EXPERIENCE 211 | Following the call into new chapters - Pete Gazlay - Founder and Former Owner of Total Facility Care - and our newest LoCo Facilitator!

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I met Pete Gly late in my banking career as one of my colleagues was pursuing a banking relationship with the owner of a young, but rapidly growing janitorial company.

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Total facility care.

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Pete founded the business in 2010 after departure from a fast growing middle market company in the same industry.

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At the start, Pete was a one man team selling janitorial services during the day and executing the cleanings at night.

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They grew steadily throughout though, and sold in April of 2023 with a team size of around 150 and a significant market share in both the general janitorial space, as well as the specialized tech and medical clean room janitorial.

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We spent a good amount of time talking about business principles in this episode, relationship selling, margins and bidding, account management, hiring entry level workers during a labor shortage, and finding the right time and manner of exit.

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And we talked about life after exit.

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Community engagements, a recent mission trip to Tanzania, and Pete's why in joining the team as a local facilitator.

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We're so glad to have him on the team, and I know you'll enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Pete Gasley.

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Welcome back to the Loco Experience podcast.

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My guest today is Pete Gasley and Pete is the founder and former owner of Um, Total Facility Care and that was a mostly commercial janitorial service here kind of across Northern Colorado.

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Is that right?

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Yeah.

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100 percent commercial.

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Okay.

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Um, and I guess, why don't you talk to me first about like, what was the, the, company scale, size, your maybe a little bit about your team and structure at the time that you departed.

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Sure.

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Um, so we, um, 100 percent commercial.

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We, um, we're running from Fort Collins down to, um, Longmont.

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Okay.

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And I'm trying to think if we were further south then, um, actually when I fully departed, we were into the metro area.

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Oh, so you stayed on for a while.

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Yep.

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After the, after the transaction and then Loveland over to Greeley.

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Um, and we actually expanded a little bit that last year, um, up into Wyoming and Nebraska as well.

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Okay.

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So.

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So mostly Larimer Weld and, and kind of just started to cross some of the lines.

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We were in Boulder County for a long time and Boulder got really difficult, um, hiring wise, um, when houses are a million dollars.

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Yeah.

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Hard to find people to work for.

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Entry level workers aren't really abundant.

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So.

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That makes sense.

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It was a challenging environment down there.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I don't doubt it.

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It was a challenging environment.

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Um, and, and.

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Just janitorial.

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Did you have a spectrum of services for janitorial?

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We'd love doing the technical stuff, clean rooms and medical stuff, all those kinds of things.

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So fancy janitorial was a fancy part of your differentiation, if you will.

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And then we had a full blown, uh, maintenance department.

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So, um, that was unfortunately always our.

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Best kept secret.

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And those are never good in business.

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Fair enough.

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Like doing all their HVAC stuff, boilers, whatever like that?

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Yeah, more kind of the minor handyman stuff.

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And then HVAC and some of the more technical stuff.

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We could manage it for clients and, uh, but we'd outsource it to the pros in that area.

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Makes sense.

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Okay.

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Um, and did you just break it down by, Like divisions and crews or like, talk to me about kind of that, the, the, the dynamics of managing.

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Cause it's mostly, I imagine you've probably got 10 or 20 office people and everybody else is cleaning.

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Yeah.

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Um, so we had about 150 people working for us, um, you know, at the peak of it.

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And, um, so it was me, I had a vice president, we had.

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Um, three, um, operations managers, one specialized in, um, carpets, floors, maintenance, all those kind of semi, um, skilled, and I would say really skilled things to do all that stuff right.

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Yeah.

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You have to know what you're doing.

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Okay.

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And then the other two managed, um, geography.

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So we had a four columns operations manager.

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That was our biggest concentration.

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And then we had another one that ran Greeley, Loveland, Windsor.

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And that was kind of, or see the general cleaning and then calling the flooring people as necessary.

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Yeah, exactly.

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And then, um, so that was kind of daytime operations.

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We had three people in the office, HR manager, um, front desk person that we called creator of first impressions.

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Okay.

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Um, because they were answering the phone or somebody comes into the office, they set the tone, you know, for who we are and, um, and then we had an office administrator.

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And, um, and I actually, I guess four, cause my wife, um, was always involved in the business and, um, she would do the accounting and bookkeeping and those kinds of things back of the house kind of stuff.

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Yeah.

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And then our big management structure was actually at night cause that's when our folks worked.

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Oh, right.

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Um, so.

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You know, you think about it's commercial.

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So we're coming in after businesses closed.

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Most of our people are reporting between five and, you know, seven o'clock at night for work out to their buildings and those kind of things.

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So again, night managers in those areas and then a bunch of leads.

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Um, and we try to keep.

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lead bandwidth we tried to keep to five to ten people.

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Okay.

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Um, just so, you know, we want that intimate kind of personal connection.

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And are they going out in groups of twos and fours in like vans and cars and different things?

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No, typically people are, so leads were, they had an area and they were, you know, driving around in their area.

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But typically Um, and then, you know, a line level employee would come into the office to be hired, and then they'd never see the office again.

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Oh, really?

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They would just show up on location?

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They're gonna report to work at their location, hopefully a building near, you know, where they lived, and those kinds of things.

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Just one or maybe two or three.

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Or it might be a route of, you know, with smaller buildings in an area.

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Right.

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Kind of try to geographically.

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Office parks and things like that, you clump them together.

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Yeah, densify them.

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Okay.

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You know, some buildings, um, like we took care of, and they still are, um, UC Harmony campus.

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And so.

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You've got, you know, a dozen people in that building.

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So they're all reporting in a certain time and you've got a lead over that building and, you know, a little different operations.

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Yeah, I guess everything's kind of a custom fit to the facility, to the, the acreage, the floor space, the needs of the client.

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Um, yeah, it's a hundred percent custom, actually, every job.

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I mean, we have, you know, some standard things we do, right, but.

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When you think about a building, they're all, they all have similar things, right?

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They've got office space, and restrooms, and a common area, and conference rooms, and all of those kinds of things.

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But, um, Are they one story or are they 10 stories?

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Are they, um, you know, really high end finishes?

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Or is it like cement floors and, you know, um, a manufacturing environment or something like that, right?

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So, or is it a, is it a manufacturing clean room and it has, you know, very high specs?

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Or it's a surgical operating room and it has to be sterilized every night?

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So, um, you know, just oftentimes people are like, well, how much does it cost?

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It says, well, it depends, right?

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Yeah, yeah.

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Well, I'm developing the systems so that you can.

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Consistently win business and consistently make profit from those clients and know which ones you're making money on, which ones you're not, stuff like that seems like part of the puzzle.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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And I think, and that's evolution of a business and, and a business owner too, you know, dialing those things in, right?

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You think you're good.

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And then all of a sudden it's like, huh, this isn't quite working.

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We've got to resolve this problem.

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Lost quite a bit of money on this last quarter.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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Um, and, uh, like, do you want to talk about the exit kind of pathway before we zoom back or maybe we should just even jump back to the founding years?

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Is that a better evolution?

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Sure, yeah, wherever way you want to go.

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I think let's do that.

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Okay, back to the beginning.

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Yeah, we won't, yeah, not back, we'll jump all the way in the time machine to first grade or something.

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And I know you worked in kind of corporate janitorial services before.

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Yeah.

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But I want to just jump back to like when you leapt out of that realm.

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Yeah, maybe tell me the conditions on the ground, what, what caused that leap and how well capitalized were you?

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How, how long had you been working on your plan?

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All that kind of good stuff.

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Sure.

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Um, so I'll go back maybe once.

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How did I get into the corporate world?

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Sure.

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Um, I had been a police officer in Fort Collins and, uh, was the youngest guy, uh, promoted in about 20 years back in the day.

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And this is, man, when was I promoted?

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That was 1992.

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So it was a long time ago.

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Um, and, and really had a lot of fun.

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Fort Collins is an innovative department and really good people, I think even to this day, but I.

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Um, and they let, let me do a lot of fun stuff.

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Um, we, a partner and I, we started the District 1 Policing in downtown that's still there in Old Town.

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Um, did a lot of problem solving policing, community policing, some really fun stuff.

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But I knew that I was like a square peg in a round hole and I wasn't, I was on a good fast track, but I was gonna be Um, just bashing head with bureaucrats and lawyers and politicians and all of that.

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It's like, this is not going to be good.

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Can you talk about why?

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Was it kind of out of the box thinking or what?

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Yeah.

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I mean, I'm not, I'm not the typical kind of a guy I know.

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I grew up in an entrepreneur's family.

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Okay.

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So I'm not the typical, like I wanted to be a cop from being five years old.

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Right.

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It was, um, I fell into it.

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It was, um, I was going to CSU.

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I was working at toddy's grocery store, which is.

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Over at Drake and Lemay, is now.

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It was still there when I moved to town.

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Yeah, um, well you know a lot of new people don't know where that is.

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It's true, it's true.

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And um, there's a job in the Collegian for student police officers.

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And I thought, Oh, that, that'll look good on a business resume.

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That's what I was going to school for.

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And it paid 25 cents an hour more than the grocery store.

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And that was going to take me a lot more entertaining.

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Right.

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And it was going to take me a couple more years to probably make that money.

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I'm like, okay, I'll do that.

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Um, and, um, newly married and, um, started that job.

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We'd been married about a year and we found out we were pregnant and, uh, that messed up the whole five year plan of college of, you know, get, get a degree, start a business or get a job or whatever it was.

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And so I had to get a job and, uh, through good old networking, I, I got onto Fort Collins and, uh, and had a great career there, but it wasn't, it was never my dream.

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Yeah.

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So.

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You were an entrepreneur at heart.

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Right.

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More.

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And I was working on, I was always, other people were working on like degrees in public administration.

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I was working on my business degree.

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Right.

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When I finished up.

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I was able to.

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Cram that four year degree into 14 years.

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Did you work with Jason Santos Stefano, by chance?

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No.

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He was my neighbor a few doors down, uh, for a while.

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Yeah, man, I've been gone since, uh, since 1985.

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I've been gone since 1998.

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So I've been gone longer than I was there by, uh, by log time.

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So, uh, so I leaped out of that and I went into, um, uh, leadership training, management, some motivational stuff.

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One of my childhood heroes was a Zig Ziglar.

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Okay.

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I was like, I'm going to be the next one of those.

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Yeah.

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And, uh, that is a brutal industry.

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Totally.

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If you're, if you're not famous or you haven't done some, you know, Olympic feet or climb Mount Everest or something like that.

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So I had a lot of fun doing that for three years and, uh, but it was traveling.

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And you were part of the team or you were kind of going solo.

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Yeah.

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I had my own company.

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That's an interesting choice for a young dad.

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Yeah.

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That's what my wife thought too, after a couple of years.

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So, and again, you know, I, I left without having, um, I had a lot of confidence in.

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Leadership and management training.

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And I'd been doing a lot of speaking in my role with the city.

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Um, but I didn't have any clients.

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So that's tip number one, have some clients before you leap.

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That's always a good, good, um, so it was, it was tough, but it was going pretty good.

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I, um, I got a gig at career track, um, which was out of Boulder.

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They did the one day seminar things and, um, and they were really kind of cutting edge.

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And then.

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Um, I had, I had worked with them and I was getting my own clients a lot in the public sector and policing and whatnot.

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Um, And they got bought by Fred Pryor and it was, it was like a hostile takeover.

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They basically, their career track was out of Boulder.

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They had these TV studios and all this creative, they fired all of those people.

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The only ones they kept were their speakers.

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And then they cut our pay by like 60%.

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It's like, you know, it takes a little more to get me on the road than this.

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You're, you're not a client of mine anymore.

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And, um, so then we were just wrestling with, like, our kids were kind of junior high age.

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I was like, I needed to be home.

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I was traveling a lot.

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I really didn't know that much about this chapter in your history.

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So timing was perfect.

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Two thousand dot com bubble burst.

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Oh, I need to get a job.

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So I put out probably 80 resumes and nothing.

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And, um, I got a call one afternoon and they said, uh, It's this company.

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I'm like, okay, what do you guys do?

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I didn't recognize the name.

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Yeah, and uh, like, uh, we're, uh, we're a cleaning company.

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I'm like, great, fat, sweaty guy, wife, Peter t shirt, cigar stub, the corner.

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This cannot be good.

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Right.

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But I didn't have any other prospects.

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So I went to the interview, um, after kind of looking them up a little bit and to see if they were legit.

00:13:33.335 --> 00:13:44.225
And not only they were legit, but they were, uh, Um, at the time they're doing HP and Agilent out on Harmony and, um, they had about 1, 500 employees doing about 52 million a year.

00:13:44.274 --> 00:13:44.705
Oh, dang.

00:13:44.764 --> 00:13:47.054
And it was like, they've got like a really innovative way.

00:13:47.054 --> 00:13:48.485
Like a shop out of Denver or something?

00:13:48.695 --> 00:13:50.904
They were out of Sacramento, California.

00:13:50.924 --> 00:13:52.934
So kind of focused in the tech space in general.

00:13:52.934 --> 00:13:54.054
In the tech space, yep.

00:13:54.445 --> 00:13:57.365
And that would go to a lot of pharmaceutical stuff in the years to come.

00:13:57.365 --> 00:14:00.264
So, I think they were in like five states when I got hired.

00:14:00.264 --> 00:14:01.855
I'm like, I don't know anything about your industry.

00:14:02.159 --> 00:14:09.230
Like, well, we need somebody to teach these 25 year olds how to manage on these Fortune 500 campuses.

00:14:09.269 --> 00:14:11.519
I'm like, okay, I can do that.

00:14:11.629 --> 00:14:11.929
Right.

00:14:11.929 --> 00:14:13.090
And I need to learn the industry.

00:14:13.090 --> 00:14:15.389
And so, so I did that for nine years.

00:14:15.419 --> 00:14:21.904
Um, I didn't have to travel till our kids were out of high school and then, Kind of, I, I had moved up in the organization.

00:14:21.904 --> 00:14:21.965
Yeah.

00:14:21.965 --> 00:14:23.044
Well then travel would be kind of fun.

00:14:23.044 --> 00:14:24.695
'cause you hadn't done that fun in your life.

00:14:24.695 --> 00:14:24.875
Probably.

00:14:24.875 --> 00:14:24.995
Yeah.

00:14:24.995 --> 00:14:27.245
So, um, I don't know about the fun part.

00:14:27.245 --> 00:14:29.554
Business travel's fun at the beginning, but Right.

00:14:29.644 --> 00:14:31.804
The last three years I was there, I was traveling.

00:14:31.835 --> 00:14:34.534
Um, I'd leave on Monday, get home on Friday.

00:14:34.595 --> 00:14:34.774
Ooh.

00:14:34.985 --> 00:14:38.914
Um, half a day Saturday catch up and a couple hours on Sunday to get ready to go.

00:14:39.865 --> 00:14:41.304
Um, I did that 50 weeks a year.

00:14:41.394 --> 00:14:41.664
Oof.

00:14:41.695 --> 00:14:49.195
Um, and for some weird reason, my wife wanted to go on vacation, um, when I had time off, so I was gone every week.

00:14:49.225 --> 00:14:49.554
Yeah.

00:14:49.615 --> 00:14:50.245
Um, yeah.

00:14:50.245 --> 00:14:51.355
House projects take a while.

00:14:52.375 --> 00:14:53.845
they take a long time.

00:14:54.264 --> 00:14:57.355
Um, that's where you learn to delegate to somebody that knows what they're doing.

00:14:57.355 --> 00:14:57.475
Yeah.

00:14:57.480 --> 00:14:58.345
You get a favorite hand again.

00:14:58.585 --> 00:14:59.065
For sure.

00:14:59.070 --> 00:15:00.595
So, um, so it was an amazing experience.

00:15:00.595 --> 00:15:05.394
I mean, when, when I left we were, um, we were in 44 states, Canada.

00:15:05.455 --> 00:15:05.754
Oh wow.

00:15:05.754 --> 00:15:06.445
Costa Rica.

00:15:06.860 --> 00:15:11.110
Um, I was in charge of environmental health and safety and customer service.

00:15:11.190 --> 00:15:11.580
Okay.

00:15:11.610 --> 00:15:13.009
So I dealt with all the problems.

00:15:13.009 --> 00:15:13.240
Yeah.

00:15:13.240 --> 00:15:13.470
Yeah.

00:15:13.470 --> 00:15:14.450
It was that job title.

00:15:14.460 --> 00:15:14.659
Yeah.

00:15:14.659 --> 00:15:14.970
Yeah.

00:15:15.009 --> 00:15:19.940
And, um, but I mean, I have That allows you to also be a understander of all the problems.

00:15:19.970 --> 00:15:20.700
Exactly.

00:15:20.769 --> 00:15:27.610
And I was, I mean, I was in, um, you know, if, if at that time you would name a fortune 100 or two 50 country.

00:15:28.095 --> 00:15:35.634
Um, company, I was probably in their global or world headquarters and we were taking care of them, you know, I mean, that's, it was, it was pretty amazing.

00:15:35.634 --> 00:15:36.654
You were dominating the industry almost.

00:15:36.664 --> 00:15:39.174
We were and, and the guy that I, What was the firm?

00:15:39.394 --> 00:15:41.634
Um, yeah, it was SBM site services.

00:15:41.634 --> 00:15:43.235
The guy that I worked for.

00:15:43.450 --> 00:15:50.539
was a great American entrepreneur, still is, and um, we didn't, we didn't do that through acquisition, that was all organic growth.

00:15:50.539 --> 00:15:51.009
Wow.

00:15:51.029 --> 00:15:52.700
Which is really pretty crazy.

00:15:52.720 --> 00:15:54.110
Like they used to do it that way, but.

00:15:54.139 --> 00:15:56.409
Yeah, but it was, you know, it was, um.

00:15:56.409 --> 00:15:57.169
What a neat thing.

00:15:57.220 --> 00:16:00.519
I mean, you, you already joined a pretty sophisticated company, but how many, Yeah.

00:16:00.519 --> 00:16:02.740
How many revenues and employees by the time you.

00:16:02.990 --> 00:16:07.230
Uh, we were doing about 240 million and um, we had over 6, 000 employees.

00:16:08.195 --> 00:16:13.764
So, yeah, it was, so, I mean, it was, um, I got my PhD in business working, you know, in that company.

00:16:14.465 --> 00:16:15.794
And what did the leadership team of that?

00:16:15.894 --> 00:16:18.625
F company look like, like were there.

00:16:18.684 --> 00:16:19.524
Oh, it was complex.

00:16:19.639 --> 00:16:21.414
A C-suite and then a bunch of directors or Yeah.

00:16:21.414 --> 00:16:22.375
A C-suite.

00:16:22.404 --> 00:16:30.565
Um, I was one of the directors and, um, and then, you know, kind of vast regional and then area down the site management.

00:16:30.565 --> 00:16:30.894
Yeah.

00:16:31.284 --> 00:16:37.705
And our, so like our typical client, we wouldn't go into a new market unless, um, we could grab a million square foot building or more.

00:16:37.764 --> 00:16:38.154
Okay.

00:16:38.154 --> 00:16:39.955
So large corporate campuses.

00:16:40.014 --> 00:16:40.195
Yep.

00:16:40.254 --> 00:16:42.080
And then once we were in the market, we would do.

00:16:42.894 --> 00:16:47.715
some smaller things, smaller things being half a million square feet or 600, 000.

00:16:47.715 --> 00:16:48.164
Yeah.

00:16:48.245 --> 00:16:52.475
Sometimes the 200, 000 was too small for us to manage just with our system.

00:16:52.475 --> 00:16:57.434
There was, you know, we had a sweet spot and, um, so some of the smaller stuff was tougher to manage.

00:16:57.884 --> 00:16:58.284
Yeah.

00:16:58.735 --> 00:17:00.054
Um, so it was really fun.

00:17:00.495 --> 00:17:03.004
And, but it was time for me to go.

00:17:03.034 --> 00:17:06.095
Would they have not allowed you to travel less or have a different role?

00:17:06.095 --> 00:17:13.025
They would have, but, um, the owner and I just, we got to a place where we just couldn't work together anymore.

00:17:13.234 --> 00:17:19.954
So when, when you start your day every day with, you know, these series of F bombs and why isn't this person doing this and this, it just.

00:17:20.345 --> 00:17:24.025
It was wearing on my soul, I guess is the best way to put it, so.

00:17:24.365 --> 00:17:26.085
Was that the entrepreneur that built it too?

00:17:26.115 --> 00:17:26.454
Yeah.

00:17:26.515 --> 00:17:26.744
Okay.

00:17:26.755 --> 00:17:27.055
Yep.

00:17:27.285 --> 00:17:29.644
Driven, you know, super driven guy.

00:17:29.714 --> 00:17:29.944
Yeah.

00:17:29.984 --> 00:17:30.625
Um, and.

00:17:30.704 --> 00:17:31.315
Learned a lot?

00:17:31.515 --> 00:17:31.805
Yeah.

00:17:31.805 --> 00:17:35.515
Oh, I learned everything from him about the industry and a ton about business.

00:17:35.515 --> 00:17:36.194
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:17:36.224 --> 00:17:38.394
Um, on, on both good and bad, right?

00:17:38.555 --> 00:17:38.894
Right.

00:17:39.325 --> 00:17:41.394
Well, I mean, it's, it's nice to learn from.

00:17:41.545 --> 00:17:45.335
other people's mistakes and failures instead of absolutely repeating them yourself right away.

00:17:45.424 --> 00:17:47.055
You know, I mean, they're still in business.

00:17:47.055 --> 00:17:48.765
He's massively successful.

00:17:48.964 --> 00:17:52.654
Um, you know, we just had kind of different thoughts about how to, to do some things.

00:17:52.664 --> 00:17:54.954
So did you, did you have a plan?

00:17:55.015 --> 00:18:00.825
Like you were crafting a plan to what your escape thing was or one day after too many F bombs, you were like, you know what?

00:18:00.825 --> 00:18:06.894
Yeah, it was a, yeah, it was a, I would say a frustrating parting for both of us.

00:18:06.894 --> 00:18:07.904
And it's like, okay.

00:18:07.960 --> 00:18:28.119
And so, so I left and I, I looked for some jobs, you know, and, um, at that time we had our first grandchild and, um, the jobs that I, Um, what's qualified for and like one was in Racine, Wisconsin, which is, and I wouldn't have to travel.

00:18:28.119 --> 00:18:32.089
So that was one of my criteria not to travel, but it was in Racine, Wisconsin.

00:18:32.650 --> 00:18:35.259
So both days of the year, it's nice there.

00:18:35.259 --> 00:18:35.799
It's nice.

00:18:35.900 --> 00:18:38.869
But we're just talking about winter here, right?

00:18:39.019 --> 00:18:39.309
Right.

00:18:39.339 --> 00:18:40.009
Just like your home.

00:18:40.029 --> 00:18:40.269
Yeah.

00:18:40.289 --> 00:18:41.529
It's a little better with.

00:18:42.674 --> 00:18:44.585
You know, it's right off the Great Lakes and all of that.

00:18:44.605 --> 00:18:48.174
And then, um, another serious one was down in Houston, Texas.

00:18:48.545 --> 00:18:50.545
Um, I'd have to live in Houston and travel.

00:18:50.555 --> 00:18:52.845
So I was like, okay, no, that's, that's a double.

00:18:53.115 --> 00:18:54.125
Almost as bad as hotline.

00:18:54.325 --> 00:18:54.904
Yeah, right.

00:18:54.904 --> 00:18:55.825
Yeah, exactly.

00:18:55.914 --> 00:18:57.585
So it's like, you know what?

00:18:57.875 --> 00:19:02.125
I really like this industry and there's nothing like this locally.

00:19:02.315 --> 00:19:03.904
Nobody's doing it this way.

00:19:04.275 --> 00:19:07.634
And, um, I'd been involved in a lot of big deals.

00:19:07.644 --> 00:19:09.414
And who was the big player?

00:19:10.105 --> 00:19:12.035
In the industry before in here locally.

00:19:12.035 --> 00:19:13.855
Yeah Porter Industries.

00:19:13.934 --> 00:19:14.414
Okay.

00:19:14.414 --> 00:19:24.400
Yeah I was a long time they they had been around Um, gosh, I guess the 30 years they, they went under when they were almost 40 years old.

00:19:24.400 --> 00:19:24.990
Oh, is that right?

00:19:25.769 --> 00:19:27.160
Sad, sad story.

00:19:27.210 --> 00:19:27.500
Yeah.

00:19:27.529 --> 00:19:29.170
Um, you'll have to call somebody else for that one.

00:19:29.440 --> 00:19:32.558
Well, it probably has a lot to do with your story.

00:19:32.559 --> 00:19:33.730
They gave us a lot of customers.

00:19:33.730 --> 00:19:34.480
I'll just say that.

00:19:35.430 --> 00:19:39.450
I remember our bank actually had used Porter Industries when I first moved to town.

00:19:39.490 --> 00:19:39.910
Oh yeah.

00:19:39.960 --> 00:19:41.000
I mean, they were huge.

00:19:41.029 --> 00:19:42.130
Well, and then they got.

00:19:42.529 --> 00:19:56.319
Like annoyed with the service and they instead hired one of our, one of my old friends, one of our employees to clean the bank on weekends, or whatever it was, I think it was just once a week kind of thing, and it was like, for her it was great dough and the bank was cleaner than ever.

00:19:56.579 --> 00:19:57.049
Right.

00:19:57.150 --> 00:19:58.509
Yeah, because she's got to be there, right?

00:19:58.529 --> 00:19:58.970
Right.

00:19:59.640 --> 00:20:02.740
Kurt's talking to me in the break room again about his desk, I don't know.

00:20:03.480 --> 00:20:06.390
Yeah, there's definitely plenty of accountability in that circumstance.

00:20:06.500 --> 00:20:06.869
Right.

00:20:07.105 --> 00:20:10.954
So, so anyway, so there was a, it was a soft market in that regard.

00:20:10.994 --> 00:20:16.244
I think so, but Porter was a, um, I mean they were the 800 pound gorilla in the local market here.

00:20:16.255 --> 00:20:17.055
They had, I think.

00:20:17.464 --> 00:20:21.855
I think they had 250 or 300 employees, you know, when we started facility care.

00:20:21.855 --> 00:20:24.894
So, so again, you know, I didn't learn anything from speaking.

00:20:24.894 --> 00:20:29.654
So 2010, we start total facility care, no clients, no employees.

00:20:29.884 --> 00:20:33.505
Um, you know, and I, I'm thinking, Hey, I'm a pretty good salesperson.

00:20:33.505 --> 00:20:36.934
I'm just, I just, uh, I'm letting all these corporate, right.

00:20:36.984 --> 00:20:38.704
I mean, Intel was one of our clients.

00:20:38.704 --> 00:20:45.694
I, the year before I had taken them from 25 to 35 million, you know, um, and it turns out that's a negotiation.

00:20:45.694 --> 00:20:46.674
It wasn't really sales.

00:20:46.994 --> 00:20:52.065
Um, and then, um, Genentech out in California, I just helped close that deal.

00:20:52.075 --> 00:20:52.954
It was a 20 million.

00:20:53.654 --> 00:20:55.315
Well, turns out none of that is sales.

00:20:55.315 --> 00:20:58.204
Like that's coming in the boardroom later and like closing the deal.

00:20:58.204 --> 00:20:59.144
That's totally different.

00:20:59.634 --> 00:21:01.075
And it's like, well, crud.

00:21:01.075 --> 00:21:02.744
I got to pick up the phone and call somebody.

00:21:02.775 --> 00:21:06.224
And were you trying to sell to some of these, things?

00:21:06.275 --> 00:21:11.295
Um, yeah, I mean, I, anybody that I was kind of like, I just need a client, right?

00:21:11.634 --> 00:21:21.644
So, um, but I imagine talking to somebody that kind of corporate office sphere is way different than talking to, you know, Joe, the Napa store.

00:21:21.744 --> 00:21:22.285
Yeah.

00:21:22.535 --> 00:21:23.555
Clean to the banks or whatever.

00:21:24.345 --> 00:21:28.204
Ten years that I was in that corporate environment, that, that whole thing changed.

00:21:28.204 --> 00:21:28.684
So.

00:21:29.130 --> 00:21:33.220
In the day when, well, they hired me, they had picked up HP here.

00:21:33.559 --> 00:21:36.569
HP was starting to consolidate regionally, but.

00:21:37.069 --> 00:21:44.670
When SBM got the first account in Roseville, California, they just like knocked on the door at the site and the site manager could decide.

00:21:45.039 --> 00:21:52.150
Well, by the time I left, um, we had, with Hewlett Packard, we had all of North America, including Canada.

00:21:52.430 --> 00:21:58.529
I don't know if they, I think they had some manufacturing in Mexico we didn't do, but then we had Central America, Costa Rica and stuff.

00:21:58.579 --> 00:22:00.190
Yeah, just super bonded relationships.

00:22:00.190 --> 00:22:01.034
And they were that.

00:22:01.295 --> 00:22:16.105
Now about a year after I left, um, year two, they lost, they, they had all the Americas and they were going for all of that and HP put it out to bid and, um, a company out of Europe that had Europe and Asia bid on the globe.

00:22:16.184 --> 00:22:19.575
And I think SBM didn't bid on that big of a piece.

00:22:19.585 --> 00:22:19.924
Right.

00:22:20.559 --> 00:22:21.559
Uh, we'll take you.

00:22:22.019 --> 00:22:29.150
And if you, you know, if you save a penny, a square foot over how many bazillion square foot they have, it's actually real money.

00:22:29.559 --> 00:22:33.589
Um, and so, you know, so that's, so they lose that big chunk of revenue as they lost it.

00:22:33.619 --> 00:22:39.339
Um, you know, it was at that point they were big enough that, you know, you feel it, but it wasn't catastrophic.

00:22:39.339 --> 00:22:44.670
It didn't break the whole, you know, they were probably still a top 10 client, but for years and years they'd been the number one client.

00:22:45.069 --> 00:22:48.000
So the good news was they had grown and diversified and yeah.

00:22:48.515 --> 00:22:49.164
All of that.

00:22:49.234 --> 00:23:07.934
So, so yeah, so I entered the market and I put some great marketing collateral together, I thought, um, and the market will fly a folder and, you know, one sheets on office cleaning and, you know, the technical stuff and medical clean and all these different things.

00:23:07.934 --> 00:23:08.234
Right.

00:23:08.255 --> 00:23:09.744
Do you differentiate yourself?

00:23:10.585 --> 00:23:14.275
Like as far as a brand and stuff, I mean, your brand was Total Facility Care I assume.

00:23:14.275 --> 00:23:15.625
It was Total Facility Care.

00:23:15.644 --> 00:23:20.684
Yeah, I hired an idiot as the first, um Graphic designer.

00:23:20.684 --> 00:23:21.674
Do you want to name this person?

00:23:21.704 --> 00:23:22.404
Yeah, it was me.

