The LoCo Experience EP #284 | Better Architecture through Diverse Experience

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In today's podcast, I sat down with Chris Aronson and Jeff Fleischer, the principals at VFLA in Fort Collins.

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VFLA has arguably been the leading architecture firm in northern Colorado since its founding in 1986, and this year celebrates 40 years of service to the commercial and residential construction industries.

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My connection with VFLA goes back to my banking years in the late 90s, but is personal because of the L that's now missing.

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Justin Larson was my highly spirited canyon-riding companion for several years until his untimely death in 2019 in a motorcycle crash in Mexico.

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Justin had merged his firm with the then Vought Fry in 2011 and led the firm during my transition from banking to local think tank, which he was always an advocate for.

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But back to our guests.

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Chris Aronson was interviewing with both Vought Fry and with JCL Architecture back in 2011.

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And when he came in for a final interview, the leadership of both companies were there to share the news of the impending merger.

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He became a principal and a part of the leadership team in 2014 and ascended to the leadership role after Justin's passing.

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Justin had lured Jeff Fleischer back to the firm only three days before his passing.

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So for me, this podcast was a bit of a cleanse.

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And both men have fascinating journeys all their own and perspectives on architecture that I found truly refreshing.

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So I hope you'll tune in and enjoy my conversation with Chris Aronson and Jeff Fleischer, principals at VFLA.

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Welcome to the Loco Experience Podcast.

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On this show, you'll get to know business and community leaders from all around northern Colorado and beyond.

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Our guests share their stories.

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And through it all, you'll be inspired and entertained.

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Thank you.

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These conversations are real and raw, and no topics are off limits.

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So pop in a breath mint and get ready to meet our latest guest.

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Welcome back to the Loco Experience Podcast.

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My guests today are Chris Aronson and Jeff Fleischer.

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They are two principals, the CEO and Vice President, respectively, of VFLA Architecture and Interiors.

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Welcome, fellas.

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Welcome.

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Thanks for having us.

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Yeah, for sure.

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Agreed.

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Thanks for having us.

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Chris, I think I want to start with you because you're the CEO and all that, right?

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Tell me about VFLA.

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It's architecture, interior design.

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I know about it, just to be full disclosure to the audience, but some people don't.

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Yeah, it's an exciting year for us.

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We're celebrating 40 years in business.

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Frank and Joe started the firm in 1986.

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They were college roommates in architecture and had moved to Fort Collins and had started their own firm.

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Frank Vought and Joe Fry, as to my reflection.

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Yes, yes.

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A lot of us in the community know us as Vought Fry.

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We are now VFLA for Vought Fry, Larson, Aronson.

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And, yeah, we are a full-service architecture and interior design firm.

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We focus on commercial and custom residential projects.

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We do interiors for commercial and also custom homes.

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OK.

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I guess I didn't realize you did a lot of custom homework.

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Do you do residential architecture as well?

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Yeah.

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Well, I can think.

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Yeah, we do quite a few.

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Last year, we had a unique year.

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We had eight projects under construction in Old Town.

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Oh, wow.

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We had our own little tour de fat.

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We call it Blueprints and Bikes.

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Oh, wow.

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Yeah, it was really fun.

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Not really.

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I knew you did some of that, but I brushed against VFLA in my banking career, mostly on commercial building architecture.

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And so your first and foremost, in my mind, has always been commercial architects.

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Yeah.

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But I guess even back in the day, Joe and Frank were also both generalists, kind of a firm firm.

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And a lot of times it would happen, right, where we would do a commercial, say, office building or car dealership.

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Hey, I've been thinking about building a house.

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Yeah, I'm thinking about building a house.

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Right.

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So, yeah, we would spin off and do their custom home or their vacation house.

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And, yeah.

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Okay.

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85 to 95% of our business are repeat customers.

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Wow.

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Yeah, and referrals.

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Wow.

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And so it's just a matter of the solid reputation we have.

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Staying relevant, hiring good architects, I imagine, is part of it.

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What's your team look like these days?

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We are a team of 17 right now, made up of licensed architects, interior designers, and then a couple admin.

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Handful of support staff.

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Yeah.

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Very cool.

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Yeah.

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Are you still in that cool space downtown?

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We are.

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We're on Canyon Avenue next to Lincoln Center.

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Right by the Nerdy Minds was right there in that building for quite a while.

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Yep.

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Very cool.

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Yeah, we've been there 11 years.

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OK. Mm-hmm.

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OK.

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I don't know if it's early to get into that, but the L is still there for my old friend Justin that passed now five years ago.

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But is that an honorarium kind of?

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Oh, of course.

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Yeah, I think he'll always stay in there with VFLA for sure.

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He was such an instrumental part of our office.

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Yeah.

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I'm sorry that we lost him.

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Yeah, that was January of 2019.

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It was.

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Yeah.

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I felt like it was almost, I tied it in with COVID Nation a little bit.

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I know, it was pre-COVID.

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I guess it was.

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Okay.

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For the audience, I guess just a little background.

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Justin Larson was the CEO of the firm and he was kind of the brash, young, upstart architect that approached Joe and Frank and basically said, I could be your exit plan kind of thing, or at least not in so many words, I'm sure.

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They merged together.

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They merged, the firms.

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Yeah, Vot Fry and JCL, Justin Larson Architecture.

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Gave them a path toward retiring eventually.

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And then you joined the firm when?

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I joined the firm right before they merged together.

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Okay.

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About a month before.

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You joined the VF side?

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The VF side.

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I remember coming into an interview with Frank, and great interview, and then he called me back, said, hey, would you like to come back in?

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I'm like, sure, what's up?

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And, you know, back in the day, we didn't have these double interviews, triple interviews.

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Right, right.

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And I remember showing up to the interview, and Justin was in the office, and I was like, what?

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Oh, what's going on?

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You know, like, did I do something wrong?

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You know, because I was applying to both firms.

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And I come in and Frank wanted to say, hey, I just want to be upfront with you that we are merging firms, these two together.

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And I just want to make sure that you're OK with that before you accept.

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Fascinating.

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And I was like, this is even better, because you guys are the two firms in town that I'd love to work for.

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Awesome.

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Yeah.

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What a neat thing.

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And so, yeah, for the audience, Justin died in a motorcycle crash in Mexico.

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Yes.

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Yeah, January 2019.

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Yeah.

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I didn't realize.

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I guess I haven't visited Vought Frye since then.

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And I guess further for the audience, Justin was my ride fast up canyons with motorcycles friend for many years, going back to my banking days.

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And so, Justin, if you're listening, I still ride fast up canyons.

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I've got a couple of new friends.

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Yeah.

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Maybe a little bit more careful than I was back in the day, but in your honor, we still twist them.

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Oh, yeah.

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That's good.

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So I guess can we talk about that chapter?

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Because you were kind of thrust into leadership, and you had just joined the firm, Jeff, right?

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Yeah, I was there three days.

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Before Justin's passed.

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Yes.

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Can I shift to you and maybe get your perspective on that?

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Because you had been a part of the firm and then rejoined.

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What was the circumstance there?

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That's right.

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So I started in 2006.

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Okay.

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And I advanced to a director of architecture with Frank and Joe.

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And then the Great Recession came in.

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And it kind of changed a lot of things, as we know.

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I was a banker during those years.

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I remember it.

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Our staff went from 12 to 6.

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Yes.

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So it took me down to Denver for several years.

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And I would see Justin at AIA events.

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And we would talk.

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And he kept saying, you should come back.

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You should come back.

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And I said, no, I think I'm good.

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And then finally, after a lot of conversations and we talked a little more and I said, this is a great deal.

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I'm going to do it.

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I'm going to go back.

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And I get to live in Fort Collins again.

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Thank God.

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I was commuting every day from Loveland, which is where I live, to Denver.

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Oh, so you never moved down there.

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No.

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Thank God.

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So, yeah.

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So then I came back and as we were talking about back three days and unfortunately that happened.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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What was the circumstance at the firm at the time?

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You were, you were already a principal, you were part of the leadership team, Chris.

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And so you were already kind of in the room for what all the stuff, right, of managing a firm is like somebody's got to have their eye on the ball.

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Yeah, so in, say, end of 2018, Justin and I were the principals of the office.

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We were luring Jeff back into the office.

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Okay, as a principal position.

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As a principal position.

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Because Frank, he was going to be retiring kind of fully end of 2018.

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Okay, okay.

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And so coming into January...

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We got too much demand and not enough experience.

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Yeah.

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We had Jeff coming in.

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We had Frank.

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He was phasing out and he had retired, which was fantastic.

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Like kind of timing in there.

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And then, yeah, just in the middle of January, you know, we get calls on our phone and through Facebook of a crash down in Mexico.

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And we're trying to piece it all together, you know.

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I'm just so fortunate that Jeff was there.

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Right.

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That Jeff had come along because otherwise I would have been solo principal.

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Yeah.

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So yeah, I was- Nobody to bounce anything off of.

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Yeah.

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Were you signers on the accounts and all that kind of stuff?

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Was there a bunch of that kind of like technical stuff?

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Yeah, we had some of that stuff to go on.

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We are really fortunate.

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Our CFO and office manager,

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uh robin has been with us 25 seven years a long time so she mostly runs a lot of the business oh yes and so having her support through all of that was um was fantastic and so um being able to lean on her and the three of us guiding the firm through that you know it took it took everybody took everybody for sure i'm sure yeah

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And can we kind of hit the ground running at that season a little bit?

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What was COVID Nation like for architecture?

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What has been the season since?

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Where has the firm been in terms of opportunity and focus?

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They're kind of harbingers of things to come sometimes, right, in trends.

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We had, with Justin's passing and how to manage that through the office, then the next year when COVID happened, we as a team were so kind of flexible in understanding how to mitigate that type of stressor.

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We had some resilience training built in.

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We had other firms and other companies reaching out to us going like, how do we do this?

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What do we do?

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How do we manage this, that, the other?

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And it was really like focus two weeks at a time.

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And so for us, I mean, we went fully remote there for a while in COVID, just like a lot of people.

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Everybody had to, basically.

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Right.

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We were fortunate.

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We had teams already set up.

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And the downside is collaboration is such a strong element in architecture.

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Doing that digitally.

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What do you think of this?

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Oh, man, it's so hard.

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You're like, show me another slideshow, Chris.

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Yes.

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On Zoom.

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So trying to do design charrettes virtually with 40 people on a Zoom call, it definitely tried us.

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Or interviews with clients.

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Interviews with clients.

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Right.

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It's hard.

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I can only imagine.

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Yeah.

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And so we, and especially Jeff's mindset, he's brought this great attitude of like, let's beta test it.

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Let's try it out.

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Yeah.

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Let's try something.

246
00:12:31.092 --> 00:12:33.152
And if it doesn't work, then fail fast, right?

247
00:12:33.172 --> 00:12:34.833
We've all heard that in this scenario.

248
00:12:34.873 --> 00:12:35.273
Fail fast.

249
00:12:35.293 --> 00:12:36.673
The important thing is to do something.

250
00:12:36.773 --> 00:12:36.973
Yeah.

251
00:12:36.993 --> 00:12:37.173
Right.

252
00:12:37.313 --> 00:12:38.994
And if it doesn't work, then do something different.

253
00:12:39.134 --> 00:12:43.095
So we were checking out like these endless whiteboards that you could zoom in and draw and trace.

254
00:12:43.155 --> 00:12:45.455
And we were trying all sorts of things.

255
00:12:45.835 --> 00:12:46.895
And some things have stuck.

256
00:12:46.915 --> 00:12:48.456
Some things have transitioned out.

257
00:12:48.496 --> 00:12:48.676
Sure.

258
00:12:48.856 --> 00:12:49.116
Yeah.

259
00:12:49.796 --> 00:12:52.817
As far as demand for business, was there...

260
00:12:53.617 --> 00:12:56.058
Like, was it really up and down during that time?

261
00:12:56.098 --> 00:13:02.780
Or like in the home services businesses, new furnaces, handyman projects, new backyards, you know, stuff like that.

262
00:13:02.820 --> 00:13:04.701
There was a ton of that stuff going on.

263
00:13:04.741 --> 00:13:05.561
Remodels.

264
00:13:06.441 --> 00:13:10.663
I don't know if that really translated to like your firm for a little more.

265
00:13:10.743 --> 00:13:14.404
2020, fortunately, we had quite a few projects lined up through 2018, 2019 that continued into 2020.

266
00:13:17.325 --> 00:13:21.950
But overall, in 2020, projects declined pretty severely.

267
00:13:22.571 --> 00:13:28.036
But then in 21, 22, 23, 24, oh man, it just- Big bounce back.

268
00:13:28.156 --> 00:13:28.516
Yeah.

269
00:13:28.657 --> 00:13:30.679
We felt it all, right, in northern Colorado.

270
00:13:30.699 --> 00:13:31.239
Yeah, for sure.

271
00:13:31.499 --> 00:13:33.001
It was gangbusters there for a long time.

272
00:13:33.041 --> 00:13:33.401
Yeah, yeah.

273
00:13:33.742 --> 00:13:35.323
Kind of softened now.

274
00:13:35.343 --> 00:13:36.084
2025 is not quite the same.

275
00:13:36.104 --> 00:13:36.705
Oh, yeah, 25, 26 with-

276
00:13:42.298 --> 00:13:48.721
Interest rates ticking up, construction costs reaching a peak, and all the uncertainty.

277
00:13:49.021 --> 00:13:53.483
Saber shaking about war and restriction on oil, tariffs, all that.

278
00:13:53.723 --> 00:13:55.704
That does not help consumer confidence.

279
00:13:55.924 --> 00:13:56.084
Right.

280
00:13:56.124 --> 00:14:02.207
And so in development and in projects, it takes a certain amount of confidence in the

281
00:14:03.407 --> 00:14:03.868
developer.

282
00:14:04.068 --> 00:14:04.248
Yeah.

283
00:14:04.729 --> 00:14:05.910
And they're taking a lot of risk.

284
00:14:05.930 --> 00:14:06.091
Right.

285
00:14:06.111 --> 00:14:07.953
And so when you shake that all up.

286
00:14:08.513 --> 00:14:12.679
And the cost of high interest rates, you know, it's a time and money game.

287
00:14:12.799 --> 00:14:19.547
And so if you can't go fast and the cost is high to go slow, the answer oftentimes is let's just wait.

288
00:14:19.727 --> 00:14:19.987
Yeah.

289
00:14:20.388 --> 00:14:21.028
We're fortunate.

290
00:14:21.068 --> 00:14:25.171
You know, we do a broad spectrum of projects.

291
00:14:25.311 --> 00:14:26.132
Right.

292
00:14:26.232 --> 00:14:29.034
And you've got 40 years of clients.

293
00:14:29.054 --> 00:14:29.374
Knowledge.

294
00:14:29.394 --> 00:14:29.915
Knowledge.

295
00:14:29.935 --> 00:14:30.475
Relationships.

296
00:14:30.495 --> 00:14:31.075
Referrals.

297
00:14:31.115 --> 00:14:32.056
Have you done one of those?

298
00:14:32.216 --> 00:14:32.617
Yeah.

299
00:14:32.957 --> 00:14:33.217
Yeah.

300
00:14:33.938 --> 00:14:34.358
Probably.

301
00:14:34.398 --> 00:14:35.879
We've done four of them, actually.

302
00:14:36.419 --> 00:14:43.324
We kind of joke things we don't do are like hospitals, prisons, and K through 12.

303
00:14:43.344 --> 00:14:43.485
Yeah.

304
00:14:44.705 --> 00:14:46.006
So we do everything medical.

305
00:14:46.186 --> 00:14:47.367
They're all kind of the same, right?

306
00:14:47.387 --> 00:14:50.889
The K through 12 hospitals and prisons, similar architecture.

307
00:14:51.009 --> 00:14:51.689
Yes, correct.

308
00:14:52.470 --> 00:14:54.671
Correctional facilities of different sorts.

309
00:14:54.691 --> 00:14:55.431
Yeah.

310
00:14:55.552 --> 00:15:05.077
But the thing that's really great is that our staff have all of these different baselines that they've come from and all those different generalist projects.

311
00:15:05.277 --> 00:15:06.138
Yeah.

312
00:15:06.258 --> 00:15:07.738
I talk to clients a lot about

313
00:15:08.799 --> 00:15:09.980
We have all this knowledge base.

314
00:15:10.541 --> 00:15:20.331
And so what we think helps is that it brings a solution faster because of all the varying projects that we've worked on.

315
00:15:20.351 --> 00:15:22.393
You can learn from the mistakes of those past projects.

316
00:15:22.513 --> 00:15:22.893
Yes.

