EXPERIENCE 68 | Beth and Peter Bostwick, Founders of Ready Touch, You Can Choose, & Mainn
Peter and Beth are the Founders of, You can Choose, Ready Touch, and their newest venture, Mainn, is a business connection software device.
Ready touch was their first and most successful business so far and it was a software company that scaled up over the period of 10 years. You Can Choose is a book and a philosophical pathway for entrepreneurs to really understand themselves.
They have a great journey and you're gonna see a couple of just smart hardworking people that took a lot of time and a lot of effort to build something really spectacular.
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Music By: A Brother's Fountain
My guest today on local experience podcast were Peter and Beth Boswick. Peter and Beth are the founders of you can choose. Ready touch and their newest venture. Maine Maine is a business connection software device that, uh, you'll be seeing a lot more about soon. Ready touch was their first and most successful business so far. And it was a software company that scaled up over the period of 10 years. And you can choose is really more of a book and a philosophical pathway for entrepreneurs to really understand themselves. Um, it's a great journey. You're gonna see a couple of, uh, just. Smart hardworking people that took a lot of time and a lot of effort to build something really spectacular. And since then, they've really focused on what can we do to make our communities stronger everywhere we are. And so, uh, it's a great episode. I've got both of these, uh, on my mind to be future local facilitators, and they've got a great business journey and have a great servant heart. Tune in and enjoy this business journey with Peter and Beth Bostwick. Let's have some fun. Welcome to the Loco experience podcast. I'm your host Kurt bear. This show is produced by me and my team and sponsored by my small business Loco think tank. And sometimes others episodes feature a range of local and regional business and community leaders. As guests in a conversational interview format, our guests are interesting and successful people with unique business journeys. And the more business education and unvarnished truth, we can uncover the better you'll feel like you really know our guests after each episode. And if I'm doing my job well, listeners will find business principles and tips from their journey. And a greater appreciation for each of our guests woven into these long format. Experience. Episodes are occasional thought. Bubbles episodes, topically focused snippets of five to 15 minutes where our guests unfold important and timely business truths. And also I'll read the local perspective blog posts because I'm lazy to prefer to listen than to read. And maybe you do too. Thanks for tuning in. And if you like to show, please subscribe, review and share it with your favorite people.
Curt:
I'm here today with Peter and Beth Bostwick and Peter and Beth are the founders of you can choose of ready touch and most recently Maine and, uh, the relative newcomers back to Fort Collins or Northern Colorado, uh, moving here in March of 2021 in a snowstorm. So let's just start with the move. Uh, talk to me about moving here in a snowstorm. You've been in California a long time, so. that wasn't that wasn't that cool?
Beth:
I bet well, yeah. Well, it was very cool, frankly, but the thing that was interesting is we rented a house in Northern, was it north old town north? Yeah. Yeah. And, um, the mover, we're having a hard time getting a driver to get our, our stuff out of the, um, the state of California into Colorado,
Curt:
you know, driver, because everybody was trying to move out of California at that time.
Beth:
perhaps, but they couldn't find a driver to move, move us across the state line. So they finally found somebody. So we were a little bit delayed and getting things delivered and then the snowstorm was starting to come in and literally the guy. Pulled the truck up unloaded as the clouds were getting darker and the storms coming in and he had to, as soon as he was done, he hightailed it out to, uh, Nebraska, cuz he had another drop and he wanted to get out there before the storm hit Fort Collins. And so we dropped the stuff at the end of the day and then we ended up going back to my parents' house cause we didn't have a chance to unpack anything. Yeah. And then we got stuck there for two days. So we were just,
Curt:
oh your stuff is all unloaded. But
Peter:
exactly. We're still the basement of our parents. It's
Beth:
like, get us outta here. We could even shovel ourselves out the next day. There's so much snow. So it's quite the experience. So let's,
Curt:
uh, let's start this conversation with, what were you guys doing? Um, immediately before that move and we'll come back around to what you're doing now, but, um, you had, had built a company ready touch that became pretty substantial and, and exited that. And we'll tell that story, but what were you, were you trying to find yourself? Did you find yourself moving about how, what brought you back to Fort Collins? Gimme some of that background?
Peter:
Well, the, it was more of like a stepping stone, right? Yeah. We, we moved from where we built the company and sold it then to a little town in, in, um, California called Santa Cruz. Okay. Which is right on the beach. Yeah. And it's a beautiful place to just chill. Yeah. And that's basically what we did for about a year and a half is okay. Worked on, you can choose or wrote another book while we were down there. We haven't published it yet. And just trying to. Decompress from all the experiences that we had, um, with ready touch. Yeah. In figuring out, well, what
Curt:
do we do next? Yeah. Yeah. That's a, a pretty beautiful way. Were you just there or did you like travel the world in different things as well? You were just chilling on the beach and uh, what's that look like. For you guys, are you runners surfers?
Peter:
Well, we took up, um, actually it was fun. We took up, um, CrossFit while we were there. Whoa. Yeah, that was a, a blast to do that. I'd never been much into exercise. Beth is a world class cyclist. Yeah. And I'd just, you know, get around a little bit, but doing the CrossFit was just a amazing, amazingly empowering to yeah.
Curt:
Transformative. I imagine very much so. Yeah. So it seems like, like before you said that, I thought maybe I could beat you up, but probably I can't
Peter:
yeah. Doing 50 burpees every morning for a month at a time. Makes a huge difference in how you feel about yourself. I imagine.
Curt:
I imagine that's cool.
Beth:
Well, I was excited because he was excited about exercise because he's just never been that way. Right. So I was like, wow. He found something. He like now, you know, lifting weights is something I never really did, but, um, It was, it was, I wasn't as ed with it as Peter was, but it was a good way to, you know, just exercise because yeah. The other thing is, you know, we didn't really get to go anywhere because it was COVID we ended up oh, right. Being locked down in Santa Cruz, which is really, frankly, not a bad place to be. On the other hand, you know, worldwide travel was not a, you didn't get chased off
Curt:
the, the beach or anything. No. Well, we technically
Beth:
followed, they closed, they closed the beach so we all, we did get chased off. Everybody got chased off literally except the birds, but
Peter:
that's quite, but it was, it was a really good place to, to be in quarantine. Yeah. Because you could walk down to the beach, like Beth was mentioning. Yeah. Yeah.
Curt:
And how big is Santa Cruz?
Peter:
About 80,000 people or something like that. Okay. It's big enough. And it's mostly a tourist place and.
Beth:
Although, while we were there, there weren't too many tourists because they pretty much were all locked out.
Curt:
right. Essentially like kinda a weird place to be. But in those, it didn't to have a big draw at that time, you know? and, and then they had
Peter:
fires. Oh, right. Yeah. So the fires were actually, I remember waking up one night, um, to a whole bunch of lightning. Yeah. That's right. Strikes. Oh, wow. And we said it's two o'clock in the morning. It's it looked like, and it strikes the bones. Right. Somebody had just flipped a switch on
Beth:
and off. No, no, no, no, no, no. So what happened was we woke up in the middle. I woke up in the middle of the night because there was there, there were white lights flashing in our, in the skylights. And I thought, what is going on? I thought it was like a, yeah, please bust or yeah, something like that. Except there were white lights and weren't red. Right. And I thought, okay. So, you know, I thought I'm gonna go back to bed. And then all of a sudden. I hear this whoosh on the, the side of the, the building the window. And it was the leaves off of a Redwood tree. That's right across from where the apartment, when we were staying in and it had blown off and hit the window and it sounded like a big brush, like somebody was hitting the house. And so then the, we saw even more lights. And so we ended up getting up and realized there was this huge electrical storm going on. And so. Peter said, well, I'm going down to the beach and I'm thinking that's two way am. You're not gonna go by yourself. I ain't gonna go with you. Cuz I you get outta the car. It's like, you just stay in the car. It's electrical storm tires. Right, right. So he literally drove down to the beach and it was very interesting because I was always fascinated with, um, the, the electrical storms that come over the mountains when I was a kid. And so to see the lightning flashes over the ocean because it just it's like black. Right. You know, it's like this black line, doesn't go, anything, go, go below it. Um, but those, that electrical storm is what ultimately started. The fires have been, um, the Santa Cruz mountains, which interesting, which then, you know, it wasn't until what, a week later that we had to potentially evacuate. So we had the car packed, the dog is ready to go in the back. And
Peter:
so that's, we decided that instead of going to a shelter, anything like that in case we had to. Well, let's just go out to Colorado. Oh
Curt:
really? Yeah. I was just gonna ask, like what precipitated this move that was, and it was literally, you potentially burned out of your apartment where you could be evacuated at any time. And that sucks to just be sitting there being ready to be evacuated at any time.
Peter:
Mm-hmm it never got that way. Cuz we were close enough to the water that happen.
Curt:
One of you has family here still in
Peter:
Northern Colorado.
Beth:
Yeah. Yeah. My parents, I grew up in Greeley. My parents a number of years ago had moved to Fort Collins and when we drove out, we ended up staying for about a month because of the weather or the, I should say their quality was so bad in California. Turns out that we had the, I think it was the camera and peak fire, I think. Right? Yeah. Through all the, all the pine
Curt:
burning, literally that's been for a long
Beth:
time. And I remember over labor day, we went to, went to, uh, a location where my brother had moved, um, his, his business and. We literally got outta the car and I felt like we were being pelted with like pieces of wood. Oh my goodness. The Ash was so bad. And, but, well, I guess we went from the frying pan into the fire literal
Curt:
yeah. There's a couple days there. It was pretty,
Peter:
we were here then just like, why, why did we leave
Curt:
California? And why aren't they evacuating all these people? Right, right. Thankfully, we've got a lot of dis deciduous trees and stuff like that in Fort Collins that stay pretty, uh, fire. They still, they all, yeah. Well, they'd all burn if they burn though. Yeah. We saw that,
Peter:
but we came out here and looked around and said, well, maybe this is something that we can, we can
Curt:
consider. Were you thinking about Santa Cruz? Just kind of as a, who knows for how long or yeah, it was a temporary.
Peter:
Yeah. We were just renting there. We kept our house up in, in, in, um, Menlo park in LA park. Gotcha.
Curt:
Figure. Gotcha. What we're gonna do next? Fair enough. Fair enough. So you make this decision and, and move to Fort Collins, March of 2021. And, uh, I guess let's talk about. Let's talk about Maine first. Sure. Because it's, it's your heart's passion right now. We're gonna be storytelling about who you are and the other businesses that you've created. But, uh, talk to me about like, what's the point,
Beth:
the point of Maine,
Curt:
the point of Maine, what's the mission? The purpose. Okay.
Peter:
So, so our tagline is we're helping business people connect to local resources.
Beth:
Okay. Yep. And the thing that's so exciting about it is this, and this goes back to some of the other stuff you'll probably wanna know about in terms of our earlier startup journey, but main is Maine is really an, a compilation whatever collection, if you will, of experiences that we really would like to mitigate or minimize for other entrepreneurs getting started because the, the decision to jump and go start your business. Is a hard decision to make. Yeah. And,
Curt:
and you don't
Beth:
know what you don't know exactly. You don't even know what questions to ask. And so Maine is really our attempt to use technology to help early stage entrepreneurs and, and other more established businesses over time, get the resources they need when
Curt:
they need it. It's pretty interesting. I, I just had a conversation with somebody yesterday and, and we decided to make an appointment for him to meet with me and him talk about Loco think tank and mm-hmm And I was like, well, can you just send me a calendar invite? He's like, I, I don't know how to do that. I'm like, well, you, this says you could just do little calendar thing, you know, and it's invite people or whatever, because we just don't know, like, he'd never really engaged outside of his own little, um, business and mm-hmm so, yeah, and that's, there's a lot of little silos in that way that are hard to
Beth:
understand.
Peter:
Exactly. And it it's amazing how much we take for granted having done this cuz you know, we've been entrepreneurs. 20 years now, you just, you just bootstrap and figure things out for sure. But it's, it's hard to figure that stuff out to get started. Right? Well,
Curt:
and I was a banker for 15 years, right. Working with small business people. Mm-hmm, you know, I knew more than the average bear and I still didn't know much, you know, when it really got going. So, um, I feel like maybe instead of talking too much about Maine, we'll just do a main teaser because I think it will be filled out better by this journey. Mm-hmm and, and really make more sense. So, um, you said Beth, that you grew up in Northern Colorado here in Greeley mm-hmm um, take me way back, uh, to third grade or fifth grade or something like that. Third, third grade. Talk to me about young. I knew you were a cyclist and things. Were you already an athlete? Um,
Beth:
you know, I was, I was growing up. I was always stronger than most people. I just, I was just stronger than everybody and sports were just where I do. You think
Curt:
you beat me up? Peter's like, yeah, she could beat you up.
