EXPERIENCE 61 | Dr Eric Holsapple Founder and CEO of LC Real Estate Group & Founder and Lead Facilitator of Living In The Gap
Eric Holsapple is the Founder and CEO of LC Real Estate Group & Founder and Lead Facilitator of Living In The Gap. He's been involved with real estate here in Northern Colorado since the early nineties, he has a Ph.D. from CSU that he got when moving back here to Colorado. He started implementing mindfulness practices into his firm at an early stage.
We spend a lot of time talking about his business journeys, certain real estate projects, principles, and things like that. We also talked about mindfulness, meditation, being aware, and really how principles are so useful in our businesses and our families, and our homes.
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My conversation today was with Eric whole sapele and Eric is the founder and CEO of Elsie real estate. And he's the founder and lead facilitator of living in the gap. And Eric's been involved with real estate here in Fort Collins, Northern Colorado, I guess since the early nineties, he has a PhD from CSU that he got when, uh, moving back here to Colorado and he. Started implementing mindfulness practices into his firm at an early stage. And so we spend a lot of time talking about his business journeys, certain real estate projects, principles, things like that. And then we spend a lot of time also talking about mindfulness and meditation and being aware and really how principals from. Eastern religion and Christianity, all kind of a spouse, the same principles ultimately in life and how those principles in the end are so useful in our businesses and our families and our homes. So, um, it's very interesting conversation. I didn't know Eric very well before this conversation, but we've always enjoyed our time together. And I just want to thank him and encourage you that you will learn something too, if you listen to this episode. So give it a try.
Curt:Welcome back to the local experience podcast. This is your host Curt bear, and I'm here today with Eric and Eric is the founder of Elsie real estate group. And he's also the founder and lead facilitator for living in the gap. And Eric, if we would maybe just start by describing those two organizations. Yeah.
Eric:Uh, Elsie real estate group, you started primarily as a development company where we developed properties in Northern Colorado. It's evolved into a fairly large. From, uh, we have a partner model. Most of the people that have been with the company more than a few years are on a partner tracks. Okay. So we, we, uh, share the responsibilities and, and the growth. We have also have a lot of investment properties that we have all been down the front
Curt:range. Okay. Just with your group or do you bring outside investors in this world? Mostly
Eric:our group, but we do bring outside investors in every, everyone has a different case. Sure.
Curt:As well. How many partners are we talking
Eric:about here? Uh, there's six partners in
Curt:LC, real estate and then a handful of associates or helpers, various sorts are entry level people that don't deserve a partner yet, but maybe they will some down the track. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.
Eric:Yeah. And then, uh, living in the gap is a mindfulness leadership training program that, uh, really, it started in our company where we did mindfulness and those things company, and it really worked well. So I formed it as a way to share that with other people and other people.
Curt:So you kind of developed it in-house and then thought, you know, I've spent so much time and effort working on this. I might as well share it. Yeah.
Eric:That and, you know, uh, and
Curt:seeing results. Right. It's not all about the time. Yeah.
Eric:And part of it is, you know, looking out at the world, there's some troubles out there that, uh, need some mindfulness. So. Um, I'm not a podcaster or a politician. I'm a business guy, but I, I really see the difference that mindfulness can make in reducing divisiveness and some of those things.
Curt:Yeah. Fair enough. Well, I'm sure we'll get into that. So talk to me about, um, I guess, young Eric, where, where did you come from? Are you a Colorado guy right from the
Eric:start? No, I was raised in Maine. Okay. Uh, I raised in Maine with the university of Maine and came out to Colorado state university.
Curt:We've got some construction that just started, like right after we started here today, they haven't been working all day
Eric:over 40 years ago, moved to Colorado, moved to Fort Collins. Oh, I've been here a long time.
Curt:Okay. Um, and like, describe that experience in Maine, like a small town kind of
Eric:rural. Uh, it was a small town, actually. My dad was the coach. Okay. Then later superintendent of schools and he ran a summer camp. Okay. And the office. And, uh, the coach for coach for a little town in Dexter, Maine,
Curt:uh, football
Eric:coach, football, basketball coach. He was coach interesting. Then he evolved into superintendent schools in that area when I was a little bit older, but he ran a summer camp that, uh, I worked at all the time growing up. And then later, uh, when we moved away, I moved to Colorado and my other brothers did other things. He subdivided and I ended up with a spot there and I go back every summer, the kids have gone every back of a year for 30 years, a
little
Curt:lake with forest it's awesome. Canoes
Eric:and stuff. Especially now we have one canoe. It's mostly kayaks and we have paddle boards. There's a light Allan out front. We can swim too. We hit golf balls out too. And those kinds of things. Yeah. And I, and I have an officer I worked for.
Curt:Oh, nice. What a unique experience and opportunity. That's a, probably a pretty good place to find some peace just being there. Huh. So, um, so you moved to Colorado and what was your background as far as. Educational things. Did you get right into real estate?
Eric:Uh, initially I moved to Fort Collins. I worked at a place called Dick's Dotson sales, which is now the Nissan dealership and I wrote service. And then I was service manager and I worked to get my, uh, uh, residency. So I could go back to school. Full time. Yep. And so it was quite a bit different town then. I mean, horse juice was about it on the target. Went to south,
Curt:the horse to flowers was like this outpost down there
Eric:or whatever. So it's been a lot of growth
Curt:since then. Yeah. Um, and that, so you gained residency, like, uh, your further education, I guess, after starting elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah. I w
Eric:my undergraduate main and I got an MBA from CSU.
Curt:Yeah. And just in general business administration, I got
Eric:an undergraduate in economics. Okay. And at the time I looked at, I loved economics more than I like studying business. Uh, but a, a, an economics degree with a master's really wasn't terminal. So I went with a business degree because I wanted to go to work.
Curt:Gotcha. Gotcha. And how did you get your business inspiration? Like why did you know a business was the area you wanted to learn?
Eric:You know, working at our, my family camp, uh, summers. It was just something that was came pretty natural to me. So it was a little, little, uh, my nickname was Ricky, Ricky behind the counter, running the store or whatever it was, it was just, uh, came natural to me. And the other reason was, is I like to travel. I like snow skiing. I like things that I knew I was going to have to make a little bit of money.
Curt:Right. If you want to do fun things and then we'll do the things. Fair enough. So where's your next step? Like career-wise you stay in the auto business for awhile or,
Eric:you know, my right now is mostly living in the gap. No,
Curt:I mean, oh, back then. Yeah. Back then. I'm going to kind of wander through the jury.
Eric:Well, I got through, went through my MBA at various part-time jobs in that, but yeah, out of after that and it, and it was in the early eighties, uh, the economy was pretty bad. You know, prime interest rate went to 21%. It was pretty big recessions, et cetera. Uh, but I got my graduated. I remember graduating without a job, my MBA, but a month or so later, I got a hired a real estate firm. In Fort Collins, two months later, they moved me to Denver. Oh yeah. So I moved right down into Denver and worked down in the Denver for several years in
Curt:the 1980s. And you're like in your mid twenties by this time or whatever. So was that exciting or were you like yeah,
Eric:uh, it wasn't. Yeah. Cause I love Fort Collins. Yeah. And that was a small town guy? Yes. Okay.
Curt:So find your way back eventually. Yeah. Um, so any major milestones or like, I guess leadership lessons or things like, you're kind of working on your path toward becoming the person that you became. Right. And, and like observations for people navigating and maybe just coming out of college, getting into the workforce.
I
Eric:would say I, I worked in the eighties. I mostly worked for other people. I worked for that company for a couple of years. And then they had a shareholder that was Australian that hired me. I actually moved from Denver to Los Angeles for a little bit. And then I traveled around a bit, but I'd say I learned a lot about what not to do there. You know, I gained a lot of skills, uh, and I was, I was good at it. Right. Uh, but I also saw, you know, how not to do things. So when I got out on my own, I started my own business in around 1990. Okay. I did things a little differently than what I saw and it's paid off and that was back
Curt:up here then. And actually
Eric:a little bit of time. I first started it with that company. I was transferred to Boston, which was close to home. I met my wife. Well, that was worth it. Yeah. And, uh, I started my business there and then my wife and newborn baby, my oldest son, Ryan, he was born in June and then August one year we moved out here. I talked to my wife and he come back here and went in for my doctorate in economics at CSU. Oh, I didn't
Curt:realize it. Oh, doctor, I call you doctor when I introduced you. Yeah. So talk to me about the, we'll talk about family more in a later segment, but talk to me about the love story there. You're now getting into your late twenties and career focused, obviously, and doing the hustle and things.
