Every Great Business Story Needs a Guide - Kirk Dando, Founder & CEO of Dando Advisors

0:00 In today's conversation, I was joined by Kirk Dando, founder and CEO of Dando Advisors. As I prepared to write this intro, I jumped on LinkedIn and noticed that we have 250 common connections, and yet, when we were introduced this summer, neither of us knew much of anything about the other. And it's because our circles are adjacent. Kirk has been engaged with fast-growing and already middle market companies for close to 30 years, while my circles go from startup phase to approaching middle market. Kirk is a CEO coach, growth whisperer, an angel investor, and almost always all three at once. He takes a stake in the enterprises of the CEOs he coaches, and he's helped unlock $17 billion plus in exits and $80 billion plus in enterprise value over the course of his career.

0:47 And it all started somewhere. Many thanks to Kirk for sharing his journey from his early days in corporate accounting to finding his special sauce, unlocking growth for middle market companies. There's something for everyone in this episode, so please tune in and enjoy my conversation with Kirk Dando. Welcome to the Loco Experience Podcast. On this show, you'll get to know business and community leaders from all around Northern Colorado and beyond. Our guests share their stories. And through it all, you'll be inspired and entertained. These conversations are real and raw, and no topics are off limits. So pop in a breath mint and get ready to meet our latest guest. Welcome back to the Loco Experience Podcast. My guest today is Kirk Dando, founder and CEO of Dando Advisors.

1:29 Well, thank you for having me on. You know, we have similar names. We do. How often do you get called Kurt? I was just going to say it all the time. But if you say it quick enough, I can't really tell. Kurt, Kurt. It all sounds the same to me. Well, I'm Kurt with a C besides. So even when they get my name right, they always misspell it. Yeah. You don't suffer that same consequence. At least they start with a K. Exactly. That's right. That's right. Let's set the stage. It's interesting to me that... You're kind of nationally famous, and regionally so, but I hadn't really interacted with you yet. And I kind of make it a point of knowing who's all the cool kids, movers, and checkers around. So tell our guests what Dando Advisors does, if you will.

2:13 So, um, Daniel Advisors was birthed, you know, out of, out of, uh, a frustration that I had. So I was the, uh, I started off at Arthur Anderson. Great experience. Okay. Got to see and be around a lot of smart people. Um, but, and there's a whole story there. We can get into that if you want to. We'll dig back. We'll jump to the time machine later. But, um, but I went on to be the CFO and ended up being the chief operating officer for a company that we quickly grew to where we're doing over a billion dollars in revenue. Okay. And I was young. Like from starting from what size? When I got there, it was about 200 million. Okay. So, yeah. So grew up pretty quickly over a couple of years. Oh, wow. And, and so when we went to sell that business, the CEO, just an incredible, incredible man.

2:59 a great leader, somebody that I learned a lot from and admired. You can mention his name. Yeah, his name is Bill Moore. He's passed away since then. He loved ones of Bill. I'm sure you remember him well. Yeah, absolutely. And he was iconic. But he said, Kirk, you've got a unique ability to look into the heart of a company and see what needs to happen in order for them to grow. you should go either invest in it or help companies grow. And I remember at the time a couple thoughts. But one was I was thinking, oh, man, he must not think much of me. He's telling me I should go be a business consultant, which, candidly, I personally had not had a lot of great experiences with. When we were growing our company and I was young, I had a lot of – And how old are you in this time?

3:44 I was 29 at this time. Or 28, 28. Wow. Yeah, I was 28 at this time. I was 30 years old, but you had somebody notice you. Yeah, and believe in me, and he took a bet on me. We're all standing on the shoulders of somebody, right, as the saying goes. And so during that time, I had a lot of people that would come in and say, Hey, we can help you grow. And I knew I didn't know what I didn't know. I had a, you know, fair amount. Oh, yeah, I get 100 offers to help Loco Think Tank grow every week in my email box. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, right? It's just that easy, right? I've got this special formula, Secret Sauce. But, you know, a lot of them I met, they've... hadn't candidly, hadn't probably even really owned or operated even maybe a strawberry stand or anything like that.

4:26 Right. Good souls, good people, good intentions. They got early retirement from IBM. Exactly. I'm a business consultant now. Or around here, HP is classic. HP basically tells people, hey, we only hire the best and the brightest. And for a long time, that was true anyway. Yeah. But that doesn't mean they know that much about actually running a business. Right. Yeah, running business or even a more specialized skill is coaching. Right. Totally. Because oftentimes what's happened, and I've seen some unbelievable entrepreneurs, and we're taking a long route to answer your question about what we do, what I do, is where they know how they did it.

5:09 Yeah. Right? And they may have been wildly successful. A lot of times you can be a failed executive today and a coach tomorrow type of things. But there are some people that have had a lot of success. But what I've seen them do is they come in and they coach these CEOs, executives, and others, not just on how to grow. But what they do is they're like, here's how I did it, so here's how you should do it. And what they miss completely is that each individual is their own unique set of skills. And oftentimes they're trying to put in what God left out on purpose. And so they don't even really know how to coach the whole person. And that's where I see a lot of the problems. But anyways, what I do at – I just want to make a quick reflection here because obviously this podcast is sponsored by Loco Think Tank and I'm the founder of that.

5:52 And people kind of call me a coach or a consultant a lot and stuff and I've always – Shielded myself from that because, frankly, I'm not that. I'm the guy, I'm the entrepreneur that came up with this recipe of pairing coach-like people with business owners. And I'm more the mixologist. Yeah. I'm the talent scout finding those different skill sets among the business owners we recruit. Anyway, I just wanted to share kind of that observation of recognizing that. different perspectives and different talents are necessary. Exactly. So it's not a skill set necessarily as much as it is getting those matches correct, right? And that oftentimes just gets missed. There's a lot of assumptions that, oh, you've done this.

6:34 You can teach me how to do it. But really what it is, I've seen them really hurt. I'm not a good coach. I'm a good encourager. You may be. Maybe I would be if I tried. You may be because you have that sensitivity and that awareness. Maybe. I've always served the responsibility. It feels like heavy. Yeah, yeah. Well, I wouldn't let anybody call me a coach or consult for a long time because I had a negative experience with it. Yeah, okay. Here we go back right on the track. Yeah, we're getting back. And so what I do now is I work with high growth companies, helping them be ready to scale personally, leadership, and the organization. And oftentimes, companies, the complexity, growth brings complexity.

7:15 It always introduces complexity and problems. And that complexity, when it grows faster than our readiness, that's when breakdowns start to happen. And so in as simple as form. Both operational breakdowns and sometimes mental breakdowns. Yeah, both. Yeah, right. So success goes to the head and failure goes to the heart, right? Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah, yeah. So that's… So you're already growing. Most of your ideal client, if you will, is like an already growing fast, but starting to stretch the boundaries of their growth. Yes. Both as a leader and as an operation. Yeah. Yeah, and it's typically someone who's maybe first or second time CEO, or they've grown the business to a point where every day is a new day.

7:56 And you think about in sports, people that play at a high, high level, they have a coach that – helps them become great at whatever they're trying to become great at, whether it be a head coach or a positional coach, whatever the case may be. Wrestling coach. A lot of the entrepreneurs I work with are venture-backed or private equity-backed. Okay. See, it's not 100%. So in some cases, this is kind of the – The investor that saw an opportunity, saw a shine in this leader, didn't want to replace the executive, saw a lot of vision, a lot of capability, but they're investing in this person. Exactly. And sometimes it's tens and sometimes it's hundreds of millions of dollars.

8:36 And so that's what I do is I come alongside them. You know, I had a lot of friends that said, hey, would you come sit on our board? And I said, you know, I think the board serves a really wonderful purpose, but I think I can do more by, you know, getting in the foxhole with you and coming alongside you and being that friend in the foxhole or that Sherpa, if you will. And so your relationship is primarily with that CEO, is that right? Well, in the beginning it is. Okay. But what I tell everyone that I work with, my real client is actually the company. Because the business actually is a legal person in the sense that it has its own text ID number. But obviously it can't walk. It can't talk. It doesn't go home and play with the kids at night. And so I begin by working with the CEO.

9:18 But it usually expands into working with the team and helping them, once again, putting in those conditions of readiness. Not just coaching the individual, but coaching around the whole organization. And it's operational awareness, too, in some ways. Probably everything from hiring practices to how do you recognize achievements and all those things. Well, and strategy. I mean, strategy is a big piece of it because, you know, a lot of times we're good at doing the fun part, calling the shot, what we want to have happen and what we think can happen. But making the shot is a whole different set of skills, disciplines, willingness, humility. Yeah, and a lot of small steps, actually, to create big things.

9:58 Yeah. You have a team? I have a small team and I did that from the very beginning on purpose. Okay. Just because it's, it's kind of a specialized skill in the sense of like, I didn't go to school to learn to do this. I mean, my, I went to school and got an accounting degree from Colorado state here where I played football. Well, and usually accountants are not terribly growth minded. No, no, no, no, no. They're backwards looking as far as everybody can see. Well, it was funny because I've got the personality. A lot of people have this, this trait. is if you tell me I can't do something, that's what I'm going to tend to go and try and do. When I was really little, my brother knew this about me.

10:38 And so one Christmas, I got a BB gun for Christmas. Okay. And I was all excited. I opened it. My brother, he goes, I bet you can't outrun a BB from this BB gun. Oh, gosh. And I was like, oh, man, now I got to take this bet. Yeah, so I'm like, all right, well, if I zigzag and he misses, I'm going to claim that I outran it. But he didn't miss. I mean, we had kinds of rules so he couldn't hurt me and everything else like that. But anyways, yeah. As long as you had a jacket on. Exactly, right. You got it, yeah. Put sunglasses on. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you've been there. You sound too familiar. So my freshman year of college. You answer a lot of questions when I say the statement, I'm from North Dakota.

11:20 Okay. Yeah. A lot of people are, oh. Now it makes sense. Anyway, continue, please. So my freshman year of college, the only class I did not get an A in was accounting. Okay. So I made it my major. Obviously, I wouldn't get a lot of parental guidance or anything at that point. What am I not good at? Let me focus on that. So anyways, working at Arthur Anderson was a great experience, but I kind of knew that it wasn't my skill set. And then I got hired to be a CFO, and I was like, man, oh, man. But pretty quickly, the organization recognized that I had more operational skills. And then who does what with your team? So I've got a real small team. I've got, uh, and actually it's mostly just family.

