BONUS EPISODE #2 | February Blog | Who Do You & How Do You Love?

Let's have some fun. Welcome to the LOCO Experience Podcast. I'm your host, Kirk 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 unbarnished truths 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 thoughtful episodes, topically focused snippets of five to fifteen 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 infer to listen and read, and maybe you do too. Thanks for tuning in, and if you like the show, please subscribe, review, and share it with your favorite people. Welcome back for another bonus episode of the LOCO Experience Podcast, specifically me reading my blog from February 2022. Who do you, and how do you love? I was honored earlier this month to share a short article in Fort Collins Lifestyle Magazine, I love in the local community, and I got some nice feedback on it. Thanks, you know who you are. Writing that article got my rocks tumbling, and the edges are smoothing enough that I wanted to expand on those ideas a bit in this month's blog. In our society, there are three main ways we as individuals show love. Through our time, our talent, and our treasure. Our treasure is the one thing that gets the most measure, as focused as we are on incomes, and GDPs, and everything in between. We also measure time in a way, at least the time that is rented for money, the formal wages, or gifted to non-profit cause and a volunteer capacity. But we fail to measure the time spent by mothers loving their children, or neighbors helping neighbors, or a friend being a friend. And who can argue that those are the hours that aren't the most precious in existence? Similarly, the sharing of our talent is hard to measure. We can sell our talent for money and measure it that way, but much talent is given away, and worse than that much talent is hidden away. In this month's blog, I'm going to go through a discussion and examination of how we can show love, through our time, talent, and treasure, in our homes, and in our businesses, and in our community. I'm asked often, and was again recently, how did you come up with the idea of local think tank? I stumbled into it, I sometimes say, which is true. I wanted a peer advisory experience that I, and others with smaller businesses, could benefit from and afford to be a part of, and local just kind of happened, with a whole lot of encouragement from years truly. As the old Franklin quote goes, or so I thought, necessity is the mother of invention, but wasn't actually Franklin. No one knows the true holder of that specific quote. Italian proverb is along the branch of its history, and it ultimately goes back to Plato, from his mastercraft, the Republic. Our need will be the real creator. Insightful, that guy, Plato, have you read him? So anyway, my want of that time explains the need, but it doesn't explain the source of the idea. I've listened to a book recently from Stephen Johnson, where good ideas come from, and it unfolded perfectly the things I had come to discover on my own when examining this question. Stephen examines innovations and ideas across history, and concludes in part that our good ideas come from our connection to networks, the more and the messier the better. It's a great book, and there's a lot more, but I shan't try to summarize his book with my paragraph. Years after founding local think tank, I came to understand the foundational elements in place. First was my own experience with peer advisory, and my extensive interactions with small, and what I'd say medium-sized business owners, who had peer advisory in their lives. My direct experience was with Vistage membership, initially recruited when I was acting president of our small bank, and later as a member in a Vistage Trusted Advisors group, for folks like bankers and lawyers and CPAs and such. Made in my best bank clients were members in a group, like Vistage or Tab or Renaissance forums, or part of a free and self-managed group. These latter groups met regularly with the same kind of model, often formed by past members of these high-cost groups, but the self-awareness and added perspective afforded to members of these groups as real leverage to the machine. Managing these chapters is not rocket science, but someone has to do the real work of planning and providing structure to meetings. In the higher-cost groups, it's a job, often as a franchisee, and in the no-cost groups, someone has to volunteer. Rotary is the next major element. Rotary club, where I've been a member for over 10 years. Armada was service above self. We also have a four-way test of ethics and programs for community service, and international service, and vocational service, and international youth exchange, and youth leadership camps, and regular volunteering at the Food Bank, Meals on Wheels, and I think you get my point. We do a lot of service in my Rotary club, and we're one of thousands of such clubs. I joined when I was still a banker, and it's a lovely and vibrant club. Many of our members are in professional services, of some sort, or nonprofit. Many others are retired, or some are retired, but they all have servants, hearts, and strong minds, and are desired to make their world a better place. The same kinds of people occupy cavernous clubs, and lion's clubs, and shirthoma, and jacies, and again, you get my point. Our world is full of bright, and capable, and experienced individuals, especially 50s and 60s and 