00:23:22.434 --> 00:23:22.845
Oh, okay.

00:23:22.904 --> 00:23:33.035
Um, so, terrible colors, like the total facility care was a T with, you know, all the way across the thing and yeah, it was, it was terrible.

00:23:33.055 --> 00:23:34.944
So, but I didn't have any money, but I had time.

00:23:35.025 --> 00:23:35.275
Right.

00:23:35.325 --> 00:23:39.275
Um, so I designed that, designed my first website, you know, all of that stuff.

00:23:39.404 --> 00:23:42.244
Not to ask a too personal question, but how come you didn't have any money?

00:23:42.244 --> 00:23:46.365
It seemed like you had this kind of high profile director level job.

00:23:47.000 --> 00:23:51.369
All the pursuits of raising kids and having houses and a spouse that didn't work.

00:23:51.369 --> 00:23:55.759
I mean, I had a great six figure salary and we were spending it, you know, like most people.

00:23:55.759 --> 00:23:56.839
Yeah, yeah, no, I get it.

00:23:56.839 --> 00:24:01.369
I mean, we probably had, we had six months of savings and I actually negotiated a severance out of SDM.

00:24:01.380 --> 00:24:02.660
Had a decent 401k probably.

00:24:02.660 --> 00:24:03.749
Yeah.

00:24:03.750 --> 00:24:08.250
But otherwise, like, spendable cash to start this business and hire somebody to clean.

00:24:08.250 --> 00:24:11.210
Yeah, I mean, we, we started it on 10, 000.

00:24:11.460 --> 00:24:12.210
I mean, it is, you know.

00:24:12.210 --> 00:24:12.539
Okay.

00:24:12.599 --> 00:24:19.299
And 80 of that went to buy a Jeep Grand Cherokee, because I'd been driving a company car for 10 years, you know.

00:24:19.569 --> 00:24:23.089
So we, we owned one car, and it's like, well, we gotta have a second one.

00:24:23.089 --> 00:24:24.099
Yeah, yeah, interesting.

00:24:24.240 --> 00:24:27.765
So Isn't it an interesting thing how Yeah.

00:24:28.605 --> 00:24:33.825
Like things can change so quickly in a financial picture and you, and you can just pivot and adjust.

00:24:34.095 --> 00:24:34.394
Right.

00:24:34.394 --> 00:24:38.115
And, and manage through, you had a six month severance or a three month severance or?

00:24:38.174 --> 00:24:43.934
Yeah, we had a six month severance from SPM and then, you know, we had some money in the bank, so it's not like we were an immediate crisis.

00:24:43.934 --> 00:24:44.025
Right.

00:24:44.325 --> 00:24:44.984
Which was great.

00:24:44.984 --> 00:24:49.875
'cause I also just took a few weeks just to like decompress, not make a decision.

00:24:50.055 --> 00:24:50.384
Yeah.

00:24:50.384 --> 00:24:50.714
Right.

00:24:51.105 --> 00:24:52.424
And um, you know.

00:24:52.845 --> 00:24:57.555
Walked the crap out of my dog back then and worked out and just did some stuff, you know, for me.

00:24:57.565 --> 00:25:13.694
Reflecting back, how, what do you think, if you, if you had planned for six months or a year and saved 25, 000 to start with instead, how do you think, and had a business plan all ready to go and maybe a professional branding.

00:25:13.734 --> 00:25:17.920
Do you think your Acceleration would have been faster if you did that?

00:25:17.920 --> 00:25:20.000
Or are you glad for the way it happened?

00:25:20.009 --> 00:25:24.029
Like, kind of learned everything because you kind of bootstrapped it from the real bottom?

00:25:24.259 --> 00:25:27.170
Yeah, I mean, I think I'm glad for everything that happened.

00:25:27.259 --> 00:25:27.500
Yeah.

00:25:28.515 --> 00:25:37.585
I think, um, there, there's a famous expression, I forget who said it, but you know, a man with money to burn will always find someone to light the fire.

00:25:37.924 --> 00:25:48.214
And, um, so I think that's true, you know, as rough as the first year was, um, when we did have some cash flow in the second year, then I could hire a good graphic designer.

00:25:48.214 --> 00:25:50.785
I could, you know, but I knew more of what I wanted at that time.

00:25:51.234 --> 00:25:53.484
So I could have spent the money for sure, but.

00:25:53.545 --> 00:25:59.575
And, you know, having to scrap and do that a little bit was, was important as well worth that extra 20 grand maybe.

00:25:59.625 --> 00:26:01.744
So I mean, I did, I did the old thing, right?

00:26:01.744 --> 00:26:03.734
I mean, nobody, do you remember your first client?

00:26:03.855 --> 00:26:04.755
Oh, absolutely.

00:26:04.835 --> 00:26:05.535
Absolutely.

00:26:05.605 --> 00:26:06.694
So thankful for them.

00:26:06.694 --> 00:26:09.815
It was, um, Colorado central water district over in Greeley.

00:26:09.865 --> 00:26:10.305
Okay.

00:26:10.335 --> 00:26:15.414
And, um, And then our, our first client in Fort Collins was Harmony Laser Center.

00:26:15.684 --> 00:26:20.115
And then our first client in Loveland was door security serve, um, systems.

00:26:20.384 --> 00:26:23.154
So, and they were all within about a week of each other.

00:26:23.285 --> 00:26:23.765
Oh, nice.

00:26:23.845 --> 00:26:25.845
It took me five months to get that first client.

00:26:25.845 --> 00:26:33.904
So you, so closing these multi million dollar deals and you landed one in each market, so now you got to run this big circuit.

00:26:33.904 --> 00:26:34.375
Absolutely.

00:26:34.375 --> 00:26:34.664
Yeah.

00:26:34.924 --> 00:26:37.045
And then about a month later, I landed one in Boulder.

00:26:37.134 --> 00:26:38.075
Oh, so yeah.

00:26:38.075 --> 00:26:39.025
So I mean, it was just.

00:26:39.569 --> 00:26:44.339
It was, um, it was wonderful, but Did you drop the Cherokee in favor of something with better gas mileage?

00:26:44.349 --> 00:26:44.849
Oh, no.

00:26:44.849 --> 00:26:48.000
I mean, I, I drove that Cherokee a long time.

00:26:48.400 --> 00:26:53.230
Um, probably the first, gosh, I don't know, five years of the business.

00:26:53.230 --> 00:26:54.839
And we put some miles on that baby for sure.

00:26:54.849 --> 00:26:58.740
And did you hire help to clean with you, like, from the time that you got your first client?

00:26:58.954 --> 00:26:59.174
Yeah.

00:26:59.174 --> 00:27:01.055
That wasn't, that wasn't the business plan.

00:27:01.055 --> 00:27:02.234
So I did do a business plan.

00:27:02.234 --> 00:27:06.474
I worked with, uh, you know, the small business development center and wrote out a plan.

00:27:06.525 --> 00:27:09.134
And, um, honestly, the plan was okay.

00:27:09.174 --> 00:27:12.914
The best part that I got out of that was actually writing the financial pro forma.

00:27:12.914 --> 00:27:15.255
And I, you know, you wrote it.

00:27:15.255 --> 00:27:17.184
It's like, Oh, look, I go broke right there.

00:27:17.555 --> 00:27:20.144
Um, I need to not do that right there.

00:27:20.144 --> 00:27:23.464
So if people are thinking about starting, right, write out that pro forma.

00:27:23.464 --> 00:27:23.674
Yeah.

00:27:23.674 --> 00:27:24.904
Cashflow plan especially.

00:27:24.914 --> 00:27:25.585
Absolutely.

00:27:25.585 --> 00:27:26.414
Because you can, yeah.

00:27:26.700 --> 00:27:29.150
you can grow too fast and grow yourself out of business.

00:27:29.490 --> 00:27:31.809
Um, if you're not careful in there.

00:27:31.829 --> 00:27:32.890
So yeah.

00:27:32.890 --> 00:27:40.039
So the, the plan from the beginning was, um, get a client, clean them at night and do the business stuff in the daytime.

00:27:40.039 --> 00:27:44.779
So I was, I was the first and, um, last employee at the beginning of the company.

00:27:44.779 --> 00:27:48.390
And I would literally go do all the business stuff, the after hours, all of that.

00:27:48.390 --> 00:27:49.470
And then I would go clean.

00:27:49.650 --> 00:28:00.744
That's the nice thing about, uh, You know, having the, the, the cleaning shift at night, you can, you know, you're not, other than the awkward encounters with your client, Oh, I didn't know you'd be here tonight.

00:28:00.785 --> 00:28:01.365
Yeah.

00:28:01.365 --> 00:28:03.825
My, you know, my person didn't show up, right.

00:28:05.424 --> 00:28:06.434
Just me tonight.

00:28:06.434 --> 00:28:13.214
Um, so, and then, I don't know, a few months in, I hired, I had a couple, by the end of the year, we had a couple of part time.

00:28:13.545 --> 00:28:14.494
employees.

00:28:14.555 --> 00:28:22.565
And, um, that first year we billed, uh, 59, 000 and, um, we took home about 2, 000 of that.

00:28:22.575 --> 00:28:24.835
So it was not paying any bills.

00:28:25.204 --> 00:28:25.775
Um, at that time.

00:28:25.785 --> 00:28:28.394
Well, but you had revenue, so you had to flow in a little bit.

00:28:28.434 --> 00:28:30.095
Well, and I have an amazing wife.

00:28:30.095 --> 00:28:34.904
And so she, um, probably shortly after, she, oh, for sure.

00:28:34.954 --> 00:28:41.289
And so I'm the entrepreneur and she's not, and you know, it was, Not happiness, I would say around that.

00:28:41.289 --> 00:28:43.220
But she's like, you know, and I think I'm going to go get a job.

00:28:43.559 --> 00:28:44.980
My God, no, you don't need to do that.

00:28:44.980 --> 00:28:46.690
Cause you know, I'm an entrepreneur.

00:28:46.690 --> 00:28:47.460
It's all going to work out.

00:28:47.460 --> 00:28:48.079
Right.

00:28:48.130 --> 00:28:49.990
Well, the kids are out of school and stuff already too.

00:28:50.019 --> 00:28:50.170
Yeah.

00:28:50.170 --> 00:28:51.019
We were empty nesters.

00:28:51.450 --> 00:28:51.619
Yeah.

00:28:51.660 --> 00:28:55.210
Um, and she's like, no, I'm going to get a job and she did.

00:28:55.210 --> 00:28:59.289
She got a job up at PVH and, uh, and she worked at UCH.

00:29:00.380 --> 00:29:02.589
first five years that we had the business and it was great.

00:29:02.599 --> 00:29:11.390
You know, we got, it wasn't, it's not like she was highly compensated, but yeah, we had some money coming in and we had health insurance and you know, it just smoothed things.

00:29:11.410 --> 00:29:15.048
Hopefully it's connected to the people who do the cleaning for UCH and PBH.

00:29:15.049 --> 00:29:22.234
Um, I don't think she ever did, but I had, I had other, we did a lot of work for UCH and they're still doing a lot of work for UCH.

00:29:22.384 --> 00:29:23.654
They were great clients for us.

00:29:23.664 --> 00:29:31.075
So, um, like when does it really start to, to grow, um, rapidly or did it right from the start?

00:29:31.075 --> 00:29:33.315
Was it a, was it a steep growth from the start?

00:29:33.384 --> 00:29:33.694
Yeah.

00:29:33.694 --> 00:29:38.944
So that next year, like we doubled in revenue and I think we doubled in revenue every, every year.

00:29:39.055 --> 00:29:39.394
Yeah.

00:29:39.394 --> 00:29:40.035
240.

00:29:40.934 --> 00:29:44.525
Um, you know, I think we jumped from one 20 to three something.

00:29:44.775 --> 00:29:44.805
Okay.

00:29:45.654 --> 00:29:47.914
I mean, it was rolling pretty good, right?

00:29:48.275 --> 00:29:51.505
And then, um, I'm trying to think.

00:29:51.515 --> 00:29:56.394
You know, I kind of, um, Uh, when did you start exactly?

00:29:56.404 --> 00:29:56.605
Uh, 2010.

00:29:56.684 --> 00:30:05.015
2010, okay, so coming by 2013, 2014 is probably, probably about 12, 13 is when you and I first got acquainted.

00:30:05.285 --> 00:30:05.865
Yeah.

00:30:06.194 --> 00:30:07.944
Well, whenever you were with the bank there.

00:30:07.944 --> 00:30:09.984
Well, I left banking in the fall of 2013.

00:30:10.285 --> 00:30:10.765
Okay.

00:30:11.154 --> 00:30:11.295
Yeah.

00:30:11.295 --> 00:30:14.454
And so it had to have been 2012.

00:30:14.515 --> 00:30:14.835
Right.

00:30:14.845 --> 00:30:18.154
Because it wasn't like right as I think I met the bank president, Doug.

00:30:18.154 --> 00:30:18.305
Yep, yep.

00:30:18.625 --> 00:30:19.984
Um, you know, some chamber stuff.

00:30:20.025 --> 00:30:22.664
And we did Harmony Laser was our first client.

00:30:22.674 --> 00:30:22.704
Okay.

00:30:22.714 --> 00:30:24.085
They were right behind you guys there.

00:30:24.085 --> 00:30:24.335
Oh yeah.

00:30:24.335 --> 00:30:25.305
I'm like, I gotta get this bank.

00:30:25.315 --> 00:30:25.914
It's like right here.

00:30:25.954 --> 00:30:27.454
We're driving by and never pay, right?

00:30:27.454 --> 00:30:28.055
Did you get it?

00:30:28.365 --> 00:30:29.625
No, I don't think we ever got that bank.

00:30:30.204 --> 00:30:30.954
It's just the way it works out.

00:30:31.174 --> 00:30:31.664
Yeah, yeah.

00:30:31.704 --> 00:30:31.954
Sure enough.

00:30:32.734 --> 00:30:40.295
You know, the fun part, though, about those first clients was I was massively loyal to them because I so appreciated their taking a chance on me, right?

00:30:40.674 --> 00:30:42.144
And so we serviced the heck out of them.

00:30:42.184 --> 00:30:48.684
And, um, they were, um, they were all clients up to, um, when we transitioned.

00:30:48.765 --> 00:30:50.184
So we kept them that whole time.

00:30:50.194 --> 00:30:51.755
We took great care of them.

00:30:52.055 --> 00:30:53.734
And, you know, so that's kind of a cool thing.

00:30:54.029 --> 00:31:02.789
My, uh, I've probably told this story on the podcast before, but my dad went to seven banks before He found a banker that would give him a farm loan, help him out to put the first crop in.

00:31:03.269 --> 00:31:07.650
Um, and'cause he was a motorcycle mechanic, but moonlighting as a farmer.

00:31:07.710 --> 00:31:08.190
Oh yeah.

00:31:08.190 --> 00:31:13.500
And a, and a and a and he had built a shop to do wrenching on a side, you know, so he was a 24 hour guy too.

00:31:13.589 --> 00:31:13.920
Just about right.

00:31:14.009 --> 00:31:14.490
Oh man.

00:31:14.579 --> 00:31:16.609
Um, but, uh.

00:31:17.990 --> 00:31:20.079
It was what was First Bank and then became U.

00:31:20.079 --> 00:31:20.250
S.

00:31:20.250 --> 00:31:20.680
Bank.

00:31:20.839 --> 00:31:21.529
Oh, okay, yeah.

00:31:21.539 --> 00:31:27.009
And he, like, eventually he became, like, one of the more well to do farmers in the whole region.

00:31:27.019 --> 00:31:31.140
And First Bank was not really good at farm banking really anymore.

00:31:31.619 --> 00:31:38.190
And, uh, but he just was loyal to them, despite a lot of bankers being like, We can save you, you know, this much on this and that.

00:31:38.329 --> 00:31:38.569
Right.

00:31:38.569 --> 00:31:42.140
And he's like, you know, that's They took a chance on me when I was nothing, right?

00:31:42.160 --> 00:31:42.559
Yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:31:42.559 --> 00:31:48.299
Everybody wants my business now that I'm So I like to hear those stories of loyalty like that.

00:31:48.309 --> 00:31:49.470
So that's awesome.

00:31:49.779 --> 00:31:55.930
Um, and so then from there, it's kind of just a slow build of the, of the machine, right?

00:31:55.930 --> 00:31:59.009
Like not absolutely not putting too much overhead onto the.

00:31:59.694 --> 00:32:07.714
The cleaning crews, um, and recognizing kind of where the, where the revenues come from and, and what the expenditures are around that.

00:32:07.904 --> 00:32:10.894
What's the, like it's, it's a service business, right?

00:32:10.894 --> 00:32:16.005
So that the cleaning materials and supplies and stuff is probably 10 percent or something.

00:32:16.005 --> 00:32:17.444
And then mostly it's wages.

00:32:18.015 --> 00:32:19.984
Yeah, I mean, wages is your big expense.

00:32:19.984 --> 00:32:21.605
That's like 75, 80 percent a year.

00:32:21.625 --> 00:32:23.684
Yeah, that, I mean, that's the big expense for sure.

00:32:23.684 --> 00:32:24.755
For six years at least, yeah.

00:32:24.845 --> 00:32:32.055
And, uh, you know, you're buying equipment, um, when you, when you're going into a building, and, you know, it's typical life there?

00:32:32.724 --> 00:32:34.365
Yeah, I typically would leave it there.

00:32:34.384 --> 00:32:34.615
Okay, okay.

00:32:34.615 --> 00:32:37.653
Um, you know, in the early days, um, again, I was just scrapping, so.

00:32:37.653 --> 00:32:38.634
You'd lug them back and forth around.

00:32:38.664 --> 00:32:41.588
Like, yeah, do you throw all your equipment in the trunk of your car?

00:32:41.588 --> 00:32:43.164
And, and I expected every employee to do that.

00:32:43.164 --> 00:32:44.355
What's the matter with that, you know?

00:32:44.365 --> 00:32:46.015
You don't want a floor waxing machine.

00:32:46.085 --> 00:32:46.424
Right.

00:32:47.174 --> 00:32:51.795
And then, you know, and I hired a, I hired a manager, he's like, you know, maybe we should stop this.

00:32:52.440 --> 00:32:54.869
So now I got to buy all this equipment for these buildings.

00:32:54.869 --> 00:32:57.109
And, you know, it's just like, it's like, okay, you're right.

00:32:57.109 --> 00:32:57.259
Yeah.

00:32:57.259 --> 00:32:58.059
We should do this.

00:32:58.279 --> 00:32:59.849
Let's make it easier on our team here.

00:33:00.529 --> 00:33:03.789
Lugging these things around, but we, again, we did some things.

00:33:03.869 --> 00:33:06.650
I learned, I had such great opportunity.

00:33:07.000 --> 00:33:08.390
I, I was at SBM.

00:33:08.390 --> 00:33:09.630
I was able to talk to all the top.

00:33:09.894 --> 00:33:12.924
manufacturers in our industry, all the chemical makers, all that stuff.

00:33:12.924 --> 00:33:16.125
So, um, we, I mean, I bought a mop bucket.

00:33:16.125 --> 00:33:17.244
You've seen mop buckets, right?

00:33:17.375 --> 00:33:17.775
They're yellow.

00:33:17.775 --> 00:33:18.734
They got a string mop in them.

00:33:18.765 --> 00:33:24.765
That's not what we used from the get go to chamber mop bucket that had a microfiber mop that's flat.

00:33:25.095 --> 00:33:25.845
And guess what?

00:33:26.315 --> 00:33:27.980
I'm not, I mean, go into any.

00:33:28.170 --> 00:33:42.900
Um, well, bank restroom, except for one total facility care takes care of, um, or, you know, fast food restaurant or gas station and look at the baseboard in the restroom and you're going to see black mop slop that high on there.

00:33:43.210 --> 00:33:45.710
Well, microfiber mops, quarter of an inch tall.

00:33:46.029 --> 00:33:46.819
You don't have that.

00:33:47.099 --> 00:33:51.299
So, it's a labor saver, it's easier on their back, you don't have to go back and clean stuff.

00:33:51.759 --> 00:33:54.690
Um, you can launder the mop heads easily.

00:33:54.750 --> 00:33:55.960
And it's more clean in general.

00:33:55.960 --> 00:33:57.093
It's more clean because we had two chambers.

00:33:57.093 --> 00:33:58.559
That two chamber is so much different.

00:33:58.559 --> 00:34:00.720
Clean water on one side, dirty water on another.

00:34:00.720 --> 00:34:01.799
What a concept.

00:34:01.799 --> 00:34:02.079
Right?

00:34:02.089 --> 00:34:04.839
Versus putting, you know, the dirty mop, I haven't changed it in a month.

00:34:04.839 --> 00:34:06.710
By the end of the bucket, the water looks rough.

00:34:06.769 --> 00:34:08.610
On the first one, when you dip it in.

00:34:08.630 --> 00:34:08.769
Totally.

00:34:08.800 --> 00:34:09.530
You know, so.

00:34:09.780 --> 00:34:19.079
And then, you know, green chemistry and microfiber towels and stuff that, you know, Yeah, microfiber towel with a spray of water will get a lot of surfaces really clean.

00:34:19.079 --> 00:34:22.269
Yeah, in fact, in Europe, they really, that's kind of what they do.

00:34:22.449 --> 00:34:26.070
So, um, and we, we had green chemicals, color coded towels.

00:34:26.079 --> 00:34:32.239
So, you know, the one, so in any larger building, what's in between the two restrooms there when you come out?

00:34:32.239 --> 00:34:32.760
The water fountain.

00:34:32.969 --> 00:34:33.789
Water fountain, right.

00:34:33.800 --> 00:34:38.610
So, the janitor's coming out of the restroom, cleaning the water fountain, going to the next one.

00:34:40.085 --> 00:34:42.974
Where was that towel before it was on the drinking tray?

00:34:43.034 --> 00:34:48.905
So we color coded them so you knew which ones were cleaning toilets and which ones were cleaning other things and all of that.

00:34:48.905 --> 00:34:58.469
So, just, you know, simple stuff, but we had pretty Um, you know, HEPA filter vacuums, um, so you're not kicking all the dirt back up in the air that you just dusted.

00:34:58.489 --> 00:34:58.820
Yeah, yeah.

00:34:58.829 --> 00:34:59.969
You know, just lots of things.

00:35:00.010 --> 00:35:03.050
Ergonomically, they're better for, um, the team member.

00:35:03.079 --> 00:35:04.039
All of those kinds of things.

00:35:04.199 --> 00:35:09.150
So, you know, equipment set, that, that's a grand, um, for one equipment set in a building.

00:35:09.150 --> 00:35:10.460
So not insignificant.

00:35:10.460 --> 00:35:11.190
Yeah, no.

00:35:11.190 --> 00:35:11.599
No.

00:35:11.909 --> 00:35:12.849
You know, to do that.

00:35:12.880 --> 00:35:14.940
Um, but once you've got it, then you're pretty good.

00:35:15.039 --> 00:35:17.539
Yeah, and it makes it a lot easier to work for you and stuff.

00:35:17.590 --> 00:35:18.460
Absolutely.

00:35:18.489 --> 00:35:20.550
Was that one of your biggest challenges?

00:35:20.559 --> 00:35:21.530
Was staffing?

00:35:21.599 --> 00:35:23.369
Or is that a speculation?

00:35:23.380 --> 00:35:23.760
Or not?

00:35:23.800 --> 00:35:24.570
Oh, not at all.

00:35:24.570 --> 00:35:28.849
I mean, you're working in a entry labor field, right?

00:35:28.849 --> 00:35:31.380
So there's lots of Lots of competitors.

00:35:31.460 --> 00:35:32.809
Staffing and training, I suppose.

00:35:32.820 --> 00:35:33.840
Yeah, absolutely.

00:35:33.860 --> 00:35:45.090
And, um, you know, what I really came to believe, I, I stole it, um, from Chick fil A 100%, but, um, that we were, um, a people business that happened to clean buildings.

00:35:45.110 --> 00:35:45.480
Yeah.

00:35:45.550 --> 00:35:48.789
Chick fil A's is, you know, we're a people business that happens to cook chicken.

00:35:48.820 --> 00:35:49.119
Yeah, yeah.

00:35:49.920 --> 00:35:51.139
And I really believe that.

00:35:51.139 --> 00:35:57.530
And, and we just got into people development because, um, there's actually career opportunities in that industry.

00:35:57.880 --> 00:36:02.500
And if we could keep people, everything stabilized out and it became.

00:36:03.135 --> 00:36:09.255
Um, yeah, people say three years instead of one year, you're right, or six months or something like that.

00:36:09.255 --> 00:36:09.684
Right.

00:36:10.054 --> 00:36:16.275
Um, and in, I don't know if you recall, back in 2018 in Larimer, well, the unemployment rate was like 1.

00:36:16.275 --> 00:36:16.735
8, 1.

00:36:16.735 --> 00:36:17.434
9%.

00:36:17.605 --> 00:36:25.335
So people talk about during COVID and post COVID, but it was, it was the hardest super tight before that in 2018, 2019.

00:36:25.414 --> 00:36:32.434
Um, and so we just pivoted and, um, worked my, with my HR manager and it's like, you know what?

00:36:32.824 --> 00:36:35.574
We are not hiring warm bodies that walk in that door.

00:36:35.934 --> 00:36:38.195
We're going to hire people that are, are kind of crazy.

00:36:38.505 --> 00:36:43.614
And so we got really serious about our core values and really serious about who we were hiring.

00:36:43.625 --> 00:36:46.914
What's it like to be part of our team and multi step process.

00:36:46.945 --> 00:36:48.625
And you got to fit our culture.

00:36:48.655 --> 00:36:54.215
And, you know, we had, we had weird crest questions on, um, the job.

00:36:54.510 --> 00:37:07.389
add that you needed to answer or we just delete your, um, application because even then people were like spamming, you know, what was going on, but we're asking like, it didn't matter to anything, but like, what's your favorite sci fi movie?

00:37:07.789 --> 00:37:09.389
It doesn't matter what the answer is.

00:37:09.659 --> 00:37:10.739
What's your favorite superhero?

00:37:10.949 --> 00:37:13.989
They had to answer it though, for us to even open up their resume.

00:37:14.250 --> 00:37:18.510
So, cause otherwise they're just, and it doesn't mean you were paying more or anything, just being more selective.

00:37:19.099 --> 00:37:21.380
This is a person that's paying attention to some detail.

00:37:21.409 --> 00:37:28.210
And then They'd go through a phone screen and then we'd have, um, an interview with our HR manager in the office.

00:37:28.210 --> 00:37:31.360
And if they passed that, then they'd go for an interview in the field.

00:37:31.860 --> 00:37:33.599
Which was a A working interview, basically.

00:37:33.619 --> 00:37:34.699
A working interview.

00:37:35.030 --> 00:37:36.929
They didn't do any good work for us.

00:37:37.010 --> 00:37:42.369
But they gotta, they gotta go to the building that they were in service at the time of day that they were gonna service it.

00:37:43.639 --> 00:37:44.769
And they're going to do a little bit of work.

00:37:44.769 --> 00:37:45.840
They're going to put on the vacuum.

00:37:45.840 --> 00:37:46.929
They're going to do some mopping.

00:37:47.329 --> 00:37:48.400
See what the work is.

00:37:48.800 --> 00:37:53.349
But the most interesting part was, people are all prepared for an interview in an office.

00:37:53.849 --> 00:37:56.059
When you go into the field, they're all relaxed.

00:37:56.059 --> 00:37:58.769
Like this isn't an inter, like I kind of got the job probably.

00:37:58.900 --> 00:37:59.070
Right.

00:37:59.550 --> 00:38:04.809
And so you would hear all kinds of wild stuff and you know, the leader, the night manager, like you had no way on this person.

00:38:06.059 --> 00:38:06.570
All right.

00:38:06.840 --> 00:38:08.530
So that step, you know, saved us.

00:38:08.530 --> 00:38:10.440
And, you know, again, we wanted our kind of crazy.

00:38:10.440 --> 00:38:11.050
Yeah.

00:38:11.050 --> 00:38:14.969
Well, your leads were probably your quality control in many respects.

00:38:14.969 --> 00:38:15.539
Absolutely.

00:38:15.539 --> 00:38:18.170
And they're the person that's got to be, um, supervising them.

00:38:18.179 --> 00:38:18.539
Yeah.

00:38:18.539 --> 00:38:22.565
And are they the contact for the owner or whatever of the building too?

00:38:22.744 --> 00:38:25.125
No, that was a, that was our daytime managers.

00:38:25.235 --> 00:38:27.525
Yeah, because, you know, clients aren't around typically at night.

00:38:27.534 --> 00:38:33.724
How did you facilitate communications between those daytime personnel and the nighttime crews?

00:38:33.795 --> 00:38:38.505
I think, I think it's one of the best things that, um, we had going as one of our secret sauces.

00:38:38.784 --> 00:38:41.264
Um, so we had what's called a pass down.

00:38:41.599 --> 00:38:42.800
Um, every day.

00:38:42.800 --> 00:38:53.650
And so the pass down was created by that daytime manager and it included a list of if we had customer complaints, customer compliments, and just maybe periodic things that needed to be done.

00:38:53.920 --> 00:38:55.639
And then schedule issues.

00:38:55.889 --> 00:38:58.409
Hey, you know, Joe called out over here.

00:38:58.409 --> 00:38:59.610
We got to cover this building.

00:38:59.619 --> 00:39:00.570
Here's how we're going to do it.

00:39:00.579 --> 00:39:00.940
Sure.

00:39:00.949 --> 00:39:02.500
Um, or we got a route open.

00:39:02.500 --> 00:39:03.570
Here's how we're covering it.

00:39:03.630 --> 00:39:03.900
Yeah.

00:39:03.900 --> 00:39:04.590
Those kinds of things.

00:39:04.590 --> 00:39:05.059
And the.

00:39:05.434 --> 00:39:11.105
The daytime manager, the night manager had a pass down meeting is about 30 minutes every day to walk through the issues.

00:39:11.585 --> 00:39:16.585
Then the night manager, the end of their shift, here's the, these are done, these are done.

00:39:16.585 --> 00:39:18.144
Here's the issues out of here.

00:39:18.215 --> 00:39:22.744
Hey, we, um, you know, we broke the picture frame on this person's wall.

00:39:22.755 --> 00:39:23.235
Right.

00:39:23.235 --> 00:39:25.724
Just happened to be our key customer and their diploma.

00:39:26.054 --> 00:39:27.335
Um, real story.

00:39:27.594 --> 00:39:27.724
Yeah.

00:39:28.429 --> 00:39:29.815
And my diploma's right up there.

00:39:29.815 --> 00:39:29.965
Yeah.

00:39:30.235 --> 00:39:31.164
I'll stay away from it.

00:39:31.164 --> 00:39:31.344
Yeah.