12:01 I've got a son in law who he's actually, uh, uh, in marketing for a high tech company. Okay. And so he helps me do, I have a podcast that I've done. Okay. Yeah. He's, he's, I saw that. Yeah. So he's, he's helped me with that and helps me, uh, and generally in some of those areas. Um, and then I've got a small team that does most of my client services, which is actually my two daughters. Okay. Yeah. That helped me with that. They. They both actually went the accounting route themselves. One worked for Ernst & Young, the other worked for Deloitte, and now they're full-time moms. And so I've got a great amount of skill for a low amount of cost. So let's go back off us a little bit. And then, I guess, maybe take me through, so you're the skill player.

12:44 You don't have a succession plan, necessarily. No. Whatever that stuff is between your ears. Well, I do have a succession plan, but it's not the normal one you would think of. What is it? So early on when I started working with companies, rather than charging by the hour, charging a fee – I do charge a fee – is I would invest money or time and get equity in the businesses. So I've worked – I've done this now for over 30 years. I've worked with over – So you've got a little piece of a bunch of companies. Yes. Most of whom you've been able to coach to greater levels of success. Exactly. So that's my succession plan. Yeah. But down to advisors will – We'll drift off when you drift off. I believe so. As far as the concept wise or whatever.

13:25 Yes. I've got some kids that are capable of doing it, but it's a lot of travel. It's hard. It can be hard on a family. And so me wanting to maybe pass that on to a family member is not – High priority. Yeah, you're almost like, you could do this, perhaps, but would you really want to? You're already going to be wealthy. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Which, for some people, is kind of the goal anyway. Yep. What an interesting, actually, way back, not to compare, but… I actually started a business called Bear Capital Advisors forever ago when I basically got laid off banking because I was dreaming about starting a restaurant. But part of my vision for that, I saw how the small businesses around were financially and operationally kind of struggling and I thought maybe I could fix some of those things and build a kind of a fractional CFO, fractional this and that, and take little pieces.

14:20 Yeah. Of a bunch of different businesses. And then as I really got to learn small business culture especially and non-funded kind of things, it was like, oh, my God, why in the hell would I want to own 5% of 20 different businesses that I'm consulting? That seems miserable. Well, and – All those relationships and all those things. Well, and it's hard because those closely held businesses typically struggle with an exit. Yeah. Totally. And whereas a venture capital, private equity, I mean, that is. That's the point. That is the point. There is going to be an exit in the future. So it works well that way. Yeah, intriguing. Anyway, I digress. It's interesting how we have similar wirings but from a significant difference in scale.

15:02 Yeah, and similar names. Based on our experience. Right? And similar names as well. Yeah. What kind of restaurant were you going to start? Oh, it was going to be locally sourced because I thought they were going to blow the world up with the funny money mortgages way back in the day. And we better have local sourcing. Yeah. But international fusion. Oh, wow. Okay. Because all the world has amazing food. Yes. It was a little bit. Actually, I guess it was. I didn't even know about what. What is that guy's name that killed himself that did the travel shows all over the world? Oh, I know exactly who you're talking about. Anthony Bourdain. Yeah, yeah, yes. Yes. Yes. And there's some copycats since then and stuff. But that was really my theme was everybody from everywhere is pretty awesome, but let's do it locally and celebrate that.

15:46 And local think tank kind of eventually sprouted from the ashes of that disaster. I love that. One of the things that is part of my process is I have confidential one-on-one conversations with the people I've met. And over 30 years, it's been over 16,000 different people. But I get to hear their story. And one of the things that this common thread that's pulled through is just in serendipitous nature in which people are into what they're into, like how you are. And I just love hearing those stories of like, I did this and I got this, I got this call, and that failed. But then all of a sudden, and they're into something exactly where they needed to be. It's beautiful how that flows sometimes.

16:26 I had a personal motto going back maybe two or three years before I did any entrepreneurial ventures, and it was ask of your needs and share of your abundance. Yeah, I love that. Which has become the model for local think tank because it's like, it's hard to ask of your needs. I bet some of your CEOs struggle to confess where they're actually failing. Absolutely. You know, and then, you know, sharing of your abundance in our capacity, it's like in a pure advisory setting, it's like if you're a genius marketer, help the guy who's struggling with his marketing get better at it. Yeah. You know, and whatever that looks like across the room. Be careful. Absolutely. You know, it's one of the things that was very frustrating early in my career is I felt like for some reason I got in a pocket of people that had more of a scarcity mentality.

17:14 And I've always been like – Accountants. Yeah, exactly. There's like somebody – yeah, good zing. But it's, you know, that plentiful mentality and it's, you know, through the course of my journeys, I moved to Austin for a period of time. And just loved it there. I mean, I was so caught off guard by just this plentiful mentality around like, and people would just introduce you to people. I'm like, and it was almost, I was almost like, yeah, a hundred percent. When I moved here from North Dakota. Yeah. It's a small community. Welcome to Fort Collins. How can I help you succeed? Exactly. Exactly. And so I was almost a little bit suspicious.

17:55 But I've learned more than I've taught for sure in my life. And that's one of the things I've really learned watching those people that are incredibly generous with what they've been given. They understand that someone else has prepared that seat at the table for them and they prepare many more seats. Yeah. In your case, the burden is so much more heavy in some ways than, like, you're a collector of so many bits of data and relationships and how to do it different, better, but that's always kind of changing. Like, kind of luckily for me, in a way, I set up these chapters at Loco Think Tank. And then the actual problem solving and the actual work gets done in those chapters, but I'm not there.

18:38 Yeah, but you're facilitating, you're kind of creating that fertile ground for that to happen. Correct, correct, for sure. And if somebody doesn't do that, then once again, it just… Somebody has to do that too, yeah. Absolutely. My facilitators are blessed to be in those conversations. Yes. And I was reflecting on, like, would one of your daughters want to take the business or something? It's like, do you want to subject somebody to kind of having to have that… database in their brain-y-brain. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's why I keep the team is small, right? Because it's not – I don't necessarily come in with, like I said, like here's the playbook. Right. Just run this playbook and you won't back and grow. You're not like EOS or this system or that system.

19:18 Yeah, exactly. And those are great systems, but mine's much more like we're on the field of play here. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I have a good friend. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's taken a couple companies public and he called me the company whisperer. Yeah. That's what I was thinking as you described the way you engaged. Yeah. And like, I guess that requires, that necessitates almost the expansion of your relationship from beyond the CEO perspective. into not just even the C-suite, but perhaps even some of the division managers. Absolutely. People like that. You've got to really find the actual sources of the pain, the problems, the bottlenecks.

19:58 Yeah. And one of the things that I learned a long time ago, and I don't know where I got this Put an end to me, but if you'll listen, a business will talk to you. And I'm not just talking about the people. It's like if you could take your business out to dinner, what would it say to you? Hey, this person over there, I know you got a friend over there, but it's time for them to go. Or hey, you know what? You're dealing with a symptom. The real constraint is... X, Y, or Z or whatever the case may be. But if you listen in – so that's what I'm afforded is that opportunity is to not just hear the words that are being said. Or a business listener. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's what it comes down to is like where are those readiness gaps? And a readiness gap – I mean essentially readiness is nothing more than having the capacity to meet the demand of what is next.

20:43 Yeah. Is that, like, typically in your experience, because you've had 30 of these journeys or whatever, right? Yeah, yeah. Is that acquisition of clients from other people a lot of times because you've got a new BetterWell strap?

21:27 Or is it even creation of new customers that wouldn't have used this solution except for now it exists? Well, it's really a... It depends on the... Customer, I suppose. Well, it's a combination of all the above, right? I mean, oftentimes product-led companies are trying to develop more and more products to be able to acquire new customers as well as retain and serve current customers. Sometimes it just comes through pure acquisition. You know, sometimes someone has a revenue that – Yeah, you're just buying other pieces of – Exactly. And then you're deploying what is kind of your secret sauce. Whether it be culture, whether it be operational rigor, whether it be market presence, whatever the case may be.

22:07 And then sometimes, yeah, you are taking from… other competitors because you know some of the best companies that have ever started were by people that were inside of a company sure that were frustrated no one would listen to their great idea should be so much better yeah and so they just go out and then they steal those customers because they're like this was so obvious but you know and i see a lot of companies that have this problem where they have an open door but a closed mind right you know they have oh yeah we want to hear your ideas but then you bring ideas and they just fall on deaf ears because once again we're Where it's the tyranny of the urgency. Being busy today is not the same as preparing for tomorrow. And that's where I see a lot of times where, like I said, if you'll listen, your company will talk to you.

22:48 You've got to be ready to listen. Is that one of the big places where business leaders fail is that preparing for tomorrow more? Yes. Like the tyranny of urgent. I think about my own thing. I've got to... a fellow doing some work on our monday.com uh infrastructure for our crm and doing some troubleshooting some automations and stuff but he sent some short videos and stuff about the work he'd done and whatnot and when i showed up the meeting i hadn't watched those videos yet and thankfully my chief of staff lauren was like She did her homework. Yes. She prepared for tomorrow. I'll get the size of you to give her credit. Yes. Thank you, Lauren. You made us show up and I didn't have to lie about watching the videos.

23:33 Yeah. But I would say that even reflecting on my own leadership, that's probably like I show up at the appointed time, but I haven't done my homework. Yeah. Well, it's – and you're really – quickly kind of honing in on a critical point is as human beings, we all do that. Right. I mean, there's, there's no, no perfect set of way of leading and doing that, but let me take you just real quickly on it. Like a journey here by asking a couple of questions. And I'll make a point here. Well, make sure you sip your whiskey so I'm not going to sit right ahead of you. By the way, Seed and Spirit new Sweet Wheat. Yes, it's really good.

24:13 Thank you. I'm glad you like it. Mine's almost empty. I did pour it before you got here. Yeah, well, yeah, I might have to get more here. Take a break. Yeah. So think about a problem. It can be at work or maybe with your team. Maybe it's just personal. It's harder today because we didn't deal with it when it was smaller. So just think of something, okay? I'm not going to ask you to share it. I have 502 emails in my inbox right now. Okay. All right. So why is it that we – When we know that something is going to be harder, why is it that we ignored or set it aside?

24:54 Why typically is it that we do that? What are some reasons? Fear. Kind of we downplay the significance of things so that we don't have to feel as bad about doing it. Yeah. Those are probably the... Or we're just busy. You know, I want to do things I like. Yeah, exactly. You know, I just want to podcast all the time and, you know, ride my motorcycle. I was riding my motorcycle to work this morning. I was like, it'd be pretty cool to just take the day off. It's a beautiful day for a motorcycle ride. I could just do that. Exactly, exactly. Well, the truth of the matter is, like, when did that problem that you're thinking of actually show up? Was it on the day it became somewhat urgent or was that just you could no longer ignore it?