Beth:
that depends on how much, how much warning I get. Maybe. I
Peter:
dunno. She might not be able to beat you up, but she's probably
Curt:
as strong. She give you a good test. Yeah, that's right. Fair enough. All right. Well, I would, I'd be hard pressed to hit her and if she hits me, then we're gonna be not equally meshed. Well, let's not go there. We're not gonna do it. I'm just asking hypotheticals, like don't get me in trouble. Indian
Peter:
light wrestling. Is that what
Curt:
you're yeah, yeah, we could do something a little less. Uh, yeah, I could probably just
Peter:
jujitsu.
Beth:
Okay. Okay. So, so I started off, you know, as a kid, I was just always active. I didn't sit still very well. My mother really, really wanted me to learn piano. I just, I couldn't sit long enough to play. Yeah, I did it enough to say, okay, can I go out and play now? And you know, it just a high moment. Yeah. And so I've always been somebody who had to just move. And I actually learned, uh, a number of years ago that. I want, they call it kinesthetic learner where I learn with my body making movements. So I was the person in the back of the room tapping their toe, right. Chewing gum.
Curt:
If you're walking and listening to a podcast, you'll receive it better than if you're exactly sitting there. Right,
Beth:
right. Interesting. And I always thought I was a visual learner, but now it was definitely not. And so that explained a lot of things. Um, so when I, uh, was growing up, I was just, I would run around, I was in track. Um, I, I have really very little hand-eye coordination. So if you threw a ball at me, I would probably get hit So that might be a good defensive mechanism for you. Yeah. But I was always faster, stronger than most the blood of endurance, most people. Yeah. And, um, I used to run quite a bit. In fact, one of the things that I did when I was a junior in high school was running cross country. And, uh, there was a local gym in town with, uh, a guy who was a marathon runner and. He said, I'll work with your cross country team. I was at Greeley west and, um, his name's Doug bell and the cross country team, he said told us if you work with me through the summer, he said, at the end of the summer, we'll do a relay, a running relay from grand lake, Colorado back to Greeley. And of course we were all in at that point. So, um, we practiced and ran and, you know, did what he asked us to do. And then at the end of the summer, we went out, spent the night, some cabin in grand lake and got up at like 6:00 AM and we were all paired. Yeah. They were always cuz we were never running by like a van staggering kind of thing. Yeah. Yep. And so there were, I think probably 13, 14, 15 of us. Okay. That literally paired up and we ran all the way to Greeley, so oh cool. It started off at. I don't know, it was probably 40 degrees in the morning snowing at the top of trail Ridge. Sure. We got up there and then by the time we got to Greeley, it was 90 plus degrees. Gosh, that was quite the quite the day cooling day. Yes, it was so
Curt:
very cool. I've done the wild west relia a couple times, uh, which is from Fort Collins to Steamboat Springs. Oh, very team of 12. So if you're looking for a challenge,
Beth:
uh, I can't do that. Cause after I started running, um, later in high school, the doctor said, you keep running, you're gonna, you're not gonna walk again.
Curt:
Oh, your knees couldn't take that much abuse. And you're kind of a heavier person probably and whatever. So that's where cycling starts for you probably. Yeah.
Beth:
It's exactly where it is. Cuz my freshman year I met, he was. Uh, junior national champion in the United States. So he was the fastest cyclist under 18, and he said, I'll never forget, screw running, get on a bike. And so my first bike race was up VA mountain. I was hooked, so,
Curt:
wow, cool. So Peter, same, uh, same question. Where are you at? Are you, you're not Northern Colorado native?
Peter:
No, I'm actually started off in Vermont, Vermont.
Curt:
Oh yeah. Very good. Exactly. My last guest, uh, that just released this week was from Maine. Oh, uh, you don't meet that. Meet many people out here from Vermont and Maine. Definitely
Peter:
not. And, and unlike Beth, who I think was in the same house for her whole life, by the time I finished high school, I'd lived in 10 different places. Wow. Including in a hotel.
Curt:
So tell me about that. Is that like describing a family environment that was kind of chaotic
Peter:
or no, I don't know if it was especially chaotic. Yeah. It just. I guess it was very
Curt:
there's a reason you moved. So it was normal to you, but because of course, when you're a
Peter:
kid, as long as you, you know, you're doing, having a good time. It's it's all right. Fair enough. Yeah, no, we, we moved quite a bit. It was a different kind of jobs or different kind of situation. So fair
Curt:
enough. Um, and we'll talk a little bit more about family, uh, as we go along, but like, describe that family environment. Was your dad like in trades or construction or your, your mom? I don't know
Peter:
if you, yeah, no, but they both went to school to be teachers. Okay. The educators, my father did, um, um, shop. Okay. And my mother did home economics. Mm-hmm so they had the, the house all covered.
Curt:
yeah, my mother-in-law was
a
Peter:
home EC teacher as well. My, my father could build anything and my mother could cook anything. Right. That was amazing. And, but he, he had jobs like he was, um, in a little bit in construction, um, back then you could actually have a job being a store manager. So that was, that was kind of his, his role for a little while. We just gotcha. Bounced
Curt:
around different places. Just kind of a, a rolling stone kind of family like that. Nothing like a lot of times families that move around a lot it's because they, you know, lost a job and had to go get a new job or different things. I I'm sure. I'm sure that happened as well. Whatever. fair enough. Fair enough. And, and how many siblings in your family? I'm the oldest of four. Oh, wow. Okay. I'm also the oldest of four. Yeah. What's your span to the youngest 13, uh, 10 years for me. So pretty good stretch. And Beth's what kind of family were you all
Beth:
stable in? I'm the oldest of four and there's probably a span. probably 10. Okay.
Curt:
Interesting. That's pretty wild. All four, all three of us. All three of us with four. Yeah. Oldest of four. Yeah. So, um, take me to like your first, uh, departures from Vermont
Peter:
or, or, well, so that was when I was third grade or second grade, so. Okay.
Curt:
Yes. Were you so, oh, that was only one stop along the way you weren't moving around Vermont, you were moving around the
Peter:
coast. Exactly. From Vermont and a couple places in Pennsylvania, then three or four or five places in, in Florida. Oh, wow. And we still have family down in Florida. Okay. So when I go home,
Curt:
it's Florida is home now kind of, or at least where the, the older people in your family and some of the cousins are right.
Peter:
Exactly. Fair enough. LA, we call it lower Alabama.
Curt:
Is that on like the panhandle, Florida kind thing? Yeah. Yeah. That's actually a place I really wanna visit is the panhandle of Florida.
Peter:
The beaches are absolutely gorgeous. Yeah. We we've. Ended up in a place called Panama city. Okay. Beach, which has the world's most beautiful beaches. That's okay. There's sand that looks like souls,
Curt:
sugar. Let your aunt Karen know I'm gonna be yeah, there you go out there soon, please. So, um, so you, what kind of a student we were talking earlier before we started recording that, uh, before some CrossFit action, relatively recently, you weren't as interested in exercise in doing things
Peter:
at yeah. Exercise, exercise. Wasn't a thing. And school wasn't a thing either. Okay. So I remember, so I started off in community college. Okay. So cuz college was just too big for me and you
Curt:
just weren't that interested in high school. And so no, no, I,
Peter:
I mean, I was smart enough to do well, but. Motivated or understood that. So what did
Curt:
you do instead? Were you a juvenile delinquent kind of cutting classes, smoking cigarettes around the back of the school? Stuff like that? Mostly. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Fair enough.
Peter:
I wasn't, it didn't belong to any clubs or
Curt:
anything. You didn't even make the top 10 of the most likely to succeed list in the yearbook, not
Peter:
even close So, so I, I, in, I was in the, um, senior class play. Oh, my rabbit had a bigger role than I did.
Curt:
were you a musician?
Peter:
No, no. We, we did. We had a play that they needed, the chef needed to pull a rabbit out of the hat and we raised Bunnys. So fair enough. I could bring a bunny in other than winning. Other than that, I was a
Curt:
guard I didn't have any lines. Nope.
Beth:
suffice it to say, if we would've met high school, we would've never been married. Fair
Curt:
enough. Not ever cl so you, you go off to community college a little bit, Peter and start getting educated and, and what's the real world. When you first get into it.
Peter:
Yeah. It's it was still quite confusing. And I ended up leaving the community college and going to Florida state. Okay. Which is in Tallahassee, which was too far away. And I wanted to be a psychologist or psychiatrist, I think as a direction I was heading
Curt:
either are. Yeah. Right. I didn't know, tomato model, so
Peter:
that's right. So kinda psychology. Yep. Um, and then I remember my first semester in school, I got a 1.7 GPA, which means that they're not gonna keep me along a whole lot longer.
Curt:
yeah. I had a 2.14 after three semesters. Right. And I got a DUI to top it off. Oh, you
Peter:
did? Okay. So there's lots for us to talk about in terms of similarities. Um, and then I realized, well, this, this is not gonna get me where I wanted to go. I suck it up. Buttercup so we're pretty. Almost straight as, from that point
Curt:
on. Cool. So yeah, sometimes you needed just about fail before you something, something happened. Yeah. Okay. And, and Beth, talk to me about, uh, your journey kind of that upper high school college. I was like the total opposite of this guy here. Right? Super achiever. 4.2.
Beth:
No, no, I didn't do that. I did well, but I wasn't like the 4.0 people. Um, I, I worked hard, but you know, we grew up and we were basically under the assumption that once we got outta high school, we went into college and we had to get a job. We got outta college. So it was like, I wouldn't say don't come home, but our expectations you'll go find a job and support yourself and not come back couch kind of thing. Um, which is pretty much what we all did. I think that, you know, when I met Peter at CSU, he was not at all the guy that I was gonna be. I was looking for so many tall, dark and handsome, and he was. Short poor and kind of nerdy blonde I don't, I don't think he was even nerdy. He was really
Curt:
kinda not even nerdy yet. Gotcha.
Beth:
He was really cute. He had beautiful blue eyes. Um, but, but he was smarter than me. Well, at least in some way, some ways. Yeah. And that intrigued me because I hadn't dated many guys, not in total, but, but there weren't many guys that were interesting to me. Yeah. They, they just, they weren't, they weren't interesting to talk to, you know, they were, you know, all about muscles or cars or something like that. And it's like, okay, well, so what, yeah. So, but he was, he had some interesting
Curt:
perspectives and C me, where are you? Are you down in Florida or how did you guys? No, we met
Beth:
here at CSU. Okay. He was a grad student and I went to his lab, so
Peter:
yeah. So after, after Florida state, I was at home working on the house. I learned how to do construction. Yeah. And I got a phone call from a professor at, um, CSU saying, Hey, you wanna come and be my graduate assistant? I applied, of course. Sure.
Curt:
But you're like, you bet. Sure. That sounds good.
Peter:
You're gonna pay my way and Colorado. Wow. That's like forever
Curt:
away. Yeah. Interesting. You're kind of like, you're a little bit like me where like, even going to college was like this big world. And I was from a little town. I graduated with a class of five and I was sure that it all those other kids that were there were gonna be way smarter than me and stuff. And then it turns out it wasn't true at all. Like but, but it's a different set of expectations. It just really kind of shows sometimes how it takes years to overcome a culture of like, not necessarily believing mm-hmm right. Whether it's your family culture, but whereas you're in contrast, Beth yours is like, okay, well, Go get yourself a good career path, right. And a college education and go be successful cuz that's the expectation. Yep.
Beth:
And, and it was, and so it was kinda like that's what you did. So I followed the rules, all did all, did all the things
Curt:
that I was supposed. And then you find Peter and you're like, I'm gonna fix him. He's so smart and cute. Funny.
Beth:
I'm not gonna fix him. I can, he's not gonna fix him. He might have tried to fix me. Maybe that's
Peter:
a better way to put it. I gave up on that a long time ago. right. So
Curt:
were you in grad school as well? Or you're just a little younger. So you were still in re undergrad, so yeah, I'm
Beth:
a couple years behind him. So I, I worked in, um, my advisors, actually our advisors, um, lab. I was a senior in college and he was a first year grad student.
Curt:
And what were you, what coursework were you studying?
Beth:
Um, I was actually studying food science and nutrition. It was a, it was a degree that was. perfect for me, cuz I was gonna go into medicine. Mm. I wanted to go to med school and I see, you know, physics and chemistry. Weren't something that really thrilled me. Yeah. But, uh, nutrition, I figured was kinda
Curt:
more like applied
Beth:
science and yeah. And, and, and they never really taught, uh, nutrition in med school at that point. This is like several decades ago. And for me as an athlete, I knew how much food affected my performance. So it's like, well, it's gotta be the same thing for somebody who's sick. Yeah. Probably even more so. Yeah. So that was why I chose the, the degree program. But it was very interesting. I very quickly learned, I am not a person who does research cuz I was not a lab person you're like, right. It's like, I like this job. exactly. But it was, it was a great thing. I met Peter. Yeah. And um, that was really how we met. Um, but it was, it was, he wasn't at all like somebody who I thought I'd be interested in, but. I'll tell you when we went through, when we were collecting data, it was pretty stressful, um, for his, his thesis. Right. Okay. And, you know, timing had to, because we were working with blood clotting blood, and we had to make sure everything happened at the right time to be able to get the data so he could publish his or print his material. So we had
Peter:
to kill animals yeah. And take their blood. And this is a coordinated
Curt:
lot of we work slaughter as they would say it was. Yes.