317
00:15:23.474 --> 00:15:30.821
Or I had the solution and we can take that and vary it a little bit and it's another great solution.

318
00:15:30.841 --> 00:15:31.562
Yeah, yeah.

319
00:15:31.642 --> 00:15:43.896
You become kind of a gathering hub of ideas and knowledge and stuff, whereas a solo principal architect really doesn't have that opportunity to – even if they're amazing.

320
00:15:44.397 --> 00:15:44.617
Right.

321
00:15:44.857 --> 00:15:50.003
You know, that ability to collaborate and build that field of knowledge over time just isn't the same.

322
00:15:50.223 --> 00:15:55.045
Or if they do one or two types of projects, but not 40 or 50, right?

323
00:15:55.305 --> 00:15:59.007
There are some project types we can walk into and go, oh, that's this.

324
00:15:59.067 --> 00:16:02.949
Yeah, just like that other thing, except for they want a little bit more of this.

325
00:16:03.029 --> 00:16:08.712
Say they all do dental offices, or they just specialize in that.

326
00:16:09.252 --> 00:16:09.492
Right.

327
00:16:10.353 --> 00:16:14.556
And we can go in and work with a dentist and say they want something different.

328
00:16:14.616 --> 00:16:22.722
We can pull our hospitality experience of hotels and restaurants and custom homes and make the lobby feel like the custom home.

329
00:16:23.222 --> 00:16:25.103
And then the back end is very technical.

330
00:16:25.504 --> 00:16:30.287
Yeah, you can feel medical in the back, but it doesn't have to feel all medical in the front.

331
00:16:30.307 --> 00:16:36.052
Yeah, and so being able to weave these project types and then just the staff flow with the patient flow –

332
00:16:36.932 --> 00:16:46.774
or on the restaurant side, understanding kitchen size versus dining room size, and start to merge these ideas together and create these really cool, unique experiences.

333
00:16:47.134 --> 00:16:47.314
Yeah.

334
00:16:47.514 --> 00:16:47.714
Yeah.

335
00:16:48.695 --> 00:16:55.276
What do the two of you, Jeff, what do you have as favorite projects?

336
00:16:55.316 --> 00:16:56.536
What are your favorite things?

337
00:16:56.616 --> 00:16:57.216
Is it custom homes?

338
00:16:57.277 --> 00:16:57.737
Is it type?

339
00:16:57.997 --> 00:16:58.457
Oh, yeah.

340
00:16:58.497 --> 00:16:58.897
Yeah.

341
00:16:59.617 --> 00:17:03.079
Man, I'm really enjoying clubhouses right now.

342
00:17:03.260 --> 00:17:03.580
Okay.

343
00:17:03.840 --> 00:17:14.788
So, you know, it's- Like neighborhood clubhouse kind of- Yeah, and, you know, golf course clubhouses- Those sorts of things because they bend to a kind of residential feel.

344
00:17:14.848 --> 00:17:17.489
So you get that softness, quality of material.

345
00:17:17.509 --> 00:17:20.251
Did you do the Fort Collins Country Club remodel up there?

346
00:17:20.532 --> 00:17:21.552
We did not do that one.

347
00:17:21.752 --> 00:17:22.293
Oh, sorry.

348
00:17:22.913 --> 00:17:23.814
It's okay.

349
00:17:23.874 --> 00:17:24.354
Octopus.

350
00:17:24.374 --> 00:17:25.735
They should have.

351
00:17:25.775 --> 00:17:26.115
Yeah.

352
00:17:27.956 --> 00:17:32.437
I didn't think it looked that good, actually.

353
00:17:32.477 --> 00:17:35.178
But one thing that we were doing quite a bit of was multifamily.

354
00:17:35.238 --> 00:17:38.498
I really enjoyed that, and that's kind of softened a little bit.

355
00:17:39.098 --> 00:17:43.079
But the uniqueness in those things, and then also just that puzzle.

356
00:17:43.299 --> 00:17:44.740
How do those pieces fit together?

357
00:17:45.320 --> 00:17:46.020
Pretty exciting.

358
00:17:46.420 --> 00:17:50.681
Like the multifamily, imagining how the people inside are going to use it.

359
00:17:51.021 --> 00:17:51.241
Right.

360
00:17:51.381 --> 00:17:55.462
And your knowledge of how people do stuff increases so much through those...

361
00:17:56.443 --> 00:18:01.623
hundreds of meetings with clients, whether it's custom homes or, you know, a preschool.

362
00:18:03.588 --> 00:18:03.988
Interesting.

363
00:18:04.029 --> 00:18:05.289
Well, it's pretty cool, too.

364
00:18:05.329 --> 00:18:12.253
You know, we've got a couple of Clubhouse projects, one that hasn't kicked back off yet, but it's the story.

365
00:18:12.373 --> 00:18:19.657
You know, we wove this story of homesteading and how do you come to the site and the honesty in the materials.

366
00:18:19.757 --> 00:18:27.021
And, you know, we have this capability to create unique spaces for people.

367
00:18:27.321 --> 00:18:30.843
And what does that do to those people when they get through the door?

368
00:18:30.903 --> 00:18:32.184
What's it like coming to the door?

369
00:18:33.304 --> 00:18:34.885
So it's pretty exciting.

370
00:18:34.925 --> 00:18:37.887
I have a confession.

371
00:18:38.027 --> 00:18:51.634
As a banker, I had a 15-year career as a banker, but some bankers, not me, but almost look at architects as being a little bit like a banker or a CPA or something where you pay your money and you get the service.

372
00:18:52.214 --> 00:18:55.776
Give $10,000 and you get your plans for your building kind of thing or whatever.

373
00:18:55.796 --> 00:19:01.839
I think I have a certain appreciation that in some cases it's more significant than that.

374
00:19:03.099 --> 00:19:03.860
I think so.

375
00:19:03.880 --> 00:19:06.280
It's not like a transaction.

376
00:19:06.481 --> 00:19:11.583
We've gotten pretty good at vetting clients and the ones that call and say, I just need a blueprint.

377
00:19:12.103 --> 00:19:13.443
I just need a floor plan.

378
00:19:13.503 --> 00:19:13.763
Right.

379
00:19:14.024 --> 00:19:16.164
We're already halfway done building it.

380
00:19:16.204 --> 00:19:17.625
It's not really for us, you know?

381
00:19:17.945 --> 00:19:18.185
Yeah.

382
00:19:19.006 --> 00:19:19.407
Makes sense.

383
00:19:19.747 --> 00:19:21.529
I have the same question for you, Chris.

384
00:19:21.689 --> 00:19:26.234
Favorite building, or favorite kind of project type that you like to work on?

385
00:19:26.274 --> 00:19:27.455
Or do you still work on projects?

386
00:19:27.495 --> 00:19:28.616
Or is the CEO too busy?

387
00:19:28.917 --> 00:19:29.317
Oh, no.

388
00:19:29.778 --> 00:19:32.901
I think in the architecture world, an architect's always going to architect.

389
00:19:35.143 --> 00:19:35.424
Yeah.

390
00:19:35.444 --> 00:19:35.664
Right?

391
00:19:35.684 --> 00:19:36.265
You should.

392
00:19:36.645 --> 00:19:37.967
Well, otherwise you've got to stay relevant, right?

393
00:19:37.987 --> 00:19:41.453
I imagine you wouldn't want to have five years of rust on your architecting.

394
00:19:41.753 --> 00:19:42.014
No.

395
00:19:42.494 --> 00:19:43.896
I mean, Jeff and I still hand sketch.

396
00:19:44.357 --> 00:19:44.577
Really?

397
00:19:44.878 --> 00:19:45.098
Yeah.

398
00:19:45.138 --> 00:19:49.024
It's such a powerful way to get ideas quickly on paper and discuss ideas.

399
00:19:52.307 --> 00:19:55.669
talk to something versus like this ambiguous idea.

400
00:19:55.689 --> 00:19:59.011
You can get it on paper and talk, what if we rotate this and do that?

401
00:19:59.091 --> 00:20:04.555
So there's this ongoing joke in architecture that the architect's favorite project is the next one.

402
00:20:04.735 --> 00:20:05.015
Yeah.

403
00:20:05.515 --> 00:20:05.735
Right?

404
00:20:05.775 --> 00:20:06.296
I'm excited.

405
00:20:06.316 --> 00:20:07.997
I'm curious about what I can learn in that.

406
00:20:08.457 --> 00:20:13.821
Yeah, I think one of the great parts of our team is how curious we are because it's constantly asking questions.

407
00:20:14.061 --> 00:20:14.882
How do you use this?

408
00:20:15.102 --> 00:20:16.423
How do you want that?

409
00:20:16.563 --> 00:20:24.309
And learning about, because we do all these different project types, learning about all these different business models and how people utilize their space.

410
00:20:24.689 --> 00:20:30.053
So for me, right now, my favorite projects are the ones that people...

411
00:20:31.414 --> 00:20:53.472
and the public can engage with more yeah so restaurants you know whether it's a little found spaces yeah even if it's small little alleyway renovation yeah um or some of these more public meeting spaces uh and then engaging some some of these are on our on the medical side right and just and medical spaces have such a great opportunity to be elevated past

412
00:20:56.095 --> 00:20:57.356
I have a story.

413
00:20:58.256 --> 00:21:07.224
I changed up my backyard this spring because my neighbor moved his hot tub to be adjacent to my chicken yard fence.

414
00:21:08.005 --> 00:21:12.409
And then he pointed out that chicken coops need to be 15 feet away from the chicken yard fence.

415
00:21:12.649 --> 00:21:16.392
And so I had to move my chicken coop in my whole chicken yard.

416
00:21:16.412 --> 00:21:20.256
But it opened up this huge space and the chickens have been pooping there for years and stuff.

417
00:21:20.276 --> 00:21:21.357
So the soil is amazing.

418
00:21:22.038 --> 00:21:32.540
So I planted a grassy patch as well as a bunch of plants and then four dwarf Alberta spruces that I bought off a Facebook marketplace from a business that supplies...

419
00:21:33.647 --> 00:21:37.768
little trees like that and stuff to medical spaces and dentist offices and stuff.

420
00:21:37.908 --> 00:21:44.109
And when the little trees get too big to haul around and move to the next office, then they're like, might as well sell them to somebody and put them in the backyard.

421
00:21:44.429 --> 00:21:44.749
Really?

422
00:21:45.069 --> 00:21:46.010
I like that.

423
00:21:46.230 --> 00:21:49.330
And I was like, that's such a nice business.

424
00:21:49.370 --> 00:21:52.091
You know, like it's nice to be proud of the business that you do.

425
00:21:52.191 --> 00:21:53.191
Architects are great.

426
00:21:53.331 --> 00:21:54.611
You know, local think tanks is cool.

427
00:21:54.931 --> 00:22:01.973
Little businesses that make sure that medical facilities have greenery around, and the places where people are waiting

428
00:22:03.273 --> 00:22:03.613
Amazing.

429
00:22:03.713 --> 00:22:03.933
Yeah.

430
00:22:03.993 --> 00:22:05.774
And then they have to have the light to do that.

431
00:22:06.174 --> 00:22:06.534
Yeah.

432
00:22:06.594 --> 00:22:06.794
Right?

433
00:22:06.854 --> 00:22:07.334
Yeah, that's true.

434
00:22:07.394 --> 00:22:08.414
That's where the architects come in.

435
00:22:08.655 --> 00:22:09.175
Mm-hmm.

436
00:22:09.795 --> 00:22:15.976
So... Well, you know, we do projects that are lead-based.

437
00:22:16.036 --> 00:22:16.237
Sure.

438
00:22:16.557 --> 00:22:23.638
And also we've looked at the idea of well-building, which is about light, you know, about the plants indoors.

439
00:22:24.019 --> 00:22:26.299
What's that experience inside the space?

440
00:22:26.339 --> 00:22:26.539
Sure.

441
00:22:26.899 --> 00:22:28.960
And that really adds to it a lot.

442
00:22:29.240 --> 00:22:29.520
So...

443
00:22:30.661 --> 00:22:35.288
The Innosphere was my first experience being in a lead-based building kind of thing.

444
00:22:35.308 --> 00:22:37.752
Isn't that great?

445
00:22:37.772 --> 00:22:43.440
And the bathroom and the men's room took 40 seconds for the hot water to get warm.

446
00:22:44.802 --> 00:22:45.162
Yeah.

447
00:22:45.402 --> 00:22:47.563
Which it seemed like it was very wasteful of water.

448
00:22:47.623 --> 00:22:48.424
Yeah.

449
00:22:48.664 --> 00:22:50.665
Maybe it was very effective and efficient on the heat side.

450
00:22:50.705 --> 00:22:51.105
But anyway.

451
00:22:51.285 --> 00:22:51.545
Yeah.

452
00:22:52.025 --> 00:22:52.525
I digress.

453
00:22:53.146 --> 00:22:54.926
I was cynical about that at the time.

454
00:22:54.946 --> 00:22:55.647
I like to share that.

455
00:22:55.667 --> 00:22:59.068
I'm like, hey, this building is really efficient, but they really should have put the hot water heater closer.

456
00:22:59.088 --> 00:22:59.488
Closer.

457
00:22:59.968 --> 00:23:00.349
Yeah.

458
00:23:00.369 --> 00:23:00.609
Right.

459
00:23:01.329 --> 00:23:02.249
So heat up faster.

460
00:23:02.510 --> 00:23:06.931
So for your firm, then, you've got a good number of architects, interior designers.

461
00:23:07.452 --> 00:23:12.794
Is there, I guess, is there a path toward becoming a principal from within?

462
00:23:12.814 --> 00:23:12.914
Yeah.

463
00:23:13.474 --> 00:23:14.295
the organization?

464
00:23:14.315 --> 00:23:16.056
Do you have some prospects for that?

465
00:23:16.176 --> 00:23:27.525
Or what's that look like for... At accounting firms, a lot of times, hey, if you show that you're a producer and you build some relationships, you start driving some revenue, then you can also be a partner.

466
00:23:28.206 --> 00:23:30.348
Is it similar in architecture?

467
00:23:30.408 --> 00:23:31.829
Yes, there's that path.

468
00:23:31.889 --> 00:23:33.130
What's the model look like?

469
00:23:33.330 --> 00:23:35.152
It's the similar path.

470
00:23:35.232 --> 00:23:38.955
Similar path to, say, a law firm or accounting firm, right?

471
00:23:39.035 --> 00:23:39.855
The growth path up.

472
00:23:40.356 --> 00:23:41.256
I think part of it is...

473
00:23:42.217 --> 00:23:52.565
With architecture, do you want to move away from leading your project and leading then your team internally, right?

474
00:23:52.705 --> 00:23:57.889
And so some team members – Some architects really don't want to get away from – Yeah.

475
00:23:58.049 --> 00:24:00.010
Just give me three projects to work on.

476
00:24:00.050 --> 00:24:00.311
Yeah.

477
00:24:00.771 --> 00:24:01.491
And that's great.

478
00:24:01.552 --> 00:24:02.432
That's what we want.

479
00:24:02.512 --> 00:24:09.958
They are fantastic project architects, and they love just the client interaction, right?

480
00:24:09.978 --> 00:24:10.098
Yeah.

481
00:24:10.818 --> 00:24:29.407
Well, it's interesting because as we've moved up in our careers, thankfully we still do architecture, but some principles are just dealing with clients, contracts, those things that take you out of the educational system and the professional system that you're in.

482
00:24:29.427 --> 00:24:29.967
Right.

483
00:24:30.407 --> 00:24:33.428
And you kind of lose the excitement in some ways, right?

484
00:24:33.488 --> 00:24:37.010
So now you're looking at the nuts and bolts of things and –

485
00:24:37.430 --> 00:24:39.733
you know, the numbers and all of that stuff.

486
00:24:39.813 --> 00:24:49.022
And so we've been really fortunate to stay in architecture and be able to continue crafting what we do and creating great spaces.

487
00:24:49.643 --> 00:24:51.244
So that's pretty exciting.

488
00:24:51.705 --> 00:24:51.865
Yeah.

489
00:24:52.145 --> 00:24:52.285
Yep.

490
00:24:53.307 --> 00:24:53.507
Um,

491
00:24:54.968 --> 00:24:56.429
What's the future of architecture?

492
00:24:56.449 --> 00:24:57.670
Oh, I wrote down a note here, actually.

493
00:24:58.451 --> 00:25:02.895
You were talking about talking to each other as you're kind of whiteboarding and sketching out ideas and stuff.

494
00:25:03.375 --> 00:25:16.846
And I've just started in the last few months using like a talk to AI software-y kind of thing where I can just like push a button and WhisperFlow translates my words.