25:37 So the truth of the matter is we tend to put off things, problems, even though the future is already giving us warning signs of what it's going to require of us. And that's kind of what we all tend to do. And so the second part of that question, more importantly, is when I say the word growth or grow, what comes to mind? Push-ups. Work. Work. Effort. Yeah. Uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So growth. So, so, so I'm, I'm sure that in some form or fashion, you're trying to grow personally or as a leader or grow your, or grow your business here. Sure. And so, uh, one of the things is most people are trying to grow something. Well, this is not profound, it's just true, is growth introduces complexity.

26:22 It always does. And complexity tests your readiness. That readiness is that capacity to meet what is next. And so you asked earlier, is that what most of the problems that I see? Well, I'm walking you through a set of circumstances that get organizations in trouble, right? And start dealing with the tyranny of the urgent. And so what I do is teach them how to go about creating those skills of readiness. One is what is it we're trying to accomplish, right? What are the goals? What are we trying to do? Most people like talking about that, and they're pretty good at that. And so that helps give you some insight into the future. The next one they're not as good at is what is this going to – require of me?

27:07 What it is we're trying to do? What is it going to require of me, of our leadership, and of our organization? I mean, getting real specific, not abstract, but getting real specific about that. That helps you take the future and turn it into real demands. Right. I mean, you've got to stare at it. The next question is, where aren't we ready? Where are those gaps? You know, where's our capacity not what it needs to be? Well, that helps create those gaps and make them visible, tangible. Well, most people, when you tell them their goals, they say, what if we had to switch our goals? They're like, no, I don't want to. So now they've got a level of commitment emotionally, mentally, financially, and otherwise. And then the fourth one is what do we need to – well, what do we need to strengthen now?

27:51 Because you can't fix everything. So what is it we need to strengthen now? That creates that focus. That creates that determination. And that creates velocity. So those kind of – it's, once again, overly obvious, embarrassingly simple. But it answers your question. And maybe in a more deep way is what have I seen over 30 years and working with over 16,000 different leaders that have had extraordinary breakthroughs and some painful breakdowns? Well, the companies were different. The industries are different. The circumstances were different, but the pattern was the same, is they failed to get ready for tomorrow. They enjoyed what I call react and repair. They liked to see and solve the problem. Always doing important things.

28:32 Putting on fires. Yeah, versus predict and prepare. Yeah. And so that sounds like a neat bumper sticker, but how do you actually go about doing that? And that's what I spend all my time doing is helping them getting ready to scale. So when the moment shows up, they're ready. Yeah. Is it Charles Fred? Is that his name? I'm not sure. True Space is his business. Okay, I've not heard of it. Basically, he's got a book and a training program. And it's really on that help your $1 million company up to $10 million kind of thing. But predictable revenue is one of the – it's – big data based first.

29:12 So like of the companies that actually make this jump from 1 million to 10 million, like what is one of the, what are the key elements to that? And a lot of it's about predictability revenue, which to have that, you have to understand your systems, where your customers come from and those kinds of elements that you're talking about kind of that readiness for tomorrow. Yeah. Well, when you talked about, when you talked about, um, I said, what comes to mind with growth? You said push-ups. Well, I love that because that's building a body that's getting ready. It's not that you enjoy push-ups. It's knowing you're trying to build towards something. It's the same thing with the predictability. I was with a company earlier this week, 13 executives sitting in a room, $30 million business.

29:55 They're going to $100 million. That's their – what are they trying to accomplish? And we kind of walked a little bit through that rubric. And it was – because they were kind of all over the place. But that predictable, repeatable revenue, especially in these times, I mean, with the world shifting underneath our feet with what AI is doing and not doing. Interest rates climbing. Access to capital being more difficult. Energy – Yep. Uh, constrictions in many places. Exactly. And so these are all, once again, these are all opportunities for entrepreneurs to build and grow in those things.

30:35 But, but people that are already in flight, it's causing some, some headwinds. I'm curious, um, like, because so much of your time has been spent in these kind of what I'd say middle market companies, is that the right middle market in many cases? Yes. Um, yeah. Are the principles the same for this demographic that local think tank serves? The, you know, five employees, the 10, 20 employees, the 50, 100, 200 employees? Yes, very, very much so. Very much so that the, the, like I said, the circumstances, the companies, industries are different, but the disciplines and the principles are very similar. It's usually there's just more zeros.

31:17 And like I said, there's more complexity. Yeah. So, so when you're five people, two people. eight people, whatever the case may be, you have problems, you have complexity, things come up, but when you're 50, 80 people, 120 people, whatever it might be, all of a sudden this complexity starts showing up. That's what I was saying. When complexity grows faster than our ability or our readiness to meet those demands, that's when breakdowns start to happen. And it's just – that's kind of, once again, stating the obvious, but it's like how do we go about – Making sure that we are aiming the resources we have because we only have limited time, limited money. You know, that scale. Yeah, whatever scale.

31:57 But, yeah, it's not like the problems are that much different. Even, you know, I've worked with companies that are multi-billion dollar companies. The problems aren't that great. Much different. I'm going to guess that that's probably like you have sales calls just like everybody else. You get referred to occasionally and oftentimes those people are skeptical because they've had other people too that they've talked to. Yes. But as a banker, my ability to kind of absorb and understand somebody's business in a relatively short time and provide some valuable evidence of that understanding was my secret sauce.

32:41 You've got kind of the same thing, but again, on a different scale, probably. Yeah. Partly because of your experience. Yeah, and once again, like I said, I've learned more than I've taught. Sure. I've done this for 30 years now. This particular thing, before that is when I was growing the other company. But, yeah, what's that? It's 10,000 hours. Yeah, it's a little faster. You're up to 100,000 now. But, yeah, I mean, I'm not trying to flip. No, I'm not fluffing your skirt either necessarily. No, I know you're not. I'm just imagining it like that quick – ability to digest a situation is really impactful, especially when somebody's paying you $500 an hour. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the beautiful thing is I don't get paid by the hour.

33:22 Oh, yeah. Yeah, because I learned my lesson when I was at Arthur Anderson. I hated tracking hours, so I'm like, I will never, ever track another hour in my life. But anyways, it's based on results. But not to flip the question here, but I... Sure. I know a little bit about what you do, and I looked into it, and I'm really curious. I want you to share with me a little bit more about what you do and more importantly, kind of why you do it, because I love to hear entrepreneur stories. Sure. So what we do, our listeners are hopefully a little bit familiar, but it's peer advisory chapters. Yes. You probably run across a lot of YPO members or Tiger 21s in your circles are maybe more prevalent.

34:05 But that, but among a smaller demographic, of course. Uh, so our members meet half a day, once a month with somebody that's been there, done that been successful in business and wants to give back and has be at least some of those characteristics of a coach or a consultant, but maybe doesn't want that lifestyle fully. Yeah. Um, and so, but the why, you know, I think it was, you know, a combination of things. I'm kind of an emotionally intuitive person, and as a banker, I just saw a lot of loneliness. A lot of, you know, for some people, for whatever reason, I've been a safe person for them to confess their fears to and stuff over the years.

34:47 And so, like, my ability to understand their situation and willingness to listen and not judge. Yeah. helped me to gather a lot of pieces of evidence that said an engagement like this would be really good for small businesses. Yeah. Yeah. And so I really appreciate you kind of sharing the why. And I, I understand kind of what you do and I, I advocate for it. And I, you know, obviously your listeners hopefully are taking advantage, advantage of that. But I, you know, I just, once again, I'm not trying to give a shameless plug to you, but, but I mean, but that's where you start even with your clients. Yeah, well, and I think it's so important that you find that community. And like I said, it's not community of just sharing good ideas.

35:29 It's that community. And you said earlier, you know, probably some of the problems that the executives I work with is that ability to kind of, Just be transparent and say out loud what they're really feeling and experiencing. And that's where the breakthroughs happen. They're not like, here's how you, you know, here's a skillset to, you know, run a better strategy process or execution. I mean, those are all. Those are all the things that the science of management – Yeah, it's not an engineering problem. Yeah, exactly. With the actual product, things like that. It's that human factor. It's that connection. And it's the connection that I've seen that has really unlocked people. Because once again, once you can start to shed that imposter syndrome, you can unlock a whole lot.

36:12 I see these other people also struggling with some of that and then – encourage one another to do better. And so that acknowledging that we're all kind of wired the same in that way. Yeah, no, it unlocks. A lot of times, you know, loco is almost one of their first experiences with kind of personal development. And what it unlocks within people sometimes is even without my prodding or encouraging or pointing, they're like, I'm going to do this. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, maybe I should just speak for myself, but experience has taught me, you know, we're our own worst enemies oftentimes. Oh, sure. You know, no one else is with ourselves more than ourselves. Nobody is nearly as critical of me as I am. Exactly.

36:52 Exactly. And so to be able to have those other voices that kind of normalize the journey. Totally. is a true unlock. It's not somebody, someone's going to pick up the phone and say, hey, I'd like to pay you to come help me normalize the journey. No one's going to do that. But ultimately, that's where the real value is. Do you have like stories you're allowed to kind of share? Oh, yeah. I may not use the names or whatever, but yeah. Yeah, whatever. But can like some of those specific things where people don't know the blind spots or the company doesn't know the blind spots they were facing and things like that. I think that's kind of fun. Yeah, so one of the things – and I've been very fortunate.

37:33 Doing this for 30 years, 100% of where I – the companies I've worked with has been word of mouth. And I say that because one is – you've got to be doing something right to be able to have your people recommend this is kind of an intimate relationship you know it's kind of like podcast isn't to get new customers um it's really to share it was it was legacy project project really it was really just just like like you well you said it like I'm not gonna like when I when I leave I'm I'm turning in the keys yeah so I wanted to leave it all on the field so so what you know is 12 episodes just kind of you know all all the things I've learned but but to answer your 12 whole episodes yeah yeah Just kidding.

38:15 Seems like you probably need 100 more. No, I know, I know, I know. You were like 280 or something? 290-ish, I think, today. Yeah, I saw that and I was like, wow. But it's only one at a time? Yeah, yeah, yeah. One person, one week at a time? Yeah, no, that's super cool. One of the things that I – because I have that word about this with people that know, like, and trust each other. And I'm very lucky in the sense I work with people that usually do have a level of humility not 100% of the time. But they admit I don't know what I don't know. Yeah, good. And so they already know they have blind spots. Now, the hard part is when the blind spot is them or the blind spot is someone that is in their family or someone like that.

38:58 And so that's – or when that blind spot means that they have to make some really hard decisions. Yeah. And that's where the relationship comes in. Because if you're not standing on something that can handle the weight of the truth – Mm. giving great advice is not going to be meaningful. If you don't have a way to get them to being committed, not scared, but committed, then it's just information. The application will never happen. And so, um, yeah, I've, you know, I've seen some people that have, you know, major blind spots that have been able to navigate to some unbelievably successful outcomes and never have to address them. And I've seen some people that have some blind spots, looked at them and it, It wasn't the reason that they got the unlock.