Beth:
Right, right, right. So, uh, but he handled the pressure and there were like six grad students in there. And I think they were all women actually. And the fact that he could handle. And there were some, I'll say, um, what's the right word? Um, strong egos, strong egos in strong personalities. And the fact that he could manage that was just in addition to the advisor, who's, you know, wanted to make sure that the data was, was, was usable as well. You know, he, I was impressed with how he managed the whole thing. So, Peter,
Curt:
I wanna jump back to you. What were you going to grad school for the.
Peter:
no, not at all. I was afraid to scared to death of girls even back, even back then. Um, no, so I liked food science and nutrition because I thought that the whole medical system was, was broken. Okay. Even
Curt:
way back then. And I knew that was so you made a shift from the psychology psychiatry kind of stuff earlier on and yep. Gotcha.
Peter:
There's huge benefits to how you eat and for sure. And now I know how you think about yourself, which is a psychology thing. So I was, I was drawn to all that. Yeah. That self-help area way back then. And just now got to get, getting to apply it. Yeah.
Curt:
Fair enough. Fair enough. So was it like. I suspect you guys might be kind of a friends first kind of thing, or was it romance,
Beth:
right? Definitely not RO love at first sight. Absolutely not. yeah, pretty close. It was
pretty
Curt:
close to love at first sight. Well, you loved her, but you guys were friends or no, you, well, we were friends pretty on right about no,
Peter:
no, no. We hung out together. Cause it was a, it was a fun, you know, you're a grad student right. Or great, or school,
Beth:
none of us really had any money to
Peter:
do anything. So we all got together go to Fort Ram. Right. We were, we were big time dancers of cool prizes there
Beth:
things. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I was racing bikes at the time and bicycles, I should say. Yeah. Not motor bikes. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, that was, you know, that took up a lot of my time. And so just being out on the road and riding,
Curt:
yeah. Talk to me about that journey a little bit. You, you were near nearly Olympic qualifying.
Peter:
Is that
Beth:
how good you guys? Well, I, um, I, so, well, there's a couple interesting dynamics there. Um, I, from, I think it was my freshman year, I. riding. And then I got into cycling into competitive cycling because I was strong and I was good and I didn't have to handle a ball. right. I was, I was great. Right, right. Um, and you know, there are a couple folks that I was dating and, you know, I, I decided to, you know, move past them, but I still enjoyed cycling. And so I got more involved with different groups. And then at the same time, Peter and I actually started dating. And I remember we went down to, um, a particular event in Denver and it was one of the qualifying events for the Olympic trials. Okay. I think would take, would take place in Oregon and, uh, the woman who, cause they really didn't have organized cycling for women. This was kinda like, you just kind of figured it out and you'd train yourself and so forth. And the woman who was quasi coaching me was an Olympic. Psych or, um, runner. She wasn't a cyclist. Yeah. And so she, you know, we were talking about intervals and all that kind of stuff still applied. And, um, she was working with me and, and I got to be pretty good within the few races that they were and were in Colorado at the time. Um, and there was one that I entered and it was this, this qualifying event, but I had a mechanical problem with my bike. And so I, it was a criterium and I ended up losing my chain in the first three rounds. And, uh, the women who went on to actually win the, the games or the, the, um, women's cycling events were actually in that oh, right. That qualifying.
Curt:
Right. So you're kind of
Beth:
right with them. Right, right, right. Interesting. So anyway, I didn't, I missed, I missed my chance, but then after that, um, I. Realize that, you know, I couldn't really make a living like I was supposed to. Right. Even if you were an Olympic cyclist, exactly. It didn't matter. Right. You couldn't get sponsorship, none of that stuff. And so I chose to, excuse me, go to grad school instead. So it was a better way for me to fair enough to make money,
Curt:
so. Right. Cool. And then how long, uh, before you guys were like engaged or did you just date for quite a while? Through the college years? Let's
Peter:
was it one year or two years? Pretty quick then it was, yeah, we got married. We knew each other for two years. Yeah, we got married. Yeah. Cause I came here, met our. and by the time I left, we were married. Yeah. Was two year, two year
Curt:
program off we go to start the careers. Right? Well, no, not yet.
Peter:
Not yet with the, with two degrees in food science and nutrition and, and the hopes and dreams of, you know, doing something more with our lives that wasn't gonna cut it. So, right. So we ended up going both of us applying to graduate school. Oh. Business school. Oh. And we applied to a number of places. And the one that we both cut into was Purdue university. Oh, west Lafayette, Indiana. Yeah. I was
Curt:
gonna say Indiana, right? Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm so more education. Exactly. And what's the next, uh,
Peter:
degree? It was we, well, that was an interesting start to that. Why don't you tell a little bit about how we got started with. With Purdue. Yeah. With, with Purdue. Well, cuz we both started, you went, went into marketing and I
Beth:
went into, uh, well that was the thought. Yeah. So there's some really interesting stuff at Purdue. Um, so we, we,
Curt:
so are you guys thinking you're wanting to be like business founders already? No,
Peter:
no, definitely not. I
Beth:
wanted to go work in the big glass buildings in cities. That's why. Yeah.
Curt:
Gotcha.
Peter:
And the idea of working in a big company, I mean, Fort Collins was big for me. Right. Coming from where I
Curt:
was in the east coast. It stinks. So you guys had that tension a little bit
Peter:
there. It's like, wow, let's go big.
Beth:
Yeah. So we went to Purdue and, and it's interesting,
Peter:
which isn't big, that's a bunch of cool. Right? Well the university's
Beth:
pretty good size, but the town's like right. Nothing. Right. It's pretty small. Um, but one of the things that happened while we were there, in fact it was the very first day of orientation. When you know, they scary about all the stuff they're gonna have you do. Um, I started to have some issues with my vision is I'm watching this presentation, listening to folks and we. It was probably about two months later, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Oh, wow. Yeah. And that literally took me out to, I
Curt:
mean, wow. That's super young
Beth:
too. Um, well it's but it was pretty consistent. I was early twenties at the time. Um, I thought it was
Curt:
kind of a forties onset a lot of times,
Beth:
but guess not, no. Um, well
Peter:
you usually, you see the results of it get older, but when you get diagnosed early.
Beth:
Yeah. But my, um, you know, they didn't have a lot of the equipment that they have today to diagnose and most people would go years without having kind of a diagnosis. Um, but I was, they saw me at the student health center, um, within a couple days. Cause I, I was losing my vision. Wow. Something wasn't quite right. Narrowing all exactly. I just, it was like, uh, something had, what's called optic neuritis, which is basically like, you got a riostat in a room and I used to turn it way down so I could see things, but everything was really dark. There's no contrast. Wow. So trying to. Study while you can't really see things. Um, and then, you know, they were running all kinds of tests on me cuz they sent me to a local neurologist and I ended up with a spinal headache with, from some of the spinal taps they were doing in all this other testing. They ultimately diagnosed me a couple months later, but the diagnoses and the, the actual Ms activity or the where your, your nerve insulation is essentially attacked the, the nerve impulses aren't able to go through. And that's how you end up with disability and problems.
Curt:
So like eats the insulation off of those wires. Kind of exactly.
Peter:
Exactly.
Beth:
So Mylon. Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, they ultimately diagnosed me once they sent me down to, uh, Indiana, then one of the hospitals there and they used. Uh, the MRI, which was very new piece of technology at the time. Right. But there, it was very black and white and wow. Um, I remember the neurologist said, put the pictures up on the wall and he said, yep. He said, you have Ms. He said, there's nothing we can do about it. You can still have babies. You can go live your life. And the most important information here, or most important thing he said to me was you cannot blame things on the disease, in your. you have to live your life. Don't blame things that don't work on the Ms. And that served me so well, because early on, yeah, I had quite a few symptoms with my vision and, you know, I had to get myself back into school. I was pretty much failing at that point. Um, but the university stepped in and they said, we want you to graduate. Peter and I were married at the time, so they wanted both of us to get outta school, but Purdue been over backwards to get me back in the program and that's wow. I ended up graduating towards the top of the
Curt:
class. So, and probably one of your first like health, anything? Yes, exactly. Like you were stronger, tough meaner. Probably not meaner. Yeah. Um, like, but you had been a healthy person most, all your life exactly. Until you started having these symptoms.
Beth:
And it was like, it's like total opposite
Curt:
thing. Well, and we know a lot more now, even though we don't know enough about Ms. Right. But. Then it was like, here's this mysteries thing that's going right. Decapitate you, and then it's gonna kill you. Right. Well, it won't typically kill or not, or not,
Peter:
or not. There's some people that are, you know, or not some somewhat as some you couldn't notice. Yeah. And then, and other people, they just go down the hill quickly. Yeah.
Beth:
So the thing that was, when I look back at that experience, um, I remember, and this is relevant to the, you can choose material that we ended up writing about later is I remember. With that spinal tap. Uh, I ended up, we went, I went to a movie the next day, right? Two days of lying low. Cause they want you to that little hole to seal up where they pull the fluid out. Right. We went to a movie and halfway through the movie, all of a sudden my head's just starting to thro. It's like, oh, oh. So I got home late on my back and they said, yep, you've got a spinal headache. You need to just stay low. So I was on, on my back literally for a week. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't eat. I mean, it was bad. Um, but I remember in that week where I was literally on my back, looking at the ceiling, I would daydream about getting back on my bike because at that point I still didn't know what was wrong with me. All I knew was I was incapacitated in a terrible way and pain, which is so opposite of anything that I've ever experienced before. While I was on my back, I would daydream about getting back on my bike and riding. And is that, that's what got me through
Curt:
that. Yeah. Did it help you get healthier too? Do you think?
Beth:
Absolutely. Yeah, it is. You know, and this goes back to what Peter was talking about in terms of, yeah. You can choose, you can choose your thoughts. You can choose your thoughts every moment of every day. Yeah. And how you make those choices impacts how you live your life. And so for me, going from that very debilitated state and just thinking about I'm healthy, I'm healthy. And that's, that's the way I think of myself even today with this disease, I'm not sick. I'm strong. I'm healthy. Yeah. And last weekend I did a 30 mile ride. Average speed was 17 miles an hour. So holy shit. Pretty good at 60.
Peter:
So yeah,
Curt:
so I didn't know you were that old and I've never been able to average more than 17 miles an hour for more than five miles. So yeah. Well, there you go. Kudos. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well I think that's great advice, Beth, and thanks for sharing that because I'm sure it was such a. pivotal change in. It was your thinking about how things are, cuz it's easy to be an optimist when everything goes right. All the time. Yes, sir. It is super easy. And uh, but it, it takes a little bit more intentionality to be an optimist when you face challenges. Yeah. So we'll have a three hour podcast unless we, um, advance a little faster through this, but you guys get done with grad school times two or whatever, and you're now bring us kind of quickly through the career trajectory. I know both of you kind of worked for others a bit before you kind of became more of a consultant, Peter. We did. Yep. So kind of gimme the flyover of the, the career trajectory a little bit, maybe the moves that you guys made and the roles that you were playing. Sure.
Peter:
So, so we continued our, our, our, our moves yeah. That we, we had started off with. So we, this was leaving us. From Lafayette, Indiana. We wanted to get a job in the same city. So we did it. We strategically picked St. Louis, Missouri, because it was not too far away. And then there's lots of recruiters coming from there. So I ended up working for a chemical company out there, Monsanto, which was the chemical company. And then Beth joined, um, Citibank. Oh, so we were. Bankers jumping, jumping into the, and then she had her big glass wall, right. Glass, um,
Curt:
window building. And St. Louis is a big city, but it's pretty country. Yep.
Peter:
Yeah. You get degree really. So we had to get tons something there, but, but we only lasted two years. Okay. Cause, um, that was tired building skills and all that. Exactly. So then we ended up moving to Massachusetts. Okay. So we both worked at a manufacturing plant out there. Oh wow. She got to do, um, labor relations and I got to do run a manufacturing line and work on the computer stuff and just absolutely.
