing a thing and I was like, I'll just do a video about it. 01:28:03:03 - 01:28:22:05 Meghan Smith I didn't think I didn't overthink it. I'm very much myself and I think I did a video like How to Repair Your Denim or something, and then people start asking you questions like, How do I wash wool or how do I do this? Or How do I do that? And it just kind of went from there. You know, Like I said, I got called grandma today on the Internet. 01:28:22:05 - 01:28:44:21 Meghan Smith That was kind cool. I did something that went really viral and then like, I haven't really looked at my friend request or things like that because I literally, like I went to bed and I woke up and I was like, I have 30,000 friend requests. I'll just never look at that again. I mean, like, okay, I work 55 to 60 a week. 01:28:43:15 - 01:29:39:16 Meghan Smith When am I literally going to get 24 hours to figure out my friend request? So I was just like, I'll just never look at that again. I never have. The problem is, is that when people are online, like you either like I do makeup or I do I do painting, or I do gardening or dancing or whatever. Whereas I'm like, I talk about music, I talk vintage, I talk about history, I talk I give life advice as just being old. 01:29:13:01 - 01:29:39:16 Meghan Smith I'm just going to be myself. And if you like that, cool. And if you don't like that, that's also totally okay. So I just do that. I just talk about what I want to talk about. I don't overthink it and kind of like coming here, I just assume have a conversation. And when we weren't having a conversation anymore, we wouldn't be having a conversation anymore. 01:29:33:08 - 01:29:39:16 Meghan Smith And that's okay. 01:29:34:20 - 01:29:39:16 Aram All right. So as we're heading towards the end of the of the. 01:29:37:13 - 01:29:39:16 Meghan Smith Is there anything else you want to know about me? 01:29:39:05 - 01:29:57:05 Aram I'm going to ask you three increasingly difficult questions. Very hard questions. And they might not be hard for you. Like the first one is I want you to think of three bands that barely anyone knows about, but you think everyone should know about. And they could be. 01:29:56:04 - 01:30:02:18 Meghan Smith I can that so fast. 01:29:57:08 - 01:30:02:18 Aram They could be really old or they could be now three bands. 01:30:00:03 - 01:30:35:09 Meghan Smith I will go with two KIRN And one. Okay, Beautiful. One is The Resonators, which is the sky map. He records bands in the Southwest. He lives in Tucson. He's a fucking genius. He's an actual he should just get paid money to just be a genius, I would say. Jeff Burke, who is from The Walkmen, the does the band Radioactivity is a fucking genius. 01:30:25:23 - 01:30:57:08 Meghan Smith He records bands. He has great ears. And I would say Still Wolves, probably my last one. And I've put out bands that I think are, you know, that have done really amazing music, but they are appreciated now, right? They there's a level of appreciation over, you know like people love lost sounds or something like that. And those are collectible records and people are searching for them and they are influential to other people. 01:30:54:23 - 01:31:25:01 Meghan Smith But Yeah, I would say as far as like those three. How's that? That was easy. 01:31:00:01 - 01:31:25:01 Aram Very, very smooth. All right. What is. 01:31:03:03 - 01:31:25:01 Meghan Smith Passion? 01:31:05:16 - 01:31:25:01 Aram What's the best lesson you've learned from painful mistake? Like the. You don't have to tell us about the mistake, but what's the best lesson that's. 01:31:12:12 - 01:31:25:01 Meghan Smith A little harder. Can we go to the third one? And I'll give that a thought. A thought. 01:31:18:01 - 01:31:44:02 Aram But okay. What's a piece of advice that you would give someone who wants to turn something that's been their side hustle but that they love like that they're into into a business. And some they're trying to try to make a real goal out of. 01:31:30:14 - 01:31:59:00 Meghan Smith Well, the first thing I do is do it with your own money, because when you take somebody else's money, you can't value it the same way. It's like signing onto a major label, right? When you sign on to a major label and you're not like working with your friends anymore, it's about money, right? We go back to the William Shakespeare thing. 