495
00:25:16.866 --> 00:25:17.507
And I can just like...

496
00:25:19.111 --> 00:25:21.873
just talk to it and be like, I'm looking to create something like this.

497
00:25:21.953 --> 00:25:22.774
A da da da da da.

498
00:25:24.375 --> 00:25:36.903
Like I think there could be some interesting uses for architecture and brainstorming around that too, where you're just like brain dumping and let the dumb machine put a bunch of- Information.

499
00:25:36.943 --> 00:25:37.724
Information and stuff.

500
00:25:38.284 --> 00:25:40.688
help you think through how you could do that.

501
00:25:40.708 --> 00:25:53.827
I'm looking to accomplish, like I imagine sometimes you're like, well we want a bunch of natural light in the master bedroom, but we also want to maintain the views of the, you know, the peak over there from the kitchen window and how do we,

502
00:25:54.948 --> 00:26:00.171
Yeah, I mean, we have clients come to us with a consolidation of their ideas.

503
00:26:00.471 --> 00:26:03.933
And so they've brain dumped at their office or house.

504
00:26:04.653 --> 00:26:11.416
And instead of coming with just their own notes, they're coming with the consolidated notes of AI to us.

505
00:26:11.857 --> 00:26:15.578
This is what I kind of have as a vision, which is great.

506
00:26:16.579 --> 00:26:20.401
It's helped us, I think, consolidate ideas in words.

507
00:26:20.961 --> 00:26:23.262
But it's still not generating graphics.

508
00:26:23.282 --> 00:26:25.424
It doesn't have that ability to kind of translate.

509
00:26:25.584 --> 00:26:25.744
No.

510
00:26:25.884 --> 00:26:28.405
We've been working with... You can make a picture of a kitty, but...

511
00:26:28.725 --> 00:26:28.986
Right.

512
00:26:29.726 --> 00:26:29.986
Right.

513
00:26:30.246 --> 00:26:39.732
Well, it's funny because, you know, we've used AI and we've looked at design work and even stuff that we've already run through our 3D software.

514
00:26:40.632 --> 00:26:58.568
We've put that into AI and you get like a crazy window on the roof or you get a person whose face is all smashed in and it's – Architects have always been accused of creating plans that can't actually be built.

515
00:26:59.048 --> 00:26:59.308
Yeah.

516
00:26:59.348 --> 00:27:01.129
But this goes above and beyond.

517
00:27:01.169 --> 00:27:13.496
Well, we put on our client hat and run through some AI prompts of, you know, hey, I want to design my dream house, you know, and gone through their prompt list, and the floor plans are so bad.

518
00:27:14.176 --> 00:27:18.979
So, you know, it's how do you utilize what's out there?

519
00:27:19.019 --> 00:27:23.121
It's better at consolidating lists of ideas than actually thinking about designing things.

520
00:27:23.581 --> 00:27:30.407
I mean, it is a great tool because we've used some of the previous projects, as I said, and run them through.

521
00:27:30.427 --> 00:27:30.827
Right.

522
00:27:31.007 --> 00:27:33.930
And we've had to massage them pretty hard through prompting.

523
00:27:34.813 --> 00:27:37.334
But you do get a decent product out of it.

524
00:27:37.394 --> 00:27:40.114
It's just not the complete project, right?

525
00:27:40.314 --> 00:27:41.855
It still sits off to the side.

526
00:27:41.875 --> 00:27:44.936
It's still a very enthusiastic intern that leaves the project two-thirds done.

527
00:27:45.116 --> 00:27:45.436
Yeah.

528
00:27:45.816 --> 00:27:46.836
It'll be really interesting.

529
00:27:46.876 --> 00:27:50.817
I mean, we're definitely keeping our pulse on AI because it'll be just like the internet, right?

530
00:27:50.937 --> 00:27:55.878
Like an architect using AI is going to be stronger than an architect who doesn't.

531
00:27:56.999 --> 00:27:58.579
It is in what element?

532
00:27:58.999 --> 00:28:01.341
Yeah, if you're all the way in, maybe not.

533
00:28:01.501 --> 00:28:01.781
Yeah.

534
00:28:01.821 --> 00:28:02.261
Right?

535
00:28:02.462 --> 00:28:08.126
There are some companies utilizing AI for quality control on drawings.

536
00:28:08.726 --> 00:28:09.427
That could be great.

537
00:28:09.507 --> 00:28:09.707
Yeah.

538
00:28:09.967 --> 00:28:12.088
That could be internal code review.

539
00:28:12.829 --> 00:28:19.013
That could be great, you know, to help double check things and help speed up that type of stuff, that type of process.

540
00:28:19.153 --> 00:28:19.334
Yep.

541
00:28:20.214 --> 00:28:25.057
So do you guys serve like kind of a northern Colorado, southern Wyoming?

542
00:28:25.117 --> 00:28:29.380
Or do you do in southern Colorado and into the high mountains and stuff too?

543
00:28:29.560 --> 00:28:31.762
Or what's your kind of area?

544
00:28:31.802 --> 00:28:34.303
Yeah, we specialize northern Colorado, southern Wyoming.

545
00:28:34.924 --> 00:28:39.467
And then depending on the client and our relationship, we've had clients take us to...

546
00:28:40.207 --> 00:28:46.034
Arizona, we did two city blocks down in there for student housing in Tucson.

547
00:28:46.254 --> 00:28:46.514
Oh, cool.

548
00:28:46.534 --> 00:28:50.598
We've had a client take us to a variety of states to do a certain project type.

549
00:28:52.340 --> 00:28:56.805
But you're not really responding to requests for proposal in places or whatever.

550
00:28:57.065 --> 00:29:00.729
We love northern Colorado so much and doing projects.

551
00:29:01.570 --> 00:29:04.594
in and around where we live is our goal.

552
00:29:05.335 --> 00:29:08.999
What's the, like, this is kind of a business-focused podcast.

553
00:29:09.440 --> 00:29:15.347
For architecture firm, what's the business of making the business profitable?

554
00:29:16.168 --> 00:29:19.272
Obviously, you know, more clients and doing a good job and not...

555
00:29:19.772 --> 00:29:22.753
But what's, I guess, the dynamics?

556
00:29:22.773 --> 00:29:30.595
Do you got to keep your architects all 50% busy to maintain a break-even business?

557
00:29:30.755 --> 00:29:31.895
How many hours?

558
00:29:32.075 --> 00:29:32.795
I don't know.

559
00:29:32.815 --> 00:29:33.735
What's it look like?

560
00:29:33.755 --> 00:29:36.916
Depending on their position, we track utilization rates.

561
00:29:37.656 --> 00:29:39.697
And so when you start to look at that, you get

562
00:29:40.397 --> 00:29:46.018
All right, one, say it's a project architect, they might be 70% billable.

563
00:29:46.639 --> 00:29:50.339
And then a younger staff member really wants to be 85% billable.

564
00:29:50.759 --> 00:29:51.260
Gotcha.

565
00:29:51.760 --> 00:29:56.301
And you start to kind of get an understanding almost of revenue generation per person.

566
00:29:56.741 --> 00:29:56.941
Yep.

567
00:29:56.981 --> 00:30:00.242
And you can almost compare that to how much you pay them and whatever else, right?

568
00:30:00.482 --> 00:30:00.722
Right.

569
00:30:01.182 --> 00:30:01.942
Yep, you can do that.

570
00:30:02.222 --> 00:30:02.942
We track that on.

571
00:30:03.022 --> 00:30:05.563
It's a lot like a law firm in that way, I suppose, as well.

572
00:30:06.003 --> 00:30:06.223
Yeah.

573
00:30:06.861 --> 00:30:15.107
Ed, we have a software program that we utilize for, you know, time sheets and things, but it also tells us what our burn rate is on a project.

574
00:30:15.487 --> 00:30:17.949
So we can track the phase of the project.

575
00:30:17.969 --> 00:30:18.349
Right.

576
00:30:18.469 --> 00:30:20.671
And where are we in the world on finances?

577
00:30:20.691 --> 00:30:21.131
Right.

578
00:30:21.231 --> 00:30:21.892
So we can make adjustments.

579
00:30:21.912 --> 00:30:26.315
Because you're kind of guessing at how many hours of labor it's going to take to put a plan together sometimes.

580
00:30:26.335 --> 00:30:26.835
It's thoughtful.

581
00:30:26.915 --> 00:30:28.756
Or is it not just time and materials, right?

582
00:30:28.776 --> 00:30:29.377
You're not just like –

583
00:30:29.677 --> 00:30:34.038
Hey, sorry, it took us way longer than we thought to draw this out, but it's really good.

584
00:30:35.058 --> 00:30:40.600
But the nice thing is there are mechanisms in the business model, you know, things called ad services.

585
00:30:40.780 --> 00:30:42.340
Change orders and stuff, right?

586
00:30:42.360 --> 00:30:42.540
Yeah.

587
00:30:42.760 --> 00:30:49.642
You know, and so we look at those as opportunities, but we try to get our first proposal right.

588
00:30:49.662 --> 00:30:49.962
Sure.

589
00:30:49.982 --> 00:30:54.363
So, you know, we're looking at all of the parts and pieces that we know.

590
00:30:55.163 --> 00:30:58.604
And if it changes, then that gives us that opportunity to make a shift.

591
00:30:58.824 --> 00:30:58.984
Yeah.

592
00:30:59.764 --> 00:31:02.106
Yeah, and you go, all right, what do we think?

593
00:31:02.186 --> 00:31:04.268
How many months is this going to take to design?

594
00:31:04.928 --> 00:31:07.530
How many hours a week with our staff?

595
00:31:08.211 --> 00:31:09.732
And you can estimate it out that way.

596
00:31:09.752 --> 00:31:11.253
That's part of where the experience comes in.

597
00:31:11.573 --> 00:31:17.178
Like if you're a brand new architect or you're like, if I buy an architecture firm, I'm like, I don't know.

598
00:31:17.358 --> 00:31:18.258
Yeah, exactly.

599
00:31:18.679 --> 00:31:20.900
Yeah, and then you start to look at, all right.

600
00:31:21.060 --> 00:31:22.682
Claude, how many hours do you think this will take?

601
00:31:22.702 --> 00:31:23.022
Yeah.

602
00:31:23.631 --> 00:31:23.891
Yeah.

603
00:31:24.511 --> 00:31:24.712
Yeah.

604
00:31:24.772 --> 00:31:28.233
And then we have 40 years of data where we can go back and go, all right, we've done one of these.

605
00:31:28.973 --> 00:31:30.174
What do we spend on this one?

606
00:31:30.414 --> 00:31:31.375
Yeah.

607
00:31:31.775 --> 00:31:32.255
Yeah.

608
00:31:32.435 --> 00:31:33.836
We have other mechanisms.

609
00:31:34.396 --> 00:31:36.437
What's the budget of the project?

610
00:31:36.477 --> 00:31:37.837
What's the construction cost?

611
00:31:37.918 --> 00:31:38.818
We look at that.

612
00:31:39.298 --> 00:31:41.159
You know, so we use a lot of different...

613
00:31:41.199 --> 00:31:42.900
Sometimes it's somewhat related.

614
00:31:42.961 --> 00:31:45.282
There's a percentage on this type of property.

615
00:31:45.882 --> 00:31:49.505
The architecture cost should be some percentage in this band.

616
00:31:49.705 --> 00:31:54.808
So we're balancing through those different pieces and parts to help us, you know...

617
00:31:55.133 --> 00:31:59.716
We have some people call and ask, all right, what do you charge per square foot of your design?

618
00:31:59.776 --> 00:32:01.217
It doesn't work like that.

619
00:32:01.238 --> 00:32:02.799
Not in our office.

620
00:32:03.059 --> 00:32:05.341
Some might do it, but we don't work like that.

621
00:32:05.541 --> 00:32:05.921
Right.

622
00:32:06.281 --> 00:32:06.822
Yeah.

623
00:32:06.882 --> 00:32:08.363
How does it kind of work?

624
00:32:08.503 --> 00:32:12.206
Can we take me through a customer journey?

625
00:32:12.666 --> 00:32:17.509
I have more money than I do, and I want to build a new office building for Loco Think Tank.

626
00:32:17.569 --> 00:32:17.950
I want...

627
00:32:18.870 --> 00:32:22.012
Three nice meeting rooms so that chapters can meet there if they want to.

628
00:32:22.072 --> 00:32:26.394
But and also just some private offices.

629
00:32:26.474 --> 00:32:29.615
So it's 3,200 square feet.

630
00:32:30.035 --> 00:32:30.175
Yep.

631
00:32:30.756 --> 00:32:32.716
And ground up.

632
00:32:33.057 --> 00:32:35.238
Ground up someplace in Old Town.

633
00:32:35.558 --> 00:32:36.318
I bought an old house.

634
00:32:36.358 --> 00:32:37.219
I'm going to tear it down.

635
00:32:37.459 --> 00:32:37.559
Yeah.

636
00:32:37.639 --> 00:32:39.840
I've got way more money than I do.

637
00:32:40.280 --> 00:32:40.700
Yeah.

638
00:32:40.820 --> 00:32:41.781
But what was it?

639
00:32:42.041 --> 00:32:44.402
And I say, hey, where do I start?

640
00:32:45.229 --> 00:32:46.529
Do I start with a general contractor?

641
00:32:46.549 --> 00:32:47.550
Do I start with an architect?

642
00:32:48.170 --> 00:32:48.770
It could be both.

643
00:32:49.570 --> 00:32:52.951
A lot of times we like to start with both at the same time.

644
00:32:54.132 --> 00:32:56.832
Do this design assist approach.

645
00:32:58.113 --> 00:33:02.314
That way you're building a strong team together, right?

646
00:33:02.894 --> 00:33:05.535
And so at the beginning,

647
00:33:07.592 --> 00:33:15.439
We might start with a conceptual design contract where it is just initial ideas and we're flushing out, all right, is this two stories?

648
00:33:15.499 --> 00:33:16.379
Is it one stories?

649
00:33:16.680 --> 00:33:17.761
Is this really what you want?

650
00:33:17.861 --> 00:33:18.101
Yeah.

651
00:33:18.521 --> 00:33:31.312
And once we nail down what that initial concept looks like and get some exterior views and floor plans, then we could, as a team, understand, all right, structural, mechanical, electrical, civil, landscape, architecture.

652
00:33:31.452 --> 00:33:36.116
and architecture and interiors, you know, those consultants get proposals from everybody.

653
00:33:36.316 --> 00:33:44.542
And then here's your flat fee to design this project through planning process to get it approved through the city of Fort Collins.

654
00:33:44.562 --> 00:33:44.762
Okay.

655
00:33:45.203 --> 00:33:48.765
And then once that's approved, then you would submit for building permit and fire.

656
00:33:49.806 --> 00:33:57.452
And, and I probably have to have a general contractor kind of engaged because you don't want to just work with me and like,

657
00:33:57.952 --> 00:33:59.153
Well, it's your project.

658
00:33:59.553 --> 00:34:00.494
No, it's my project.

659
00:34:00.594 --> 00:34:00.854
OK.

660
00:34:00.914 --> 00:34:01.534
It's your project.

661
00:34:01.574 --> 00:34:02.915
So as long as I'm moving forward.

662
00:34:02.935 --> 00:34:03.656
You'd be our client.

663
00:34:03.836 --> 00:34:06.677
And I could general contract my own build, theoretically.

664
00:34:07.198 --> 00:34:09.519
Maybe not on a commercial project, but on a residential, you could.

665
00:34:09.899 --> 00:34:12.300
If it was for my house, I would say in that case.

666
00:34:12.341 --> 00:34:14.142
But legally, technically.

667
00:34:14.162 --> 00:34:15.502
It's nice to have a GC on board.

668
00:34:15.522 --> 00:34:16.003
Good luck.

669
00:34:16.243 --> 00:34:20.225
Yeah, it'd be nice to have a GC on board to help create that team.

670
00:34:20.825 --> 00:34:22.446
And they can be confirming pricing.

671
00:34:22.727 --> 00:34:24.968
They could be confirming construction duration.

672
00:34:26.008 --> 00:34:30.329
Yeah, I think you're right because we've seen prices fluctuate so hard.

673
00:34:30.850 --> 00:34:32.030
What's hot?

674
00:34:32.170 --> 00:34:33.530
Is copper hot right now?

675
00:34:33.550 --> 00:34:35.471
Did that go through the roof?

676
00:34:35.591 --> 00:34:37.612
The one thing that's always hot?

677
00:34:38.172 --> 00:34:38.892
Hookup fees.

678
00:34:39.212 --> 00:34:39.472
Yeah.

679
00:34:41.113 --> 00:34:41.373
Yeah.