Curt:
Is it food manufacturing, no
Peter:
industry? No, there was, we made, um, chemical windshield, um, plastic for the windshield. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. So much fun to talk about that. Yeah. Anyway, he did that and then I got involved in, uh, a project at, um, at Monsanto to implement SAP. Oh yeah. SAP is a big computer system that
Curt:
yeah. SAP stands
Peter:
for. Is German. So it doesn't sound okay. It's basically, it basically runs accounting and logistics
Curt:
and finance, E R P the enter enterprise resource planning kind of
Peter:
system. Exactly. And all the companies were putting it in back in those, in those days. Gotcha. I, I helped Monsanto put it in and then for the
Curt:
next they were like, Hey, you're pretty smart. You figured this out. Pretty good. Do you wanna be on our team instead for a
Peter:
nice race? Exactly. So I did that for, and I could only handle it for another couple of years. And then I went and joined a small company and then from there on, I just did consulting. Okay. Until. Well, we'll catch us up when we get to, uh, took your
Curt:
toolkit from SAP and like, I can not have to work for a big ass corporation. Exactly. Yeah. And, and Beth, uh, what were you doing along that same time when he's starting to equip himself
Beth:
here? I was, I was working in big companies. I ended up, uh, moving into HR because that was one of the ways I could graduate. I had to, I ended having ended up having to shift my degree a little bit Purdue, so I didn't graduate with regular MBA, but I graduated with master's in human resources. I see. Um, but what I was able to do is go in and work with executives and help them build and rebuild their organizations. That's really what I spent the
Curt:
last. So this is where you're really your human resource kind of, uh, yeah. Chops came from was during this time. Yep. And even through that pivot and your degree. Yeah, yeah.
Beth:
To the extent. Well, it's interesting. HR chose me versus me choosing HR. Yeah. Um, but when I look back at my career as particularly from, uh, the standpoint of an entrepreneur, those HR experiences were way more powerful than having finance experience or even operations because totally people run everything. Yeah. They do everything and you don't have a company without people. So if you don't know how to deal with the, all the gray junk that happens. Well, you're not gonna be a hard, it's gonna be a hard time for you. Yeah. Being an executive in any kind of organization.
Curt:
So how did you, like, you sounds like you got a role, like specifically coaching some of these executives and things like that, helping them build their teams.
Beth:
I would do that. Uh, I would, you know, work with them individually at helping build out divisions. Um, there's one project that pretty much spoiled me for the rest of my career in, in large companies. And that was, uh, while I was ATCI they picked from the entire organization, 12 HR people from around the world. And 12, uh, non HR people. So line people, research people, whatever, to be on this team of 25 to basically rebuild the entire HR function worldwide. Oh gosh. In that company. So I got to do some really cool stuff there. So then, so I was what you would call an intro entrepreneur yeah. In that role. But once I got out of that, I was done with corporations and
Curt:
oh, we have some similarities in that, uh, kind of disrespect for the way they operate
Beth:
sometimes. Yeah. But it was just, it was just fun to be creative. And you can't really do that in, in large companies it's or you have very limited options to do
Curt:
that. Yeah. It's interesting. You kind of came from the food science and moved to psychology and you kind of came from the science and, or the, the psychology and moved into really more the software and the science of that. Right. Yeah.
Peter:
People, processes and
Curt:
technology is really what I was doing. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. So, um, let's get into the founding of, um, ready? Touch, touch, ready? Touch. Yeah. Yeah. Like talk to me about, was it, like you said, you were consulting in different things already, Peter and, and doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but like, this was like a real business instead of, you know, cuz it's easy to be a consultant. You just, it is do work and you know, if you have overhead, it isn't very much kind of thing, but it's different than, than launching an enterprise, like a
Peter:
platform like that. Yeah, we, yeah, we decided to start, start a software company. So it's, I, I found what I thought was a big problem in with the, the people that I was consulting with. Okay. And um, said, oh, I can solve that. So let's, let's go build it. So okay. Grabbed a bunch of people together. We almost, we thought we solved it, but it was a bigger problem than we were able to handle. Right. Tell
Curt:
me, tell, tell me about the problem and the attempt.
Peter:
Well, the problem started off being what we call track and trace, um, which is keeping track of serial numbers or individual products throughout their life cycle. Mm-hmm um, it's actually, some of the process that we put into place were like a precursor to what you do now with blockchain. Sure. Where you keep track of everything and you keep track of it in a whole bunch of different ways so that you know, where it is at all times. And one of the target markets we had was in, um, pharmaceuticals, cause there's a tremendous amount of, of, um, um, fake pharmaceutical. Right. And you don't know where they come from and how they get to someplace you worse. So now, but right. And we had some logic that, that would make that work either using R F I D technology or something. Interesting, something else. So we, we thought we were onto something, but. As Beth likes to say Walmart was trying to do R F I D at that point, did
Curt:
you create any revenues on this first effort and was this ready touch?
Peter:
No, this was a precursor to ready touch a company called sir tey. Okay. Or certify as we called
Curt:
it, but oh yeah. Yeah. And was it, um, like you said, you hired some people and you worked on the puzzle and got some investors. I gather raised some
Peter:
capital. Yep. We raised a little bit of, um, friends and family money. We had a customer that was using our product to, to, to make a difference. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was just one customer and it was like, wasn't
Curt:
quite, you needed at least five to really be sustainable kind of thing. Exactly. So I was like, okay,
Peter:
what do we do next? Yeah. Yeah. This is one of the many pivots that you do as an entrepreneur, for sure. Trying to figure out where, where to go
Curt:
next and circa me here. And where are you guys at this point? We
Peter:
have moved up to, um, Silicon valley. Okay. So we were.
Curt:
up there living and you were kind of cuz they needed all the smart computer people that they could find up there, whether you were a consultant or whatever else. And so you could kind of punch your ticket and you're smart Beth and everybody needs good people. So you could kind of work wherever too.
Beth:
Mm-hmm yeah, well basically he, when, uh, when he was a consultant, he didn't care where he lived, cuz he was always on an airplane. Mm. He was on the road all the time. So I could just pick wherever I wanted. And I remember we were in Southern California. I was working at gateway computers at that time and they were gonna move down to San Diego and it's like, well, I'm not going there. Peter's up in working up in Oakland that his consultant all the time. Yeah. So it's like, I'll just fly, go get a job and they'll move me up there. And so that's how he ended up at Genentech. Okay. And I lasted there for a year. Cause like I was so burnt out in this organizational change stuff and I thought, you know, we always talked about starting our own company, so why don't we do it? So we decided to literally in the back porch to jump off the cliff and go start it. Okay. How hard can it
Curt:
be? So I thought, I thought Peter maybe used that while Beth was. Now we're excited to no, you just both, uh, you know, I usually coach people to like, keep one income
Beth:
we do all or none. I don't do the
Peter:
partial stuff. You know, you know, that's one of the things, I dunno if we'll get, have nearly enough time to talk about that, but it's the mindset of where we were then it was almost like running away from what we were doing in trying to make something happen versus what we're doing now with Maine, it's like figuring where we run toward this thing, where do we wanna go? And, and how much our mindset is so completely different about cuz we talk about jumping off the cliff, right back then in Menlo park and we starting this and just think about that, right? You're jumping off a cliff. Is that really the way you wanna start up business?
Curt:
It's a good, that's the metaphor. This told all the time, jumping off a cliff and building an airplane on the way down and, and it's a disaster,
Peter:
right? The mindset of doing that means that there's a good chance you're gonna hit the ground right. And fail. Right. So now we have that mindset. we're just gonna take the next step. What do we want to happen? Mm-hmm right. And it's probably not falling off the cliff. Right. So the whole mindset is completely different and hopefully we'll get into that a little
Curt:
bit later on. Yeah. Well, let's, uh, let's talk about, it sounds like the, was the next pivot, the one that ready touch
Peter:
created then. Yeah. The next pivot. The next pivot, we basically started putting technology into stores. Okay. So what we did is this was before the, the touchscreen iPads were around. Sure.
Curt:
So we basical oh, in Syme this is, so then this is like 2004, 4,
Peter:
5, 2 6 or something like that. That, yeah, I think it was about 8, 8, 8 or nine when we got this thing going. And what that was is initially we had, as our, as our customers, um, we were putting in. Informational kiosks mm-hmm so places where you could get information that you can now get, you know, effortlessly from your phone in the store, so you can understand, whoa, what kind of a recipe do I have for dinner tonight? Right. Or what what's this wine
Curt:
taste like? And even here's an interactive map of the store. So, you know, where
Peter:
all that stuff, baby, because that was just getting started that time though. Totally retail of the future is technology. Yep. And then the phone came along and says, Nope, it's come. It is the future, but it's
Curt:
yes. In a different way than you hoped for it's in your pocket.
Peter:
Right. Right. So versus these$10,000 machines that we were selling at the time to put into stores. Right.
Curt:
Right. Yeah. So, so talk to me about the, the launch of that. Like what, well, that was fun and exciting. Cause you were already kind of broke from this certified thing, right? Yeah. Well, not broke but broke, but we're but yeah. We're just cause you had some consulting clients and stuff, even through this and around.
Peter:
Right. And we, we we've been
Curt:
savers and we've been
Peter:
savers. You guys have kids by the way. Nope. Kid list.
Curt:
Okay. Um, and then what we did is essentially, which makes it easy to not be broke exactly. When you're an entrepreneur. Yes. Big time.
Peter:
Big difference. Yeah. And then what we did is we got a phone call from somebody that said, Hey, can we use your in-store technology to do a little mini
Beth:
store? And this call came right when we had no clue where we were gonna pivot to next. Right.
Curt:
And the recession. So you're building these$10,000 kiosk things and the recession that market's gonna dry up for that. Well, not already has,
Beth:
but the recession was starting to happen. Right. The great recession of what. Eight nine. And I was taking a class at Stanford at the time called from idea to IPO, and it was taught by a venture capitalist. And the latter part of that class was late 2008. And we started with entrepreneurs and getting started and the whole ideation piece. And then we ended with, how do you IPO your company and those bankers that came in at the end to talk about IPO. They looked like they'd been run over by train because they, right. The markets were just falling apart. Everything was going away. So it was like, wow, we're there.
Curt:
Ain't gonna be no IPOs. Yeah.
Beth:
Well, it was just, it was just scary thinking about what was gonna happen. We're trying to get something off the ground in our backyard. Right. So, okay. Now you can go Peter
Peter:
Yeah. So, so we got a phone call that says, Hey, can you help us build technology for a little mini store? Yeah. So what we want is we wanna build, let people come up to this, your kiosk swipe some items that they wanna purchase. Yeah. Cause everything's got a barcode on it. Right, right. Swipe their credit card. And then walk out of
Curt:
the door, like physical items, like a candy
Peter:
bar, machine dispenser, just like that. So what we did is we basically disrupted the vending industry. Okay. Because there's millions, literally millions of vending machines in office buildings. Right. You're already behind, you know, you have to have a badge to get into an office building. Yeah. Yeah. You know, everybody that's, that's already in that office building. Why do you have to have a, a, why do you have to have a, a box that's got food in it that you have to pay for to get out? Why don't you just put shelves in there and coolers in there and let people walk up and get what they want, scan it and walk out. Right. And of course everyone was saying, because everyone's gonna steal it. Right, right. They steal the lunch out of, out of the cafeteria. Right. Uh, why weren't they steal this? But we had cameras in and right. And shrinkage
Curt:
was, and people worked there
Peter:
and exactly. And shrinkage was never
Curt:
an issue. And were you selling like prepackaged goods. Yeah. Could just be stocked in there, basically.
Peter:
Exactly. So did you think about what's what's in a, what's in a seven 11, right? Right. You got chips, you got milk, you got sandwiches, you got salads. Cause you can make that right. Cause you could actually have a salad there. You could pick it up, look at it. Make sure it's okay. Could it's all pre
Curt:
packaged, which makes it much easier
Peter:
to sell. Yes. Cuz no one's gonna buy salad out of a venting machine. Right. They've tried that.
Curt:
Right, right. Interesting. Okay. So that's where your technology really started finding traction really is. And I can see that being as a better solution because with the kiosk you're like, well I dropped 10 grand plus$400 a month for random service calls and stuff like that. And I'm not really clear if I get any benefit, but with a vending machine, it's like, well, people pay$2,000 a month into the machine. I pay$10,000 for the machine. I, I make money after eight months. Exactly.
Peter:
Whatever. Exactly. And you could, we, we realized that get in the middle of the cash. To make a business it's cause when you're just selling information, you're not, you know, totally
Curt:
who cares, right.
Peter:
Because you can get information from someplace else and as you know, the internet was taking off like that. Yeah. So information is free.