39:46 But as far as specific blind spots, it's typically, like I said, it's just we all have them, right? Thank goodness we don't all have the same ones. It could be a pretty miserable world. But the thing that – Is it the CEO usually or is it organizational? Like it's not – It's both. It's both. And a lot of times it's the people on the team because a lot of times people on the team know how to manage up well. And it's kind of like what I call this iceberg of ignorance. The people at the very top are getting 4% of the information. The people at the bottom are getting 90%. They see it all going. They see the real world. And so that getting up there, and so that will create, you know, because a lot of times I'll have CEOs say, well, why didn't they tell me?

40:26 Like, you know, and they are a person that they could approach, but it's like, you're just not going to get that information. That is just, it's not anything you've done. It's not because you're not capable of hearing it or even responding to it well. It's just the dynamics. It's just the reality of things. So you've got to create these conditions inside your organization, once again, where you can hear what's happening. The CEO of Patagonia started something called a 515. Have you ever heard of 515? Maybe. So 515. I've watched the show based on it. Yeah, so there's a software out there called 15.5 that was based off of this. Okay. 515 is where weekly he had everybody in his entire organization fill out. It shouldn't take anybody more than 15 minutes a week. to fill out and shouldn't take their manager more than five minutes to review.

41:09 And he wanted to be out testing products and be with customers and everything else like that. But he also wanted to know what the pulse of what was going on. He knew that he wasn't going to get all the information, but he felt like he could get a reading on things. And so the questions were pretty simple. It was like on a scale of 0 to 10, how are you doing? Give me free form, like thoughts that you're having, frustrations you're doing, just whatever, and people would fill these out. And he could kind of go spot check and read those, and they'd give them to their managers. Now, you may say, well, gosh, people aren't really going to answer that honestly. Well, then you got to step back and say, well, now we, that, that's, that's information. Like, why wouldn't they answer it honestly? Like, okay, we got to, we got to fix that. Is there, is there someone being oppressive on my team? Is there somebody doing those things? But, um, you know, once again, the people I've seen acknowledge that they have blind spots and they set up systems and conditions, they expose those, they bring it into the light because they know that that's where the problems start to really get out of control.

42:01 Yeah. is when they're not doing that. And they don't just stand up and give a pep talk like, hey, I want to know the problems. Hey, come talk to me. Hey, we have an open door. But they actually create methodologies to expose those. That's actually, I mentioned Lauren already, but. she came on about a year ago and, and look who was as high as 90 members at times. We're down to 65 ish. Now we've had a little degrowth. We'll say, uh, back growing again. Um, but part of the reason is, is, well, two, twofold. We've added new members slower than we should, but we've also lost existing members faster than we should. Um, and so that was kind of one of her examinations and, um, soon-to-be instructions almost was, you know, how often are you connecting with your members one-on-one?

42:50 Yeah, not very much. Well, you should meet with one member. You've got 65 members. We've got 52 weeks a year. You should meet with at least one member every week. Yeah. And here's at least the start of a check-in template that you can actually... record what they say to you about how their experience is going as a member. Yeah. You know, it doesn't have to be fake. It doesn't have to be contrived. It doesn't have to be, but it's gotta be systematic. Yeah. It's gotta be. It's intentional. Yeah. And that's what a lot of times people say, oh, that, that's absolutely creativity. And it's like, no, actually all that creativity gets dispersed and, and, and, and set of focused in that business. The stress of why am I losing 32 members a year is a lot higher than the productivity value of whimsically.

43:32 I'm talking to my members whenever I want to. So I'll give you a system that I built, and it just made sense to me in that company that we grew to a billion. And it was – and I'll give it to you really quickly. I mean, it's deeper than what I can give here. But I recognize what you just recognized is we weren't connecting in a meaningful way. People want to work with people they know, like, and trust. People are tired of people showing up on their door that didn't belong there, emails that they're trying to trick into something, phone calls, whatever the case may be. Yeah, absolutely. People are exhausted with that. And that doesn't build the real, real, like you just said, but people want to do business with people they know, like, and trust. Um, and so I recognized that we weren't doing a great job building relationships. So what I did is I just came up with a system of like every day of the month represented a letter of the alphabet.

44:17 So obviously when there's 31 days, exactly. So, so you just, everybody's last name started with an A you had it. And I, and I believe if you, If you send somebody something once in a while, not like once a year or a birthday card, but if you send somebody something personal, a nice note, or tickets to a movie, or whatever the case may be, you're going to start to build some rapport. But if you call them with a personal call and just check in or whatever the case may be, you're going to have a deeper – and you're going to serendipitously find things out, and they're going to find things out about you, and you're going to start to build a relationship. And if you see them, now you're going to build – a bond that can handle the weight of the truth, that can build a friendship. And that's – and so we had what was called send call C. And so on the first of the day, you'd open up to A and you'd be like, okay, I sent them movie tickets last month.

45:05 I need to give them a call. And you just kind of quickly – this is before technology was raised off. But it's the system. It's a system that does that. It's an intentional system to connect with your clients. And it's just so simple because you can't reduce that all to memory. But the CEO that I worked with, I told you, was an incredible leader. He's one of those people that, like, you could be sitting in a restaurant, someone would walk in with an entire family that he hasn't seen in eight years. He names them all off. And I'm just like, how do you do that? I mean, he had the gift of doing that, but most of us don't. Yeah, so systematizing that is a key. I feel like we're going to jump in the time machine when we come back from this short break where I refill my whiskey. But before we do, is there anything else in kind of that mix of results that's really pattern-like that really stands out to you?

45:55 It's always this way. Yeah, there's... I don't know if it's anything additional. I think we make it harder than it needs to be. I think like one said, it's sometimes just having that ability to see into the future because it's already giving us warning signals and having the willingness and kind of the readiness and the discipline to actually act on it. Right. And that sounds so obvious and so simple, but sometimes – And that's what you – I mean, you can spend weeks avoiding something that actually takes 20 minutes to prepare for. 100%. Yeah. And it's going to meaningfully move the needle. Yeah. And vice versa. You could spend weeks on stuff that's not going to move the needle. Totally. So. Dig it. We'll be right back.

46:36 This episode is sponsored by Loco Think Tank. Loco Think Tank provides peer collaboration for business owners. 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. 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, local community, or to feature on this podcast. Listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of Loco Think Tank get their sixth month of membership for free. Just mention the Loco Experience podcast on your application. To learn more, visit our website at locothinktank.com. That's L-O-C-O thinktank.com.

47:20 One of the things I wanted to come back to the conversation with before we jump in the time machine is, I'd like to say at Loco Think Tank, our chapters are two parts business, one part personal. Or two parts board meeting, one part support group. Yeah, I like that. Talk to me about the mental, emotional, relational side of business leaders at a larger scale than I'm familiar. So I love that question. It's really... A long time ago when I started this, someone asked me, why do you do this? I said it's because I get what I call a helper's high from doing it. And that helper's high comes because of the personal relationships that are built.

48:01 A lot of times people will say, well, how long do you work with a company? How long are you there? And I tell them oftentimes it starts as a business relationship and ends as a friendship. Yeah. You admire many of your clients as well. Yeah. I have that characteristic as well. Many of my business members are much more successful in business on a financial basis or a number of employees or jobs created or whatever. Yeah. And I admire them. Yeah, but you're providing just a service and a way to kind of continue to unlock them. And so for me, it's – Same thing. Yeah, yeah. I get down into really personal relationships. I mean I end up staying in the homes a lot of times of the – CEOs and executives meet their kids, hear about their marriages, ask those questions.

48:52 Not as a function, but as a true care. Kind of got to be sensing when you're in those engagements. Well, we're not two different people, right? We're just not. I mean, the person that we are at home, I mean, we may put on a different face and different crowds and stuff like that, but that emotional side of what we're carrying and going through and stuff like that, life just has a way of just throwing punches. And so if you don't have somebody that you can kind of go to, especially in business, a lot of times… A lot of the CEOs and executives I work with have a great relationship at home, but they just don't understand the business side of things. So they can't come and say, hey, this happened or, hey, I just had to have this hard conversation with this venture capital person that has been a friend for a long time or whatever.

49:33 And it just seems so transactional, but deeply, soulfully, it really hurt them or nearly broke them. I play words with Loco Think Tank. It's a local community think tank, but it's also Loco like crazy. Make you crazy if you don't talk to somebody and make your spouse crazy if you keep talking to them about your business and they don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, have more time for us and the kids, make more money. I don't know. By the way, I don't know if you knew this, but guests on the Loco Experience... they get a gift. So this is our crazy ginger hot sauce along with a nice card. I love the logo. Because of our ask of your needs and share of your abundance.

50:14 This happens to be the largest tomato that I grew in my garden this summer. And if your family would enjoy it. Well, thank you, sir. I got tomatoes coming out my ears, Kirk. I love tomatoes. Good. That's a brandy wine, actually. One of my favorites. It's got a very distinctive flavor profile and even leaf color and profile. Okay. Well, thank you very much. So what kind of stuff do you grow in your garden? You know, a lot of tomatoes. Yeah. Quite a few cucumbers. I grew watermelons for the first time this year. Oh, okay. How'd they turn out? Good. Delicious. Were they seedless? No, I had seeds. Okay. But maybe the best watermelon I've had.

50:56 Really? The second one. The first one, I didn't let it get ripe enough. Uh-huh. But I just had one this past weekend. I was like, damn, that's a good watermelon. Okay. I love watermelon. Got some pumpkins. That's about it. Oh, and then a bunch of herbs that I use as well. A few peppers. Is that something that's kind of like a hobby, something that kind of helps you relax? Yeah. You know, I'm a farmer's kid. Okay. All right. And my facility – do you know Pete Gasly? I don't. The name sounds familiar. He was with Total Facility Care, sold out a few years ago. He's one of our facilitators. Okay. But he did a workshop at our next little summit and asked, who's got a hobby in here? And it was only like 40%, which I found, because I've got five.

51:40 Okay. I like gardening. I like hiking. I like road trips. I like riding my motorcycle. I love that. And maybe that's because I don't really like working that much. I was like, okay, I'll do those sales calls just as soon as I get done picking tomatoes. I don't know. Well, thank you. That's great. That's great. But I haven't done it. Real quickly, who did the... Oh, and the hot sauce is from Matador Mexican Grill. Okay. That is Crazy Ginger, mostly because I thought Crazy Ginger was a great name for a hot sauce. It is a great name. You got red hair under there? Yeah, yeah. Ginger, is that red? That's what I... When I had hair, it was red. So, yeah, you could stock up. You could buy a case at Matador even if you want to when you run out of this one.