00:39:31.405 --> 00:39:38.815
Um, and, and then the, the daytime manager, our, our goal was always to let the customer know an issue before they knew it.

00:39:38.844 --> 00:39:39.235
Sure.

00:39:39.264 --> 00:39:44.094
So by seven or seven 30 any issues we wanted in the customer's inbox.

00:39:44.155 --> 00:39:44.545
Interesting.

00:39:44.545 --> 00:39:46.405
And it was a massive creator of trust.

00:39:46.405 --> 00:39:46.824
Wow.

00:39:46.829 --> 00:39:50.934
So, so you're daytime manager are coming on at seven o'clock in the morning or six Yeah, pretty early.

00:39:51.114 --> 00:39:54.594
And they're at least checking email from home and doing that, looking at the pass down.

00:39:54.969 --> 00:39:58.010
But like that customer, we emailed them, Hey, we'll be by today.

00:39:58.059 --> 00:39:59.690
We need to replace this frame for you.

00:40:00.170 --> 00:40:01.150
Manager stops by later.

00:40:01.150 --> 00:40:03.300
He's like, man, I can't believe you guys told me about this.

00:40:03.610 --> 00:40:07.190
And we take the frame, get it, you know, get it reframed.

00:40:07.219 --> 00:40:08.690
And it's back the next day to him.

00:40:09.099 --> 00:40:10.619
And that paid off.

00:40:10.989 --> 00:40:13.139
Where people are willing to share that I did this.

00:40:13.199 --> 00:40:14.789
Well, you're willing to tell on yourself, right?

00:40:14.789 --> 00:40:17.420
Because I'm Scotch taping that thing together and not telling anybody.

00:40:17.460 --> 00:40:18.099
Exactly.

00:40:18.099 --> 00:40:20.840
Which is, which is the norm in our industry, right?

00:40:21.219 --> 00:40:22.340
And then it creates this.

00:40:22.590 --> 00:40:24.489
You're like, something's not right here.

00:40:24.539 --> 00:40:26.869
Hey, Pete, what's going on with this thing?

00:40:27.230 --> 00:40:28.030
I don't know, Kurt.

00:40:28.070 --> 00:40:28.789
Let me find out.

00:40:28.789 --> 00:40:30.260
So then I got to wait till night.

00:40:30.619 --> 00:40:33.579
And then it, so it's like, well, they said they didn't do anything.

00:40:33.579 --> 00:40:34.500
What do you think happened?

00:40:34.500 --> 00:40:36.280
And we're going back and forth, right?

00:40:36.760 --> 00:40:39.320
And you're just ticked, you're just ticked about it as a client.

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:48.054
Versus in the other scenario, that client's a thousand percent happy because We admitted to what the issue was and we fixed it right away.

00:40:48.465 --> 00:40:56.985
Um, and so then you get, if something bad does happen later on, cause the janitors are always first to be blamed, um, you get the benefit of the doubt.

00:40:57.164 --> 00:40:59.014
Like, wait a minute, these guys are trustworthy.

00:40:59.045 --> 00:40:59.385
Right.

00:40:59.385 --> 00:41:02.295
You know, it's probably, I didn't leave my wallet on the desk there.

00:41:02.425 --> 00:41:02.804
Yeah.

00:41:02.844 --> 00:41:06.025
Like I thought I did because like they told me when they broke the picture frame.

00:41:06.195 --> 00:41:06.614
Right.

00:41:06.704 --> 00:41:09.255
So it's not, and you know, countless stories of people.

00:41:09.610 --> 00:41:15.789
Turning in wallets and diamond rings and you know all kinds of stuff that we just we had amazing people That's really cool organ.

00:41:16.050 --> 00:41:25.434
One of our values was being trustworthy and in our tagline under that was Being trustworthy, when nobody is looking because nobody's looking most of the time.

00:41:26.344 --> 00:41:28.375
And especially in us, cause we're in your building and you're not there.

00:41:28.375 --> 00:41:29.114
Yeah, for sure.

00:41:29.125 --> 00:41:30.914
You know, so it's a high trust transaction.

00:41:31.485 --> 00:41:31.844
Yeah.

00:41:32.434 --> 00:41:41.335
Um, so I guess kind of along your business journey, you're just kind of growing, building systems, figuring out new ways to hire, to.

00:41:42.005 --> 00:41:45.864
Let people know that you're a special kind of crazy if you want to work for you guys, right?

00:41:45.914 --> 00:41:53.375
Yeah, I'll be one of our clients even yeah, maybe and then Kovat nation like is was that significant?

00:41:53.434 --> 00:42:02.375
Oh, you were essential workers I assume we were keep the buildings clean if even if nobody's in them you have contracts and stuff in those situations Or yeah people scale back a lot.

00:42:02.494 --> 00:42:05.155
Yeah Yeah, that crazy time.

00:42:05.155 --> 00:42:19.400
So The good news was, with my corporate experience, I had, I had lived through SARS and H1N1 and bird flu and lots of stuff and You know, and corporate has all kinds of contingency plans for every emergency, right?

00:42:19.710 --> 00:42:21.320
So that meant we had to create them.

00:42:21.590 --> 00:42:22.309
So I was very averse.

00:42:22.320 --> 00:42:30.409
So every fall, I just started keeping an eye on CDC and who, and because flu is always an issue and just anything else that was popping up.

00:42:30.469 --> 00:42:34.070
And um, so that year COVID was on the radar.

00:42:34.070 --> 00:42:34.909
It was on our radar.

00:42:34.909 --> 00:42:35.159
Oh yeah.

00:42:35.409 --> 00:42:36.199
November of 19.

00:42:36.269 --> 00:42:37.679
December for me.

00:42:37.679 --> 00:42:37.869
Yeah.

00:42:38.030 --> 00:42:48.139
And then come January, it's like, okay, I think this is, and I wasn't worried about it because like SARS in the past and, um, bird fluid, it had hit the coast, but not the interior of the country.

00:42:48.329 --> 00:42:49.050
So I'm like, it's not.

00:42:49.559 --> 00:42:51.469
Probably not going to affect us in Colorado.

00:42:51.949 --> 00:42:54.860
By January, I was like, hmm, we were having cases in the U.

00:42:54.860 --> 00:42:55.139
S.

00:42:55.139 --> 00:42:58.579
You know, I think, I think Washington and California started breaking out.

00:42:58.590 --> 00:42:59.230
Yep, yep.

00:42:59.489 --> 00:43:00.000
Well, and U.

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:00.449
K.

00:43:00.449 --> 00:43:01.849
and a few places in Europe.

00:43:01.849 --> 00:43:02.059
You know.

00:43:02.070 --> 00:43:04.420
Yeah, Europe had gotten really crazy.

00:43:04.500 --> 00:43:06.250
Yeah, Spain was rough real fast.

00:43:06.289 --> 00:43:06.769
Yeah.

00:43:06.849 --> 00:43:07.099
Italy.

00:43:07.110 --> 00:43:07.480
Italy.

00:43:07.719 --> 00:43:08.940
Italy, Spain.

00:43:08.980 --> 00:43:10.980
I mean, a lot of them were, it was really tough over there.

00:43:11.500 --> 00:43:12.590
Um, so I'm like, you know what?

00:43:12.590 --> 00:43:14.739
I need to get some N95 masks.

00:43:14.780 --> 00:43:21.679
And, um, they had lots of them at Home Depot, but they were chemical N95 and they were painting N95.

00:43:22.434 --> 00:43:27.114
Because back then, 3M was, um, slicing these out, saying they were all for different things.

00:43:27.114 --> 00:43:27.635
Oh, specialty.

00:43:27.675 --> 00:43:28.695
Turns out they're all the same thing.

00:43:28.695 --> 00:43:29.434
Same shit.

00:43:29.554 --> 00:43:29.744
Right.

00:43:29.744 --> 00:43:30.514
So I didn't buy them.

00:43:30.514 --> 00:43:31.744
20 percent more.

00:43:31.755 --> 00:43:37.164
I finally found some, um, from a friend of mine that had a pest control company that had ones that were compliant.

00:43:37.164 --> 00:43:38.875
I'm like, can I buy some of those from you?

00:43:38.875 --> 00:43:39.344
Okay.

00:43:39.344 --> 00:43:39.454
Okay.

00:43:39.454 --> 00:43:41.855
And this is, this is in like February, so it's full on now.

00:43:41.855 --> 00:43:43.184
This is probably our mutual friend, Kevin.

00:43:43.184 --> 00:43:44.224
Yeah, Kevin Lee Masters.

00:43:44.304 --> 00:43:44.804
Yeah, yeah.

00:43:44.815 --> 00:43:45.934
He's one of my best friends.

00:43:46.074 --> 00:43:46.905
I don't doubt it.

00:43:46.905 --> 00:43:51.175
Yeah, Kevin and I used to have a, about every six months, rotation on lunches.

00:43:51.204 --> 00:43:51.534
Yeah.

00:43:51.914 --> 00:43:54.135
Oh, I thought you were going to say smoking cigars, because he loves to do that too.

00:43:54.164 --> 00:43:55.094
Oh, I've never done that with him.

00:43:55.094 --> 00:43:56.585
We were pretty much just on a lunch rotation.

00:43:56.594 --> 00:43:57.324
Oh, there you go.

00:43:57.344 --> 00:43:58.304
He's moved away now, right?

00:43:58.324 --> 00:43:59.835
Yeah, he's in Pensacola, Florida.

00:43:59.885 --> 00:44:00.574
Okay, yeah.

00:44:00.574 --> 00:44:04.925
So, he to this one, I hope you, uh, come back and be on the Loco Experience sometime.

00:44:04.925 --> 00:44:05.744
Yeah, exactly.

00:44:05.744 --> 00:44:06.275
You've got a fun journey too.

00:44:06.425 --> 00:44:06.974
Yeah.

00:44:07.525 --> 00:44:09.494
I was bribing him for that, then he moved away.

00:44:09.494 --> 00:44:10.405
Oh, man.

00:44:10.679 --> 00:44:14.769
Yeah, he, he shot me a picture about two weeks ago of nine and a half inches of snow.

00:44:14.769 --> 00:44:20.670
Oh, no! I'm like, man, that's more snow than we've had in a storm year this year.

00:44:22.539 --> 00:44:25.039
So you, so you pick up a bunch of N95s?

00:44:25.250 --> 00:44:26.469
Yeah, we got a few.

00:44:26.480 --> 00:44:31.880
We We did training because we knew something, you know, we were going to have to decontaminate this stuff.

00:44:31.880 --> 00:44:34.340
And we were like, we were like deeply understanding it.

00:44:34.340 --> 00:44:34.679
Right.

00:44:34.679 --> 00:44:39.170
And then, but like everyone else, we were like an essential business.

00:44:39.289 --> 00:44:41.929
You shut down people like, what is this stuff?

00:44:41.929 --> 00:44:45.750
That's, you know, I remember one of my managers coming in and Hey, the governor in California.

00:44:46.179 --> 00:44:47.159
Shut down.

00:44:47.250 --> 00:44:49.219
And I'm like, that's not American.

00:44:49.219 --> 00:44:49.539
What?

00:44:49.539 --> 00:44:55.679
So I'm, I'm trying to study all this stuff and, you know, thank goodness we were in essential business.

00:44:55.889 --> 00:44:58.340
Unfortunately, 40 percent of our customers were not.

00:44:58.849 --> 00:45:02.230
Um, and so that was an immediate issue.

00:45:02.579 --> 00:45:03.239
Um.

00:45:03.295 --> 00:45:06.264
I was like, Oh, we don't have anybody going to the office.

00:45:06.264 --> 00:45:08.704
So we're not going to need you for a while.

00:45:08.704 --> 00:45:09.105
Yeah.

00:45:09.114 --> 00:45:15.364
And I was like, Oh boy, your contract actually says pro forma again, here's where we go bankrupt, right?

00:45:15.364 --> 00:45:17.385
I mean, it was, it was a very scary time.

00:45:17.385 --> 00:45:22.264
So, and then we had to, we had to rebuild them cause I'm not gonna charge you for stuff that we're not doing.

00:45:22.275 --> 00:45:22.844
Right.

00:45:23.565 --> 00:45:26.695
Um, cause I always had a longterm view for clients.

00:45:26.704 --> 00:45:28.525
We're going to, we're going to work in your best interest.

00:45:28.525 --> 00:45:30.244
And it always served us well.

00:45:30.255 --> 00:45:32.434
So, um, but also you don't want to like.

00:45:33.155 --> 00:45:36.215
Lay off 80 cleaners or something.

00:45:36.215 --> 00:45:39.864
I mean, I just, um, I don't know how many of your crew was at that time.

00:45:39.994 --> 00:45:40.184
Yeah.

00:45:40.184 --> 00:45:41.864
We were a little over a hundred then.

00:45:42.224 --> 00:45:46.074
So, and fortunately we didn't have to lay anybody off, which is a miracle.

00:45:46.085 --> 00:45:48.695
So a couple, I mean, there's a bunch of miracles in there, but.

00:45:49.300 --> 00:45:58.809
Um, the end of 2020, our revenues were flat from 2019 and we lost 40 percent of our customers for about five months, right?

00:45:58.929 --> 00:46:07.150
So that was a miraculous, like, cause a bunch of other people signed up, uh, other people signed up and we did hundreds of COVID decontamination.

00:46:07.219 --> 00:46:07.840
So yeah.

00:46:08.179 --> 00:46:14.699
Um, trust me, I was, you know, not just a commercial and residential, we didn't do any residential.

00:46:14.699 --> 00:46:15.539
So just commercial.

00:46:15.539 --> 00:46:19.630
So your existing client base mostly, but you would go in there and do a full scrub kind of, right.

00:46:19.630 --> 00:46:24.000
If they had a few people sick, it was like, okay, we're shut down for a couple extra days or one person sick.

00:46:24.010 --> 00:46:26.110
Cause you know, paranoia was really high.

00:46:26.590 --> 00:46:27.079
Fear was super high.

00:46:27.840 --> 00:46:33.900
Um, but I mean, it was definitely, I'm a man of faith and you know, I was, I was on my knees a lot during that time.

00:46:33.900 --> 00:46:34.030
And.

00:46:34.440 --> 00:46:42.880
really, really felt like, um, you know, um, God doesn't talk to me audibly or anything, but just like, Hey, you need to, you need to get on offense in this.

00:46:43.289 --> 00:46:47.409
And, you know, but we had done all the things that you're supposed to do of good due diligence, right?

00:46:47.420 --> 00:46:51.360
Like we had, um, we'd called through our finances, saved a little bit of money.

00:46:51.375 --> 00:46:54.744
I, I talked to all my banker friends and they all said, no, thank you.

00:46:54.744 --> 00:46:56.764
We don't want to extend your line of credit credit.

00:46:57.175 --> 00:47:00.074
I did this in January, you know, and like, I hate all of you guys.

00:47:00.434 --> 00:47:06.385
Um, so because they didn't want to give me any money, a couple of months later, they all wanted to give me money.

00:47:06.394 --> 00:47:10.235
Mark Twain, uh, has a, you know, the, the line about bankers from Mark Twain.

00:47:10.844 --> 00:47:11.264
Yes.

00:47:11.445 --> 00:47:16.085
A banker is a man that will gladly loan you his umbrella and then take it back when it starts raining.

00:47:17.275 --> 00:47:17.974
Exactly.

00:47:18.375 --> 00:47:18.755
Yeah.

00:47:19.070 --> 00:47:21.929
So, um, so we just, you know, we got aggressive.

00:47:21.929 --> 00:47:24.550
We asked Linda and I stopped taking a salary.

00:47:24.639 --> 00:47:26.179
We want to make sure everybody got paid.

00:47:26.360 --> 00:47:29.179
You know, we prioritized how we were going to pay vendors.

00:47:29.420 --> 00:47:38.960
You know, the, the multibillion dollar company vendor that we had, they could wait a while, you know, the, the local person that like we're going to pay them as fast as we could.

00:47:39.360 --> 00:47:43.750
Um, and of course our employees got paid first, but we asked all of our managers.

00:47:43.750 --> 00:47:47.010
We're like, look, we're not going to tell you what to do or tell everybody.

00:47:47.010 --> 00:47:48.650
We got to make a cut here, but we got to make a cut.

00:47:49.184 --> 00:47:52.264
So, I need each of you to go back and talk with your families.

00:47:52.614 --> 00:47:54.594
And tell me what you can do.

00:47:55.105 --> 00:48:00.114
And it was, those were the most humbling, interesting conversations over the next couple of days.

00:48:00.175 --> 00:48:00.445
Yeah.

00:48:00.445 --> 00:48:05.574
Of people coming back and saying, Hey, I can, I can take a, a 40% cut.

00:48:05.934 --> 00:48:06.175
Wow.

00:48:06.204 --> 00:48:10.364
And I'm like, no, you can't Right.

00:48:10.364 --> 00:48:10.905
You know?

00:48:11.175 --> 00:48:16.275
Um, and fortunately so, but I'd be honored to give you a 20% cut if I needed to.

00:48:16.275 --> 00:48:16.574
Right.

00:48:16.590 --> 00:48:16.670
Yeah.

00:48:16.670 --> 00:48:16.829
Right.

00:48:16.835 --> 00:48:21.135
So we, we talked about'em some, you know, 10%, one 40%.

00:48:21.135 --> 00:48:23.025
I mean, it was, and it was kind of everything in between.

00:48:23.025 --> 00:48:23.175
It was.

00:48:23.695 --> 00:48:31.840
It was super humbling that Um, they believed in us enough and in our line employees enough that they would sacrifice like that.

00:48:31.869 --> 00:48:35.000
Um, fortunately we didn't have to cut any of their pay.

00:48:35.369 --> 00:48:37.000
Um, we had enough cash reserves.

00:48:37.010 --> 00:48:41.570
And then when PPP came out, all of my banker friends wanted to help me.

00:48:41.789 --> 00:48:42.139
So.

00:48:42.489 --> 00:48:43.250
Sons of bitches.

00:48:44.480 --> 00:48:44.809
So.

00:48:44.820 --> 00:48:48.710
That was, um, actually, uh, I think, uh, right around March 24th.

00:48:48.735 --> 00:48:55.864
5th or so, I had the first, uh, we had a long series of weekly zoom ins on business climate stuff.

00:48:56.054 --> 00:48:56.505
Oh yeah.

00:48:56.534 --> 00:49:00.934
And I, I was the, the guest host of the very first one before PPP came out.

00:49:00.934 --> 00:49:03.144
So yeah, whatever that was, probably end of March.

00:49:03.704 --> 00:49:08.324
And uh, I was like, you know, your job as the business owner is to be a steward.

00:49:08.324 --> 00:49:10.594
I know that you.

00:49:11.019 --> 00:49:25.920
Love your staff and love your people, but if they don't have a business to come back to after whatever the hell this shit is Yeah, if there's no entity, then Right, then you have to, your job is to preserve a business that can give them back a job whenever you can.

00:49:26.320 --> 00:49:33.530
Like you have to do whatever taxes, and maybe that means not paying yourself, whatever, but know that you're not going to do anybody any favors by running yourself bankrupt.

00:49:33.684 --> 00:49:36.105
Yeah, destroying jobs for the future.

00:49:36.284 --> 00:49:43.885
You know, I think the other, like the other great part was we, we really educated our employees about, cause there's so much fear around COVID.

00:49:44.525 --> 00:49:46.804
We were experts already in the medical space.

00:49:46.824 --> 00:49:51.304
So we knew what was going on and, um, and plus you got a bunch of 25 year olds.

00:49:51.304 --> 00:49:52.394
You're like, don't freak out.

00:49:52.425 --> 00:49:55.175
Like, you know, actually they were more freaked out than the 40 year olds.

00:49:55.175 --> 00:49:57.894
It was just generational fear at the time.

00:49:58.255 --> 00:50:00.215
We had college kids up to retirees.

00:50:00.215 --> 00:50:02.784
I mean, we have kind of every spectrum working for us.

00:50:03.239 --> 00:50:07.119
Um, but we, we equipped them early with a lot of information.

00:50:07.119 --> 00:50:12.960
I had one person freak, the one person that quit, um, and ironically they did laundry delivery for us.

00:50:12.960 --> 00:50:17.659
So they would pick up the, um, used towels and mop heads and bring them back.

00:50:17.699 --> 00:50:22.099
We'd wash them in our commercial washers in our shop and take them back out and stuff.

00:50:22.099 --> 00:50:23.409
And he was freaking out about that.

00:50:23.409 --> 00:50:28.400
And I'm like, so when you come back today, can I, can I show you some statistics from the CDC?

00:50:28.780 --> 00:50:31.400
The flu kills more people every year.

00:50:31.804 --> 00:50:34.625
What they're predicting this is gonna do so far.

00:50:34.625 --> 00:50:35.554
And it's like, no way.

00:50:35.554 --> 00:50:36.215
That's not true.

00:50:36.215 --> 00:50:38.735
I'm like, the flu didn't kill anybody that year when you Right.

00:50:39.304 --> 00:50:40.295
Well, or something.

00:50:40.295 --> 00:50:43.655
It did in the fall of 2019, but, but not in 21.

00:50:43.684 --> 00:50:43.804
Yeah.

00:50:43.804 --> 00:50:45.034
It magically went away.

00:50:45.335 --> 00:50:48.184
Um, so I showed him that and he quit.

00:50:48.184 --> 00:50:51.005
His wife was actually at a, an at risk person.

00:50:51.094 --> 00:50:52.534
So, you know, I, it's understandable.

00:50:52.534 --> 00:50:54.034
I got no criticism for fear really.

00:50:54.034 --> 00:50:59.045
But we, you know, not knowing much because of the bad information that was coming out.

00:50:59.050 --> 00:50:59.159
Yeah.

00:50:59.755 --> 00:51:00.804
We just were proactive.

00:51:00.804 --> 00:51:17.605
We early on in, um, it was either late February, early March, I put, um, we put masks on everybody and we put safety glasses and not for the Anthony Fauci reason, which he was telling us we didn't need any of that stuff, right?

00:51:17.934 --> 00:51:20.934
And I'm like, I've worked in a medical environment for two decades.

00:51:20.934 --> 00:51:23.905
Now this, what you're telling me doesn't match here.

00:51:24.195 --> 00:51:29.780
Like when human beings go into sterile environments, um, you know, we're always, We're always gowned up, right?

00:51:29.780 --> 00:51:38.539
We've got, we've got gloves on, we've got a gown on, we've got a hair net on, if you've got a beard like us, you've got a beard net on, you've got a mask, and you've got safety glasses.

00:51:38.820 --> 00:51:49.199
And, uh, the number one thing is, human beings are the biggest contaminant in sterile environments, because we shed thousands of cells every day, hair, right?

00:51:49.219 --> 00:51:56.940
So, so whether it's, uh, You know, a cleaner environment for, um, silicon chips or a sterile environment for medical were the biggest contaminant.

00:51:57.500 --> 00:51:59.360
So you're trying to prevent that in the environment.

00:51:59.679 --> 00:52:07.309
And then a lot of the mask and the safety glasses in those environments, you're, um, you're cleaning everything in a surgical suite.

00:52:07.530 --> 00:52:11.519
The ceiling, the lights, the walls, the floor, the table.

00:52:11.559 --> 00:52:14.769
I mean, the surgical table gets all taken apart, all this stuff.

00:52:15.210 --> 00:52:17.340
And you have to, it has, it's wet.

00:52:17.699 --> 00:52:20.463
It has to be wet for 10 minutes for the disinfectants to work.

00:52:20.463 --> 00:52:20.954
It's just insane.

00:52:21.065 --> 00:52:22.715
So you're, you're saturating everything.

00:52:22.724 --> 00:52:26.574
Well, if you got on the ceiling and you're looking up and it's dripping in your eyes, it's not good.

00:52:26.605 --> 00:52:27.824
Or your mouth or your nose.

00:52:27.824 --> 00:52:33.644
So it's like, okay, what we know right now, number one, at that time, gloves were optional for our people.

00:52:33.644 --> 00:52:34.795
It's like, everybody's wearing gloves.

00:52:35.925 --> 00:52:37.934
And everybody's going to wear a mask and safety glasses.

00:52:37.934 --> 00:52:38.775
And here's why.

00:52:39.090 --> 00:52:48.849
Because you're going to be cleaning something and your nose is going to itch, or your eyes are going to itch, and you're going to go like this, or you're going to wipe, and you're going to, you're going to put this into yourself, and we don't want that to happen.

00:52:48.860 --> 00:52:54.079
So, it was, it was the practical reason, not all of the nonsense that happened later with the masks.

00:52:54.400 --> 00:52:56.050
And everybody appreciated that.

00:52:56.050 --> 00:52:56.329
Yeah, yeah.

00:52:56.710 --> 00:52:58.639
Well, they feel cared for in a certain sense like that.

00:52:58.800 --> 00:52:58.829
Right.

00:52:58.829 --> 00:53:05.400
And so, and then we would, and then we just started, um, we communicated with them every single week.

00:53:05.835 --> 00:53:09.454
Um, a company wide email, which we had really never done before.

00:53:09.514 --> 00:53:12.105
And, you know, things were happening rapidly.

00:53:12.105 --> 00:53:16.355
So sometimes it was every day, every week, but it was at least every week.

00:53:16.355 --> 00:53:17.005
Here's what we're doing.

00:53:17.005 --> 00:53:18.519
Here's how we're doing as a company and all that.

00:53:18.829 --> 00:53:21.530
And so we pivoted, we started doing these COVID cleans.

00:53:21.610 --> 00:53:24.250
Well, you're in Weld and Larimer County, right?

00:53:24.340 --> 00:53:25.179
Oh, vastly different.

00:53:25.530 --> 00:53:32.409
So like, yeah, there was no COVID in Greeley, hardly, but I'm sure there is in the hospital settings and the banks and different things.

00:53:32.440 --> 00:53:38.539
I would say though, that, that difference of philosophy didn't really emerge until probably May or June.

00:53:38.539 --> 00:53:39.070
Yeah.

00:53:39.070 --> 00:53:41.110
So there was a lot of fearful months in there.

00:53:41.579 --> 00:53:42.650
Everybody was just terrified.

00:53:42.650 --> 00:53:43.690
I mean, I remember the first.

00:53:44.175 --> 00:53:46.454
The first COVID clean we had was in a doctor's office.

00:53:46.965 --> 00:53:55.994
And, um, it's like, okay, I'm, I'm going to go do this because, and I had the team with me, but it's like, I'm not going to ask one of my hourly and people to do something that I haven't done.

00:53:56.335 --> 00:53:59.335
Like I I've researched this, I've developed all the protocols.

00:53:59.414 --> 00:54:00.324
I'm going to make sure it works.

00:54:00.324 --> 00:54:00.755
Yeah.

00:54:00.815 --> 00:54:01.175
Yeah.

00:54:01.224 --> 00:54:06.235
And we get there, the doctor is freaked out, like locked in their office, in their own office.

00:54:06.690 --> 00:54:08.054
And I'm like, Hey, doctor, can I talk to you?

00:54:08.054 --> 00:54:09.469
Because their employee got sick and was in the other room.

00:54:09.469 --> 00:54:12.280
A patient came in and was there for a while.

00:54:12.289 --> 00:54:14.679
They figured out they had COVID and then they sent them away.

00:54:14.690 --> 00:54:15.039
Right.

00:54:15.079 --> 00:54:16.559
And the doctor is like terrified.

00:54:16.570 --> 00:54:16.980
Right.

00:54:16.989 --> 00:54:22.079
It's like, so wait a minute, like, I'm the janitor and I know what's going on here and you're the doctor.

00:54:22.590 --> 00:54:27.489
Shouldn't this be different, but they didn't, you know, that special just, they didn't know what's going on.

00:54:27.500 --> 00:54:30.570
So we got them decontaminated, prove the process worked.

00:54:30.880 --> 00:54:36.250
We had a team that we paid, um, we paid them a time and a half, no matter what they were doing.

00:54:36.250 --> 00:54:41.960
If they were going and doing a COVID decontamination, we ended up, we had a logo we made for them and shirts.

00:54:42.099 --> 00:54:45.710
We just had some fun with it, you know, which is morbid probably.

00:54:46.360 --> 00:54:52.489
Um, you know, we could have made, honestly, we could have made hundreds of thousands of dollars more, but again, we're good stewards.

00:54:52.489 --> 00:54:53.320
By charging more.

00:54:53.320 --> 00:54:55.820
Yeah, we're good stewards with our customers money.

00:54:55.880 --> 00:54:56.179
Yeah.

00:54:56.309 --> 00:55:01.730
Um, you know, we, we were using a, um, disinfectant that it turns out killed COVID.

00:55:01.769 --> 00:55:04.469
COVID was an easy, um, virus to kill.

00:55:04.469 --> 00:55:07.139
It's a, it's an envelope virus, just like the flu bug.

00:55:07.389 --> 00:55:11.869
It doesn't, and they, we didn't really know this until probably July or August.

00:55:11.889 --> 00:55:12.119
Mm.

00:55:12.170 --> 00:55:12.590
But.

00:55:12.994 --> 00:55:14.875
Um, it dies very easily.

00:55:15.474 --> 00:55:17.094
It's a very fragile virus.

00:55:17.094 --> 00:55:19.474
It will even just be on a surface for a while.

00:55:19.764 --> 00:55:21.864
Yeah, it doesn't live very long on a surface.

00:55:21.864 --> 00:55:23.085
Less than 24 hours.

00:55:23.335 --> 00:55:27.414
And that's, it's always one of the myths during cold and flu season anyway.

00:55:27.414 --> 00:55:29.934
Well, can you guys disinfect everything every night?

00:55:30.335 --> 00:55:31.784
Yeah, we can do that.

00:55:32.585 --> 00:55:34.974
And it's clean until the first human touches it.

00:55:35.454 --> 00:55:38.724
And then it's, and it's that doorknob you're talking about.

00:55:39.429 --> 00:55:46.150
I always offered, I'm like, I can have the guy in the tuxedo with the warm towels, disinfect the door handle every time.

00:55:46.519 --> 00:55:51.949
Nobody ever took me up on that for some weird reason, but it's still a service option if somebody wants it.

00:55:53.210 --> 00:56:00.349
Um, I've any other big developments during the COVID season or did you start thinking about selling then?

00:56:00.349 --> 00:56:01.170
Or when did you?

00:56:01.219 --> 00:56:05.400
No, I mean, it was COVID was all survival mode, I think.

00:56:05.420 --> 00:56:07.170
And then a lot of people decided that.

00:56:07.590 --> 00:56:08.400
Screw this.

00:56:08.469 --> 00:56:08.800
Right.

00:56:08.980 --> 00:56:09.780
They were out.

00:56:09.780 --> 00:56:10.539
I'm ready to be done.

00:56:10.610 --> 00:56:18.590
No, I think, you know, I think what happened for us is All of a sudden, um, you know, the cleaning people became important, right?

00:56:19.019 --> 00:56:23.010
And we, we positioned ourselves as experts on this in the market.