Curt:
That's really a similar, I, I like to say it's easy to add value to the world. It's not always easy to get value back up for you. Mm-hmm and you said the same thing by saying kind of that get in the middle of the cash. Like you have to kind of get between that value proposition. And get your
Peter:
piece that's right. Well, well add a value
Curt:
that add of value. Well, you have to add value too, but you ha can sometimes add that value without getting any money. Sure. Yes you can. Which is hard. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So that starts to scale then. Is that kind of where we go from here? And what kind of a, like, was it just the two of you guys still in your garage? Did you have any helpers or things like that? Oh yeah. Programmers
Peter:
and tech and oh yeah. We hired a staff. We had sales people. Okay. We, we had, um, a technology, um, bunch of CTO and finance, finance. We had a whole, um, service.
Curt:
So talk to me about the building blocks or was most of that from like the first part, the kiosk company. And you were kind of. Running out of market space in that space and then this new exactly kind of thing comes along and keeps everybody in
Peter:
paychecks pretty much. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. We, we had to dip down once or twice when the, you know, the things weren't working well, like, like, like let some people go, but, um, it was, it was kind of building on what we had
Curt:
already done. Yeah. Fair enough. Well, and at the risk of running long, talk to me about like those first couple of employees, like, did you, was this something that had to have like a staff of six or eight or something just to get off the ground in the very first place? Or did you kind of no,
Peter:
no. We started off PI in, yeah. We started off with hiring a friend of a friend of a re recommended fair friend. Right. And then actually from that point on the first, the first serious employee we had, um, we ended up hiring a, a good friend of his. And then we ended up hiring the father of the,
Curt:
of it's nice. When your friends, uh, or when your employees refer their friends to work for your company? No. When they refer their
Peter:
family, it's
Curt:
even more significant. I interviewed an intern prospect this spring and he was prior job. One of them was at home Depot. And he told me how he had had a good time there, cuz he recruited like five of his buddies from lacrosse team and stuff. And so, yeah. And I was like, and I bet home Depot loved you cuz you're like bringing them a bunch of employees when nobody's good
Beth:
employees, obviously in the valley, the only way you can really get people is get the re refer is get the referral, you know, it's because it's hard to go out and just, you know, blindly hire people because people wanna know what they're getting into. And it's a very, it's a very tight, tight, tight. Yeah. Cuz
Curt:
everybody's doing something weird
up
Beth:
there and, and everybody, well, no, they, everybody wants to be part of the next cool thing. Right. So, you know, you might start at Facebook, but then you go to Google, then you go to Twitter. I mean you just, everybody bounces around right. Or
Curt:
all these other little things that are all around the fringes of everything. And, but I mean it's different than. Like I'm a professor at CSU or I work for Domino's pizza, you know, it's, it's kind of like a picking and choosing yes. Beyond the normal right. Job
Beth:
marketplace and the thing that's so important out there is you have to have, you have to have a really great place to work that people wanna come to work because everybody's getting recruited all the time. So we were literally between the Google exit and the Facebook exit on, on highway, on highway five, highway 1 0 1 or highway 1 0 1, excuse me, highway Northern California highway 1 0 1. So if we didn't have a great place that people wanted to come worse with us.
Curt:
We couldn't pay. And did you have to pay? Yeah, I was gonna say, did you have to
Beth:
pay to no, we couldn't pay that, but they were there because they wanted to be part of, because
Curt:
they realized something that you did, which was big corporations sucked to work for. exactly.
Peter:
Well that, and, and we, we had a, we had, you know, you have a ping pong table out here, right? Yeah. That's one of the things that we made sure we had and we just had good times. We enjoyed, we enjoyed
Curt:
being with each other, just really people, real people that enjoy being with each other and working on the problems as much as we could. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would say that's pretty accurate assessment of our team around here too. um, so like what's that journey of scaling? This was 2009, 2010.
Beth:
Hmm. Right. Probably 2010. Um, and to
Curt:
after the recession, you know? Yeah. So it
was
Beth:
probably nine,
Curt:
10, but it kinda sluggish for quite a while. Yeah. Or at least the general economy, but your industry might
Beth:
not have been well. And the thing that's is a challenge when you're starting, when you disrupt an industry is you have to develop credibility and you have to, you, you start slow because, you know, as Peter's talking about, these guys are worried about shrinkage, right. You know, 5 cents makes a big deal for these people. And so you have to be really, really, really diligent about, you know, you're always on
Curt:
right. Helping them out. And it's way easier to sell those units five years after somebody has first heard of you exactly than it was at first. So you were just kind of slowly taking out the legacy machines from all these office complexes all around California initially and then beyond, or how's that work? Yeah,
Peter:
it was, we, we was nationwide, it almost went nationwide instantly because we had some really strong supporters
Curt:
yeah. Out in interesting in, um, with no distribution or anything like that, though. Right. Like there's. Well, we didn't
Beth:
do the distribution. We were the
software.
Curt:
Oh, you were strictly the software software. So there were one hardware manufacturer, hard hardware
Peter:
and software. Yeah. We, we dealt with the, we, we, we recruited a hardware person to be part of our team. I see. Yeah. I mean, he had his own individual company, but it was part of
the,
Curt:
the overall, yeah, the kind of a, almost partnership of sorts kind of thing. So talk to me about that, like process, like the, like a normal customer, like, did they own like a bunch of machines and they wanted to replace a bunch of machines or like, what was the customer like from, are you for you? You just had to supply the software for as many machines as your homeboy could sell. Right. In some ways.
Peter:
But, but, but at the same time we also manage the. I
Curt:
see. Sure. So it's a service. Oh right. Software is a service, duh. Okay. Right. So
all
Peter:
I'm catching up, which was, which was the hard part, right? Yeah.
Curt:
The software. Right. Cuz the box can't be smart enough to actually do all this stuff that it needs to do. Exactly, exactly.
Peter:
Plus. So, so, and they think about, uh, our customer was, what they would do is they'd put out one of our machines in the stack, you know, cooler and, and um, um, snack displays. Um, then they'd just leave it out there. And then what they had to do is go back into the office and then manage inventory. What do they sell? What do they price it at? You know, what's the par levels, all that kind of stuff. They have to manage it. So that was all our software
Beth:
as well. And they had to learn how to do that. Prior to this, they were just filling vending machines. They were stocking things, right. So they had no idea about how to merchandise or anything like that. So we literally had to help these people become comfortable with technology because they were now managing their, these operations right. From an
Curt:
office offsite and make it as simple as you could, because it was literally put the, the chips here before that, whatever that's right. Interesting. At the whole,
Peter:
a whole level level of education, we had to
Curt:
walk people through. Right. And did you keep getting paid then? Like, as these machines were deployed? Exactly. They stayed, they got a revenue model that just continued on
Peter:
we made a, a couple pennies off of every
Curt:
Snickers bars. Right. Interesting. Yeah. Well that's probably, and though, when did like, so this was a, a multi-year journey, like 10 years or something. Really? Yep. Mm-hmm um, what was like the first signs of an exit. Uh, and, and what did that look like? And, and, and what were some of the whys toward that?
Beth:
Well, we had, we had a relationship with, um, somebody who is a, a pretty key person in the vending industry and that relationship started to not work so well for us. Okay. And so he was one of our biggest customers. Yeah. Okay. And we had to, we had to make a choice,
Curt:
like kept pushing you on price
Beth:
or like just, just everything, a number, number of areas. Yeah. Yeah. The technology and everything. And. um, we ended up not agreeing to some of the stuff that he cuz he just kept coming back and demanding more and more and more. And so it was like, you know, at some point you have to fish or cut bait. So he, we cut bait. It's like, look, we're done. And he came back and he was
Curt:
like, I'm not gonna improve the product or that kind of thing or
Peter:
no. Yeah. That's what we, that, that was our
Curt:
position. You were like, no, the, we, we, yeah, we, we can't, we're not gonna spend all this money. We building it to be something silly. We can't
Peter:
keep giving. Exactly. Yeah. And you know, and, and I don't know if this is the time to talk about it, but we do want to get into the book just little bit. Yeah, I do. Yeah. But, and not because we wanna get there, but because our, our mindset at that time, right. Was one of being a victim kind of. Yeah. Very. So it was a very
Curt:
difficult, yeah. Why is he being this way? Exactly.
Peter:
So we were, to me, we, we were doing that to ourselves. Yes. Which was bringing that
Curt:
to us. Right. And. People that are of that mindset. Like your, your former partner now, somewhat enemy, they notice how you're being and they take even more advantage sometimes. Exactly. Right.
Peter:
Right. And, and, you know, and we've, we've moved well beyond that, but no, no fingers pointing or blame being at yeah. Levied, but that was a tremendous learning experience
Curt:
unconsciously, many
Peter:
times. How, how, how can you go about being successful if you don't think that you are right. Interesting, capable of being successful.
Beth:
And it was really in that, those dark times that we really tried to figure out what's wrong with us. And I remember this book that we just gave you here. Yeah. Really started from Peter being up in the middle of the night, just writing and learning. The power of your thinking, because it's something we'd never really spent any time on. You know, we're always about, you know, facts and figures and stuff and so forth. Yeah. And we started to realize that if we thought about ourselves differently than we had for years, yeah. This is like the long term thing. Um, we could start to shift the trajectory of our life and that's where we said, you know, we ultimately ended up selling the company. Um, but we went from a place of very bad things happening. And six months later, we ended up finding somebody who to buy the company for millions of dollars. And so when we went through that experience, after you had shifted
Peter:
your mindset after we had six months, oh, only, only
Beth:
because we shifted our exactly. Yeah. And it was then that when we finally realized we, you know, all the paperwork was signed, it's like, oh my God, how did this happen? Because we thought nothing could ever work for us. Yeah. It was when we went back to think about the moments where we made that shift and we consciously said, nothing's working for us right now. Everything we've tried is not working. So we have to do something different. And I remember it was over a Christmas holiday. We went down to visit family in Florida. And then we went to new Orleans to just like get away from everything. And it was in that time, I told Peter, I said, we have to do something different. I don't know what the heck it is, but we have to do something different. And so really from that moment or that, that weekend that we spent there. We said, okay, now we have to consciously start saying every time we think negative things, we have to shift that thinking. Hmm. And this book is a result of us trying to make those shifts over that six month period. But I'll tell you, we ended up selling the company at right before we would've had to lay start laying people off because wow. It was, so it was quite dramatic. And then we, then we took a couple years to kind of unpack that whole experience because one, we couldn't believe it happened. And we thought, what, what was the result of it? And we realized it was because we had shifted our thinking
Curt:
well, and like beyond just that you had to have a buyer that wanted to buy it. Exactly. Right. Um, Talk to me about that. Well,
Peter:
it was, it was interesting because when we first went and visited this one, this, the person, the company that eventually bought us. Yeah. We, we hadn't, we were barely making the transition to, to the way we're thinking. Mm-hmm and I remember going and talking to them, we'd hired an investment banker to, to help us sell. Okay. And going to visit and Nope, the answer was Nope. Right? I mean, almost instantly. Nope. We have our swim lane. We know what we're doing. Interesting. We don't, we don't, we don't have no interest in what, what you have, but thanks for coming up
Curt:
and you'd hired this investment banker to help you sell it in part, because like, it wasn't really working anymore with yeah, that's right. It wasn't profitable as it should have been. It,
Peter:
it wasn't gonna continue to go in the direction that we wanted to. Yeah. Cause we would've. Yeah.
Curt:
You were too reliant on this one major customer that we were the relationship soured with and whatever lots of lessons learned.
Peter:
Yeah. It happens. Yeah. And then. And then we started to put into place these lessons that we had started to learn about the way that we were thinking. Hmm. Right. How do you think about yourself are, what do you want to happen? Yeah. And we had another company that we were down the road with that was thinking about investing in us or buying, buying us and at the very, again, near the very end. And it was pretty much the same time that we were down in, in new Orleans. They came back and said, Nope, we're not interested. Yeah. Interesting. And then,
then
Curt:
you're like, we suck. We're such lose. We suck exactly. We're such losers. If we keep doing this, we're gonna suck and be such losers all the way until we have to lay people off and fold the tent. Right. And
Peter:
then just go live under
Beth:
10 years for nothing. Right. Right. It was like pretty
Peter:
dramatic. So we, we interesting. We were at, at the bottom when we went down to new Orleans. Yeah. But then when we came back just a week or two, after that, I remember just to spur the moment, picking up my phone and calling the, the. The, the CEO of the company that eventually bought us yeah. And said, Hey, and I was just up there recently. You said no, but love to get a chance to, to explore this a little bit more. And this time he said, yes, come on up. We just made an acquisition with another company. Yeah. And we've been thinking about you. Oh,
Curt:
cause it filled a gap in some way that it built a bridge between him and you or whatever.
Peter:
Completely. It filled a okay. Cuz they were in the middle, this one company they bought was on the left side. If you will, of where they were moving more into the, the, the vending. And we were on the right side of moving into food service. Oh, right. So it was just a, it was the difference between those couple of weeks was not because of the market and not because of the technology. It honestly, I'm, I'm convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt was because we changed. Our view of ourselves. Yep.
