26 | Creating a Family Culture of Work, Faith, and Entrepreneurship with Alyssa Redfearn
Hi friends, welcome back to Intentional Motherhood. I'm your host, Kelsey Redd, a stay at home mom with four active little kids and a real mom always trying to learn from those of you who are doing it better than I am. So today I have a really special treat for you. This is going to be our first interview episode where I am actually interviewing one of my amazing mom role models and my older sister, Alyssa Redfern, who had all of her kids before me. Her oldest is 12 and her youngest is just a few months older than my oldest.
Kelsey Redd:So I've been able to watch her grow and develop as a mother and to watch her children grow. And she's doing some amazing things that I'm really excited to share with you. So let's get started. We're going to dive over into that interview. I'm super excited for today's episode because I have my first podcast guest.
Kelsey Redd:It had to be none other than my older sister, Alyssa, who has led the way in her parenting and mothering journey with her kids, and her family has done some really amazing stuff that I'm really excited to talk more about. Welcome, Melissa.
Alyssa Redfearn:Hey, I'm so happy to be here. It's really fun because Kelsey and I are only a year apart. So for most of our life it felt like we did everything together. Went to high school together, went to college together, got married close to the same time, but just the way life turns out, I had four kids. Six months later she has four kids, so we're doing things in a long, long line kind of five years apart from each other.
Alyssa Redfearn:It feels really fun. To me, it's like such a blessing because I feel like I can have eight kids. I can still have babies in my life even without having a bunch more babies myself.
Kelsey Redd:And this is something that I love to tell moms to do, is to find their role model moms because it's so helpful to have someone who's just a few years ahead of you in the journey so that you can see what they're doing, see how things are going, and learn from their successes and their failures of what you want to do as a parent. So Alyssa is definitely one of those role model moms for me, and something that's really cool about her family is they have gotten really into entrepreneurship. But before we get into that, I wanna hear, Alyssa, what you would say defines your family culture?
Alyssa Redfearn:Oh, that's so good. I feel like a few years ago, I was listening to a podcast where a CEO type of guy talked about how he had started a company and something that was top of their list important to do was create a company culture both within the employee company but also like a brand that their customers would understand clearly. And you all know this, you you love Cotopaxi because, you love Vivint because, you love Patagonia because. We all have our loyalty to brands. And he said, one day I woke up and said, why does my family not have a culture?
Alyssa Redfearn:It's so important because it's gonna happen either way. It's just that your culture might become video games because your first kid got a video game console or your culture might become football because one kid had an exceptional talent in football. That culture will come to you and that you have to be so proactive. He said, as a CEO, this was like so important to us. It will drive the direction of our company.
Alyssa Redfearn:When I heard that, I was like, what is my family culture? I don't know what my family brand is or family motto, whatever you want to call it. So we've had a few over the years.
Kelsey Redd:Yeah, so tell us how that has developed and where are you at now?
Alyssa Redfearn:I feel like it's very stage of life. If your family motto is I can do tough things, that's an amazing motto for a family of young children who can have a tantrum over tying their shoes. It can also be something when you're not making the teams you want to make when you're a kind of elementary school age kid. So in our family then, we've had the motto, one of my favorites, Jesus has my back and I've got his back.
Kelsey Redd:I love that.
Alyssa Redfearn:It's so fun because it kind of just reminds us that, like, we have someone in our corner all the time. I think that was something that came about as the kids started leaving the house for school and for teams and just you're at a friend's house and you're not with your mom, and that can feel really weird when you're five and a half years old. And so Jesus has your back and you've got his, you know, no one talks bad about Jesus in our house, we say.
Kelsey Redd:I love that. So it sounds like the spirituality is really important to you guys.
Alyssa Redfearn:Yeah. We've always been really religiously oriented. It's something that grounds us. It's something that we're very well founded in. We belong to a church community, and we love that.
Alyssa Redfearn:But more than that, we try to foster this environment of I have a one on one relationship with Jesus. Prayer can be really important for our kids because I think there are things they don't feel like they can say to their siblings, they don't know if their parents understand, and there's someone they can talk to every morning, every night, really any time.
Kelsey Redd:So helping them to understand that they can build a personal relationship that is prevalent in their life despite any other relationship in the world.
Alyssa Redfearn:That feels really important to us just because you always will experience highs and lows with your religious community or with your parental and child relationship, and you can get really disillusioned by different things. Feeling like one on one, me and Jesus connect, then that's important to us.
Kelsey Redd:I love that. So are there any other underlying cultural definitions that you would put on your family or what are some of the principles that have led you to create the family culture you guys have?