Eric:Uh, you know, things happen. You know, I was in my early thirties when I first, uh, and I worked for that company. I traveled all the time, right. It was 50 weeks, one year on your planes and traveling around a Western Canada and Europe. I had to go to Australia and everything, but I remember stepping on a scale and I was 210 pounds today. I weigh 160 and I just, wasn't very healthy. I smoked, drank too much. Uh, so I really went on. Uh, on a health purge at that time and met my wife and about the same time, uh, and, uh, just, I met her there. And then when I left that company, we started dating and okay. And she retired, I convinced her to move to Colorado. Didn't take too
Curt:much. What was it about her that really drew your eye?
Eric:Well, she loved, she loved, uh, she loved to ski and loved to want it to have a family and it was beautiful and
Curt:just was money and all those things. Yeah. It's funny how we don't really quite know sometimes. Yeah. So, um, so you lug your newborn and your young recently married wife out to Colorado against
Eric:did a grad school. I'd been out about 12 years. Wow. I had to relearn a calculus and those kinds of things to get back and study economics, but I really wanted to teach, uh, okay.
Curt:And have you been teaching, you have been teaching as well? Right? I
Eric:taught, I've taught CSU for 20 years. I haven't been the last four or five years, but I taught there for 20 years.
Curt:And how would you like to be honest, when I was in college, I kind of thought that I might want to kind of be a professor someday. I thought that would be a fun role. How did you, how would you characterize that for somebody imagining that, uh, journey? And I know you've been probably more, not a teacher than actually a professor or whatever, but yeah.
Eric:And I've done both, but yeah, the, uh, I would say, um, it was, you know, even in business, I knew that that's how I communicated. I love to bring and mentor young people and, and show them the ropes and show them how to do things. And it was, uh, you know, it took a little bit, I mean, it's harder than I thought it was at first to be up in front of 50, 20 somethings, uh, But it was really rewarding. Yeah. Yeah. I met so many great young people. Is there any
Curt:particular, uh, like students at the time that have crafted out something really amazing as far as like local businesses or
Eric:visible, you know, it's really the story of LC real estate group. It's, uh, we started with one intern at a time and people would come in and either I'd help them find a job at Realtech or Christian Wakefield, or if they wanted to go to Denver Sullivan Hayes or somewhere. And then sometimes they would work out at LC real estate group and, and, uh, become partners over time.
Curt:And you were probably trying to grab the ones you want in the business for LC. I suppose sometimes
Eric:a lot of them came through. Yeah. Well,
Curt:and it's a lot of, uh, like it's a lot about culture fit and stuff, and you don't always know that right away and all that. I guess it was LC real estate then formed like shortly after you got finished with your doctorate and
Eric:you kind of, I met Don Murasco right. When I was coming out with a doctorate at the time, I was kind of thinking, do I want to be a professor, whatnot, but I've been in there doing it for three years. And I really found, I was just too entrepreneurial be
Curt:in
Eric:that environment. So I met Don Marasca and it was at the time it was more commercial Gilmore's firm. They had a more real estate, more residential and he had more commercial. And I went, just went to work with him. He had a number of projects and helped him on the financing side and we hit it off. Your two later we changed it to a Loveland commercial. And then later on it was rebranded as LC real estate group Nelsey home.
Curt:Okay. Oh, so home as well. So you build custom
Eric:homes. Well, we built, we didn't build custom homes. We built homes, mostly starter kind of home. So we did get out of that during COVID, which is another story
Curt:we'll have to get toward that. I guess it seems like you were very intentional about creating what you wanted to create. Uh, can you talk to me about those early stages where you like to review the mission, vision values, right from the start and hiring practices and things that come together later?
Eric:No, actually I'm in the eighties. I ended up, I traveled a lot and I ended up having to lay a lot of people off close offices, restructure things, and I really shied away from that. I hated it. It really chewed me up. Yeah. I didn't like that. So when Donna and I started, we didn't have really any employees. We had, uh, his wife, Carol was assisting us and then Blaine, his, his step son came on out of college and he's still with us today, runs the place. Um, and we really didn't want employees. Employees came later, they came with mindfulness. As I did more in mindfulness, I start and soft people. I changed and. It was another whole deal. I started really loving working with people. Yeah.
Curt:So it was the mindfulness go back as far as like the general health
Eric:turn. Yeah. I just found yoga during that time, back in the early nineties and found yoga and really started at about the same time as my doctorate at 93. And it was a just life changer for me. You
Curt:got a yoga studio, want to give a shout out to or anything that really well,
Eric:it's a community yoga in Loveland. I helped start it. I started at what five years ago is LC yoga. Now it's community yoga love. I didn't, uh, I didn't enjoy running that. I enjoyed start it and I love yoga. I'm not in that anymore. It's a great studio.
Curt:Cool. Um, like talk to me about real estate itself. Like a, that journey, you know, from the early eighties, you know, by the time you're starting, it's kind of mid nineties area here in Northern Colorado. Really kind of some of the start of the boom time of what were some of your favorite projects or some of the things that really remember
Eric:from those things? Yeah, what I remember is because I was a, an economic student, I remember when I started traveling all around how it was just amazing to me, how different areas were having totally different real estate cycles. You know, California was booming. Texas was depressed. You go to Boston, it's booming. It goes to somewhere else. It wasn't Colorado was down at the time, but you go different places. So as an economics, you know, someone that liked economics that was fascinating to me and were really, was a major reason to drive back and get my doctorate as well as teaching was just to learn more about that. Yeah. And to watch Colorado evolve. Cause at the time it was a pretty thin economy, oil and gas agriculture, and it's just so much more diverse now than it was back in the eighties,
Curt:which creates a lot more resiliency, right? Like one sector is suffering. Not everybody has to. Yeah. And sometimes that's an opportunity, right? Like when one segment is laying off workers, but another one is hungry for them.
Eric:And in our area is noticing the, the impacts of, uh, the universities that they're so big and they cycle it different ways than the business community dose. So it's very countercyclical business, very stabilizing Fort Collins market is, you know, even through some of the downs in the early nineties and eighties, Fort Collins has done really well. A lot of that's to do with the university. Sure.
Curt:Yeah. That makes sense. Um, I guess from a, uh, prognostication, what it is Northern Colorado doing, right. Or what have they done. Right. And what are some real challenges faced in that segment?
Eric:Got innocent, great things, right? Like burying all the electric lines. Right. Uh, the bike pass, I think they've done right. Fort Collins has done an amazing job, uh, putting, uh, courts and other business employment downtown that helped the restaurants and those kinds of things. I think they've done some right things. Their water policy is something they've done pretty right, because water, water policy, and some of these studies are still much better than it is if you go out in the Eastern plain really? Huh?
Curt:Like just availability of water. yeah. What do you think about the big water project up there now? That's closer and closer, I guess the Glade reservoir. Yeah.
Eric:Yeah. I think it's, I mean, if we're, we've got to decide if we want to keep growing something like that has to happen, right. Because water prices right now are going crazy. Just can't
Curt:really conserve enough water to. Feed another half million people and water them.
Eric:And one of the fears is house prices are increasing so much. I think we did a 20% increase last year. Yeah. Is, you know, can businesses and employees keep up with that. You know, our business is gonna at some point say, geez, a million dollars for a house for all my employees. And I've made me, maybe we should be moving to Michigan right now.