680
00:34:41.433 --> 00:34:41.853
Yeah.

681
00:34:42.873 --> 00:34:48.237
But as Chris said, that's where the general contractor at the table can say, hey, here's what we're seeing.

682
00:34:48.758 --> 00:34:54.522
You might want to procure these parts and pieces now or sooner than later.

683
00:34:54.662 --> 00:34:55.063
Yeah, yeah.

684
00:34:55.103 --> 00:34:57.305
So that's a really great thing to have.

685
00:34:57.405 --> 00:34:59.086
Well, once you start to understand the scope.

686
00:34:59.106 --> 00:35:02.228
They have a good pulse on the subcontractor's route, right?

687
00:35:02.349 --> 00:35:03.970
Is wood going up, down?

688
00:35:04.030 --> 00:35:05.091
Is steel going up, down?

689
00:35:05.151 --> 00:35:07.372
Oh, that's even part of the architecture conversation, right?

690
00:35:07.413 --> 00:35:11.736
Because depending on the materials, what you're looking for, that conceptual design...

691
00:35:11.983 --> 00:35:12.904
Or availability.

692
00:35:12.924 --> 00:35:16.149
You know, as we know, data centers are using a lot of copper and water.

693
00:35:16.549 --> 00:35:16.970
Oh, right.

694
00:35:16.990 --> 00:35:21.236
So should we buy early on this or should we pivot, right?

695
00:35:21.296 --> 00:35:22.898
So should we try to do something else?

696
00:35:23.099 --> 00:35:23.439
Oh, yeah.

697
00:35:23.499 --> 00:35:24.000
Interesting.

698
00:35:24.020 --> 00:35:24.480
So, yeah.

699
00:35:24.521 --> 00:35:28.005
So it's all that knowledge base that really adds to that project.

700
00:35:28.085 --> 00:35:28.386
Oh, God.

701
00:35:28.847 --> 00:35:29.087
Yeah.

702
00:35:29.347 --> 00:35:32.890
I never really thought about that impact of like copper is copper is copper, right?

703
00:35:32.930 --> 00:35:38.234
So your copper sinks have gone up in price lately, probably in comparison.

704
00:35:38.415 --> 00:35:46.101
Well, you know, it's interesting because with the electric vehicle requirements now, some projects are requiring new transformers.

705
00:35:46.221 --> 00:35:48.643
Transformers are taking a lot longer to get a hold of.

706
00:35:48.783 --> 00:35:52.006
So it just depends on what we're working with.

707
00:35:52.746 --> 00:35:53.407
It's very interesting.

708
00:35:53.726 --> 00:36:02.331
What do you see as trends in the industry, say, in the next five years plus, other than some application of AI, right, and efficiencies around that?

709
00:36:02.391 --> 00:36:03.672
Yeah, technology is huge.

710
00:36:03.772 --> 00:36:05.433
That's the main, one of the big things.

711
00:36:05.613 --> 00:36:05.834
Yep.

712
00:36:06.514 --> 00:36:15.319
What sets a firm apart, like, to be one of those choice firms of the future, you know, for the 50th anniversary year?

713
00:36:15.339 --> 00:36:16.140
Mm-hmm.

714
00:36:18.093 --> 00:36:22.054
We've been great at beta testing our virtual reality.

715
00:36:22.475 --> 00:36:25.736
We run our third or fourth round of VR in the office.

716
00:36:26.156 --> 00:36:27.136
Walk me right through it.

717
00:36:27.276 --> 00:36:31.478
Yeah, so we started with it was a cardboard box with a cell phone slid in.

718
00:36:31.758 --> 00:36:34.559
And you're looking at a room, right?

719
00:36:34.679 --> 00:36:37.120
It was that early on trying to look at that.

720
00:36:38.000 --> 00:36:45.303
We quickly moved to goggles that would have that image in it because they didn't do first person walk arounds yet.

721
00:36:45.963 --> 00:36:52.365
Now we have a great Veeve Pro system, has wands, it has goggles.

722
00:36:53.105 --> 00:36:54.326
We have the double monitor.

723
00:36:54.606 --> 00:36:56.967
So if you don't, the people in the room.

724
00:36:56.987 --> 00:37:00.208
Like this thing that you're drawing, you can walk the client around their house.

725
00:37:01.188 --> 00:37:03.789
Or they could walk themselves, which is fantastic.

726
00:37:04.029 --> 00:37:07.670
I want to go through this door to see what it looks like in the space.

727
00:37:08.270 --> 00:37:11.191
So they point the wand, hit the button, they go.

728
00:37:11.931 --> 00:37:12.492
It's really cool.

729
00:37:12.912 --> 00:37:13.793
And what's really nice?

730
00:37:13.813 --> 00:37:14.814
I want to try it.

731
00:37:14.834 --> 00:37:15.174
Come over.

732
00:37:15.454 --> 00:37:16.215
Yeah, I love you.

733
00:37:16.235 --> 00:37:17.255
We should.

734
00:37:17.435 --> 00:37:18.156
It's great.

735
00:37:18.196 --> 00:37:24.961
You know you have clients in doing a VR session because you just hear them laughing and, oh, my gosh, this is so great.

736
00:37:25.221 --> 00:37:25.421
Yeah.

737
00:37:26.242 --> 00:37:33.367
Well, the thing we like, too, is it gives them an idea of what the space looks like, and we can quickly make adjustments to the design.

738
00:37:34.147 --> 00:37:39.630
So you can see if, do I like the way the ceiling works with the wall and how this space transition.

739
00:37:40.591 --> 00:37:47.274
It's so much cheaper in that situation than building the building and they go, I don't like that.

740
00:37:47.875 --> 00:37:54.038
I was thinking you guys both showed some interest in our ping pong table here at Loco headquarters before we came into the podcast.

741
00:37:54.058 --> 00:37:54.358
I loved it.

742
00:37:54.878 --> 00:37:59.261
With your VR tech, maybe you can just do kind of VR glasses and a wand.

743
00:37:59.581 --> 00:38:00.702
Oh my gosh, right?

744
00:38:00.722 --> 00:38:01.222
You can just be...

745
00:38:01.582 --> 00:38:02.462
Silent in calm.

746
00:38:02.502 --> 00:38:07.425
You'll be standing in the middle of the office, like, swinging your hands around, yelling at each other.

747
00:38:08.725 --> 00:38:11.106
The staff is, like, walking around you, staying clear.

748
00:38:11.286 --> 00:38:12.167
Yeah, exactly.

749
00:38:12.467 --> 00:38:20.430
Well, I've driven a few clients around the VR, and I'll be in the goggles for 30 minutes.

750
00:38:21.251 --> 00:38:26.153
It's so powerful on your brain that after 30 minutes, I think I'm there.

751
00:38:26.913 --> 00:38:33.896
I think I'm in that restaurant or in that home, and I'll take them off, and you're like, oh, I'm in.

752
00:38:33.936 --> 00:38:36.958
Oh, so this isn't like sketchy, weird walls.

753
00:38:37.518 --> 00:38:37.918
No.

754
00:38:38.158 --> 00:38:40.299
I'm like, oh, I'm in my conference room.

755
00:38:40.539 --> 00:38:40.739
Right.

756
00:38:40.899 --> 00:38:44.001
I thought I was downtown in the restaurant.

757
00:38:44.061 --> 00:38:44.481
It's great.

758
00:38:44.781 --> 00:38:48.743
So it's like filling people in there almost in different backgrounds.

759
00:38:48.783 --> 00:38:49.423
Yeah, we use our.

760
00:38:49.443 --> 00:38:51.264
Out the window scenes and stuff like that.

761
00:38:51.733 --> 00:38:52.013
Right.

762
00:38:52.073 --> 00:38:54.194
We use a system called Revit.

763
00:38:54.495 --> 00:38:56.496
It's a 3D object-based system.

764
00:38:57.076 --> 00:39:02.919
So once we start going into the computer and building those forms, that's when we get people involved, right?

765
00:39:02.999 --> 00:39:04.500
Because there's solidity to it.

766
00:39:05.160 --> 00:39:06.981
Going back to what we talked about, sketching.

767
00:39:07.642 --> 00:39:10.243
Chris and I can crank sketches all day long.

768
00:39:10.643 --> 00:39:15.486
And it's great for clients, but when they can get to that VR engagement...

769
00:39:15.946 --> 00:39:17.287
then it's very powerful.

770
00:39:17.307 --> 00:39:23.890
There's a studio I walked around downtown, and it used to be the Joe's upholstery.

771
00:39:24.830 --> 00:39:31.293
And they've got white walls with projectors all over and stuff, so it can make you feel like you're at the beach when you're...

772
00:39:31.553 --> 00:39:32.273
not actually at the beach.

773
00:39:32.293 --> 00:39:32.754
Oh, really?

774
00:39:33.014 --> 00:39:33.374
Interesting.

775
00:39:33.414 --> 00:39:37.075
They've talked about using that for floor plan walks and stuff like that.

776
00:39:37.115 --> 00:39:43.718
But with your tech and their giant space, it might be a pretty interesting collaboration opportunity.

777
00:39:44.658 --> 00:39:46.179
I'll have to make an introduction there.

778
00:39:46.199 --> 00:39:47.680
You guys can check it out sometime at least.

779
00:39:47.700 --> 00:39:48.980
Because it might be intriguing.

780
00:39:51.061 --> 00:39:55.625
I feel like, what else would you have people know about, I guess, architecture in general?

781
00:39:55.645 --> 00:40:04.052
What we're going to do just to prepare you is we're going to jump in the time machine and go back to first grade for each of you and do a little bit of a life story.

782
00:40:04.873 --> 00:40:10.677
Come back for the local experience, some hot sauce sampling as well as some WizCal.

783
00:40:11.818 --> 00:40:16.182
And then this is your show too, so if you want to ask me any questions, I'm here.

784
00:40:16.602 --> 00:40:17.043
Oh, jeez.

785
00:40:17.963 --> 00:40:19.705
But first, a break.

786
00:40:20.877 --> 00:40:23.178
This episode is sponsored by Loco Think Tank.

787
00:40:23.558 --> 00:40:26.620
Loco Think Tank provides peer collaboration for business owners.

788
00:40:26.940 --> 00:40:33.522
We build smart, safe places to help business leaders navigate every stage of the business journey and we love what we do and who we do it with.

789
00:40:34.043 --> 00:40:46.128
Our model features gift-back minded business veterans in the role of Loco facilitators and we're always looking for abundance-minded individuals to add to our membership, facilitator team, Loco community, or to feature on this podcast.

790
00:40:46.428 --> 00:40:51.935
Listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of Loco Think Tank get their sixth month of membership for free.

791
00:40:52.135 --> 00:40:55.139
Just mention the Loco Experience podcast on your application.

792
00:40:56.020 --> 00:40:59.164
To learn more, visit our website at locothinktank.com.

793
00:40:59.404 --> 00:41:02.048
That's L-O-C-O thinktank.com.

794
00:41:03.715 --> 00:41:07.357
I want to do the time machine.

795
00:41:08.437 --> 00:41:11.259
We always jump in the time machine about this time.

796
00:41:11.339 --> 00:41:13.300
How far back are we going?

797
00:41:14.601 --> 00:41:16.121
Actually, I like doing this trick.

798
00:41:16.622 --> 00:41:22.064
What's your first memory, like your first effective memory that you can recall?

799
00:41:22.585 --> 00:41:28.748
I've gotten everything from in the womb baby to five years old to I've blocked out my childhood.

800
00:41:28.768 --> 00:41:29.328
It was terrible.

801
00:41:30.978 --> 00:41:39.565
I remember, this will date me, of course, but being called into the living room when the landing on the moon was occurring.

802
00:41:39.605 --> 00:41:40.426
Oh, yeah.

803
00:41:40.446 --> 00:41:41.607
So that was pretty exciting.

804
00:41:42.067 --> 00:41:42.688
That is cool.

805
00:41:42.808 --> 00:41:43.028
Yeah.

806
00:41:43.148 --> 00:41:44.349
Black and white TV, too.

807
00:41:44.509 --> 00:41:44.749
Sure.

808
00:41:44.889 --> 00:41:46.591
You know, black and white TV.

809
00:41:48.792 --> 00:41:49.193
Very cool.

810
00:41:49.213 --> 00:41:49.833
But, yeah.

811
00:41:49.913 --> 00:41:53.496
Is that like a, that's a distinctive, like one of the early memories.

812
00:41:53.837 --> 00:41:55.218
And I remember a...

813
00:41:56.399 --> 00:42:04.511
I don't think it was the Beatles-Shea Stadium concert, but I remember something about that.

814
00:42:04.651 --> 00:42:04.932
Okay.

815
00:42:05.112 --> 00:42:05.853
So I was pretty young.

816
00:42:05.873 --> 00:42:08.377
Where were you geographically?

817
00:42:08.597 --> 00:42:10.580
And describe your family background just a little bit.

818
00:42:10.720 --> 00:42:11.601
Sure, yeah.

819
00:42:11.761 --> 00:42:15.183
So that would have put me early, early years in Indiana.

820
00:42:15.363 --> 00:42:16.123
Okay.

821
00:42:16.203 --> 00:42:17.244
Northeast Indiana.

822
00:42:17.584 --> 00:42:19.165
And it was my mom and I.

823
00:42:19.205 --> 00:42:21.366
And then my brother came along later.

824
00:42:21.526 --> 00:42:23.368
And so, yeah.

825
00:42:23.408 --> 00:42:24.608
Just your mom and you, a single mom?

826
00:42:24.868 --> 00:42:25.049
Yep.

827
00:42:25.349 --> 00:42:25.689
Okay.

828
00:42:26.029 --> 00:42:27.570
So it was pretty exciting.

829
00:42:27.790 --> 00:42:28.691
She did a great job.

830
00:42:28.731 --> 00:42:28.911
Yeah.

831
00:42:29.211 --> 00:42:30.272
Still doing a great job.

832
00:42:30.312 --> 00:42:31.192
Still kicking hard.

833
00:42:31.652 --> 00:42:32.353
84 years old.

834
00:42:32.373 --> 00:42:33.213
Shout out to mom.

835
00:42:33.233 --> 00:42:34.354
You want to mention her?

836
00:42:34.434 --> 00:42:34.814
Julie.

837
00:42:34.914 --> 00:42:35.395
Hi, Julie.

838
00:42:35.415 --> 00:42:35.635
Yeah.

839
00:42:36.195 --> 00:42:42.781
So, yeah, I mean, she worked hard and we really had some – my brother and I had a great life.

840
00:42:42.921 --> 00:42:43.122
Yeah.

841
00:42:43.282 --> 00:42:46.825
You know, we had a lake cottage in Michigan.

842
00:42:47.145 --> 00:42:48.667
And what was she doing?

843
00:42:48.707 --> 00:42:52.190
How did she – So she worked for a company called International Harvester.

844
00:42:52.410 --> 00:42:52.650
Oh, yeah.

845
00:42:52.930 --> 00:42:54.491
Yeah, so she was a senior.

846
00:42:54.511 --> 00:42:57.372
My wife's dad was a John Deere guy for 50 years.

847
00:42:57.412 --> 00:43:00.374
Yeah, so she was a senior buyer at International Harvester.

848
00:43:00.434 --> 00:43:00.794
Okay.

849
00:43:01.154 --> 00:43:01.874
So she was buying.

850
00:43:01.914 --> 00:43:03.855
She was really good at her job, corporate career.

851
00:43:03.915 --> 00:43:05.076
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

852
00:43:05.136 --> 00:43:06.396
So it was pretty good.

853
00:43:06.416 --> 00:43:07.537
Got vacation time and everything.

854
00:43:07.577 --> 00:43:09.478
So she was, gosh, in those days, she was.

855
00:43:09.498 --> 00:43:10.258
She did pretty well.

856
00:43:10.418 --> 00:43:15.080
Well, and to be a corporate career woman in whatever the 70s.

857
00:43:15.140 --> 00:43:16.501
Right.

858
00:43:16.781 --> 00:43:18.522
Not as common as it is today.

859
00:43:18.662 --> 00:43:20.363
Right, yeah.

860
00:43:20.483 --> 00:43:22.244
She worked on the Scout.

861
00:43:22.724 --> 00:43:24.164
I don't know if you know the Scout.

862
00:43:24.585 --> 00:43:25.865
It was the first SUV.

863
00:43:25.925 --> 00:43:26.245
Yeah, yeah.

864
00:43:26.545 --> 00:43:28.866
And so she was working on that.

865
00:43:28.886 --> 00:43:30.007
One of the best little 4x4s out there.

866
00:43:30.027 --> 00:43:31.287
Built like a tech.

867
00:43:31.368 --> 00:43:31.688
Great.