Curt:
Now, are you gonna get all like manifested on me here and stuff like that? Like extra woo woo. Or just a little
Peter:
woo. Woo. I, I don't, I don't know.
Curt:
I don't know. I don't mean to be man. Like, like there's,
Peter:
I, I just, I just know that, that the way that the world works yeah. Is you have a lot more influence than you think you do.
Beth:
Right. And, and it's in acknow. It's it's in recognizing that, that you start to begin to, to see things that you could never see before. So there's a grade and Peter gets to tell us, cause I won't say it. Right. But there was a, a trip that they made to go sign the paperwork and they were running late for the flight. So you wanna tell'em
Peter:
about that? It's a little boo. Woo. So if, if it's so, so when we were coming back, From the trip. I, I, I'd taken a little bit of a test and it says, have something magical happen today. Okay. And, and you don't have to define what it is, just let it happen. So I just let that, let it go. And we didn't end up closing the deal. It was before we closed the deal with him. So we were on the way, way back, my investment banker and I were getting on the plane and, you know, things worked okay. But they weren't, it wasn't, there was nothing magical happening. Yeah. So we were flying, um, Southwest airlines. So if you're familiar with how Southwest airlines works, first one in gets the best seat, last one and gets the worst. Yeah. Right. So we, we flew from, um, through a connecting flight in, um, Las, Las Vegas. We were late getting into Las Vegas. So we had to run through the, through the airport to get to our terminal from the Las Angeles to excuse me, Las Vegas to San Jose. Yep. The last two people on the. And we walked in and walking down the aisle and there's an aisle seat available. And I says, there's no way there's ever an aisle seat
Curt:
right. At the last, there must be somebody
Peter:
in the bathroom or something. There's a better type. And, and, and then I walked in and then the, there was a guy standing in the exit row, the flight attendant, the flight attendants Stanley row saying, but you could have this seat instead. It was the exit row aisle seat, which to me is the best seat. Totally. Right. So, so we were the last two people on the plane. We both got exit seats. I got the best seat on the plane, which was the exit row aisle seat. So the fact that that magic happened to me was just, that is pretty magical, low me away. And it's a setting that is set for myself up as I was moving towards this whole idea of what you call manifesting.
Curt:
Well, I didn't, because there's, I think there's a risk here cuz sometimes the. I do believe that our thoughts have a lot of power mm-hmm and they can impact even other people's behavior and how the universe responds to us and things. And there's some people that will just play video games and hope that their magical career arrives in front of them as well. Mm-hmm you know, and, and there's, you know, there's a lot of sweat and effort usually between thinking you can and getting
Beth:
well, let go back to that experience. I was telling you about the Ms. Yeah. So when this happened to me, it was like, okay, this feels a little Woohoo to me. Right. You talked about right. It's like, okay. And, and in the meantime, I had been, truly trying to understand for me in my past life, you know, before we really started to make the, tried to make this shift, what had happened to me. And so I went back to that experience with the Ms. And when I first found out I was devastated, it's like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm not sure what's gonna happen to me. It was really, really scary, but I re remember how I focused on what I wanted to do, or I wanted to be able to be physically. And I was thinking about the cycling riding in the mountains, literally. Yeah. Oh, I was take, I would go down, go down the puter canyon. I'd go down the big Thompson canyon on my bike and just feel the, the mountains and everything. And thinking back to those thoughts and where I was physically at the time, which was probably a little better than where I am today. I was a little younger then. Sure. Um, is that's the proof rights there? That's what sprung you out of that? Exactly. So all the beliefs I had about why it wasn't true. It's kinda like, yeah. Move on
Curt:
fair. They don't work. Well, one of my it's actually still hanging on my Facebook page. The first quote that I put on there, when I built that back in oh seven or something was, uh, Henry Ford's. Uh, whether you think you can or think you cannot. Right. You're right, exactly. So I do believe, and yet, you know, there's right. So talk to me about, I, I guess the exit comes along, it's probably just a turnkey purchase. They bought you guys and kept your staff and folded you into the, the larger fold mm-hmm Um, was there any, like learning lessons from that acquisition or merger process that were really significant or,
Peter:
yeah, the, I guess the biggest lesson is, is realize that who you're who's buying you or how that process is going is. You're gonna, you're gonna be with them for a little while, right? It's it's still a
Curt:
relationship. You don't just throw
Peter:
em the keys. I just throw the tee and recently selling your car and walk away. Right. You're probably gonna be the chauffer for a little while. Fair enough. And then that's, that was the case. I stayed there for another couple of years. Okay. And, you know, and the nice thing about it, they were really, really good people. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Like really solid people they wanted to do. Well, you know, we got, we got off to some, some bumps as you yeah. As you would expect,
Curt:
usually we don't all understand each other perfectly if we hope. Yeah. Right. So, and then, then, then the Santa Cruz era starts effectively. Is that pretty close? Yeah.
Peter:
After a couple years of, of doing that, it's like, okay, what are we gonna do
Curt:
next? Yeah. So let's, let's, let's, let's go meditate on it. Let's, let's take a deep let's Santa, a cruise on it, deep,
Peter:
deep breath, and figure out what are we gonna do? So talk to me
Curt:
about the book and, and you can choose generally I've been reading your emails. They're really quite effective. And I, I, I hope I didn't offend, I, since I might have a little bit in talking about the manifesting earlier, because I think there's a spectrum of, uh, hope and. Yeah, sweat, uh,
Peter:
sometimes. And I appreciate that, cuz it is a, it is a, a touchy subject for few people and we all often, um, are, you know, is this too? Woo woo. Because it is a, is a frame of mine for people. Yeah. And, and it is, it is easy to go over and say, well, you know, unicorns and rainbows and all you have to do is think, and everything happens. Right. Right. You do live in a physical world and right. And it takes, takes physical action to make things happen. But at the same time, I do know that there's lots of people who work really, really hard. Yeah. That don't have anything to show for it. Yeah.
Curt:
Fair. Yeah.
Beth:
Fair enough. I think, and I think that, um, you know, there's, there's, uh, a person, um, Abraham Hicks or it's a, there's a series of videos and podcasts that, that, um, we've listened to and it was. You know, a person channeling another entity and, you know, it's kind of like, okay, this is not quite what seems right on the other hand, when you step past the assumptions and you know, this isn't good or it's bad and you start to say, okay, you just listen to it for what it is. Yeah. And you start to think about it as it relates to your own life. You know, the whole thing you mentioned with Henry Ford, you know, if you think you are, you aren't is, is so true because if he said that this is way before Abraham hick ever came out, right. You know, a lot of people listen to those videos, go, you know, go see the, the presentations and so forth. And I think that, um, people are starting to realize that we've really pushed the limits of the, you. I'll say more management, sciences, like numbers are everything. Right. And, um, I think the pandemic has really forced people because we were all locked up for a while. Yeah. To really think about, well, what's really important to me. And so if I don't really know what's important to me, then how can I be happy? So I think some of those very fundamental questions people spent some time with. Yeah. Because they were in a different place than where they had been running around for, you know, years running. Crazy.
Curt:
Yeah. If you just, if you're just running around at maximum speed and not really thinking about much and just trying to make sure you're keeping up with the Joneses, you're gonna lose Yeah, for sure. And you know, to the extent that there's a blessing of this pandemic, Probably for people to like, take a breath and like reflect on some of that. Now there's some real consequences to that. You know, we've got like labor shortages and disruptions and lots of interesting. Well, but I, one
Beth:
of the things I think particularly around labor that I think is really important is that people have had a chance to really. Think about what they want. Right. Which is really one of the basic questions that we ask people. Um, cuz we have a weekly call that we have, um, folks jump in on and it's all about, well, what do you want? If you don't know what you want, if you don't really, really know what you want at a really core level, you're never gonna get it cuz you're not gonna know what it is. You're not gonna recognize it. Yeah. So it really goes back to those very basic, basic fundamentals. And it's really stepping back from all the beliefs and assumptions that you've picked up over the years that you're able to truly figure out, well, what do you want, not what your parents want or what society tells you you should want. But what do you
Curt:
want? Yeah, no, it's interesting. It feels like in a lot of ways that, uh, like you're talking about things that I've already learned and accepted, but you're just like five years ahead of me or maybe a month ahead of me or whatever in terms of. Appreciating it and respecting that, right. Does you can choose it's a nonprofit organization, is that right? No, no, it's just a, no, we just, does it have revenues? Like it's got a book that hasn't had too much yet, but it's more of a, more of a movement effort. It's
Peter:
that right. It's really a way of, of it's the way we're living our life. Yeah. Right. And, and, and I wrote the book just because it's, it was so impactful for me. And if it helps other people. Fine. It's not like a week. We gotta make this thing work, right. Yeah. Right. I mean, we,
Curt:
we, you wrote the book. It says Peter and Beth here. No, well,
Beth:
he wrote the book we wrote, but then I went through and its like, we have to reword this. So I think of me as the editor. Right. Yeah. Um, but I
Curt:
think that he's the idea generator.
Beth:
Right? Right. Um, well he was honestly the leader on this whole thing. I kind of went haltingly into it. Okay. Let's see what this is all about. But, but as I was working with him and listening and thinking about him, cause I was, you know, Peter suffered from depression for all, for a while, you know? And he's been able to step past that largely because of the work he did. As part of this whole transition with, with ready touch to the sale and so forth. And so that was a huge benefit to us personally. Yeah. And now we've just put it in writing so that if people want to learn more about it, it's out there because we were really frustrated that we weren't taught. This is not part of
Curt:
how's. We grew up there's grew up so many entrepreneurs that like have an inward hate of themselves because they've fallen so far short of where they thought they would be by now, or they've lost this key relationship that should have been the thing that propelled us to growth. And now what did I do? And, uh, I think that's, you know, my, my heart resonates with that because that's part of what local think tank does is yeah. You know, we get people together to tell each other, quit thinking like a dumb ass, you know? Right, right, right. Um, but it's not easy, you know, and it's not, and it's really complex. And, you know, whereas you should have been proud as you're approaching that exit. In some ways you were like frustrated with yourself for it not having gone more like you wanted it to or whatever, but you don't have, that's where you're going with this, Beth, I think is like, I can choose to that's right. See it a
Beth:
different way. Absolutely. And Maine frankly, is a great manifestation. If you will, to use your word of what we want to be able to do in the world with technology and to help entrepreneurs. Yeah. Small business, because people aren't paying attention to them. Yeah. They're, they're the engine of the economy, right.
Curt:
Basic level. Yeah. And they're the redheaded stepchild kind of in terms of like policy and, you know, you know, I, I saw another grand announcement from the state of Colorado that was, you know, a general extra obligation for all small businesses of Colorado recently and things. And I, and we probably even have some different. Thoughts on that. So I, what more would you like to share about you can choose, um, or Maine? I think probably both of those need to be unfolded as they unfold a little bit and get the book, go on the website, sign up for the newsletter.
Beth:
Yeah. Well, you can choose. We've got, you can choose.info is where you can find out the book is online. You don't have you, if you wanna print in copy, you can get it on Amazon, but you can actually see the actual words on it's free. Yeah. Fair enough. You really wanna get people out there, but really you can choose is probably the core of what is part of how we live our living, our life going forward. And I will say is we start to build Maine is gonna be a lot of how we help our organization grow at some point, because we only want people. As part of our team, working with us that have a shared mindset around the power of your thinking and how you as an, as an individual own that. And if you don't, then you are choosing to be a victim yeah. Of whatever.
Peter:
Yeah. Yeah. It's really personal empowerment is the core of you can choose which, which, which do you feel. And it's the core of. It is. That's true. It's all about respect, respect, making sure that you, you, you are responsible for everything. Yeah.
Curt:
Are they co-mingled these two, like, is Maine gonna really have any, you can choose principles within it. Oh, for sure.
Peter:
They
Beth:
will. But they won't be like labeled as choose. Right?
Peter:
It's at the core. I mean, just
Beth:
like the right. I mean, if you look at what Maine will eventually become, as we get, get it going is it's gonna give people choices, small businesses and entrepreneurs choices to learn about things versus having to do it a certain way.
Curt:
Yeah. Not gonna make you do this, but you can choose this or choose that. Exactly. Fair enough. Yeah. Well, let's jump into the closing segments before we make you guys way late for the babysitter. we don't have kids, so we don't have a babysitter. Well, we should have some more wine. There you go. So, um, we always, uh, is yeah. Jump into faith, family or politics. And, uh, this is you can tag team'em, you can SW'em back and forth. Um, what's the most compelling to you to talk about.
Beth:
Health doesn't matter to me. You have
Peter:
choice. Peter's got an idea. Well, faith, faith is interesting. Yeah, because my faith is, it is so much more powerful now than it has ever been. And it is on the, you can choose front. So it's, it's the faith of personal empowerment, but I have a vision of myself or of a people, not just the physical us. Yeah. But a, a we're part of a bigger us.
