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Are you looking for new hobbies?
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That's my question for you.
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And you've heard me talk about this.
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In midlife, what are powerful things we can do for ourselves?
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We can have fun, we can be in community more often.
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And quite frankly, it doesn't matter whether you're in midlife or not, more fun and more community is always good.
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And in midlife, particularly, we want something to exercise our brains.
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And so today's change maker is going to tell us exactly how to do all three of those things at the same time.
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And that's Mahjong.
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Let's talk about it.
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Welcome to Mind Your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time.
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Unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body.
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Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and, oh my goodness, powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife.
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This is the Mind Your Midlife podcast.
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This is the second episode in my new occasional series about change makers.
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And by that I mean women who've created something brand new during this stage of life and can show us the way forward.
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We can learn from them the wins they've had, why they did what they did, how they came up with it, the lessons they've learned.
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And today you might pick up a new hobby as well, because we're talking mahjong.
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Now, Mahjong as a game is sweeping the nation.
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And I use that quote as kind of a joke a lot because in our family we quote when Harry met Sally all the time.
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And if you remember, there was a quote, Baby Fish Mouth is sweeping the nation.
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But Mahjong truly is sweeping the nation.
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Mostly women, I believe, are playing it, and men too.
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This is not a game only for women.
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It just happened that a lot of women got interested in it for community and for brain health.
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So my guest today is Tori Rittinger, and she is the founder of Talk Tiles to Me, which is the first Mahjong studio in the DMV area, which, if you're not near me, means District Maryland, Virginia, so around Washington, DC.
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And her business started out with a few friends playing this game around a table at her house and has become a truly thriving community.
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She is full of energy.
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I'm gonna tell her that in our conversation.
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I find that so inspiring.
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So welcome, Tori.
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Hi, thank you.
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I'm excited.
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Yes, absolutely.
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You are welcome, and I'm excited to have you here.
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And I mean, I've had so much fun with you over the last year.
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We were just realizing.
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Yeah.
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So first, let's start.
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You have a mahjong business, and I feel like 80% of the people listening to this are gonna go, oh yeah, Mahjong.
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And then there's gonna be some who are like, what is she saying?
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So just tell us quickly what in the world is Mahjong first.
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So Mahjong is a tile game that has sort of had a resurgence since COVID.
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It's been around for years, it's been around since the 1800s.
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But I think since COVID, this new need for people to want to socialize and be around people, and it's this tile game that has f that has filled that void for people.
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So it's if you look at like a card game, like poker, let's say, it's sort of in a way like poker but with tiles.
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And I tell people it's a mix between poker and chess and patience all together.
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But you can socialize, you can have a cocktail if you want while you play, you can tell stories and talk, and so essentially it's a tile game, but I feel like it's so much more than just a tile game.
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Yeah, I fully agree with that, and we're gonna talk about that for sure because it is just blowing up right now.
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But let's start from the beginning.
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How did you get the idea to have a mahjong related business?
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Where did that come from?
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So I started out, I was first heard about Mahjong almost six years ago from one of my dear friends that lives in Texas, and it uh you can't live in Texas and not play Mahjong because it's just everywhere there.
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And she kept trying to tell me about this game and everybody's playing it.
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And I thought you're speaking Chinese to me.
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I don't even know what you're saying.
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And I finally took a lesson and just got hooked.
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And my lesson was three weeks, three, three lessons over three weeks, and I took it with my, it was myself and seven friends, and it was just such a wonderful time knowing we were going to get together these three weeks in a row.
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And so I just enjoyed it so much I wanted to start teaching it to people because I know people wanted that connection and to be together, and so I didn't necessarily start out as thinking it would be this big business, and it just grew so fast.
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And I kept going with it because I loved the joy, I still love the joy that it brings people and seeing people come together and the connections that are made.
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Yeah, and if I could just echo part of what you said, for me, you always seem so happy and excited to be there and doing whatever it is that you're doing.
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I think that's in uh is infectious the right word.
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That seems a little negative, but anyway, I think it rubs off on people.
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So that's a big deal too.
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Well, I'm glad that I come across as excited because I am.
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You absolutely do.
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But was this related to your previous work experience at all?
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It was, yeah.
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So my previous work experience, I was in advertising and sales, and a lot of that again is like connection and bringing people together, and I would do events with different, you know, clients and bring them together, and I always enjoyed that.
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And I always just enjoyed I could never sell something I didn't believe in, but I always, you know, when I was in it, I was I worked for I was in television sales, so I worked for a couple of the bigger, like the ABC and NBCs, and I believed in their stations and their brand.