00:56:23.019 --> 00:56:29.710
So, um, we, you know, cashflow, we survived because of COVID decontaminations.

00:56:29.710 --> 00:56:31.309
Um, but we also.

00:56:31.614 --> 00:56:39.025
We grew, even though our revenue ended up flat at the year, we grew because a new client's coming in and they were like, you know, maybe we're going to take this a little more seriously.

00:56:39.034 --> 00:56:45.724
My crazy drunk uncle Joe's been cleaning and we're thinking that's maybe not a great idea right now.

00:56:46.054 --> 00:56:50.324
Sometimes we find his chew spit in the toilet and he hasn't flushed it yet.

00:56:50.324 --> 00:56:52.005
Or he's asleep in the closet or something.

00:56:52.144 --> 00:56:52.715
I don't know.

00:56:52.755 --> 00:56:54.574
And it's like, yeah, we, I think we can help you know?

00:56:54.574 --> 00:56:58.704
There was more customers created from that circumstance.

00:56:58.744 --> 00:57:01.005
They were having an opposite experience.

00:57:01.449 --> 00:57:10.010
Um, you know, and I was, um, at the time I was on, I think I was, I was the past president of the chamber board in Fort Collins.

00:57:10.010 --> 00:57:11.949
I had been previously on the chamber board in Loveland.

00:57:12.269 --> 00:57:12.610
And so.

00:57:13.025 --> 00:57:21.005
Just as a courtesy like I'm I'm shooting out information to not only all our clients But to my business network and of course that information is so good.

00:57:21.034 --> 00:57:26.315
They're like sharing it with people and So then we're getting it wasn't the intent.

00:57:26.324 --> 00:57:27.635
The intent was truly to just serve.

00:57:27.644 --> 00:57:32.494
Yeah, but then phone would ring Hey, I was talking to so and so or they sent me this thing.

00:57:32.585 --> 00:57:34.045
Yeah, could you come look at our building?

00:57:34.394 --> 00:57:39.505
It's like, yeah, we can, we can come look at your building, you know, um, and so it was, you know, it was good.

00:57:39.525 --> 00:57:41.184
And like I said, we didn't have to lay anybody off.

00:57:41.554 --> 00:57:49.125
Um, I think the best success story is none of our people got sick from COVID, um, from working in one of our buildings.

00:57:49.625 --> 00:57:51.664
We had people, at least as far as you can tell, right.

00:57:51.664 --> 00:57:59.125
We had people with community transit mission, you know, their kids got sick or they were, they were at, you know, a gathering with people or something like that.

00:57:59.125 --> 00:58:00.135
Of course that happened.

00:58:00.474 --> 00:58:03.644
Um, but nobody got sick from work and that was pretty well.

00:58:03.655 --> 00:58:03.945
And that's.

00:58:04.380 --> 00:58:06.210
And we were in it all the time.

00:58:06.219 --> 00:58:10.639
Right, well and, like it's pretty much known now, it's an air transmitted.

00:58:11.244 --> 00:58:11.514
Thing.

00:58:11.545 --> 00:58:11.844
Right?

00:58:11.934 --> 00:58:12.144
Yeah.

00:58:12.150 --> 00:58:12.900
You got coffee easy.

00:58:12.900 --> 00:58:13.019
Right?

00:58:13.019 --> 00:58:14.125
And even if there is, yeah.

00:58:14.125 --> 00:58:17.364
And so they're working there at night when there's nobody around.

00:58:17.364 --> 00:58:18.085
Like Right.

00:58:18.144 --> 00:58:20.934
If there is covid in the room, it's on a desk surface.

00:58:20.934 --> 00:58:20.994
Yeah.

00:58:20.994 --> 00:58:22.255
And you just wipe it up kind of thing.

00:58:22.255 --> 00:58:22.525
Yeah.

00:58:22.735 --> 00:58:29.394
I mean, I think the number one best piece of advice I gave people during Covid was, you know, stop licking the counters and you're gonna be okay.

00:58:29.485 --> 00:58:30.054
Right, right.

00:58:30.445 --> 00:58:34.224
So, I mean, it was really like, let's bring some common sense back to this stuff.

00:58:34.230 --> 00:58:34.525
Yeah, yeah.

00:58:34.554 --> 00:58:37.704
Wash your hands, you know, just if you're sick, stay home.

00:58:37.704 --> 00:58:39.085
I mean, it just kind of simple stuff.

00:58:39.414 --> 00:58:51.054
So in some ways, the growth that COVID turned or helped turn on the backside of it, at least made it more attractive or compelling to potentially sell, or you weren't even thinking about it at all?

00:58:51.074 --> 00:58:51.824
Not really.

00:58:51.824 --> 00:58:54.454
I mean, we, or maybe you weren't thinking about it even up until you got an offer.

00:58:54.454 --> 00:58:54.925
I don't know.

00:58:55.005 --> 00:59:01.025
No, I, you know, beginning of 21, I think the thing that happened to us during COVID, it happened to everybody.

00:59:01.295 --> 00:59:03.965
Um, like a box of nitrile gloves, a hundred gloves.

00:59:04.284 --> 00:59:06.534
in January of 2020 cost 4.

00:59:06.534 --> 00:59:08.014
50.

00:59:08.045 --> 00:59:08.405
Right.

00:59:08.445 --> 00:59:14.594
Um, later in the year, we were paying 23 to 25 for that same box of gloves.

00:59:15.204 --> 00:59:18.364
And it was, um, I don't think it was price gouging.

00:59:18.364 --> 00:59:34.784
I think it truly was supply and demand because Everybody needed gloves all of a sudden, and there's only so many glove manufacturers, you know, so, um, it was, you know, they were sticking it to us, but they had more demand than they supply, you know, they were.

00:59:35.054 --> 00:59:39.284
Um, so, you know, um, those haven't come back down to 4.

00:59:39.284 --> 00:59:40.585
50 though, oddly.

00:59:41.074 --> 00:59:45.525
Um, I actually still have, uh, uh, gloves from my food trucking days.

00:59:45.635 --> 00:59:46.034
Oh, yeah.

00:59:46.034 --> 00:59:46.434
There you go.

00:59:46.445 --> 00:59:52.574
I've got two more boxes left and I use them for cleaning my grill and nasty stuff and the plumbing COVID.

00:59:52.835 --> 00:59:54.135
You gotta have your stash, right?

00:59:54.135 --> 00:59:54.565
I had it.

00:59:54.565 --> 00:59:58.864
I was down to a four pack in the basement during that season, but, uh, we made it through.

00:59:59.164 --> 00:59:59.804
There you go.

01:00:00.065 --> 01:00:04.695
So we were seeing that price inflation like on everything in, in 2020.

01:00:04.695 --> 01:00:09.244
So we got in 21 and we were, we were good and we were growing.

01:00:09.244 --> 01:00:12.994
And I mean, we had a nice, you're making price adjustments, like everybody's back.

01:00:13.014 --> 01:00:15.925
Well, we didn't, but we had enough room, like we could pay people more.

01:00:15.925 --> 01:00:18.034
So we kind of raised wages.

01:00:18.114 --> 01:00:22.204
Um, we were able, uh, one of the coolest things was at the end of 2020.

01:00:22.635 --> 01:00:28.284
Um, we were able to pay out some huge bonuses to all of our team who had worked so hard.

01:00:28.565 --> 01:00:34.025
Um, so the year ended up great, felt totally blessed and we wanted to share that, you know, with our team.

01:00:34.025 --> 01:00:34.885
So it was really cool.

01:00:34.905 --> 01:00:35.344
Yeah.

01:00:35.394 --> 01:00:44.594
Um, and so we got, we kind of did our, uh, midyear planning in, in early July and I left on vacation.

01:00:44.835 --> 01:00:45.985
Things were great.

01:00:46.034 --> 01:00:48.195
And when I came back, things were not great.

01:00:48.250 --> 01:00:53.130
Um, I think we've had a bunch of people who've been on the hiring front and my VP and my HR manager are like, we can't hire anybody.

01:00:53.130 --> 01:00:54.269
I'm like, what are you talking about?

01:00:54.269 --> 01:00:59.010
I mean, like we hire five or six people every week, you know, I mean, it was just a constant thing.

01:00:59.010 --> 01:01:00.679
Like we haven't hired anybody this month.

01:01:00.679 --> 01:01:02.050
I'm like, what is going on?

01:01:02.050 --> 01:01:05.789
And like, well, everybody's taking their wages up to 15.

01:01:05.820 --> 01:01:06.150
Right.

01:01:06.150 --> 01:01:10.639
And we were, we were starting at 1350 with a bump to 14 within a few months.

01:01:10.650 --> 01:01:11.269
Right.

01:01:11.369 --> 01:01:13.989
I'm like, okay, well, that's, that's a problem.

01:01:13.989 --> 01:01:15.695
Cause I don't have that money.

01:01:15.695 --> 01:01:16.244
Math.

01:01:16.324 --> 01:01:16.755
Right?

01:01:16.824 --> 01:01:17.324
Math.

01:01:17.344 --> 01:01:17.914
Yes.

01:01:18.235 --> 01:01:22.764
And, um, so, went back and did some research and it's like, oh boy, we gotta do.

01:01:22.775 --> 01:01:29.804
Have you been maybe increasing your I hadn't been doing a little bit sooner, uh, might've been able to absorb some of that.

01:01:29.804 --> 01:01:35.894
So in our industry, there's always a fight every year, a three to 5 percent increase was always a fight with a customer.

01:01:35.894 --> 01:01:38.684
So it became a little bit of a retention gamble, right?

01:01:38.684 --> 01:01:45.494
So you just, so you kind of delay those, you put pricing into new clients and, you know, so we, we were suffering from that.

01:01:45.929 --> 01:01:47.730
and it was, now it was acute.

01:01:47.739 --> 01:01:48.969
So we built a plan.

01:01:48.969 --> 01:01:53.170
I'm like, okay, everybody's going up to 15 here on September 1st.

01:01:53.199 --> 01:01:54.789
This is now beginning of August, right?

01:01:54.800 --> 01:01:55.170
Oh, right.

01:01:55.199 --> 01:01:56.840
Cause you can't hire new people at 15 bucks.

01:01:56.849 --> 01:01:57.119
Nope.

01:01:57.150 --> 01:01:58.420
If you're still paying somebody 14, 20.

01:01:58.420 --> 01:01:59.139
Can't do that.

01:01:59.139 --> 01:02:00.460
That wasn't suggested.

01:02:00.460 --> 01:02:01.429
I'm like, we're not doing that.

01:02:01.489 --> 01:02:03.159
That's not gonna, that will not fly.

01:02:03.159 --> 01:02:05.769
That's neither ethical nor safe.

01:02:05.769 --> 01:02:06.809
Right.

01:02:06.809 --> 01:02:07.840
Somebody's going to talk.

01:02:07.849 --> 01:02:09.349
We'll go like wildfire, right?

01:02:09.369 --> 01:02:09.780
Yep.

01:02:10.110 --> 01:02:19.530
Um, and in the meantime, we built a case, um, And we had to, most of our clients, we had to ask for like a 25 percent increase and some were even bigger.

01:02:19.659 --> 01:02:20.300
Oh, wow.

01:02:20.360 --> 01:02:20.760
Yeah.

01:02:20.940 --> 01:02:24.829
So it's like, okay, well this might be the end of the enterprise here.

01:02:24.880 --> 01:02:29.360
So next, if we lose too many, it'll be, you know, we're going to go down.

01:02:29.360 --> 01:02:29.650
Right.

01:02:29.820 --> 01:02:36.574
And so, um, but we put the case together and really about, Look, these are entry level people that live in our Isn't that crazy?

01:02:36.605 --> 01:02:44.355
Right after giving out big bonuses and stuff in 2020, and Yeah! Like now we're Frustrated, now you're like, shit, batting down the hatches, we gotta figure this out.

01:02:44.364 --> 01:02:44.394
Right.

01:02:44.454 --> 01:02:47.434
It's going the other way pretty quickly, you know, six, seven months there.

01:02:47.445 --> 01:02:47.784
Okay.

01:02:48.105 --> 01:02:49.804
So, we put this case together.

01:02:49.804 --> 01:02:59.114
It was about 30 pages of why we needed this price increase, and it included, of course, inflation, and it included taking care of our employees, not just now, but we showed them a path.

01:02:59.565 --> 01:03:07.215
It was like My prediction is this is going to go to 20 an hour within three years, um, and we're pretty close there, by the way.

01:03:07.655 --> 01:03:17.505
Um, so, um, so we, we went out, I had one of our top five customers call me, I'm working on this and he says, Hey man, can we get together like next week?

01:03:17.534 --> 01:03:20.554
I need to talk about ways that we can save money and cut our pricing.

01:03:21.135 --> 01:03:21.724
I'm like, okay.

01:03:22.445 --> 01:03:23.945
Um, we'll meet with you.

01:03:23.954 --> 01:03:29.085
Well, incidentally, I need to talk with you about some ways that I could increase your pricing at least 20%.

01:03:29.164 --> 01:03:30.315
I didn't say that on the phone.

01:03:31.405 --> 01:03:32.855
But, you know, it was a pretty big gut check.

01:03:32.864 --> 01:03:33.434
Yeah.

01:03:33.514 --> 01:03:36.085
Um, so we, we went and met with him.

01:03:36.434 --> 01:03:40.094
And, um, it was about a 28 percent price increase.

01:03:40.505 --> 01:03:41.594
And reduced service.

01:03:43.175 --> 01:03:44.565
Price decrease and reduced service.

01:03:44.574 --> 01:03:45.175
No, price increase.

01:03:45.175 --> 01:03:46.554
Oh, increase and reduced service.

01:03:47.014 --> 01:03:48.894
But what he really needed was reduced service.

01:03:48.894 --> 01:03:52.014
And so, we went in there and he said, Wow.

01:03:52.014 --> 01:03:53.994
This is, I sent it to him 24 hours before.

01:03:53.994 --> 01:03:54.894
Cause I wanted him to read it.

01:03:54.894 --> 01:03:57.954
It was, it was a complex case study and the pricing was complex.

01:03:57.954 --> 01:04:02.355
And, um, when we sat down, it's like, this is exactly what I've been looking for.

01:04:03.885 --> 01:04:04.355
Oh, really?

01:04:04.405 --> 01:04:05.014
Tell me about that.

01:04:05.014 --> 01:04:08.775
It's like, well, I need to do a couple of things here, but we're gonna, we're gonna maintain our vacancy.

01:04:08.775 --> 01:04:11.724
So if you can, if you can keep it at this rate, I can sell this.

01:04:12.014 --> 01:04:19.764
And then I was pitching, um, I think it was like 1 percent a year, um, discounts if they would sign on for three years.

01:04:20.059 --> 01:04:23.269
So now I made three year contracts, um, with the clients.

01:04:23.269 --> 01:04:27.230
And so we walked out of the meeting and I was like, wow, that went a lot better than we thought.

01:04:27.550 --> 01:04:31.159
And then the next day we had our largest client and, um.

01:04:31.894 --> 01:04:36.505
This is a client that would, um, dicker with me over how you calculated the percentage increase.

01:04:36.804 --> 01:04:42.355
Cause if you do it one way with the numerator and denominator, it's like a 10th of a percent higher or whatever.

01:04:42.414 --> 01:04:42.605
Yeah.

01:04:42.605 --> 01:04:42.844
Yeah.

01:04:42.885 --> 01:04:44.215
He wanted it the lowest way.

01:04:44.914 --> 01:04:47.405
Um, I'm like, Oh, this is going to be a rough meeting.

01:04:47.494 --> 01:04:48.684
Always on that original amount.

01:04:49.375 --> 01:04:54.644
And this is, I think at that time, I don't know, it was, he was a good, he was 15 or 20 percent of our business.

01:04:54.864 --> 01:04:55.644
So it was significant.

01:04:55.644 --> 01:04:55.775
Yeah.

01:04:55.775 --> 01:04:56.034
Yeah.

01:04:56.034 --> 01:05:00.159
Um, and, um, Same thing.

01:05:00.159 --> 01:05:02.820
Send him the case study the day before.

01:05:02.989 --> 01:05:08.079
And we sat down and, um, he's like, I said, so what do you, what do you think?

01:05:08.079 --> 01:05:12.420
And he says, well, you gotta be an effing idiot if you don't understand what's going on.

01:05:12.420 --> 01:05:15.940
He's like, every vendor of mine has already asked for price increases.

01:05:16.059 --> 01:05:17.320
Usually the ones that are waiting.

01:05:18.030 --> 01:05:20.269
We had annual contracts with him that started in January.

01:05:20.269 --> 01:05:22.050
This is now, you know, August.

01:05:22.409 --> 01:05:24.429
And, um, he's like, you guys are waiting until September.

01:05:24.429 --> 01:05:25.489
This is a no brainer.

01:05:25.789 --> 01:05:29.469
So we talked about that for probably five minutes.

01:05:29.469 --> 01:05:33.539
And I'm like, Hey, I just want to clarify, you know, we had a bunch of buildings that we did for him.

01:05:33.539 --> 01:05:40.690
I said, you're talking every single building here because all of them are managed by like an HOA or that kind of thing, commercial HOA.

01:05:40.849 --> 01:05:42.800
It's like, yeah, every single building, he says, you guys have.

01:05:43.230 --> 01:05:45.539
You guys have made sacrifices for us in the past.

01:05:45.550 --> 01:05:47.510
We're going to, this is going to, we need to keep you guys.

01:05:47.659 --> 01:05:47.949
Okay.

01:05:47.949 --> 01:05:48.949
This is what we're going to do.

01:05:49.039 --> 01:05:50.130
Like, okay.

01:05:50.670 --> 01:05:54.969
And so, um, Leland and I walked out and said, man, maybe we're not asking for enough money.

01:05:59.179 --> 01:06:00.599
So we, that was too easy.

01:06:00.840 --> 01:06:01.260
Right?

01:06:01.380 --> 01:06:05.639
So we, um, we weren't quite as generous on the discounts, you know, on the next clients.

01:06:05.639 --> 01:06:08.969
And over the next couple of months, we talked to every single client.

01:06:09.364 --> 01:06:20.144
And, um, we lost, we lost three in the process and one, I just totally messed up the pricing on, um, and just, and then just fumbled it.

01:06:20.434 --> 01:06:22.614
Um, another was a new client we'd gotten that year.

01:06:22.614 --> 01:06:27.735
They were small and they just, we already were an upgrade and they couldn't handle more, you know?

01:06:28.034 --> 01:06:30.355
Um, so it was, it was pretty incredible.

01:06:30.355 --> 01:06:32.264
So we get to the end of 2021.

01:06:33.309 --> 01:06:40.659
And, um, I just, I felt like we just kind of got released from the business, which is kind of finally like at the end of the fear, right?

01:06:40.670 --> 01:06:41.760
In some ways, right?

01:06:41.760 --> 01:06:45.650
But we had now this back into masking that September or something, right?

01:06:45.670 --> 01:06:48.409
But we're starting to see the price increases come in, right?

01:06:48.449 --> 01:06:53.425
Because we were, We had most of the clients we had done, like, Hey, we're going to implement this at the beginning of the next month.

01:06:53.425 --> 01:06:53.775
Right.

01:06:54.335 --> 01:06:58.195
And so we knew in January hit like everything, like you get, you can map it out.

01:06:58.195 --> 01:07:02.894
I can map it out for three years, what this performance is going to look like, what things are.

01:07:02.905 --> 01:07:09.985
And I mean, it was, and again, we were able to give really good bonuses at the end of, you know, we raised everybody's wages, like a dollar an hour.

01:07:10.085 --> 01:07:10.344
Right.

01:07:10.364 --> 01:07:13.724
And, um, and we gave great bonuses again at the end of the year.

01:07:13.724 --> 01:07:14.574
I mean, it was really.

01:07:14.949 --> 01:07:18.769
You know, things were going well and, and now it was like really set.

01:07:19.050 --> 01:07:19.380
Yeah.

01:07:19.389 --> 01:07:19.989
Um, yeah.

01:07:20.030 --> 01:07:22.070
Most of your big stuff under long term contracts.

01:07:22.070 --> 01:07:36.780
And, and we had, you know, I think the, our transition story though, starts back in, um, probably 2015, 2016, we had an offer in 2016, we had an LOI and, um, and we backed out when you were like 20, 30 employees or something.

01:07:36.789 --> 01:07:37.320
Yeah.

01:07:37.650 --> 01:07:37.889
Yeah.

01:07:37.889 --> 01:07:39.889
We had, yeah, probably 30, 40 employees.

01:07:40.179 --> 01:07:40.429
Yeah.

01:07:40.469 --> 01:07:41.780
And, um.

01:07:42.244 --> 01:07:48.625
Both Linda and I separately felt like, um, you know, God was telling us, no, it's not the time.

01:07:48.625 --> 01:07:53.164
Like, your, your ministry, your focus needs to be on your employees right now.

01:07:54.099 --> 01:07:57.369
As the entrepreneur, I was okay with that.

01:07:57.769 --> 01:08:01.119
Linda was not happy about that, but she was obedient.

01:08:01.119 --> 01:08:04.309
She's like, Hey, I think this is, I'm like, I'm feeling the same thing.

01:08:04.309 --> 01:08:22.284
It just, it turns out it was a brilliant move because, um, one night I had to go get a job right away and we found it out in the aftermath about four years later that, um, That company sold to another company and then that new owner stiffed all of the first acquisition companies Oh, so it's supposed to be a role.

01:08:22.284 --> 01:08:27.234
We did it with Roger kind of yeah So we'd have probably not gotten our earn out on that.

01:08:27.234 --> 01:08:29.534
I mean it would have been bad bad news.

01:08:29.534 --> 01:08:44.585
Yeah It's like okay, we got saved we dodged a bullet there But I really felt like in the latter part of that year like okay, I think like I think it's time to go Yeah, we got through this and plus I was just I was stinking tired from two years of dealing with this stuff.

01:08:44.585 --> 01:08:46.555
Well, I didn't realize you're, you're a little bit older than me.

01:08:46.555 --> 01:08:47.694
I thought maybe I was a little older.

01:08:47.694 --> 01:08:48.114
I'm not sure.

01:08:48.114 --> 01:08:48.335
I wasn't sure.

01:08:48.345 --> 01:08:51.555
No, I'm older than you started working in 92 when I graduated high school.

01:08:52.175 --> 01:08:52.935
I got promoted in 92.

01:08:52.935 --> 01:08:53.965
You got promoted in 92.

01:08:53.965 --> 01:08:55.715
I've been working a few years.

01:08:56.335 --> 01:08:57.125
So, uh.

01:08:57.354 --> 01:08:57.864
So, yeah.

01:08:57.864 --> 01:09:04.524
And I, but I know the feeling like you get into the fifties and stuff and you just don't really wanna do the 60 hour weeks anymore.

01:09:04.529 --> 01:09:05.725
It's, it's just a grind, you know?

01:09:05.725 --> 01:09:05.875
Yeah.

01:09:05.875 --> 01:09:10.614
And so, um, so we called up, um, you know, an investment banker in our industry Okay.

01:09:10.614 --> 01:09:15.265
Outta Chicago, um, that I had worked with before and, and knew great guy.

01:09:15.505 --> 01:09:16.585
Um, he's also named Peter.

01:09:16.585 --> 01:09:18.744
So that's, you know, he's gotta be a good, easy to trust.

01:09:18.744 --> 01:09:18.925
Yeah.

01:09:18.954 --> 01:09:19.854
Gotta be a good guy.

01:09:20.755 --> 01:09:23.875
Um, and he's like, yeah, let's do this thing, you know.

01:09:24.425 --> 01:09:28.835
Um, and a guy I know, he's like, Hey, um, he's doing this roll up.

01:09:29.145 --> 01:09:32.585
And if you're interested, I think he's in Colorado right now, skiing.

01:09:32.675 --> 01:09:34.625
I'm like, yeah, let's go have lunch.

01:09:34.694 --> 01:09:37.475
You know, like I'm always up for a seven figure lunch.

01:09:37.935 --> 01:09:44.744
And, uh, so I drove up to, um, Beaver Creek and we had lunch and it's like, well, thanks for taking a couple hours.

01:09:44.744 --> 01:09:46.954
I'm like, yeah, it was more like three and a half, but you're welcome.

01:09:47.545 --> 01:09:48.925
And, um, we had a great meeting.

01:09:48.925 --> 01:09:49.604
It's like, Hey, just.

01:09:49.930 --> 01:09:52.189
Whatever you do, I want to be the first one to see this.

01:09:52.710 --> 01:09:55.000
I'm like, okay, we'll, we'll give you the first shot at it.

01:09:55.510 --> 01:10:03.810
And so, um, it was interesting working with the investment company cause they were, um, what I felt was trying to low ball the price.

01:10:03.819 --> 01:10:13.966
And I'm like, look, because it's based off of EBITDA, which had been pretty much not good in 21, um, but I'm like, let me go work on the performance.

01:10:13.966 --> 01:10:18.630
You guys can see this is like, okay, I see what you're saying.

01:10:18.685 --> 01:10:21.145
Um, we'll, we'll do it this way.

01:10:21.145 --> 01:10:30.595
And so we laid out our price and, um, and we gave, we gave Bryson the first shot at it and we negotiated a little bit back and forth.

01:10:30.635 --> 01:10:34.125
And I said, the only thing I want is, um, they put a cap on the earn out.

01:10:34.385 --> 01:10:36.265
I'm like, I'd like you to take the cap off.

01:10:36.284 --> 01:10:40.114
Cause I believe we're going to over perform to kick ass right now.

01:10:40.215 --> 01:10:48.609
And well, actually the other cleaning industry people I know, including one longtime member, she got slammed during COVID recovered.

01:10:49.390 --> 01:10:50.949
And then after that blew up.

01:10:50.949 --> 01:10:51.189
Yeah.

01:10:51.189 --> 01:10:52.074
You know, industry.

01:10:52.074 --> 01:10:52.076
Yeah.

01:10:52.081 --> 01:10:54.909
People realized maybe we need professionals doing this.

01:10:55.090 --> 01:10:55.180
Right?

01:10:55.180 --> 01:10:55.479
Yeah.

01:10:55.484 --> 01:10:55.515
Yeah.

01:10:55.630 --> 01:10:56.890
So that probably benefit.

01:10:56.890 --> 01:10:59.500
So that was the only thing he, he kept the cap on there.

01:10:59.619 --> 01:10:59.890
Okay.

01:10:59.890 --> 01:11:01.479
And, um, and it was fine.

01:11:01.479 --> 01:11:05.289
We, and we overperformed and He should have paid you a little bit more.

01:11:05.319 --> 01:11:05.590
He should.

01:11:05.619 --> 01:11:06.460
No, it was all good.

01:11:06.954 --> 01:11:07.034
Honestly.

01:11:07.149 --> 01:11:07.720
It was all good.

01:11:07.720 --> 01:11:11.020
I had a um, so you stayed on for like a year or something?

01:11:11.020 --> 01:11:12.069
Yeah, I was ready to be done.

01:11:12.069 --> 01:11:18.279
So we exited in April of 22 and I had a, I had to, um.

01:11:20.810 --> 01:11:29.170
I was kind of actively, um, helping out for a few months and then like once a week in the office and then not in the office and, you know, and they were still paying me.

01:11:29.170 --> 01:11:34.949
So, um, I couldn't complain too much as long as things were heading in the right direction, there to answer phone calls and all that kind of stuff.

01:11:34.949 --> 01:11:36.680
And what's the business name now?

01:11:36.680 --> 01:11:37.439
Did they change the name?

01:11:37.800 --> 01:11:39.260
Nope, still Total Facility Care.

01:11:39.439 --> 01:11:42.979
So, um, when they bought us, um, they're out of Tampa, Florida.

01:11:42.979 --> 01:11:53.524
When they bought us, they had gone from, um, Um, and so, and now today they're just, they're right, hovering around a billion dollars.

01:11:53.614 --> 01:11:54.335
Oh, wow.

01:11:54.364 --> 01:11:56.965
They've been rolling up companies all across the U.

01:11:56.965 --> 01:11:57.255
S.

01:11:57.255 --> 01:11:57.645
Yeah.

01:11:57.654 --> 01:11:57.984
Oh, interesting.

01:11:58.215 --> 01:11:59.101
Yeah, so now they're trying to choose.

01:11:59.101 --> 01:12:01.935
So is that the new vet industry thing and they get like supply?

01:12:02.444 --> 01:12:05.074
Cause that, I'm guessing it might be similar in some ways.

01:12:05.074 --> 01:12:07.725
Like the veterinary industry has been taken over by big corporates rolling up.

01:12:08.154 --> 01:12:09.034
Oh, lots of industries.

01:12:09.104 --> 01:12:11.645
And they have just advantages on the supply chain.

01:12:11.664 --> 01:12:11.864
Yeah.

01:12:11.864 --> 01:12:35.194
And so they can get You know, so like when I was working in the corporate side, like I knew all of the major equipment manufacturers and all that, because we would buy from them and we'd buy through a distributor, but we'd pay them 10 percent over the manufacturer's price, which the distributor hated because they had a lot fatter margins than that.

01:12:35.744 --> 01:12:36.704
And then as a little guy, you don't have those.

01:12:36.704 --> 01:12:41.145
But if you're a small business, you're like, no, you don't have any of those advantages, you know, even.

01:12:41.479 --> 01:12:45.739
You know, I think, you know, when I, when I left, we were buying like 100, 000 of chemicals every year.

01:12:45.750 --> 01:12:46.159
Yeah.

01:12:46.189 --> 01:12:49.800
So we got some better pricing, but nothing like I enjoyed at that corporate level.

01:12:50.274 --> 01:12:56.194
So, you know, at a billion dollars, I don't know what their spend is, but it's, it's several million dollars a year on chemicals and equipment.

01:12:56.194 --> 01:12:56.444
Sure.

01:12:56.475 --> 01:12:57.795
They're, they're getting the best prices.

01:12:58.204 --> 01:13:02.614
Well, it's kind of the same as too big to fail in banking, you know, the Wells Fargo is in the J.

01:13:02.614 --> 01:13:02.685
P.

01:13:02.704 --> 01:13:03.204
Morgans.

01:13:03.244 --> 01:13:09.324
They literally borrow their money for like a point less than everybody else because they're too big to fail.

01:13:09.435 --> 01:13:09.774
Yeah.

01:13:09.814 --> 01:13:11.125
Well, it's a built in monopoly.

01:13:11.125 --> 01:13:12.185
I don't know.

01:13:12.185 --> 01:13:12.515
It is.

01:13:12.585 --> 01:13:16.435
We could talk more about it, but probably we don't have time, but I feel like if anything.

01:13:17.090 --> 01:13:20.560
There should be some kind of a size tax, right?

01:13:20.560 --> 01:13:27.880
Because size, size creates power, power creates dirty deeds and uncompetitive practices and things like that.