Curt:
There's a universal connection kind of exactly
Peter:
element. We're all connected together beyond this, this physical, but also who I am is much bigger than this person walking around with this five senses. Yeah. So when I think about personal empowerment, I know that some of the choices that I make. Now even are influenced by what I want to, the bigger me wants to accomplish. Yeah. So it's, I'm not a victim. I, I get a, I'm a puppet running around. I'm not saying that whatsoever, but I do have objectives that I want to
Curt:
accomplish and also somewhat responsibilities. Right. Because you're so connected. So that your actions also impact others. The make, try to make'em positive as the best you can.
Peter:
Yeah. That's always a good, good thing, but it's always, I won't say just positive for myself, but POI not doing things too selfishly, but doing things that, that are aligned with what's important to me. Yeah. Because you can easily go the other route where you're just helping everybody and you, you end up drained yourself. Yeah.
Curt:
I have to say, when you were talking earlier about kind of that element of, of choosing and let something magical happen today and things like that, um, Providence is the word I've used a lot. And I, I consider myself a Christian and right. I've had some gosh, a half dozen or a dozen moments in my life now where it's like, wow, pretty wild. How God pulled that together there, where we got these two seats, you know, or whatever. And so there's either either and both I think, and both, uh, either not even either, it's just both mm-hmm, there's both our own actions in terms of what we choose, how we engage and there's this universal collective, whether it's God or the universal collective, right. Whatever that connection thing is. Right. What do we call that? Uh, so anyway, thanks for, uh, and what more, anything more you'd like to share on that general topic? That's funny.
Peter:
Okay. I mean, I, I, I could literally talk about that all
Curt:
day, right? fair enough, Beth. Uh, so
Beth:
on faith on faith. So I grew up very Catholic. Okay. Um, and. You know, I think the Catholic church has done some great things. Um, I, I think it's a, a historical entity, if you will. It's been around for a long time. And I think, you know, for myself as a woman, there's things that, as a kid, I remember disagreeing with, as I was reading the Bible, it's like, okay, this isn't excuse me, this isn't me. Um, and so I've really is, is, you know, Peter and I went to
Curt:
as a woman, you say that, I wonder what,
Beth:
um, because it felt like I was always second. Mm. If I read the Bible, it's like interesting, you know, you know, I wasn't, I was, they can't be preach. Yeah, yeah. Fair. There's lots of stuff like that.
Curt:
So, you know, it's just like, oh, I'd hate to be a priest. So you're lucky. Right, right. But yeah, I feel you. Yeah. So it's
Beth:
just, you know, it's just things like that. They're just very torical that makes sense. Um, but I think for me going forward, you know, I look at just my own experiences when we were in Silicon valley, it was really hard to find a woman founder, like a person who was on the nap, writing the napkin. This is my idea versus the first employee. Yeah. Big, big difference between those people. And I think that, you know, my own experiences, as well as the stuff that we've learned, you know, as we put together the, the, you can choose book and live those experiences. Um, we, I specifically think very much in terms. The world is and whatever I overlay on top of it in terms of judgment, good or bad, whatever it is that just reflects negatively back on me. And I don't get a chance to experience the universe as it's as it is. Yeah. And so I've learned to step back from things should look like this, or should look like that from a faith perspective. And I've learned to trust myself more and be, uh, believe in myself more. And those are hugely empowering to me because I don't feel like I have to get it right. Because there isn't such a thing as right. There really is. This is what works. Yeah. And being open to possibilities is another really powerful way of looking at the world, instead of assuming it needs to be like this or be like that. Yeah. Cause I was very much like that person.
Curt:
Yeah. That's a, I, when you were sharing about kind of feeling. Like gender suppression or whatever. At the beginning of that, there was a, there's an old joke. I start a joke. It's an observation from, I wanna say this is like the, the area around Spain when the Muslims were pushing up into there thing mm-hmm and there's a, the, anyway, the joke is the, uh, the Gentiles would share nothing, but they're women and the Christians would share everything except they're women. Mm-hmm, interesting. Uh, and that was kind of what they became known for in those days. And so even though the Bible gets a bad rap for some of the things and the priests and things like, I guess I would just like to support the notion that Christianity probably has done more for women's rights than most other.
Beth:
I'll say organizations. I'll I'll withhold statement on that. Fair enough. Because I think that there's, there's a lot of things in there, but nonetheless, I think. You know, I look at each of us as individuals.
Curt:
Like there's a, there's, there's plenty of things that, um, every
Peter:
way.
Beth:
Yeah. But I think that as, as people, humans being here on earth, as part of the life we're living, we're here to have an experience. Yeah. And when you look at it, from that perspective, you don't have a judgment one way or another. Yeah. Because you're here for an experience. You could judge it as good or bad, that's your choice. But, but I think if you just take the perspective of being here and having an experience that's takes away the cloak of judgment, right. Refer to it as it's interesting, that can be really heavy. It
Curt:
sure can. You know, and some outcomes are better
Beth:
than others. Exactly. And who's to say whether good or bad, you know, from each perspective has a, has a, has a for sure perspective, but you know, that to me is less important than for each individual truly experiencing what. They're living their truth, whatever that is. That's their choice. That's up to them. It's not me to make that choice. Fair. Fair
Curt:
enough. Thank you. Yeah. Peter, do you have something
Peter:
else? Well, so, so to that, you really, it's hard to tell whether a choice or an outcome is good or bad in total. Right? In, in that moment, it might be a bad thing. Right? I remember we talked to, to, to, to a woman who was, cuz we were talking about, you can choose and how, you know, things aren't necessarily bad that you think they're bad. And she says, oh, says I had this worst thing that happened to me 30, 40 years ago. She says I got laid off from a job. Right. And she said, it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. And I said, well, what happened? I said, we, we, we left the city and we ended up moving down. This was in Palo Alto. Yeah. We bought a house and raised our kids there. I says, well, how did that turn out to you? He says, oh, it was great. We ended up, you know, my husband
Curt:
got a great job. I had the kids had great schools that's that our house appreciated 800%.
Peter:
Exactly. And I says, and it was really that bad that you got fired. And she just, it was like, I told her, her hair was on fire. Interesting. It was like what? I've been holding this truth. That was the worst thing that happened to me for 40 years. And now you're just telling me that if I change my perspective, it it's not about. And did she come around? Yeah. She was like, oh my gosh.
Curt:
I mean, that's been a great blessing of my life in many respects. Is that. I've been able to spot the silver lining relatively quickly of all the crappy things that happened to
Beth:
me. Yeah. But those crappy things were all learnings that enabled you to be who you are today, who you are today. Yeah.
Curt:
As long as they don't knock you in the gutter all the way. Well, nothing knock you if can climb back outta the gutter. That works too
Beth:
well. You know, we were pretty damn close to the gutter or maybe in the gutter getting run over at some point. And it's like, but you know, we are so much better off now as result. It's just a matter of, you know, sometimes it's really uncomfortable to be uncomfortable. Yeah.
Curt:
Fair, fair enough. You know? Well, that was a fun faith segment. That was just one. Right? You got two more to go. We've got family or politics who wants to choose next?
Peter:
You wanna start
Curt:
first. You guys are like my wife and I, you don't have any children. Long-term marriage 30 years. Oh, we're getting up more than close. 35 40 almost 85, right?
Peter:
Yeah.
Beth:
85. So, so yeah, we're getting up there always. Yeah. So, um, you know, family, I think for me. You know, I'm, I've never been I've. I, I wasn't really the black sheep. I would call myself more of a gray sheep. I didn't really fit into lots
Curt:
of things. You were a little weird, but you weren't bad. Can't really call you a black sheep.
Beth:
Right. Right. So, so,
Curt:
you know, she's riding her bike again, mom. Sorry. I just think about my culture in North Dakota. Her gree is a lot the same, you know, people don't ride their bikes.
Peter:
That's weird. Right.
Beth:
But, um, they'll shoot something then. Well, you know, riding a bike for me is cleaning out the cobwebs. I get so much done on my bike. You think I'm just out there having a good time, but I'll, I do a lot of processing out there. That's how I'm building the company in my head. Right. Yeah. Um, but I think, um, with family, you know, I was a little nervous about coming back here. You know, I've been move, been gone for about 40 years and now I come back and my brother and sister are out here. Okay. And my parents. And so it's like, well, you know, how am I gonna be accepted? They all say, they want me to come back, but
Curt:
really, really you're the California contingency. Right. So. Little woo woo. Sometimes yeah.
Beth:
Yeah, but it's but it's been, it's been really good. It's been very nice. My parents are in their eighties and dad's, I think turns 90 in like a week. I mean, do your siblings
Curt:
have some littles and they have littles of their own coming now and stuff. So they're, they have just
Beth:
littles. They don't have little over their own. Yeah. Um, they're just parents at this point soon, probably maybe a couple years, like kids are, their kids are all pretty go out there and do big things, stuff. Um,
Curt:
that tradition has continued. It sounds like.
Beth:
Yes it has. Yeah. But I, but you know, I think I'm, I'm happy. I'm really happy. I'm back close to my parents in particular. We're, we're both enjoying this time because you know, Sundays have become more the afternoon. We go spend time with mom and dad and you know, we haven't done that for decades. Yeah. And so it's just, it's nice to be back. Would you guys
Curt:
like to be on our rotary club list for potential exchange, uh, student hostings. For international students. Oh, I don't know at this point, like a three month, uh, three months of adulting. And then you get to give them back to somebody else. Oh, you seem like you would love that. That would be interesting.
Peter:
We can talk a little bit about that. Fair enough. Beth. Beth has a, I'm thinking about,
Beth:
we gotta get the company going here. well,
Curt:
different agenda here. Actually the, the second exchange student that my wife and I hosted was from Brazil. And one of the rules is you can't like work for money, but, and my food trailer was starting just at that time. So I got a couple of free shifts out of Leticia um, because you know, it was just inappropriate for me to pay her Um, but anyway, she was super excited about it. Like, I was literally launching that business at that time that she was here with us. So wonderful. Um, Peter, anything that you'd like to observe with
Peter:
regards to family? Well, well, I'm, I'm enjoying adopting her parents cuz both my parents have, have since passed. Yeah. Um, so when I'm up here, I'm, I'm enjoying the heck out of getting to go over there. Cuz when I grew up, um, up in Vermont, I remember we used to all the family used to go to my grandmother's house for Sunday dinner. Oh really? We'd sit around once almost every week, every and, and they did it until she passed away. Wow. Basically cuz her two of her sons were just like down the street cuz little town up in, in Vermont. Sure. So that was, to me, the ideal situation is you can walk over to mom's house or grandma's house. Yeah, yeah. And have that. So now that we're here, we get to do that. So every Sunday we either go to their house and or they come over to our place and we barbecue. That's super cool. Something cool. It's just, just a, I'm just loving
Curt:
the heck. That's part of what we miss. Like we have all this diversity of economy and all this wondrous, but like little house in the Prairie where grandma lives right over there and you've got the 250 people in the town kind of thing and stuff, you know, there's some. Benefit to that closeness
Peter:
of community too. There isn't, you know, it's, it's wonderful that we have the ability. Most of us have the ability to make those choices. Yeah. We all have the ability to make the choices. Yeah. But most of us don't, many of us don't feel empowered to do so. Yeah. That's an interesting, but now this is a, for me, this is perfect. Five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. What I wanna couldn't imagined it. Oh my gosh. I would've pulled my hair out. Right? Yeah. We had to go and conquer the world if you will. Right. To see what that was. And, but now that, that we're at this phase of us, it's just amazing to be part of the
Beth:
family. Right. So this is one of the, you know, I, I remember when I was younger thinking, I don't wanna get so old, but you know, I have to say now that I'm older, it's hugely beneficial to be older because I don't have the fear I used to. I don't have the, I don't need, I don't feel like no pressure to expectations. You know, it's just, it's different. Now I can, you know, have roof over my head. I've got food in my stomach. So it's not like I have to worry about basic fundamentals, but, but I do think that when you're older, you do have this. S groundedness in who you are, if you really truly spend time paying attention to what you want. Yeah.
Curt:
Yeah. Fair enough. Um, do you like, it feels like you wouldn't prob you sold a company for millions of dollars or at least a pretty good chunk of change. You probably, unless you had like a huge amount of tax debt or anything like that, you probably wouldn't have to work so hard, but you guys are, are hustling. Like you're building this main thing and it's coming together fast and Kurt goes back to the fact that I'm everybody, you can't sit still. He'll go crazy. If he makes you sit still, you'll go crazy. And then you'll kill him and beat him up and kill him.