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And so I could talk to you about it and I was happy to sell it.
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And it's the same thing with the mahjong.
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I don't even look at look at it as like I'm selling it, but I look at it as it's something I'm really, like you said, excited about and passionate about.
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And so it was sort of the same thing from that.
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If it was just something that didn't mean much to me, I couldn't I couldn't do it.
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Um, but I always liked that being around people.
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And then I took a break and I was a mom for almost 20, full-time mom for 20 years.
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So you it feels like you just found something you loved and kept doing it, and it grew into something, would you say bigger than what you thought?
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Or maybe you weren't.
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I'm sure.
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Yes.
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I didn't, I when I started teaching people, it was four people in a tiny room off my family room.
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And it was me telling my kids, I'm like, you got me quiet, and my husband was putting our dogs in a room, and and it was just so fun.
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I was like, Oh, just keep teaching people, and then it grew like I so many people want to do it.
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Let's work with some businesses and go to restaurants, and then it just kept going.
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And I never a year ago, I never would have thought I am where I would be where I am today.
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But I love it.
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It's yeah, I'm really happy with it because I I just love the connection of the people.
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I know I keep saying that, but and that is sort of what my old career was too.
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And it's something that's positive that brings people together, and it's good for you, you know.
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Okay, so that's interesting.
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Let's make sure we bring that in because for me, uh I mean, I like games and stuff, and I was looking for a way to hang out with people, and we met a year ago at a mahjong lesson at a local wine bar, and I was like, wine bar plus game plus fun people, of course.
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I mean, why would I not do that?
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And it it's really good for your brain as well, yeah, right?
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Yes, it's very good for your brain.
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It uses it uses your brain in ways that you don't normally use it every day.
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It's you're using strategy, you're thinking, you're you're um you're using a lot of forward thinking, you're trying to think a couple steps ahead.
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And as we know, as we get older, you know, we might not be as sharp as we once were.
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And we want to do everything we can to help preserve our brain.
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And when you're doing something like that, that's you know, firing your brain up like that, it's so good for you.
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Um, and the National Mahjong League, which is the creators of the card that you need to play, a percentage of their sales goes to um the Alzheimer's Association because there is such a connection between you know memory and using your brain, um, and mahjong being so good for that.
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So I look at it too, like we all worry about like our physical appearance and you know getting to the gym or doing some sort of class for our body, but I mean it for your brain is really important too.
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Absolutely.
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And we've talked about that on this podcast many times.
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It you need some sort of brain activity and ideally with people, which you have a great combo with that, yeah.
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Yes, and mahjong is gives you a purpose of getting together, it's not like let's just go out and have a glass of wine, which is fine too.
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Some people say wine's good for the heart, you know.
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However, you want to find that, you know, fit that in.
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But but this is it's a reason to get together, but you're also you are doing something that's good for you in multiple ways.
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Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
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Couldn't agree more.
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Okay, so let's talk about your business a little bit.
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What have been some of the maybe concerns or worries that you've had to work through as you've been growing this from your side room in your house to your own business location?
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Well, everybody has expectations, and I'm very much a people pleaser.
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I've always been that way.
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So I always want to make sure that everybody leaves with a good experience.
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Um, and for the most part, we've had that.
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A concern would be people who walk away and don't understand the game, but we are very intentional with how we teach the game because I have I have a special needs child, and then my other two kids have their own learning challenges.
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So I feel like I'm understand different learning styles.
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So we are very um intentional about how we teach.
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But that was one of my concerns is what if people don't get the game?
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Or what if they don't like it and they don't want to come back?
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And that has happened, but it's been maybe a handful of people.
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I mean, I almost everybody has come back.
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Um, but I guess that was my concern was just people not enjoying it, and some people just aren't game people.
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Um, myself included, I don't sit down and play board games with my kids, but I love to sit down and play mahjong.
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That was one of my concerns, and just making sure that everybody feels like they're getting what they paid for because it it does cost money to learn how to play, but once you know, then you can continue to do different things that it doesn't cost as much after that.
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But you know, it is expensive, and I don't ever want to like people to feel like it's too expensive for them, or um so that was that was another concern.
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But again, I I really haven't run into that very much.
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Yeah.
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Um yeah, and the demand really seems to keep growing for you.
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Can you demand so explain to us how that's happened because you started with four people in your house, and now what does it look like?
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Yes, and now so we started four people in our house, so we slowly went into like the wine bar, and then we went to bigger restaurants, and now we have our own studio in the DMV.
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It's the only Mahjong studio in the DMV, and um, we can accommodate 24 people, max up to 32 if we want at one time in the studio.