Curt:And when those shocks happen fast, it's like, you know, a big deal. It's an interesting economy in terms of, especially like the urban rural kind of divide a lot. So many of those rural towns, you know, you can buy a decent house for a hundred thousand dollars or whatever, and they've got internet and all the things. And I grew up in a town, you know, even smaller than most of those. And it's kind of a nice experience, especially with, you know, the real sense of community that they offer compared to like the, the garage to office parking lot existence that so many suburban NS live and the
Eric:other, the other differences. One thing that I enjoy being here is like all my three kids are here and thriving within 45 minutes of me. And Maine, or I grew up, everybody moved away. I mean, you're, you know, if you really wanted to do something and you left. Yeah. Fair, not ABI. That's not fair. There's some people that stayed great, but a lot of times, so you just, it's a separation. So one nice thing about this. As you know, there are opportunities here for families to stay
Curt:together, right. Or come back together as the big thing I'm noticing lately is, uh, you know, grandparents following their children to Fort Collins 10 years later because they're never going to move. And so I might as well sell my Kansas house or my Michigan
Eric:house or whatever. And it's, and it's a great place with 320 days of
Curt:sunshine. Yeah. We both probably meet a lot of families where it's like one person came out and then now my cousin lives here and my sister moved out and then our parents, whatever. And so we
Eric:just got to ask ourselves, where's the balance at what point? The quality of life, get really suffering because, you know, there's just too much population right. At front range. So I don't know where that number is, but that'll come for sure.
Curt:For sure. Well, if we can get enough water for them,
Eric:well, love water and highways that, you know, it doesn't take four hours to get to Denver and
Curt:et cetera. Yeah. Yup, yup. Pretty important stuff. Um, talk to me about some of the like projects. I remember one specifically was the, the north side king Soopers was a pretty big project that you guys did and partnered with some local development dollars and things like that. But talk to me about that in a sequence of big projects that are visible that were, yeah,
Eric:it's an interesting one. We developed a king Sooper Senate in Loveland first in the nineties, late nineties opened it and it's called Thompson valley town center. And then, uh, and this is interesting as something that we focus on a lot in the gap is, you know, reasons to do services. To really go out and on it. I was on a Northern Colorado economic development board meeting Ralph Waldo from the group. At the time he passed away a couple of years ago, just grabbed me one day, said, geez, you know, Eric, I love what you guys have done with CSU. And what you do with the community north Fort Collins needs a developer. Would you go have lunch with Ron lot's Howser? You know, so we did Nathan client in my office and I went and had lunch with him. We looked, it was only one parcel of land at the time we thought was big enough. And, uh, Jim Smith owned it. Okay. Long time. See, I knew him well through CSU and it was under contract at the time to a Denver developer. Oh, wasn't available. About two years later, I ran into Jim at a CSU event. I think it was. And he said, Eric, you know that land's available. You want to, you want to check it out? So we looked at it again, we looked at king Soopers and you know, king Soopers says, yeah, we're, we're ready to do that. So we worked it out with Jim and king Soopers and develop that center. But a lot of that center had to do. You know, being out in the community and doing things in the community that, that other people appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah.
Curt:Well, and, and like those big projects like that there, you know, they take public buy-in and the neighborhoods and things like that.
Eric:We had a partnership with, uh, Darren and Mike Freeman, where at the time, or at the city was, there was $8 million urban renewal funding, which was needed because it was in a wetland and had to be re-established and it needed a roundabout and infrastructure work and whatnot. It wouldn't, it wouldn't have worked without a doubt, otherwise wouldn't have. And at that time that opened an oh nine or oh 8 0 9 when we did most of the work on it, I think it opened in 10 or 11. You know, that was a heck of a time during the great recession to be developing something. So it definitely wouldn't happen. I had
Curt:a bit of a bird's eye view on that one. Um, one of my former clients, uh, Bob Fann cook was the manager of the Albertson's, uh, across the street. It's like, I dunno why they need this king soup. It's the way it was. But, uh, he had a different perspective, obviously. Um, so talk to me about some other like fun projects that you guys have been a part of that the one, some
Eric:of the ones I'm proudest of are the affordable housing projects we've done in Loveland. We did three, we did a pine tree village, Boise village, Boise village, north that all had 20% or so affordable housing components with the housing authority, with habitat, we did 50 or 60 houses with habitat for humanity. Can you, can
Curt:we like delve into this topic a little bit because you know, people here. That word, affordable housing. And then it, frankly to me, it barely means much, and I'm probably better informed than most, right? Like it's so it's income graded as a city, waive some fees and stuff. Like how do they make it
Eric:affordable? Yeah. In that, in that instance, uh, and those were 10 years ago now in that instance, you know, they were, uh, fees were frozen at your time of application. You got accelerated review time and some criteria were a little easier. You could have a little bit smaller, lots. And some other things that were criteria was a little bit easier, but it still took a lot. I mean, you still had to take money that you were making from the rest of the project and subsidize the affordable, make it work.
Curt:Gotcha. And do those, are they like deed restricted in some fashion, then
Eric:everyone was different, but yeah, generally there was a deed restriction that lasted at least five
Curt:years. I see. So yeah, you could,
Eric:you could sell it the big point of discussion contention or whatever you would today is. I mean, do you permanently deed restrict it because then are you really, truly. Passing wealth on to those folks. But the other side of it is if you don't, are you constantly having to replenish the affordable housing stock? Right. Because you know, there's been a windfall to somebody and they pulled himself up, which is great, but now you got to have buy in again. Right. You got to figure out how to get it again. So it's not, it's not, it's a tough discussion, but, you know, without it, you end up having everybody commuting in to serve your communities, right. Traffic and pollution and everything else, gas
Curt:prices and all that, you used to be drive to qualify, but now you can't mortgage might be less, but your gas bill.
Eric:So it, I mean, it has to be subsidized in one way or another.
Curt:Yeah. Um, and how has that relationship then with habitat for humanity as it relates to, I guess, general affordable housing? Or is it like, so you were developing stuff for habitat to build upon then later? Well,
Eric:generally we were getting these approvals and we talked to habitat and worked out deals, whether it would work for them. I know though, uh, in, uh, oh 7 0 8. We had a project in Loveland called Boise village north. And, uh, I'm trying to say how I, the shit hit the fan without swearing, but anyways, the shit hit the fan with the economy housing market just busted and whatnot. We got handed back about a hundred lots from different builders that were at the time we didn't build houses. We just developed and sold the local bill. Um, and we got about a hundred lots back and no one would answer the phone. And then we had, I know we had something like 70,000 a month, negative and debt service that we had on, you know, to service debt on those loans. So we really had to go through a lot. And at the time, uh, I remember Sarah Matthews was the CEO of habitat and we went to Denver and looked at, uh, several projects. They had done there and changed the front facades and whatnot. And habitat ended up doing like 50, you know, 20 houses in there at the time was a big deal. Right. You know, they were the biggest builder in Loveland. Oh, eight or nine. Yeah. Ed like 10 a year, you know, eight or 10 a year. There just wasn't any building.
Curt:Uh, talk to me about, uh, like surviving as a firm during that, like you said, 70,000 a month, negative cashflow from that, like how do you patch.
Eric:One of the things that you asked earlier, you know, what I learned in the eighties was mostly was what not to do. And one of our, one of our, uh, tenants is it, each project has to carry its own. Each project has to cashflow each one, you have to figure out as you go. And if you have each one that does that, when you add them up, they work. But if you keep going, you have some that are negative that you don't take care of. Then another one grows before you know it, then you hit a recession and you got, oh my, you know, w we're in big trouble here. So we were lucky in that we had been pretty, pretty, uh, frugal and pretty smart about it. So we ended up having to sell some projects, raise some money, do some different
Curt:things that way better than others,
Eric:still a little bit, we were able to, because our debt structure was, was okay. The other thing we were pretty lucky about as the residential market went down before the commercial. So we were able to sell some commercial and then prop that up. But it was, it was, I can't tell you
Curt:it wasn't scary, right? Yeah. That's uh, I remember, uh, Oh, I'm trying to remember. I guess it was, uh, Mitch Morgan from velvet Morgan real estate. Uh, back in those days, I was like, uh, you know, how's it going? Well, I'm seeing how fast equity disappears off of balance sheet these days, you know? And, and I was like, well, good thing. You had a, quite a bit of it, you know, to begin with. So, and that's an important part. I think it's a good principle for business as well. We might draw out as just like businesses end up doing a lot of different kinds of services, different lines, different things. And each one of those should really carry its own water.
Eric:Exactly. Cause you can't pay attention all the time to every single item and you take your eye off the ball and before you know it, you're under water. Yeah.
Curt:If you've got five different divisions or segments and they're all losing money, all of a sudden,
Eric:wow. And some have the, the philosophy that I won't take loss. In my opinion, that's a fully foolish philosophy, right. Because I'm better off acknowledging it and taking the loss and saving it for a rainy day coming back. And so
Curt:that's that, uh, uh, economic theory of, uh, what sunk costs, right. Fallacy. Right. I think it's not a theory. It's a fallacy.