52:20 All right. Well, thank you. I'm going to go home and try it tonight. Be like, here's my crazy ginger calling card. Yeah. So, yeah. So that's your gifts. Thanks for being here today. Well, thank you, Kurt. That's really thoughtful. Let's jump in the time machine, shall we? Let's do it. Back to, well, let's start with first memories. Do you have, there's such a spectrum I'm finding. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I have memories from when I was three years old. Okay. Three and four years old. Very early. Yeah. Yeah, quite a few memories. And where were you set at? So I remember the home setting where I was at, but also the neighborhood.

53:01 Yeah, I was in Colorado. I was born and raised down in Denver. Yeah, and so, you know. Entrepreneurial family? Siblings? No, no. So my dad was a shop teacher during the school year and then a welder in the summer. Okay. And, uh, and, uh, unfortunately when I was in, I think it was about third or fourth grade, they got a divorce. Okay. And that, uh, it was just a tear in my universe. Yeah. You were the only child or? No, I had an older brother. The one with the BB gun. Oh, sure. Um. Okay, so that was a big change. It was a gigantic change. Talk about fourth grade. Yeah, so that, you know... You lived with your mom, with your dad? Yeah, so I was with my dad until...

53:42 I really enjoyed playing sports. And so my dad was a teacher in the Cherry Creek School District down in Denver. And so by the time I got seventh grade, I wanted to go live with him because I wanted to be in the Cherry Creek School District for sports and wanted to be able to do that. And so I moved in with him in seventh grade. But it was, you know, and he met somebody that... that had family done real well and stuff like that. So grew up in Cherry Hills. So, so he was, so I grew up around a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of wealth and got exposed to seeing that. But it once again was felt like, you know, felt like the kid looking over the fence the whole time, but it did teach me and it gave me an opportunity to be like, see what was possible.

54:22 Yeah. I didn't know how to get there. Obviously I thought accounting would be the way I, right. Once your brother told you, you'd know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so but, yeah. So you regular high school existence, but very athletic apparently too. Is that right? Yeah, well, I really enjoyed sports. I played football at Colorado State. Okay. What position? I was a defensive corner. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, played a little bit of strong safety, but mostly corner. Yeah, yeah. Very cool. And then didn't get drafted, so Arthur Anderson. Didn't get drafted. Yeah, yeah, so Arthur Anderson came calling, thankfully. They're one of the only ones that came calling, but I was lucky enough to go to work for them. Great once again. You know, there's these serendipitous things that just kind of happen along the way.

55:06 Well, everything that happened after probably wouldn't have been able to happen without some of that base training from them. A hundred percent. Right, all the books that you dug into. Exactly. All the reports that you had to make. Well, once again, I always felt like I was looking over my shoulder. Like, I knew I didn't know what I didn't know. I mean, I was, I knew a lot more of, I didn't know. Yeah. And so just being able to watch. And so from a young age, like I said, I was caught off guard so significantly when my parents got divorced. Yeah. I was like, I never saw this coming. You were trying to see the future a little bit. Oh, because they hid it from you guys. Yeah. And so, yeah, no, I had no idea. And so subconsciously, I think I learned I better start to read situations. I better be able to look ahead.

55:47 You know, I've written a book now called Predictive Leadership. Yeah. I mean, and so if you look back, kind of the genesis, a lot of that, I think, was out of that hurt. Yeah. And that wanting to create security. So much of entrepreneurship is sprouted from challenging times. I was... I'll go on a quick detour with you if you don't mind. I'm actually one of North America's most learned people on a thing called Halos Relational Intelligence. Really? Which is a Brazilian platform that's kind of like disk and stuff. Okay. And it's way better. Honestly, like you should use it. Yeah, yeah. In your organization. I want to find out about it. Yeah. If you like. Yeah.

56:27 But the theory, the platform is that there's, I'm a white over green. White is full of ideas, full of disorganized email inboxes, et cetera, et cetera, philosophical conversations, a lot of visionaries. Blue is organizer planner. Okay. Green is the social relational. Okay. So I'm a white and green. Okay. White over green. Yep. Orange is the achiever entrepreneur. Okay. And then brown is like the... integrator, they call it. OK. Independently developed outside of EOS, no knowledge of EOS. But the integrator is the person that's kind of needed to understand the complexity, especially in growing a business or designing the system.

57:10 So they can see how all the parts have got to come together. They can see how all of this together. You're a brown type. I'm pretty sure. You're probably brown and green. Yeah, I would say you got that social relational element to you as well. Yeah, and that's where kind of everything starts. Understanding the complexity of things is your superpower. Yeah. Um, and anyways, the Hallows platform has a whole bunch more that we can teach you. Very interesting. It's kind of built on polarity, how your strengths are also your weaknesses and you grow up in stereo and you develop other skills and stuff. And then we'll talk more about that at our long lunch that we book here. Yeah. I want to do it. And, and just real quickly, like what got you curious about that? What got you into that? You know, I've always been a dabbler in that kind of stuff. I'm a Enneagram. I'm an eight, seven. Okay. Uh, all right.

57:50 Challenger promoter kind of thing. Um, And I've always found it really interesting. Back in my banking days, I would say I like to just have all the ideas and leave them on the table and let everybody else do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was a lot of self-examination. And then when I got introduced to Halos from a Brazilian gal that was a facilitator for us. And she was friends with the inventor of it who was the founder of the Coaching Federation in Brazil. Okay. And he studied at Manchester. So there's actually quite a bit of Halos in Europe. Yeah. But then otherwise it's South America and, you know, local think tank hasn't exploded. But it really is, in my opinion, disc seems like a way to sell high-priced disc consultants.

58:35 Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. This isn't going to be something you can learn and implement and just do. Well, and the key word you said there is implement, right? Right. Like I said, disc, I think, once again, it's educational entertainment. Sure. But very few people actually apply it, implement. Implement what it actually and how to use it. Totally. And it is, I mean, it's fun. For me, totally. It helped change my marriage for the better because Jill had grown fond of shooting my ideas down as soon as they left my mouth. Uh-huh. Because she was going to have to be an integrator. Because she's an organizer planner. No, she's an organizer planner. She has to keep it all straight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every new idea was a threat to her security. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A hundred percent, yeah. And so once I recognized that, I had a lot more grace for her.

59:17 Once she recognized my wiring of inherently, I'm just going to spit a lot of ideas out. Some are dumb. Yeah, yeah. You don't have to call them dumb right away. Like, I'm sensitive, too, you know? And so anyway, I just found it more useful. And it was agnostic. None of my members were using it. And so it became a way to be like... Hey, if you're not using anything, use this, but at least we can kind of have this language. And I've dabbled in it like a lot of things. I haven't really implemented it well. That would probably be one of those things that I should actually do to build a scalable, forward-looking organization that actually uses the skills I've built and transfers them. Yeah, there's something so powerful about feeling understood.

59:58 And when you know that about somebody, you can help them feel understood, right? Like you said, once you understood that. Yeah, I spent 45 minutes with you. Now I know you're a brown and a green probably. Yeah, yeah. No, I think you're exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I've learned and what you just said is true is different is – Not wrong. It's just different. It's useful. Yeah, different. It's absolutely amazing. Can you imagine if we were all the same? Like we couldn't go to our favorite restaurant because we'd all be there. Well, we wouldn't have nothing to talk about. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. But if we don't understand that, you can also say, that person drives me crazy. They shoot my ideas down. Totally. And it creates conflict. It's not. So anyways, yeah, I really appreciate that.

1:00:39 But if you find value in those detail-oriented people, even though you're the achiever entrepreneur that just wants to go, go, go, you start to understand how they also add value to this problem. Yeah, well, you need them, right? Right, totally. Yeah, because they're going to take the great idea and figure out where the gaps are, what are the pieces, what are the, yeah. Totally. Where did we jump? Oh, we were CSU, corner, sometimes safety, didn't get drafted, Arthur Anderson, and learned a lot. And how many years there? I was there five years. Okay. Yep. And then got recruited out of there to go be the CFO. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Let's talk about that. Like a recruiter came along and said we need this company or you – Yeah, I mean it was – It was – The recruiters – I mean there were recruiters at that time, but it wasn't like we have today.

1:01:26 But it was somebody that I think probably got a fee for placing me. But – But it was more of a mutual connection that – And they just saw that you might have more of a knack for private industry. It would be more interesting for your curious mind. You know, I mean, that may be what they said, but the truth of the matter was is I knew I – one, didn't – I knew that I didn't belong at Arthur Anderson for a long time. With that bunch of going heads. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, no, they're great people, but I was like – I just – I'm not wired up this way. Well, we talked about abundance mindset versus elsewise. Yeah, yeah. So I was like – I knew my days were numbered.

1:02:07 But I got along with the partners because they go, you're going to be a partner. You're going to be able to sell work and everything else like that. But one day I was gone in the elevator. Because you were that friendly guy besides. What's that? You were kind of a friendly guy besides. Everybody likes you quickly. Well, I was lucky because, I mean, this – So they put me on like the best jobs. Like I had like Kalawassie, which was right by Hilton Head. I had Beaver Creek, Hyatt. I had Heavenly Valley, Tahoe. So I had all these really great jobs. And I think they put them on me, not because I was good, because they like to come out there and have fun when they came out there. But anyways, I got on the elevator one day. I was leaving. It was about 3 o'clock. in the afternoon and one of the partners got on, he goes, Oh, you guys, you leaving to, you leaving early?

1:02:48 I said, well, actually for me, I'm leaving late. And he started laughing. He was like, I guess. So anyways, that's, but yeah. So, um, I think I just knew that I needed to go try something else. And I was a bit of a shock going into industry. Cause I, you know, when all you're doing is auditing and looking, right. You're standing on the sidelines, you know, Totally different. Yeah. I mean, it's easy to give advice and it's easy to see like how stupid was that? Why did you do that? Right. Well, and all those numbers that you're looking at reflect the results of things that already happened. Yeah. When you're actually in the business, you're like, oh, shit's happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All around me. And next month I'm going to read the report about it. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah. So got recruited and went there.

1:03:30 And it was, like I said, the CEO was just a great guy. I was there for two weeks about. He came into my office. Yeah. And he said, Kirk, if we don't turn this around, I'm going to shut it down. The whole thing? Yeah. Well, that's what he said. And I was young. And so I had two thoughts. I had two thoughts. My first thought was, I got to get better at asking questions. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was like, I got to ask some better questions in the interview. The second, I thought, well, he's telling me this because he wants me to help him. Right. And the first one was true. I probably didn't need to get better at asking questions. But the second one was, I think he was just thinking out loud. Yeah. But I took him seriously. And so I went about making some changes. and holding people accountable and, and getting people focused and cleaning up, you know, role clarity and, and driving execution.