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And we're busy almost every night with different events, people coming in to play or coming in for, you know, if we have a beginner lesson or social play, or if we have people rent the studio for birthday parties.
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And so, you know, the little table that once was off my living room is uh now here in the studio with a lot of other tables and chairs, and so we do all of our events here now.
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We'll still go to people's homes, but now we have merchandise.
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Um, and one of my goals was people when they get into Mahjong want to buy a set of tiles, and you can buy it ranges in price.
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You can get a set for $100 on Amazon, you can get a really expensive boutique set.
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And I wanted to carry all of those in the studio so people could come in and see all these different tiles that and find what they like before they buy, because it is an investment.
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So that was really important to me was to have that.
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We're not tied to any tile company or anything like that.
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Um, I say we're a free agent, uh, and we are so I want people to be able to come in and see that.
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But yeah, so from the tiny little table in the living room to now having a studio with merchandise and multiple tables and tile sets is I love it.
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And it's not just you, right?
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You're not in there every single night of the week.
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No, we we now have seven instructors.
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It was originally just me, and we've grown so fast.
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So we have instructors all throughout the DMV.
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We go all the way out to Loudoun County, we go out to Vienna, um, south, all the way around um in the Maryland, and now we're just going up and down the East Coast too.
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We're um getting instructors there too.
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And we've had instructors from California reach out to us to want to be part of our team.
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I mean, it's all over, it's just growing all over.
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It's great.
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I just love to see that it's taking off.
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And I think there's people who take a lesson and it's sort of like like what I did.
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They're like, I love this so much, and I want to just keep it going, and that's what it's what it's doing.
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It's great.
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I don't see it going anywhere.
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I feel like it's like the new pickleball, and everybody, you know, likes their pickleball, but it's you know, it's like what pickleball was a few years ago, but I don't see it going anywhere because this is something that's been around for you know a very long time.
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And like I said before, it's good for us.
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So I don't, you know, as this pickleball.
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So you know, pickleball, you know, you're doing the body part, and then the you know, you're doing this part with the that's right, mahjong, the brain.
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So you know that's right, you gotta exercise the brain and the body.
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I agree completely.
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There you go.
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Yes, yeah, yeah.
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What is your favorite part about having this as a business?
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Um I just the being able to bring people together.
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I know I keep saying that, but I really like that's what brings me joy is like when people are together and just enjoying each other, and that's been the biggest and the ability for people to come in and see the tiles.
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Like I like that too, but it really is.
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I love the community.
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And I've met so many people, and you meet people from so many different in different parts of their lives of people becoming friends, you know, and people in their 20s who are friends with people in their 50s and 60s who they may not otherwise have even thought to have conversations, you know.
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And we had a group of people at one of our events, it was a table of women who didn't know each other, and at the end of the night, all six of them were exchanging phone numbers, and they all meet now every month to play together.
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I mean, it's and they're all those, they're all kind of in the same um you know, stage of life with having kids and things like that, new kids, young kids, but yeah, and I have a story like that too.
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I already knew two of the three other people that I play with once a month, but the fourth one was a friend of one of them, and they all came to a lesson with you at one point or another, through me, actually, because I was inviting people, and now we play once a month, and now we're all four friends, and so yeah, you never know.
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You learn so much about people too, just over like the game, you know, you're like, how's your you know, your kid feeling who was sick last week, or how's your parent, you know, and or you get different recipe ideas.
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I mean, I've gotten so much information, and I want to write a book on like all the funny things that like from menopause down to trying to get pregnant, you know what I mean?
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Or like waiting for your boyfriend to propose, you know, like I've heard it all.
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It's it's great, you know.
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I will say it's easy to sit down at a table with people you don't know and you just end up chatting as you're playing.
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So I agree with you.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah.
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Have you made any mistakes through this process of growing this business or kind of learned a lesson the hard way, would you say?
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I need to be more intentional with what sort of studio we are in terms of we're more like social play, we're not hardcore competitive.
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And there have been people that have come in that that is exactly what they want.
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And we're trying to build certain events that are around people who want that, but it's just making sure that that comes across that way in the beginning because we've had situations where people who, you know, are wanting competitive play and other people who you know are coming in for social, and our whole point of building what we've built is for that social piece.
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Yeah.
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So I wouldn't say it's a mistake, it was just a learning process of making sure sort of expectations were known.
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And aside from that, I mean, I'm always learning.
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I have, you know, a couple people around me that helped me that if I did not have them, I would not be where I am today.
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And um, I feel like one of them is like my how my brain was 20 years ago.
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I like used to be type A all over everything.