Eric:Yeah. So I think if there's, if I've made a mistake, I gotta acknowledge it and move on. Yeah.
Curt:Yeah. So, um, I guess maybe let's start talking about like folding in some of the live, in the gap principles in, cause this was probably the season when that's really starting to become kind of institutional for you guys.
Eric:Yeah. And even before, so yeah. Mindfulness practices were coming in and we started a little bit at a time. Like at a time when things were not going very well, we started a seed group and said, I wonder if we focused on what is going well not, we're not going to ignore what isn't going well, but what if we focus on some of the things that are going well, relationships. So it was kind of things and started having a group destroy, fucking that made a huge difference, made a difference for how people felt about themselves, their relationships between them. What'd you call it a seeds group seed S E E D. Okay. It's just thought of seeds of mindfulness just to seed, descend
Curt:it out, not an acronym or anything like
Eric:that. It's just that. And, uh, we started reading, you know, a good book about it. Maybe showing a video. I'm doing a little mindful expect and, and, and key is to start talking, getting to know each other. Cause he find at work, people don't really know each other on a deep, on a deep level.
Curt:And obviously you think that's good?
Eric:I think it's essential. You know, we work eight, 10 hours a day. Yeah. If we, if we leave everything to, when we get home at night, we're exhausted. Totally. You know? And also there's no reason why. Have a relationship is good with the people I work with as, as with people I grew
Curt:up with, right. That's always been kind of my mentality, whether I was an employee or now here as a small employer. Um, it's like a family to me, you know? And, but I've also heard it otherwise, like some business owners are like, well, you don't want to have relationship. Cause then you, you know, you can't fire somebody when you need to or different things like that. And to me, I'd always been level mind of, well, I just want to be able to tell them why I have to let them go and
Eric:be in relationship. And you hope you don't have to, but sometimes you have to write a and there's ways to do it that are humane and you can maintain a relationship. Even through that. I found. Yeah. So what was your, you have to make some decisions.
Curt:What was the early team building elements? You mentioned that you were kind of a two man show with a, with a helper kind of in those earliest times, and that was kind of the way you wanted it. Um, we kind of passed over when you finally, when you started really adding
Eric:team members to it. You know, it was blamed that had come in and then later Nathan Klein came, he graduated from CSU and he came in and he was an immediate impact, you know? Uh, and just one at a time it started happening. It started, started growing. Yeah. Uh, so it wasn't like, this was a big deliberate plan. Yeah. But all of a sudden there were four or five of us and I looked at myself and said, you know what? You gotta change. You gotta be better at this
Curt:leading these
Eric:people you're caught up in my own. Busy-ness right. You know, and I had to say, you know what, I gotta start paying attention to these people. And I, I know the big flip for me was flipping around and saying, what can I do to support you versus what can you do for me? Yeah. Yeah. And it was a huge
Curt:flip well, in, in that kind of sphere, right. Everybody's kind of their own little business unit total. Right. You might be working in partnership with somebody or in a development or things like that, but generally you're just pulling the, you know, you're meeting people that you're working deals, you're fighting tenants, whatever that looks like.
Eric:The other major thing is that everybody's bought in on as, you know, go serve on a nonprofit board, go help in the community, go do these things and help the community grow. And, uh, it's just such a better way to go than just constant cold calling. You get to meet everybody in the community, you get to make a difference, uh, and you get to learn what's going on. Yeah.
Curt:Right. Well, it's, it's so hard in today's world. Like even 10 years ago, you could get news that that was relevant and things like that. Like if the city of Fort Collins had to put out a notice that they wanted all citizens to see whether it was the Colorado and or biz west or a few different things, they could generally get the word out to a good percentage of the population. Now, nobody can. Like, you know, the Oscars flop probably was the only thing that had the national attention of the people and even regional attention with, you know, newspapers declining and things like that. And then just such a fragmented.
Eric:Well, I see, you know, now people think that it's all social media marketing and it's essential and we need it, but there's still no replacement for being out, being out and about and meeting people, talking to people for sure.
Curt:Well, especially for those of us that have, you know, regional based businesses, if you're doing e-commerce or whatever, that's great, but that's different. But, uh, yeah. So this is what the team pushed back against this at all, as you're kind of starting to unfold these principles, or did people leave? They're like, oh, this is a little woo for me, we're doing yoga at the office. It's
Eric:different people, everybody doesn't get in at the same level. And, uh, I've really found myself to say. If I want to know if I want to just get upset about what people aren't doing, then I can be upset all the time. But what if I look for what they are doing? You know, what are the little things that people are doing? Yeah. So everyone's not in gently, you know, at the level that I go in, because I'm kind of an all in guy. When I go in on something, that's one reason I'm successful, but that's not for everybody. And I have to acknowledge that, but we start most meetings, a little bit of mindfulness and people don't resist that. We have, we do some yoga, but everybody doesn't have to come. Some people do. And some people don't, you have to be accepting as
Curt:well. Yeah. You're not pushing it. You're offering it
Eric:really wouldn't be very mindful if you said everybody's got
Curt:right. Have peace. The beatings, the beatings will continue until morale improves, something like that. So, um, I guess talk to me about some of the. Real impacts to the business that you, that you saw through that period of time of really intentionally investing and intentionally investing in yourself, I guess, as the
Eric:leader. Wow. You know, we just haven't lost good people, you know? Uh, we we've unfortunately lost someone. We had to close our humble and company in the early parts of COVID. Um, but we haven't lost good people through it. And I think that says everything,
Curt:um, volumes with all the demand for housing now, or are you going to fire that puppy back up and help us
Eric:out here? You know, we got to the stage where we couldn't tell when we started the house, that it was going to make money. And we got to the end of a few of them. They didn't make money. And you were just, we found ourselves at the mercy of, you know, you got to have 10% inflation every year. How is price appreciation or this isn't going to work. And that in my model doesn't work. Right. You know, I need to have an idea when I start the house, maybe I won't make money, but I need to know that I can clear the loan. Right, right. When I finished, you know, and there
Curt:was no reason to accept risk for very little
Eric:reward. So it's a different, a different world. And I would say the other thing was capital structure wise, you see mostly national builders on building, uh, the more cash that's in it, the less risk is in it for them or they're
Curt:cash heavy. They they're scared to put it into other places at this point in time. So they wasn't and lots
Eric:where 25,000, you know, and no nine and a 10. We could have that clear and build the house, but when lots were 125,000, we had to borrow part of the lot costs really dramatically increased. And plus then
Curt:you're in entitlements for who knows how long, and you've got this lot low enough. They're just hanging on you and yeah.
Eric:All that. So the risk level and probably part of it too, is my age. Right. You know, I don't really want to start over
Curt:again in this. Yeah. You don't need a, a $3 million write off on your financial statement. Um, so I guess talk to me about, like, it seems like living in the gap has kind of become more your passion in some respects even than real estate. And how do you spread your time between them and, and is that kind of going to be your hobby job for after you don't want to do real estate as a real full-time thing? Yeah. Yeah. I
Eric:mean, I I'll keep my, I love real estate, you know, I'm good at it. I love it. And we have a great team. I'm fortunate with the partners that we have that yeah. I have a lot of people to share their responsibilities with. Uh, but clearly my passion is living in the gap right now. It's, you know, I've seen the difference that has made in people's lives, including my own. Probably mostly my kids will keep I work with and others that have come through the program. Yeah. And that gives me more juice than, you know, taking a trip or buying a car or something. I just, I get a lot of, uh, satisfaction out of it. Yeah. Uh, and I just, and I think it's something that the world needs
Curt:and how long has living in the gap in like a real thing with like a logo or whatever,
Eric:uh, going on five years, probably it started a small and yoga studio, just a little workshop in a yoga studio and then, uh, got a little bigger and longer. Yeah.
Curt:And you're doing kind of, uh, I went to one of your kind of introductory workshops the other day. And learned a lot. It was very useful, but it was kind of almost like a here's what you would get if you signed up for this eight week or 12 week or something seminar every month, nine months old, we do some
Eric:shorter ones where we're in now with a couple of days on eight week ones, uh, the main programs. Now it takes a while to, to deprogram us from a lifetime of not being present. Yeah. And to learn presence and to form new habits. It takes some time to do that. It isn't like instant enlightenment. Yeah.