01:13:27.880 --> 01:13:33.300
And like, in your case, like it's hard, would be harder still for a little guy to try to get going again now.

01:13:33.369 --> 01:13:33.760
Yeah.

01:13:33.800 --> 01:13:36.029
Cause you got to pay full price for all those materials, all that stuff.

01:13:36.029 --> 01:13:36.510
Yeah.

01:13:36.779 --> 01:13:41.199
And you know, in our industry, I'll say it's, um, it's ultra competitive.

01:13:41.199 --> 01:13:44.729
I think it's super, it's a super difficult industry because you're.

01:13:44.994 --> 01:13:49.045
You're trying to manage professionally, but you've got a lot of entry level employees, high turnover.

01:13:49.225 --> 01:13:51.734
Um, Right.

01:13:51.734 --> 01:13:53.215
And the competition is always there.

01:13:53.215 --> 01:13:56.024
I mean, it takes somebody with a vacuum and a mop bucket and they're in business.

01:13:56.034 --> 01:13:57.125
I mean, it's, you know.

01:13:57.364 --> 01:13:58.395
No barriers to entry.

01:13:58.515 --> 01:13:58.805
Right.

01:13:58.824 --> 01:14:03.635
Now, now, they're not going to hire that person with the mop bucket and the vacuum into their clean room.

01:14:03.725 --> 01:14:04.145
Totally.

01:14:04.305 --> 01:14:16.574
So for us, those technical spaces are the more complex, you know, campus environments, those kinds of things are always good because, you know, it's, The barrier to that was higher and the cost of change for the client was always painful.

01:14:17.015 --> 01:14:20.774
So if you, if you change, you know, there's going to be complaints from people.

01:14:21.005 --> 01:14:24.555
Um, and so that was, you know, that was kind of our secret sauce.

01:14:24.935 --> 01:14:35.795
And the flip side, um, you know, we, you guys would know it, but we, um, we've been working on it for a couple of years and shortly after the transaction, we landed the customers banging customer here.

01:14:36.074 --> 01:14:39.555
Um, they, you know, the first letter is.

01:14:39.904 --> 01:14:41.244
F and the last letters.

01:14:41.274 --> 01:14:46.975
Oh, if you know who that customer is, they have a green logo, but they were looking for some solutions.

01:14:47.024 --> 01:14:52.314
And, um, I forget how many branches, but Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado.

01:14:52.314 --> 01:14:52.664
Right.

01:14:52.664 --> 01:14:55.784
So we picked, we picked up all of that Western Nebraska, I should say.

01:14:56.265 --> 01:15:04.875
And, um, the local manager here was great facilities guy, but his boss in Omaha is like, are you sure you want to do this?

01:15:05.194 --> 01:15:06.164
Because you don't.

01:15:06.685 --> 01:15:15.715
He had, I think in that area, he had three or four vendors and he wanted to get to one and we had been talking to him for two years easily.

01:15:16.310 --> 01:15:17.430
He'd met our clients.

01:15:17.430 --> 01:15:18.560
He'd been in our buildings.

01:15:18.560 --> 01:15:19.710
He'd seen how we executed.

01:15:19.710 --> 01:15:21.979
He's like, I need, that's exactly what I need right there.

01:15:22.359 --> 01:15:23.699
Cause we solve all his problems.

01:15:24.039 --> 01:15:26.380
And, but it doesn't mean the first couple of months aren't bumpy.

01:15:26.420 --> 01:15:31.640
Cause you're transitioning all these branches, new expectations and all of that.

01:15:31.649 --> 01:15:35.710
So, um, you know, I give him a lot of credit and they're happy as could be now.

01:15:35.770 --> 01:15:37.659
They're one of the biggest fans of total facility care.

01:15:37.659 --> 01:15:38.170
There it is.

01:15:38.329 --> 01:15:39.819
So, yeah, so it's fun.

01:15:40.145 --> 01:15:46.704
I feel like if we're gonna get you out of here in a reasonable time, we better, uh, take a quick break and then come into a little bit more of the story.

01:15:46.914 --> 01:15:47.664
Alright, sounds good.

01:15:47.734 --> 01:15:51.925
And, uh, we'll also talk a little bit more about, uh, Wait, we don't have two cents.

01:15:52.085 --> 01:15:52.864
Alright, sounds great.

01:16:42.305 --> 01:16:43.625
Okay, and we're back.

01:16:44.154 --> 01:16:58.465
So, I think the question I have, Pete, after listening to that, kind of, really learning more about your industry than I've ever known before, by far, uh, and just how, how it plays, how it uh, interrelates, it's still relationship driven.

01:16:58.824 --> 01:16:59.582
Oh yeah, 100%.

01:16:59.582 --> 01:17:08.585
And a pencil, you know, a sharp pencil for bidding it right, executing it right, asking for more money if you need to, all those kind of things.

01:17:08.645 --> 01:17:10.515
Um, what were some of the big things that you learned?

01:17:11.104 --> 01:17:30.595
Elements of change, if you will, along the way, you already kind of talked about kind of getting maybe culture first in that 2018 19 time period, hiring and develop a people business, kind of taking that focus, obviously education and communication and even being a leader in the county, the community.

01:17:31.164 --> 01:17:33.484
At that time during the COVID nation was key.

01:17:33.484 --> 01:17:37.395
Is there other big, big change elements for total facility care over the years?

01:17:37.925 --> 01:17:42.954
Um, you know, I think, um, EOS was really big pivotal in our, in our journey.

01:17:43.135 --> 01:17:44.215
Um, when did you start that?

01:17:44.515 --> 01:17:52.444
Um, in 2018, but we had won, um, the chamber small business of the year award in 2015.

01:17:52.444 --> 01:17:58.175
And then a couple of weeks later, we won the, we made the mercury 400 or 100 list for the first time, number four on the list.

01:17:58.194 --> 01:17:58.604
Okay.

01:17:58.994 --> 01:18:10.164
And, um, there was an EOS implementer, I think the only one in Colorado at the time, she was here in Fort Collins and, uh, she handed me traction and said, Hey, I think this, you guys are on a great path.

01:18:10.164 --> 01:18:11.125
I think this will really help you.

01:18:11.125 --> 01:18:11.675
And I'm like, okay.

01:18:11.725 --> 01:18:13.164
I mean, I read business books all the time, right?

01:18:13.395 --> 01:18:13.685
So.

01:18:14.069 --> 01:18:20.949
Um, I cracked it open and read the first, first 30 pages and it was about mission, vision, values.

01:18:20.949 --> 01:18:25.920
And I was like, ah, like, I don't need another book on this and I put it back on the shelf.

01:18:26.329 --> 01:18:30.100
Um, and then in, so we continued to grow in 2018.

01:18:30.399 --> 01:18:34.189
Um, you know, we were hitting my personal selling, I think, is what was happening.

01:18:34.670 --> 01:18:36.869
And, uh, You were managing all the things kind of too much.

01:18:36.869 --> 01:18:38.449
All the things, way too much.

01:18:38.489 --> 01:18:46.699
And, um, at my peer advisory group, the one thing I was in that was good, Um, they had a guest come in, he was a dentist, and he had implemented EOS.

01:18:46.789 --> 01:18:47.090
Okay.

01:18:47.090 --> 01:18:48.050
And he was just raving about it.

01:18:48.050 --> 01:18:50.119
I'm like, I think I got that book on my bookshelf.

01:18:50.119 --> 01:18:51.180
I need to go look at that thing.

01:18:51.550 --> 01:18:56.800
And then, interestingly, another, uh, peer advisory group that was trying to recruit me Okay.

01:18:56.819 --> 01:19:00.130
Sent me an email and said, Hey, this guy, Ken Trader is going to be in town.

01:19:00.140 --> 01:19:01.417
He's an EOS implementer.

01:19:01.417 --> 01:19:01.574
Well.

01:19:01.875 --> 01:19:04.675
Ken and I had been friends since like the late 80s.

01:19:04.765 --> 01:19:05.135
Oh wow.

01:19:05.175 --> 01:19:07.175
And I hadn't seen him in a few years.

01:19:07.484 --> 01:19:09.114
And I'm like, I can't be there that day.

01:19:09.555 --> 01:19:10.555
But I reach out to Ken.

01:19:10.564 --> 01:19:11.064
Right, right.

01:19:11.074 --> 01:19:13.135
And so he gave me the spiel on EOS.

01:19:13.164 --> 01:19:14.805
I'm like, we need to do that.

01:19:14.805 --> 01:19:19.194
So he came in and um, we decided to self implement.

01:19:19.194 --> 01:19:20.314
And he said, I'll help you.

01:19:20.324 --> 01:19:23.414
He says, you're the one guy I think that could self implement this thing.

01:19:23.425 --> 01:19:23.635
Yeah.

01:19:23.645 --> 01:19:25.255
And so, so we did.

01:19:25.284 --> 01:19:28.914
And that was So he coached you a little bit, but didn't charge you the full boat fee.

01:19:28.914 --> 01:19:30.324
He coached me, yeah.

01:19:30.720 --> 01:19:42.720
And, um, and we just, we just went in and did it and it was 2018, 2019, 2018, yeah, into 2019 and it was transformational because, um, I hired the right leadership team.

01:19:42.720 --> 01:19:51.960
I had, you know, you have to make some painful decisions when you get real about your capacity and well, and sometimes the people, right, people, right on your team, all of that stuff, right.

01:19:52.039 --> 01:19:52.939
That's out of EOS.

01:19:52.939 --> 01:19:53.550
And so.

01:19:53.609 --> 01:19:58.279
I had to let some people go, hired some right people, and it just set us up for success.

01:19:58.279 --> 01:20:02.689
And, and those systems and those people are still running the company today.

01:20:02.699 --> 01:20:07.250
So I think that's, you know, just a huge success that it's still, it's thriving.

01:20:07.250 --> 01:20:10.529
We've got great people that are still running it and those systems are running it.

01:20:10.529 --> 01:20:12.680
They're still running on EOS.

01:20:13.010 --> 01:20:13.949
whole big machine?

01:20:14.300 --> 01:20:18.069
No, just your, your shop is running on EOS, just our shop locally.

01:20:18.159 --> 01:20:20.060
And sometimes there's conflict with that.

01:20:20.140 --> 01:20:23.329
But, um, and you see our vision board, right?

01:20:23.880 --> 01:20:26.439
And, you know, early on, I was like, geez, Bryson, come on, man.

01:20:26.439 --> 01:20:27.989
You guys should really benefit from this.

01:20:27.989 --> 01:20:34.270
I get, you know, some issues and it's not built for a company that big, but the principles still transfer.

01:20:34.270 --> 01:20:36.399
So, yeah, so that was huge for us.

01:20:36.399 --> 01:20:38.779
And so I'm a massive fan of EOS.

01:20:38.899 --> 01:20:40.350
If, if as an owner.

01:20:40.854 --> 01:20:47.935
You like wanting more freedom in your business and, um, you know, and you want to make more money, um, all the things, right.

01:20:48.125 --> 01:20:49.425
And you want to have the broken parts.

01:20:49.425 --> 01:20:53.484
And well, for me, I think give your team more clarity about what we're really trying to do.

01:20:53.875 --> 01:20:57.505
Each position kind of, you want to help people connect to greater purpose, right.

01:20:57.614 --> 01:21:01.005
And, um, and just have a better, have a better story.

01:21:01.354 --> 01:21:02.895
I mean, it's just not grinding all the time.

01:21:02.895 --> 01:21:05.505
It's like you can have some fun and joy in your business.

01:21:05.505 --> 01:21:07.465
And I think EOS are one of those.

01:21:07.795 --> 01:21:10.364
tools, you know, the great game, game of business.

01:21:10.395 --> 01:21:11.994
Um, there's several others out there.

01:21:12.324 --> 01:21:14.895
You got to have some system, have a system and run as an entrepreneur.

01:21:15.354 --> 01:21:27.744
So, um, you know, I didn't introduce you as our new incoming facilitator for local think tank, although I did miss that, but talk to me about peer advisory and it in your business journey.

01:21:27.755 --> 01:21:30.145
Have you been in a peer advisory chapter?

01:21:30.175 --> 01:21:30.784
A lot of that?

01:21:30.885 --> 01:21:32.024
Um, yeah.

01:21:32.024 --> 01:21:34.024
How long was in a peer advisory group?

01:21:34.104 --> 01:21:40.470
Um, probably man, Probably seven years seven or eight years.

01:21:40.470 --> 01:21:44.949
Okay, you know so mid kind of middle at TFC through the end of it.

01:21:44.960 --> 01:21:46.935
Yeah, I just It's so valuable.

01:21:46.994 --> 01:21:51.479
Um, you know, I think the entrepreneurs, was that Vistage for you or was it something else?

01:21:51.484 --> 01:21:52.875
It was through, um, kingdom Way in town.

01:21:52.935 --> 01:21:53.385
Okay, sure.

01:21:53.685 --> 01:21:54.345
Dan's groups.

01:21:54.375 --> 01:21:54.614
Yep.

01:21:54.614 --> 01:21:54.824
Yeah.

01:21:55.064 --> 01:21:56.534
And um, Dan's been on the show.

01:21:56.534 --> 01:21:58.814
I think he was episode 99, maybe 90 99.

01:21:58.814 --> 01:21:59.595
Real around there, man.

01:21:59.595 --> 01:22:02.175
You got like a photographic memory of those episodes.

01:22:02.175 --> 01:22:03.255
Pornographic memory actually.

01:22:04.425 --> 01:22:05.055
There you go.

01:22:05.385 --> 01:22:06.734
Um, so it's huge.

01:22:06.734 --> 01:22:08.324
I'm not talking about you Dan, I'm just teasing.

01:22:08.685 --> 01:22:10.034
You've got other, um.

01:22:10.095 --> 01:22:17.234
You know, entrepreneurs that are the same boat, you know, um, business owners are fighting and a lot of times it's very isolating being in those positions.

01:22:17.244 --> 01:22:22.255
So I think just somebody to brainstorm with that understands the journey, right?

01:22:22.284 --> 01:22:26.404
And understands it's been there that, you know, Hey, I didn't take a paycheck.

01:22:26.875 --> 01:22:30.015
I had to take out of my home equity to pay, make payroll this month or.

01:22:30.279 --> 01:22:35.850
Whatever it is, right, that you can just relate that and, and you can get good counsel from other people around you.

01:22:35.850 --> 01:22:36.479
Yeah, yeah.

01:22:36.750 --> 01:22:42.810
Dan and I were kind of, we were introduced like when he was kind of first getting going and I was first getting pro.

01:22:43.250 --> 01:22:50.970
And I had like this one page Word document application with a logo that my friend's daughter had made and whatever.

01:22:50.970 --> 01:23:01.060
And he had like, The nice fold out thing with different flyers and stuff, and, uh, I've just really appreciated his heart for service, uh, all over the world.

01:23:01.220 --> 01:23:01.300
Absolutely.

01:23:01.300 --> 01:23:01.340
Yeah.

01:23:01.340 --> 01:23:01.779
Dan's great guy.

01:23:01.779 --> 01:23:03.375
Some of the friendliest competitors you're gonna meet.

01:23:03.465 --> 01:23:04.364
Yeah, for sure.

01:23:04.395 --> 01:23:12.824
And I think, you know, there's, um, I admire, I admire the heck out of you for what you've built for Loco and, um, you know, you already hired me so I don't have to say it right.

01:23:12.885 --> 01:23:19.904
But um, it's, I mean, it's not, it's not an easy task to build something from nothing and Yeah.

01:23:19.965 --> 01:23:20.354
And there's.

01:23:20.835 --> 01:23:24.704
long time competitors too in the market that have been doing it for decades.

01:23:24.715 --> 01:23:28.274
So, you know, you, you found the, the course.

01:23:29.444 --> 01:23:32.524
Anyway, we'll see, you know, I think that there is opportunity.

01:23:33.550 --> 01:23:46.130
For the, the, the small and midsize businesses around the country to get that kind of experience, you know, and with or without a faith component, you know, for me, I've never made that part of my brand, but it's part of my, my being, right.

01:23:46.699 --> 01:23:48.359
So, you know, go from there.

01:23:48.630 --> 01:23:48.840
Yeah.

01:23:48.840 --> 01:23:51.630
And I think, I think there is a market for that.

01:23:51.630 --> 01:23:56.579
And, you know, most of the big national ones are going after the higher revenue companies.

01:23:56.800 --> 01:23:57.079
Right.

01:23:57.260 --> 01:24:00.890
Um, so yeah, so you found a nice sweet spot there for Loco and.

01:24:01.284 --> 01:24:02.444
Um, clearly it's working.

01:24:02.515 --> 01:24:02.984
I hope so.

01:24:02.984 --> 01:24:04.204
It's benefiting lots of folks.

01:24:04.225 --> 01:24:04.875
Yeah, for sure.

01:24:05.085 --> 01:24:05.994
Well, I appreciate that.

01:24:05.994 --> 01:24:07.414
And I appreciate you being part of the team.

01:24:07.755 --> 01:24:10.505
Um, let's jump in the time machine to first grade.

01:24:10.505 --> 01:24:16.515
Like I promised, where are we at?

01:24:16.814 --> 01:24:18.814
First grade, uh, Greeley, Colorado.

01:24:18.824 --> 01:24:19.265
Okay.

01:24:19.345 --> 01:24:20.875
Um Were you born and raised?

01:24:20.944 --> 01:24:25.625
Uh, I was not born This is a shame to me as a Broncos fan.

01:24:25.675 --> 01:24:27.175
I was born in Oakland, California.

01:24:27.225 --> 01:24:27.845
Okay.

01:24:27.895 --> 01:24:29.354
But you don't have any choice where you're born.

01:24:29.395 --> 01:24:29.734
Yeah.

01:24:29.784 --> 01:24:31.595
My parents moved out here when I was three years old.

01:24:31.614 --> 01:24:33.744
What were the circumstances of that?

01:24:33.755 --> 01:24:35.585
Were they born and raised Californians?

01:24:35.845 --> 01:24:37.585
Or were they coming back to Colorado?

01:24:37.604 --> 01:24:39.965
Yeah, my folks met in Germany.

01:24:40.005 --> 01:24:41.444
My dad was in the army over there.

01:24:41.444 --> 01:24:43.055
And my mom was over there with her family.

01:24:43.829 --> 01:24:48.439
Um, my great uncle, who's now passed, but he was an aerospace engineer for Boeing.

01:24:48.789 --> 01:24:52.069
So he was over there doing some work with Boeing and my mom went along.

01:24:52.510 --> 01:24:56.390
Um, so mom and dad met in Germany and came back.

01:24:56.479 --> 01:24:59.300
His parents lived in Alameda, California.

01:24:59.619 --> 01:25:01.229
And so I was born in Oakland.

01:25:01.239 --> 01:25:02.470
They lived there for a little while.

01:25:02.800 --> 01:25:04.609
And my dad went to mortuary school.

01:25:05.305 --> 01:25:07.505
And, uh, got a job at a mortuary in Greeley, Colorado.

01:25:07.505 --> 01:25:08.765
So, yeah.

01:25:09.164 --> 01:25:10.774
That's an unusual vocation.

01:25:10.984 --> 01:25:11.685
It is.

01:25:11.765 --> 01:25:15.305
And he didn't stay in it very long because he was an entrepreneur.

01:25:15.385 --> 01:25:15.675
Yeah.

01:25:15.704 --> 01:25:18.595
So, all the mortuaries It's a really good business, though, if you buy one.

01:25:18.645 --> 01:25:18.875
Yeah.

01:25:18.875 --> 01:25:20.104
I mean, people are dying to get in.

01:25:20.324 --> 01:25:20.895
Totally.

01:25:21.175 --> 01:25:25.574
So Um, but back then, all the mortuaries had ambulances.

01:25:26.465 --> 01:25:31.225
And they had ambulances for the morbid reason that if you're the first one on scene, you can have dibs on the bodies.

01:25:31.984 --> 01:25:32.505
Really?

01:25:32.585 --> 01:25:33.114
Absolutely.

01:25:34.845 --> 01:25:36.345
This is early sixties, right?

01:25:36.715 --> 01:25:43.034
And, uh, so my dad actually kind of started falling in love with first aid and I don't, I'm not even sure EMTs were a thing then.

01:25:43.154 --> 01:25:43.505
Yeah, yeah.

01:25:44.244 --> 01:25:46.484
So he offered to buy the ambulance from the mortuary.

01:25:46.765 --> 01:25:48.284
And he started the Greeley Ambulance Company.

01:25:48.364 --> 01:25:49.104
Oh, really?

01:25:49.114 --> 01:25:49.425
Yeah.

01:25:49.484 --> 01:25:49.694
Oh, did he?

01:25:49.694 --> 01:25:51.954
And then that, uh, and there was competition, actually.

01:25:51.975 --> 01:25:53.635
There was other guys that were doing the same thing.

01:25:53.645 --> 01:25:54.234
Yeah.

01:25:54.314 --> 01:25:58.475
And, um, and then he, he kind of won the market and then he had the Weld County Ambulance Company.

01:25:58.484 --> 01:26:04.965
Isn't it so funny that, like, we're convinced in these days that an ambulance has to be, like, owned by a hospital.

01:26:05.284 --> 01:26:05.545
Right.

01:26:05.574 --> 01:26:09.274
And it must be like a, like a, it's like the fire truck, right?

01:26:09.274 --> 01:26:11.314
Like, it has to be a public service or whatever.

01:26:11.314 --> 01:26:14.005
Right, But there's actually lots of private ambulances.

01:26:14.005 --> 01:26:15.925
Ambulances would probably be a lot cheaper.

01:26:16.085 --> 01:26:17.725
Oh, there are existing now still?

01:26:17.805 --> 01:26:20.944
Yeah, so like if you see like AMR, you'll see it more like that in the Detroit area.

01:26:20.975 --> 01:26:22.005
Those are all private ambulances.

01:26:23.045 --> 01:26:27.204
So they're just like contracted to the hospitals to go pick up people and different things.

01:26:27.864 --> 01:26:30.055
But that's still, you gotta live within their existing.

01:26:30.524 --> 01:26:34.784
Like structure, it doesn't allow that kind of free range entrepreneurism.

01:26:34.824 --> 01:26:37.274
Like your dad was like, Hey, I got, you got any dead bodies I could hold.

01:26:38.364 --> 01:26:39.034
Exactly.

01:26:39.034 --> 01:26:49.225
So, so yeah, so first grade I'm in, um, I'm in, um, public school in, um, Greeley, Colorado, and I get a first grade, I can't read.

01:26:49.225 --> 01:26:50.734
And my parents are like, this is ridiculous.

01:26:51.085 --> 01:26:56.465
And so they put me in a private school, um, Trinity Lutheran, and I was a hellion in second grade.

01:26:56.494 --> 01:26:57.854
I did learn to read, which is good.

01:26:57.875 --> 01:26:58.324
That's good.

01:26:58.375 --> 01:27:06.574
But the famous thing my mom talks about is the student teacher in the spring, and me and my friend were just in trouble all the time in second grade.

01:27:06.994 --> 01:27:14.935
And, um, she had such a great experience student teaching, she decided that after four years of college and student teaching, she no longer wanted to be a teacher.

01:27:14.935 --> 01:27:15.364
And quit.

01:27:15.364 --> 01:27:16.854
You chased a teacher out of her career.

01:27:16.854 --> 01:27:17.265
Right.

01:27:17.989 --> 01:27:21.039
So hopefully she's happy today, whatever it is.

01:27:21.039 --> 01:27:22.829
Should be better on that other career path anyway.

01:27:23.069 --> 01:27:23.789
Yeah, I'm sure.

01:27:23.800 --> 01:27:32.670
So you were, uh, we'll call it a hyper active child with limited restrictions on your self behavior.

01:27:32.670 --> 01:27:33.100
Maybe we'll.

01:27:33.140 --> 01:27:33.689
Oh yeah.

01:27:33.689 --> 01:27:35.909
I mean, I, um, curious about everything.

01:27:35.920 --> 01:27:36.279
Yeah.

01:27:36.579 --> 01:27:40.550
And that was back in the day when student, um, teachers could spank you.

01:27:40.550 --> 01:27:41.800
So like I would.

01:27:41.954 --> 01:27:46.885
I mean, the worst punishment was you had to stay in from recess and you had to write pages out of the encyclopedia.

01:27:47.114 --> 01:27:51.555
I would get swatted sometimes, but it was bad because then I'd get spanked by my dad at home.

01:27:51.935 --> 01:27:55.614
Because back then, it wasn't the teacher's fault, it was the kid's fault.

01:27:55.625 --> 01:27:56.774
Yeah, I was just remembering actually.

01:27:56.784 --> 01:27:58.645
Why are you doing that to your poor teacher?

01:27:58.734 --> 01:28:05.114
I think 9th grade typing class is the last time I was assigned to write pages out of the dictionary is what we used.

01:28:05.114 --> 01:28:07.005
I had a typing class in 9th grade too.

01:28:07.005 --> 01:28:08.864
I don't think they teach typing anymore.

01:28:08.864 --> 01:28:10.484
No, because their computers were there.

01:28:10.774 --> 01:28:12.515
So later it wasn't useless though.

01:28:12.515 --> 01:28:13.954
Think how good we're at typing now.

01:28:13.954 --> 01:28:14.284
True.

01:28:14.314 --> 01:28:14.675
Yes.

01:28:14.765 --> 01:28:15.574
Compared to some people.

01:28:15.574 --> 01:28:15.635
Yeah.

01:28:15.635 --> 01:28:15.904
Right.

01:28:15.904 --> 01:28:16.774
I, you know.

01:28:17.284 --> 01:28:19.835
So, um, how did you progress?

01:28:19.835 --> 01:28:22.835
Were you, were you, did you become academic?

01:28:22.835 --> 01:28:24.364
Did you become sporty?

01:28:24.425 --> 01:28:25.954
Did you have siblings by then?

01:28:25.954 --> 01:28:30.185
Uh, yeah, I've got a younger sister, uh, Becky, she actually just retired.

01:28:30.585 --> 01:28:34.524
Um, as the Loveland, uh, 9 1 1 center manager.

01:28:34.534 --> 01:28:36.185
She did that for 37 years down the line.

01:28:36.185 --> 01:28:37.585
Kind of followed in Dad's footsteps.

01:28:37.604 --> 01:28:39.164
Yeah, it was, it was weird.

01:28:39.164 --> 01:28:42.104
We all like got into some law enforcement there for a while.

01:28:42.104 --> 01:28:44.135
So, um, yeah, so she's amazing.

01:28:44.135 --> 01:28:45.085
She lives in Loveland.

01:28:45.435 --> 01:28:47.185
Um, and.

01:28:47.635 --> 01:28:52.854
Yeah, so, um, both, so I love sports, played basketball and, and football.

01:28:52.854 --> 01:28:59.015
You could probably, yeah, huge guess that from my amazing stature, Um, fortunately I was in a small school, so Well yeah.

01:28:59.015 --> 01:29:03.694
But back in those days, being like, everybody was smaller, six foot tall and, and yeah.

01:29:03.694 --> 01:29:05.135
Skinny was big.

01:29:05.194 --> 01:29:05.314
Yeah.

01:29:05.314 --> 01:29:09.034
My eighth grade basketball team, we had a couple of guys that were five 10 and they were monsters.

01:29:09.064 --> 01:29:09.305
Right.

01:29:09.305 --> 01:29:11.944
You know, so in eighth grade, that's probably still true today actually.

01:29:12.010 --> 01:29:12.300
Yeah.

01:29:12.300 --> 01:29:17.614
But, um, yeah, so played, uh, sports in, in high school.

01:29:17.885 --> 01:29:30.725
Um, class president, um, you know, pretty charismatic, forward thinking, definitely those leadership things were early, I think, even in second grade, it was just going in the wrong direction.

01:29:30.725 --> 01:29:41.774
So, um, so yeah, those things and, um, yeah, good academically and, um, definitely wanted to go, you know, be a billionaire.

01:29:41.774 --> 01:29:42.505
I don't think that was a thing.

01:29:42.505 --> 01:29:47.005
Be a millionaire when I graduated high school and, you know, probably start a business, do those kinds of things.

01:29:47.295 --> 01:29:48.045
So, yeah.

01:29:48.225 --> 01:29:48.885
Did you go?

01:29:49.729 --> 01:29:50.979
College proper then too?

01:29:51.039 --> 01:29:51.640
Did we talk about that?

01:29:51.640 --> 01:29:53.560
Um, yeah, I came over to CSU.

01:29:53.569 --> 01:29:54.939
So, long ways away from home.

01:29:55.000 --> 01:29:55.770
Yep, and business.

01:29:57.859 --> 01:30:00.760
My dad wanted me to study finance, so that's what I went into.

01:30:01.170 --> 01:30:04.430
And then I took cost accounting 1 and 2.

01:30:04.430 --> 01:30:05.739
And I got A's in it.

01:30:05.760 --> 01:30:07.069
And I'm like, I never want to do this again.

01:30:07.250 --> 01:30:08.000
Right, don't make me.

01:30:08.739 --> 01:30:10.550
So, then I moved to management.

01:30:11.149 --> 01:30:11.640
Fair enough.

01:30:12.399 --> 01:30:14.130
That seems more suited probably.

01:30:14.199 --> 01:30:15.260
Absolutely, yeah.

01:30:15.350 --> 01:30:23.880
Um, when did you Like you said, you wanted to be a millionaire or a billionaire or something, and that usually comes with entrepreneurship in some fashion.

01:30:24.109 --> 01:30:31.390
Did you have other like teenage entrepreneurial ventures, lemonade stands, stealing stuff and hawking them at the pawn shop?

01:30:31.409 --> 01:30:32.949
No, I did not do that.

01:30:32.949 --> 01:30:33.199
Okay.

01:30:33.199 --> 01:30:33.380
That's great.

01:30:34.250 --> 01:30:36.380
No, I, yeah, lots of little ventures.

01:30:36.380 --> 01:30:42.779
So back in the day, um, in the back of comic books, you could, um, buy things that you could sell door to door.

01:30:42.779 --> 01:30:49.090
So like I would buy seeds and we'd go sell them in the springtime door to door to the neighbor, a big case of seeds, right.

01:30:49.090 --> 01:30:51.770
So for profit or whatever, yeah.

01:30:52.100 --> 01:30:54.100
Delivered newspaper, babysat.

01:30:54.920 --> 01:30:57.550
Um, mowed lawns, um, all that.

01:30:57.550 --> 01:31:00.770
When I was 16, my best friend and I started a lawn mowing business.

01:31:00.869 --> 01:31:01.079
Okay.

01:31:01.170 --> 01:31:02.619
And we had 20 lawns.

01:31:02.739 --> 01:31:02.979
Okay.

01:31:02.989 --> 01:31:04.350
Um, that we mowed every week.

01:31:04.390 --> 01:31:06.010
And then we'd do landscaping projects.