868
00:43:31.868 --> 00:43:32.868
Built like a tech.

869
00:43:32.908 --> 00:43:36.930
And while they're so light that they can just like coast over the mud bog instead of sinking down in it.

870
00:43:37.350 --> 00:43:41.272
Or there might be a story related to not coasting over the mud bottom.

871
00:43:41.392 --> 00:43:42.473
Sometimes not.

872
00:43:42.493 --> 00:43:44.994
Sometimes requiring 200 feet of cable.

873
00:43:45.775 --> 00:43:46.896
Yes, exactly.

874
00:43:47.016 --> 00:43:47.796
And a tree stump.

875
00:43:47.856 --> 00:43:50.698
But anyway, yeah.

876
00:43:51.178 --> 00:43:59.843
So, yeah, grew up there and spent half a life in Michigan and, you know, moved out here in 93.

877
00:43:59.963 --> 00:44:00.944
My wife and I did.

878
00:44:01.224 --> 00:44:06.387
Tell me, before we get there, tell me about teenage, Jeff.

879
00:44:06.407 --> 00:44:06.827
Yeah.

880
00:44:07.633 --> 00:44:08.694
I don't know if I can.

881
00:44:08.734 --> 00:44:11.697
Were you a troublemaker?

882
00:44:11.717 --> 00:44:15.982
There was a little bit of, yeah, there was a little bit of some things going on.

883
00:44:16.042 --> 00:44:17.163
But yeah.

884
00:44:18.164 --> 00:44:19.385
Not because of your mom.

885
00:44:19.465 --> 00:44:20.727
Mama tried, mama tried.

886
00:44:20.767 --> 00:44:21.627
Yeah, you know.

887
00:44:21.888 --> 00:44:22.588
I mean, it was just.

888
00:44:22.649 --> 00:44:23.970
What about your love for music, though?

889
00:44:24.555 --> 00:44:25.295
Well, that is true.

890
00:44:26.076 --> 00:44:27.877
But no, played a lot of baseball, tennis.

891
00:44:27.977 --> 00:44:33.180
If you weren't hanging out with all those hoodlums and stuff, you wouldn't have developed that kind of rock and roll music knowledge.

892
00:44:33.220 --> 00:44:41.784
No, that was a really early thing because my uncles played music, played guitars, and really set me on a music path.

893
00:44:42.044 --> 00:44:42.324
Okay.

894
00:44:42.724 --> 00:44:44.826
And that was actually my first love.

895
00:44:44.966 --> 00:44:47.027
I went to music business school in Nashville.

896
00:44:47.727 --> 00:44:48.547
Oh, wow.

897
00:44:48.728 --> 00:44:49.488
After a while, I was like,

898
00:44:49.808 --> 00:44:51.290
Eh, I'm going to shift paths.

899
00:44:51.310 --> 00:44:54.193
And then your second love was the wife that you moved here with?

900
00:44:54.213 --> 00:44:55.014
Oh, no, that was third.

901
00:44:55.154 --> 00:44:55.775
Oh, she was third.

902
00:44:55.795 --> 00:44:57.737
We joke about that often.

903
00:44:59.479 --> 00:44:59.860
We do joke.

904
00:44:59.980 --> 00:45:00.801
It was stronger.

905
00:45:00.861 --> 00:45:04.605
It was third place in chronology, but stronger in the end.

906
00:45:04.845 --> 00:45:06.587
I see you wincing over here, Chris.

907
00:45:06.888 --> 00:45:07.028
Oh.

908
00:45:07.468 --> 00:45:09.209
No, but no, seriously.

909
00:45:10.350 --> 00:45:25.479
So yeah, I mean, I dove hard into music and went to music business school and finally said, the thing that turned me from that was my buddy who was from Tokyo got a job at Sony Records.

910
00:45:25.639 --> 00:45:27.120
And he said, God.

911
00:45:27.280 --> 00:45:28.241
This is so exciting.

912
00:45:28.561 --> 00:45:34.946
And I talked to him a month later after he was there, and he said, I go to the studio at midnight, and I get done at 10 a.m.

913
00:45:35.767 --> 00:45:39.670
So, you know, you start thinking about a life of doing that, right?

914
00:45:39.690 --> 00:45:41.532
How do you have a family life?

915
00:45:41.552 --> 00:45:41.792
Right.

916
00:45:41.952 --> 00:45:44.794
Because it was something I was interested in, having a family.

917
00:45:45.495 --> 00:45:47.797
And so I started a little seed plant.

918
00:45:48.137 --> 00:45:49.238
I started thinking, wow.

919
00:45:49.478 --> 00:45:53.560
what's a better professional approach to my life, right?

920
00:45:53.660 --> 00:45:55.141
So that's where architecture came in.

921
00:45:55.241 --> 00:45:55.521
Okay.

922
00:45:55.701 --> 00:45:56.262
So, yeah.

923
00:45:56.542 --> 00:45:57.042
Made a pivot.

924
00:45:57.302 --> 00:45:58.023
Yeah.

925
00:45:58.163 --> 00:46:00.684
But moved out here in 93 for grad school.

926
00:46:00.884 --> 00:46:01.685
Where did you meet this?

927
00:46:02.245 --> 00:46:03.566
Didn't you say with your now wife?

928
00:46:04.086 --> 00:46:04.746
Yeah, my wife.

929
00:46:04.806 --> 00:46:05.186
Yeah.

930
00:46:05.226 --> 00:46:06.187
So I met her back.

931
00:46:06.527 --> 00:46:08.449
In architecture school or before then?

932
00:46:08.469 --> 00:46:09.770
No, back in music days?

933
00:46:10.671 --> 00:46:13.073
And so we were newly married.

934
00:46:13.093 --> 00:46:17.096
So she was already pulling you away from the music industry also.

935
00:46:17.356 --> 00:46:20.439
No, she's still, she's like, are you sure about this?

936
00:46:20.699 --> 00:46:22.560
She was supportive regardless.

937
00:46:23.081 --> 00:46:24.902
She gave you space to come to your own conclusions.

938
00:46:25.082 --> 00:46:25.843
Yes, exactly.

939
00:46:27.084 --> 00:46:27.785
She's a good woman.

940
00:46:28.125 --> 00:46:30.307
That's actually exactly what good women do.

941
00:46:30.407 --> 00:46:31.087
Yes, exactly.

942
00:46:31.207 --> 00:46:32.929
Telling you what to do is less effective.

943
00:46:32.949 --> 00:46:33.029
Yes.

944
00:46:33.933 --> 00:46:36.434
She has supported me in a lot of different things.

945
00:46:36.454 --> 00:46:36.794
That's cool.

946
00:46:36.894 --> 00:46:41.416
And it's pretty exciting, and I'm very thankful for it.

947
00:46:41.496 --> 00:46:43.317
Let's bounce it over to Chris.

948
00:46:43.397 --> 00:46:44.677
Same question.

949
00:46:45.057 --> 00:46:45.757
First memory.

950
00:46:46.918 --> 00:46:52.220
I've been thinking about that while Jeff's been talking, and I grew up Fort Collins native.

951
00:46:53.473 --> 00:47:00.399
Grew up on the north side of town, and I always remember picking raspberries off my neighbor's raspberry bushes.

952
00:47:00.499 --> 00:47:01.160
Yeah.

953
00:47:01.180 --> 00:47:07.566
So their entire lawn that faced the green belt, I'd hop over our fence, go over in the summertime and pick raspberries.

954
00:47:07.606 --> 00:47:08.506
It's like unlimited raspberries.

955
00:47:08.546 --> 00:47:08.907
Oh, yeah.

956
00:47:09.147 --> 00:47:10.508
And they loved it, right?

957
00:47:10.528 --> 00:47:12.250
They were like, come here, you know, da-da-da, and...

958
00:47:12.830 --> 00:47:36.653
um so that and then also just riding my bike around the neighborhood yeah you know um i do not have early early early memories i mine's kind of a similar picking strawberries is one of my early memories when i was three or four somewhere in there kind of i came across i came across a photo that my parents had of me running on across the top of the world trade center oh wow which is really cool i was right

959
00:47:37.653 --> 00:48:01.752
I don't know four right blonde curly hair you're running around like I don't remember that you know I'm like a blur in the picture but it's one that I'm like that's that's really cool you remember it no you don't have a memory of the actual event though it's just like oh yeah you know same here yeah I've got uh blueberry like some school memories and stuff is really where it starts activating for me when there's other personalities to remember instead yeah interesting

960
00:48:01.892 --> 00:48:02.052
Yeah.

961
00:48:02.712 --> 00:48:04.073
So how about you?

962
00:48:04.253 --> 00:48:07.534
Like, what's that teenage look like?

963
00:48:07.634 --> 00:48:09.754
And set this household stage for me as well.

964
00:48:09.855 --> 00:48:10.975
Other siblings?

965
00:48:11.075 --> 00:48:12.295
What were your parents up to?

966
00:48:12.315 --> 00:48:13.076
Oh, sure.

967
00:48:13.896 --> 00:48:16.957
I grew up here and then we moved to the south end of Fort Collins.

968
00:48:18.257 --> 00:48:23.461
I have one younger sister, four years younger than me, and we have a great relationship.

969
00:48:23.481 --> 00:48:29.365
My parents are married to this day, and my sister, we just got together with her and her family this past weekend.

970
00:48:29.385 --> 00:48:30.145
We're pretty close.

971
00:48:30.385 --> 00:48:34.268
She lives near the Springs.

972
00:48:34.728 --> 00:48:34.948
Okay.

973
00:48:35.128 --> 00:48:35.289
Yeah.

974
00:48:35.329 --> 00:48:37.850
And so, yeah, we have a great family dynamic.

975
00:48:38.010 --> 00:48:38.250
Cool.

976
00:48:38.431 --> 00:48:41.192
Really fortunate to grow up with parents that love each other so much.

977
00:48:41.393 --> 00:48:41.733
Yeah.

978
00:48:41.793 --> 00:48:41.913
Cool.

979
00:48:42.573 --> 00:48:42.874
Yeah.

980
00:48:43.754 --> 00:48:47.996
For me, getting into architecture, I was president of my Lego club.

981
00:48:49.077 --> 00:48:49.797
You were a builder.

982
00:48:49.817 --> 00:48:52.538
You were a little more focused than Jeff right from the start.

983
00:48:52.638 --> 00:48:57.641
Yeah, it was like I knew growing up doing Legos was definitely a hot thing.

984
00:48:58.381 --> 00:49:01.522
And I think also traveling with my parents.

985
00:49:01.542 --> 00:49:02.903
That's a big value for them.

986
00:49:03.178 --> 00:49:07.040
Yeah, and then, you know, going to see these places across the world.

987
00:49:07.180 --> 00:49:09.842
What was their circumstance?

988
00:49:10.202 --> 00:49:11.883
Yeah, my dad ran a company here in town.

989
00:49:12.163 --> 00:49:13.564
He's an environmental consultant.

990
00:49:13.744 --> 00:49:13.864
Oh.

991
00:49:14.224 --> 00:49:18.747
He's, by schooling, he's a limnologist in the study of fresh water.

992
00:49:19.147 --> 00:49:19.787
Oh, okay.

993
00:49:19.807 --> 00:49:26.751
So he's a water scientist, and my mom used to work at the group real estate, and...

994
00:49:28.532 --> 00:49:32.673
So you had two working professional parents in that business world.

995
00:49:32.854 --> 00:49:33.274
Yeah.

996
00:49:33.294 --> 00:49:37.495
After a while, my mom stayed and just had to work on my sister and I.

997
00:49:37.575 --> 00:49:41.476
If somebody called her, she might do some real estate, but that was the extent of it.

998
00:49:41.696 --> 00:49:42.017
Yeah.

999
00:49:42.297 --> 00:49:42.897
Cool.

1000
00:49:42.917 --> 00:49:45.238
So with my dad's job, he traveled all over the world.

1001
00:49:45.338 --> 00:49:45.818
Oh, really?

1002
00:49:45.838 --> 00:49:46.158
Yeah.

1003
00:49:46.318 --> 00:49:52.080
He'd come back from Jakarta, Indonesia with these really cool trinkets and blowguns and

1004
00:49:52.801 --> 00:50:11.143
carvings and you know our house is filled with so he was like a research scientist almost uh in addition to being an entrepreneur i guess so mongolia and south america and he he took some i'm sure some pretty amazing trips for work like who hired him to do those things

1005
00:50:11.622 --> 00:50:16.507
Large oil and gas companies looking to come in and do mining projects.

1006
00:50:16.547 --> 00:50:26.457
Right, make sure we don't mess this water up so you've got to get a baseline and kind of give us solutions that don't have a risk of... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1007
00:50:27.178 --> 00:50:29.600
Barry Carlson used to do a lot of stuff with that.

1008
00:50:30.021 --> 00:50:30.781
Okay.

1009
00:50:30.821 --> 00:50:32.403
Teledot, I forget.

1010
00:50:32.683 --> 00:50:34.125
He had a company here in town as well.

1011
00:50:34.545 --> 00:50:35.486
Oh, Teledyne Waterpik?

1012
00:50:35.506 --> 00:50:36.326
No, it wasn't Teledyne.

1013
00:50:36.386 --> 00:50:37.026
No, it was Teledyne.

1014
00:50:37.787 --> 00:50:38.107
I don't know.

1015
00:50:38.327 --> 00:50:38.667
Yeah.

1016
00:50:39.688 --> 00:50:49.573
He was an agricultural engineer that also he developed something better than Trex decking that had a Velcro-like fastener, aluminum extruded into it.

1017
00:50:49.773 --> 00:50:49.973
Whoa.

1018
00:50:50.253 --> 00:50:53.775
Never got it to market because it was just a little too tricky to figure out.

1019
00:50:53.835 --> 00:50:56.016
But one of the smartest guys I ever knew.

1020
00:50:56.036 --> 00:50:56.836
Yeah.

1021
00:50:56.856 --> 00:51:03.800
But he was like a gold mining engineer for how to keep the gold stuff, yucky gold stuff out of the water.

1022
00:51:04.360 --> 00:51:22.677
interesting uh so probably brushed against your father's yeah industry similar channel yours was oil and gas sounds like his was gold neat but either way you want to keep it out of the water apparently yeah or the mercury or whatever in the case of whatever uranium so so uh architecture school csu or go farther away

1023
00:51:23.558 --> 00:51:24.819
No, it went farther away.

1024
00:51:25.340 --> 00:51:29.825
So my aunt and uncle, they live in L.A. Oh.

1025
00:51:30.305 --> 00:51:32.868
And growing up, we'd go visit them frequently.

1026
00:51:33.549 --> 00:51:38.094
And so I was like, well, man, I wrote a letter to myself in, what, freshman year in high school.

1027
00:51:38.754 --> 00:51:40.916
I want to go to architecture school in Los Angeles.

1028
00:51:40.996 --> 00:51:41.276
Yeah.

1029
00:51:41.677 --> 00:51:42.357
And da-da-da.

1030
00:51:42.497 --> 00:51:45.880
And then, you know, the English teacher sends it to you four years later when you're a senior.

1031
00:51:45.900 --> 00:51:50.904
The wild part is, like, I did go to architecture school in Los Angeles.

1032
00:51:50.924 --> 00:51:53.926
So I went to USC just south of downtown.

1033
00:51:54.467 --> 00:52:00.772
You know, the campus is kind of known for being in the... Two of my nephews are in Los Angeles area at college right now.

1034
00:52:01.012 --> 00:52:01.753
Great.

1035
00:52:01.793 --> 00:52:02.613
From right around here.

1036
00:52:02.753 --> 00:52:04.275
One, I forget, V something?

1037
00:52:04.795 --> 00:52:05.316
Viola?

1038
00:52:05.636 --> 00:52:05.936
Okay.

1039
00:52:06.096 --> 00:52:06.456
Is one?

1040
00:52:06.517 --> 00:52:06.797
Anyway.

1041
00:52:07.497 --> 00:52:08.677
But it's pretty cool.

1042
00:52:08.877 --> 00:52:09.218
Oh, yeah.

1043
00:52:09.278 --> 00:52:12.098
It's the best place to live for a freaking 19-year-old kid, right?

1044
00:52:12.298 --> 00:52:13.459
Such a great spot for architecture school.

1045
00:52:13.519 --> 00:52:14.599
Forty minutes from the beach.

1046
00:52:15.299 --> 00:52:18.640
You know, you're studying these things in the books, and you're like, oh, let's go visit them.

1047
00:52:19.060 --> 00:52:19.360
You know?

1048
00:52:19.420 --> 00:52:19.700
Right.