Curt:Yeah. Probably almost nobody. Maybe, maybe the Buddha or whatever got instant light, but he seemed to work at
Eric:it. It seems like he was under the tree, the Bodhi tree for a long time.
Curt:So for listeners out there, they're like, you know, I've heard of mindfulness, I've, you know, maybe practiced yoga, I've done this and that. Can you give kind of a, uh, overview tour of what those terms mean? I think you mentioned that yoga wasn't really like the, or was that you or somebody on a Rogan podcast or something that yoga wasn't really. Um, exercise. It's more for like preparation for
Eric:meditation. It's true. It's turned into more exercise in the last hundred years, but traditionally, I mean, yoga goes back thousands of years and they were preparing the body for meditation. They were preparing when you, when you, uh, focus on the body, your mind calms down. Yeah. When you focus on the mind, it gets crazy. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So, so when I focused on the body, I take that and diffuse that consciousness, that also it opens up all my intuition, you know, my God, my heart, it opens up a whole nother level of intelligence. That is way beyond just thinking. So when we get to the point where we notice that we're thinking that we are thinking, but that we're not our thoughts. We get so jumbled up in thought and vision and these things that we lose our consciousness, we lose our sense of awareness. So we work really hard at clawing that back. You become aware and a less stressful. So how's this
Curt:work like in practice, I'm imagining like a financial meltdown and, and things like that. I mean, is it like, okay, we've processed all this information now let's, let's kind of just have some meditation time or is it more instantaneous almost where you're like, okay, getting pretty busy, crazy up there. A time to just take a five minute breath exercise and I'll probably have a lot better feeling about this hard problem that I'm currently facing after that. Well,
Eric:you start noticing that too. So I'm really stressed at some point. Sometimes that may be just a natural thing, right? Yeah. I'm stressed. Of course I am. I'm already stressed, but it doesn't have to be that way. And we find stress is really in thought and joy and peace of mind, calmness that comes in stillness and quiet. And it's that little, I call it living in the gap. Is that gap between thoughts? Yeah. There's some 60,000 thoughts. I thought every second and a half or so. There's not a lot of room for space. And then between that. So we really need to do some work on, on, uh, calming that down. So it starts with noticing, yeah, we start with a practice. Usually we start with a couple of minutes because our mind is very active. And if we go for a long time, when we start, it can be counterproductive. Can just be, oh, this is, yeah. So we just start with a couple of minutes and as the mind calms down, we extend a little bit, but your first month might just be two minutes. And what we're doing during that time is we're let, as a thought comes up, we let it go. We come back to our breath. That thought comes up. We let it go. We come back to our breath. So we're constantly letting the stresses go. And coming back to presence, your breath is represents the present moment. If we're, if we're doing it. So by letting that go, we're training ourselves. So later in the day, when we get that phone call or that announcement or whatever else, instead of immediately just being stressed, we go and we just notice, Hey, I'm in my body. Hey, I'm breathing those kinds of things below the surface so that I can come at the problem from one of awareness and presence versus one. I
Curt:was just, uh, like attending to my breath a little bit while you were answering. And then I was like, oh crap, I'm not going to be prepared to ask a question when he comes back online. Probably not the right time, but anyway, um, so you were, uh, doing this, this workshop that I attended with your son. Um, and Ryan's been kind of studying this kind of thing as a, uh, college course, almost. It appears as well, kind of talk about like what he brings to your team and are there other team members for living in the gap?
Eric:Uh, well, let's start with Ryan is, uh, he's 28. He started, uh, you know, he started this in his teens. He struggled a little bit and he started in his teens working on mindfulness, those kinds of things. And he went and got a degree in transpersonal, psychology from Naropa in Boulder, and he ran a earth based Institute, help them run their coaching nature-based coaching for four or five years. And now he's in a readiness dissertation for his doctorate at Pacific line in a model that you saw a little bit of called the self soul spirit model, which learns gestalt theory. How we learn a little bit more about our thrifts, who multiple, we have multiple person, and that's the wrong way to say it. We have sub personnel, multiple personalities sounds like a sickness, but we have some personalities that they're competing. Sometimes actually athlete in me would compete with an entrepreneur, would compete with a lover, would compete with totally, you know, those kinds of things. So he runs that part of the program and he's really gifted at
Curt:it. Hmm. That's really interesting. When I first launched my, my first business, uh, bear's backyard grill, which was my mobile food business. Uh, so I had this food trailer and I did a, a video series of three, uh, in the first one, I was like a cowboy and I had these big, uh, like sideburns and a mustache and things like that. And then I shaved everything except for a handlebar mustache. And became a hipster. And then I saved that off and went back to the sport coat for banker Curt. So I basically showed those kind of three different subgroups of my personhood.
Eric:We all have them and we find that, uh, most of us have some of those, uh, parts that sometimes sabotage. Right. And it's an awareness for us. We teach it through awareness. Once you become aware that that's happening, you can start to spot it coming and take a different route. Right. Where you'd say all it, I mean, three days later, you're saying what the hell happened? And you evaluate a little bit go, oh, right. I went blank. I didn't, you know, I just went, I didn't take the right actions. I did this. I sabotage myself. So that can be a key to success is learning how we sabotage ourselves from success.
Curt:Right. I'm imagining, like I know a lot of business owners of all sizes, whether they're little startups or big companies that have kind of imposter syndrome challenges. Sometimes, especially when they've leveled up at a time or two. And they feel like they're out of their depth. And that feels like to me, like one of those personalities is like holding the one that knows that they can achieve this. But the other one is like whispering little sweet doubts in their ear. We
Eric:have a little moist. In us. That is not always our friend. Yeah. So part of it is becoming aware of that and then say, thanks for sharing. Yeah. Noted. This is my vision. This is where I'm headed. Yeah. I like it. I
Curt:like it. So I'm like, what would you like to see, develop with living in the gap? Do you want to have like teams of facilitators eventually and things like that kind of let it flow into what it's supposed to become as part of it
Eric:too? Yeah, that's part of it, but I also find that, uh, if you can get a company culture to tip into mindfulness, it can make a huge difference. So we have a nipple, like one of the ones in our program now is came back and said, Hey, would you, can you come teach mindfulness to our company? So I've been doing down in Denver and there's actually two companies doing any. That was what I was a little bit late for it, right. Doing an eight week mindfulness program for the entire company. I see. And that can be huge, particularly if you can get the CEOs involved. So where I love to see as, as if companies, uh, can change the, my influence. Cause I, what I see happening is that goes home to the family. Yeah, it makes a difference with the kids. The people say that different their relationships with their kids, it's like instant. They know you start relating to a different way with your spouse. You start listening a little more. Um, and then I see those going to the school, to the school board and sharing mindfulness or to the, you know, to the, uh, planning commission meeting or whatever it is and going out from there. I just see that the business, uh, has been so successful at stealing our attention, Facebook, Instagram, email, all the different things that it had been at is that if business got behind mindfulness as a
Curt:way that wouldn't really a big concern, it would just,
Eric:and I, and I see business side, why the thing I see is, uh, I don't see the politicians in the current state coming out of this on their own, that business funds almost all political donations. I think in 2020, there was $14 billion to. A couple of major
Curt:race. Dr. Berg had like 5% of that.
Eric:So I think if business got together and also business, most businesses don't really care about ideologies. They need to know what the policies are and that they're predictable and the economy is going to move. And if that's, it we'll figure out how to make money, but we all have customers on the left and right. We have employees on the left and right. And all kinds of different genders and all this, we have 'em all. And no, I don't believe a solid business practices to tout to one or the other. So it seems like
Curt:those are personal, starting to become more of a thing though.
Eric:But if business can get back to saying no, just stay in the guardrails, make some decisions, get old, figure out something where you're cooperating with each other. And until you do, there's no funding. Well it's in South Africa, they had a. And, uh, they were headed to civil war and the business community really came out and said, you got to do something different. This isn't working. Right. And it made a big difference. So I see that coming here. And so anything I can do to help change that conversation a little bit to be more cooperative and less divisive, but it's, nobody's, nobody's going to get everything they want. Yeah.