Alyssa Redfearn:So very early on, we started having a really strong feeling about work and the effect of work on our children. We saw a problem in the outside world and we saw a problem inside our house and that was a lack of work. And it really started to stress me and Kyle out as we looked around and we thought, oh, this problem that this friend of the family is having originates from not knowing how to work. And my son loses his mind when I tell him to clean his room because work is so upsetting to him. And we just decided we had to have this rebrand of work.
Alyssa Redfearn:That work was no longer dreaded, get it over with as fast as you can. Work was this thing that we felt like you found joy in, that you gained self confidence in, that is actually internally driven.
Kelsey Redd:So how has that gone over? How has that progressed from hating the work to because right now, you guys are doing some really cool things with actually a family business that your kids are heavily involved in and I don't want to get to that.
Alyssa Redfearn:We always try to point out the well roundedness of work. For example, when we bring up chores, then we bring up why we love the chores. Someone says, I don't wanna do the dishes. That is not an uncommon thing to hear in our house even today. But I say, isn't it so wonderful that we pull clean dishes out of our pantry?
Alyssa Redfearn:That's amazing. I'm so happy that we're eating on real plates. And so this is just something that we try to present is like, I love having a clean house. At home, we try to present work as see this beautiful life that we live and how we say, I'm grateful for my home in our prayers, how we say, I'm grateful for my clothes and my warm bed. These are things that don't just come to us.
Alyssa Redfearn:We contribute to them. We bring them in our lives. We are part of why are we have a warm roof over our head. They're
Kelsey Redd:they have to work for what they have, and they take some accountability for it.
Alyssa Redfearn:Yeah. And that they contribute. And I honestly think that that's something that resonates with kids. Nowadays, I feel like people are saying kids don't wanna contribute. I think they like contributing.
Kelsey Redd:That's amazing. So tell us about the business that you guys have started and how it has come to be what it is.
Alyssa Redfearn:So the Wild Boys Sourdough Company, as it is officially named as of a couple months ago, is a sourdough bread company that our family started just about a year and a half ago. My husband was one of those quintessential sourdough making people of the COVID era, and he worked on a recipe. He loves cooking generally. He worked on a recipe for about two or three years before he had a dough that he was ready to call our everyday dough. And that sourdough recipe became just every morning he made a loaf of sourdough and our family would eat it.
Alyssa Redfearn:We loved homemade bread. We converted to only homemade bread. We loved it. Our second son William really wanted to make some money for the summer. He just was saving up for a bike or something like that.
Alyssa Redfearn:And my husband said, well, if we double my sourdough recipe, you will take one loaf of sourdough around the neighborhood and ask for $5 for it and I will make the other one for our family. So William started doing this. He instantly was making tons of tons of money. The other kids of the family were jealous because here they are selling candy bars for 25¢ and William is making like a $100 in, like, a month. And so we realized that people really liked it, and our neighbors were really receptive, really, really sweet, and even said things like, finally, a kid shows up with something I want.
Alyssa Redfearn:And that kind of surprised us because I laugh because I have bought a rock for $3 from a neighbor child. Like, we all know we're just doing this to be nice to the kids and teach them entrepreneurship and teach them work.
Kelsey Redd:But now your family's actually providing some value to the neighbors.
Alyssa Redfearn:But someone said thank you for finally sending them around with something I actually would like to have in my house. And so, anyways, so after William had made like a $100, we said, you gotta share the wealth with the rest of the brothers. So we started letting everyone take turns. And we started by taking turns with one loaf a day, and then it was two, and then it was three. Now, we have regular subscribers.
Alyssa Redfearn:They buy bread one to two times a week. We always deliver it same day it was baked. We've tried to develop a little bit of a brand. We're getting, like, kinda new with that. But, yeah, the kids have done things like they had each had $200 to spend when we were on vacation, which is mind blowing to me.
Alyssa Redfearn:I never had $200 in my life. They have bought new dirt biking gear, radios, and lights, and just stuff that it's kind of luxury items. We can't afford all that stuff normally, but because they're working, they can go buy a fancy light for their helmet.
Kelsey Redd:Wow. So it sounds like when they're the ones working for the money, earning the money, choosing what they pay for, they probably have a high level of investment in what they're paying for and the work that you guys are doing.
Alyssa Redfearn:Yeah. We've tried a lot of different things. Sometimes we'll save up for a family thing together, and every single shift they do, they don't get paid for. They just know we all get a trip to Hawaii at the end of this. That is one of the hardest ones to tell your kid, I need you to go out and do this work, you just have to trust me that there's a reward at the end.
Alyssa Redfearn:That's challenging. We've made a shift. One thing we do now is that they get a salary every weekend.
Kelsey Redd:Oh, wow.