70s, who don't want our need, a real job, but they don't want to do nothing. Some of them have been owners of amazing businesses, and they're passionate about free enterprise, and those people are great candidates to be a facilitator at local think tank. Third was Bible Study Fellowship, BSF International. It's an organization I got involved with in my late 20s shortly after I'd come to faith, or accepted grace, or believed in Jesus, however you'd held me turn that phrase. BSF provides a once-weekly gathering of folks from diverse backgrounds, assorted churches, and even those opposed to churches, but curious about the Bible, to come together and study and learn. One of the key elements of the program is a weekly group discussion, or the reading of the daily reading and questions, facilitated by a volunteer discussion leader. When asked in my second year of BSF if I would have interest in becoming a discussion leader, my reply was basically, you don't want me, I don't know anything about the Bible, and that response was, you don't have to. You can learn the material together. It's the discussion leaders job to provide the structure, ask good questions, and draw out the quiet members. We'll teach you how to become a better facilitator. And so I learned what it was to be a facilitator, and that's the light yoke of responsibility we offer to our chapter minders. They've been there, done that, but it doesn't mean they know all the answers, but they can help the group find those answers together. Last was the Matthews house. My honey bear became the seventh employee at the Matthews house back in 2007, a couple years after its founding, and I got involved soon after. Early on it came to events and volunteered a bit, and later I got more involved, and eventually came to sit on the board. I even became board president for a season, and I remained involved as an ambassador. I give monthly and do what I can to raise awareness. The Matthews house is a local 501C3 that empowers youth and families to close the cycle of poverty in Northern Colorado, through a relationship driven, whole person approach to human services. They help clients navigate resources and find traction in their life journey, and we aspire to provide that same kind of support for our members. To see someone go from surviving to thriving is a wonderful experience, and I've been blessed to see this journey from my vantage at both Matthews house and at local think tank. So we've got these four distinct elements mixing together. And alongside that, I've been volunteering at the Lairmer County Small Business Development Center as well, serving primarily startup community. I have my experience in network as a banker, and in all of these experiences, it was clear that too many of my clients had gaps in their game. They were great with the numbers, but had terrible time hiring or trading, or they were brilliant at sales and marketing, but terrible with their financials. Bringing these groups of amazing but flawed entrepreneurs together helps them see themselves more clearly and learn from one another in a confidential environment. So this messy mix of interests and networks and learnings came together, then we stir and stir and stir some more and poof, local think tank was born, and is even growing up a little. We love the founders and owners of small businesses, and we long to see them thrive. My encouragement for you this month is to do a bit of self-examination. Who do you, and how do you love? Where are you spending your time, your talent, your treasure? Do you have a narrow scope of focus or a broad mix of interests? Are you self-focused or others focused? If your answer is to any of these questions is yes, you didn't read the question. But if you've been inspired to messy up your network a bit and share some of your time and treasure, I've got a special event coming up that I'm donating a chunk of my time talent and treasure to this spring. I'm hosting a community growth party benefit for the Matthews House in April 14th at Sweetheart Winery. We'll have small plates and appetizers from yours truly and other local restaurant tours and caterers, amazing wines from Sweetheart, a presentation from the Matthews House staff, and live music from my favorite local band, and providers of our podcast intro and outro music, a brother's fountain. We're asking $100 donation to the Matthews House to attend, and it'll be worth it. It'll be amazing people there from all corners of my messy network, and I hope you'll consider joining it. There's a link in the notes from one of our information, and I hope you'll have an inspiring and entertaining month until we see there again. BS, if you want to learn more about the Matthews House, I'd invite you to be inspired and encouraged by episode 36 of the local experience podcast with the Matthews House founder Jerry Smiths. Or, if you're curious about a brother's fountain, you can learn more and be highly entertained by episode 20 with a brother's fountain bandmates, AJ and JJ Fountain. Thanks for listening, thanks for reading, have a great week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Logix Variants Podcast. If you enjoyed this program, share it with your favorite people, and please leave us a review on your favorite listening platform. Subscribe to never miss a leader's interview, and check out thelogixvariants.com to learn more and find our library of episodes. Until next time, stay local.