Curt:Well, we're, uh, we're going, gonna start with the, the drift into politics a little bit here. So I would propose, we take a short potty break and then jump into the faith family politics segment. Awesome. And we're back. Um, so before we leave living in the gap, I'd like to just imagine, like, who is your target audience? Like, what are they facing? What's their challenge. You mentioned you wanted to get some CEOs so they could bring it back to their firms and things, but just generally, like, especially as, as regards your nine month program, like who's looking for you and who are you looking for?
Eric:You know, I would say who's looking for us or, or typically we found people that are. Been in business a little bit and have some success, but are looking for a little more, uh, satisfaction, visa, mine, happiness. And want to make a bigger difference. Yeah.
Curt:So they're making impact where they want to take themselves as a leader, up to the next level up kind
Eric:of thing. And what we're looking for is people that want to make a difference. People are willing to put a work in and go out in the community, do some non-profit work, do some other work, do some, you know, and, and put some work in and make a difference. Awesome. And, and one of have things along. Well, I think you can do it all. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, you don't have to give up. When I first started studying this, I thought you had to renounce all your possessions and go sit on a hill in India. And I found it like skiing thing. So I found that you can, you can do more by being successful, making a difference as long as you're willing to serve. Yeah.
Curt:Yeah. Very good. Well, um, we started drifting into politics a little bit there. Is that something you are willing to talk about? What would you like to share? Uh, just generally, um, anything fresh and new. I mean, we got Ukraine war going on and inflation, uh, going pretty rampant in our economy right now. And supply chain challenges. What what's, what's the best let's start
Eric:with the economics of this situation. Is that in my view, not that it's like the facts or anything, but it might be, it is that I have a PhD in economics that we, uh, spent a lot of time, you know, since the eighties opening up markets and globalization, you know, first it was Japan. And, uh, I did my dissertation on the Japanese when they came in the eighties and purchased us real estate. Well, what happened? Well, they sold us a lot of TVs and computers, and they got dollars in cash in their banks and their banks brought their people back over and said, Hey, buy real estate with this. And anyway, we globalized, it went there. It went to, you know, Vietnam and Thailand and China and all these places. So we, we kept prices down despite growth by constantly offshoring jobs, to cheaper labor markets, cheaper material markets. Now we found with COVID and, uh, political instability with a Ukraine war and those kinds of things that globalization has a big cost to it. There's more risk involved in it, you know, if you can't control your market. So. Those markets are globalization's pulling back. Some people are saying, well, medical supplies shouldn't be the supply chain should all be in the U S chip should be, maybe this should be so in. We'll pick up some stability with that and some security with that, but the things are going to smoke. You're going to be more expensive. So it isn't all just inflation in my view, as far as a rising of all prices, just generally there's shifting of costs with different things in some markets are going to be permanently more expensive when things then than
Curt:others. Yes, for one, right? Because we're going to probably be bringing more and more manufacturing back to our shores, more and more a supply chain
Eric:element. We've got that going on at cost. And we also have the whole, uh, warming of the planet and push for climate change. That's going to add some cost to it. There, I think there've been some costs that haven't been fully accounted for, like pollution. Right,
Curt:totally. Right. So that's, yeah, there's a, there's a lot of costs that don't get counted properly. Like pollution, like, well, like if we talk about China, we've largely outsourced a whole bunch of our manufacturing there, partly because of environmental and cost factors. But now their environment is kind of trashy, right? They've squeezed all the life out of it almost by, by pushing so hard.
Eric:Well, and, and most times when it, when development starts in a country, that's more thorough worldly. I mean, if you're not eating enough and don't have a roof over your head, pollution, doesn't seem like a very big problem. But as you evolve and you come up with some affluence and you, and you've solved feeding and housing, then, then you look up and go, gosh, we got to solve this problem. So it's a, it's an evolution, but if you're starving to death yeah. Pollution doesn't seem like that big of a problem, but later on does, anyway, that's another element that's going to raise costs, right. And it's likely warranted, but it's going to, things are going to cost more and that's going to have some implications. The other thing I would say is this a AI artificial intelligence and mechanical things are there. I think they're going to be accelerated because of the cost of labor and other things. It's going to push more
Curt:to that way. Yeah. Which could increase like the, the distance between the haves and the have-nots because theoretically, at least if you don't have the skills where your labor is the main thing that you have to share now, labor is being outsourced to robots. And we got to work on that. Yeah. What do you, what's your impression, I guess, on the, on the climate change question, right? Like I find it to be very challenging, uh, philosophically because yes, I want to keep the planet from. Turning into a warm ball. Right. But it's also like the things that they're talking about doing really keeps poor people poor because energy is money in many respects. Yeah. And
Eric:the other side of it is, and then the side, I think we need to exploit. It's like when, uh, televisions come out and everybody starts watching TV and by, and TVs and a new industry Sporn, right. We started worshiping TV. Right. Well, we can decide that, uh, climate is something worth worshiping and something that we take a lot of satisfaction in and it is a business. So, and it will, those, those people hopefully will benefit from jobs in that room. So I don't think it all has to be negative. I mean, it's an evolution if we buy into it. Yeah. There'll be losers in the petroleum industry, but there should also be some winners and new industries, Sporn, uh, spawned. By it as well. So it could be, you know, a job generator now in the short term, the costs will may oval I'll weigh that, but in the longterm number one is it doesn't look like we have a lot of choice. And number two is I think we need to find the, the silver lining in it and look for, look for those that growth. Yeah.
Curt:So in reflecting on like maybe the national political environment here, we got, you know, the January six kind of thing and, and all the kind of, you know, was the election, this and that fair, whatever. And now we've got Biden. Who's not a rocket ship of a thinker in the office. What do you think? Like a head for the two major parties in the, in the national realm here at midterms coming up in the fall,
Eric:left on their own. I see gridlock and divisiveness and one side trying to beat the other down. Yeah. And even if you do, you're still going to have the Kapha country and the other party. Right. You know, it's going to be, so to me, it's one of the reasons that I am a proponent of mindfulness is we need to stop judging each other just by a label, by a political label. I mean, what's, how can we have the, I mean, I know there's independence to it, but just for the sake of simplicity, half the country, one side, half the country, the other side, we're a lot more diverse than that. Totally got 150 million people don't think one way, 150, the other, there's all kinds of things in there. And we need to start thinking about what we agree on and moving that. And not just everybody, if you have a label of conservative or liberal or, you know, trans or whatever, the labels that were thrown around on that, we know things. And we know people and we don't want to talk to them anymore. That doesn't work. Yeah. We need to figure out how to get a conversation. Yeah. And to move things along that all aren't on me winning and you losing,
Curt:you mentioned trans. And so, uh, Leah Thomas has been in the news a lot lately and things, but what do you make of that whole issue? And I, I struggled between kind of fairness of helping people be who they want to be, but also, you know, especially like in the fighting sports, I don't want. Men that have changed something to be able to beat up on women, right?
Eric:Yeah. I, I, it's really complicated and not my area that I'm very versed in. I think it's an area that we have to pay attention to. I, it troubles me on the ages that some are trying to get people to decide on. I don't know how you, I mean, teenagers are, it's such a confusing time anyway. Oh
Curt:yeah. There's depression. I was a late bloomer. And so I was like, what's wrong with me and all these things. Right. And,
Eric:and so to make some permanent decisions about things at that time of life problems may, but it's not an area of my expertise. Yeah. But I do think it's an issue we need to pay attention to and listen to people and pay attention to it. We can't just slam the door down and say, no, it doesn't exist. Yeah. Because that's not
Curt:true. One of my, uh, kind of theories of, I guess, politics generally is that. We would be better to have and welcome, and be blessed by 50 diverse states instead of like having one size fits all kind of solutions. And even in conversations like this, I mean, I know that we don't want to have, you know, states where there's still segregation laws based on color and things like that or whatever, but we don't have to all approach it in the same way because we aren't, our perspectives are so much different from one another.
Eric:It would be to me to be ashamed if you had to move to find people that agreed with you, right? I mean, you may
Curt:have to do the positive for the longterm union
Eric:either. And the other side is, you know, I'm not, I was, I grew up hunting, but I don't want to feel like I got to carry a gun to go grocery shopping or kids in school and whatnot. I mean, there's a, we have to get back conversing and talking to each other and, and just saying, we have to come up with similar solutions. You've got till five, right. We'll come up with something and it may not be perfectly. You know, not doing anything and not talking is, is not an answer.