01:31:06.270 --> 01:31:10.760
Yeah, it's great until it turns out grass still grows after school starts and football practice.

01:31:10.859 --> 01:31:11.359
Oh, right.

01:31:11.369 --> 01:31:12.000
So.

01:31:12.140 --> 01:31:14.949
So fulfilling your contracts at the end of the season was harder.

01:31:14.949 --> 01:31:16.600
Yeah, September, October was rough.

01:31:16.600 --> 01:31:20.289
We'd, um, so after practice, Hiring seventh graders to go over there.

01:31:20.310 --> 01:31:26.960
We'd go mow lawns, you know, we'd like pull the truck up so we could see what the headlights and then we'd come back in the morning.

01:31:27.295 --> 01:31:31.716
Before school started to make sure we didn't have mohawks on the grass to trim anything we missed.

01:31:31.716 --> 01:31:32.623
Quality control always.

01:31:32.623 --> 01:31:32.926
Absolutely.

01:31:32.926 --> 01:31:36.552
So, yeah, so there's always a little something like that going on.

01:31:36.552 --> 01:31:37.314
I dig it.

01:31:37.335 --> 01:31:37.824
I dig it.

01:31:37.944 --> 01:31:39.145
It's fun to know.

01:31:39.204 --> 01:31:44.755
Do you, what, um, I guess we're, we always talk about faith, family, politics.

01:31:44.755 --> 01:31:46.244
And so the question I was going to ask is.

01:31:46.255 --> 01:31:46.954
I have all of those.

01:31:47.274 --> 01:31:48.734
Talk to me about your children.

01:31:48.734 --> 01:31:52.595
Are there entrepreneurs in waiting or already in your family tree?

01:31:52.625 --> 01:31:55.085
Uh, no, they're probably smarter than that.

01:31:55.704 --> 01:31:56.135
So, yeah.

01:31:56.135 --> 01:31:57.354
At least one of the government workers.

01:31:57.354 --> 01:31:57.864
That's easier.

01:31:57.895 --> 01:31:58.744
Oh, no, no, no.

01:31:58.744 --> 01:31:59.274
Used to be easier.

01:31:59.295 --> 01:31:59.454
Just kidding.

01:32:00.234 --> 01:32:06.305
No, my, uh, my son and, um, his wife and girls live in Windsor, and he's an iOS programmer.

01:32:06.564 --> 01:32:06.774
Okay.

01:32:06.944 --> 01:32:07.645
Self taught.

01:32:08.055 --> 01:32:08.265
All right.

01:32:08.354 --> 01:32:11.164
Um, and he can, he can program iOS and Android.

01:32:11.164 --> 01:32:11.925
And what's that mean?

01:32:12.074 --> 01:32:18.505
So, like, um, so like currently he's working for Uber, not as a driver, so he programs the airport app.

01:32:18.685 --> 01:32:19.135
Okay.

01:32:19.274 --> 01:32:19.654
Interesting.

01:32:19.654 --> 01:32:23.395
Um, so if you've ever had an airport Uber ride, um, you know, my son was probably a part of that somehow.

01:32:23.404 --> 01:32:23.795
Gotcha.

01:32:23.854 --> 01:32:24.305
Okay.

01:32:24.534 --> 01:32:32.475
Um, yeah, there was some big release project they were working on, um, right before Thanksgiving because that's a heavy travel season in airports.

01:32:32.475 --> 01:32:38.265
And it was, I, it was some improvement for the drivers on how they, they could see fares and pick them faster and all that kind of stuff.

01:32:38.555 --> 01:32:38.704
Yeah.

01:32:38.704 --> 01:32:39.925
There's so much behind all that.

01:32:40.244 --> 01:32:43.574
Like to me, I just push the button and it works, but yeah, pretty amazing.

01:32:43.994 --> 01:32:44.484
A lot of people.

01:32:44.484 --> 01:32:44.795
Yeah.

01:32:44.875 --> 01:32:45.095
Yeah.

01:32:45.095 --> 01:32:48.215
So, and he's worked for a couple of companies doing those kinds of things.

01:32:48.215 --> 01:32:48.704
And then.

01:32:48.994 --> 01:32:51.654
Um, my daughter and her husband and family are up in Cheyenne.

01:32:51.875 --> 01:32:52.204
Okay.

01:32:52.204 --> 01:32:56.475
And, uh, she works kind of now as an office manager, ironically at a funeral home.

01:32:56.814 --> 01:32:57.274
Okay.

01:32:57.284 --> 01:32:59.984
Um, but she's got, uh, and she's got six kids too.

01:32:59.984 --> 01:33:00.765
So they're Oh, wow.

01:33:00.765 --> 01:33:01.085
They're busy.

01:33:01.085 --> 01:33:01.944
That's a full time job too.

01:33:01.965 --> 01:33:02.164
Yeah.

01:33:02.354 --> 01:33:03.364
And my son's got three kids.

01:33:03.364 --> 01:33:04.835
So we've got nine grandkids all together.

01:33:04.895 --> 01:33:11.435
So, uh, usually I ask, uh, like one word description of the kids or grandkids.

01:33:11.614 --> 01:33:11.984
Oh.

01:33:12.024 --> 01:33:15.505
Nine seems like a lot, two seems like a few, but So can I use two words?

01:33:15.534 --> 01:33:15.984
Yeah.

01:33:16.125 --> 01:33:17.234
Beautiful chaos.

01:33:17.664 --> 01:33:18.435
That's all of them?

01:33:19.029 --> 01:33:19.479
All of them.

01:33:19.489 --> 01:33:20.479
All of them put together.

01:33:20.739 --> 01:33:22.270
Yeah, when they're all together, it's beautiful chaos.

01:33:22.460 --> 01:33:26.850
The question I was going to ask is, do you see any budding entrepreneurs in that grandkids set?

01:33:27.220 --> 01:33:28.329
Uh, yeah, definitely.

01:33:28.380 --> 01:33:28.659
Yeah?

01:33:28.680 --> 01:33:29.250
Definitely.

01:33:29.350 --> 01:33:29.810
We'll see.

01:33:29.979 --> 01:33:30.449
Yeah.

01:33:30.680 --> 01:33:31.970
We'll see if that plays out.

01:33:32.000 --> 01:33:32.310
Yep.

01:33:32.750 --> 01:33:38.170
Um, what else in the family, uh, realm would you like to talk about, if anything?

01:33:38.439 --> 01:33:39.489
Uh You want to talk about your wife?

01:33:39.729 --> 01:33:40.628
Yeah, my amazing wife.

01:33:40.628 --> 01:33:41.789
Where did you pick her up on this journey?

01:33:41.789 --> 01:33:49.479
Yeah, so my wife and I, um Uh, I spotted her, I was in 9th grade, and she was in 8th grade.

01:33:49.569 --> 01:33:49.989
Okay.

01:33:50.090 --> 01:33:54.393
And I spotted her, and I was like, man, that's Are we back in public schools, or were we in private schools too?

01:33:54.393 --> 01:33:57.600
No, we were in a private, uh, Christian high school in, uh, day spring.

01:33:57.710 --> 01:33:58.029
Alright.

01:33:58.079 --> 01:34:00.770
And, um, I was like, man, that girl is cute.

01:34:01.149 --> 01:34:09.689
And, um, so like there was like a school hayride or something in October, like, Hey, you want to like sit together on the hayride.

01:34:10.229 --> 01:34:13.449
I think I was bold and I held her hand or put my arm around her or something.

01:34:13.770 --> 01:34:14.100
You know?

01:34:14.100 --> 01:34:14.289
Yeah.

01:34:14.289 --> 01:34:16.649
It was pretty hot, pretty hot junior high there.

01:34:17.729 --> 01:34:21.659
So we dated off and on through high school and then got serious towards the end of that.

01:34:21.670 --> 01:34:25.750
And then, um, and then as I was leaving for college, she dropped me.

01:34:27.010 --> 01:34:38.039
She's like, okay, you're going to go, you know, see the world, all that, whatever, meet other girls, but she was, you were just at CSU and she was really, really, it wasn't, you're like, no way, man.

01:34:38.819 --> 01:34:43.109
And, uh, so, um, so we were a little back and forth that fall.

01:34:43.109 --> 01:34:44.369
And then when I came home for Christmas.

01:34:44.694 --> 01:34:47.805
We reconnected, and then, um, we got engaged.

01:34:47.805 --> 01:34:49.515
So basically she held you loosely.

01:34:49.774 --> 01:34:51.074
She held me loosely, yeah.

01:34:51.104 --> 01:34:54.274
She gave you the freedom to go make other decisions if you wanted to be stupid.

01:34:54.675 --> 01:34:55.795
And likewise, right?

01:34:55.795 --> 01:34:56.585
Yeah, right.

01:34:56.685 --> 01:35:00.784
Or maybe she had a boyfriend on the side she wanted to go explore with, I don't know.

01:35:00.784 --> 01:35:02.975
She dated some other guys, but hey, let's face it.

01:35:03.024 --> 01:35:03.984
It wasn't about that.

01:35:04.034 --> 01:35:04.435
Right.

01:35:04.534 --> 01:35:04.824
Okay.

01:35:05.630 --> 01:35:10.369
Yeah, so we got, we got married, uh, December of 83 after she graduated high school.

01:35:10.399 --> 01:35:10.899
Okay.

01:35:11.250 --> 01:35:12.850
And, uh, she's 19.

01:35:12.869 --> 01:35:13.390
Oh, really?

01:35:13.390 --> 01:35:15.529
So you were, like, you finished your first year of college.

01:35:15.539 --> 01:35:15.810
Right.

01:35:15.810 --> 01:35:16.890
And she finished her high school.

01:35:17.930 --> 01:35:20.869
Amazingly, after I got married, my college grades got a whole lot better, too.

01:35:21.069 --> 01:35:21.439
Right.

01:35:22.130 --> 01:35:23.000
I can't imagine.

01:35:23.770 --> 01:35:25.930
It turns out if you go to class, it helps a lot.

01:35:25.930 --> 01:35:26.779
I don't know.

01:35:26.779 --> 01:35:28.680
That was part of my journey, too.

01:35:29.010 --> 01:35:30.829
I actually quit buying textbooks.

01:35:30.989 --> 01:35:32.199
Uh, my, uh.

01:35:32.399 --> 01:35:38.710
It's my second year of college because I got a DUI, which was my warning shot, but I, but I wasn't attending classes.

01:35:39.289 --> 01:35:44.880
So I was like, well, if you don't have the book to try to read and catch up, then you won't skip class.

01:35:44.880 --> 01:35:49.909
And so I, then I attended class a hundred percent of the time, took copious notes and got straight A's.

01:35:49.909 --> 01:35:52.180
No, I pretty much got straight A's from there.

01:35:52.460 --> 01:35:53.050
I quit buying textbooks.

01:35:53.069 --> 01:35:54.920
I don't know if I could do that without reading the book.

01:35:55.010 --> 01:36:00.399
Well, I just, I'm an, I'm an auditory learner and as long as I'm going to class and listening closely.

01:36:00.529 --> 01:36:00.800
All right.

01:36:00.800 --> 01:36:01.282
I appreciate the result.

01:36:01.282 --> 01:36:01.523
I know.

01:36:01.523 --> 01:36:01.885
I need it.

01:36:02.585 --> 01:36:03.194
For me, it was.

01:36:03.234 --> 01:36:03.725
I don't know.

01:36:03.805 --> 01:36:11.805
I don't recommend it necessarily, but if you're out there thinking, God, why do I buy these textbooks for 120 and sell them for 30?

01:36:12.034 --> 01:36:12.404
Yeah.

01:36:12.414 --> 01:36:13.585
Well, do what I did.

01:36:13.935 --> 01:36:15.465
So, I mean, Lynn is amazing.

01:36:15.465 --> 01:36:18.465
We're, you know, we just had our 41st anniversary in December.

01:36:18.475 --> 01:36:18.814
Wow.

01:36:18.885 --> 01:36:23.414
And, um, we love each other more now than we ever have, honestly.

01:36:23.425 --> 01:36:25.185
So, you know, people ask me about that.

01:36:25.185 --> 01:36:28.045
It's like, it, it hasn't all been, um, Easy.

01:36:28.045 --> 01:36:29.154
There's been some really hard spots.

01:36:29.154 --> 01:36:32.850
Well, you've talked already a couple times about how she's really not an entrepreneur and you really are.

01:36:32.850 --> 01:36:33.010
Yeah.

01:36:33.010 --> 01:36:34.104
And she was, she was sitting here.

01:36:34.104 --> 01:36:35.425
She would say that very same thing.

01:36:35.425 --> 01:36:35.694
Yeah.

01:36:35.755 --> 01:36:43.225
And, but you know, there's, um, I think there's some beauty towards the end of a journey when you've persevered through all the hard stuff.

01:36:43.225 --> 01:36:43.615
Yeah, yeah.

01:36:43.675 --> 01:36:47.604
You know, and, um, a hundred percent there's honestly, there's no one I'd rather be with.

01:36:47.984 --> 01:36:51.404
Um, you know, and we just so much in common, right?

01:36:51.409 --> 01:36:51.470
Yeah.

01:36:51.590 --> 01:36:52.274
I mean, yeah.

01:36:53.020 --> 01:36:54.050
Honestly, since we were kids.

01:36:54.100 --> 01:36:54.989
I share that with you.

01:36:54.989 --> 01:36:58.659
I mean, Jill and I, my wife and I met right when I first moved to Fort Collins here.

01:36:59.210 --> 01:37:03.189
Um, and she's very much more similar, kind of, uh, to what you're talking about.

01:37:03.760 --> 01:37:14.369
But having her, like, lock arms with me and march through, The transition from upper middle class banker to poverty level income entrepreneur.

01:37:15.909 --> 01:37:17.090
You gotta go get a job, Andy.

01:37:17.100 --> 01:37:21.939
Yeah, well, and she got a huge promotion and raise, which is what allowed me to keep going.

01:37:21.939 --> 01:37:24.729
I was gonna have to give up and go back and get a bank job.

01:37:25.270 --> 01:37:27.979
But she got a big raise and a big promotion in health insurance.

01:37:27.979 --> 01:37:30.989
I was like, oh, maybe I can make this my real thing.

01:37:31.020 --> 01:37:31.869
Good job, Jill.

01:37:31.970 --> 01:37:33.180
Yeah, kudos, baby.

01:37:33.180 --> 01:37:34.460
We wouldn't be here today, right?

01:37:34.500 --> 01:37:35.310
Yeah, for sure.

01:37:35.350 --> 01:37:48.890
Well, and to do that when You're just not sure right, uh, which is the case with, with Linda and with Jill, it sounds like, you know, and I, you know, I think one of our success is we've always pulled for each other and it sounds like you and Jill do that too.

01:37:48.890 --> 01:37:53.810
And, you know, we see so many couples that are just like, they're trying to do their own thing and they're pulling against each other.

01:37:53.989 --> 01:37:55.369
It's like, you got to fight for each other.

01:37:55.369 --> 01:38:01.239
That's the, you know, well, it's not a 50, 50, it's a hundred, a hundred, a hundred percent, you know, for sure.

01:38:01.649 --> 01:38:02.489
I also say like.

01:38:02.819 --> 01:38:06.319
We didn't always like each other, but we've always loved each other.

01:38:06.779 --> 01:38:09.619
You know, and so, and that perseveres through the hard times.

01:38:09.619 --> 01:38:13.409
Like, okay, at the end of this, like, I'm gonna still love you, so let's figure this out.

01:38:13.439 --> 01:38:24.670
If, uh, if she was sitting here instead of you, what would she say about you was, uh, both why she was drawn to you first and why she's, uh, locked arms with you for 44 years?

01:38:25.529 --> 01:38:26.534
Oh man, I don't know.

01:38:26.534 --> 01:38:27.689
I think because she was cute.

01:38:27.689 --> 01:38:28.409
I already know that.

01:38:28.409 --> 01:38:28.649
And smart.

01:38:28.649 --> 01:38:29.430
She was very cute.

01:38:29.430 --> 01:38:30.414
She still is smarter than you too.

01:38:30.755 --> 01:38:33.840
Um, and, um, yeah, I don't know.

01:38:33.840 --> 01:38:36.720
I, you know, we were just kindred spirits for sure.

01:38:36.725 --> 01:38:36.734
Yeah.

01:38:36.840 --> 01:38:36.989
Yeah.

01:38:36.989 --> 01:38:40.199
I would say early on she recognized it as well as you.

01:38:40.204 --> 01:38:40.215
Yeah.

01:38:40.350 --> 01:38:40.590
Yeah.

01:38:40.649 --> 01:38:42.239
And I think, um hmm.

01:38:42.300 --> 01:38:42.510
Yeah.

01:38:42.510 --> 01:38:43.590
And I think, you know, she's, isn't that.

01:38:44.274 --> 01:38:45.125
It's amazing too.

01:38:45.125 --> 01:38:55.994
I think, you know, she's a spouse that's believed in me, even in those times when I haven't believed in me, you know, which there's, I think we all, as confident as I am about nobody's beat me up more than I've beat me.

01:38:56.654 --> 01:38:58.255
You have your own self doubts, right?

01:38:58.255 --> 01:39:00.774
And so to have somebody in your court, in your corner.

01:39:01.114 --> 01:39:02.824
You know, like, hey, we can figure this thing out.

01:39:02.824 --> 01:39:04.694
Let's, you know, let's solve it, right?

01:39:05.614 --> 01:39:06.635
We gotta figure out how to move forward.

01:39:06.635 --> 01:39:08.225
Even when we failed, you know.

01:39:08.225 --> 01:39:12.795
And especially when it's somebody that you love telling you those things.

01:39:12.835 --> 01:39:17.145
Like, they're easier to believe than somebody else that might be trying to give you a pep talk.

01:39:17.345 --> 01:39:20.135
And taking some crazy risks.

01:39:20.135 --> 01:39:24.045
Like, leaving a good job on a good career path at the police department.

01:39:24.055 --> 01:39:24.204
Sure.

01:39:25.015 --> 01:39:30.284
Put in your 20 or 30 and you got a good retirement, you know, and or the corporate thing after that, right.

01:39:30.284 --> 01:39:31.465
You know, like, Hey, I believe in you.

01:39:31.465 --> 01:39:32.795
Let's, let's do this thing.

01:39:32.944 --> 01:39:33.354
Yeah.

01:39:33.395 --> 01:39:35.225
You could have spent the rest of your life in Racine.

01:39:35.234 --> 01:39:35.635
Right.

01:39:36.194 --> 01:39:36.524
Right.

01:39:37.074 --> 01:39:37.645
Thank goodness.

01:39:38.625 --> 01:39:41.595
Um, so I think that kind of checks the family box.

01:39:41.595 --> 01:39:44.024
Uh, you want to talk faith or politics next?

01:39:44.045 --> 01:39:44.914
Uh, your pick?

01:39:45.314 --> 01:39:47.125
You're the questioner.

01:40:30.539 --> 01:40:32.510
So, um, let's talk about faith.

01:40:32.520 --> 01:40:33.220
We haven't, okay.

01:40:34.319 --> 01:40:34.770
much.

01:40:34.800 --> 01:40:42.500
Um, you mentioned that your folks took you out of public school and then eventually at least you were in a private Christian school, Day Spring.

01:40:42.920 --> 01:40:45.449
Um, what was their faith background?

01:40:45.470 --> 01:40:50.840
Were they born and raised in the faith and were you thusly raised the same or?

01:40:50.930 --> 01:40:51.489
Talk to me about that.

01:40:51.529 --> 01:40:58.350
Um, yeah, so I would say, I'm trying to think, my mom was, Um, probably raised in the Presbyterian church.

01:40:58.359 --> 01:41:04.329
I think my dad was in like the Episcopal church, but his dad was in, um, he was in the Navy.

01:41:04.340 --> 01:41:05.670
He retired as a captain.

01:41:06.149 --> 01:41:12.520
My dad moved, he was in 17 elementary schools by the time or in 17 schools by the time he graduated high school.

01:41:12.779 --> 01:41:17.039
So, um, you know, and that's during world war II and, and Korea.

01:41:17.189 --> 01:41:18.819
So, I mean, he.

01:41:19.755 --> 01:41:23.385
I don't know, you know, I think they went to church, almost everybody did back then.

01:41:23.694 --> 01:41:24.225
Yeah, yeah.

01:41:24.225 --> 01:41:25.534
It was hard.

01:41:25.534 --> 01:41:26.774
Never had a church community, hardly.

01:41:26.784 --> 01:41:28.505
Like, and friends and all that stuff, right?

01:41:28.505 --> 01:41:28.854
Right, right.

01:41:28.854 --> 01:41:29.244
So.

01:41:29.614 --> 01:41:37.895
Um, so we went to a Presbyterian church growing up, very traditional, you know, kind of high church with, uh, church organ and piano.

01:41:37.984 --> 01:41:38.015
Okay.

01:41:38.015 --> 01:41:39.935
You know, the pastor's in a robe and Okay.

01:41:39.965 --> 01:41:43.055
You know, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight, all that good stuff.

01:41:43.204 --> 01:41:43.444
Okay.

01:41:44.045 --> 01:41:51.125
Um, and for me, by the time I was probably seven or eight, I was like, there's, there's just, I don't like this.

01:41:51.125 --> 01:41:53.015
Like there's nothing here.

01:41:53.074 --> 01:41:54.454
Boring kind of, right?

01:41:54.454 --> 01:41:54.784
Yeah.

01:41:54.845 --> 01:41:55.024
Yeah.

01:41:55.024 --> 01:41:56.194
Totally boring.

01:41:56.255 --> 01:41:57.845
And I don't get it.

01:41:57.845 --> 01:41:58.145
And.

01:41:58.699 --> 01:42:00.409
Um, all of that, so.

01:42:00.779 --> 01:42:13.149
I mean, I was, I was definitely, um, not a person of faith and, um, and then my mom, so then I had to go to this Lutheran elementary school because the public school wasn't doing very good.

01:42:13.199 --> 01:42:13.380
Yeah.

01:42:13.380 --> 01:42:13.640
Yeah.

01:42:13.789 --> 01:42:15.609
Or you weren't doing very good there anyway.

01:42:15.619 --> 01:42:16.060
Right.

01:42:16.100 --> 01:42:18.760
And then the, so now I'm in this Lutheran thing, right?

01:42:18.760 --> 01:42:21.229
Which is even higher kind of church, right?

01:42:21.229 --> 01:42:21.529
Right.

01:42:21.609 --> 01:42:22.489
We have more church.

01:42:22.520 --> 01:42:22.939
Right.

01:42:23.289 --> 01:42:28.560
Um, and so, I mean, I just, it's all not working for me and I'm just.

01:42:28.760 --> 01:42:37.840
At the end of 8th grade, that was the end of elementary school, then you go into junior high, which was, um, I guess 8th and 9th grade back then.

01:42:38.100 --> 01:42:41.130
They didn't have middle school back then, but this school went to 8th grade.

01:42:41.130 --> 01:42:44.090
So I was going to finally be in 9th grade in public school.

01:42:44.090 --> 01:42:44.869
It was going to be good.

01:42:45.220 --> 01:42:49.539
And my parents gave me the devastating news of sending me to this Christian high school.

01:42:49.569 --> 01:42:50.020
Okay.

01:42:50.289 --> 01:42:52.510
And I'm like, I don't want to do this.

01:42:52.600 --> 01:42:52.930
Right.

01:42:53.109 --> 01:42:54.220
My mom's like, well just do it for me.

01:42:54.220 --> 01:42:57.975
You were still going to church and stuff with them, but Totally, no, I could put on, totally tuned out.

01:42:57.975 --> 01:42:59.439
Mostly I could totally put on the show.

01:42:59.470 --> 01:43:00.340
I knew all the stuff.

01:43:00.340 --> 01:43:02.079
I mean, I was, I got all day long.

01:43:02.079 --> 01:43:04.119
I, you know, like we had chapel all the time at school.

01:43:04.119 --> 01:43:05.140
I went to church on Sunday.

01:43:05.170 --> 01:43:05.560
Yeah.

01:43:05.564 --> 01:43:05.574
Yeah.

01:43:05.680 --> 01:43:06.970
I mean, I knew all the things.

01:43:06.970 --> 01:43:07.539
Right, right.

01:43:07.720 --> 01:43:09.430
But there was no, your book smarts was there, right?

01:43:09.579 --> 01:43:11.439
There was no, you didn't really know what the good news was still.

01:43:11.470 --> 01:43:11.680
No.

01:43:11.680 --> 01:43:13.180
There was no faith with God at all.

01:43:13.614 --> 01:43:19.435
And, um, so I went to this school and she asked me at the end of the first year, what do you want to do?

01:43:19.444 --> 01:43:23.314
And I was like, well, there's this really cute girl there that I like.

01:43:23.664 --> 01:43:25.555
And so purely on that, I stayed.

01:43:28.175 --> 01:43:31.335
So, hey, it's worked out, you know, all these years later.

01:43:31.635 --> 01:43:41.454
Um, and then when I was, um, I think when I was 16 and started driving, I probably, um, I probably started going to church with Linda.

01:43:41.805 --> 01:43:52.864
And, um, her family went to a four square church, so very charismatic, very different, um, you know, like long worship and they had like a band.

01:43:52.864 --> 01:43:54.225
High production value.

01:43:54.484 --> 01:44:00.324
They had like, I wouldn't say high production value, but they had a band, like there was drums, you know, guitar, the whole thing.

01:44:00.324 --> 01:44:01.454
It was like, Oh, this is cool.

01:44:01.454 --> 01:44:02.524
You know, this is different.

01:44:02.545 --> 01:44:06.404
And like the pastor was talking, he's, he's like preaching out of the Bible.

01:44:06.404 --> 01:44:06.534
And.

01:44:06.805 --> 01:44:08.664
Going verse by verse and explaining what it meant.

01:44:08.685 --> 01:44:08.944
Yeah.

01:44:09.154 --> 01:44:10.675
It was just a different experience.

01:44:10.675 --> 01:44:11.675
I'm like, okay, I'm intrigued.

01:44:11.675 --> 01:44:14.675
And then, um, you know, Linda's talking to me.

01:44:14.914 --> 01:44:16.515
Teacher at school is talking to me.

01:44:16.824 --> 01:44:21.755
Um, and you know, and, and the Holy Spirit is talking to me and my mom's talking to me.

01:44:21.814 --> 01:44:22.175
Sure.

01:44:22.185 --> 01:44:28.119
So springtime of my junior year, um, so I'm 17.

01:44:28.439 --> 01:44:32.239
And one day after school, I'm like, yeah, I, like, I'm, I am ready.

01:44:32.239 --> 01:44:40.729
And so, um, the teacher and Linda, another friend of mine, you know, we went into, went into a classroom and, you know, I gave my life to Jesus and submitted.

01:44:40.739 --> 01:44:45.270
And, um, it was, it was just an amazing, powerful experience.

01:44:45.270 --> 01:44:48.739
And, um, no, I've never been the same since.

01:44:48.789 --> 01:44:49.130
Yeah.

01:44:49.630 --> 01:44:50.119
I like that.

01:44:50.119 --> 01:44:55.260
That's a, that's a good testimony to how sometimes long you have to.

01:44:56.104 --> 01:45:09.319
Put things in the tumbler before you get a battle and it you know, I would say my faith was still pretty immature For a long time, you know, I'm I'm 21 I'm a They're idiots because I'm 21.

01:45:09.539 --> 01:45:11.430
I look like I'm about 15.

01:45:11.689 --> 01:45:15.569
They give me a gun and a badge and handcuffs and they let me arrest people.

01:45:15.710 --> 01:45:16.010
Right.

01:45:16.069 --> 01:45:23.329
And, um, I have a very black and white view of what God and church is because I've just been in this a lot.

01:45:23.329 --> 01:45:24.560
And what the law is.

01:45:24.600 --> 01:45:34.409
And now I'm like, In this crazy world and, um, like I am arresting people that say they're Christians and all of this crazy stuff.

01:45:34.409 --> 01:45:34.680
Right.

01:45:34.680 --> 01:45:36.180
And I was having a crisis of faith.

01:45:36.210 --> 01:45:36.479
Hmm.

01:45:36.869 --> 01:45:44.640
And, um, I, I remember distinctly, there was a guy breaking into Jacks up on North College Avenue there.

01:45:44.640 --> 01:45:44.670
Okay.

01:45:44.670 --> 01:45:48.960
This is, you know, it's like midnight or early morning hours or something, or trying to get in and Yeah.

01:45:48.960 --> 01:45:50.824
And I, he's trying to break in and I.

01:45:51.404 --> 01:46:03.265
I pull up, I'm like the third or fourth cop on scene, and there's, you know, there's a fight with this guy in front of the store going on, and so I'm sprinting over there, and all of a sudden he starts yelling out my name.

01:46:03.814 --> 01:46:05.475
Pete, Pete, see me.

01:46:05.954 --> 01:46:07.595
I'm like, Oh my gosh.

01:46:07.645 --> 01:46:09.734
And this is the guy from church.

01:46:09.984 --> 01:46:10.524
Oh damn.

01:46:10.625 --> 01:46:11.154
Yeah.

01:46:11.255 --> 01:46:13.215
He's like drunk as could be.

01:46:13.265 --> 01:46:15.064
I am mortified.

01:46:15.064 --> 01:46:16.204
So embarrassed.

01:46:16.484 --> 01:46:22.194
You know, we get them hooked up and well, you know, my buddy takes him away and I just, is the cuffs on, I guess.

01:46:22.234 --> 01:46:22.784
Yeah.

01:46:22.784 --> 01:46:23.194
Yeah.

01:46:24.805 --> 01:46:26.154
Cuffs on back in the police car.

01:46:26.154 --> 01:46:27.104
You're going to the jail.

01:46:27.104 --> 01:46:32.199
So Um, yeah, so I, I was like, that's it, man, this whole God thing, like I'm done.

01:46:32.250 --> 01:46:32.699
Oh, no shit.

01:46:32.750 --> 01:46:43.119
And so really, but it was hard to go, it was hard to be in a community then cause I'm working these weird shifts and, you know, um, and so probably, I don't know, the crisis of faith for a year or two.

01:46:43.119 --> 01:46:50.739
And then, um, you know, again, Linda, she's like, Hey, like we need to get back involved in church and like, yeah, you're right.

01:46:50.750 --> 01:46:52.279
And, you know, unfortunately.

01:46:52.579 --> 01:46:53.899
God will meet you where you are.

01:46:54.130 --> 01:46:55.069
That's a cool thing.

01:46:55.210 --> 01:46:57.260
Yeah, I love, I love the verse in James.

01:46:57.260 --> 01:47:00.319
It says, if you draw near to God, he'll draw near to you.

01:47:00.800 --> 01:47:05.430
And it's when I find myself away from God, it's because I've pulled away because of him.

01:47:05.729 --> 01:47:11.079
And so if somebody's searching, just like ask God to show himself to you because he will draw near to you.