01:31:50:16 - 01:32:29:14 Meghan Smith It's like, Know thyself is the universal rule, right? I'm not going to go out and be like, I'm going to become a chess champion. Don't play chess with me. I'm fucking terrible at it. It's fucking evil understand your limitations. Understand What am I really good at? What am I not actually good at? How much money am I willing to lose? 01:32:12:15 - 01:32:55:13 Meghan Smith It should not be gambling, right? Like, Oh, I'm going to make it back. I'm going to go to the tables and I'll make that money back. I think it takes like knowing your strengths, understanding yourself and being and being willing to, like, lose it all, you know, Which was really scary because, I mean, I did think in the pandemic, like, okay so I just need to accept that like, like I did this thing for 31 days and I'm going to fucking lose it all and so is everybody else. 01:32:40:08 - 01:32:59:14 Meghan Smith Right? And not letting that define. So as far as really big mistakes, dude, I'm making mistakes constantly and I try to not do them again. It's really funny. I Got a lot of parking tickets, like a string of fucking parking tickets When I first got my license and I sat with my mom and she looked at all of them. 01:32:59:09 - 01:33:22:04 Meghan Smith So I was like, I think I'm kind of in trouble. Like, I think, you know, like I kind of put them in the glove box or, like, not really real. And so my mom sat down with all of them and she was like, Well, here's the thing I find really interesting. She goes, None of these are for the same mistake. 01:33:14:07 - 01:33:48:08 Meghan Smith She's like, This one is for 30 feet at a stop sign. This one is for taking a turn on no turn. This one is this. And so she looked at all of the tickets like one was a moving violation and all the rest are parking tickets. And she's like, You do learn from your mistakes. So once you pay for all of these, it's completely possible that you have literally done every parking mistake that you'll that you'll you'll never do this again because you've learned from it. 01:33:44:21 - 01:34:21:04 Meghan Smith I make mistakes constantly, all the time. So I don't know if there's that. I've, like, learned the most fun because I'm making mistakes. It's like make mistakes, learn from them, don't wreck the company, and like, don't lose a client. If you can just do those two things, like, Here's how I do it. If you find a faster way and a better way to do it, come show me. 01:34:10:19 - 01:34:21:04 Meghan Smith Don't wreck the company. And I think that's like the healthiest way to, like. 01:34:14:21 - 01:34:21:04 Aram Learn hack. Yeah, and don't be afraid to make mistakes. 01:34:17:19 - 01:34:37:06 Meghan Smith I'm not afraid to make mistakes. I'm constantly falling on my ass. You're making mistakes constantly. There isn't one mistake that defines you. Like, I probably made three mistakes this morning. I just haven't, like, you know, I haven't been awake at three in the morning to go fuck, which, you know, that's what you do. And then you just go, Oh, fuck, I just need to go back to sleep. 01:34:37:11 - 01:34:43:11 Aram I get this. Go on. All right. As we're closing off, any last words? Anything you wanna say to the audience? 01:34:44:02 - 01:35:02:22 Meghan Smith No, but I will say the funniest thing about leadership that I've done in my whole life is we're talking about leadership is I coached a roller derby team, and that's actually where I learned to like. It's not like coaching women is so fucking weird. But aside from that, yeah, that was punk rock. I was like, Oh, I wish little kids could do this. 01:35:03:15 - 01:35:13:05 Meghan Smith That would be the best. I could've done that at six years old, that would have been the greatest thing ever. But yeah, thank you for having me. And yeah, this was super interesting. Awesome. 01:35:13:10 - 01:35:36:03 Aram All right, everyone, please check out Melody. No vintage. I will say that walking in that store, you really feel like, Oh, like this is. This is cool. Like, this is. This is this is put together by someone who knows what they're doing. And also, like, legitimately absolutely cares. And I don't even buy vintage clothing because I am a guy that was only knows how to wash his jeans of this t shirts and. 01:35:36:10 - 01:35:36:23 Meghan Smith You learn a. 01:35:36:23 - 01:35:43:07 Aram New thing. I learned a new thing today. So thanks so much for your time. Thank you. And Mike, drop the B.