Curt:Yeah. Fair enough. Um, so politics covered pretty good here. Uh, would you like to talk about family or faith
Eric:you pick, um,
Curt:let's, let's talk more about your family is run, right? We talked about Ryan. Is he your only son or you have he's
Eric:my oldest daughter, Katie. That's a yoga teacher. She runs the yoga retreats and the yoga therapist and runs programs. She lives in Lyons and my youngest son, Colton, uh, recently graduated a history degree from CU and, uh, he runs a game. Business. Oh, really on a platform called roadblocks, which has been in the journal journal a lot. Oh, that's
Curt:fun. That's pretty exciting.
Eric:Yeah. He's a couple years out of school and trying to make it doing that. So for years we were worried about him, you know, seventh, eighth grade on the computer too much. Yeah. I still worry about that a little bit, but pretty much he's, he's running a gaming industry and go, and now he's got the game going and he's got to figure out the money. What's the name of the game? It's roadblocks is called the oh, the last crusades.
Curt:Okay. So I like to ask our guests to do a one word description of each of their children. If they're willing. Would you like to give a Ryan, Katie and Colton a shot? Sure.
Eric:Um, Ryan, uh, is a great, uh, there's two words, communicator. Okay. Katie is passion. Hmm. Colton is entrepreneur.
Curt:Sounds like they're diverse group between
Eric:totally. Which one do you love? The most? All of them, my mother, my mother taught me how to save each one. Think that you love them the most. It was a good trick.
Curt:And what was your wife's name? Tracy. And, um, how does Tracy spend her time in she's
Eric:working on art is something that, uh, you know, really wasn't rewarded and, and in school and whatnot, when she was growing up and then we got into, you know, she worked and then kids, and then since she's had a little more time, she's a very talented artist and a really good at it. What's her format, you know, she does a little of everything. I think she's still learning. So a little of everything. Yeah. Portraits and landscapes. Yeah, yeah,
Curt:yeah. Uh, watercolors and oils and whatever kinds of charcoal or whatever, she's still
Eric:working on. What is her ultimate, you know? Yeah. Whatever you said that word. I can't remember, but anyway, medium or medium. Yeah. But yeah, right now she does a little
Curt:bit fair enough. Um, was she mostly mom to the kids during this journey? And she,
Eric:and she started helping me. Oh. And then as we had kids, you got busy with
Curt:that, right. You're like, well, I'm going to hire an admin person now, so you can have all this more time for these kids. Yeah. Cool. Well, it's nice to have those kinds of family journeys and everybody's kind of got to see that together cause, uh, Ryan's in his late twenties now. And so he's been along for most, you know, I guess he was the, that the youngster you'd brought out here if he lost it. So, um, anything else about your family you want to give a shout out to your folks? Are uncles, cousins, anybody crazy in
Eric:your family tree? Um, my, my, my parents have passed. I have three brothers that are all. Yeah, we go with CML every summer. They all come back to Maine.
Curt:Oh, cool. So they have neighboring parcels out there at the kind of
Eric:my, uh, my next oldest brother ends up in my parents' house, which was on 25 acres and he's runs a, uh, organic farm there. Oh wow. For their own thing. I have another brother that's in New Mexico. He's a poet and a brother whose birthday is today? April fool's day. Remember little brother Gary. He said works in hardware. Sales.
Curt:Yeah. Does the, the, the poet, like he like buys his bread because of his poems and stuff like that, or,
Eric:well, he's had to do some odd jobs over his, you know, he was a speech therapist and did some taught at a university and doing other things all the way, but his passion is poetry. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Now he does a
Curt:full-time nice. I like that. I was, I've written, I don't know, 15 or 20, what I would say real poems, you know, and they're hard. They take a lot of students. Sometimes
Eric:I'm the same, I've written some, and he doesn't think they're real poems, but I do
Curt:because that change in artists. Yeah. So, um, like when you think about family, like what's the significance of it and what do we do to make stronger families? I guess if you think that's also
Eric:useful. I think family and relationships are really in the end of the day, what. Right. You know, connecting with people and family is so huge. Um, shouldn't be underestimated and needs to, we need to spend a lot of time on that. I, I think it's gotta be a top priority. I mean, it doesn't matter how good you are at your job, right? If your family's a mess, you're a mess. Totally present. So you gotta, you gotta figure that out. And there's no, I think presence paying attention, listening, right. And really with kids, I find seeing them as equals to you. I mean, of course you're bigger. You have more experience. You might have more money and whatnot, but really treating them as if they're equal people and respecting them that way is the key to that. And they know it. They can tell,
Curt:I like I was talking with Alma just the other day, about how fascinating it is. Cause we're like from a consciousness standpoint, we're all these little cylinders of kind of awareness. And we were aware of what happens through our own eyes and in our own minds and thoughts and everything that's going on in your mind is kind of a mystery to me right now. But humanity is more like ants or something where they're just kind of useless by themselves fully. Like we accomplish almost nothing by that and that relationship cultivation of bringing all those little closed off spheres into greater understanding with each other and whatever.
Eric:Yeah. And I think we were wired to do want to know, to think that we know, say that we know, and really in the end we know little for sure. I say, I know who I am and what I stand for. Yeah. You know, but I can't know. I don't know what's going on in your brain. I talked to you, I can get, uh, you know, ask you and get a, an idea of that. And I can have some intuition, but we really don't know.
Curt:Well, and we spend, um, You know, when we spend some time intentionally meditating and being apart from our thoughts for even just a minute, uh, it helps us to kind of put ourselves in the right place in terms of alignment with all those other little people, just doing the same thing, even getting to know
Eric:ourself, right? Because we're, we're a collection of things that other people have put in there. Yeah. You know, that's what we spend the first part of the gap on is just clearing out what culture is told us is important. And some of the things are important, but mostly culture is telling us to go to work, make things, consume things, right. Buy things. Right. Uh, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm a business guy. I'm an economics. We need to do that. Yeah. But that's not purpose. And that isn't where I get my value or my joy.
Curt:I think that's the biggest thing. And obviously it's not just that simple. This goes back to, I guess, politics a little bit, but tax policy, um, there's an old Reagan quote, you know, tax what you want less of and subsidize what you want more of. And I generally agree with that from a, from an economic standpoint and the income tax taxes income. So, well, do we want less income? No, not really. I wouldn't say that we do, but what we do want is less consumption because that's like consumption is kind of what drives the climate crisis element. If in the end, if you, if you think about it that way. I mean, the fact that every time I want to buy a little bit of hand lotion, I buy it in a container that I then throw it away, you know, or whatever that looks like. Right. They're totally in conflict with each other.
Eric:Well, we need to do, but yet we see what's happening to, I mean, just look at the amount of plastic and the old laptops and TVs and what, not that we can't even get rid of. Right. Where are they going?
Curt:Yeah. Yeah. And that's, uh, so anyway, let's. Hi, zoom up approach. Uh,
Eric:but I mean, I think if you had a platform that said consume less, right. Then, you know, the next thing is going to be well, if I consume less than I need to buy less, and if I buy less than you need to make less. Right.
Curt:Well, exactly. Yes, exactly. And we have this kind of, it has to get bigger. Otherwise, a lot of things break. Uh, especially for the financing structures, right. At some
Eric:point we've more in that model out. Yeah,
Curt:no, exactly. Yeah. It's going to break eventually at the current trajectory. Um, so I think we covered family a fair bit there. Let's talk about faith. Uh, are you from a faith background?
Eric:Well, I am from a faith background and that I had a dad that was, uh, an atheist and a mom. That was a Methodist.
Curt:And how was she? Well,
Eric:she dragged us to church until we got big and then we didn't go to church, but, uh, I ended up being baptized at Piskel. I have a brother that's an Episcopal priest. Oh,
Curt:interesting. Which one? Not the poet. He's running the organic farm.
Eric:Yeah. Yup. And then, uh, the brother is a Buddhist and so I think we have a big tent of understanding of it. And I say, I think religion serves. Hugely impactful, usually important. Yeah. And the only religion I don't believe in is the one that says that my religion isn't as good as yours. Other than that, I mean, it's a personal choice and most of them down to the thing, or how should I act? How have we agreed to act? Yeah, for sure. We agreed to take, you know, to behave and that can't be a bad thing.