01:47:11.149 --> 01:47:11.659
Yeah.

01:47:11.720 --> 01:47:12.369
And it's a promise.

01:47:12.369 --> 01:47:12.930
So true.

01:47:13.520 --> 01:47:15.079
Um, a hundred percent agree with that.

01:47:15.119 --> 01:47:19.250
And one of the things I was just thinking about was like, one of the things I felt.

01:47:19.649 --> 01:47:31.189
Back in the day before I accepted faith, which was somewhat through my wife as well, but it was kind of a Guiltiness, you know, like I had to be a better person before I could before you come to God Yeah, of course.

01:47:31.619 --> 01:47:45.965
Well, and the same thing is relevant with loco thick tank Um, with a peer advisory group and it's, and it's not a church, but people like, people think they have to get to their, their business to a certain point, pretty good before they can be a member of a group like this.

01:47:45.975 --> 01:47:50.965
Cause they don't want to come in and show their dirty underwear about how they've got these big gaps in their business.

01:47:51.005 --> 01:47:51.675
No, that's true.

01:47:51.694 --> 01:47:52.234
I mean, it's true.

01:47:52.335 --> 01:47:53.645
It's true about church, right?

01:47:53.704 --> 01:47:55.194
Um, people are right.

01:47:55.274 --> 01:47:56.465
There's a bunch of hypocrites there.

01:47:56.505 --> 01:47:56.984
A hundred percent.

01:47:57.024 --> 01:47:57.854
Come and join us.

01:47:57.965 --> 01:47:58.784
That's what I say.

01:47:58.805 --> 01:47:59.715
Like, come and join us.

01:47:59.715 --> 01:48:00.024
Right.

01:48:00.364 --> 01:48:01.925
And then like, guess what?

01:48:01.925 --> 01:48:03.425
When you come into peer advisory.

01:48:04.104 --> 01:48:05.935
We all have some imposter syndrome.

01:48:06.055 --> 01:48:08.795
We all got stuff going on in our businesses that we're not quite sure about.

01:48:09.569 --> 01:48:12.119
But it's good to get a couple of real strengths, right?

01:48:12.119 --> 01:48:14.560
And you've got some real gap areas that you might not even be aware of.

01:48:14.560 --> 01:48:19.680
And that person sitting across from you, maybe they've already solved that problem and they can make that path shorter for you.

01:48:20.000 --> 01:48:27.369
Or maybe they're an expert in the thing you're struggling with, the finances or the marketing or sales or just leadership, or how do you, how do you hire this person?

01:48:27.430 --> 01:48:27.710
Yeah.

01:48:28.135 --> 01:48:29.555
Do I really need to fire this person?

01:48:29.555 --> 01:48:32.074
I gotta let go of this key person, it's gonna hurt.

01:48:32.555 --> 01:48:33.845
Yeah, we've been there.

01:48:34.185 --> 01:48:34.904
Let's walk you through that.

01:48:35.145 --> 01:48:35.845
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:48:36.215 --> 01:48:38.725
Well, because there is no new story, almost.

01:48:38.725 --> 01:48:46.685
You know, when you read the Bible, you're like, damn, these people might have lived back in Israel a long, long time ago, but they still had a lot of the same little challenges.

01:48:46.694 --> 01:48:51.470
You read Proverbs or Psalms and you're like, Man, that guy's thinking a lot of the things I've thought before.

01:48:51.479 --> 01:48:55.949
I mean, read Genesis, you're gonna find all kinds of debauchery and evil human stuff, right?

01:48:56.270 --> 01:48:58.949
And it's like, this is not a G rated Bible.

01:48:59.149 --> 01:48:59.869
No, it's not.

01:48:59.869 --> 01:49:01.289
It's X rated, actually.

01:49:01.880 --> 01:49:02.460
That's fair.

01:49:02.920 --> 01:49:07.414
Um Oh, we haven't talked about a recent mission trip that you've done.

01:49:07.414 --> 01:49:07.885
Oh, yeah.

01:49:07.914 --> 01:49:12.364
Um, which was very interesting, and I hope we, let me do a quick time check, oh, we got time.

01:49:12.805 --> 01:49:15.444
So, you went to Tanzania.

01:49:15.524 --> 01:49:16.085
Yeah.

01:49:16.204 --> 01:49:18.034
Um, just, what was it, this fall?

01:49:18.364 --> 01:49:19.545
Uh, no, March of last year.

01:49:19.545 --> 01:49:20.215
Last March, okay.

01:49:20.215 --> 01:49:21.154
Yeah, so just about a year ago.

01:49:21.225 --> 01:49:30.975
So, talk to both the, the call of missions, as well as the experience that, uh, that, cause you had a, you were like at a super remote part of the country.

01:49:30.975 --> 01:49:31.475
Yeah.

01:49:31.475 --> 01:49:31.515
Yeah.

01:49:31.515 --> 01:49:31.555
Yeah.

01:49:31.715 --> 01:49:33.185
Really unique circumstance.

01:49:33.255 --> 01:49:33.664
Yeah.

01:49:33.904 --> 01:49:34.055
Yeah.

01:49:34.055 --> 01:49:38.444
So we go to a foundation's church, uh, down in Loveland, non denominational church.

01:49:38.444 --> 01:49:49.385
And, um, the missions pastor approached me and said, Hey, I'm taking a small team of guys, um, to Tanzania and we're going to be like in this really remote location.

01:49:49.404 --> 01:49:50.864
And it is not going to be glamorous.

01:49:50.875 --> 01:49:53.515
We're going to be camping in tents and bucket showers.

01:49:53.515 --> 01:49:56.015
And it's like, if you want to go, I'd like for you to go.

01:49:56.015 --> 01:49:59.145
I'm like, all right, let me talk to Linda and we'll pray about it.

01:49:59.154 --> 01:49:59.715
And we did.

01:49:59.715 --> 01:50:01.725
And You know, it was a pretty, it was a pretty quick.

01:50:01.725 --> 01:50:02.185
Yes.

01:50:02.295 --> 01:50:03.654
Um, you know, I got time.

01:50:03.654 --> 01:50:05.154
I, this would be an adventure.

01:50:05.614 --> 01:50:06.944
Um, I'm up for this thing.

01:50:06.944 --> 01:50:11.765
So, yeah, so we went, um, so six of us went over to, um, Tanzania.

01:50:11.765 --> 01:50:13.954
It's about 30 hours to get there.

01:50:14.645 --> 01:50:15.854
It's in Eastern Africa.

01:50:16.215 --> 01:50:22.074
And, um, we went out, we worked Bostic.

01:50:22.095 --> 01:50:23.795
They're amazing, amazing people.

01:50:24.175 --> 01:50:36.699
And, um, we drove, we went into Arusha, which is if you're going to go, yeah, See, um, the Serengeti or Andra crater, or if you're gonna go climb Mount Kilimanjaro, you're gonna fly into a Rusa.

01:50:36.704 --> 01:50:36.965
Oh, okay.

01:50:36.970 --> 01:50:37.060
Okay.

01:50:37.060 --> 01:50:38.109
So that's where we flew into.

01:50:39.010 --> 01:50:42.784
And, um, Kilimanjaro is in Kenya, or is it Tennessee?

01:50:42.784 --> 01:50:43.329
It's in Tanzania.

01:50:43.359 --> 01:50:43.689
Oh it is?

01:50:43.689 --> 01:50:43.989
Okay.

01:50:44.079 --> 01:50:47.710
So, um, I think it's Kenya's just to the north.

01:50:47.920 --> 01:50:52.029
So Kenya had the two tallest peaks in Africa.

01:50:52.680 --> 01:50:57.739
When the, and then when they, um, divided up Tanzania, Tanzania didn't really have anything.

01:50:57.810 --> 01:50:58.060
Okay.

01:50:58.060 --> 01:51:00.569
And Kenya was really nice, so they gave them Mount Kilimanjaro.

01:51:00.699 --> 01:51:01.010
have this.

01:51:01.119 --> 01:51:02.659
So it's probably a mistake in hindsight.

01:51:02.659 --> 01:51:03.720
Right, probably.

01:51:03.720 --> 01:51:06.420
But, given all the tourism that happens there and what not.

01:51:06.880 --> 01:51:08.500
Okay, so I'm in the right ballpark.

01:51:08.510 --> 01:51:08.930
Yeah, absolutely.

01:51:08.930 --> 01:51:11.460
Anyway, for some reason I just had Kilimanjaro in Kenya.

01:51:11.479 --> 01:51:13.220
I just, I guess K with K, I don't know.

01:51:13.300 --> 01:51:14.500
Yeah, um.

01:51:14.710 --> 01:51:19.210
So yeah, so we drove out, um, eight hours into the bush.

01:51:19.729 --> 01:51:23.119
After a 14 flight, whatever.

01:51:23.119 --> 01:51:26.460
We spent a day in Arisha and then we drove out and we spent a week out there.

01:51:26.784 --> 01:51:39.484
And we built a, um, basically a pole barn, but a shade and rain structure that the local people there will eventually put walls onto and, um, you know, turn that into a church.

01:51:39.854 --> 01:51:48.145
And, um, two evangelists that live way out there, um, to the Hadza people, which are the last, um, hunter gatherers.

01:51:48.609 --> 01:51:52.060
Tanzania, they may be the last ones in Africa, actually.

01:51:52.449 --> 01:51:54.609
Um, there's less than 2000 of them.

01:51:54.819 --> 01:51:56.560
So they're kind of minimally contacted.

01:51:56.560 --> 01:51:57.819
Tribe, basically.

01:51:57.824 --> 01:51:58.449
Yep, yep.

01:51:58.630 --> 01:52:02.979
Is there Rainforest there that they Uh, no, it is, um, Plainsman, yeah.

01:52:02.979 --> 01:52:10.779
Plains, um, it's near Lake Yasi, um, there, which is a huge, huge lake and they just, they cover a huge area.

01:52:11.140 --> 01:52:13.310
Um, and hunters, just hunters and gather.

01:52:13.310 --> 01:52:17.149
I mean, they've been doing it since the beginning of them being in the area.

01:52:17.149 --> 01:52:17.510
Yeah.

01:52:17.810 --> 01:52:18.569
And they have a What?

01:52:18.590 --> 01:52:19.350
And gather what?

01:52:19.359 --> 01:52:20.932
Do you mind if I ask?

01:52:20.932 --> 01:52:21.899
Um, yeah.

01:52:21.899 --> 01:52:27.189
So one of the, there was this really old guy that would come into camp and we asked him one day, like, how old are you?

01:52:27.189 --> 01:52:32.248
And he's like, I don't know, maybe 194, 000 years old or something.

01:52:32.248 --> 01:52:37.229
My guess is he was maybe 50 or 60, but he looked like he was probably over a hundred years old.

01:52:37.229 --> 01:52:37.810
Whoa.

01:52:38.289 --> 01:52:42.399
Um, and his, um, the biggest animal he's ever killed was a giraffe.

01:52:42.510 --> 01:52:42.920
Okay.

01:52:42.960 --> 01:52:46.850
Um, and then they, they kill lots of, you know, if they can get a piece of it With guns and stuff?

01:52:47.100 --> 01:52:47.739
Oh no.

01:52:47.739 --> 01:52:50.710
Or are they like, stone tools and like ropes and Bows and arrows.

01:52:50.710 --> 01:52:51.300
Okay.

01:52:51.300 --> 01:52:52.079
Bows and arrows.

01:52:52.140 --> 01:52:52.520
Okay.

01:52:52.529 --> 01:52:53.949
Criminal I should have, I should have brought one.

01:52:54.199 --> 01:52:54.989
That would have been cool.

01:52:55.060 --> 01:52:55.670
That's very cool.

01:52:55.670 --> 01:52:59.779
So they, um, they have this poison made out of rosewood Okay.

01:52:59.779 --> 01:53:01.520
That they use for big animals.

01:53:01.539 --> 01:53:02.029
Alright.

01:53:02.079 --> 01:53:25.770
Um, and they'll put it on the end of it, so Um, after we had built the, the church structure, we had a worship service on Sunday, all of the tribes came in and this guy came in that had all his bow and all his arrows and, um, we were talking to him through translator and, um, He was showing us this arrow and it was it was quite larger than all the others and it had all this It had this compound just gunk on it.

01:53:25.800 --> 01:53:30.220
Yeah, and guys like don't touch that by the way That's poisonous.

01:53:30.609 --> 01:53:31.199
Oh, okay.

01:53:31.560 --> 01:53:47.170
And then afterwards he's like you guys might and we were holding the arrow not touching the point Oh, yeah, you know and and a lot of the arrows some of them are just wood for like small game Yeah, you know for a rat or a small or something small Um, critters or birds, right.

01:53:47.170 --> 01:53:48.100
They'll hunt birds.

01:53:48.100 --> 01:53:48.399
Right.

01:53:48.520 --> 01:53:55.659
Um, and then some of'em are medium sized and they'll hammer out a spoon and then file it into a very sharp point.

01:53:55.659 --> 01:53:55.720
Hmm.

01:53:56.140 --> 01:53:57.880
Um, and make a, I mean, it looks like a.

01:53:58.685 --> 01:54:01.145
An arrowhead that you could go buy a X or something, you know?

01:54:01.805 --> 01:54:01.954
Yeah.

01:54:01.954 --> 01:54:01.956
Interesting.

01:54:01.961 --> 01:54:03.305
They're not forging their own metals.

01:54:03.305 --> 01:54:03.364
No.

01:54:03.364 --> 01:54:04.024
But they can take it.

01:54:04.024 --> 01:54:11.465
But it's made at the, you know, the shaft is a stick of wood, and then the fletching are, are, um, feathers from a real bird that they killed.

01:54:11.585 --> 01:54:11.734
Sure.

01:54:11.914 --> 01:54:16.444
And I've got one in my house that, um, we bought Trader with'em and Sure.

01:54:16.475 --> 01:54:17.284
Um, interesting.

01:54:17.345 --> 01:54:17.585
Yeah.

01:54:17.585 --> 01:54:20.675
And so some of these folks have become Christians even though they're living this country.

01:54:20.765 --> 01:54:21.965
Yeah, they're lifestyle.

01:54:21.965 --> 01:54:27.364
They're, they're considered, um, an unreached or unreached people, so there's about 40 that are believers there.

01:54:28.555 --> 01:54:32.175
There's an evangelist there that's from the Hadza, uh, people.

01:54:32.515 --> 01:54:36.914
And, um, so he's been working with them and they don't have any written language.

01:54:37.675 --> 01:54:38.774
So that's a barrier.

01:54:39.055 --> 01:54:44.614
And so it's really, it's, it's just making disciples, which is, you know, it turns out that's how Jesus did it.

01:54:45.215 --> 01:54:46.194
He didn't write the Bible.

01:54:46.194 --> 01:54:55.284
He just told 12 people and then they told a bunch of people here we are today on the other side of the world, you know, knowing about this amazing God we have.

01:54:55.284 --> 01:54:55.625
Right.

01:54:55.625 --> 01:54:58.604
So they're doing that same thing in Tanzania.

01:54:59.064 --> 01:55:02.225
And it was really, you know, we went over there to help with this project.

01:55:02.284 --> 01:55:04.345
We funded it and did a lot of the building.

01:55:04.354 --> 01:55:11.515
But, um, there's a church in Arusha that is funding this evangelist and, um, that's out in that area.

01:55:11.515 --> 01:55:14.854
And so they're trying to reach their unreached people in their country.

01:55:15.284 --> 01:55:16.175
Which is really a cool thing.

01:55:16.175 --> 01:55:20.114
And is Tanzania a Christian nation overall?

01:55:20.164 --> 01:55:26.095
If you look on the, um, like one of the global reports, it'll say it's about 52 percent Christian.

01:55:26.454 --> 01:55:28.869
But, um, Islam is on the rise.

01:55:29.020 --> 01:55:29.609
Islam on the Sure.

01:55:29.609 --> 01:55:31.039
Well, all across Africa, really.

01:55:31.039 --> 01:55:59.795
Yeah, and on the, that eastern horn, so going down, I forget the, what the country is above, Somalia, it starts with a P or something, but then there's Somalia, then there's Tanzania, Um, I think actually Zambia, Tanzania, coming down the coast, so, on the coast of all of those countries, Um, they're almost all Muslim, but that goes back to the slave trading days in the 1500s, 1600s, because the Arab traders would come down and, and grab slaves.

01:55:59.795 --> 01:56:02.689
Well, if you're Muslim You can't be enslaved.

01:56:03.260 --> 01:56:05.300
And so the people on the coast converted.

01:56:05.329 --> 01:56:06.140
I'll be a Muslim.

01:56:06.180 --> 01:56:10.869
And then they would go into the interior and capture other tribes and then sell them as slaves.

01:56:10.960 --> 01:56:11.420
Oh, gotcha.

01:56:11.439 --> 01:56:14.260
And then they'd run back up the coast into the Middle East and sell them.

01:56:14.329 --> 01:56:15.050
Oh, interesting.

01:56:15.130 --> 01:56:15.520
Yeah.

01:56:15.550 --> 01:56:17.239
So there's quite the history there.

01:56:17.279 --> 01:56:20.760
And so Christianity has kind of evolved off the coast in some respects.

01:56:20.770 --> 01:56:21.149
Right.

01:56:21.149 --> 01:56:22.039
In other areas.

01:56:22.050 --> 01:56:25.050
It's almost prey animals for these Muslim slave traders.

01:56:25.050 --> 01:56:25.680
Well, yeah.

01:56:25.680 --> 01:56:29.149
I mean, there's a lot of persecution in different parts of Africa because of that.

01:56:29.159 --> 01:56:29.529
So.

01:56:29.944 --> 01:56:36.774
So, like I say, in Tanzania, along the coast, you'll see a lot of Islam influence, and then you'll see, um, you'll see more Christian influence in the middle of the country.

01:56:36.774 --> 01:56:44.024
This is a heavy topic, but, like, with the rise of Islam, like, across Africa, even, like, Oh, yeah.

01:56:44.024 --> 01:56:52.845
Niger is at threat, probably, of being overtaken soon, even though it was historically very Christian in different places, but especially, like, Europe.

01:56:53.425 --> 01:56:55.145
Like, UK.

01:56:55.164 --> 01:57:01.114
Like, some of these countries in 30 years are going to be majority Muslim nations at the pace they're currently on.

01:57:02.005 --> 01:57:07.015
Is there something that the West should do about this?

01:57:07.585 --> 01:57:09.814
Well, I think Europe's got to figure that out.

01:57:09.864 --> 01:57:11.154
I think that's not our problem.

01:57:11.154 --> 01:57:13.715
Well, not right now.

01:57:13.765 --> 01:57:14.024
Yeah.

01:57:14.345 --> 01:57:14.494
Yeah.

01:57:14.494 --> 01:57:14.835
Yeah.

01:57:14.914 --> 01:57:17.604
You know, we have, we have a big ocean between us, right?

01:57:17.704 --> 01:57:28.354
Um, I think the little reported issue is like in Sudan and the Congo, you're talking about Niger.

01:57:28.675 --> 01:57:30.005
Um, like Suzanne.

01:57:30.414 --> 01:57:36.444
The, the Christians are just being driven out, you know, in the civil war that's going on and they're massively persecuted.

01:57:36.795 --> 01:57:45.215
Um, you know, you can, if you, I mean, the crazy thing is you convert in one of these countries, you're going to probably be murdered for your faith.

01:57:45.795 --> 01:57:51.104
Um, you know, nothing that we faith, we face here in America or even in the Western world.

01:57:51.104 --> 01:57:54.034
So it's, you know, it's a real, well, and some of the strongest.

01:57:54.659 --> 01:57:57.880
faith proclaimers in the world are in Africa right now, too.

01:57:58.000 --> 01:57:58.350
Right.

01:57:58.399 --> 01:58:01.835
You know, because, you know, nothing brings out strong faith like strong persecution.

01:58:01.835 --> 01:58:02.489
Yeah, persecution.

01:58:02.500 --> 01:58:02.829
But, damn.

01:58:02.909 --> 01:58:03.569
Exactly.

01:58:03.649 --> 01:58:15.693
Um, I guess, is there, is there a role for, and we can shift to politics from here in some ways, but is, like, recently Trump just called out the South African president for being like, Right.

01:58:15.693 --> 01:58:15.725
Right.

01:58:16.114 --> 01:58:26.095
Hey, no preaching to stadiums full of people about how you're going to kill the white farmers, please, like, that's kind of like, right, pretty like we're doing apartheid 2.

01:58:26.095 --> 01:58:26.095
0.

01:58:26.095 --> 01:58:26.524
Yeah, 2.

01:58:26.524 --> 01:58:27.795
0 is worse than 1.

01:58:27.795 --> 01:58:28.404
0.

01:58:28.425 --> 01:58:28.805
Right?

01:58:28.805 --> 01:58:31.555
Like, and that's the challenge of learning this as a nation, right?

01:58:31.564 --> 01:58:39.024
Kind of, yeah, like, like, how is there a place for politics in this conversation?

01:58:39.045 --> 01:58:50.069
Or is do we just let those countries kind of Do what they're going to do, you know, you know, I'm, um, so I don't think politics is going to be the savior of the world, right?

01:58:50.100 --> 01:58:51.500
I think we already have one of those.

01:58:51.560 --> 01:58:51.859
Yeah.

01:58:51.899 --> 01:58:56.670
Um, you know, I think an interesting place to look at politically is Rwanda.

01:58:56.920 --> 01:58:57.199
Okay.

01:58:57.239 --> 01:59:01.029
Um, that had the, you know, had the genocide there, right?

01:59:01.050 --> 01:59:01.340
Yeah.

01:59:01.380 --> 01:59:05.210
Um, and I forget the names of the two tribes, but basically, Okay.

01:59:05.425 --> 01:59:09.625
If, if we were looking at them as Westerners, we'd go, look, these are the same people.

01:59:09.765 --> 01:59:15.015
It turns out they are, but they were just in two tribes and one completely murdered the others.

01:59:15.494 --> 01:59:21.145
But what's been going on over there the last, gosh, I think it's almost 30 years now is reconciliation.

01:59:21.574 --> 01:59:24.154
And there's some amazing reconciliation going on.

01:59:24.154 --> 01:59:30.760
I heard a story probably six months ago about a woman who's family had been murdered and they murdered him mostly with machetes.

01:59:30.810 --> 01:59:32.789
So they're hacking people apart.

01:59:32.800 --> 01:59:33.109
Yeah.

01:59:33.270 --> 01:59:36.600
And her whole family was killed by her next door neighbor.

01:59:37.029 --> 01:59:37.319
Wow.

01:59:37.699 --> 01:59:45.130
So the next door neighbor, so there was um, basically like Nuremberg type trials in Rwanda for probably over a decade.

01:59:45.510 --> 01:59:49.840
And so her neighbor was sentenced to prison and she still lives in her house.

01:59:49.850 --> 01:59:50.810
She's a widow.

01:59:51.119 --> 01:59:55.239
So in, in the majority of the world, if you're a widow, you're in rough shape.

01:59:55.239 --> 01:59:55.640
Yeah, yeah.

01:59:56.354 --> 02:00:04.666
It's a man's world and you're just going to take advantage of it in one way or another or lots of ways, economically and everything else.

02:00:04.666 --> 02:00:08.414
Um, so this guy served his term and he was released back home.

02:00:09.055 --> 02:00:14.125
So the murderer of her family is now living next door to her.

02:00:14.395 --> 02:00:14.685
Okay.

02:00:14.694 --> 02:00:16.015
Like 20 years later.

02:00:16.064 --> 02:00:16.255
Yeah.

02:00:16.255 --> 02:00:16.614
Right.

02:00:17.034 --> 02:00:22.625
And there was, um, there's a reconciliation project going on there.

02:00:23.045 --> 02:00:24.324
And, um.

02:00:24.854 --> 02:00:29.204
She was able to, to work through that with him and forgive him.

02:00:29.295 --> 02:00:29.734
Okay.

02:00:29.885 --> 02:00:32.015
Um, but she's got this massive trauma, right?

02:00:32.024 --> 02:00:32.395
Right.

02:00:32.545 --> 02:00:36.244
And, um, and that Now, is it Christians and Islam there?

02:00:36.354 --> 02:00:37.034
Uh, that In Rwanda?

02:00:37.135 --> 02:00:40.045
No, it was, it was a racial, it was a racial thing.

02:00:40.104 --> 02:00:40.435
Okay.

02:00:40.475 --> 02:00:44.395
But again, they're all, if you looked at it, they all seem to be the same race, right?

02:00:44.425 --> 02:00:44.904
Right.

02:00:44.904 --> 02:00:46.314
So that's, it's always a tribal thing.

02:00:46.354 --> 02:00:48.725
And I learned a lot about tribes when I was in Africa.

02:00:48.755 --> 02:00:48.914
Sure.

02:00:48.914 --> 02:00:50.935
It's very much, it's very much who you are.

02:00:51.154 --> 02:00:51.444
Yeah.

02:00:51.454 --> 02:00:55.524
Um, there, we, I, I don't think we have anything comparable to that here.

02:00:55.534 --> 02:01:08.954
No, I mean, like in the little community I grew up in, like there were Perlerbergs and there were Johnsons and there were bears and there was almost a family clan kind of thing like, uh, Ireland would have or something, you know, but nothing like tribe tribes.

02:01:08.994 --> 02:01:09.414
Yeah.

02:01:09.694 --> 02:01:17.484
So I don't, so that's on the political solution in Rwanda, even though there's been, um, A judicial process.

02:01:17.555 --> 02:01:17.814
Yeah.

02:01:17.814 --> 02:01:18.154
Yeah.

02:01:18.335 --> 02:01:21.654
But really the healing has taken something beyond the individual level.

02:01:21.675 --> 02:01:25.645
Yeah, which is, you know, it's a spiritual thing that is healing that country.

02:01:25.994 --> 02:01:30.625
Um, I would circle back to a statement you just made, which was, I don't think politics really solves anything.

02:01:31.854 --> 02:01:32.675
I like that kind of talk.

02:01:32.685 --> 02:01:36.135
I didn't, I didn't think, I just, it's not the savior is what I'm saying.

02:01:36.135 --> 02:01:36.614
Okay.

02:01:36.734 --> 02:01:42.064
So, um, what, uh, where, what is your political, Yeah.

02:01:43.189 --> 02:01:46.239
Perspective and how has it evolved maybe over this journey?

02:01:47.220 --> 02:01:51.510
Um, uh, I've probably been conservative, I think.

02:01:51.984 --> 02:01:52.515
The whole way.

02:01:52.574 --> 02:01:53.314
The whole way.

02:01:53.375 --> 02:01:53.774
Yeah.

02:01:53.784 --> 02:01:56.524
So when I, I mean, when I was 18, I voted for Reagan.

02:01:56.765 --> 02:01:57.074
Okay.

02:01:57.074 --> 02:01:58.685
The, I guess his second time.

02:01:58.685 --> 02:01:59.484
I don't think I was old enough to vote.

02:01:59.505 --> 02:01:59.954
Yeah, yeah.

02:02:00.185 --> 02:02:02.175
And I wasn't old enough to vote in 80.

02:02:02.225 --> 02:02:03.484
Perot was my first vote.

02:02:03.505 --> 02:02:06.180
So I've always been a wild card in that department.

02:02:06.180 --> 02:02:06.568
Oh, there you go.

02:02:06.568 --> 02:02:06.664
Yeah.

02:02:06.664 --> 02:02:07.965
That libertarian streak.

02:02:07.965 --> 02:02:08.265
Right.

02:02:08.265 --> 02:02:08.954
Well, he was independent, right?

02:02:08.984 --> 02:02:10.614
He was, but kind of libertarian.

02:02:10.675 --> 02:02:11.994
He just screwed it up, though.

02:02:12.005 --> 02:02:13.265
He could have won that election.

02:02:13.810 --> 02:02:19.600
If he, if he would have stayed steady, maybe because he was in and then he got out, remember that and then that killed it and then he got back in.

02:02:19.600 --> 02:02:23.000
Yeah, that may be so, but the deep state was already in existence.

02:02:23.060 --> 02:02:23.579
It was.

02:02:23.590 --> 02:02:26.020
So I don't really call those odds that strong.

02:02:26.029 --> 02:02:26.529
That's true.

02:02:26.710 --> 02:02:27.520
He probably got whacked.

02:02:28.350 --> 02:02:31.760
That would have been Trump 1 0 back in the 90s.

02:02:31.760 --> 02:02:33.479
The guy would have used a scope and took him out actually.

02:02:34.140 --> 02:02:34.170
Right.

02:02:34.449 --> 02:02:36.460
Instead of a freaking open science gun.

02:02:36.609 --> 02:02:37.460
Knowing what they're doing.

02:02:37.520 --> 02:02:37.890
Yeah.

02:02:37.890 --> 02:02:38.430
I digress.

02:02:38.739 --> 02:02:41.250
So, so, so conservative in general.

02:02:41.460 --> 02:02:41.619
Yep.

02:02:42.430 --> 02:02:48.750
Not libertarian per se, because you're more socially conservative than what most libertarians would say.

02:02:48.750 --> 02:02:49.510
Yeah, probably.

02:02:49.560 --> 02:02:55.289
Some of those family values are pretty important, but also fiscal conservative, don't spend all my money.

02:02:55.489 --> 02:02:55.760
Right.

02:02:55.770 --> 02:02:59.539
So you've been kind of digging the doge Or don't spend any of my money the way they're doing it right now.

02:02:59.550 --> 02:03:02.430
You've been digging the doge, uh, investigations here.

02:03:02.430 --> 02:03:03.699
You feel like that's okay?

02:03:03.970 --> 02:03:04.850
Oh, absolutely.

02:03:05.109 --> 02:03:05.289
Yeah.

02:03:05.289 --> 02:03:07.289
I mean, I think they'll, they'll get it sorted out here.

02:03:07.619 --> 02:03:09.369
A lot of court stuff going on right now.

02:03:10.159 --> 02:03:11.619
I mean, I, um.

02:03:12.289 --> 02:03:22.420
I read something today about, you know, how, um, Obama had pushed executive powers and Biden had pushed executive powers and Trump is pushing executive powers.

02:03:22.420 --> 02:03:26.300
And, you know, the court will weigh in on that and it'll get, it'll get settled.

02:03:26.310 --> 02:03:28.439
But I guess my real question is.

02:03:28.944 --> 02:03:31.805
Like, look at all of this corruption that they're showing.

02:03:33.095 --> 02:03:34.685
Who, who's actually for that part of it?

02:03:35.885 --> 02:03:42.494
So, um, you know, it's not, it's not like we should get there by any means, but like, this is, this stuff's egregious.

02:03:42.524 --> 02:03:43.814
We have to stop a lot of this.

02:03:43.824 --> 02:03:45.095
Like, this is egregious stuff.