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I had so much energy to do it, and at 51 now, I'm like, okay, I don't, and my brain is like ADD because I don't know what happened.
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Perimenopause is what happened.
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I mean, it's yeah, it is.
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I tell people, I'm like, my kids have ADD, like I get it, like, but I never had it.
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And then now I'm like, oh my gosh, like, yeah, yeah.
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Or maybe I always had it and I just learned how to manage it and never, but it's like I'm like, I feel like I'm a ping pong ball sometimes.
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I'm just like all over the place, but but it works, like it just yeah, it works.
00:19:23.950 --> 00:19:33.789
I I love that you are saying you need to be more intentional about the the community and the fun aspect because I mean, everything you've said, that's what you want.
00:19:33.789 --> 00:19:44.430
And I feel like you've kind of learned to stay in sync with what your intention was and not let all the side stuff get in the way, which is yes, important.
00:19:44.750 --> 00:19:45.470
Definitely.
00:19:45.470 --> 00:19:54.509
Yeah, and I feel like we've worked too hard for this business and for the people that keep showing up for events to have people come in and sort of railroad that.
00:19:54.509 --> 00:19:59.470
And um, you know, and the people to the people that have done that, it's not like it's a continual problem.
00:19:59.470 --> 00:20:04.509
But when it's happened, it's um people, it's not people being mean, they just don't know better.
00:20:04.509 --> 00:20:06.829
That's they're just competitive and that's how they want to play.
00:20:06.829 --> 00:20:10.670
But it's you know a little off-putting to people who are used to sort of our style.
00:20:10.910 --> 00:20:11.150
Yeah.
00:20:11.390 --> 00:20:11.630
Yeah.
00:20:11.630 --> 00:20:13.870
So, but we are very intentional about that.
00:20:13.870 --> 00:20:18.589
We want it to be a place that people come to and just relax and have fun and aren't super serious.
00:20:18.829 --> 00:20:20.190
That's what attracted me.
00:20:20.190 --> 00:20:25.069
And um, as you said, I'm sure some people want to be competitive and play more seriously for sure.
00:20:25.069 --> 00:20:28.350
But what attracted me was the fun and the community for sure.
00:20:28.350 --> 00:20:40.350
And funny story, in fact, I was in your studio, I don't know, a month or so ago, uh, maybe more than that, and somebody came in with a big bag of change and said, Are we playing for money?
00:20:40.350 --> 00:20:45.870
And the other three of us at the table looked at her like, uh, we have no idea what that means.
00:20:45.870 --> 00:20:49.390
Nor do we have any change.
00:20:49.630 --> 00:20:53.150
So yes, some people play for money.
00:20:53.150 --> 00:20:54.269
I don't play for money.
00:20:54.269 --> 00:20:58.430
I'm fine if people want to play for money, but yes, we, yeah.
00:20:58.430 --> 00:21:00.670
And it's for like 25 cents.
00:21:00.670 --> 00:21:02.029
This isn't like $25.
00:21:02.029 --> 00:21:03.870
But but some people like that.
00:21:03.870 --> 00:21:08.029
And I have friends that do that, and then at the end of the year, they pool everything that they want.
00:21:08.029 --> 00:21:15.789
I guess they keep all the winnings in a little container, and then they go and they donate it to, I don't know if it's Alzheimer's Association, um, which is sort of fun too.
00:21:15.789 --> 00:21:20.910
But we are gonna start doing events where people keep score if people want to do that.
00:21:20.910 --> 00:21:23.630
And then some people don't even want to, they just want to be able to win.
00:21:23.630 --> 00:21:26.190
So that'll be fun too for people to do that.
00:21:26.190 --> 00:21:41.789
But I never want it to become, we live in a very competitive area, and I never want it to be, you know, I don't want that to spill over into our, you know, our our cozy Mahjong studio, because this is supposed to be relaxation for everybody.
00:21:41.789 --> 00:21:52.110
And sort of like I feel like when I play, all the open tabs of my brain are shut, and I'm just focusing on what's in front of me and what I'm currently doing, which normally day-to-day, I don't do that.
00:21:52.110 --> 00:21:57.390
And so I don't want that outside world coming in and affecting the community.
00:21:57.390 --> 00:21:58.509
And I love that.
00:21:58.509 --> 00:22:05.470
I mean, there's room for competition for sure, and there's tournaments, and I've helped people trade for them too, but that's not us.
00:22:06.029 --> 00:22:11.150
I the visual of all the open tabs in your brain being shut while you're playing is great.
00:22:11.150 --> 00:22:16.110
I and and I think that's kind of how I feel, although I wouldn't have thought to put it into those words.