1:04:17 Well, guess what? There was a path to the CEO's office saying, fire that guy. Because, you know, I just didn't understand. I came from kind of asking so much more out of them than anybody else had asked. Yeah. When I'd asked for, I came from like a sports background where you're trying to win, you're trying to, you know, so I just assumed once again, that was, got me in trouble. But, um, um, But thankfully the CEO didn't fire me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was – rather than fire me, he said, well, I think you should be the COO. And so kind of expanded into that. Wow. In like a year. Yeah, it was pretty quickly. This is like a $200 million company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In your 27. Well, like I said, he's one of the most genuine great leaders I've ever met.

1:04:57 Not because he did that for me. Obviously, he gave me an opportunity I did not deserve, titles I did not deserve. But he saw something in me that I did not see in myself. What did... What were his blind spots in allowing the business to get to that place where it needed to find you? If I may. It was the things that weren't changing. It was just, like I said, it was too loyal to people. And once again, I'm not like… Having an outside eye on the situation would make it easier. Yeah, and I just got it kind of down to its basic. Because like I said, having played sports at a high level, you don't get there because they like you. I mean, if you can do the job, you get to play. If you can't do the job, yeah. Your defensive end isn't getting any sacks because he doesn't fucking track.

1:05:39 Yeah, exactly. He's not going to be out there. He's going to be outside drinking water and stuff. But all that to be said is, once again, my naiveness was, we're all here to win. And when I came, people would become more adept and better at it. it's saving their jobs. Yeah. And so when I started to expose that, you know, they went back, but you know, and so it was a rough, it was a rough patch for a while. It was pretty rough for you. I remember sitting in the shower just like crying and being like, what am I doing? Like, I'm so like, what have I done? How's this gonna mess my family up? Like no one likes me. Um, And those were all things I was telling myself. They weren't necessarily true. Because they were doing sort of money in revenue but barely making any money at the time. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. They were spending more than they were making.

1:06:20 It was kind of the philosophy of some of it's bound to stick around here eventually. Right. And it wasn't going to. But then that must have unlocked that massive growth, huh? Yeah, yeah. And so there was a handful, like I said, usually there's a few things that you need to strengthen. Right. Not everything. Right. Yeah, they wouldn't have been in business at $200 million a year if they didn't do some things really great. Yeah, and I don't know where I got this gift. I don't know if it was, like I said, from that hurt that happened when I was in fourth grade or what happened. But I've got this ability to kind of look and see what the real constraint is, not the symptom of that constraint. And so I would always go to the constraint. But that's – you're going to hit a nerve.

1:07:02 Sure. Or you're going to break some glass when you do that. And I just, once again, just – I've learned since and I understand it. You're kind of like Elon Musk style. You're like, well, this is obvious. And then people are like, racist! Yeah, yeah, exactly. You're like, how could you point that out? That's the elephant. You're not supposed to see the elephant. Don't talk about the elephant. Yeah, exactly. Okay, I dig it. But not in the same autistic weird way that Elon is. Maybe, maybe, who knows? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's ADHD. So how many years with this firm and what was the name of it? It was Moore & Company and I was about there for five years.

1:07:42 And what did they do? Real estate land development. I helped develop a software that really helped kind of when it went time to sell. Make that look more better? Yeah, kind of helped with the valuation and everything else like that. And what did the software do? It was basically like modern-day CRM. It was part of that software, what I was saying about just building the relationships. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So you basically jump into self-employment. What's your stage in life at this point? Had you found a Mrs.? Yes. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yep, yep. And so when we started, when I started, so I met my first wife, and I've been remarried since, in college.

1:08:25 Okay. We had three kids. Okay. You know, and this is, once again, you know, maybe exposing a little bit more than you probably typically would do for a putt. That's what the local experience is. Yeah, yeah. You can say anything. Yeah, so we had two. You can say crazy things about her. Nobody's going to say anything. No, no, yeah. No, no. She's great. She's fine. But we had my first two daughters, Lauren and McKenna. Okay. And so when I started doing what I was doing, they were right around four and two years old. Okay. Three and one. And are you in Cherry Creek or whatever? I'm in Highlands Ranch at this point. Highlands Ranch. At this point. Same thing. Yep. And so. Give or take. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And so we got pregnant again and it happened.

1:09:09 through a series of events, we lost that child. And then we got pregnant again. And during the birth, the baby had a cord accident. So that was within one year and one week. Yeah. One year and one week of each other. One was on April 1st and one was on, on April Fool's Day. And then another, and that, yeah, exactly. Now that, and her name was Abigail. And then the second one a year and a week later was Skylar. And so after that, you know, Not a lot of logic, but a lot of feelings, a lot of emotions. And so Trish's parents took Lauren McKenna down to Austin after the funeral, Skyler's funeral. And we let him, you know.

1:09:52 Can I dwell there for a moment? My wife and I miscarried, too, but we never took the trouble to name the baby. Well, these were full term. Both of them. Yeah, full term. We were eight weeks or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's... That's a great question. We were noodling on names and stuff. But I don't know. I just wondered if that was a healing thing. But obviously when you go all the way to the near finish line. Yeah, we had to go to the delivery and deliver. And like I said, Skyler had a cord accident, so it happened during the delivery. Oh, what a tricy. I'm sorry it was. Abigail was a little bit after the birth. When she passed away. Anyway, I'm sorry. No, no, that's a great question. Thank you for asking that.

1:10:32 It's super personal. Most people shouldn't ask that question. No, 100%. Like I said, there's nothing you can ask that I won't answer. Where do we jump up after that? So we go to Austin to pick up Lauren and McKenna. We're with their grandparents. And we're not a lot of logic. And we're like, we wanted to always live on a lake. There's Lake Austin. And so we just literally packed up and moved. And then we had Sloan, my youngest one, when we were in Austin. And so while we were living in Austin, she was about one or two years old, and she was having what's called failure to thrive where they quit growing. I've heard of that. Yeah. And so we came back up here to Fort Collins for a summer, and she did great.

1:11:12 And we went back, and the doctor said, we don't know what it is, but if she does better there than she does here, and you can go back, you should go back. And so we moved back. And luckily, because of what I do… You can be wherever you want to. Wherever I need to be. Yeah, yeah. That's an interesting… It's a great space to be. Austin's a great town, too. Austin's a great town, yeah. You know, if the Lord wants to move you somewhere, you can make your kiddos sick in the wrong place. Exactly. That's right. I don't know what he does. Yeah, well, that's serendipitous. I do have a strong faith, and I can look back, and I can see where God was at work. But I didn't feel like it at the time. I can tell you that. No, it feels tough.

1:11:53 How was that first... You mentioned that you had somebody say you've got this skill or whatever. So what was that first Dando Advisor's... moment. Like, did you quit this other thing? You were like, I'm out of here. They got acquired or something. Yeah, we got acquired. So you were out of a job anyway. Yeah, well, I wasn't out of a job necessarily, but the CEO said, you've got a unique ability to look into the heart of a company. Yeah. And help them. And I had some friends say, hey, would you come sit on our board? And I said, rather than doing that, why don't I just come alongside you? And if I can see things that will help, I'll say it. If not, I'll get out of your way, I think. Did you get a little cash with this exit or anything? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But not significantly because I just didn't.

1:12:34 Well, you just got there. Well, the other area I was naive. I didn't really know how to negotiate and do all that. I was happy to have a salary. Yeah, yeah. You were only 29 years old. Exactly. Exactly. And he was giving me a shot. I got a title. I mean, he gave me a lot of other stuff that was more valuable than equity. So, yeah. And so I just had some friends. And so I came alongside them. And I just did what – when I had those people that showed up for me, they would show up and tell me all the things they're going to do for me. And I would always ask them, do I have to pay you if it doesn't work out? And it wasn't because I was going to be hard to get payment from. What I was really looking for was – I was looking for an advocate.

1:13:15 I was looking for a friend in the foxhole. I was looking for somebody that would build the trust and rapport with me that could say, Kirk, you're not implementing it. Kirk, you're not going to do anything we're saying. And so we're not going to keep billing you. We're done. We're wasting your time and you're wasting ours. If that was true. You have to do that combination of both sides have to want it. Yeah. I was part of, so one of those influences to local think tank I mentioned was the Matthews House. Mm-hmm. And they're kind of a human services organization, but based on kind of all the needs, we can't just fix this if we're going to leave that untouched or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. But it also was built on the premise that the client always had to be working at least as hard or harder than the case manager.

1:13:58 Um, and that was clutch for actually getting the big outcomes that they got, that got them more and more growth. And pretty soon my economy was like, Hey, can you just basically do everything that we have been doing so shitty at for the last 20 years? Yeah. But it's that little, that little piece, right? Right. That unlocked it. And, and yeah. So anyway, I digress a little bit, but that is so important. Yeah, that's a great point. And so that was something. I was thinking about hiring you, but then I was like, am I willing to work harder than Kirk? Exactly. Yeah, well, and that's why I tell everyone I've ever worked with, I said, listen, if I don't get you the results, you don't have to pay me.

1:14:39 That's not a sales tactic. That's about being accountable. That's about believing and knowing what you're actually going to help with is going to help. Yeah. And that's sometimes having to say, no, I can't do that, but I do know somebody that can. Because ultimately, once again, my customer is the business that can't talk, can't walk, but it needs an advocate. It's not the CEO necessarily or the board or whoever decides to hire you. It's this specimen that – Needs a good steward. Yeah. So my first Dando experience, I didn't know what I didn't know, but I just thought, here's the thing I wish somebody would have done for me. Yeah. And it became cathartic. And these were people that you brushed against kind of in your journey in the previous chapter. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, and I made some dear, dear friends.

1:15:22 I mean, I'm like lifelong, like friends. Yeah. Yeah, like people, a dear friend of mine, Rocky Turner, he's one of the founders of a company called LPR Construction in Loveland. Okay. They're national. They built like Coors Field and stuff like that. He passed away unexpectedly suddenly a little over a year ago. Oh, I'm sorry. And I was given the… the opportunity and just the, I was so grateful for this. Yeah. To, to give his eulogy. And, and those were some of the beginning days and those, you know, and that's the, the, the things that I'm most proud of about this, and I don't have a lot of pride around these things is, you know, the friendships, the friendships, it's not there's a lot of logos there's a lot of outcomes there's a lot of the kind of bandit-y metrics but when you get to impact somebody's life not just their balance sheet or their profit and loss statement or remove a problem that's maybe got them stuck but when you get a chance to impact somebody's life and they impact yours yeah yeah what a career what an opportunity I mean it's like I couldn't have scripted that I couldn't have we have a similar journey just in different scales exactly 100% 100% Thank you to Purpose Driven Wealth of Thriven for sponsoring our Purpose Driven Questions segment.