1049
00:52:19.860 --> 00:52:23.361
You know, the Eames House right down the road, Disney Concert Hall.

1050
00:52:23.661 --> 00:52:24.502
All this stuff, yeah.

1051
00:52:24.522 --> 00:52:27.282
Yeah, all that stuff's right there, which is very cool.

1052
00:52:27.542 --> 00:52:29.823
Yeah, we spent a little more time in Southern California.

1053
00:52:29.863 --> 00:52:31.464
My mom actually grew up out that way.

1054
00:52:31.684 --> 00:52:36.245
But because of the nephews and some other things, and another friend moved there, like...

1055
00:52:37.542 --> 00:52:40.683
It's amazing how much stuff is there.

1056
00:52:42.023 --> 00:52:48.284
Like just the magnitude of the development, you know, the canyons that we would drive through here and they'd be empty.

1057
00:52:48.324 --> 00:52:51.005
I've got 400 houses in them.

1058
00:52:51.025 --> 00:52:51.285
Yeah.

1059
00:52:51.305 --> 00:52:51.585
Or 800.

1060
00:52:51.885 --> 00:52:52.385
Yeah.

1061
00:52:52.825 --> 00:52:53.345
Or 4,000.

1062
00:52:53.365 --> 00:52:54.365
Right.

1063
00:52:54.765 --> 00:52:57.886
I think as a college kid, you know, I always lived close to campus.

1064
00:52:58.066 --> 00:52:58.286
Yeah.

1065
00:52:58.326 --> 00:52:59.526
And would ride my bike.

1066
00:53:00.267 --> 00:53:01.547
You know, there were so many things.

1067
00:53:01.567 --> 00:53:03.867
You'd go to endless comedy shows, concerts.

1068
00:53:03.887 --> 00:53:04.167
Right.

1069
00:53:04.187 --> 00:53:05.228
I mean, there was so much to do.

1070
00:53:05.708 --> 00:53:06.608
It was overwhelming.

1071
00:53:06.628 --> 00:53:07.188
With a bicycle.

1072
00:53:07.808 --> 00:53:09.748
Yeah, it was almost overwhelming, right?

1073
00:53:09.768 --> 00:53:12.489
So you're just like, I'm just going to go to the architecture studio.

1074
00:53:13.129 --> 00:53:14.789
So you didn't really get mixed up.

1075
00:53:14.849 --> 00:53:15.750
So you could go.

1076
00:53:16.030 --> 00:53:20.670
We'd go out to some of these comedy shows or concerts and things like that in downtown.

1077
00:53:21.191 --> 00:53:24.571
But yeah, there's so much to do on that.

1078
00:53:24.611 --> 00:53:28.272
Really, it was just a great spot to just focus in on the architecture.

1079
00:53:28.332 --> 00:53:28.492
Cool.

1080
00:53:28.712 --> 00:53:28.972
You know?

1081
00:53:29.472 --> 00:53:29.672
Yeah.

1082
00:53:30.432 --> 00:53:32.473
And Jeff, let's shift back to you.

1083
00:53:32.633 --> 00:53:34.253
So you landed in Fort Collins, you said in 93?

1084
00:53:36.241 --> 00:53:36.501
Yes.

1085
00:53:37.022 --> 00:53:38.764
I actually landed in Broomfield.

1086
00:53:38.805 --> 00:53:39.646
Broomfield in Colorado.

1087
00:53:39.666 --> 00:53:40.527
That was the first stop, yeah.

1088
00:53:40.547 --> 00:53:40.707
Okay.

1089
00:53:40.908 --> 00:53:44.553
Yeah, because I went to grad school at CU Denver.

1090
00:53:44.733 --> 00:53:45.014
Okay.

1091
00:53:45.334 --> 00:53:48.499
And so, yeah, we were there for quite some time.

1092
00:53:49.140 --> 00:53:51.743
And then as we started having kids, we said...

1093
00:53:52.304 --> 00:53:53.625
Oh, we don't have any family here.

1094
00:53:53.645 --> 00:53:55.726
It would be nice for them to know their family.

1095
00:53:56.106 --> 00:53:56.367
Yeah.

1096
00:53:56.467 --> 00:53:58.668
So we started looking at moving back to Michigan.

1097
00:53:59.348 --> 00:54:04.591
And it just didn't happen because there were no jobs.

1098
00:54:04.852 --> 00:54:05.612
So we stayed here.

1099
00:54:05.632 --> 00:54:10.355
And then we came up to this area in northern Colorado about 25 years ago.

1100
00:54:14.197 --> 00:54:14.457
Okay.

1101
00:54:14.637 --> 00:54:14.897
Yeah.

1102
00:54:15.077 --> 00:54:15.738
So been here since.

1103
00:54:15.758 --> 00:54:16.078
Early 2000s.

1104
00:54:16.098 --> 00:54:16.298
Yeah.

1105
00:54:16.318 --> 00:54:16.538
Yeah.

1106
00:54:16.558 --> 00:54:16.698
Yeah.

1107
00:54:16.718 --> 00:54:16.878
Yeah.

1108
00:54:17.218 --> 00:54:17.418
Yeah.

1109
00:54:17.438 --> 00:54:17.598
Yeah.

1110
00:54:17.918 --> 00:54:18.018
Yeah.

1111
00:54:18.058 --> 00:54:18.158
Yeah.

1112
00:54:18.178 --> 00:54:18.338
Yeah.

1113
00:54:18.539 --> 00:54:18.899
Yeah.

1114
00:54:18.939 --> 00:54:19.099
Yeah.

1115
00:54:19.159 --> 00:54:19.279
Yeah.

1116
00:54:19.299 --> 00:54:19.499
Yeah.

1117
00:54:19.539 --> 00:54:19.699
Yeah.

1118
00:54:19.719 --> 00:54:19.879
Yeah.

1119
00:54:19.919 --> 00:54:20.119
Yeah.

1120
00:54:20.139 --> 00:54:20.259
Yeah.

1121
00:54:20.279 --> 00:54:20.419
Yeah.

1122
00:54:20.439 --> 00:54:20.639
Yeah.

1123
00:54:20.659 --> 00:54:20.759
Yeah.

1124
00:54:20.779 --> 00:54:20.959
Yeah.

1125
00:54:35.904 --> 00:54:36.324
Do we have?

1126
00:54:36.404 --> 00:54:37.325
Yeah, we have three kids.

1127
00:54:37.405 --> 00:54:39.046
Okay.

1128
00:54:39.066 --> 00:54:43.808
My last one will be graduating from Mizzou in May.

1129
00:54:43.828 --> 00:54:46.489
Man, there's a lot of kids from here going to Mizzou.

1130
00:54:46.609 --> 00:54:46.829
Yeah.

1131
00:54:47.009 --> 00:54:49.810
I mean, it's an incredible campus.

1132
00:54:49.950 --> 00:54:59.815
Now that my friends' kids are going to college and stuff, my wife and I don't have kids, but I would say there's a half dozen or so of my kind of direct friends' kids going there now.

1133
00:55:00.135 --> 00:55:05.457
But it's funny because my daughter talks to people and they're fascinated that she came from Colorado.

1134
00:55:05.978 --> 00:55:06.198
Right.

1135
00:55:06.358 --> 00:55:07.658
Oh, what are the mountains like?

1136
00:55:08.839 --> 00:55:09.819
What is skiing like?

1137
00:55:09.879 --> 00:55:10.740
What is this like?

1138
00:55:10.780 --> 00:55:13.641
And she's like, you can go out and check it out.

1139
00:55:13.661 --> 00:55:17.403
It's only like a seven-hour drive.

1140
00:55:18.143 --> 00:55:20.884
Yeah, so she's my youngest.

1141
00:55:20.984 --> 00:55:24.106
My middle daughter graduated from a school in Michigan.

1142
00:55:24.906 --> 00:55:52.794
and on the west side and uh she's been she's a bachelor of fine arts uh person and so she she's got a studio in the garage in her house and so she goes nuts with that and then my son who's the oldest uh he just graduated and uh he's uh at a place called sierra space now so which is a kind of a space yeah so they're making the new um the new uh

1143
00:55:54.003 --> 00:55:54.283
Shuttle.

1144
00:55:55.024 --> 00:55:55.424
Oh, really?

1145
00:55:55.624 --> 00:55:55.844
Yes.

1146
00:55:55.904 --> 00:55:56.404
Oh, interesting.

1147
00:55:56.504 --> 00:55:58.385
So they've got three main products.

1148
00:55:58.465 --> 00:56:00.146
Is that here in northern Colorado?

1149
00:56:00.326 --> 00:56:01.367
He's down in Lewisville.

1150
00:56:01.447 --> 00:56:01.907
OK, yeah.

1151
00:56:01.927 --> 00:56:06.350
That Longmont, Lewisville region has a lot of aerospace going on.

1152
00:56:06.430 --> 00:56:08.451
And Loveland's increasingly getting some stuff, too.

1153
00:56:08.491 --> 00:56:09.031
Exactly.

1154
00:56:09.111 --> 00:56:09.411
Yeah.

1155
00:56:09.731 --> 00:56:09.992
Yep.

1156
00:56:10.152 --> 00:56:11.732
So it's pretty exciting.

1157
00:56:11.933 --> 00:56:14.794
Well, you've got some interesting times here.

1158
00:56:14.854 --> 00:56:20.257
Like a fully empty nest is a whole different thing, probably, than before.

1159
00:56:20.277 --> 00:56:21.418
What will you spend more time doing?

1160
00:56:22.498 --> 00:56:28.606
Um, probably my goal is to really get into my guitars and start playing those a lot more.

1161
00:56:28.806 --> 00:56:31.128
Do you play in any like old guy bands around here?

1162
00:56:31.289 --> 00:56:32.090
No, I don't.

1163
00:56:32.110 --> 00:56:35.994
Cause I, I'm very hard on myself and I say, I'm really not good enough.

1164
00:56:36.094 --> 00:56:37.015
I'll just say I suck.

1165
00:56:37.035 --> 00:56:37.456
I suck.

1166
00:56:37.796 --> 00:56:42.460
So, but my daughter plays and she's like, no, you should really get in a band.

1167
00:56:42.500 --> 00:56:44.122
So I haven't gone there yet.

1168
00:56:44.142 --> 00:56:47.344
As long as you don't charge a lot, you can get a lot of gigs.

1169
00:56:47.745 --> 00:56:47.965
Yeah.

1170
00:56:48.145 --> 00:56:49.646
And still kind of suck a little bit.

1171
00:56:50.527 --> 00:56:51.568
Beta test it at the office.

1172
00:56:51.928 --> 00:56:52.088
Yeah.

1173
00:56:52.108 --> 00:56:53.369
Yeah, I like it.

1174
00:56:53.409 --> 00:56:53.670
Yeah.

1175
00:56:54.611 --> 00:56:58.538
Fridays, Fourth Fridays at VFLA in the parking lot.

1176
00:56:58.738 --> 00:56:59.579
Exactly, yeah.

1177
00:56:59.640 --> 00:57:04.027
But we have a little recording studio in the basement, so it's fun.

1178
00:57:04.248 --> 00:57:05.049
Yeah, that's really cool.

1179
00:57:05.069 --> 00:57:07.754
We can't have drums, though, because somebody in my house said no.

1180
00:57:10.133 --> 00:57:11.614
All right, Mom.

1181
00:57:12.355 --> 00:57:15.177
But we've got everything else, so it's pretty exciting.

1182
00:57:15.197 --> 00:57:15.977
That's good.

1183
00:57:15.997 --> 00:57:17.738
Chris, I'm going to bounce to your early career.

1184
00:57:17.758 --> 00:57:21.041
So you graduate, I presume, from USC?

1185
00:57:21.121 --> 00:57:22.362
Yep, graduated from SC.

1186
00:57:22.382 --> 00:57:24.423
They had a five-year program at the time.

1187
00:57:24.623 --> 00:57:28.906
My girlfriend and now wife, she was in dental school at CU Denver.

1188
00:57:29.467 --> 00:57:31.308
So I graduated and moved to Denver.

1189
00:57:31.368 --> 00:57:31.468
Yeah.

1190
00:57:31.815 --> 00:57:34.457
So she was out there for a while and then she came here to finish up?

1191
00:57:34.517 --> 00:57:37.179
Or were you long distance the whole time?

1192
00:57:37.219 --> 00:57:38.501
Yeah, we did long distance.

1193
00:57:38.601 --> 00:57:38.781
Yep.

1194
00:57:39.341 --> 00:57:41.663
High school sweetheart here at Collins.

1195
00:57:42.063 --> 00:57:42.684
I love that.

1196
00:57:43.445 --> 00:57:47.568
She went off to Nebraska Wesleyan for pre-med.

1197
00:57:48.188 --> 00:57:50.851
And then I went to, a year later, I went to SC.

1198
00:57:51.391 --> 00:57:53.673
Then we met back up when she was in dental school.

1199
00:57:53.753 --> 00:57:53.953
Yeah.

1200
00:57:54.113 --> 00:57:55.615
So I found a job at a...

1201
00:57:56.195 --> 00:58:08.161
80, 100% firm, CLIP in Denver, working on big projects, like the Denver Justice Center, the Hyatt Convention Center, big schools, big libraries.

1202
00:58:08.181 --> 00:58:08.381
Yeah.

1203
00:58:08.662 --> 00:58:09.002
Really fun.

1204
00:58:09.022 --> 00:58:10.823
Which I suppose is kind of a lot like going to work

1205
00:58:11.523 --> 00:58:14.385
big four CPA firm or something like that, right?

1206
00:58:14.445 --> 00:58:15.705
Yeah, it was wonderful.

1207
00:58:15.745 --> 00:58:20.168
See how the way it is, what you want to do more of and none of.

1208
00:58:20.188 --> 00:58:22.389
Yeah, you've got to start somewhere, right?

1209
00:58:22.569 --> 00:58:26.451
So I had interned at a couple smaller firms in LA, which was great during school.

1210
00:58:27.332 --> 00:58:29.012
Working at the big firm was wonderful.

1211
00:58:30.273 --> 00:58:32.975
Well, your girlfriend was in Colorado, your fiancee.

1212
00:58:32.995 --> 00:58:33.595
Yeah, yeah.

1213
00:58:34.535 --> 00:58:35.035
Exactly.

1214
00:58:35.356 --> 00:58:38.257
So once- Sorry, I just made the decision for me.

1215
00:58:38.277 --> 00:58:39.737
I don't even know her.

1216
00:58:39.897 --> 00:58:43.158
Yeah, so we got married here in Denver.

1217
00:58:44.579 --> 00:58:51.782
When she was done with dental school, we moved out to Palo Alto for a year while she did a residency.

1218
00:58:52.142 --> 00:58:55.823
And we're like, hey, if we're going to do this residency, let's pick somewhere cool.

1219
00:58:55.843 --> 00:58:56.563
Right.

1220
00:58:56.663 --> 00:58:57.784
And we're not going to Nebraska.

1221
00:58:57.824 --> 00:58:58.064
No.

1222
00:58:58.184 --> 00:59:00.785
It was going to be Portland.

1223
00:59:01.665 --> 00:59:05.466
uh, Stanford and Palo Alto or Honolulu.

1224
00:59:05.746 --> 00:59:05.966
Cool.

1225
00:59:06.346 --> 00:59:08.567
And it came down to, you know, Honolulu, Stanford.

1226
00:59:08.587 --> 00:59:12.388
And I, I think the biggest fear with Honolulu is that we'd never come back.

1227
00:59:12.668 --> 00:59:12.928
Right.

1228
00:59:13.428 --> 00:59:14.989
It's like, it is kind of a fear.

1229
00:59:15.009 --> 00:59:15.349
Yeah.

1230
00:59:15.389 --> 00:59:15.589
Right.

1231
00:59:16.029 --> 00:59:17.749
And so we did Palo Alto for a year.

1232
00:59:17.769 --> 00:59:18.249
It was great.

1233
00:59:18.270 --> 00:59:19.090
It was 08, 09.

1234
00:59:20.330 --> 00:59:22.612
Right, and so I worked at a small...

1235
00:59:22.632 --> 00:59:24.834
So you had an opportunity to find a different job.

1236
00:59:24.994 --> 00:59:27.095
We were fortunate there that it was in a bubble.

1237
00:59:27.295 --> 00:59:27.916
Okay.

1238
00:59:27.996 --> 00:59:29.737
It was a 20-person... Powered through, kind of.

1239
00:59:29.757 --> 00:59:31.178
Yeah, it was a 20-person firm.

1240
00:59:31.719 --> 00:59:36.923
I really liked the connectivity of the team and how it operated and the scale of the projects.

1241
00:59:37.443 --> 00:59:41.146
And I think that's where I really thrived in that type of atmosphere.