Curt:A hundred percent. That's a similar, I like to say. Um, I look at kind of the various religions is kind of like, everybody's got a foggy lens at what the God person universe thing is, but we're all seeing the same, same circumstances play out on the ground. We know that intentional, uh, thought like prayer is huge. It changes the outcomes of things that happen, right? Whether you're meditating or whatever, whatever you're calling. If it does the same thing,
Eric:right? So in the gap, it has a living in the gap. It has a thing because most of the mindfulness literature comes from the east Eastern religions from Hinduism Buddhism. Yeah, that was kind of that wasn't even, and I find that can be a big turnoff for people. So I really look for things, uh, that, I mean, it's not necessary to have that in. So there some authors like Jon Kabat Zinn that started mindful based stress reduction about 40 years ago, he has stripped that out and just said, this is meditation. If you read, uh, Eckard totally talks about as much one, you know, Catholicism and Buddhism kind of in the same. So I really look for avenues because we're what 70% of, uh, uh, Christian faith in the U S something number like, is it really,
Curt:it doesn't seem like it's that really? I think it's like half of that for realsies though, or people that are privileged check that
Eric:box a lot less, but yeah. So, but anyway, in order to not be a turnoff, we really try to stay with literature. That's just straight. This is mindfulness, this is meditation and a straight thing can be used in
Curt:any real. So you wouldn't say that what you're doing or teaching was in conference. In fact,
Eric:most people get rebirth to it. Yeah. I just read another, uh, we're going through a 12 month plan with our group and somebody else's morning, there've been three or four of them this year that have said I recommitted to my faith. Yeah. I've this has brought me back to knowing how
Curt:important my faith is. Well, that's one of the things that I've noticed when I have studied other, especially Eastern religions and stuff is, is I am a Christian and I go to church at least half the time and whatever, but I read things all the time where I'm like, well, this is basically an exact parallel to this segment of, of this book or whatever, you know, it's just a different packaging for the same, describing
Eric:them, describing a spiritual experience in words, which are always going to fall short of what the actual experience, right. It's our description of it. But it isn't what is actually there. So different people describe it different ways and agree on different things, but the what, the heart of what we're. Ilene there is, you know, teaching us to have a communion with God and with consciousness and to be a
Curt:good, yeah, love God and love one another. And that's kind of the thing, right? It was
Eric:ticking on hot, who is a Vietnamese monk that died earlier this year and say, uh, that Buddhism can make you a better Christian.
Curt:Ah, that's pretty awesome.
Eric:To me, it's much more philosophical than it is. Yeah. Religious in quotes.
Curt:Yeah. No, I think that's a pretty fascinating, uh, quote. I love, uh, yeah. So, um, I guess anything you'd like else to share and topic of faith generally? So I think what I'm hearing is that. Pick your thing and then pay attention to it because that framework and having a values that you have identified. And, and I think that goes into a business principle as well, right? Like that's the utility of having your business value is actually itemized out and written on the wall or things like that is these are the things that are important to us around here. Yeah, definitely both. That's a microcosm of this larger society and
Eric:to have a tent within your business for as much spirituality, I mean, you wouldn't want all Buddhists or all Christians or all this. I mean, it's a big tent. This, this is a great melting pot. Yeah. For sure of a politics and religion philosophy.
Curt:Fair enough. Can be awesome. He seemed like a guy that might've studied a fair bit of philosophy along the way as well. My own, I like it. I love it. Okay. Any, uh, like I actually like Greek philosophers was something that I studied intentionally and then I had other elements, any favorites outside of like the living in the gap informed portion of. As you mentioned a few names already there,
Eric:boys. Um, modern day is a guy named Rupert spirit that I like to read. Okay. It's good. That God totally is good. I
Curt:like him. I haven't actually read it. I see.
Eric:It's not, he's not an easy one. We usually try to chunk that down. Tell me that I'm not going to pick it up. It's too scary. It's worthwhile, but it's not, it isn't like a page Turner. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough.
Curt:Fair enough. Um, well we always like to close with the local experience and that's the, uh, the craziest experience day, week, year in the life of a, that you'd care to describe to our audience. Um, and it's really an open table. Uh, if you were swimming with sharks or things like that, or if you,
Eric:whatever, when it comes to mind is just the COVID right experience when we're going along. And then, you know, this whole. And I can remember my kids saying this is coming. I'm going to, I won't
Curt:be that bad. Right. Last time I talked about it.
Eric:But, uh, um, and then just, you know, seeing, you know, whole, whole centers that we have empty, right. You know, going home and just saying, oh crap, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do about this? And we had just up the street here, I was just at the target center. I mean, we had a 24 hour fitness in there, filed bankruptcy. Really? It just put like $5 million getting them in there. They really,
Curt:I forgot that was your space over there. I used to have
Eric:target moving in. Huh? Well, that was, it was, uh, we, we, we stuck the landing, but it was so
Curt:there for awhile.
Eric:Imagine you've got the banks and you got all the mortgage payments and you've got all that stuff happening. So I guess that, that whole experience getting through that year, and I would say that was also. The value of partnerships and relationships, get you through that kind of stuff. As I had my guys, Nathan and Blaine every day, we'd be on a zoom, different people, doing stuff. I had a lawyer that I've had
Curt:since the mid eighties. Right. And you're managing a lot of properties besides you're negotiating between landlords and tenants and who has to pay rent, who doesn't,
Eric:everyone was negotiated
Curt:with something. Yeah. Yeah. That's what, uh, I I'm friends with, uh, Jimmy over at Palmer properties. And he was like, dude, I am just like having conversations every day with everybody. Yeah, it was. So that
Eric:was the most recent thing I can think of like that with like what, what
Curt:is going on here? Well, it is, it's an interesting local experience in that. Everybody went through it, you know, everybody had their own chapter. What did, how did you guys treat that? Did you guys, uh, do you guys have a physical office location that you're normally at you shut down for quite a while? Or did you move to a couple
Eric:of people kept going in. They wanted to go in. Most people went home, you know, and did it, and no one was made to come in, but a couple of people preferred to come in and with only two or three in the office, it was safe. Exactly.
Curt:Yeah. My wife works from home and we have a little bungalow and so I kind of have to have an office. Cause my voice is so loud. I can't have phone calls with people all day and do podcasts and stuff like that there. So, uh, you know, I'm blessed in that regard, but um, any, I guess, any craziest things or elements of that COVID season, obviously just the unknowing, right? Especially when you're a landlord and a tenant and a broker and a property manager.
Eric:Well, we didn't know anything. And we learned to, nobody knew anything, you know, the more you got through. Yeah. We're all working. We're all feeling our way through this,
Curt:based on what we learned and what we, what we saw. Like if, uh, if a similar bug came along in five years, um, how do you think it would be different now? What would, what would your hindsight button say we should do? Is there any kind of major things that you think we've learned as a society that would inform our behavior next time?
Eric:I hope so. You know, uh, communication, cooperation, science, you know, we're all things that come up for me. Um, but we're human and we tend to cycle on and keep forgetting those things. Where are you going out again? So I hope that we take the steps to be.
Curt:I, uh, I don't know if we did the right thing, but I early in the thing, I was like, well, the government has to show that they're doing something. They might not know what to do at all. And whether that'll help at all, but they have to do something because they can't do nothing. Because then that would mean they don't know what to do. Don't know what to do.
Eric:Exactly.
Curt:So well. Um, any last kind of remarks, thoughts? Uh, I think we can wrap this thing up. We got,
Eric:no, if you want to know more about living in the gap, you can check out living in the gap.org. That's spelled out there's information there on our programs is a few videos. If you wanted to unfree resources, if you wanted to try meditation or a little mindful movement, there's some free videos there.
Curt:And then on the LC real estate group, like who would want to look you up? Is this a people that own commercial properties generally then, or that might want to develop a commercial property?
Eric:Yeah, either we have a really talented and a mindful group of real estate brokers, and they're capable of development, building things, buying things. Who's your favorite cat? They're all favorite.
Curt:All right. I'm not going to get you out of that one. Yeah. Hey Eric, I appreciate you being here today. Wish you a great weekend.
Eric:Thank you.
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