EXPERIENCE 110 | Nathan Wilbanks & Alex Swanson - On Artificial Intelligence, Marketing, Writing, and Thinking - and the Romance of an Entrepreneurial Journey Together

Nathan Wilbanks and Alex Swanson on artificial intelligence, marketing, writing, and thinking, and the romance of an entrepreneurial journey together. Nathan Wilbanks and Alex Swanson are the founders of Biza Media, a content and strategy driven marketing agency headquartered in Fort. In 2021, Nathan departed Bizo to develop new ideas and eventually founded Jack and Jill, a subscription-based AI powered writing tool focused on the collaborative power of an AI tool and a thoughtful content creator. We get deep in this one deep into the utility and limitations and dangers of chat, G P T and OpenAI and the various iterations and deep into the relationship between Nathan and Alex who have been together since Alex was in junior. And they had a baby together shortly after she graduated high school, while Nathan operated a high-end custom motorcycle shop. This episode brings great discussion about human intelligence, artificial intelligence, and relational intelligence, plus business and family with a pair of authentic and inspiring entrepreneurs. So please join me in welcoming Nathan Wilks and Alex Swanson. Welcome back to Lo Experience. This is your host, Kurt Baer, and today I'm with Nathan Wil Banks and Alex Swanson. And these guys are the owners and operators of a couple of businesses, Bizo Media, and a new one, Jack and Jill. And, uh, so I think let's just start by, why don't you guys describe what you're up to right now, and maybe, uh, just a hint toward what you've been working on. You want me to cooker? Sure. All right. Um, we've got the tenure here. Yeah. Okay. So, um, well, just a little background. Nathan and I are married, um, and we have collaborated a lot in business. Um, since the Donna time it seems like, um, we started a digital marketing company, Vizo Media. And, um, essentially I run that full-time now. Yep. And we specialize a lot in content marketing and organic marketing. So, uh, less to do with like paid ads and things like that. We really like to build an organic, thoughtful, uh, marketing strategy for companies to reach their ideal target audience. So that's like a combination of maybe email marketing and also just SEO type things to blogging, social media, just the audience telling the story. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Not always be beholden to the paper per click. Yep, yep. Exactly. Okay. And then, um, Nathan, what are you, I know you've been working on a number of things and kind of, uh, yeah, so, um, I kind of left Bizo, I guess late 2021. Has it been that long? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I felt like it was in a good place. We put out, you know, some really good projects and stuff, and I just felt like I needed a change. Um, I for a while I kind of felt like, I don't know if you've ever seen the Office, but uh, sure. There's a, there's a guy there. What kind of American would I be in? I hadn't seen the office. The, uh, David Wallace, when he leaves the company, he uh, he kind of goes crazy and he creates, what was that company called? Suck It. Suck It, yes. Yeah, he creates, suck It just some crazy off the ball thing and everybody thought he was crazy and then he, he ended up selling it for millions of bucks. But that's kind of how I felt. Cuz you know, I left Vis off, which was, you know, very stable. It was, you know, growing. We were, you know, doing good stuff. And I feel like I, uh, looking back, I did, you know, I kind of abandoned it. I left, you know, just in search. It suffered for your departure. Yeah, it did. Um, I definitely didn't, I didn't give the support I should have whenever I left. Um, really Alex had to take on the reins and just, you know, figure it out and, you know, I was there for consult, but I definitely could have made it, uh mm-hmm. Easier. But I mean, in, in the pain, I think it's, it's grown bizo cuz it's seen what we're really good at, you know, because, um, some of the things that we just, I was piecing together manually on the background that nobody re even knew about. You know, it's one of those things to leave like, oh my God, why is that process falling apart? Nathan was doing some shit in the background, taking care of it. Yeah. You know, whether it. Uh, technical automation or stuff like that. But I left Bizo and now I'm into, um, artificial intelligence. Yeah. So the project I've got going on now is an AI writing assistant, and it initially started as a outline generator, kind of for BIS Opp. Hmm. Um, just kind of like a little side project. And then it's grown and grown and grown into the point where, I mean, now we have several thousand agencies using it, and it's, it's creating content that it blows us away every single day. It's, it's getting really good. I have to say, the first time Alex showed me some samples was probably like last fall. Mm-hmm. And I was like, what? That's better than my writing, you know? And I produced it in like 20 minutes. Yeah. It was crazy. Does that freak you out or does it make you happy or both? Uh, it's super exciting. Um, to a degree. It, I mean, as a writer, you know, at first I was like, there's no way it's gonna be as good as a writer. Um, this is bad for writers. You know, I had all of those skepticisms and then using the tool, it has expanded my mindset on what is. Possible with writing. I want to know, um, cuz I was at a podcast convention this past, uh, month I guess, or six weeks ago and they were, there was a lot on AI and chat G P T and stuff. Like what is, what's different about what you're working on than just kind of the out of the box chat, G P T and why can't I just use that? Cuz that's pretty near free, right? Or Yeah, yeah. And you could, um, one of the main differences really is our target is specifically for, um, organic SEO blog articles. So if you're looking to create extremely high quality, much higher quality than just typing in a prompt for J Chat, g p t is gonna provide mm-hmm. In a quick succession, then that's really where Jack and Jill comes in. Oh. And you can kind of build layered content and kind of like, because it's built on that outline foundation, it can kind of go from point to point. It isn't just like chat G P T, but what is God Right. In a two page report? Yeah. Well, and that's the thing I, I would say an or an AI is only as good as really what you're giving it on the input. And, you know, a lot of people, they're using chat G P T, you know, Hey chat G p t write me an article about, about X, Y, Z and that's very surface level, you know. Yeah. We've, we've got some, we've done a bunch of studies where typing in, you know, even a, a target audience, so having, you know, uh, people in Florida. For example, could be the target audience or imagine, um, you know, influential high wealth individual, small business owners. Small business owners looking, you know, who uh, love luxury lifestyle, who enjoy boating in their life, uh, in their free time. Like how detailed can you get to give that AI more information Yeah. To pack it back into that, that article. And that's what our tool does automatically. Yeah. So it makes it easy. And then on the SEO front, is it like based on what you can learn on public data, what words are cost, what, and being found easily and stuff like that, you can kind of intentionally load those keyword words or whatever? Yeah, yeah. And it still allows a lot of flexibility for the rider, cuz that's one thing that we've kind of gotten feedback is a lot of people don't, they don't want to have the, the freedom taken away. So, you know, they're kind of honestly at the end of the day worried about, you know, AI taking their job. So at, at some point it's skepticism like, you know, I don't wanna lean into it too much. Yeah. I still don't have some control here cuz if not, you know, it's, it's, yeah. What's the point of them paying me 50,000 or 60, 70? But you know, beyond even just that, I think it really does help, um, because the AI can't read your mind yet. You know, it's really, it's only as good as the information that you're giving into it. So that's really where our system comes in. Um, you know, it's super intimidating for a lot of people to start with. Just like a blank chat g PT screen. Yeah. It just says, you know, one input's like, well, I don't, I don't know, you know, and where to start. Yeah, sure. You can ask a bunch of questions, but we really take that outta the picture. So really our tool, you know, I love chat, G P d I use it, you know, I pay for it. So it's, it's a great tool, but, um, it's more of a generalist tool. And ours is very specific to content writing, long form content writing. Yeah. For like marketers, small businesses, people who are looking to play the SEO game. And, and it's important to note too that it automatically formats it for SEO results. Yeah. So there are a lot of little bitty details that go into a good SEO article. Mm-hmm. And it automatically formats it for you, so you can come with pretty much zero prior knowledge to how SEO works and it's formatted well. And what I think I like about what you're saying there is because your, your target is kind of the agencies so that mm-hmm. They don't have. Spend a hundred hours learning about chat g p t to make use of it, they can just use it. Right? Mm-hmm. And be trained on how to use the Jack and Jill tool mm-hmm. Or whatever. Mm-hmm. One question I was, uh, just thinking about, and I just slipped my mind. Oh, is the large language model that powers your tool, is that the chat thing and you're just tapping into that? Or have you got a different, so the JAK system's actually using several different large language models. So, um, we actually did just integrate the chat G P T api, which is amazing and super fast. Um, actually it, out of all the things that it does, surprisingly, the chat, um, is one of my least favorite things. So our chat on the application for us, ours is not using a chat G P T api, it's using a different one. But, uh, yeah, we use several different ones. You know, some, some close source models. So there's, there's like subscription based kind of other large language models that are out there, not just one big open source that's raising all the eyebrows. Yeah. And I mean, open AI has obviously led the way with, they've, they've been out for a while. Their G P D system's been out for a while. I've been using our API since late 2021, so it's not. Something that's like super new. But chat, g p t as a product kind of brought it into the forefront because it was just so easy. I mean, it's literally just, yeah, one, one little chat. It's like Google just punch, punch some stuff in there, which I think is good. But the same limitation happens with Google. People aren't, they don't always know what they need to search. So Alex, or Is, is Bis opp in some ways was kind of the beta customer for Well, um, Nathan. And were you kind of like eager to do that after he abandoned you? I mean, I was, I was actually super excited because I felt like it was a compromise after he abandoned me and I was drowning in work. We're gonna come back to that story, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. We, he, well, it was kind of half abandoned, half kicked out, but Right. We'll talk about this later. That's true. Um, but yeah, I, I was super excited to find a solution that would help me streamline all the work I had on my plate all of a sudden. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, um, on top of that, It was fun as a writer to be able to have my hand in exactly what I wanted in a software. Mm-hmm. I've never been able to do that before. And I actually, I brought one of my friends, Taylor Hill, who's also a writer in, and we basically, everything that you see in Jack, I mean, we basically told him we wanted. Yeah. And so it has been really nice Yeah. To have a tool built Exactly. For what we use it for. Yeah. Yeah. Or what we need. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a writer's, uh, tool in many experiences. Built, built by writers. Well, built by Nathan for writer, directed by writers. Yeah. Yeah, definitely Alex. And I mean, we've got, I think, yeah, almost 2,500 different riders and agencies on the tool now. And we just released our, the alpha version, um, I think it was Valentine's Day. Oh, wow. Okay. So about a month ago. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's exciting. It's, it's grown fast and we're getting a lot of feedback and it's, it's definitely, I wanna circle back to, uh, kind of the, the where you want to go and where you're taking biza and things. But before we do, I want to think about, I was thinking just now about when, um, when we really started getting acquainted, Alex, cuz we were acquainted from being next door neighbors at one point mm-hmm. In business. But at one point you were like, I want to be in a local think tank, chapter two. And Nathan was a member and you're like, I'm kind of, I'm kind of running it more than he is now. I was like, oh, is that so I did not know. Yeah. Yeah. So you were kind of slowly taking the reins and then when they got to be whatever, half taken or something, you were like, I'm out of here. Yeah, a little bit. And you were like, well good. Don't let the door hit you on your way out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it was very much like that. Nathan, um, Nathan, actually, hunter, hunter and I talked about this. He's a starter. Yeah. He's the type of person that loves to invent things and build things. He was getting bored and when he is over something it is such a drive to be around. I said, no shit. I said, not two weeks before I made the decision to leave, I verbatim said, wow. This is the greatest project that I've ever created. And it was, it was a project that we had worked on and it really was, it was one of my favorite projects. I thought, you know, we were at the top of the world and it was just, I'm not beyond that, like the creation aspect of it. Everything else had gotten just too, I feel like monotonous. Yeah. Like it was too much of a drag, you know? Mm-hmm. And I needed to go back cuz I'm really the type who likes the novelty of things. And you know, I worked with blockchains several years ago, um, getting into that, you know, got out of that, got, you know, really deep into building just digital products for people, you know. So I think that's always been fun. Um, but then I kind of lost a little interest in that because, you know, I wasn't building anything long term for myself. Hmm. So I kept building these projects for everybody else and they were very technical and everything. And at the end of the day, I felt like I was just running an agency. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So, and, and at the end of the day I really kind of geared towards more like the engineer mindset. Yeah. So that's interesting. Yeah. I wanna learn about like how you learned all about this backend stuff and stuff, because. Like you guys were fresh in business kind of when we met. And so I think the best thing to do now is jump in the time capsule. Sure. And, uh, the time machine and head back to, um, you guys seem like you're like grade school sweethearts or something maybe, but uh, like are you from the same place, same region as the country? Yeah. District 14 in Georgia. Okay. Marjorie Taylor Greens. Oh, is that right? Oh, yeah. She's always trending. Yeah. Um, for as small as that area is. Where is that in Georgia? It's northwest Georgia. Near like Chattanooga, Tennessee. Okay. Yep. Uh, yeah, like the tri-state area. So you're right next to Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. Right in that corner kind of. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up, she claims Georgia. I claim Chatanooga more cuz I, I grew up mostly on the Tennessee side. Oh, is that right? Until really, I guess high school. Yep. So let's, uh, take those a little bit separately, or, or did you guys meet in high school? Is that eventually So yeah, actually. So where you were in the, in the mtg district 14 country or whatever. Yep. Uh, what, uh, what your brothers, sisters, what were your parents up to? What was the community and the culture like? A little bit? Yeah. So I grew up in a really small town. Um, my, in fact, in my grade I had about 80 students. Hmm. And, um, sixth grade, my dad was my sixth grade math teacher. Oh, fun. Uh, when I was in high school, he was my principal. Um, I, I felt like stable community sounds like. I mean, yeah. I, I definitely grew up with a very solid family. Um, I love them. We're very close. Um, I have two brothers. I'm the middle child, so I'm most likely to go to jail. Statistical. Yeah. Is that right? I didn't know that. Yep. The youngest probably would be, but nope. Middle child. Okay. Middle child's a problem. One, and honestly, I was always in trouble. Um, I met Nathan in, was it ninth grade? I think it was ninth grade. Um, we dated for a couple year or several, several years. And, um, he lived about 20 minutes away. Okay. Um, yeah. Just across or just back now, across on the Georgia side, but mm-hmm. And let's switch it to you just a little bit. Um, you were on the Chattanooga side or whatever, of Tennessee. What was your. Family dynamic. You have siblings? Yeah. Do you have Yeah, so I'm the oldest of four boys. Oh. Um, yeah. My dad and mom are definitely glutton for punishment. My, my wife's brother has four boys, and, uh, yeah, it's an, a special thing. Yeah, it is. Um, yeah, so, um, grew up in Chattanooga suburbs, uh, I guess mostly Hickson area, you know, went middle school, um, didn't do a whole lot in middle school. Played, played football, I guess. Uh, started playing music in high school, got back or something like that. Yeah. Wasn't I, I'm not real big now, so I wasn't real big then, but, uh, yeah. Wide receiver corner at the time. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, yeah. So good student. No, no terrible student. Um, I didn't, I, I still stick with now I, I don't think these big gray boxes are a very good fit for like hyper ADHD boys, and that was definitely, yeah. You know, me and all of my brothers were just very high strung. Yeah. Um, I'm a lot more calm now, but, uh, yeah. So moved to, we actually moved to North Georgia just across the line, maybe half a mile across the line. So I was in Georgia by the time I went to high school. Um, I got really into music. I was practicing probably six, eight hours a day. Whoa. Yeah, it was insane. Um, I played in several bands. We Oh, guitar. Yeah. Um, I played guitar, piano, and drums now. Wow. But it was mostly guitar then, but we toured around, um, we'd gone for a couple weeks at a time. Wow. High school. Yeah. Okay. It was really, it was, it was. So you took your studies very seriously? I did not, I did not take them seriously. Um, what did your, uh, did your dad work and mom stay home watching those four boys, or no? No. So they both, they both worked. Okay. Um, so my dad, uh, he initially started out, um, you know, he's, he's so smart. My, my dad, uh, is just like, everything mechanical is right up his alley. Mm-hmm. So he, he started at a sign shop and he started doing sign design. And this is right when I guess the graphical user interface was really spinning up. This was early nineties. And Yeah. You know, he showed me around these tools, sign lab and stuff like that. And that played a big role into my kind of tech journey. Yeah. But, uh, he, he ended up being a, uh, plant manager and assigned company for, you know, several years and kind of managed that. And, um, my mom's an accountant, so, um, yeah, they were both working and. Just rubber day kind of, uh, Joe paycheck kind of lifestyle. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Uh, some struggle, you know, I guess going into high school, so my parents did divorce. Oh. You know, going, yeah. Going from middle school to high school. So that was, that's sort of tough. One of my friends says that people like heading toward divorce don't always, don't often realize enough that like both families, standards of living are gonna take a major cut, no matter how you slice it. Oh yeah. It was, it was super tough. Now, I mean, they're, they're actually great friends. My mom and dad. That's cool. They're, they're both remarried and they're, they're good friends. And every time we go back home, you know, we're hanging out with all of'em. That's awesome. Cool. And they've got great relationships, so, Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, tell me more about young Alex. Uh, like were you a good student? Were you an athlete? Were you a writer already? I was an average student. I really had to work hard to make good grades. Um, just book smarts. It does, it doesn't really come natural to me. Mm-hmm. I'm a lot more just scrappy and street smart. Yeah. And just like figure, figure shit out on my own type of person. Um, so I guess I'm kind of like Nathan, like being stuck in a classroom was hard for me. Yeah. Um, reading was hard for me. But you were committed to achieving Yeah, in some ways. In a different, yeah, I was a way that he was, did well. He was committed to achieving, but in music or whatever things. Well, and coming from like a, like a little closer. Oh, sorry. Um, so my dad being an educator, he definitely instilled that value of, you know, getting a good education is important. It's good to live with structure and follow the roles and respect your elders and all of that. So I do think if we're comparing, yeah, my life has been easier. I was just like ingrained those Mm. Yeah. Types of values. That's funny. Yeah. Well, because you, when otherwise you've got these, all of us have these rough edges. Yeah. But if you're bouncing hard against the edges Yep. You know? Uh, yep. And Nathan's very much the opposite, which I think is why we work so great as a team. Yeah. Um, because if I didn't have someone to teach me to, you know, have some rough edges sometimes Yeah. I would be walked all over constantly. Yeah. And so, um, so yeah, I, I was a cheerleader. I played soccer. Um, very busy kid, very attention seeking ditzy loud. Um, is that what cut your, uh, Nathan's attention? Uh, no. Maybe a hundred percent. No. Actually, I think the first time we met, we, she didn't, I don't think she said one word. I was actually, I met, she was with one of her friends and I roll up and I think at the time, I think I had one of my motorcycles. Yeah. So Alex, the first time I ever met her, she almost knocks over my motorcycle. So I, I definitely, I thought she was ditsy, little, little ditsy. I was like, I don't know about that girl. She's, she's getting messed, messed my stuff up. Yeah. But no, then, then we started talking and, you know, rest of sister. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just, I've always been down for like a good time. Mm-hmm. Like, I'm, I'm very social and I don't know. Yeah. I don't even think she asked. She just like threw her leg over it. She's just like, oh, like you didn't bump into it. You're like, no, just your motorcycle on it. And then it was very heavy. Yeah. She didn't realize it's like a 700 pound motorcycle. That's awesome. So, um, I remember Nathan from when we first met and we were office neighbors that like, some of your early work was in a motorcycle shop cuz we, yeah. You know, I was raised in a motorcycle family too. Were you a motorcycle kid first and then the motorcycle shop came along? Yeah. Uh, just barely. So I guess going into high school, so my parents split up. Um, I stayed with my mom I guess for the first couple years and, you know, then I wanted a change from, at the time she was living in kind of like middle Tennessee. So there's not a whole lot to do up there. So, Um, my dad had just moved down to just shy of, you know, the Chattanooga, Georgia. He was on the Georgia side. Yeah. On the Georgia side of the Chattanooga line. So, uh, I was like, okay, well I wanna go live with dad for a while. And, um, you know, he had an opportunity to buy a piece of property there. Um, there was, you know, he was able to buy a house and, uh, uh, a little tiny building. The thing couldn't have been 800 square square feet. It was so tiny. Right. And I remember the price on it was like$16,000. And I'm not shitting you. This is in District 14, so Alex knows where it's at. It's. It is one, it is one of the most poverished areas in Georgia. Mm-hmm. And we were on one of the most poverished roads in that district. It's as cheap as you're ever gonna get. Right, right. Yeah. But it was the house he could afford at the time or whatever. And but, but looking back, it provides such an opportunity because he could have easily afforded, you know, a little bit more and just rented. Mm. But I think that ownership mindset where he was like, well, no, it's not much, but it's mine. Yeah. And this is my motorcycle shop, and it was in nowhere. Yeah. And, and we had people actually come and Yeah. My first Oh, so he was fixing motorcycles with your help and the Yeah, so, so my first foray into it, so my, my first job was, I think I was 14 and I worked with my mom up in, uh, COE, Tennessee was where I was, uh, where she lived at. And it was at a restaurant. But then once I moved with dad, um, it was just kind of being a helper mechanic. And I was also doing marketing and stuff at the time. And yeah, I mean, I, I learned a lot about business. I can tear apart a Harley engine from top to bottom and put it back together. I can, I don't know, I can, I learned how to develop websites. Then I went to, I guess at that same time. Wow. I was, I So you built a website basically for your dad's repair business or whatever? Yeah. So I, I didn't realize it was your dad's business. Uh, yeah. Previously. Yeah. So, um, and it was, It really, I guess the way it started with my, like coding venture was honestly back with, there was this social media site called Xanga and it was before MySpace. And basically you could code themes with that. And that was my first foray. And then I remember we had gotten a quote from a local agency in Chattanooga and it was like$10,000 for a website at the time. Right, right. Cause they were the cutting edge thing. I was like, nobody knew how to do it. Maybe 2003, right? 2004. So beginning of my high school career. And I was like, the hell with that? I know html, I can build it. And I did. And it was, and people were like, that's a pretty nice website. Could, yeah. And then at the same time, at the same time, I guess halfway through school, so I was a mechanic at my dad's shop. And then I was also, I had Will Banks design, which was my, my freelance design and development practice. Oh, very cool. At the time. Yeah. Very cool. It was great. So, uh, we'll come in the family section and really tell the love story, but you guys did, you started dating in junior high and, and have you been together since, or was there a season of Not, or About two months of not. Okay. Oh, that's it. That's not too much. Yeah, that's not, not too bad. After, yeah. 15 years. Yeah. That was our like. Are we making the right decision, pondering on our relationship and then we realized, yeah, yeah, yeah. We work really well together. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, you're never gonna find a per perfect person, cuz there there are no such things. So. Exactly. If you jive with somebody, you might as well just grab'em. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so what was that evolution then? Did you, um, you were dating through high school? Did either one of you go to college? Yep. We both went to college. Okay. But, um, we, we had our daughter at a really young age. Yeah. Um, so we had dated for two years. Um, I remember going to my senior prom and I, it was about a week after I found out I was pregnant. Oh, oops. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, and, you know, I, it was, that's, that's actually it is this like bible belt still too. And so that was scandalous. Even though it was 2004 or whatever. I was so scared. I told my mom as soon as I found out. Yeah. I was so scared to tell my dad and he, I, I'll never forget, he was just like, It's okay, we're gonna make it work. Mm-hmm. It's okay. He was just so supportive. I you're like, I thought you were supposed to be mad at me. Yeah. Like, like, I'm embarra. I, I felt like such an embarrassment to him mm-hmm. Because of who he was. Mm-hmm. And so, because he's a school principal, right? Yeah. And so, like, I was like, I felt so guilty. Like that's what I kept thinking about. Yeah. And you know, he was so supportive. He walked hand in hand with me down the halls, you know, just still, like, he never showed that he wasn't proud. Yeah. And so, like, I, I just, kudos dad. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and both of my parents, and I mean, our families are very supportive. Mm-hmm. But that was hard, um, because we were 18 and thought, okay, well, we're adults, you know? Right. Of course. Looking back on it now, we were children, we were babies. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We didn't know what we were doing. And, you know, it was hard, but we made it work and we didn't. And you went to college anyway? We did. We did. We went online. Um, well, hybrid. Yeah. Which was the new thing then, right? Right. And were you just motorcycle mechanicing and, and or were you, you went off to college where both, where would, where'd you go I guess is the question there both at the same place? Yeah. I assume since you're married and sorry, maybe you weren't married yet, I suppose. Yeah. Uh, we didn't get married for eight years, so that's a story later, but we were very untraditional. Yeah. We're life, life partners. Yeah. And then eventually we're like, man, let's, let's actually, yeah. But, um, yeah, so we both went to Georgia, Northwestern Technical College. Okay. Which was a, uh, technical college near where we lived. Um, whenever I had Ellie, I was 18, and, um, Nathan bought a$40,000 house Oh, right across the street from the motorcycle shop. Mm-hmm. And, um, it had been abandoned for years, but it was actually, it was a very great opportunity because we were paying the owner, so it was like a personal loan. Oh, right. Yeah. Owner finance, kind of zero interest. Oh, wow. Yeah. Zero. Yeah. You just had 20 years to pay him or whatever. Yeah. And that's all good. Yep. It was a$333 and 33 cent payment every month. And we raised Ellie there. I remember when we moved in, all we had was a couch and a pack and play. Yeah. And I mean, we grew our lives and it was great. Yeah. And, mm-hmm. For, so you, did you go through school too? And what was your degrees? So I didn't, didn't quite, so, so when I was really, I was more focused on the motorcycle shop. Mm-hmm. So I had, um, I had actually not even, so I, I missed, I failed a couple classes in high. I did too. In, well, oh, in high school. In high school. Failed a couple classes. I was told that if I came back another semester, I could graduate halfway through the year. So I came back, did, did some classes. Well, then I kind of got the runaround and they were like, well, you're gonna have to stay another semester. And I was like, okay, I'm out at that. So I literally left. So you weren't legal to actually be in the college? So I left, sorry, I'm jumping ahead. I left immediately went, got my g e d and within a week just applied. Oh, so you're fine. Applied to the college and I did that for a couple years and I was in the business management program and I just, I, I'm, I'm gonna be honest, I was, I was, I feel like I was learning too much at the motorcycle shop in the real world and these businesses. Yeah. On, you know, the different, you know, macroeconomic theories of things. Right. Just weren't applicable, you know, to what I was dealing with in the day to day. I didn't, I didn't have the funding or the sources to deal with those sort of things at the time. So I really, you know, focused on the task at hand, which was running the motorcycle shop. Yeah. And, and yeah. Getting jobs done efficiently and all that. Yeah. I was just, when Alma started here, um, she was, uh, taking classes at Front Range Community College. Mm-hmm. And. They went back to remote classes only and she wasn't that interested anyway and whatever. Yeah. And she's like, I'm learning so much more here at Lo think Tank and I can take online classes and I can watch YouTube videos. Mm-hmm. And do things that are current and cutting edge, not five years old already. Yeah. Yeah. So it really comes down to like, what do you wanna do in your career? Yeah. If you wanna do business, you don't have to go to school. You really don't. It's, it's helpful if you're young and you have the time. If you wanna have an engineering company, you'll. Yeah, you might have to, but Yeah. But yeah. Um, yeah, I mean it really just depends on what you wanna do. And so what were you doing? Yeah, so I majored, I don't remember the program cuz it was a technical school. I plan on going to a four year college. And so I did just like a normal program. Kind of a generalist for a little bit. Yeah. Just to get some credits so then I could transfer and I transferred to Western Governor's University where I majored in early childhood education. Oh, okay. Um, I got through that, um, almost, I was like, maybe, I don't know, 30 credit short or something. Decided I didn't wanna do that anymore. Switched to business management and, um, went to school another couple years. Oh wow. I have no degree. I'll just go ahead and say, um, a lot. But you have plenty of credits, A lot of student set of one or two degrees at least, and then a lot of student debt. But I, I mean, I went to a pretty cheap school, so I can't complain. Yeah. But mm-hmm. Yeah. I imagine if it was a hundred grand or hundred grand in today's world Right. It's like 20,000. Right. So it's not bad. Yeah. So you're running the motorcycle shop. Was your dad involved this whole time too? Yeah. Yeah. So he was, he was. Split in his time. He was still the prop, um, the plant manager at the Oh, right. So you were kind of running the motorcycle shop most of the time. And he was at a, at a hobby business kind of. So at 18 he moved to the Tennessee side of things. He got tired of paying the Georgia 10% tax, so he Okay. Flipped over the line to avoid that. Um, and at that point he was saying mostly up there, and I, I did, I found myself running the motorcycle shop from the front end to the back end. Yeah. The, you know, hello, this is Nathan, you know, to answer and to running the park. What was the name of the shop? It was, uh, the Hogs Pin. The Hogs Pin. Yeah. Oh, nice. You know, hogs PIN is Nathan. Um, it, it taught me a lot. It brings back so many memories hearing that It does my, I mean, it was so funny cuz I was 18, 19 years old running this motorcycle shop and the people bringing their bikes were 50, 60 year old Sure. Men. Right. Who have$50,000 motorcycles. Like it was, you know, I, I had, I had to learn so much and I, I couldn't, I couldn't take any shit and I couldn't, you know, at one, at any point, you know, let my guard down because like, those are their babies. Right. I don't know if you know Harley owners, but they take it. Really don't let Alex dip any of those motorcycles over when she's over. So I never touched another one, ill say. But they, they're real particular, and, and you know, they're motorcycles. I'm sure I learned a lot. Yeah. So, uh, kind of, I guess it must not have been too much after that when you guys packed up the truck and moved to Colorado. Huh. And by the way, your wife's, uh, wine is ready for a refill. Yes. If you wanna grab that little bottle. Yeah. Um, we moved to Colorado in 2014. Um, oh, so that's a little bit later. Yeah, it was, well, Ellie was four years old, my daughter. Okay. So, um, so yeah, I mean, it was just a lot of, in fact, before we moved, a year before, um, we were both working two jobs. Oh, wow. Wow. To save up, to move. It was a really big deal that our families, um, had a really hard time supporting. Mm-hmm. I mean, taking their granddaughter across the country. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And what was the driver of that? Like, just wanted to be in a different place? Or was there a job opportunity out here or something? We, so we initially, we had the idea, we moved out here, well, one, you know, we kind of wanted to mix it up, get out of, out of, you know, Georgia, we'd been there, you know, Tennessee, Georgia for a long time, so do something different. But we had some friends that were coming out to Colorado and there was a business venture that me and some guys wanted to get into, uh, with a sensory deprivation, flotation Oh yeah. Business. Yeah. I had one stretch, uh, in my SBDC consulting days. Mm-hmm. Where in the span. Two months I met with four different would be mm-hmm. Float tank. Thanks Joe. Rick Operators here in Fort Collins. Yeah. Yeah. Must have been something like that. Yeah. The early and none of'em launched. And then somebody, I think does have a float thing in Fort Collins now, but it was like over a year, maybe two years later. So yeah. They're, they're so capital intensive. Yeah. It just, it was like half a million dollars launch. Well, and you better have a launch a couple hundred thousand dollars in marketing to get it spun up afterwards. Cause otherwise they're, those payments are gonna eat you up before you can fill'em. And then what happens is, I think about 95% of the cost was just maintenance, maintenance of those tanks. Oh, really? Manually. So that's where really the biggest foray, that wasn't really included in the projections of most of the ones I looked at. Yeah. It's, it's a lot to look, to look at cuz there's to do it right and keep those tanks clean, like there's so much cleaning stuff involved. So much dosing. And that was one of the things that got me into the tech space is we actually developed a automated float tank system And oh, that was kind of my foray. It was totally touch pad controlled from the front desk and the entire, entire, like system cleaned itself, dosed itself. It literally detected the pH level and all that stuff. And now they're on the market. You can buy those now. You can, you can buy those now. You couldn't buy those. It wasn't, you tried to create it for yourself because you realize what the intensive maintenance was gonna cost you in terms of labor hours and shutdown time. And, and that was the only way that we were gonna get it set up, is we figured up the cost and we were like, there's no way we're gonna be able to buy these tanks and do all the renovations that it takes to keep. Place as quiet as you need. Yeah. Because one, one footstep or you know, loud noise that you hear Yeah. In the float tank and it just jars you awake and it's a terrible experience. So, so, so you guys are working two jobs. Mom's watching the mm-hmm. Baby a lot and some other, other people here and there because there's charges and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And you're saving up money cuz you're gonna move to Colorado with this float tank venture. Yeah. Oh yeah. And your, your families and everybody else are like, what now? They're like, you guys are smoking crack. And we're No. Just kidding. Uh, no we weren't. No, you're just dreamers. We're dreamers. We really are. Yeah. I mean, we've always been like that. So did that come together? Did it ever have revenues? I assume you had saved some capital, but needed a bank to be friendly and stuff like that too? Yeah, so we had, one of our partners was our cash investor. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It, it lasted for a while, but, you know, we really, we, we didn't try to get any other funding backing. I think there were some like key things at a point where we did have the opportunity to. Yeah. So, and, and honestly, you know, I think partner trust and stuff like that comes in a lot, you know, and that's one of hard of those things hard. We were young and you know, when somebody says, okay, we'll sign here for a half million dollars. Yeah. It's like, okay, are we sure we want to go down this venture? And there was just so many cracks that we kind of saw. You know, with the model and looking back, I've, I've done the research on, you know, those poor float tank centers since then, they're not high revenue generating machines, really. You know? Yeah. You gotta keep'em booked up just constantly. Right. You're buying yourself a job. Right. And that's still fun. Really. Yeah. Most of the people who own'em are self cell owning. It's, it's not Right. There isn't enough overhead to have staff hardly. And helping you out and stuff. Yeah. That's a not a super attractive venture necessarily. It's like owning a laundromat or something. Right? Yeah. So we got ourself real into debt with that, you know? Mm. Just broke, running, running ourselves so thin, cuz. You know, we were just putting all our time and effort there. Yeah. So that's, that's actually when Bizo got started is okay. And you've rented the cheapest office you could find, which was right across the hall from my, the cheapest office I could find with my thriving look with think tank business. Oh, and El Good office. Elon was great. Elis yeah. Really great landlord. And in a, and a good building. You know, if you, if you like small windowless offices, it's got a lot of. I know. Yeah. That was the only thing, like my office now has windows and it's better because of that. We had, we had to put so many fake plants in there to just give it, give it. I had actually that plant right there I had in my prior office before I downsized into that thing. And it was a, a little money tree, right? Oh yeah. And it stayed the same size for like three years. And then I moved into my College Avenue one right by La Chiba Hood HQ there, and it like went from 18 inches to six feet tall and like, oh my god. Two years or a year. Anyway, what they, what'd they do with nourishment, right? Little dirt. Yeah. When I was at, when I was at the America building, I had to have like a plant light just shining at it to keep it time fairly alive. Yeah. It's barely surviving. Right. Thing I, I kept it alive for like a year and a half there. Hey, that's impressive. Yeah. So, uh, so that's Bizo Media. So because of what you had learned, marketing the motorcycle thing and various things, and I'm assuming you were the marketing lead on, were you also invested in, in working on the float project or were you working elsewhere or, yeah, so, um, I saw, I don't know, looking back on this now, I wonder if I was sticking my nose where it didn't belong. Hmm. Um, kind of situation. But I saw a lot of. Issues with the three partners not communicating well, and we, none of us were good managers. And so, and, and Alex statistically is, is a better manager. And so I came in and I had to-do lists and I had like objectives and I had deadlines and, you know, I was like, Hey, um, I'm helping, but I'm also gonna get shares in this company if I'm helping. And I, like, I just came in and, and one of the partners because I know you guys can't pay me. So, yeah. Yeah. That's kind of how it was. And, uh, and one of the partners was really not happy about it. And, um, and it, it quickly dissolved after that. And so then I was like, okay, so what's next? You know, I was, I, I guess I have this personality that's just like, I love to be. If somebody's taking the charge and they're like, Hey, this is now the goal. Then you're like, I'm jumping in. Yeah. Yeah. And so that was how it was with bis op. I, I didn't know how I, like, I wasn't a graphic designer and I wasn't a writer, but I knew how to, I, I guess I'm a creative person, so I watched a lot of YouTube and I taught myself Photoshop and Illustrator and um, and picked it up fast. So I don't know that there's, there's that meme. If those people have seen, uh, it's Rick Rubin going around and he's like, I have no technical ability. I I have, I can't play any instruments. I can't do anything. Right. I'm not a technical guy. I just know what I like. And this motherfucker gets paid like millions of dollars to touch his hand on these records. Oh, right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's, he's, yeah, he's a great podcast guest. I've heard him on Lex Friedman. I think he's great. Another one, he's got so many good thoughts, but he's, and that's kind of how Alex was. She's like, I, I don't know. I'm like a sponge. I'm guess She was not technical. So I've spent like every wake, so that six to eight hours guitar playing every day through middle school. Right. That continued, but it continued in like code and design and things like that. And still, still music even till the day. It's just my days are getting shorter and shorter cuz there's not enough time. But with every hobby I add to it. But, you know, Alex was a sponge. I remember she actually hooked us up and real kickoff of Biz Off was, was because Alex designed one newsletter for a PR agency in New York. Yeah. And it took off. Hmm. And well, they started throwing their clients at us. Nice. And it was a great partnership for years. Um, we probably relied on it more than we should have. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, it gave us the confidence that we needed to continue. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so you have like a lot of design experience and stuff, but Alex is like, well, I know what I like and I know what people like. Mm-hmm. And this newsletter is a good one for people that think like this. I'm a little bit of a copycat. Yeah. Too. Like I'll find things I like and then I'm like, like I found a YouTube video recently that I was like, wow, I'm sold. I'm gonna go buy this software. And then I was like, Nathan, take this YouTube video and, and plan point by point everything but tie it to Jack and Jill. Yeah. And you'll be great. Yeah. She's a perfect repurposer. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Well there aren't that many new ideas in the world. Yeah. Like even like, you know, local think tank people are like, how did you come up with that? I'm like, well, I took a little bit of Vistage and I added some Rotary Club and some Matthews house and some Bible study fellowship and. Ba bing, ba boom. Yeah. You know, and I didn't do that intentionally, but it just, you know, that's how things go. Yeah. You learn that way and you're like, I like this. This works. Yeah, this works. This looks good. Um, I'm actually gonna call a really brief break because um, I need a drink refill and a potty break, and so we'll come back. Okay, so when we left off, we were kind of, bis opp was really coming into itself. You know, you got this, uh, nice PR agency in New York that's funneling new clients to do their newsletters and, and maybe some design and stuff, building websites too. Were you guys doing that? Yep. Yeah. So kind of the traditional digital marketing, but not the social, not the ppc. We, we tried to, we at the time did that too. We did all of it. So we, we were the typical, we'll do it for, we'll do it all right. But we, we did have one advantage that we niched very early. So like with that PR agency, Alex and I pivoted. Fast. Mm. So that was the first step in the door. But we took advantage hard, like we worked with so many other people, even not from that PR agency, we just leaned into being the marketing agency for the architecture and construction industry. Mm. Mm-hmm. And immediately And is that who that PR agency focused on? Was that niche too? Yeah. Yeah. And then we got connected with, you know, other PR agencies were hitting us up and things like that. That's cool. And people were referring and people were finding us. The biggest thing was seo. I mean, and that still happens to this day. So I mean, we've got a, had a$60,000 website contract, you know, hit our desk this morning from just an organic website lead. Yeah. They're like, I hear you guys are good architecture industry websites. Yeah. Well we rank number one for a bunch of keywords related to it, so, yeah. You know? Yeah. So that is kind of, um, will remain kind of as part of your core, I guess, in other things with bis op, is that so? Yeah. Yep. Um, I mean, yeah, bis o I think we've definitely, so at one point we used to do everything for anyone in the building industry. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, and so I realized that was a problem whenever I had a client one time ask me to write an s o p for them. And so then I was like, okay, what's ans so sop? I'm just kidding. Yeah. That's what I would've done. Yeah. And so like, I, I don't even know your company really. Like I'm writing marketing for like, I don't know your operations. How could I, how could I write this for you? Without any direction. We found ourselves developing like automations and stuff for people's, like sales processes and stuff. Mm. And like, although it was interesting and, you know, raw talent can find a way to get stuff done. Right. Did a high quality Yeah. It stretched us so thin. Right. And we couldn't Well, and everything is custom. Yeah. And we, we sounds like Yeah. We weren't building case studies around any specific thing, so everybody was always like, you know, well we we're looking for a, you know, website for a landscape architect. You know, you guys don't have that. And it's like, well, shit, we did X, y, Z for a landscape architect love, so we, we need, we needed a trim. Yeah. And so, I mean, yeah. So 2020 came and, you know, inflation started rising in 2021 came around and it was just, I don't know, it was probably inopportune to some degree. I knew something had to change with Nathan not being there anymore. I had to really hyper focus on what we were offering and make sure that it was good. And so now I'm turning away work where I've never done that before. Yeah, yeah. Because it's just, it's not in our expertise, it's not in our vision. And so I think we're going in a great direction there. And, um, I know that what I do offer is going to be one of the best options you have. Yeah. You know, so Well, and you, so you're kind of the chief creative there, and then you have, uh, some subcontractors you rely on for certain specific elements. Like do you do video or things like that, for example? I mean, it you can not No, I would say no. Yeah. Uh, to video I would refer someone. Right. Um, I, I have gotten better at that too. Like I, I'm kind of the person that, um, connects people. Yeah. I've noticed that about my personality and, um, and so I love to have contacts in my, my, uh, Rolodex. Yeah. But I don't wanna take that on and manage it myself. Um, as far as having employees, we are a global company. I have a client in Barcelona for an example. So, um, it doesn't make sense to have in-office employees as much as just good people working for me. Mm-hmm. And are working in BIS op. And so we have found that contractors, I mean, they make the most sense. Not only are. Eager to work and eager to prove themselves because they're contractors. And I could cut'em in a second. Yeah. They also have the ability to leave in a second, right. If they're not getting their needs back. That whole loosely kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I mean, all of my contractors have been with me for years. Yeah. And it just, it's a, it's a very well, and they're pros. Like if you're hiring people, then maybe you hire somebody with skills already. Maybe you have to spend a bunch of time training them. Maybe they can't really learn the things you're trying to train them. But with, with marketing, I mean, at least in what we have offered, I wouldn't say this is probably like so black and white. Yeah. But at least for what we offer, it makes sense. And, um, I, I look for contractors to teach me things. Right. And not vice versa. Yeah. I'd say we have like, I mean, especially now, bis opp has a very clear cut and the websites have been great for a long time. I feel like it's And are you allowed back at bis opp now? You guys have been fences? Yeah, we've, we've, we've men advances. I'm, I'm back in whenever she needs to. Like, I mean, sometimes I'll pop in like. I'm a developer. Right. So any website project I've definitely got my hands in whether I'm on the, whether I'm on the client calls or not. Well, no, you're right. She's like, I got a couple contracts now that don't need you anymore. She, I have the co I have a website contract open right now and Nathan has not even looked at it. You're right. So that's a win for you and a win for you. That is because you're tired of working on websites. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Once it get it's launched and there's a bug randomly. Yeah. Now, are you leaning into, like, I know you talked about your niche kind of on Biza, but are you leaning into the, the Jack and Jill and the, and the content writing element Yeah. As well? Yep. So, um, absolutely. I've, I mean, I've been very honest with my clients that I use AI to help generate content. Right. Um, and there has been some skepticism. Yeah. But I'm a firm believer of being transparent and honest with processes. Yeah. And I think there should almost be a, you know, AI hybrid, full ai. Yeah. You know, fully person, like there should almost be a stamp honey on everything nowadays. There is not a single article that we send to the client that hasn't been heavily edited by a human. Right. Right. We use AI to help us generate that first draft, and we're able with Jack and Jill to really customize how we want that content to go. Yeah. And so that first draft is really, But then it takes a human to come in with some SEO knowledge and some just human experience. Yeah, yeah. To like bring that last, you know, that last MPH to the article. Well, when I start writing something, I don't really know where it's going. Yeah. But, but as a marketer, you actually, yeah. Kind of know where you want to go. And so you can just point the tool there a little bit and really sketch that out instead of letting your wandering mind take you away from the trail. I'm more of a wanderer. I'm like, I'm just gonna punch in a topic and see what it does. I mean, if you're writing for seo, you have a target keyword that you need to have at least, at least 5% of the time. Five to 10% in your article. Yeah. There is a very hard rule, um, strategy there. I think I remember. I think it's one to 2%. Is it? I don't know, five to 10%. No, one to 2%. You're right, you're right. Sorry, I just say before some, before somebody goes putting in 50. I remember, I think I got an email from you, Alex, one time on some blog I wrote and you were like, I love your writing. It's completely useless for seo for what your business does. Yeah. And it's true. I mean it is the, we deal with clients for that all the time. I read your newsletter every month and I read you, I read your blogs. I mean, Nathan knows cuz I always forward it to him. Mm-hmm And that's how I knew that Jack and Jill was mentioned. Oh nice. Instantly. Cuz I always open your newsletter. It is really great for. Um, human experience. Yeah. But if somebody is searching you right in search, they might not find you. It's, it's different. It's different channels. So your voice is probably perfect for email or even social or something like that, but so search is just such a different game. It's, it's answering questions. Yeah. Just so I want to dip our toes a little bit more into AI and how you see Jack and Jill unfolding potentially, and how you'd like to see it unfold. Yeah. Um, and then, uh, you know, we'll go into some of the closing segments from there, but, um, yeah, tell me, I guess, I don't know what you think people want to know, like what questions they have. Um, I'll tell you what I see a lot, um, I see a lot of, I see a lot of fear. Yeah. So a lot of people that, I think it comes out in different ways. Like there's some people who, you know, even educated people in the space who are like deathly afraid, who think this might be the last hundred years that humanity's around because we're accelerating at that sort of speed. Um, I think there's also a lot of people who are very skeptical. So like, and that can range from anywhere from. Skeptical that we're gonna end ourself, you know, like the iRobot sort of thing, which could be a possibility. Stuff is, is growing very, this is getting very existential, super powerful. Well, this, well, if you read my blog, you're like, well, the echo chamber with devious inputs is dangerous. Yeah. It, okay. So, and, and the reason this will probably play into our discussion about faith here in a little bit, but it's, you need to be at least aware, somewhat of it, because if you're not aware, you're gonna be very shocked one way or the other. Mm-hmm. And I think it's not so much that, so there's a kind of meme going around. Uh, I think people are concerned about losing their job. So there's a meme, you know, AI's not gonna take your job. A person using AI's gonna take your job. Right, right. Yeah. It, it, uh, I think that's one thing that people are concerned about. And I think that's not necessarily true. I think it could elevate everybody if, if we're all creating. Mega content at light speed. Well then nobody's creating mega content at light speed. So eventually there's gonna be, well, the world can hardly take any more content. Yeah, yeah. It's already in some ways, and we're gonna have to haveis to dilute the content and distill it down to, to that. But where I see AI going and where I think it's gonna be very important, and I want to see Jack move there. So right now it's writing content, but, um, we just, uh, released a Zapier integration that allows you to connect it with over 5,000 apps. What? Yes. So imagine hooking up your AI assistant to anything online. So imagine creating a digital version of yourself, thousands of digital versions of yourself that can do anything you want online. I cannot do that. Yeah. It's too complicated. I can, I have, I'm an imaginative guy, but it's not as, it's not as hard as you think. So, so Nathan has, um, it's set up where it'll read his email and auto respond a draft, and it'll, he can train it on to know which one it should respond to and which ones it should just delete. So, or, or like how he wants to respond. Like he can tell the ai like, Hey, if someone reaches out to me about a guest post, yeah. These are our offerings. This, these are our rules, and it automatically drafts that up for him. Yeah. So I get, because I mean, we run some sites that, that are doing well, so we get tons of people emailing about guest posts. Hey, I'd love to post on your, you know, And a lot of times they're willing to pay for it. Right. You know, a hundred bucks a pop or more. And I'm missing on those opportunities all the time because I don't have, I'm not stuck in my email all the time. Right. And I don't respond to all those. So I set up a, an a, literally my AI to respond to those things. And it does automatically, it sends it in everything? Or does it set it up and then you send it? So right now, so this is where the human, the human, it's like still having your, it's shit scary. It's, it's like still having your hand on the plug. Okay. Right. So that, right now I just have it where it summarizes all of those and it emails me a summary of every single one with a link to the original email and to reply for every single one, where're. Now all I have to do that was a five minute per email process before. Yeah. I can do a hundred of those in five minutes now. So we're talking exponential differences. Um, so I think, yeah, I think that's the thing that the exponential nature of AI is, is the scary part. Do you have any notions on, like, I've heard some, like potential fail safes being built in or whatever, where like it can't update itself. Um, the, the, is there any way to really stop the growing intelligence of this system? I, I believe so. This is getting like a, a philosophical thought about it, but I don't think technology can be put back in a box once it's, it's been out unless something really catastrophic happens. Like, I, I do think the nuclear Armageddon, I do think there's past, I do think there's past civil civilizations that definitely knew intelligence that got lost. That, that now we don't have. Sure. Um, but it's gotta be like, how to build a pyramid. Yeah. You Egyptians Yeah. Well whole period, whole, the whole library of Alexandria. Right. Just, you know, got lost. But, but I do think bar that, um, I, I don't see a way to stop it because already there, so Facebook just released a model that's even more powerful than what, uh, supposedly more powerful than open. Had launched and it got within a matter of days, torrent it out on the internet and people just downloaded the hell out of it. What do you mean torrent it out? The, the code Peer, peer to peer old map. It got stolen Napster style, it got put out there and people just downloaded all the weights. It was like 40 gigs worth of the, the way it, so like, Facebook spends 40 billion building this thing and everybody just steals it. Yeah. Good. I guess. I dunno fucking, but, but that, but it shows the futility of trying to keep it in a cage. It really does. Like digital critters. They can just, the teachers out there, listen, listening. The business owners out there listening. Like, I, I highly advise you don't do a whole band, you know, don't look at G G P T, don't look at ai, don't use it. Like, I think just teach your kids how to use it. Yeah. At least pause and think about how, how it could be, how we will we be able to tell if kids are actually learning or if people are passing bar exams or, so I think it's already, it's already, so I'm using mine. This, this isn't something that I have released to the public yet, but I'm, I'm using my own tool to literally help me understand my limitations. So you can build a knowledge graph and feed it in information. It could be pulling all the information from your phone. So like, whether you trust your phone with all the information. Yeah. May maybe you get a non Google phone, you know, get one of those off the grid phones, but you could do it, you know, your own self-contained unit and you teach that ai everything that it needs to know and it can, you know, essentially work on, on your behalf, you know, so that's already what, you know, we've, we've got going on now and learning. Imagine diving into something magic school by style and instead of, you know, having to, to read through books or texts or something like that, you strap on a VR headset and it's combined with AI that knows what