1242
00:59:41.186 --> 00:59:45.269
You're working on multiple projects at one time, big impact on the community.

1243
00:59:45.289 --> 00:59:46.250
Yep, yep.

1244
00:59:46.290 --> 00:59:48.652
I went to smaller and smaller banks all throughout my career.

1245
00:59:49.853 --> 00:59:56.838
The last one was a 40-person company, but I could see the impact of my actions on the bottom line of the whole damn business.

1246
00:59:56.858 --> 00:59:57.519
Exactly.

1247
00:59:57.619 --> 01:00:01.082
Yeah, because the big firms, they start to silo you, right?

1248
01:00:01.142 --> 01:00:01.742
Yeah.

1249
01:00:01.762 --> 01:00:04.084
So you are only doing X, Y, or Z.

1250
01:00:04.164 --> 01:00:04.464
Right.

1251
01:00:04.704 --> 01:00:09.928
Yeah, you're our multifamily specialist and never shall you touch anything but a multifamily property, which makes you –

1252
01:00:10.709 --> 01:00:14.190
hard to employ by other firms if the multifamily market is down.

1253
01:00:14.430 --> 01:00:14.730
Right.

1254
01:00:15.010 --> 01:00:15.771
That's exactly right.

1255
01:00:15.791 --> 01:00:17.031
Corporations always do that.

1256
01:00:17.051 --> 01:00:20.392
They try to specialize you, which is to your detriment sometimes.

1257
01:00:21.092 --> 01:00:22.893
Anyway, Chris, bring me back.

1258
01:00:22.953 --> 01:00:23.533
I was ranting.

1259
01:00:23.833 --> 01:00:28.054
So from Palo Alto, we moved back to Fort Collins.

1260
01:00:29.035 --> 01:00:32.296
Sharla started working here as a dentist.

1261
01:00:33.176 --> 01:00:33.976
It was 09.

1262
01:00:34.376 --> 01:00:36.157
Nobody was hiring in Fort Collins.

1263
01:00:36.237 --> 01:00:36.477
Right?

1264
01:00:36.517 --> 01:00:39.238
And so I picked up a job back at that same firm in Denver.

1265
01:00:39.438 --> 01:00:42.699
And so I was commuting back down to there, down to Denver.

1266
01:00:42.799 --> 01:00:46.640
At the bank, we were taking applications from unemployed Acrotechs to be a teller.

1267
01:00:46.780 --> 01:00:47.400
Yeah, exactly.

1268
01:00:47.940 --> 01:00:48.900
I bet.

1269
01:00:49.120 --> 01:00:49.400
Yeah.

1270
01:00:49.640 --> 01:00:50.120
It was true.

1271
01:00:50.140 --> 01:00:50.721
Wow.

1272
01:00:50.761 --> 01:00:51.001
Yeah.

1273
01:00:51.741 --> 01:00:52.081
So it goes.

1274
01:00:52.461 --> 01:00:59.929
And so after a while, Market turned around and then got an email out of the blue from Robin, our CFO.

1275
01:01:00.110 --> 01:01:00.410
Oh, cool.

1276
01:01:00.610 --> 01:01:01.371
And office manager.

1277
01:01:01.411 --> 01:01:05.175
And I was like, yeah, I mean, why not come in and interview and see where it goes?

1278
01:01:05.195 --> 01:01:07.358
And that's how I met Frank and Justin.

1279
01:01:07.418 --> 01:01:08.539
And that was 2011.

1280
01:01:08.559 --> 01:01:08.879
Very cool.

1281
01:01:08.899 --> 01:01:10.101
Yeah, that was 2011.

1282
01:01:10.121 --> 01:01:10.401
That was cool.

1283
01:01:11.382 --> 01:01:11.842
It was great.

1284
01:01:12.162 --> 01:01:12.422
Yeah.

1285
01:01:12.542 --> 01:01:12.823
Yeah.

1286
01:01:12.943 --> 01:01:15.444
Nice opportunity to unfold.

1287
01:01:15.484 --> 01:01:19.765
And you stayed living here the whole time while you were mixing it up, looking for jobs and different things.

1288
01:01:20.145 --> 01:01:20.966
Your wife is Charlotte?

1289
01:01:21.286 --> 01:01:21.666
Charlotte.

1290
01:01:21.886 --> 01:01:22.246
Charlotte.

1291
01:01:22.346 --> 01:01:22.486
Yep.

1292
01:01:22.606 --> 01:01:23.807
Hey, Charlotte, you'll probably listen to this.

1293
01:01:24.527 --> 01:01:29.549
And I hear you're awesome, by the way, like the best, smartest pediatric dentist in northern Colorado.

1294
01:01:29.609 --> 01:01:30.049
Is that right?

1295
01:01:30.109 --> 01:01:30.489
No peds.

1296
01:01:30.629 --> 01:01:31.009
Not peds.

1297
01:01:31.029 --> 01:01:31.489
Just general.

1298
01:01:31.730 --> 01:01:33.990
But she's got some specialty that's like super fancy.

1299
01:01:34.050 --> 01:01:34.391
Yeah.

1300
01:01:34.431 --> 01:01:36.251
She works more.

1301
01:01:36.331 --> 01:01:37.792
She's been hedging more into the –

1302
01:01:40.005 --> 01:01:42.707
biologic and holistic dentistry.

1303
01:01:42.767 --> 01:01:45.989
So low toxicity treatments, a lot of laser.

1304
01:01:46.289 --> 01:01:47.149
She uses a laser.

1305
01:01:47.289 --> 01:01:49.351
To get the scaling off and stuff like that.

1306
01:01:49.451 --> 01:01:50.211
All sorts of stuff.

1307
01:01:50.251 --> 01:01:52.292
It's got a hundred different settings.

1308
01:01:52.793 --> 01:01:54.053
It's really cool.

1309
01:01:54.394 --> 01:01:55.294
She's a badass.

1310
01:01:55.354 --> 01:02:01.137
Well, and just like the food that you put into your body like manifests significantly in how your teeth behave.

1311
01:02:01.498 --> 01:02:03.539
Not just, as it turns out, not just with meth.

1312
01:02:04.360 --> 01:02:26.502
yeah exactly what yeah what are you saying exactly no it's true your mouth is the gateway to your body right for sure a window to how healthy you are you know say you have pain in one tooth it could be a trigger and telling you a signal that you might have something wrong with a certain organ you know so you're picking up on some of that western medicine yeah

1313
01:02:28.845 --> 01:02:31.087
I probably could have a fun conversation with her sometime too.

1314
01:02:32.088 --> 01:02:32.528
You should.

1315
01:02:32.688 --> 01:02:37.812
I feel like we may have a good opportunity to sample the hot sauce coming up here.

1316
01:02:37.832 --> 01:02:39.693
Are you guys ready for that?

1317
01:02:39.733 --> 01:02:39.913
I see.

1318
01:02:39.933 --> 01:02:40.113
Yeah.

1319
01:02:40.193 --> 01:02:41.214
Let's take a short pause.

1320
01:02:41.254 --> 01:02:42.215
I'll get us set up for that.

1321
01:02:42.335 --> 01:02:42.595
Okay.

1322
01:02:42.795 --> 01:02:43.175
Perfect.

1323
01:02:43.296 --> 01:02:44.476
And then we'll jump back on.

1324
01:02:45.877 --> 01:02:49.920
We're coming back toward the final segment, the Loco Experience.

1325
01:02:50.541 --> 01:02:51.982
So accompanied by our...

1326
01:02:53.122 --> 01:02:58.266
Spirit sponsor, WizCal, our featured spirit, but by Seed and Spirit Distilling.

1327
01:02:58.646 --> 01:03:04.530
They're in the Funkworks building and will be opening a tasting room and oyster bar and food truck soon.

1328
01:03:04.910 --> 01:03:05.230
Really?

1329
01:03:05.270 --> 01:03:10.153
So with their own spirits, they've got gins and rums and stuff like WizCal.

1330
01:03:10.213 --> 01:03:11.274
That's fantastic.

1331
01:03:11.314 --> 01:03:12.155
Which is delicious.

1332
01:03:13.055 --> 01:03:13.235
And...

1333
01:03:14.816 --> 01:03:21.740
The crazy ginger hot sauce that is sprinkled a little bit on some of these chips.

1334
01:03:22.200 --> 01:03:22.660
Let's do it.

1335
01:03:22.920 --> 01:03:25.862
Chris, I'll let you start there.

1336
01:03:26.102 --> 01:03:26.762
Try this guy.

1337
01:03:27.243 --> 01:03:30.644
Jeff, that big one, the juicy one is the one that Chris wanted you to have.

1338
01:03:30.684 --> 01:03:31.265
I'll go over here.

1339
01:03:31.325 --> 01:03:31.845
Okay.

1340
01:03:33.586 --> 01:03:34.886
I do love a good hot sauce.

1341
01:03:34.906 --> 01:03:35.287
Yeah, there you go.

1342
01:03:35.307 --> 01:03:38.868
We'll start with the hot sauce tasting notes if it's okay.

1343
01:03:40.009 --> 01:03:41.110
Ooh, I got some of that one.

1344
01:03:41.130 --> 01:03:41.890
Good initial cake.

1345
01:03:41.910 --> 01:03:43.011
Ooh.

1346
01:03:43.031 --> 01:03:43.191
Ooh.

1347
01:03:44.418 --> 01:03:45.241
Really good flavor.

1348
01:03:46.044 --> 01:03:46.686
Good balance.

1349
01:03:46.726 --> 01:03:46.846
Nice.

1350
01:03:46.947 --> 01:03:48.893
Yeah, that's a great sauce.

1351
01:03:49.865 --> 01:03:52.127
Available at Matador Mexican Grill for your purchase.

1352
01:03:52.487 --> 01:03:52.948
There you go.

1353
01:03:53.168 --> 01:03:55.009
Breakfast burritos, tacos.

1354
01:03:55.690 --> 01:03:55.990
Fish.

1355
01:03:56.130 --> 01:03:56.430
Fish.

1356
01:03:57.051 --> 01:03:57.491
Tacos.

1357
01:03:57.591 --> 01:03:58.272
Bloody Mary.

1358
01:03:58.652 --> 01:03:59.133
Bloody Mary.

1359
01:03:59.193 --> 01:04:00.254
Oh, yeah, that'd be great.

1360
01:04:00.294 --> 01:04:01.975
Actually, I use it in my salsa a lot.

1361
01:04:02.115 --> 01:04:07.660
Like, just get regular speed salsa and just put a couple few drops of this in there, and you're like, eh, that's really good.

1362
01:04:07.680 --> 01:04:08.220
Want another one?

1363
01:04:08.400 --> 01:04:08.600
Yeah.

1364
01:04:09.041 --> 01:04:09.401
I'm glad.

1365
01:04:09.721 --> 01:04:10.202
Who doesn't?

1366
01:04:10.742 --> 01:04:12.364
Jeff wants the, get that juicy one.

1367
01:04:12.724 --> 01:04:13.785
Okay, I'll do it.

1368
01:04:14.085 --> 01:04:15.286
But I'm going to double chip it.

1369
01:04:15.866 --> 01:04:16.387
Okay.

1370
01:04:21.125 --> 01:04:42.128
here we go sometimes three two one go big go big exactly what were you gonna say chris i was gonna say sometimes hot sauces they start mild and then get too hot this one starts off strong stays at that level and it kind of then tapers off yeah it's a good sauce good job matador well good job paul yeah paul paul set me up with a bunch of tasters

1371
01:04:43.383 --> 01:04:51.410
You have got the high-ribe bourbon there with you, which I don't know if you've tasted it, but you can share tasting notes on that, too, if you'd like to.

1372
01:04:51.430 --> 01:04:52.031
I'll try it out.

1373
01:04:52.091 --> 01:04:52.371
Hold on.

1374
01:04:52.391 --> 01:04:53.412
Yeah.

1375
01:04:53.452 --> 01:04:54.273
Might as well while we're here.

1376
01:04:54.613 --> 01:04:58.176
It's not really a taste test podcast or anything, but, you know, we do some stuff.

1377
01:04:58.517 --> 01:05:00.759
It pairs well with the hot sauce.

1378
01:05:00.819 --> 01:05:01.039
Nice.

1379
01:05:01.319 --> 01:05:02.620
Good.

1380
01:05:03.041 --> 01:05:04.442
Should we jump right into the whiz, Cal?

1381
01:05:04.462 --> 01:05:04.542
Yes.

1382
01:05:04.963 --> 01:05:05.544
That's up to you.

1383
01:05:06.444 --> 01:05:07.125
Tell us more about it.

1384
01:05:07.405 --> 01:05:14.992
So this is basically a hybrid spirit mezcal and whiskey, primarily corn whiskey.

1385
01:05:15.192 --> 01:05:15.933
Okay.

1386
01:05:16.333 --> 01:05:19.716
But it does have kind of the smoked mezcal flavor.

1387
01:05:19.916 --> 01:05:22.679
And so it's the only Wizcal around.

1388
01:05:23.399 --> 01:05:24.921
So I like to sip it kind of.

1389
01:05:24.941 --> 01:05:26.122
It's not really a shooter for me.

1390
01:05:26.362 --> 01:05:28.064
But it makes it great old-fashioned, actually.

1391
01:05:28.084 --> 01:05:30.586
A Wizcal old-fashioned is, like, really nice.

1392
01:05:31.567 --> 01:05:31.987
I love it.

1393
01:05:33.526 --> 01:05:33.846
I like it.

1394
01:05:34.287 --> 01:05:36.148
My sponsor will appreciate that.

1395
01:05:36.869 --> 01:05:37.649
That is tasty.

1396
01:05:37.749 --> 01:05:40.732
So I'll podcast soon.

1397
01:05:41.092 --> 01:05:46.656
I'll update the open date on the Seed and Spirit Distilling Tasting Room there.

1398
01:05:46.897 --> 01:05:47.197
Love it.

1399
01:05:47.397 --> 01:05:48.658
Yeah, it's got a good smokiness.

1400
01:05:50.360 --> 01:05:51.660
Some of them come off too strong.

1401
01:05:52.040 --> 01:05:54.861
I like that we get to keep this shot glass.

1402
01:05:54.881 --> 01:05:55.281
No, I'm kidding.

1403
01:05:55.321 --> 01:05:56.041
You can if you want.

1404
01:05:56.121 --> 01:05:57.422
I mean, I got so many of those.

1405
01:05:57.442 --> 01:05:58.382
I'm totally kidding.

1406
01:05:58.402 --> 01:05:59.802
Before I had a spirit sponsor.

1407
01:06:00.042 --> 01:06:00.743
What are these from?

1408
01:06:00.763 --> 01:06:03.063
These are from the... What, tin cup?

1409
01:06:03.243 --> 01:06:03.823
Yeah, tin cup.

1410
01:06:03.963 --> 01:06:06.064
Yeah, these are just tin cup shot glasses.

1411
01:06:06.164 --> 01:06:07.044
Those are great.

1412
01:06:07.304 --> 01:06:07.744
That's good.

1413
01:06:08.925 --> 01:06:10.165
That makes it spicier.

1414
01:06:10.910 --> 01:06:11.270
For sure.

1415
01:06:11.691 --> 01:06:11.991
Wow.

1416
01:06:12.291 --> 01:06:13.672
He's coming back.

1417
01:06:13.692 --> 01:06:14.513
Do you need some milk?

1418
01:06:14.553 --> 01:06:15.094
Coming back.

1419
01:06:15.194 --> 01:06:16.275
No, he doesn't need milk.

1420
01:06:16.475 --> 01:06:17.496
I don't have any milk around.

1421
01:06:17.536 --> 01:06:18.096
No.

1422
01:06:18.456 --> 01:06:18.697
What?

1423
01:06:19.637 --> 01:06:21.899
What kind of deal is this?

1424
01:06:21.999 --> 01:06:37.913
Jeff, the final closing segment is the Loco Experience, which is the craziest experience of your lifetime that you're willing to share and have your daughters listen to and everything and your wife and your clients at VFLA.

1425
01:06:40.350 --> 01:06:41.931
And the police, the authorities.

1426
01:06:42.291 --> 01:06:42.751
Yeah.

1427
01:06:43.091 --> 01:06:46.492
But mostly the statute of limitations has run out on most of your shit, I reckon.

1428
01:06:47.633 --> 01:06:48.033
Maybe not.

1429
01:06:48.053 --> 01:06:48.413
I don't know.

1430
01:06:48.433 --> 01:06:51.954
There's a lot of stuff I just really can't talk about to be perfectly honest.

1431
01:06:51.974 --> 01:06:53.735
Well, that's the kind of stuff we like.