02:03:45.104 --> 02:03:54.475
Yes, we can't be spending millions on Sesame Street in Iraq, that's actually a good use of funds in comparison to most of it.

02:03:54.585 --> 02:03:55.675
I mean, I was reading today.

02:03:55.675 --> 02:03:58.295
K cups for the FBI for 1, 200 apiece.

02:03:58.345 --> 02:04:03.135
Like, who's getting rich off of that about a coffee mug for a C 17 that costs 1, 300.

02:04:03.185 --> 02:04:03.864
Right.

02:04:03.965 --> 02:04:08.784
And instead of, when the handle breaks, instead of repairing the handle, they're buying a new coffee cup.

02:04:08.784 --> 02:04:09.795
Are you kidding me?

02:04:10.534 --> 02:04:11.645
Like, what?

02:04:12.385 --> 02:04:14.975
They think they're billionaires, but they're government employees.

02:04:14.994 --> 02:04:15.854
It's like, come on.

02:04:15.864 --> 02:04:16.215
Yeah.

02:04:16.215 --> 02:04:17.055
Yeah.

02:04:17.055 --> 02:04:17.454
Um.

02:04:18.350 --> 02:04:19.609
Uh, Gulf of America?

02:04:20.670 --> 02:04:21.510
I think it's hilarious.

02:04:22.789 --> 02:04:25.270
Doesn't offend you, neither is it necessary kind of thing.

02:04:25.300 --> 02:04:26.159
Right, no.

02:04:26.369 --> 02:04:29.130
I also love the Mexican president's response.

02:04:29.439 --> 02:04:29.819
Which was what?

02:04:29.819 --> 02:04:31.029
This is Mexicana.

02:04:31.539 --> 02:04:33.500
She's showing all of America, you know.

02:04:34.250 --> 02:04:37.270
How about, uh, Canada is 51st state?

02:04:37.270 --> 02:04:38.199
Oh, I was going to ask this.

02:04:39.340 --> 02:04:41.500
I chickened out for one of the first times in my life.

02:04:42.039 --> 02:04:43.359
At the, uh Oh, be brave.

02:04:43.414 --> 02:04:43.774
Come on.

02:04:43.875 --> 02:04:49.574
Well, we had the, the goose came and did a state of the state kind of address at Farm Ranch Community College.

02:04:49.694 --> 02:04:50.305
Oh, okay.

02:04:50.454 --> 02:04:56.515
And they had like an open questions segment and it was, it was really pretty disturbing.

02:04:56.524 --> 02:05:03.935
Honestly, the whole tenor of it was like, Trump's kicking ass and there's basically nothing we can do, but we can stay strong and fight in the streets if we need to.

02:05:03.975 --> 02:05:04.505
Oh man.

02:05:04.595 --> 02:05:13.425
But the question I was going to ask that I chickened out about was, uh, Do you think it would be better for Canada to be, like, ten smaller states or just one big state?

02:05:14.385 --> 02:05:15.515
I, I don't know.

02:05:15.704 --> 02:05:18.385
Um, I mean, I think Canada should figure out their own things.

02:05:19.185 --> 02:05:19.574
We don't need them.

02:05:19.574 --> 02:05:21.725
You know, I don't, no, I don't think we need them.

02:05:21.734 --> 02:05:33.800
You know, the reality is that in the, the first hundred miles of the border, So if you go the north, our northern border, their southern border, 100 miles up, that's like 85 percent of their population.

02:05:33.810 --> 02:05:35.020
Over 90 even maybe, yeah.

02:05:35.050 --> 02:05:37.770
So, why do we want the rest of that?

02:05:37.859 --> 02:05:42.510
Well, because they got a ton of natural resources, farm, farmland, I mean that's, that's, that's.

02:05:42.550 --> 02:05:44.180
But it's also all frozen, so.

02:05:44.229 --> 02:05:50.319
Well, for now, but global warming, of the biggest thing I don't understand is why is Canada all focused on global warming stuff?

02:05:50.350 --> 02:05:53.119
Like why wouldn't you want global warming if you're Canada?

02:05:53.390 --> 02:05:54.039
It's almost in it.

02:05:54.220 --> 02:05:54.909
It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

02:05:54.909 --> 02:05:55.300
It's in us.

02:05:56.399 --> 02:05:56.840
Right.

02:05:56.859 --> 02:05:58.039
Warm it up, Chris.

02:05:59.000 --> 02:06:09.989
no, I think, um, I think what is, um, fascinating about what Trump's doing in Canada is a prime example is he, he throws these outrageous things out there.

02:06:09.989 --> 02:06:10.460
Right.

02:06:10.720 --> 02:06:17.380
And then it turns out there's actually some, um, he's smart as a fox and the whole deal, I mean, look at the Panama canal, right?

02:06:17.680 --> 02:06:23.539
Like China has a death grip on both sides of that by managing these ports on either end and.

02:06:24.960 --> 02:06:27.399
We were getting, you know, the shaftiness.

02:06:27.439 --> 02:06:28.789
We built this thing, right?

02:06:29.100 --> 02:06:34.180
And so, I mean, he threw the, he, um, he negotiates like a business person.

02:06:34.500 --> 02:06:36.050
And he does things that are unconventional.

02:06:36.060 --> 02:06:37.939
He says the things that nobody else will say.

02:06:38.300 --> 02:06:41.859
And so he, you know, I mean, it was before he got inaugurated, right?

02:06:41.869 --> 02:06:42.729
Back in December.

02:06:42.970 --> 02:06:44.859
Hey, the Panama Canal should be ours again.

02:06:44.970 --> 02:06:47.210
And everybody's like, where did this come out of?

02:06:47.229 --> 02:06:50.770
Well, it turns out it's been a strategic threat for a couple of decades.

02:06:50.770 --> 02:06:51.270
Oh, yeah.

02:06:51.319 --> 02:06:52.489
That he's finally calling.

02:06:53.079 --> 02:07:01.609
The cards on the table like this has to stop well I have no doubt that most people in Greenland would be happier in ten years if they were part of the u.

02:07:01.609 --> 02:07:01.890
s.

02:07:01.920 --> 02:07:03.989
Yeah Canada not green.

02:07:03.989 --> 02:07:05.109
I know Greenland.

02:07:05.109 --> 02:07:07.460
Maybe is it my strategic?

02:07:07.460 --> 02:07:14.760
Yeah up there and I think they'd be happier and we'd be happier Yeah, probably But, but isn't, so Greenland's another, so this is an outrageous thing.

02:07:14.760 --> 02:07:16.399
We're going to buy Greenland or whatever, right?

02:07:16.760 --> 02:07:22.029
Well, interestingly, Denmark now all of a sudden is interested in putting 2 billion into strategic defense of that.

02:07:23.020 --> 02:07:25.039
Oh, well, that's not a bad deal for us.

02:07:25.079 --> 02:07:25.449
Right.

02:07:25.689 --> 02:07:26.859
That's not our 2 billion, it's theirs.

02:07:28.109 --> 02:07:30.090
And it turns out actually we're kind of aligned.

02:07:30.149 --> 02:07:33.250
I believe they're a NATO member, right?

02:07:33.250 --> 02:07:36.239
So, hey, yeah, Trump's crazy.

02:07:36.310 --> 02:07:40.109
I thought Trump was going to, uh, end the Ukraine war on day one.

02:07:40.715 --> 02:07:41.135
Yeah.

02:07:41.145 --> 02:07:44.215
That is one of his campaign promises he's not accomplished yet.

02:07:44.215 --> 02:07:46.265
Is that, uh, stubbornness by Europe?

02:07:46.324 --> 02:07:47.364
By Zelensky?

02:07:47.364 --> 02:07:49.085
By Putin?

02:07:49.114 --> 02:07:49.944
What do you think's going on?

02:07:49.944 --> 02:07:52.824
I don't know, you know, so today's February 11th.

02:07:52.824 --> 02:07:53.725
I saw Zelensky.

02:07:53.734 --> 02:07:55.194
Oh, we're coming up on the anniversary date soon.

02:07:55.204 --> 02:08:00.835
Yeah, so I saw Zelensky, um, said, said something about, I think we can get a deal done today.

02:08:01.444 --> 02:08:06.395
And then also, um, an American, uh, Trump and Whitkoff got an American released today.

02:08:06.404 --> 02:08:07.055
Yeah, I saw that.

02:08:07.055 --> 02:08:08.875
That's been in, uh, Russia.

02:08:08.875 --> 02:08:09.895
So things are happening, probably.

02:08:09.904 --> 02:08:11.454
Yeah, so I think things are happening.

02:08:11.475 --> 02:08:12.104
Be a little patient.

02:08:12.875 --> 02:08:15.265
Well, Biden did about all he could to fuck that shit up.

02:08:15.484 --> 02:08:16.465
Well, to keep it going.

02:08:16.475 --> 02:08:17.024
Right.

02:08:17.064 --> 02:08:17.635
You know, I mean.

02:08:17.975 --> 02:08:22.034
Shoot missiles into Russia, long range missiles, right before he leaves office.

02:08:22.064 --> 02:08:23.375
Like, what are you talking about?

02:08:23.375 --> 02:08:26.935
And does anybody believe the 900 billion is all still in Ukraine?

02:08:26.935 --> 02:08:28.944
Because I don't, by the way.

02:08:29.225 --> 02:08:29.784
I don't.

02:08:29.845 --> 02:08:30.185
No.

02:08:31.250 --> 02:08:32.729
I mean, it's just, it's not there.

02:08:32.729 --> 02:08:40.739
It's, you know, and, um, I think there's been reports of many of the munitions we've spent sent over there during lots of, right.

02:08:40.739 --> 02:08:41.970
They're not lots of other places.

02:08:42.279 --> 02:08:50.170
So, you know, it's going to be terrible if our military has to fight, um, against our weapons that we let get out of control.

02:08:50.170 --> 02:08:54.539
I mean, I think that's going to be horrible and it doesn't, that does not in any way justify Russia.

02:08:55.055 --> 02:08:57.015
Going in there and trying to take over Ukraine.

02:08:57.545 --> 02:08:58.845
That is unjust.

02:08:58.845 --> 02:08:59.395
It's evil.

02:08:59.395 --> 02:08:59.975
It's not right.

02:08:59.975 --> 02:09:08.585
I think one of the things that's really at risk of this is, like, all the acceleration and drone technology between Ukraine and Russia during this fight.

02:09:09.255 --> 02:09:10.074
I don't know if the U.

02:09:10.074 --> 02:09:10.255
S.

02:09:10.255 --> 02:09:12.015
is prepared for that kind of technology.

02:09:12.534 --> 02:09:13.074
Clearly not.

02:09:13.074 --> 02:09:20.755
We just announced three new Warships, the, the George Bush, the Bill Clinton or something like that.

02:09:20.765 --> 02:09:23.725
And it's like, in retrospect, maybe those weren't the best names to choose.

02:09:25.295 --> 02:09:32.354
Well, and just like the Russia's Black Sea fleet got taken out in a matter of a few hours by a bunch of heavily armed drones.

02:09:32.854 --> 02:09:33.895
I'm not sure.

02:09:33.904 --> 02:09:34.760
Supposedly is.

02:09:34.760 --> 02:09:35.114
Yeah.

02:09:35.114 --> 02:09:36.654
Bohunk back country place.

02:09:36.944 --> 02:09:37.255
Yeah.

02:09:37.694 --> 02:09:37.824
Yeah.

02:09:37.824 --> 02:09:44.244
I just saw something on a feed on Telegram a few weeks ago that, um, Israel has been doing.

02:09:44.814 --> 02:09:51.154
Um, this like, um, uh, like shark tank for drones, anti drone technology.

02:09:51.890 --> 02:09:55.949
And, um, they were, they were, had a big demonstration day.

02:09:56.270 --> 02:10:02.789
So my guess is they're ahead of us and we'll probably buy technology from Israel for sure, because we're going to need it.

02:10:03.569 --> 02:10:08.689
It seems likely, you know, hopefully not like, I'd love to think things just settled down, but I think.

02:10:09.085 --> 02:10:13.395
You know, it's pretty clear that we can't like track balloons, right?

02:10:13.395 --> 02:10:15.225
I'm guessing we can't track drones very well.

02:10:15.454 --> 02:10:17.385
So something's got to change with all of that.

02:10:17.385 --> 02:10:21.774
Cause that probably is a threat that we can't, you know, counter right now.

02:10:21.784 --> 02:10:22.125
Right.

02:10:22.194 --> 02:10:23.375
Well, and how many of these.

02:10:23.939 --> 02:10:37.819
Millions of illegal immigrants are Arab people with a drone in their backpack, you know Well, some of them that have been arrested have been right, you know, so yeah, but but even more than that I think it's the transnational crime happening on the border.

02:10:37.939 --> 02:10:40.814
Yeah, and I mean, the, the cartels got a lot of money.

02:10:40.854 --> 02:10:44.185
They're, they're pretty savvy that borders have always been valuable.

02:10:44.185 --> 02:10:49.975
You know, there's always something that's worth more on one side of the border than the other side of the border, regardless of what kind of border you're talking about.

02:10:49.975 --> 02:10:55.444
We've got a cartel and they start shooting at our border agents or police or whatever, you know, from a drone.

02:10:55.444 --> 02:10:58.154
I mean, why wouldn't they do it if they could buy that technology?

02:10:58.305 --> 02:10:58.704
For sure.

02:10:59.435 --> 02:11:01.314
Um, I think we covered a pretty good chunk.

02:11:01.385 --> 02:11:04.244
Anything else in the faith family politics segments you'd like to hit?

02:11:05.015 --> 02:11:27.694
Um, you know, I think just, Those are big politics, but I think politics is local, local to, you know, and so, um, you know, one of the reasons that I was always part of the chambers in Northern Colorado, I was part of all the advocacy kind of, yeah, Greeley Loveland, four columns is that advocacy and, um, you know, we can, I, I'm frustrated by how much politics is in business.

02:11:27.694 --> 02:11:31.524
I think it should, I probably lean more to you on a libertarian bent on that.

02:11:31.524 --> 02:11:34.670
Like, just leave us alone and let us, let us do business, you know, okay.

02:11:35.949 --> 02:11:50.149
So I think you know, I think the things that the chambers are doing here, you know down in Denver matter Even though the way things are lined up right now It's pretty anti business in Denver, but you know, they can they can get some wins on the margins of that.

02:11:50.149 --> 02:11:53.630
I think that's important Yeah, yeah, you know, it's important locally too.

02:11:53.670 --> 02:12:10.640
Yeah, so I would I would share that plug like for for business community Members, business owners that aren't a part of a local chamber because you don't have time, because you don't want to spend the 1, 000 or 2, 000 a year for membership, or whatever that is for your business.

02:12:10.640 --> 02:12:14.390
I think most of them you can join for like 400 or 450 bucks or something a year.

02:12:14.390 --> 02:12:24.210
You can be a member and just show your support because, at least here locally, I think the Chambers are kind of one of the strongest voices for business, and that's what you're buying.

02:12:24.810 --> 02:12:27.649
You know, you're not buying a marketing group or networking group.

02:12:27.649 --> 02:12:30.689
You're not buying a new club to be a part of.

02:12:30.689 --> 02:12:34.550
You're buying a small part of a voice for business.

02:12:34.579 --> 02:12:34.880
Right.

02:12:35.255 --> 02:12:44.555
Well, and it's, and it's even closer than that too, you know, Fort Collins City Council right now is trying to figure out how to get in a minimum, crazy minimum wage, which is ridiculous.

02:12:44.994 --> 02:12:49.024
Go look at a job listing and try to tell me anybody that's hiring at minimum wage.

02:12:49.255 --> 02:12:50.265
The market won't support it.

02:12:50.664 --> 02:12:51.925
You know, the market won't support it.

02:12:51.944 --> 02:12:54.944
It's, I mean, most people are, I think minimum 12.

02:12:55.015 --> 02:12:56.324
50, something like that.

02:12:56.914 --> 02:13:02.255
Uh, most jobs are starting at 16, 17, 18 an hour in this market in Northern Colorado.

02:13:02.284 --> 02:13:03.414
We don't need a minimum wage.

02:13:03.414 --> 02:13:04.635
The market is handling it.

02:13:04.954 --> 02:13:09.505
And it, but they'll put the minimum wage up to 20 bucks or something, and that's fine.

02:13:09.515 --> 02:13:10.335
Then that moves it up.

02:13:10.335 --> 02:13:12.064
That means I got to hire people.

02:13:12.064 --> 02:13:18.994
Everybody that's getting paid 18 has to go up to 20, and everybody that's getting paid 20 has to go up to 23 because, well, I'm not a minimum wage person.

02:13:19.505 --> 02:13:20.354
Right, exactly.

02:13:20.354 --> 02:13:23.899
And now all the consumer prices and the business prices have to go up to 20.

02:13:23.899 --> 02:13:31.149
That was one of our kind of secret sauces early on is we paid about a buck fifty above what other people were doing.

02:13:31.229 --> 02:13:36.159
And then Colorado put in a manum, the higher minimum wage with the increases.

02:13:36.159 --> 02:13:36.430
Yeah.

02:13:36.479 --> 02:13:39.204
And it compressed wages and now my competitors were paying the same.

02:13:40.274 --> 02:13:45.545
They were still doing crappy work, but we're competing for the same, like, well, you know, it's like, well, this is a better place to work.

02:13:45.555 --> 02:13:49.345
Well, you guys pay the same, but you hold me accountable and make me work.

02:13:49.534 --> 02:13:50.975
Yeah, that's part of the agreement.

02:13:52.034 --> 02:13:59.670
So, you know, so that kind of stuff, I think too, we don't have time as business owners, but then, you know, the chambers, what they're doing, they can keep doing it.

02:14:00.100 --> 02:14:00.949
An eye in that crazy stuff for us.

02:14:00.949 --> 02:14:05.800
Well, you talked about the complete shortfall of workers during that 2021 period.

02:14:05.829 --> 02:14:06.220
Yeah.

02:14:06.300 --> 02:14:06.640
Right?

02:14:06.670 --> 02:14:11.670
Well, and that was, a lot of that was caused by just people having some excess cash flowing through, you know.

02:14:11.680 --> 02:14:12.270
Oh, yeah.

02:14:12.319 --> 02:14:15.140
And they didn't have to take those crappy jobs or whatever, you know.

02:14:15.140 --> 02:14:19.479
Well, remember they, they were paying them 600 a week extra on unemployment.

02:14:19.479 --> 02:14:19.810
Yeah.

02:14:20.154 --> 02:14:22.265
So that's over 15 an hour.

02:14:22.774 --> 02:14:24.595
And I'm like, so what does it take?

02:14:25.545 --> 02:14:29.635
I mean, as part of the thing in 21, like what's it take to get somebody off the couch?

02:14:29.645 --> 02:14:29.965
Right.

02:14:30.154 --> 02:14:32.085
Like, well, it's more than 15, right?

02:14:32.085 --> 02:14:34.625
Because I'm making 15 sitting on the couch.

02:14:34.664 --> 02:14:36.654
I get to play with my kids, go to the park, whatever.

02:14:36.654 --> 02:14:36.984
Right.

02:14:37.305 --> 02:14:41.734
If I take your 15, you can actually want me to show up to work for 40 hours a week.

02:14:42.005 --> 02:14:42.154
Yeah.

02:14:42.154 --> 02:14:44.694
That was one of the most foolish things I ever saw.

02:14:44.835 --> 02:14:46.975
It was complete insanity, but it was part of that.

02:14:47.380 --> 02:14:51.220
That this long running thing of we got to get a fifteen dollar minimum wage.

02:14:51.310 --> 02:14:55.630
Yeah, which also when I remember when you think that was strategic in some ways.

02:14:55.670 --> 02:14:56.460
Oh, absolutely.

02:14:56.500 --> 02:14:56.819
Yeah.

02:14:56.819 --> 02:14:57.449
A hundred percent.

02:14:57.670 --> 02:15:16.789
I remember in, um, whenever that first came up in Denver, they were showing McDonald's workers and this guy's like, I've been in McDonald's for five years and I'm only making 30 cents an hour more than, and I'm like, Well, then you're clearly not contributing any value to this company because McDonald's would love to promote you.

02:15:16.819 --> 02:15:18.560
They would love to do a manager if you don't.

02:15:18.710 --> 02:15:19.289
And guess what?

02:15:19.319 --> 02:15:26.819
McDonald's has the highest number of millionaires working for them that have high school education.

02:15:27.409 --> 02:15:31.829
Because you can actually start as a fry cook on the line, and you can own a McDonald's.

02:15:32.359 --> 02:15:39.069
You can work your way up, and if you work hard, you're an entrepreneur, you can own one of those things, and you can become a millionaire.

02:15:39.609 --> 02:15:45.399
Um, so don't tell me, if you're doing the same thing, then you're adding no value to that company.

02:15:45.539 --> 02:15:46.189
Acknowledged.

02:15:46.260 --> 02:15:46.930
It's just crazy.

02:15:47.920 --> 02:15:48.699
It's local.

02:15:48.699 --> 02:15:51.989
It's, you know, statewide and it's, it's the nation.

02:15:52.279 --> 02:16:00.590
So, no, I, a light hand, you know, and I think the same politics is to me, the more decisions you can make local, the better.

02:16:01.050 --> 02:16:07.439
And the more there tries to be like a strong federal government making us states all the same, the more bad ideas.

02:16:07.449 --> 02:16:07.579
Yeah.

02:16:07.579 --> 02:16:13.909
And I think we should rejoice if, if some of this stuff can actually happen at the federal level and get rid of some of these regulations, then.

02:16:14.260 --> 02:16:26.550
It should come back, and we can regulate it the Colorado way, the Northern Colorado way, like, the way, how do we want to get the influence of the Soros organizations and the bill writers out of the state legislatures and all these things.

02:16:26.550 --> 02:16:32.959
Yeah, any of them, just get them out, you know, so, and, and let, let business create and let the market forces.

02:16:33.379 --> 02:16:34.809
Um, actually do what they do.

02:16:34.840 --> 02:16:35.850
They do it very efficiently.

02:16:35.909 --> 02:16:36.209
Yeah.

02:16:37.420 --> 02:16:39.360
I think we're ready for the loco experience.

02:16:39.520 --> 02:16:40.090
All right.

02:16:40.209 --> 02:16:44.920
Your craziest experience of your lifetime that you're willing to share with our listeners.

02:16:45.340 --> 02:16:46.780
Crazy experience.

02:16:46.840 --> 02:16:49.959
Um, I don't know how crazy it was, but I think it's very unique.

02:16:50.040 --> 02:16:50.239
Yeah.

02:16:50.389 --> 02:16:55.510
When I was 10 years old, uh, my grandfather, uh, my grandmother put me on a plane in San Francisco.

02:16:55.559 --> 02:16:55.819
Hmm.

02:16:55.940 --> 02:16:57.969
And I flew by myself to Hong Kong.

02:16:58.139 --> 02:16:58.450
Oh.

02:16:58.629 --> 02:17:02.649
And I spent the summer over there, um, with my best friend in California.

02:17:03.020 --> 02:17:03.479
Okay.

02:17:03.559 --> 02:17:05.100
And we His family was from there or something?

02:17:05.110 --> 02:17:09.020
No, his family had a sailboat built in, um, Taiwan.

02:17:09.149 --> 02:17:09.459
Okay.

02:17:09.469 --> 02:17:10.770
And they sailed it to Hong Kong.

02:17:10.909 --> 02:17:11.170
Okay.

02:17:11.170 --> 02:17:13.299
And they were outfitting it for a while there.

02:17:13.299 --> 02:17:21.034
And so we spent the summer in Hong Kong on their sailboat, sailing around and Um, you know, being pirates on the sailboat and all of that fun stuff.

02:17:21.034 --> 02:17:24.194
And then his family sailed that around the world over the next couple of years.

02:17:24.194 --> 02:17:26.184
And this was like in the 80s probably?

02:17:26.524 --> 02:17:29.694
Um, I was 10 so it was 1973.

02:17:29.725 --> 02:17:30.934
Wow, early 70s.

02:17:30.965 --> 02:17:31.305
Yeah.

02:17:31.524 --> 02:17:32.114
Wow.

02:17:32.534 --> 02:17:42.635
Um, which was like kind of just as China was opening up to the world, I guess Hong Kong was a little more open, but Hong Kong was, I don't think, uh, yeah, I don't think China was open yet.

02:17:42.645 --> 02:17:43.024
Yeah.

02:17:43.055 --> 02:17:48.004
Maybe, maybe Nixon and Kissinger started talking about a little bit, but not much.

02:17:48.004 --> 02:17:52.774
So, but Hong Kong, I mean, to me it was effectively Chinese culture.

02:17:52.844 --> 02:17:53.735
Oh yeah, for sure.

02:17:53.825 --> 02:17:54.145
Yeah.

02:17:54.145 --> 02:17:57.754
Um, so you got to experience that firsthand when almost nobody.

02:17:58.510 --> 02:18:00.069
Do anything about any of it, right?

02:18:00.090 --> 02:18:04.569
You know, we were still seeing cartoons with the little plant eyes and the little funny hat, right?

02:18:04.600 --> 02:18:06.340
I have one of those hats, actually.

02:18:06.340 --> 02:18:07.570
Well, because they're real, you know.

02:18:07.570 --> 02:18:08.924
It's not just a cartoon, it's a real hat.

02:18:08.924 --> 02:18:10.728
It's a straw hat that they wore in the fields, you know.

02:18:10.728 --> 02:18:12.030
And they shed rain really good.

02:18:12.479 --> 02:18:13.059
They did.

02:18:13.569 --> 02:18:15.489
So talk to me about that experience.

02:18:15.559 --> 02:18:18.090
Like, anything extraordinary about it?

02:18:18.219 --> 02:18:20.479
Like, were they, were they fluent and stuff?

02:18:20.479 --> 02:18:21.270
Or they had family?

02:18:21.280 --> 02:18:24.260
No, I mean, we, um, they had the sailboat.

02:18:24.450 --> 02:18:28.270
Um, docked, you know, that was run by England at the time.

02:18:28.270 --> 02:18:29.739
So it was a British Harbor.

02:18:29.739 --> 02:18:31.120
We were a bunch of English speakers.

02:18:31.229 --> 02:18:31.639
Yeah.

02:18:32.159 --> 02:18:32.629
Yep.

02:18:32.819 --> 02:18:36.450
And, um, you know, summer, so we didn't have to do school or anything like that.

02:18:36.889 --> 02:18:42.649
And, um, I don't know if, you know, I don't know if their, his parents spoke any, um, Chinese.

02:18:42.649 --> 02:18:46.069
I don't remember back then, but you know, I mean, we'd go into the markets and.

02:18:46.420 --> 02:19:07.770
You saw all kinds of crazy stuff that you'd never see in America, you know, and like a, a bowl or a big plate of shark fins for shark fin soup and, you know, baby chickens that apparently you eat them whole when they're little chicks and I don't know, uh, apparently, yeah, it's good when the claws tickle your throat or something, you want the bones to be a little crispy so they break easier.

02:19:07.879 --> 02:19:10.530
Um, but man, I learned to love Chinese food.

02:19:10.959 --> 02:19:14.299
I think one of the amazing, you know, we got to sail a lot.

02:19:14.299 --> 02:19:15.360
So that was fun.

02:19:15.360 --> 02:19:15.409
Yeah.

02:19:15.409 --> 02:19:15.430
Yeah.

02:19:15.750 --> 02:19:16.829
One of the amazing experience.

02:19:16.829 --> 02:19:25.190
We were out on a bay for a couple of days and it was fairly early in the morning and, um, just crystal clear water.

02:19:25.190 --> 02:19:26.649
Like you'd see all the way down to the bottom.

02:19:26.649 --> 02:19:30.159
I was getting ready to dive off of the boat.

02:19:30.520 --> 02:19:41.995
And, um, this giant manta ray comes swimming under the boat and I grabbed the, like the two poles there and it was, I mean, it was huge, you know, I don't know, maybe it was two feet.

02:19:41.995 --> 02:19:46.329
I was a 10 year old, so I don't know, but it, I mean, it looked massive.

02:19:46.700 --> 02:19:47.389
I know they're big.

02:19:47.389 --> 02:19:48.299
Oh, wow.

02:19:48.299 --> 02:19:49.739
And we, you know, we'd go snorkeling.

02:19:50.524 --> 02:19:51.434
Diving for stuff.

02:19:51.434 --> 02:19:52.625
And it was, it was just fun.

02:19:52.625 --> 02:19:59.725
I mean, we would, we'd climb up the mast there, you know, that the ladders going up the mast, we'd jump into the water and really cool.

02:19:59.774 --> 02:20:00.315
It was fun.

02:20:00.315 --> 02:20:01.385
World expanding at the time.

02:20:01.395 --> 02:20:02.395
Yeah, absolutely.

02:20:02.405 --> 02:20:02.684
And.

02:20:03.190 --> 02:20:05.829
I mean, they put me on a plane by myself, you know?

02:20:05.860 --> 02:20:05.950
Right.

02:20:05.950 --> 02:20:06.790
And sent me over there.

02:20:06.790 --> 02:20:07.209
Right.

02:20:07.479 --> 02:20:11.979
I'll say the, um, they were stewardess at the time, but the flight attendants took good care of me.

02:20:11.979 --> 02:20:12.129
Yeah.

02:20:12.129 --> 02:20:12.340
Yeah.

02:20:12.879 --> 02:20:16.389
well, your parents must have been at least a little bit free range as well to allow that.

02:20:16.450 --> 02:20:17.770
Uh, you know, my, be sick of you.

02:20:17.770 --> 02:20:18.879
You know, it was my grandmother.

02:20:18.879 --> 02:20:21.909
She was, she was fierce and she was like, oh, he can do this.

02:20:21.909 --> 02:20:22.209
He'd be fine.

02:20:22.209 --> 02:20:24.819
You know, I don't know how she talked my parents out of that.

02:20:24.819 --> 02:20:25.569
I love it, but, uh, I love it.

02:20:25.569 --> 02:20:26.110
Yeah, it was cool.

02:20:26.110 --> 02:20:27.010
I'm glad they let me do it.

02:20:27.219 --> 02:20:27.430
Well.

02:20:28.170 --> 02:20:28.690
Thank you.

02:20:28.860 --> 02:20:29.889
Thanks for sharing the time.

02:20:29.889 --> 02:20:30.979
Oh, It's been fun.

02:20:30.979 --> 02:20:35.940
Thanks for letting me learn a lot more about the industry, and thanks for becoming part of the team at LocoThink Tank.

02:20:36.020 --> 02:20:37.239
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

02:20:37.239 --> 02:20:38.129
It's a great community.

02:20:38.250 --> 02:20:38.440
Alright.

02:20:38.440 --> 02:20:39.440
It'll be fun to be a part of it.

02:20:39.590 --> 02:20:42.190
Well, Godspeed, and we'll see you next time.

02:20:43.209 --> 02:20:43.920
Alright, thanks.