you know and knows what you don't know and feeds you that information to pull you along. Like you could a hundred fold your intelligence, I believe. Well, and for kids, well, it doesn't leave a lot of room for slackers. Like I've been kind of a slacker, coasted and done pretty well for myself. You, but so let me, lemme, let me clarify that a little bit. I think it depends on the person. Yeah. Because just like, okay, so there's some people who own an iPhone that use it, you know, in third world countries that might all be, that might be all they have and they are in a whole multi-million dollar business mm-hmm. Off of one iPhone and we see it all the time. It's amazing what they can do, but then you got, you know, someone else who's just using it to play Angry Birds. So I really think it depends what your, you know, are you using the calculator to do a better job or are you using it to be lazier? Yeah, yeah. Uh, so I use the, the metaphor today that AI is like being a film director. And if you teach kids that when they're using ai, they're really being a director of whatever story they want to tell. Hmm. Then they're going to create amazing things in school. Mm-hmm. And you're gonna have those kids that are slackers and they're like, Hmm, I'll just auto generate something. Yeah. Right. You can tell. Or they just choose not to use ai. Yeah. What about them ones that, I mean, is there even gonna be such a thing as really writing anymore? Or is just I think school, I think there will be because just, just like, but is that gonna be the starving artist? Hmm. I wonder because that's the thought I have. Like, I think that if you're spending six hours writing a blog instead of 20 minutes, right. Like, are you really wasting time? Kind of. I, I guess. Yeah. But, but what else do I do? I just do, I have five hours and 40 minutes of Twitter time then, I mean, real easy. So already Jack can do this, you can talk, you can give your thoughts, you can talk into an ai, and then it can tell a story. Oh my gosh. Mm-hmm. So it's all about like children. I think students are going to be trained on how to articulate their imagination, and AI is going to create these incredible storylines. And if you get lazy, it's gonna be boring. Hmm. But if you aren't lazy, it's going to be impactful and it's gonna bring chills to you. Like it's gonna be amazing. Hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, tell me about Jack and Jill, because you've talked about Jack, but I know there's a Jill and like, uh, and it, it's a subscription service to be Yeah. A part of this and where do you go? The good or whatever. Yeah. So it's, uh, Jack and Jill, AI writing assistant, and you can find it@jackandjill.com. So j a Q N. J i l.com. So Jack and Jill, but spelled off Hunky Jacque, Jacque and Jill with one L. One L. So the original concept, you know, we were thinking, you know, Jack was the, the assistant, you know, Jack is the ai and Jill is, you know, the writer, you know, so this is, oh, it's, it's kind of, you know, obviously non, non Jill. Jill is the human. Yeah. Jill is, is the human. Yeah. So it's really, you know, taking that, that side of it, because it is still, or vice versa, your vice employee is a male. He can be like, Jill, write me this. Yeah. Because I'm the jock. No. Yeah. Yeah. And then, but it's really you and the tool, you and the tool, kind of the notion. It's not just this tool doesn't mean thing. It's you and a tool as a team. And, and you can see when you use it, you know, you can sign up, it's a free trial, and, and you can, you know, try out all the features for, for, that's pretty cool. Yeah. It's awesome. Um, but basically, you know, you feed in prompts and the ai, and this goes along with almost any ai. It's only as good as the input that you're gonna give it. So that's the context. Yeah. So a lot of people say, well, chat gpt is not very factual. Well, it wasn't necessarily trained to be factual. If you want it to be factual, you know, you can easily hook it up to a factual database that, you know, then you use the language model to say a natural language, what, you know, things about that database. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, but yeah, Jack and Jill, I mean, it, it takes a. What used to take us, I mean, anywhere from two to four hours per blog of research writing for, if you're a fast writer, if you're, if you're a fast writer for an, um, info, you know, informative style blog for seo, and then it cuts it down to, I think we've got it down to like 10 minutes now. Yeah. And I think it's important for you to also highlight that it's not plagiarized. Um, so it's, I think that's important content to explain. Yeah. So if you ask the same question two different days, it'll actually come up with different stuff. It's not copying and pasting anything. Yeah. So the way, the way it works is it's basically, you know, there's a lot of advanced math behind it, but at the end of the day, it's trying to predict. So you have an input of tokens or text, and then there's, it's trying to predict what's going on, and then it'll have an output of tokens or text and depending on what you put in. And that's what we do with Jack and Jill. We make sure you vary it by putting in a topic in an audience and a intent in the angle. So there's enough variety to that input. There's so much variety to it. Impossible to create the same thing twice. What, when you say tokens are text, what are you talking about? So text is broken down into tokens. And tokens are basically, it's, it gets turned into a mathematical representation of words. Oh. So that's how the AI actually works is when I, when I, and so it doesn't actually know what a word is, it's just kind of combinations of tokens that it sees. And, and the real, the really cool thing is it turns it into a several thousand. Like, uh, number array. So just like an array with several thousand numbers. Wow. And that number corresponds to a space in a three-dimensional plane. And let's say cat and dog are probably closer together in that 3D plane right. Than cat and, uh, coffee. Yeah. So it's all relative. And that's how the AI actually understands. Oh, it's like a big universe. Yeah. It's like a theory of relativity and, and those are like clues to which galaxy it should fly to. And, and the scary thing is we're seeing something so like, it's, it's technically just like an auto predict to an degree, degree, but we're seeing very interesting things, like, almost like conscious capabilities forming from that. Hmm. So that's where the ai, I mean, Nvidia just launched a paper saying that they're expecting over the next decade, uh, AI to get a million times more powerful than it is right now. G G P T four is released, supposed to release next week, which is supposed to be at least a hundred hundred times measure that it's, it's based off a lot of you can read the papers, there's like a specific formula of things that they train it on, you know, as far as cognition. Right. But, and now it's already passing bar exams. Right. And things like that. Like we're, we're putting it to its paces and it's, it's, so if we're gonna have interstellar travel, it'll probably be because we asked the right questions to an AI tool. Yeah. Or it will have wiped us out already. Yeah. And if we can decides it wants to go there. If we can harness, if we can harness it, I do believe that, you know, it. Huge. Yeah, we could, we could be an interstellar species fusion. Mm-hmm. All that kind stuff. Right. And it's already figuring out a lot of stuff, like actual practical things and like, um, you know, protein folding and stuff to figure out, you know. Well, and I'm hearing that like it could be like one of the best therapists ever. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like I can really know what's gonna make you stop grabbing that food or, and you're not gonna feel bad about it. Weed or whatever. Yeah. Or friends. There's people that have said that it's gonna be like most people's best friend are gonna be an AI because of, there's actually a pretty, uh, popular app. I don't remember the name, but someone told me about it recently and it's a lover. Oh gosh. And then they had an update, so like you could chat, you could text your lover and it was all in AI and they had an update story where they couldn't say, I love you anymore. And they were getting depressed. They basically lobotomized Yes. These people's, well cause companions they were, cuz it was freaking, it was potentially freaking them out and getting a little too close for comfort or whatever. Yeah. But those people were fine. Like, I saw a bunch of people online, they were like, I'm okay with that. I knew it was in AI and you guys just screwed up my whole thing right now. She doesn't love me. All right, guy. Um, well I feel like that's a good place to transition. Like, there's so much mystery in where I, AI goes. Yeah. I think, uh, it's a lot of speculation. There is a lot of speculation, but you're building the Jack and Jill tool so that it like, teaches itself how to get smarter and, and can like be a long time. Support system for creative agents of sorts. Yeah, yeah. Really, you know, and it's, it's not set up in a way, you know, just to tamper expectations. It's not set up in a way where it automatically codes itself and stuff like that. Uh, but people are, people are working on that, so, uh, I'm not, but there are people, so it's not, we're totally off the hook, but, you know, with Jack and Jill, you know, really I intend on it being the best assistant for Riders. Um, it's specifically designed around, you know, Mar Market is mostly agencies right now, so agencies, freelance riders, um, a bunch of niche sites, um, small businesses that are trying to grow their seo. That's kind of our specific market. So if you're, you're looking to grow seo grow organically, right? Long form blog. Yeah. Even if you're a business owner, it wouldn't hurt getting in and just trying it. Yeah. No, I, I, I've, I'm such a purist. Like, I was just thinking to myself like, I've never written a blog in less than four hours. Usually it's more than that. And I've never researched either. So anyway, you are such a purist, right. And I do think that's good for the entertainment side, but you're probably not helping your SEO any, right, right. Well, and I'm spending five hours doing something that I could probably really, I could probably communicate my essential points better. In an hour. Yeah. Uh, in a shorter blog with some part. Well, if you had someone just like run you an SEO keyword analysis and you knew what keywords you need, you could get that at least else some of that in there. Yeah. And just throw it in occasionally. So like yeah. You can link to your other blogs from that. So I should probably just hire Bizo Media to be my marketing agency. You know, my number. Well, you, but I'm, I'm not an architecture landscaper or anything like, like that. I mean, so I don't work just in the building industry anymore. Right. So, and like you go know quite a bit about local think tank already. Yeah. So that saved you some research time. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I'm gonna call one more short break cuz I'm an old guy with a small bladder, and then we will do the closing segments. Okay. Perfect. Cool. And we're back. So, Alex, I know you're the most excited to talk about. No, just kidding. So, faith, family, politics, uh, I, I don't think you're super, let's start with family. We'll soften you up a little bit. Alex, you can start with family and then I'll let Nathan decide where he wants to start on the next topic. But first you're gonna, you're gonna both talk about family a little bit, but you're part of the same family, so it's, it's easy. Yeah. I can't, I can't talk trash about Bacan. I, you talked about your dad already quite a bit, you know, just how supportive he was when you, uh, by the way, my sister got pregnant in her first year of college Oh, okay. At 18. And I was like, oh boy. I remember I, I took her to lunch and I was like, are you sure you wanna be with this guy? He. Four years older or something. Yeah, great guy. Rich, love you if you're listening. But, uh, you know, so that was really hard for her. She, you know, eventually came back and finished college and stuff like that, but mm-hmm. But my family had a similar experience and, you know, yeah. She was a few months pregnant when she got married and whatever. Yeah. Uh, so talk to me about Yeah. That experience, but even your brothers, your mom a little bit more, your daughter. So, um, so one of my first jobs was actually working in a hair salon, and I was my mom's assistant. Mm-hmm. So she was a hairdresser. I always had knew the best hairstyles. Um, oh. So, no, I wonder you were so, uh, yeah. Popular and attention seeking. I was very attention seeking. I don't know if people really liked me that much, but, but yeah. So, um, so that was fun. My mom, I mean, she's a very creative person. Um, she's retired now. Um, and so she kind of ruined me in a sense. Even to this day, paying to get my hair done hurts. Like I, I don't know how to explain it other than I feel like I shouldn't have to pay for it. Thanks, mom. Well, you just need a really good friend that you do marketing for or something that has I need a trade off. Yeah. Because it's like, like it's not that. I mean, of course hairdressers are super talented and they deserve to get the money that, you know, they charge. Sure. But it is a couple hundred bones to get a room house. Oh, a few hundred if you're a woman. Right. And so it's like I block at 50 bucks for a haircut, you know, or 30, it's, it's expensive. Whenever you were trained in your very like, uh, mushy brain stage that you don't pay for that. Right. Mom does it in the kitchen. Right. And so that's been hard. But I mean, yeah. So she's, she's the, she is where I got my creative side. Yeah. Um, My dad taught me, um, a lot about just like the structured and like responsibility. Responsibility. My mom is all creative and my parents are still married. Um, they're, yeah, they're super cute ish. Almost 50 years or something by now. Yes. Well, yeah, I mean 40, 40. Sorry, my math is s's Okay. But I forget how young you guys are. You little functions. Yeah, but, uh, they're approaching 40. They isn't, they're close The thirties. Sorry. Either way You mean the age? You guys, you're probably younger than me, but what maybe, I dunno, might be, um, I'm 48. I mean, yeah, we're millennials so fair. So anyway, anyway, so, um, my brothers, I have an older brother, um, Zach, he is, um, he's super quiet, but you know, just such a great brother. My, I will preface this. Are they all back home now? Still? Yeah. They, they all live in Chattanooga. Um, my brothers and I have always gotten along. We're not the type of dynamic that never had any big issues. We never fought growing up. Even them with each other or nothing? No, none of us. We, I mean, there were times growing up where we shared a bedroom, all three of us. Wow. Uhhuh. Um, and I mean, we just, we've always gotten along. Well, my younger brother, um, drew, he is, uh, very much a free spirit. Just, um, I don't know, he. He is also just, we all have our own personality. Zach's quiet and introverted, but you know, loves like movies and film and stuff like that. Drew is kind of more along the lines of like free spirit kind of dresses, a little funny, plays in a band, plays, plays in a band, actually plays in, plays in band eccentric like 2020 bands. Oh, wow. Are you jealous, David? I am so jealous. Yeah. Um, he has an Oregon in his bedroom, like, just like I like him already. Yeah. Like, he just has, he's a just a, a very unique guy. Was your family from around there? Yes. Like your grandparents are around there, I swear. And stuff like that where most families in that area got off the boat and never left. Right. So like it's that way in North Dakota too, like people don't really leave there. Yeah. Yeah. Like you get settled and you just don't leave and so Yeah. I mean my family all from that Georgia, north Georgia area. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, I draw a hundred mile circle and you're pretty much catching Yep. 200 people that are all blood. Yeah. Yeah. I mean you have, you have family get togethers all the time with like extended family. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I mean, that's my family. Cool. Um, Nathan, your turn and then we're gonna, uh, go back to you guys together to talk about your daughter. Yeah. Just one. Yep. Yeah, that's it. Um, yeah, so I'm the oldest of four boys. Um, so I've got three brothers. Uh, Really both of my parents, um, I would say they're both diligent, hardworking. Um, I think, you know, that's probably one of the reasons why they got divorced is they're both just too, they're hit in the same lane. Yeah. You know, they're both, um, very proactive. My mom is, you know, always looking to, you know, advance things and build things, you know. Cool. Currently, you know, she's an accountant. She, you know, works at a bunch of different companies. She's, you know, doing her own thing and, uh, building her house and all that. My dad's currently a, uh, contractor. Oh. So he ended up getting out of the, the sign shop space in motorcycle space and ended up getting into the construction. Yeah. Construction into things. Well, and we didn't get into this, but it seems like the right time. Like, were, were you leaving an active I'm running the motorcycle shop situation when you came to Colorado too, and Pretty much so it, it was a tough transition. Like, I mean, my dad didn't want to run it, I didn't want to run it. Yeah. At a certain point, like, cuz with that industry, like, I mean it started and it was doing good and we, we learned so much and we marketed a ton. But there, after the recession really, after the housing market kind of crashed, it was so tough to keep up. Really with the online vendors. Cause they were, they were able to charge under MSRP for a lot of things. Right. For a little small town shop who's making all of their money. Like we're only making money on tires and every person comes in is like, well I can get it on j and p cycles for so and so, so. Right, right. Woo. Well, damn it son. Right. I can't compete with it. That accent. That just, yeah, that's pretty spot on. That's, that's what it was though. You guys have actually lost a lot of your accents. I met you. It was sad. I haven't tried to, but No, no. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, I laid it on thicker when I worked at that shop. You know, you, you have to, you gotta do your audience. Like I'm working with like 50, 60 year old, like, they're like looking for some deliverance, uh, kind of region. Motorcycle mechanic. That's like the motorcycle whisperer. Yeah. You know, but that, that was tough. So yeah, I mean we did kind of just like, I mean, we left, I mean, I left and kind of left it there, you know, with that. And he, he managed for a few years and, you know, he kind of dwindled, dwindled it down and Yeah. You know, shut it, shut it down a few years after that, but yeah. Fair enough. Um, I know that you, I, I, I can't What was your daughter's name again? Ellie, Elliot. Ellie, Ellie. She is, uh, quite a charmer. Like I remember when we were business neighbors and she was four or something. And, uh, I just love to see her face and Yeah, in her person roaming the hallways. We do a, uh, one word description of children around here, and I'll give you each a one word description just to have a little contrast. Okay. I'll start. Fiery. Fiery. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Determined. Ooh. Mm-hmm. That combination of attribute should serve her quite well, hopefully. Right? Or put her in prison. Oh yeah. She's, she's, but she's not a middle child, so that, that's better. It was, she's, she's the only child, so she gets all the resources. She's an Enneagram seven. She loves, I'm a seven eight. Seven eight. Yeah. She is two. She loves, loves advance. She's eight now, or no? How old is she? She's 12. 12 now. Oh. She is riding the max line right now to go home. Oh, nice. Yeah, she's very independent. Yeah. Um, yeah. I I love the public bus here, actually, so it actually is really useful. Yeah. Jill and I, well we, we you have exchange students and Yeah, like there was one day where we just. Didn't have a ride for Manuela and the neighbor kid that goes to putter had Covid. Mm-hmm. And it's like, well, the bus stop is right over there. Yeah. Like, this is how it works. Yeah. You know, it's, and it's pretty easy. It's super easy. Yeah. It's, it's the best one you're gonna get. I'm telling you, if you've ever been in Chicago riding any of those lawns, right. You've ever been in New York, like, this place is great. Like, oh, for sure. Yeah. Even if, you know New York, it's so easy to get lost. But, you know, Fort Collins, the city planner did well. Yeah. Yeah. The original one for sure. Um, for sure. But yeah, recently you guys have been kind of sucking it, but whatever that, that, that zoning changed thing. Yeah. That was gonna totally screw Yeah. My wife and myself, because our house wasn't, our house is a thousand square feet. So if you had less than a 1300 square foot, you could only build a 600 square foot accessory dwelling unit. Oh yeah. Like into this. But weve got 10,000 square feet in our property. Yep. Which means we can build a carriage house now and always have been able to. So we haven't been able to, and I actually, now you can actually. Yeah. Wait, you can't have, well, you could after the change, if it comes back into a effect, it's not 10,000. It's like 9,000. Oh, yeah. I don't know. Well, but any place could build one. Oh, okay. With the change that's, and so it took away my carriage house unobtainium status. Yeah. And it punished me by limiting how big of a thing I could do. So, wow. Whoever put that caveat in there, where if you've got too small a house, you can't build a bigger thing. Like that's stupid. You're lame. Yeah. Uh, that's exactly Cause we have, cuz we have a bigger yard. Right, right. We have space. We have more space. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the exact person who should want to build more stuff is person with a tiny house. Right. Whatever. Anyway. Yeah. My, uh, my builder was like, well, you just have to do an addition onto your house and then you can build a bigger carriage house. I'm like, well, okay. It's easy. Um, anyway, we're, we're on family. Um, Ellie, tell me the love story just a little bit more. Like outside of the fact that she didn't quite tip your motorcycle over, what was it that. That ended up winning you around to young Alex here? Or were you Alex, I mean, are you Alexandria, right? Alex Alexandria is my business name. Yeah. Just because everybody thinks I'm a guy. If they say Alex Fair. Yeah. If you know her, it's Alex. Yeah. But, but yeah, I mean, yeah, we met, met in high school. I mean, she was probably, I don't know, she was probably attracted to the motorcycle and me playing the band if I had to guess. I'm sure guitar goggles go a long ways. Yeah. But, um, I mean, at the time I raced motocross and that's Wow. All the cool stuff. So I was, yeah. Yeah. You were one of the, you were one of the bad cool kids. I was, I was cool. Which was that cool with your like a conservative family, high school principal? Yeah. Yeah. Less, less. And Nathan was also three years older than me. Oh, perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's out of high school. Yeah. And, and, or kind of high school dropout, rather. High school dropout, working at the motorcycle shop that his dad owns or whatever, with all these Harley guys around that are Vietnam beer and who knows what else. Yeah. Actually, he didn't smoke weed or drink beer or anything until he met me. Um, that's true. It was like many years later. I was, I was a very bad infant. I was in my, well I was in my like twenties before I ever, so I think I asked the question I didn't get an answer for, but what. What were you saying? Like what the bad, what attracted you to her though? Like the bad boy is what attracted her to you. So I think it's the same thing that it is now. It's always been our communication ability. Like I feel like we've always been able to just talk and work things out and yeah, she gets in, not everybody gets you. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And she's got, most people don't even, no, they don't get'em. We don't, we don't necessarily have a lot in common, like not the same music, not the same sort of style and stuff on most things, but I think the core values, you know, are the same. We're both, you know, family oriented people. I think we both wanna work on things better ourself, be better you today than we were yesterday. Mm-hmm. That's like an echo of my relationship with Jill. Yeah. So kudos to you. And we're coming up on 20 years here soon. Oh. Of marriage actually. That's awesome. That's a big one. Yeah. I love that you guys get to count at least half of those eight years of not marriages. I, I feel like, yeah, at this point it's like 14 years since we started dating in high school, and I just use that. Yeah, I think that's cool. Yeah. That works. Yeah. Um, so outside of the bad Boyness, like I assume there was also some other redeeming factors of this young man that Yeah. When you were defending him to your dad or your mom Yeah. What were you saying? So, and maybe that's different than what your heart was saying. Yeah. Might me the same. I suspect I, I feel like Nathan, I, I've always been able to see the soft side of Nathan. Yeah. Which he doesn't like to show a lot and Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Something about our connection. He was able to open that up to me. Yeah. He can show you who his underbelly and it's not as easy with others. Yeah. Um, that's good. I mean, and another thing that I always loved about Nathan was just how, how much of a dreamer he is. I'm a dreamer too, and so, you know. Yeah. Yeah. We became really close friends outside of our relationship just talking about like what if and what could be. Yeah. And I love it. We still do that today. Mm-hmm. We do it every single day. That's cool. Um, I feel like we've always just had that connection where we grow together. Mm-hmm. It's beautiful. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Yeah. Um, I'm gonna move on to politics or faith. Nathan, which would you ooze to. Hit first. Um, politics. I mean, you can do politics. I'll do a little bit on, on faith, and you both have to talk about both by the way. Just Okay, good, good. I was about to say, I, if I, if I can't touch on politics, I feel like it's No, you, em both touch on both. We got, we got 20 minutes less, whatever. Yeah, I can go over a little bit today. So I'm thinking, you know, really on faith. So my parents weren't very religious growing up. I mean, I think just working jobs. Yeah. You know, my parents were working sometimes, you know, two jobs, you know, each, you know. Yeah. And it was just three kids, you know, four kids after, you know, a certain amount of years. Like, it just gets, it's a lot of, lot of effort. So I think, you know, we, we went to church and stuff, you know, uh, Christmas and Easter. Easter sometimes. Yeah. But you know, as a kid you're just walking in here like, why am I here at that? Right. I don't quite understand. And then we left, you know, but. I guess getting into, so middle school was kind of a pivotal time. So this is back, this is in Tennessee Hickson Middle School at the time they still had a Bible study class. Hmm. So across the country, you know, well, mid two thousands they wiped that shit out. Right. So this, this was back, this was back before that. And it wasn't a, it wasn't a religious class, it was a very history based class. Was, this is what the Bible says. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And they tried to paint the story of, well here's where we think it happened, here's the people we think were involved, here's what we think they're talking about here. And it, that class never once pushed me towards any certain, like, thought belief, but I was very interested in it cuz they just painted the picture so well. Yeah. Yeah. So then I started picking it up on my own and I guess getting into high school, you know, I started, you know, dating some girls that went to church. So I started going and, you know, it's just like a friend group thing. And um, you know, I got more involved in it. Um, and then, oh yeah, cuz you're like 18 when you're like 15. Mm-hmm. When you actually started seeing each other. Yeah. Okay. Now I'm putting that together. Yeah. So I'm a little bit older. I didn't meet Alex until, like, the end of high school. Yeah. So, you know, early high school, I'm still figuring stuff out, you know, um, I, I find a conflict, you know, I. I go to several different churches there. I'm in several different, you know, church groups and things like that. And it's because you're dating several different women? No, same. No, but mostly, but you were curious, you were super curious about this. I was curious. You're trying to get to the bottom of it and why do all these different churches believe all these different things? That was, that was huge. And none of them, nobody would give, you know, real facts on anything other than, you know, and nobody ever had a real reason why they believed any one particular thing other than, well my, that's what we do here. My, well, I don't know. My parents believed that and they taught me this, and that's why I believed that. Yeah. And it just never did enough for me. So I honestly, I mean, I left religion completely, you know, in terms of like a traditional organized, you know, associating with Yeah. Any one thing. But, you know, moving out here, um, I've always considered myself like more of a spiritual person. Like I do think there's something a lot bigger than, you know, this little blue.here that we've got going on. I think there's something, you know, no matter what you wanna call it, you know, that's definitely bigger than us. Um, and I. We did the yoga training. I know we didn't touch on that, but you know, Alex and I are both certified yoga teachers. Oh you are? Yeah. Sweet. Mm-hmm. We both got our 200 hour and you know, that was shit. Meditating like four hours plus a day will really rock your mind stage. That's, well that's kind of my kind of perspective a little bit is like, it's kind of all the same. Mm-hmm. Stuff like if you can pray deeply for 30 minutes, it's kind of the same thing as doing Yeah. A good meditation. And if you, if you listen to the Bible or read the Bok or any of the others, like if you really, I feel like get past the language, which has been filtered and refiled and rewrote and a, you know, Caesars here and a king there, rewrites it to the version, like dig through it. And I feel like they're all kind of speaking the same, you know, touches, you know, throughout there. And I feel like, you know, ish. Yeah. Although we'll challenge you at one place, which is most of the other religions are about doing something so that you can attain something. Yeah. And Christianity is about grace. True belief through faith. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's a free gift of God. Mm-hmm. Not for doing something, but for believing something kind of in a different way. Yeah. Yeah. It's not by like living it out actions. It's kind of, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that's, you know, that's also, that for me was critical to like deciding from all this array of different mm-hmm. Cool things. Yeah. Anyway, I digress. Yeah. And I think, I mean really what just stuck out to me, I think, you know, With faith was, you know, really just knowing that the way I see faith is I was given these abilities and these talents. Mm-hmm. And I have no control over them. I had, you know, I, I wasn't, I didn't choose to be born where I was born. I didn't choose to be interested as a kid in the things that I was even interested in. Mm-hmm. Like really, I don't think we have a whole lot of choice in those things. So that's where I am, uh, grateful, you know, that I was given those gifts and things, and I do have the faith that I'll continue to try to make the right decisions. But, you know, in terms of, you know, I guess following one sort of, you know, set of rules or doctrine, I don't, so what is your, like value guide when you like, have a hard time with a ethical decision or this and that? Is it all instinctual or like, like what is the found like, like one of my challenges with the world today, honestly, is that if anything goes, then anything really goes and we can just kill each other. We're just walking meat bags anyway and Yeah. You know, and so if you take that, even whether it's. Any of the current events. Like if you take those things to their logical conclusions, we can do whatever we want. Yeah. Maybe, I don't think necessarily that religion is the thing, keeping those barriers down. Um, no, I don't think so either. But, but I think, but I think a common value set is mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think, I mean, we've, we've determined our, our values personally. I mean, we're big, big family people. We're big, um, growth, integrity, growth, learning, creativity. Yeah. Like Alex and I both, like, we're never gonna try to hurt anybody, you know? And that's, I don't know, I don't think it's, it's, it doesn't, at least for me, you know, it doesn't tap too much into, you know, my, I guess spiritual or religious practices so much. If you, if you look at like the 10 Commandments, we live by those, like Yeah, yeah. You know, they're, you probably read it. My, uh, I rewrote it as the, uh, 10 principles for your best Good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some blogs ago, probably a couple years ago Really? And it was, Really, these are good things. Yeah. Like they're all used to it. Your life will be easier if you don't do these things. Yeah. Yeah. And the only reason I don't really participate, I think is, is it's not the teachings, it's not the core values of the, it's the power structure. It's the power structures. Yeah. It's the people. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, the people are corrupt. Like it can be, you know? Yeah. Like, you know, and I think they're, so if you played by the system completely, sure it would be perfect. But, you know, I, I haven't experienced that, um, really shaped how, like, it changed the way I felt about Christianity in a very unfortunate way. Mm-hmm. I wanna hear it. So, um, sorry. I went to a church one time and a girl, it, it was a very small church in a very small town in Georgia. 13 members. Okay. Okay. So you can think of about what that is in your own minds. And a girl 16 years old gets pregnant and her parents are members of the church. She's a member of the church. She comes in and they publicly kicked her out in front of everyone. Wow. Because she was pregnant. And I remember sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, I cannot believe this is happening. Right. Um, and it just showed how, um, how corrupt. Someone can be in their power Yeah. To have that say. And nobody stood up and said, Hey, this is, this is wrong. Mm-hmm. Like nobody had that power to do that. That's, you know, such a shame. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a shame. Um, it really is. So I feel like it, I'm sorry. And plus you got pregnant like two years later. Yeah. Yeah. As an unmarried And this is a dating a non-Christian. Yeah. And I had, boy, and this wasn't my parents' church, it was a friend's church, but like I remember any, anytime I went to church there, I would have to wear these long dresses with shoulder pads. Like, it was crazy. And, and this was during the time of like, literally that show teen mom that was like at its peak. So like there was this whole stigma, there was a local Macy in the first season. Like she was literally from our town. Oh gosh. So there's a lot of, a lot of like, just persecution from that too. So at the time, you know, yeah. You know, before Alex, so like before I, I kind of gave it up like I was playing in bands and stuff and it's, it's so funny cuz none of us drank, none of us smoke, we didn't do anything. We were good. Right. Good damn kids catches. We were good kids and we, we played heavy rock and roll in metal and I mean, we got shunned out of all sorts of places. Sure. Like, you know, and it was just, I don't know. I think the judgment that comes with it is, I don't know why. Yeah. I don't, I don't catch that for mother. No, I get it. And I guess one thing I would encourage you, like. I've shunned a lot of churches, I've shopped a lot of churches, I've shunned a lot of churches, and like the church we go to now has like four pastors. Mm-hmm. Like, if, so, so one guy isn't like the power person. Mm-hmm. Like there's other people have checked them. Yeah. I think that's real important. Yeah. Because people are not infallible. Like, and we, we see that a lot in the, the south as like, honestly, like you go down there, if you had a couple million bucks, or even if you're pulling in 10% from the local community, from a tide, like Right. You're running that town. Oh yeah. A lot of times like, oh yeah, so much corruption, most powerful person in town, and, and, and it's just a corrupt way. And then pretty soon, like two of the unwed moms in town actually have the DNA of the freaking pastor, you know, with bullshit like that. That's crazy. Yeah. So that's some criticism. Yeah. But I, I can tell also that least you, Alex, you've got a lot of appreciation for Yeah. I mean, the faith. Yeah, absolutely. I, I've kind of become this person, especially when teaching it to my daughter, you know, we should really keep our faith. As close to us personally as possible and like have our own experiences and not just take everything that everyone else is telling you at face value. Hmm. Chew on it a little bit. Like how does that relate to you? And that's very much how I look at things from a faith perspective. And, um, and you know, my mom, I, I love you mom if you're listening to this. Um, but you know, she, she comes at me sometimes and she's like, you just need to read your Bible. You need to do this and that. And yeah. And I am very much the type of person that's like, I'm good with God. Like, yeah, I'm good. I have a great relationship. I love where I am. And, um, and so that feedback doesn't bother me anymore, but for a long time I thought something was wrong with me until I, I found a good relationship with it. Well, and that's one of my big criticisms probably with the Christian faith especially, is like, if you don't fit this descriptor of what a good Christian is and does, which is totally variable based on the church and the region and all these things. Yeah. You know, there's like, shoot the, the, what do you call it? What's the Catholic light thing? Episcopalian. Mm-hmm. Like it's basically a gay church. Like how did that happen? I dunno. But it happened like, or, you know, maybe I'm wrong about that. And I'm sorry. All you is Episcopals out there if you're mad now, but like, there's at least a few denominations and elements of things that, because gay people, God loves gay people too. Yeah. And like, so they've like literally taken over arms of certain elements of churches to be like really cool with Yeah. Mixed or whatever. Gay marriages. It's, it's representation. Representation at the end of the day, like I think people need that, you know, spiritual representation. Like if they can't show up to church and congregate, well, you know, it's hard. Like that's, that's not, yeah. And then frankly, like even like being part of the Unitarian church is like better than being like church is stupid. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't, I think it's less good than Yeah. Cause I do think that Jesus had a special message and a special calling in some ways. Yeah. A different pedigree than some of the other Faiths backgrounds. And I'll challenge you to check it out sometime. But Yeah. And I would say that too. I mean, I definitely think like, we wouldn't still be talking about Jesus if he wasn't such an impactful figure. Right. But you know, I think it was a more clear lens to me. Yeah. To me it was a more clear passage to how God really is, than a lot of the other faith fight. Yeah. But, and that could be, I mean, even region too, like, I mean I always call it the, uh, the geographical lottery. But you know, we got lucky that we're born here, where we were born, you know, cuz there's a million other people. You know, one of the first ventures I went to was, uh, China in, uh, let's see, 2008. So I guess I was 18, 19. Oh, okay. My, my aunt actually, you know, she gave me the opportunity of Lifetime and took me out there and there's um, a lot of Buddhist, a lot of Christians, you know, there's a good gamut of people over there and you know, you see they live by the same morals a lot of times too. Yeah. Especially now geopolitically, like, we think of China as like an enemy, but back then, well those people aren't. No. And that, you know, the CCP certainly is. Yeah. And, and back then I think they can be if, if we want them to be for sure. Well, and we can paint them that way if we want that to happen. Yeah. It looks like we're working on it right now. Well expand our geopolitical presence. Uh, should we shift? We just shifted to politics. Oh, guys. Um, uh, Nathan, why don't you start? Yeah. We can start with global politics and we'll boil it down to local. I love global politics. Uh, I love how nuclear keeps trending on Twitter. Right. You don't know if it's energy or the bomb. Right. So I put a, I put a post on LinkedIn, um, like the day after the Nord Stream Yeah. Bombing. And it was, uh, to the best of my memory, it was. Who blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline? Uh, number one, uh, Russia. Putin's so crazy. Number two, the US uh, Europe is our gas customer now. Number three, Ukraine with CIA support. Mm-hmm. And, uh, number four, um, equal terrorists. Mm. And it was a tie between Russia and the US actually. Yeah. Well, and now we know, well, maybe, but we don't really know. Like there's a lot of finger pointing. We'll never probably actually know. You'll, you'll know. Who do you guys think you'll know what the winner tells you in the next 50 years? Right. History will tell you who Yeah. Actually did that. I mean, I, I think it's obvious. I mean, I think, well, well, we said we were going to, well the, the move was telegraphed. Now generally, if I'm trying to keep some intel, I don't say, you know, well if they continue with this building, we're gonna Well, the Telegraph by who? Yeah. The old man who doesn't know how read the box and read. Right. He's like, oh wait, shit. That was no, do not repeat this box. I should have been reading that. I should have told the intern to never put his thoughts in. That is, that is one thing that I found. It doesn't matter generally what spectrum you're on. Politically. You weren't happy if you did or did not vote for Biden. You know? So are, yeah. When people are still proud they voted for Biden. I'm like, that's a problem. I voted for Biden and I'm like, oh, I don't wanna admit that. Um, but talk to me about like, are we in World War iii? I, so I think, okay, geo geopolitical just topics or are my jam lately, and I think we are in the beginning of it. I think we're testing. Testing the defenses of each other. Yeah. And I think, yeah, it doesn't, unfortunately. So I think we need to look about it from, like, as us people, what are our enemies saying? And I always say this when it comes to like geopolitical conflict, like what are they saying over there to their people? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because I've, I've been to China, I've been to Japan and Right. I know they're not Well, the Chinese people don't hate Americans. No, they don't. They love Americans. And American people don't hate Chinese. No. When I went, when I went over there, I got so much love and curiosity. Curiosity. Like it was insane. So like I try to think who's, who's the beneficiary here? And unfortunately, I do believe, if you look and see how many bases are around China mm-hmm. How many US bases are around China versus how many Chinese bases are around the us, it's, it's, you see who the aggressor is. Sure. And, and we know, and we've known for a long time that it's in the US' best interest since World War ii, world War I, to continue that geopolitical Well, and it's arguable that the world is better if there's one decider, kind of, you, you, yeah. You, you could global. Although the risk of having the petro. Go away is incredible. Today. Today there was an announcement that China actually facilitated the, uh, negotiations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is huge because we Oh shit. We thought we had Saudi Arabia in aren't team. We did not facilitate that. And that is gonna introduce China between China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. They will control almost all of the oil and we fucked ourself because of it. Yeah. So I, I do think Americans need to wake the hell up and ask themselves, do we want to continue spending our tax dollars yourself before you wreck yourself? Do we want to continue, I'm spending our tax dollars and taking money out of our pocket to fund this expansion that's pissing off the people who control. Right. A lot of one particular resource. Like just ask cuz those people over there, or even we look at, um, the people in, uh, south, uh, South Africa, like technically there are allies, but the South African president says, well, hmm. The Russians never came and colonized us. They never came and took all of our people in our buildings and forced us to live their ways. So, right. Why, why should I, why should I be against them, like, frankly South Africa's? Well, that's part of the woke fucking conversation. Mm-hmm. Because South Africa's been wrecked. Yeah, yeah. By like, and I get it. Like we can't have. Segregation and stuff like that. But like my dad employs two South Africans on his farm because they're refugees basically of when South Africa was a farming nation. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And now they are not like they, and it's burned all those farms up by stealing'em and giving'em to black farmers that didn't know how to do it. Yeah. And I, I just don't wanna see the us keep encroaching these areas. And, and we do it in such a weird way. We go in and we say, Hey, we'll give you a fuck. Right. We'll give you a fuck ton of money to develop these resources. You've got oil here, but you don't have the ability to get it outta the ground. Here you go. We'll give you a shit ton of money. You pay us back at an exorbitant interest rate. And when they can't, we'll come take that property and go take those assets at a much cheaper cost. Yeah. And if you're not okay with that, well that's fine. Just sell us that natural resource infinitely cheaper than you were gonna sell it to before. And China is doing exactly the same thing with the nations of Africa. Yeah. So don't think of them as a good guy. No, I don't think, I don't think of them as a good guy. And maybe they're just counterbalancing the American empirical threat. Or maybe they want to be the empirical. I, I kind of think there's a hunger that they have too. Yeah. I think to be full. Well, I think they have to like, put yourself in in their shoes and think to yourself like, well, shit, you know, Taiwan, do you understand how close Taiwan is to, it's China? It's like literally like a block away. Oh yeah. Like it's basically China. I've been to all those places. They're all basically China. They're all the same relatives. Right, right. We don't need to try to assimilate all of those. I think it's just a political power move. I think we're, we're using Oh, sure. Well, with all of them, huge dollars of American companies, like Oh yeah. Billions of dollars. American companies get their supplies from time on and the region and stuff like that, so. Oh yeah. It's very complicated. Uh, I bet I would like to see it on a more, like, back in the late two thousands, I feel like the trade was going great, like mm-hmm. Us in China, we were doing pretty good. We were, you know, trading buyers, boys and buddies. Yeah. Yeah. We had the, we had a big trade deficit. They would buy all our bonds. It's cool. Yeah. Well, basically as soon as America signaled its interest in increasing inflation, uh, China quit buying our bonds. Yeah. Because they're like, well, if you're just gonna do that, you go elsewhere. And so other, you know, that's a complex thing. I'm actually like, most people don't know this much shit about stuff. Uh, so, and you obviously do too, Alex, cuz you're chiming in at least on a relative basis. We talk about this a lot. Yeah. Um, what's your, like, we'll we'll zoom back down to local here, but do you have any adjusted perspective on the global politics? I definitely think there's a lot of power moves going on and it's clear that the general public and all of these countries just want peace. Right. Um, Except I do think that how can the general public force peace when that's what they want? But governments always seem to want war. Yeah. And, and they do these plays behind the scenes that, you know, like if, if the US were to go embalm, you know, Russia tomorrow, like, it's not like we had any choice in that. Right. As as the citizens. Right. As the citizens. Right. And like I just hope that the internet is loud enough at this point. Mm. Where most people can understand that we don't want World War iii. Yeah. Yeah. We don't want, and at world, at three, at the end of the day, put your foot down and stop the money, stop the flow of like, all of that. Cause that's how it's all, it's all ran. It's just, yeah. Well, and so people really that don't wanna be in World War iii, like, do we just, we sacrifice Ukraine on the altar of not doing World War iii. I mean, and that's the hard part. So I have four contractors in Ukraine. Yeah. So it like, really sits heavy on my heart. Like sometimes they don't answer. And I literally think to myself, are they dead? They're dead. Yeah. Like, it's a real thought. And, um, and so it's, it's a complicated issue, but you know, I still have to look out for, like, like ultimately yes, my family, like World War II is bad enough that Yeah. Like if everybody loses, no, it's not worth that. Right. This isn't like the nuclear wars of, you know, the fifties and the sixties. Oh yeah. They, they don't fail like they used to. They have a lot longer range. They have a hell of a lot more of them who, uh, I think the, I forget who whose quote this is, but it said, you know, it was right after World War ii, you know, world War II will be fought with nuclear weapons and World War Four will be fought with bows and arrows and sticks and stones. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And yeah, you know, it's a scary thought. Um, yeah. And that's, that's why, you know, I think, I think we have to, as a country, get beyond the two party like ideology. We're not gonna get past those systems. Like, those systems are so ingrained that like, I mean, the ideology, like people are gonna have to sit at home and think to themselves, am I willing to hate the other party so much that it causes the destruction of this country? Because that's what's gonna happen. The notion there, because like if, if we put a quiz out, Well, the problem is, is the media's so manipulative now when people are so ignorant. Mm-hmm. And it's only gonna get worse when we quit thinking, because we quit writing because writing is thinking. And so I think, you know, definitely, I mean, you should write and think, but Yeah. Um, Len, you had hit it on there. Limit the media. Like, what is your intake? You can only be influenced by Well, but how do we know what's going on with other media? Well, it depends on the media gear. Kids, you look outside right, too. Like, if you're looking at Fox and cnn, like, just know that they're, they are only reporting to get ratings. Well, and just, just remember that, whether you're watching Fox or you're watching, what is it? The Wall Street Journal who are two totally different opinions. They're both owned by Rupert Murdoch, right? They're both owned by the same company feeding you bullshit. So whoever, whoever's listening to this, stop watching Fox News. Stop watching cnn. Stop watching any of those motherfuckers. I like News Nation. Okay. Yeah. All right. Just to give you maybe like NPR or also I think global, like NPR is like propaganda for sure. Okay. Like, um, npr. Just say npr. Npr listen to you all the time. I'm actually advertising on you right now. But, but NPR is definitely like for clicks and things like that. Yeah. Like it, it feels like news, but they're trying ish. Yeah. But I think maybe, maybe the biggest thing is just diversify it, right. Get the other opinions. And that's why I do know a little bit about geopolitics is cuz I just happen to follow up a couple people who literally, like, they're, they live in other places in the world. Yeah. That matters a lot. Cause Yeah. Because, you know, we are so, thank you Elon for buying Twitter. I actually really enjoy Twitter now. It's so much better. It is, it's so much better. I I, it took me literally 10 years to like fully commit to Twitter and now I love it. Yeah. Like, I like how there's no filtering. You can read comments and it's like you're getting what you need to like, except the fact that it's coming out that for years that we're working with the FBI to hide a bunch of stuff. Right. This, this is the stuff that I like. I don't trust any of those motherfuckers. Don't listen to any news source or any social media or any government official. I think I'm libertarian at this point. Oh yeah. I'm, I've been libertarian like before. I've voted for Ross per parole with my first vote. Dude, I'm gonna vote for Ron Swanson, the next Ronson I would vote, definitely vote for him. I was, I was, uh, somebody characterized, made a. A podcast the other day, they were like, you know, Elon Musk is the only person in the world that would spend 44 billion to buy a nonprofit company. Yeah. And then be the whistleblower on his own company. Yeah. I mean, for real. I mean, he posted, I think yesterday a, uh, line of code that said like, filter out all comments e about vaccinations, even if they're claiming it's, uh, harming people essentially, is what it said. Oh, wow. And he said, this is, uh, concerning. Right. And then people are like, oh my gosh, stop spreading fake ne like people are just like attacking'em. And I'm like, whatever. Well, this was a thing that, like how can you attack that? And I guess since we're on the political spot, like think of how big and how much effort was put into silencing certain ideals back when Covid first came out. Oh gosh. Like, I think anytime, it doesn't matter what side of the fence you're on, anytime somebody's saying, no, don't think that way, perk your fucking ears up. Totally. Because something is wrong. Well, like the Ohio thing recently, right? Like, oh, that's a big deal. No problem here. It's no, no big deal. And then there's dead fish everywhere, right? And, and people water all reporting the place. Yeah. People are reporting peeing blood. Like No, it's totally, yeah, totally. Well, yeah, it's, uh, and that's where if the government says it's safe, just stay home. So this is, I'm leaving Well, loss of integrity honestly, to, to stay on this topic for a while, but, The loss of integrity by institutions of mm-hmm. Media and government now. Yeah. You can't trust them and, and cdc C and w h o and, and the FBI is taken over like, who the fuck do you trust? And that's why none of'em, when, when the destroy the alphabet soup, when that's when the government tells me, oh, well the vaccination came from China, or the, uh, disease came from virus, came from China or whatever. Like, I, you don't know what to believe. Like Right. You know? Well, and it started to look like it came from a lab that was funded by us, us, by the people that got money because they funded it well. Well that's a pretty sweet business model. You just create a bug, create something that fixes it. Yeah. And then sell the shit out of it. Yeah. Especially if you don't have the government mandate that. It's you do something it sounds like. So like think of how, and your wife is the one that's overseeing you. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Anyway, I digress. No, the tin foil hat is definitely more protective than the mask in modern society. Yeah. It's been funny how like conspiracy theories all of a sudden, like, you are a conspiracy theorist if you don't believe UFOs were shot down out of the sky. Like all, it's so funny how it took a complete 180 and now Yes, it is true. It is true. We are in the closing segment. Yeah, let's do it. The local experience. And is it, do you wanna do one each or do you guys have been together for so long? There's probably a shared local experience. Maybe, I don't know. The craziest experience that you would like to share. Oh gosh. You wanna go first or me? Um, sure. You, oh, I don't know the craziest experience, honestly. Moving here, I have to think is actually no. Oh no. Having a child at 18. Yeah. Um, I remember, oh, drink it fast. Yes. Um, I remember being in the hospital, Cushing her out. I was in labor for like 14 hours. Oh wow. Um, it did not like, it felt real, I guess I was like in this like teenage fog of what I thought was reality. And then seeing her come out, seeing Nathan's legs buckle and about to pass out. And looking at my daughter, I was like, oh God, my life is different. And in fact, now looking back on anything before that moment, it feels like a dream. Yeah. It doesn't feel like it was me. Huh. Um, so I would have to say that you became you when she became her. Yeah. I mean, that's really, in some ways Yeah. That's really, I, I just, I feel like I'm a completely different person. Like I was just born a a different person, born again in a different way than maybe your family or some of your friends or whatever. And I'm not a victim. And I'm not a victim. Like I look at that like, wow, you know what? I wouldn't recommend having a child at 18, but I was fortunate enough to have that and have the type of situation where I think I came out better. Yeah. So, yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Thank you Nathan. Um, did you have any babies? Uh, no. Yeah. No. Um, yeah, so I think, so I have this one experience, which is just like, when I think of the craziest experience, it's just like serendipitous. So I was, I guess, 21 at the time. And I was an avid rock climber. Hmm. So I was out climbing one day and I had some friends with me, I had a group of friends left. I was climbing by myself for a bit. And I had another group of friends that were supposed to come later that night. Um, so I'm climbing by myself. I'm doing some night outdoor outdoor night. And you're talking some, some high end stuff, I'm guessing, cuz you look like a freaking capable rock climber. Yeah, I was, I was pretty good. I, I think I was like a five seven guy or I forget. Yeah. I mean, I was, I was getting up to five, five elevens, you know, five 11 bees, you know, somewhere. Pretty good stuff, but yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, so weird. I was doing some climbing. It was just me and, um, it was late at night and I had a greere, which is, you know, a self catching device. But, um, you've gotta have both ends of the rope go through it or, you know, there's nothing for it to catch on. So it'll just slide through and you'll fall and die. Um, I made a couple climbs. I'm sitting there waiting on them, you know, they're not here showing up yet. So I make a few more get to the top and I go to rappel down. And I guess this is probably about, I don't know, a hundred, 110 foot, uh, cliff. And I go to Rappel down and I. My, my rope kind of felt funny. I was like, mm, man, whatever. And I just pushed off and I felt the other end of the rope, oh shit. Slip through my hand cuz I normally keep my like Right, right. And it goes through that little you thing or the w u thing and it through my greere, through my harness. And literally I cinched my hand real quick and there was about two inches Oh. Of rope left. So I'm holding both ends of the rope. One is real long hanging down and the other one's only got about two inches. And if I let go of that one side of that rope, I'm falling to my death. Right. I'm sitting there and you're holding halfway down, like you're off the cliff. I'm, I'm probably, I guess 20 feet down at this point holding just like with one hand, the one side of the rope. And normally it's crazy cuz your left hand, like whenever you're like repelling, you don't really wanna put your left hand there cuz you can get burned from the rope. Right, right, right. So it was just crazy that I had both my hands right there and felt it go through. And I remember I was squeezing so tight that the nail actually started breaking away from my hand and there was like blood coming down my fingers for my hands squeezing so hard. You're like, I hope I don't bleed enough on this rope that it gets too slippery for me to freaking hold onto it. Like it was so freaking crazy. I didn't make one noise. Not one. Like it was the dead quietest it's ever been in my life. Yeah. And I remember just like, and just literally grabbed you were able to climb up, up the damn rope. Got up. Sat there and just like blown the hell away for a minute was like, what the fuck was that? That was an egregious mistake because when you're climbing, make sure both ends of the rope are on the ground. And I just, I'd done some climbs and I went back and run back and I guess the rope shimmied. Overly confident. Overly confident. That's, yeah. The thing there. But yeah, so, oh dude, I get down and I'm shocked and I get a phone call, not five minutes later after getting down and it's Alex and she says, I just took a pregnancy test. I'm pregnant. Oh shit. Yeah. It was that moment he could've been dead. Yeah. That would've changed her journey. Yeah. Yeah. It would've changed my life forever. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that might be up there with the craziest seems just because crazy to me. It was. It was. I guess we have a shared crazy experience. Yeah, it was. It was. That whole year was crazy. Love you guys. Yeah. Sincerely. See you again.