1:16:41 At Purpose Driven Wealth, they believe financial clarity leads to a life of contentment and purpose. Their mission is to help guide clients using a values-driven, stewardship-based approach focused on provision, contentment, and enjoyment. With more than a century of experience, Thriven helps individuals and families navigate life and business transitions and prepare for the future while creating space to live generously and give back in meaningful ways. To learn more about purpose-driven wealth, please call 970-330-7411 for a complimentary initial consultation. And now on to the questions. I still don't remember the question I was going to ask you, but it seems like it's probably a good time.

1:17:23 We'll just segue to the purpose-driven questions. I'd love that. Is there anything else you want to make sure I jump in on? No, no. I'm enjoying the conversation. Awesome, good. Well, I'm glad. That's my goal. Yeah. By the way, if you find the time to give a review of the experience of being a guest on The Local Experience, that's one of the things I'm really trying to ask for because – I do care how many people listen, kind of. Yeah, yeah. But I mostly care about the network expansion and the awesome stories I get to share on here and their willingness to actually be a guest because it's kind of scary for a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, and you do such a great job of just kind of making it comfortable and asking questions and kind of letting the conversation go where it needs to go.

1:18:04 I feel like I can do that with a lot of people well. Yeah, yeah. You're not running off a script here or anything. That's nice. Cool. All right, here we come back. And we're back from our break, and we're jumping in to the purpose-driven questions. All right. So thanks to Purpose Driven Wealth for sponsoring the local experience. Yes. It gives us a little segment here. I'm going to jump into this one. this is a funny way to ask this question. It's not quite according to the script, but it sounds like it's sunshine and roses so far, growth, growth, growth. But when times were tough, uh, what did you lean into?

1:18:46 Was it your, your spiritual, your financial, your relational wealth? Like what is your source of big strength when it times are tough? Cause maybe you'd even share a tough time. Cause yeah, Yeah. You know, that's part of this. Well, I shared one earlier about losing those two daughters. But, you know, I mean, yeah, I mean, life is hard, right? I mean, it's. Maybe that seems like your big challenge moment, right? Yeah. And good on you guys for trying again so soon. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, like I said, I mean, maybe it wasn't a lot of logic going on, but we just felt like we had another family member. You've really been called a lot. Like you feel the reaction to call.

1:19:28 Yeah, yeah. Well, you ask kind of what I lean on is my faith. And from an early age, my mom was somebody that was just a very soulful person. She wasn't religious or spiritual per se, but she had a strong faith and watching her. And interestingly enough, my brother is not a believer. Mm-hmm. And I asked her, I said, are you worried about that or whatever? And she goes, no, I'm not worried about it. And she just loved him and loved me so well. She kind of, for me, showed me the love of Jesus.

1:20:09 That unconditional love. Yeah, that unconditional love that I think of and have been experienced in that. And so something that my faith is, you know, every single, you know, growing up, I believe for my kids anyways, yeah. I can first thing in the morning is a time for me to kind of capture them and start them in the day. So I would go down and sit next to the bed, talk to them, say a prayer with them. And at the end of the day is a time to detox them before they're getting in the bed and kind of talk to them. You've been absorbing all this crazy stuff. Yeah, exactly. So that's just something I kind of bookend the days. Well, as they grew up and went off to college and stuff, I couldn't go be next to their bed.

1:20:49 So what I do is each morning I get up and I have a quiet time where I'm connecting and listening. But I send each of them a voice prayer now. Every day? Every day. Every day. Yep, yep. It takes a little over an hour in the morning to do it all. But that faith is because I've been humbled more than I've been on top. I mean, it's, it just is, it's been consistent and, and, you know, um, and so that, that faith is what I really lean into. And then the family, like, you know, like, like everything, if you, if you spend five minutes looking at my Facebook, it'll be pretty clear that everything orbits around kind of my family and those kids.

1:21:40 And it's, you know, when you lose two kids and I was young when it happened and stuff like that, it reorients you. And also growing up in a home where there was a divorce and where it was a little bit chaotic and everything else like that, I kind of committed myself. And generationally, we have some brokenness and some drift. We have some parents that have not shown up well for their kids, for my mom and my dad. And so that's something I became committed to is breaking that generational drift. But I knew I could. I couldn't do it without the help of God. So I'm pretty clear on that. Can we talk about when that really happened for you? You mentioned that your mom kind of had that spirituality and kind of example.

1:22:21 Was it your wife? Was it somebody else in your life that really redirected your pointer? Or was it just the Lord? Yeah, I think it was just life and the circumstances. And you're a brown type. You're going to investigate and be curious about how do I have the best kind of relationship with the world? Yeah, there was someone that took my faith and really helped me grow it. His name was Tim Hawks. He was a senior pastor at a church called Hill Country Bible Church down in Austin, Texas. And he's another one that saw something in me that I didn't see myself. So it was in Texas, actually. Yeah. So you were – Where I really started to grow. I mean, I had a faith. Yeah. I had that childlike faith until I was, you know, 20 or 29 or 30. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:23:02 You know, but – But an intentional cultivation. Yeah. It sounds like. Absolutely. Started about that age. And he's somebody that really poured into me and kind of helped me in that way. Cool. Yeah. Let's talk about have you seen examples where business had to be realigned with values, either in your client space or even in your own space? And talk to me about the circumstance a bit, if you would. Yeah, a lot of times, I think more times than not. the business does need to be reoriented around the values. Because a lot of times what I see, and the intentions are good, where they come up with the values where they maybe get a bunch of people together.

1:23:43 They kind of come up with some words, and they maybe put a little bit of a context to each one of those words. And it represents kind of a watering down of the best of everybody. So it's kind of a quilted experience. Yeah, it's like values by committee. Exactly. That's exactly what happens. What I tell people is I said, you know, don't necessarily come up with those values right away. Let the company, like I said, which is a legal person, let it mature a little bit. Let it come to you. Let it go through adolescence a little bit more. Yeah, exactly. And then step back and say, who are the four or five people that if we could have 100, 200 more of those people, we would do it today? What are those characteristics that those people exhibit? And they'll be like, well, they've got grit. They do what they say they're going to do.

1:24:23 I'm like, those are your values. That's what you care about. And then you don't have to align it as much. You hire to that. You fire to that. You promote to that. But a lot of times they've got these values that are hanging and they're aspirational and they really are wonderful. But they're not demonstrated. And what that does is that gives everybody that wants to sit on the sidelines a target to shoot at. Right. And it's not helpful. We're going to jump into the building community segment. Thanks to Ginger and Baker for supporting the local experience. I love it there. It's the best place. Whether you want a coffee or a fans' fans dinner is the best place. My Rotary Club meets there, too.

1:25:04 By the way, you should be a Rotary Club member. You know, I was in my younger... But yeah, that's the problem is I'm just gone so much. You don't have to slow down. But we're every Thursday morning. Okay. So if you're gone two Thursdays a month, that's no big deal. Okay. All right. Because I always felt guilty because I'm never showing up. It doesn't matter. Okay. Yeah. I'm the sergeant at arms. They made me that so that I would have my attendance be higher. Yeah. But I announce our guests. Okay. And I have a very... Like, I like to do... like emcee work for non-profits i'll do a silent auction or things like that where i can use kind of my voice and my kind of charisma i'm spontaneous but if they want me to have a big script but at rotary club they recognize my strengths like hey you can welcome and greet all the guests Rotary is fantastic And it's upstairs at Ginger Baker 7am every Thursday morning So I'll commercial to you And to all of our listeners If you've been wondering about Rotary You can look me up Well thank you You've got the right spirit for Rotary Well thank you But the question is, so Rotary is one of the ways that I've built community.

1:26:14 Now it's way easier at Ginger and Baker than it was at the Marriott, frankly. Even the Marriott was awesome, but the bacon and the food and stuff, it's just so nice there. But where have you found or built community? Maybe we'll see even... outside of your faith congregation, because I know that's been a part of your journey. Yeah, that's typically where kind of my community has been. That's your core community, is your faith community? Well, the core community is that. Family is that. But yeah, family is because, once again, when you're raising kids or playing sports, you meet the parents, you know. Something that after Skyler passed away, so we moved to Asana Lake. So being on a lake has always been part of where we build community, because we invite people to come and, And, you know, Seth, who's helping produce this, has been to my house on the lake here.

1:27:02 Oh, do you know him from his Texas days? No, no, from here. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, yeah. Because I know he went to school in Baylor. Yeah, yeah. As well, back in the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, after that. But so the expansion of just kind of that church community, but also that family and friends and everything else like that. And so building that community and pouring into them, but also being part of, you know, There's different nonprofits in different cities that I find. In fact, I've got one coming up. It's called Project 4031. It's in Austin, Texas. What they do is help for end of life, help provide opportunities where the financing and just all the things, hospice care and everything else like that.

1:27:48 does us you know so being able to you know invest in doing those those and building community there yeah once again i belong to harmony out here which is not a not-for-profit but it's it's building community on the golf course and it's i think it's what your intentions are that's your club is that your sport of choice your hobby of choice it is now because uh unfortunately i playing basketball i blew an achilles and then a year later actually playing golf i blew a quad tendon so so pickleball and all this other stuff is like a little tougher yeah i can't do that i uh actually i i broke a rib playing basketball at heritage christian church oh really it's a little elbow or a knee so i landed in my ribs and that was maybe the last i've heard a broken rib is like one of the most painful things because it was cracked heavily yeah yeah yeah it didn't separate all yeah yeah but still yeah it was that's a technicality And then I wrapped myself all up with, like, ace bandages because it helped.

1:28:45 Yeah. Because I couldn't laugh. I couldn't tell a joke. I couldn't sneeze. Yeah. All this. And then I went to the doctor, like, a week later. Like, you'll probably give yourself pneumonia if you wrap yourself up with that ace bandage like that. You've got to breathe. Yeah. That's true. And it hurts. Yeah. Anyway, I digress. Yeah. That's funny. So not even pickleball anymore. No. I probably could, but it's just not worth it. Yeah. I feel you. No. Where did we jump off? Just there to find- So we were talking about building community. Oh, building community. Yeah, just kind of an expansion of just the circles that I run. And what's your handicap? It's a seven right now. Damn. Yeah, but it started this summer at like a 15.

1:29:28 Oh, well, dude, seven is impressive. Yeah, no, trust me. I never thought I'd break, you know, ten. So what did you do? What did you do different? Just practice, you know, like, yeah, when I got up every single day, I was like, well, what am I going to go do? So I went over there and just hit balls and just, and then Joe over there at Harmony gave me a couple lessons that really helped me. It was just that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. It was just playing. One thing I've... Like, I played with some old guys at Fort Collins Country Club one time, and they're like, your golf coach can teach you how to shoot, but playing with old guys will teach you how to score. Yeah, 100%.