Beth:
Um, let me just say that I've had to leave the house more than a few times to just like get away because I just had to go move and I had to be by myself. Yeah. And so fair
Curt:
enough. Well, and what's the point of. Drinking decorates hanging on a beach, you know, that's pretty dumb. Exactly. They're full of sugar. That's right.
Peter:
And, you know, yeah. Almost see it's boring. After a while we did a little bit of that in Santa Cruz and it's like, okay, this is, yeah. Fine. But yeah, what's what's next. Right. So fair enough. And we just love, and the idea of building something with a, with a mindset of it's possible. Yeah. And we can be successful. Yeah. Is,
Curt:
well, I, I think what you're building doesn't exist in part, because everybody that wanted to create it wanted to build something like this, that would just be like PBS, like a public service kind of offering or whatever. And wouldn't have Adam Smith's principles in mind. And so stay tuned for more news on Maine. It's, it's kind of, uh, just coming out of the oven right now in a lot of respects. So yeah. We'll come back to that maybe in a future conversation. Sure. Um, politics, politics. How's uh, how's governor Newsome doing. So he come bringing it together. No idea. Oh yeah. Haven't paying attention. We left
Peter:
we're out. No, I mean, I have no idea what the governor here does either. I, I rarely you just
Beth:
check out. He's an entrepreneur we learn. So
Peter:
that's a good thing. Yeah. I mean, I, I know what's going on at the national and I lo little bit about what's going on local, but, um, somebody at the, um, at the fundraising event we were at the other day. Okay. Um, made the comment that, you know, with all the drama going on in the world, it's easy to get overwhelmed and, and feel powerless or to feel just, you know, like, like. What do I do and be mad at people. Right, right, right. And then he made the perfect statement there. It was, you know, part of helping people to raise funds, but act local is what I heard him say. Right. Jump into what's what's around here. What's impacting you. Yep. What do you care about, right. It's nice to care about what's going on in Ukraine or what's going on in Washington, but what are you gonna do about it, right? Yeah. Are you gonna jump on a plane or are you gonna send money then do so, and then feel good about it. Sure. But if you wanna make a difference in your life and have an impact, then do something local. Start with yourself, look in the mirror, figure out what you wanna do and then go from there. Yeah. So to me, politics is just people talking about stuff that maybe they'll do something about, but maybe they won't. Yeah. And it's easy to, geting drawn into that. Cuz this is drama.
Curt:
A lot of people talking, it's just not a lot of people doing it.
Peter:
It's just drama. It's just like watching to me. It's no different than watching a soap opera. Right. If you care about what the people watch are doing on the still opera, you can feel just as much sadness as someone walking weight or so much pain
Curt:
or so much joy of something. I just went to the top gun movie last weekend. And it was amazing because of all the heartstrings that pulled from their original version and stuff. Exactly.
Peter:
Yeah. And if you wanna have that feeling, then, you know, jump into those every once in a while, I'll open up my app and see what's going on in the news and it's, and then I get enough of a fill to not know,
Curt:
mostly you're just like happily detached from that. Yeah. And, and
Peter:
generally, but I'll get attached cuz I, I have gotten attached when there's something that I feel I need to do something about and cause that's cool. You just can't just wait for nothing. If you feel strongly about you do it. Yeah. Yeah. But don't watch it and feel like you need to be a part of it unless you truly wanna be a part of it. Yeah.
Curt:
Right. Yeah. I think that's a great encouragement cuz we do, we feel. So powerless sometimes, and, and, and too many people, people feel powerless, like things happen to them, right? Like even if it's inflation, inflation's happening to me. And I really, I would agree that I, I wanna also inspire people to make things happen. Mm-hmm you know? Exactly. And, but, and sometimes it's like, not just about working harder with your head down it's about thinking yes. And believing and appreciating. What you've got and acceptance of yourself and all those kind of things. Well, I think
Beth:
a lot of it goes back to, um, what do you want, I mean, and what do you as a person wants? And I think a lot of people get caught up in drama, whatever it is. Um, and they don't really take the time to get grounded in who they are and what they want. Yeah. And so they get caught up in somebody else's stuff. Yeah. That doesn't really relate to them be, and it doesn't, you know, really make them happy or, or put'em in a better place. How do you find out what you want? You have to spend time paying attention to you? What you're thinking? I mean, I remember when I first started and what's in your heart. Yes. What's in your heart. But I remember one of the things that I did early on was watch my thoughts and we'll often tell people, Hmm, pay attention to what you're thinking. You don't have to judge it. Just listen to what you're thinking. And I remember I was someplace. On the street corner. And I was just sitting there cause I, I was waiting for somebody and I was watching somebody walking down the street and it's like, this person walk by. And it's like, why did they put those shoes with that, that pair of pants that just doesn't make any sense. And I caught myself and it was like, you know, Beth, who the heck cares and what's the point, you know? And it was like, wow, that was the first realization
Curt:
why
Beth:
I was, why do you spend time thinking about that? Exactly. And I was realizing, and I was so judgey in my head and it's like, so, okay, so you can pay attention to this and you can step, choose to step back from that, if you wish. And it took a took work, I'll tell you Kurt, you know, it was a couple months of really paying attention and being diligent about it. Yeah. I'm convicted. Yeah. Well I think everybody is at some level, I'm
Curt:
like, you can't drive past, past my house, but I can drive past, past my house.
Beth:
well, and I think that that's the whole point is that people judge other people, but they never really take the time. Or frequently, don't take the time to pay attention to themselves. Yeah. And it's when you do that internal work that you start to realize, okay, so I am judgy and I had to work really hard to not do that. And so I wonder that's the first step.
Curt:
I think entrepreneurs as a general category probably spend more time judging themselves than others because there's so few of other people judging them, it's lonely, right? Like nobody's telling them whether they got to get back to work or this and that, you know, they get no reward very often. They don't necessarily, well, you you're
Beth:
as an early stage entrepreneur, you're often isolated. And so who, how many people are you really talking to? Which is part of what we really wanted to be able,
Curt:
or is a 10th year entrepreneur. You feel isolated sometimes too. Yeah. Yeah. Um, before I let you off the hook politics, what do you wanna tell me about politics?
Beth:
I just think it's up to people to choose whatever it is that really is important to them. Yeah. And if it's something really important to you, you should really engage still better than a
Curt:
knife fight.
Beth:
Yeah, I think so.
Curt:
I'm not into just politics generally.
Peter:
Well, you could say it's no different, less
Curt:
blur perhaps. That's one of my, I don't know who's quoted is, but politics is the, the invention we came up with to avoid actually hacking each other to pieces with swords.
Beth:
such a good visual with that one.
Curt:
Um, the lo experience, um, the crazy experience that you'd like to share with our
Peter:
audience. I, I I've been thinking about that ever since you brought it up and I, I don't have anything.
Curt:
You don't have any crazy experiences. Well, we just talked about the magic airplane
Peter:
spot. Yeah. And I guess that's the challenge I have is so many, I've had so many magical things. I'll think of something. Go do Beth first. Yes. Okay. Well,
Beth:
for me, the magical experiences, when I think about how we went from being literally in the gutter. To selling our company in six months. That to me was magical. Yeah. And it took us a good year and a half to unpack that experience. It was so magical. Yeah. And so that would be what I point to it was a painful, magical experience. Let me just say that magical design necessarily to mean it's good or feels good, but it was painful. And in retrospect was about as magical as you could possibly imagine.
Curt:
Is your acquirer happy that they absolutely made that part of the absolutely.
Beth:
Absolutely. They love the technology
Peter:
was great. And, and the people that, um, many of the people that, that transferred over were hired on us still there helping make work are still there. You getting promoted being promoted. My sister, yeah. My sister was, oh,
Curt:
really? One of those. Oh yeah. Cuz you guys were recruiting family
Peter:
and family. Yeah. She, she, she was really fundamental to, to helping us. Oh really be successful. That's cool. She started off just. No technical background, but she would just figure it out.
Curt:
And did you guys gather capital for that venture as well? Did you have to pay off investors and stuff or you were more boots strapped on that second kind? We boots strapped it pretty much. Well, we had, we had, um, a little bit of investment. We had little bit of investment. Yeah. But mostly not. It was your company generally speaking. So you got spoils kind of there.
Beth:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, but you know, you look at 10 years of
Curt:
work. Well, right. I mean, and you probably weren't getting the biggest paychecks in town during those 10 years. We're,
Beth:
we're living off our savings for year. So I would say at least three to five years fair. But that's what you get when you, like, you just, you're all in. I mean, you know, you be willing to make those jumps, but, but that's why the way you think about yourself is so important, especially for people who are in an entrepreneurial space, because you have to believe in yourself cuz nobody else is gonna believe in you. Yeah. If you don't then why would anybody else?
Curt:
So like, do you have any quick tips on like, it sounds easy, just believe in yourself and. Better things will happen. It's not easy. It's not easy. Maybe we don't have any quick tips. We don't have time
Peter:
in this section. No, but we do have one, one quick tip, cuz this is a quick tip that I give to all the students I talk to. Cause I'd still do mentoring at okay. At, at Purdue university. Cool. Hopefully CSU will will reach. They'll probably let you we'll do something like that is we, we try to help people to shift their thinking so that they learn to become a little bit of a better friend to themselves. So we, we say be your best friend, but that's usually a big jump for where people are starting from. We just basically say, listen, listen to how you're talking to yourself and things don't go right. Is that what you would stand for a friend telling you those same things, right? If not, then just make some adjustments and what you're thinking about and, and maybe encouraging yourself. Well, you know, maybe next time you can do better Peter and things like that rather than you're just an idiot. You'd suck it. Yeah. If
Curt:
anybody else criticize me, like I criticize myself. they would totally be an asshole in my book. Exactly. That's right. You would kick
Peter:
em out and you, you probably even be, you know, push'em away. Right, right. Because you can stand that, but you listen to yourself doing that. Yeah. So that's the one little quick trip tip that I would give you is when you start beating yourself up, just ask yourself, why am I doing this to my best friend? Right.
Beth:
Very good. Yeah. It's hard to do, make that shift, but it's is a really powerful way to start.
Curt:
Peter, do you wanna tack on anything or you just want to, uh, like, no, the, the last
Peter:
little
Curt:
thing that I, that no, on the local experience, do you want just join in her, in Beths that, that season? No. You got, no, that was beautiful.
Peter:
So one of the things I did, I remember Beth went, went to Cuba, I think for a, a week or a month, actually a month you went there.
Beth:
Well, no, it was, it wasn't a month. It was like about 10 days. Something
Peter:
like that felt like a month felt like a month. Well, it felt like a month cuz I said, Hey, I'm gonna go have fun. So I jumped out of an airplane. and I flew to, um, London for a week weekend.
Curt:
Okay. So your local experience was like having a little bro time while, while Beth was in Cuba, kinda
Beth:
Well, I was glad he did it. It's like, oh, I could do that. That's
Curt:
not how I impressed. I like it. Yeah. I like it. Um, you landed fine. No problem on the airplane jump. That,
Peter:
that, that was amazing. If you've ever, have you ever jumped onto the plane plane? No, not yet. The, the idea of, of getting onto, you know, is it was paired, paired, right. So you're clipped onto somebody else, but you jump getting onto a plane. You, you would get on a commercial jet. Right. They, you know, make sure the doors are locked. Sure. Yeah. Cross check and all that stuff. And we get into this plane and the, in the, the door that they have is just a piece of Plexiglas. Right, right. It's just rattling back there,
Curt:
the slides back. And then they open it up extra van door
Peter:
and then on purpose, you jump out. Right. And it was just the, the, the most amazing experience. So I, so look forward to doing it again. Awesome. I would encourage everyone. Have that feeling of, of complete
Curt:
the main reason I don't want to do it is, cause I don't wanna be with somebody. Like I wanna be by myself and have to pull the string. well, you get to pull the string. Oh, do you? Okay. Well, but you still got somebody there. That's gonna pull the string if you don't. Well, I don't know. I'm a little bit more of an adventurer maybe. Well
Beth:
maybe you do it with somebody the next time you go by
Curt:
yourself, maybe. Okay. Anyway, I'm just teasing a little bit. Um, tell people how to find Maine. Can you even look it up
Peter:
online right now? You, you can, as of, as of recently you can go to Maine it's two ends. Yep. And maine.co. Okay. So maine.co you can go there and you can actually pre-register to be an early adopter of
Curt:
the mm-hmm and what do you get? If you're an early adopter, you
Peter:
the first a hundred folks that sign up, get a, the first free year. Nice
Curt:
a year free. I thought you should not charge just a little bit discounted year.
Beth:
Let's do the end of the year. We wanna get, we wanna get people loaded
Curt:
up, so we're figuring it out. Um, appreciate you guys. This was a fun conversation. Yeah. And I'm looking forward to the next time we can spend time together. Oh
Peter:
my God. Gosh. Thank you guys. Speed.
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