Alyssa Redfearn:Every loaf of bread you deliver, you get a dollar. And on Saturday, you're getting 5 to $12.
Kelsey Redd:Wow.
Alyssa Redfearn:And then additionally, we say there's money so that we can go on a vacation this summer.
Kelsey Redd:So have there been any challenges or maybe failures along the way that you guys have learned from? What have what lessons have you guys learned from this? It's hard to say.
Alyssa Redfearn:The thing is is that neither my husband or I are entrepreneurs by career. So we're definitely learning along with the kids. And even though we act as if we're the experts because we have a little more world knowledge than our children, we are also very new at this. So, of the challenges have been making company decisions. Another challenge is just kind of your typical, it's the end of a long day.
Alyssa Redfearn:I don't feel like working. And my mom is telling me I have to go sell this bread.
Kelsey Redd:Yeah.
Alyssa Redfearn:Which to me is such a valuable lesson because as a mom, I don't know how many minutes I have that I'm like, I do not feel like driving to this gymnastics practice. I do not feel like doing these dishes or cooking this meal. And I kind of But do it anyway. Yeah. I'm moping it for a second and then say, well, doing it anyways.
Kelsey Redd:So how do you feel like having this business and having this just overall family value of entrepreneurship and work and taking accountability for earning and saving and buying things has translated to your family relationships, sibling relationships even?
Alyssa Redfearn:So previous to this family bread company, our kids would try to earn money in various ways. Henry's selling sodas at the park, William's got a lemonade stand, Noah's trying to fix up a bike or something to sell on KSL. Once we joined in one uniform company, it helped us understand how different people bring different skills to the board. William is a great baker. He always makes the best dough.
Alyssa Redfearn:His brothers don't seem to do as well with that. And in sourdough, it matters. You want good dough. Henry has amazing client relations. All of our regulars, our weekly subscribers, Henry brought them on.
Alyssa Redfearn:Do you want me to bring you a loaf every Wednesday? He's so good. He's so chill. Anyways, it's just everyone's realizing that people bring different skills, and so they're good at specializing. And they're good at realizing that, oh, my brother is good at something.
Alyssa Redfearn:I thought I was the best at everything. He actually is good at something that I'm not great at.
Kelsey Redd:So they're learning to respect each other's differences and and skills.
Alyssa Redfearn:Definitely. The other thing is that because I always insist that we have family goals, then we all know that we're in it for one thing. So they all realize kind of what looking at the same goal means, which is not something that's ever happened because they all have different interests.
Kelsey Redd:It kind of brings it full circle back to what you started saying with, Jesus has your back, but now you've introduced this concept of we have our family's back and we're a team and we're always working to reach a family goal.
Alyssa Redfearn:Yeah. It's definitely bonded us a lot more as a family. It's also a awesome excuse to just spend time together. It's this thing that kind of makes us touch base with each other, like, four times a day.
Kelsey Redd:Interesting. Becomes an anchor.
Alyssa Redfearn:Yeah. So one really cool aspect, my kids all of a sudden started thinking of other people, like, I think this person would like a loaf of bread, and it doesn't seem like they're able to buy it for whatever reason. Do you mind if we just give it to them for free? My husband and I weren't planning on introducing a charitable arm to our company. We feel like we're doing a lot of charity because my husband and I are spending a lot of time and money that we're not getting paid for.
Alyssa Redfearn:It was our kids who thought, like, I just wanna give this one to so and so for free, or I know that so and so had a doctor's visit this week or whatever. And so it started becoming this thing where they were the ones who were coming up with charitable things to do with our company. They haven't yet reached the point where they actually wanna donate their money, but they are thinking of like, oh, I don't mind if we give this one away for free, even though we could make $5.
Kelsey Redd:Wow. That's amazing. That's probably something that you didn't even foresee when you were doing all this, but it's just a silver lining.
Alyssa Redfearn:Yeah. It's awesome. Kids will surprise you in really, really great ways.
Kelsey Redd:I love that. Thanks so much for sharing this experience. I love that, it's something kinda unique that your family does, and I think it's and I feel like family cultures can be anything you want, and it is cool to see something outside of the box like this. Where can people go if they wanted to see more of your business and learn more about your family?
Alyssa Redfearn:You're so kind. Our Instagram handle is wild boys co. We have pictures of our bread. We have pictures of our boys. We deliver actually to multiple cities.
Alyssa Redfearn:We have like Alpine people, our area in Cedar Hills and Linden people. And so we just do different days. You can DM us and get a fresh loaf of sourdough.
Kelsey Redd:That's so cool. Thanks for sharing. And it's been a pleasure talking to you on our podcast today.
Alyssa Redfearn:Hey, thanks for having me.