1:30:09 That's a great point. You don't need to whack that thing out of that rough and try to get it on the green. You can just, like... punch it out there and take the two dude yeah exactly you don't have to try to be the hero every time or you know going around obstacles and different things just like don't don't take the eights yeah you know you you won't be in the hundreds all the time if you don't take the seven and the seven eights all yeah and that's where i was at the beginning of summer i was like oh yeah like yeah i can't believe it but yeah yeah so i went out just not that this matters or is helpful at all but uh so so I didn't have my club so I just rented some clubs when I was at Harmony because my clubs were down in Texas and and I played nine and I shot a par with rentals and I've never ever shot a par so yeah on rental clubs much like with rental clubs so I was like you're like wait it was legit it wasn't like well it's a mulligan it was legit legit par yeah that's cool is it time for the hot sauce yes yes I've been waiting yeah Bada bing, bada boom.

1:31:17 So this is the Crazy Ginger. Reminder to listeners, you can find this at your favorite burrito shop, the Matador Mexican Grill down on Harmony near Timberline. And you can take some of those daintier ones, or if you're a big hot sauce guy, grab that juicy one. Yeah, grab it. We'll have some taste impressions here. That's... Don't forget your microphone. That is really good. That's the crazy ginger? That's crazy ginger. That is really good. Thank you. Yeah. Does it have any of the ingredients from your garden?

1:31:57 Not from my specific garden, but mostly stuff I could grow, because I wanted it to be something that would be available to be locally sourced. Uh-huh. So it's... Back to your roots of wanting to set that... Peach is the number one. My Rotary Club has the Peach Festival. Oh, okay. Yeah. bell peppers, carrots, habaneros, garlic, ginger. You can feel the habaneros. What's that? You can feel the habaneros. Yeah. No, that's the point of a hot sauce. That's good. I'm glad you're doing it. I know some people call it a hot sauce, but it's not really a hot sauce. It's a legit hot sauce. That's good. Thank you. Thank you. I guess let's just do the – I forgot to set it up, but here's the whiz cow.

1:32:42 Okay. Okay. That was the other thing I was... You can have more chips, by the way, if you want to while I'm killing time. I have to let that hot sauce settle down. The Loco Experience is the final segment, and that's the craziest experience that you're willing to share with our members. So you've done 290 of these. 290 local experiences. Tell me some of the craziest that come to mind for you, right off the top of your mind. Right off the top of my mind, Amy from Lindgren Landscape fell off of a trail and tumbled 70 feet and then fell 30 feet into a ravine on a rainy hiking trip.

1:33:35 with i'm imagining a busty like she's dolly partner yeah yeah but a gold cross was swinging from this lady's neck when when she got drug up by her boyfriend to the roadside and this lady stayed by her while she was like trying not to die um as like a 17 year old wow so that was one yeah um A.J. Fountain and his friend found a dead standing moose up by Steamboat when they were out visiting from Indiana. Okay. And they ultimately used a Leatherman tool to cut the head off of said dead standing moose and try to drag it to their cabin.

1:34:16 Oh, word. But it was too heavy, so they buried it, and then they got a hacksaw and took it. just the rack uh-huh and then they mounted it on their jeep cherokee and started driving back to indiana before somebody in sterling was like hey they will arrest you and take away your jeep for having that boost attlers yeah unless you have a tag yeah and they're like well we just found it and they're like that so there's a couple that just come to mind instantly there's a lot of good oh yeah i know i know that's yeah i love that segment So, yeah, some near-death, some craziness. It doesn't have to be either of those things. Yeah. But you know your journey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I say it, what you're like. Yeah, well, I knew that. That's a key part of your podcast.

1:34:58 And I love that and hearing the stories. Once again, like I said earlier, I love hearing the stories. And I thought about what is the craziest thing. And I don't know that it's crazy, but I've already shared it. It was losing those two daughters. And what that did to our family and the closeness that's created. So it was a blessing in disguise almost. Like that's a clue that held part of the rest of your family together more? Yeah, and that's what I said to people. I said, it's the worst thing and the best thing that ever happened to me. He wrapped up in one. And so, you know, what was crazy about it is the good that came out of something that was so hurtful.

1:35:40 I mean, I was so – I was grieving so hard. I literally – It's probably like 30 years old or so. And I got shingles. Oh, damn. Yeah. On my legs and just from the stress and the grief and everything. It was like that. And then literally, I mean, moving to Austin, I never even lived outside of Colorado a day in my life. And that opened up, I mean, the people I met in Austin. It was in its prime time at the time. Yeah. So crazy in the sense of like- So just like Arthur Anderson set the foundation, so did Austin. It absolutely... Austin absolutely did. That's really been... I want to zero in on that because I bet you have even more cases of silver linings where something that seemed like a bad thing turned out somehow beneficial.

1:36:27 Yeah. I'll tell you one real quick and it has to do with moving to Austin. To do a taste test? Yes. This is the WizCal. Thank you to Seed and Spirit Distilling. Yes. Oh, they just opened their taproom in the former Funkrooks. Oh, they did. So it's called... Seed in the Spirit Oyster Lounge. Oh, wow. Okay. I'll have to check it out. Yeah. So if you want some of the freshest, best oysters around, they have that too. Okay. And my son-in-law is coming here. He loves oysters. He's coming here on Saturday. So we'll go. So this is a whiskey plus mezcal. Okay. Hybrid spirit. All right. Local ingredients. Wow. This is really good. And what was this? That was the Sweet Wheat Single Bolt that they just released as well.

1:37:12 I'm definitely going to have to take that. Yeah, there's so good. That's only like a $40 bottle. Like they're not really good. They're not making good whiskey. Yeah. So kudos to Cedar Spirit. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. We were going to transition to. So this is maybe part of the crazy story. So we went down to pick up Lorna McKenna. We wanted to live on a lake. Coincidentally, my father-in-law was a realtor at the time. He was a retired dentist that turned realtor. And so he took us and saw some homes on Lake Austin, and they were affordable. We're like, oh. Wow, we can actually afford this. It was almost easier at the time.

1:37:53 Yeah, yeah. So we went back, sold our house within a week, loaded all of our stuff into a storage unit and just moved in with my in-laws. Yeah. Literally within like – And then your house shopped. Within 60 days of us and all this house getting moved down there. All those houses had sold and everything was not affordable on the lake. Like we're – oh. Oh. And so we're like, well, we're going to be living with them for a while. So anyways, so we finally – we're like enough is enough and we find this place to rent on the lake. And it's just this little shack place. But we're like, at least we'll be on the lake. And we just needed a thought. We needed to reconvene and as a family. And so I come up here. I'm working.

1:38:34 It might have been working with LPR that day. I get done at night. I load up a U-Haul truck, one of those big U-Haul trucks, spend, you know, till eight or nine o'clock at night and I start driving. And I drive all night long. And I should not – I mean, I was so tired. I remember literally like seeing like clowns dancing in the roads. I was so tired. So I get down to Austin. Yeah. And I go to pick up my daughter. She's going to go down to the lake house to unload the thing. Well, the truck starts on fire. But it's just a cab. It didn't get everything on fire. Like you parked there after like – No, no. We were driving. My daughter and I were in the car, and so the trucks catch on fire. So they get the fire put out, and I call U-Haul, and they said, we'll send another truck.

1:39:17 And I said, there's no way I'm unloading this truck into another truck. Right. I've been driving all night and everything else like that. And so then – so they say, all right, we'll send a big tow truck, and we'll just tow it down. Okay. So they tow it down there and – And you got to remember, I'm working on no sleep. The truck's on fire. I get everything moved in because, you know, just didn't use movers or whatever. Get everything moved into this, you know, little house on a lake, and we're just settled in. And my wife goes, it smells like cat pee. Oh, no. And I'm like, no, no, no. I was like, it does. But I'm like saying no. But I'm sitting there like for two hours and we're just trying to get the kids to bed. And I'm like, we can't stay here.

1:39:57 We can't stay here. This is awful. And so the people that rented us the house was an attorney and they told us where they were moving. in a place called Enfield, but they didn't give us their address. They said a location would be like saying, I'm moving in North Fort Collins. So my wife and I at the time drive to that area, pull over, we say a prayer saying like, please let us find – we knew what their cars looked like. And we turn the corner, and there's their cars. OK. And you're going to what? What's that? And you're going to do what? Yeah, well, we're saying, listen, we can't stay. We just signed a six-month lease or something. Right. What, even a year? And I said, listen, I was like, listen, we've lost a child. Yeah, and I was like, keep our money.

1:40:38 Do whatever you need to do. Well, I think, come to find out what had happened, is he needed that rent for the mortgage on the house that he was getting ready to get. So also he goes, no, we'll fix it. We'll clean it up and everything else like that. We're like, no, no, no, no. It's only six months. And he goes, no, no, we want to do this. And so I'm thinking they want to do it right. So we go down there. Well, they hired some day laborers off the street down in Austin. We go there, and they're chipping up all these – they tore up the carpet. They're chipping up all these tiles, and it's flying all over our stuff. And my wife goes – I think those are asbestos tiles. And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm just like, I don't know. And so, so we go and get it tested and it's high asbestos.

1:41:18 So I'm getting to the silver lining part. Um, so then, um. So now he's a lawyer. So now I'm just in Austin. So now I've got to find kind of the best of the best lawyers because I'm – Right. And so we go through this whole thing, long story short or short story, longer now or whatever, is we get out of lease and have to sign all these legal papers and everything else like that. But because of that, we found this home on Lake Austin. Yeah. that we did end up buying. We would have never even been looking. Had we been renting that place for six months, we would have never. And that place became a place of so community. Yeah, well, so much community. It was just like a little shack on the lake, but it was our lake.

1:42:03 And we bought a boat, and we named it Skylar and everything else. But we had so much community, so much memory, so much fun. Sloan was born and brought there. And so had all that not happened, We would have never been looking. That was a silver lining. We found this home. And then I started just meeting kind of the who's who of Austin. At that time, I was the chairman of the Children's Museum, which that opened so many doors. And there was so much that just wouldn't have happened. Yeah. Well, and there's a funny old expression, nobody's a prophet in their hometown. Yeah. Oh, for sure. To some extent, it kind of was the lever of both connections and... outsider's validation that allowed the rest of your path to unfold.

1:42:46 Yeah, very much so. Cool. Thanks for being here. Well, hey, Kurt, you have a great show here. I really have enjoyed this. Awesome. Probably went longer than, probably talked too much, but I thank you for the opportunity, and I thank you for what you're doing for the community. Thank you. Godspeed, and until next time. Absolutely. Hi, this is Kurt Baer, host of the Loco Experience podcast and founder of Loco Think Tank. Every week, I explore intimate conversations with business founders and leaders. And so I hope you'll join us this week and every week for the new episode of the Loco Experience.