1432
01:06:54.075 --> 01:06:59.217
And nothing illegal, but things that you got into at my age, you know,

1433
01:07:03.438 --> 01:07:05.539
For me, that's illegal things, mostly.

1434
01:07:05.559 --> 01:07:06.220
Yeah.

1435
01:07:06.360 --> 01:07:07.680
God, the craziest thing.

1436
01:07:07.700 --> 01:07:08.681
I've got to think about that.

1437
01:07:08.701 --> 01:07:10.882
Chris, do you have something, a story in your mind already?

1438
01:07:10.902 --> 01:07:12.623
I mean, I'm not a crazy life experience.

1439
01:07:12.663 --> 01:07:15.665
You seem like a really relatively risk-averse kind of guy.

1440
01:07:15.685 --> 01:07:15.765
Yes.

1441
01:07:16.325 --> 01:07:16.665
Yeah.

1442
01:07:16.945 --> 01:07:21.868
Do you want to go bungee jumping with me at my new bungee tree that I just built at my friend's property?

1443
01:07:22.088 --> 01:07:22.909
Oh, maybe.

1444
01:07:23.129 --> 01:07:23.409
Oh, really?

1445
01:07:23.429 --> 01:07:23.850
That sounds cool.

1446
01:07:24.010 --> 01:07:24.130
Okay.

1447
01:07:24.150 --> 01:07:24.370
All right.

1448
01:07:24.450 --> 01:07:32.497
So along those lines, I guess probably the craziest- So physical risks is more acceptable than legal risks and going to prison and stuff like that?

1449
01:07:32.658 --> 01:07:33.058
Oh, yeah.

1450
01:07:33.098 --> 01:07:33.458
No, no.

1451
01:07:33.618 --> 01:07:33.899
Yeah.

1452
01:07:34.079 --> 01:07:34.859
Okay.

1453
01:07:35.260 --> 01:07:42.086
I guess the craziest things I've done, I did my study abroad in architecture school in Como, Italy.

1454
01:07:42.406 --> 01:07:42.466
Oh.

1455
01:07:42.486 --> 01:07:44.268
So we were over there in northern Italy for four months.

1456
01:07:44.288 --> 01:07:44.388
Cool.

1457
01:07:44.488 --> 01:07:45.268
Yeah.

1458
01:07:45.669 --> 01:07:48.830
Like that fancy lake where all the really, really, really, really rich people live.

1459
01:07:48.850 --> 01:07:50.311
Yeah, it was like before that, right?

1460
01:07:50.331 --> 01:07:50.591
Right.

1461
01:07:50.631 --> 01:07:51.231
Before that.

1462
01:07:51.251 --> 01:07:52.051
Right before it became extreme.

1463
01:07:52.071 --> 01:07:53.052
It was kind of like the small town.

1464
01:07:53.072 --> 01:07:55.653
Right, it was kind of the hidden gem of northern Italy at the time.

1465
01:07:55.673 --> 01:08:02.996
Yeah, it was like on a lake, you know, and we'd go down to Milan to their polytechnique school and that's where we'd do the studying.

1466
01:08:05.337 --> 01:08:09.539
But you could, the adjacency to Switzerland is right there, right?

1467
01:08:09.559 --> 01:08:09.819
Okay.

1468
01:08:09.979 --> 01:08:15.042
And so we would, and Switzerland's known for some of these high-risk things, right?

1469
01:08:15.082 --> 01:08:21.285
So we went canyoning one weekend where basically it's like a slot canyon on a rope.

1470
01:08:22.025 --> 01:08:26.548
So they have a cross rope, and you jump off, and you do this huge swing across.

1471
01:08:27.169 --> 01:08:27.269
Oh.

1472
01:08:27.729 --> 01:08:28.850
And, you know, you're in college.

1473
01:08:28.870 --> 01:08:29.871
You're like, oh, sweet.

1474
01:08:29.911 --> 01:08:30.271
Right.

1475
01:08:30.291 --> 01:08:31.672
Somebody strung a rope across here.

1476
01:08:31.692 --> 01:08:33.993
We could just tie my rope onto that rope, and we just swing.

1477
01:08:34.013 --> 01:08:34.434
Yeah.

1478
01:08:34.474 --> 01:08:38.697
So we just went up there, four or five of us, you know, took the train up.

1479
01:08:38.877 --> 01:08:40.198
Hey, let's go cannoning.

1480
01:08:40.238 --> 01:08:41.539
And it's snowing.

1481
01:08:41.839 --> 01:08:42.619
It's icy.

1482
01:08:42.760 --> 01:08:48.944
You know, you put on this harness, and you jump off this, you know, who knows how deep the mountain is.

1483
01:08:49.284 --> 01:08:49.724
Right.

1484
01:08:49.764 --> 01:08:50.485
How long was the rope?

1485
01:08:50.545 --> 01:08:51.566
Oh man, a long.

1486
01:08:52.687 --> 01:08:52.947
A long.

1487
01:08:53.007 --> 01:08:54.668
And you're just free falling.

1488
01:08:54.688 --> 01:08:55.449
Enough to scare you.

1489
01:08:55.589 --> 01:08:56.370
Enough to scare you.

1490
01:08:56.390 --> 01:08:57.731
And you're like, wow, this is far.

1491
01:08:57.751 --> 01:08:58.952
This is really far.

1492
01:08:59.272 --> 01:09:01.374
And you get down and you're like, I don't know if I should have done that.

1493
01:09:04.726 --> 01:09:05.066
You know?

1494
01:09:05.686 --> 01:09:06.006
Yeah.

1495
01:09:06.046 --> 01:09:07.947
Because that could have gone wrong.

1496
01:09:09.907 --> 01:09:10.127
Really?

1497
01:09:10.347 --> 01:09:10.567
Yeah.

1498
01:09:10.747 --> 01:09:10.927
Yeah.

1499
01:09:11.027 --> 01:09:11.588
But it's far.

1500
01:09:12.128 --> 01:09:14.488
I mean, it's like a long bungee jump, right?

1501
01:09:14.528 --> 01:09:15.409
But without supporting.

1502
01:09:15.449 --> 01:09:15.929
So hundreds of feet.

1503
01:09:15.949 --> 01:09:16.789
Yeah, hundreds of feet.

1504
01:09:17.229 --> 01:09:19.930
And you're swinging out, you know, and then coming back.

1505
01:09:20.010 --> 01:09:21.650
And then how do you get off of it?

1506
01:09:21.870 --> 01:09:23.250
Like you don't just hang in the middle somehow?

1507
01:09:23.270 --> 01:09:24.511
No, they had like a catch rope.

1508
01:09:24.531 --> 01:09:25.311
They had a catch rope.

1509
01:09:25.331 --> 01:09:27.331
Like I said, I know physics a little bit.

1510
01:09:27.351 --> 01:09:29.132
Like eventually the thing stops swinging.

1511
01:09:29.152 --> 01:09:29.332
Yeah.

1512
01:09:29.572 --> 01:09:31.712
So they had a catch rope and a landing at the bottom.

1513
01:09:31.732 --> 01:09:31.992
Okay.

1514
01:09:32.132 --> 01:09:34.433
And so they'd have a staff member down there that they would...

1515
01:09:34.853 --> 01:09:37.435
you would basically grab this rope.

1516
01:09:37.455 --> 01:09:40.397
Oh, because there was a rope kind of hanging below you almost.

1517
01:09:40.457 --> 01:09:41.398
Yeah, I don't know.

1518
01:09:41.458 --> 01:09:44.300
You black out and you don't remember.

1519
01:09:44.460 --> 01:09:45.481
It was so scary.

1520
01:09:46.922 --> 01:09:49.084
Like, there's no chance I'd do that now.

1521
01:09:49.104 --> 01:09:49.604
Yeah.

1522
01:09:49.784 --> 01:09:56.149
You know, my afraid of heights is like, I think once you, I don't know what it is, but recently, like, my...

1523
01:09:57.787 --> 01:10:01.330
appreciation of the risk of being at heights is higher.

1524
01:10:01.370 --> 01:10:03.472
My body just goes in overload.

1525
01:10:03.612 --> 01:10:04.853
It's crazy.

1526
01:10:06.755 --> 01:10:07.155
Interesting.

1527
01:10:08.116 --> 01:10:08.977
What about you, Jeff?

1528
01:10:09.197 --> 01:10:10.999
Okay, so I might have a couple.

1529
01:10:11.959 --> 01:10:12.440
That's okay.

1530
01:10:12.840 --> 01:10:14.402
As long as they're crazy enough.

1531
01:10:14.422 --> 01:10:15.923
If the first one was crazy enough, you can still it.

1532
01:10:16.303 --> 01:10:22.472
Well, we may have had nail gun fights, taking the safeties off.

1533
01:10:22.792 --> 01:10:23.033
Yeah.

1534
01:10:23.233 --> 01:10:25.276
You put a full bandana on.

1535
01:10:25.296 --> 01:10:27.619
We did BB guns and slingshots.

1536
01:10:27.859 --> 01:10:29.061
Yeah, that was kind of silly.

1537
01:10:29.081 --> 01:10:30.043
Yeah, that's pretty crazy.

1538
01:10:30.123 --> 01:10:30.824
Shingle fights.

1539
01:10:33.446 --> 01:10:33.766
Oh, yeah.

1540
01:10:33.906 --> 01:10:35.467
Those are like freaking ninjas, right?

1541
01:10:35.487 --> 01:10:37.409
Yeah, it was a full-on throw.

1542
01:10:37.549 --> 01:10:38.770
So same thing.

1543
01:10:39.150 --> 01:10:41.191
Bandana it up so you don't get it in the throat.

1544
01:10:41.311 --> 01:10:41.431
Right.

1545
01:10:41.451 --> 01:10:43.793
Don't want to take an eye out necessarily.

1546
01:10:44.033 --> 01:10:45.594
And that's all I'm going to tell you.

1547
01:10:45.694 --> 01:10:47.355
It's like a hot bottle rocket fight.

1548
01:10:48.056 --> 01:10:48.416
Oh, yeah.

1549
01:10:48.536 --> 01:10:49.997
Oh, that's a good one, too.

1550
01:10:50.137 --> 01:11:00.024
We may have played James Bond one night and had bottle rockets as we were driving and putting them in bottles and shooting at cars.

1551
01:11:00.044 --> 01:11:00.344
Yeah.

1552
01:11:01.125 --> 01:11:20.548
octopus no you'll be fine you'll be fine all of us did that well not really yeah but most of us didn't get caught doing that there's way too many other things I can't talk about fair enough not illegal not illegal well yes they are like definitely shooting bottle rockets at cars is illegal maybe maybe

1553
01:11:20.977 --> 01:11:22.219
Depends on what state you're in.

1554
01:11:23.580 --> 01:11:24.842
It isn't like prison time.

1555
01:11:25.202 --> 01:11:25.543
Correct.

1556
01:11:25.563 --> 01:11:26.804
It's not a felony.

1557
01:11:27.245 --> 01:11:30.028
We were pretty mischievous.

1558
01:11:30.589 --> 01:11:33.433
I threw a chunk of ice at a car.

1559
01:11:33.493 --> 01:11:38.699
Like we were throwing snowballs at cars in kind of a town-y kind of a situation.

1560
01:11:40.675 --> 01:11:43.578
Apparently, I decided I should throw this chunk of ice, and it was like a chunk.

1561
01:11:44.239 --> 01:11:47.802
And a guy come and confronted me and caught me.

1562
01:11:48.083 --> 01:11:50.926
And man, that's a memory I have.

1563
01:11:51.006 --> 01:11:54.109
I was like freaking eight or something, probably.

1564
01:11:54.129 --> 01:11:55.370
You know, pretty small.

1565
01:11:55.430 --> 01:11:59.514
I was adventurous, I suppose, for an eight-year-old and sassy.

1566
01:12:00.415 --> 01:12:03.277
And I remember that conversation.

1567
01:12:03.297 --> 01:12:05.237
I thought he was going to kick my ass.

1568
01:12:05.257 --> 01:12:07.399
You know, he should have, kind of, but I was eight.

1569
01:12:07.999 --> 01:12:11.340
Turns out you can't whoop ass on eight-year-olds anywhere in this country.

1570
01:12:11.360 --> 01:12:12.881
It doesn't really matter what state you're in.

1571
01:12:12.901 --> 01:12:13.522
Even back then.

1572
01:12:13.682 --> 01:12:14.482
Even back then.

1573
01:12:14.702 --> 01:12:15.983
Yeah, not in public anyway.

1574
01:12:16.043 --> 01:12:16.723
Yeah, exactly.

1575
01:12:16.763 --> 01:12:17.764
So I'm glad for that.

1576
01:12:17.784 --> 01:12:18.464
That's so funny, yeah.

1577
01:12:18.764 --> 01:12:20.846
Well, I have a challenge for each of you.

1578
01:12:20.866 --> 01:12:21.266
Okay.

1579
01:12:22.047 --> 01:12:25.910
Jeff, really glad to meet you here on the podcast.

1580
01:12:26.090 --> 01:12:28.892
If we have not met before, it seems like maybe we haven't.

1581
01:12:28.912 --> 01:12:30.613
Yeah.

1582
01:12:30.733 --> 01:12:31.254
I enjoy it.

1583
01:12:31.274 --> 01:12:34.396
By the way, you seem like you might have some billiards talent.

1584
01:12:34.896 --> 01:12:36.137
Do you have some billiards talent?

1585
01:12:36.157 --> 01:12:36.898
It's okay.

1586
01:12:37.138 --> 01:12:37.438
Okay.

1587
01:12:37.679 --> 01:12:38.499
It's not at the top.

1588
01:12:38.519 --> 01:12:45.266
I know a few architects that are decent, and sometimes I like to give them lessons in nine ball over at Cooper Smith.

1589
01:12:45.406 --> 01:12:50.250
Yeah, I mean, I'm a competitive person, and so I might take up that challenge.

1590
01:12:50.270 --> 01:12:54.494
Well, if we wrap this up pretty soon here, we might be able to get back on the ping pong table.

1591
01:12:54.694 --> 01:12:55.055
Oh, yeah.

1592
01:12:55.075 --> 01:12:55.195
Yeah.

1593
01:12:55.715 --> 01:13:07.605
And Chris, any last words or any words of, actually, what I would like from you is the best advice you've ever had and pay it forward.

1594
01:13:08.346 --> 01:13:10.487
Oh, the best advice I've received?

1595
01:13:10.507 --> 01:13:12.869
Yeah, the best business advice you've ever had.

1596
01:13:13.590 --> 01:13:15.812
Pay it forward to somebody that's listening right now.

1597
01:13:17.736 --> 01:13:20.457
I think it's follow your intuition.

1598
01:13:21.118 --> 01:13:27.080
I mean, as basic as that sounds, it really rings true because we're so different as people and we're all on our own paths.

1599
01:13:27.660 --> 01:13:31.622
When that gut feeling kicks in, I would listen to that.

1600
01:13:32.202 --> 01:13:35.084
Actually, I use that even talking about local think tank.

1601
01:13:35.104 --> 01:13:39.586
When you make a decision and your gut says it's good, trust your gut.

1602
01:13:39.746 --> 01:13:39.946
Yeah.

1603
01:13:40.726 --> 01:13:40.926
Yeah.

1604
01:13:40.946 --> 01:13:41.207
Dig it.

1605
01:13:42.308 --> 01:13:42.788
Thanks for that.

1606
01:13:43.749 --> 01:13:44.690
Appreciate you guys being here.

1607
01:13:44.850 --> 01:13:45.290
Yeah, thank you.

1608
01:13:45.310 --> 01:13:46.031
Thanks for having us.

1609
01:13:46.051 --> 01:13:46.451
Godspeed.

1610
01:13:46.471 --> 01:13:48.313
Thanks for enjoying the hot sauce and the bourbon.

1611
01:13:48.333 --> 01:13:48.693
It was delicious.

1612
01:13:48.854 --> 01:13:49.514
And the whiz cow.

1613
01:13:49.534 --> 01:13:49.855
Yeah.

1614
01:13:50.535 --> 01:13:50.715
Thanks.

1615
01:13:50.735 --> 01:13:51.256
Cheers for now.

1616
01:13:51.496 --> 01:13:51.856
Cheers.

1617
01:13:52.397 --> 01:13:56.361
Hi, this is Kurt Baer, host of the Loco Experience podcast and founder of Loco Think Tank.

1618
01:13:56.961 --> 01:14:00.805
Every week, I explore intimate conversations with business founders and leaders.

1619
01:14:01.345 --> 01:14:06.390
And so I hope you'll join us this week and every week for a new episode of the Loco Experience.