EXPERIENCE 10 | John Shaw with DaVinci Sign Systems

Welcome to the LOCO Experience Podcast with LOCO Think Tank Founder Kurt Bear. Listen in as Kurt digs deep into the business and life stories of business owners and thought leaders at different stages of growth from all walks of life. Launching and growing anything can be a crazy experience, so expand your thinking and level up your understanding of what it takes to find success in the world of free enterprise. Alright welcome back to the LOCO Experience Podcast. Today's episode features John Shaw of DaVinci Science Systems and John is the founder and the conductor of the orchestra down there at DaVinci Science and let's just set the stage John by telling our listeners what role you play and what DaVinci Science does who you serve, things like that give us the foundation of knowledge. Sure thanks Kurt thanks for the invitation to come visit. DaVinci Science Systems is a custom signage manufacturing company founded in 2004. We're starting in four columns we've moved over to Windsor and let's see so we make all sorts of custom signs and what's your team look like? Team look like we've got a great staff we've got about 30 folks full time and a few part-timers. I say we hire the E team and the E team is everything about them is positive good attitude good work ethic they like to spread pixie dust and willing to do what's needed and let's say where can I go from there so I use the term conductor because it's it's a little bit like running an orchestra where you've got everybody in their chair and everybody's has to do their piece to come up with a beautiful sound like an orchestra and so to make a beautiful sign it's kind of similar and so that's me I don't carry a baton but I do oh we got a train this is the third train during a local experience podcast well you'll know what's loco if you hear the train right that's right it's good crazy yeah super um let's see so yeah so talk to me about like who are your clients like what kind of signs are we talking about like street signs road signs commercial signage all right good question so all kinds of signs our main go to sign is usually business to business retail signage institutional signage so banks hospitals churches religious organizations we've a common display it's got electronic message center as a changeable portion of the sign and then it's got a static portion involved with it up above so I like to say it's a little bit of the old and a little bit of the new so many that most of our displays have got a lot of masonry working them so stone they might even be hand carved stone or sand blasted stone and then have some modern electronic signage that gets the job done almost what do you say you say the art and science of identification yeah our tagline is the art and science of identification and we pull that from Leonardo da Vinci you know master painter and designer inventor and so that's where the name comes from and we hope to honor his tradition and you know make make products that are really like art on the street yeah we like to say as opposed to just your typical sign notice me exactly and it doesn't necessarily have to be gaudy but you know maybe sometimes they are if that's that that's what's needed and we like to have the general public when they see a really cool sign whether da Vinci made it or not our goal is to you know let them think we did right and appreciate the the set above maybe element of signage that's exactly right we really focus on design we've got a great designer Casey Easton's been with us I think pretty much since the beginning he's a gentle giant he's six foot eight he's the he's the smaller brother he's six eight well but he's he's a master at the keyboard and the design strokes he makes things look really good so does it depend a lot on who your customers are trying to catch like do different people look at signage differently depending on what they're looking for sure like a bank sign supposed to look like a bank sign otherwise you might think it's a supermarket or something I don't know there's some of that yeah so you know a bank signs hospital signage health care tends to be a little bit more conservative if you're from Ford Collins you've probably seen the stuff sign downtown or college has got exposed neon projects off the building I think even without reading it you would know that that's not a bank right you would see that and then if you just mosey down the street a little bit and then you saw first national bank on the other north side of town fairly conservative you know there's no exposed neon on it but it has electronics you would probably know that it's some kind of institutional organization other than retail so right sure but still with probably some of those stone elements and things like that that transmit you know foundations of strength and whatever sure yeah that's exactly right that's a good point so you know a well a well built sign will have a strong permanence look to it and as if to convey that we're going to be here a long time yeah that we're not here you know it's not a banner it's not a piece of the windows stickers I have at local things and offices are not fully doing the job well you need those two so yeah you need those two so that's a good starting point so we'll work on your work on your bigger sign so what's your range of services like I think you you guys do windows stickers and stuff a little bit sometimes but most of you you're kind of the more sophisticated signage and then as a part of a package might do that other stuff or yeah it's really external you're all that it's really full service so we're doing a lot of multi-family projects right now and let's see a couple we finished in Denver and seven four columns catalyst 15 15 Wyatt or all big multi-family projects where they have everything you know they have exterior signage they have interior signs have glass signage they have wall graphics they have three dimensional things inside they've got signage for the elevators most of it's three dimensional you know the more the more layers you put on anything the more interesting it becomes yeah and so you know it also becomes a little more expensive so usually it's you know higher end stuff and we kind of if it's harder to do that's part of what you guys can do some places just can't do those more complex things right so pretty much all you know all facets of signage but we do lean towards the permanent exterior is really a goal but we're doing lots of graphics now with digital printing coming into the forefront that thing runs nonstop and when it quits running we're pretty much out of business so lots of wall graphics you can you can put them everywhere now and we even do hand-painted murals some folks might remember the mural on the side of Jay's bistro there's a saxophone player there yeah I'm not sure who that's going to be yeah we hand-painted that so we can do you know low-tech stuff as as well as you know more high-tech stuff as well yeah yeah well let's talk about that team a little bit so 30-ish full-timers and whatever so talk walk me maybe through some of the different departments or maybe maybe even if I'm a if I'm a customer and I want to sign like what's that first interaction with a sales team I suppose sure sure good question so yeah you're gonna come to us either maybe you came to us via Google probably not likely maybe you got a referral maybe you saw some of our other work maybe you heard us on either public radio or another sponsored another event but if you come to us Kelly's gonna be the first one to answer the phone and she's gonna help figure out the best person to assist you and then it's gonna go to a salesperson and then they're either gonna you know reach out to you and you know non-covid day is the first thing you do is want to go visit the site yeah yeah get get together with you on site if right you were gonna do this thing of course yeah yeah and then of course there's the sign code so then they've got to do a little sign code research figure out what we can do sign companies are fairly free is that all free on the front end you get like a first kind of blush at least sign code and get on a notepad sign companies will do more for free than any other organization on the planet I'll keep that in mind and it's it is hard to believe but I joke about that say you know call up a landscape architect or an architect tell him the command designed a new you know part of your house and you're not gonna pay him anything unless you happen to choose yeah right exactly so we do quite a bit of work up front we take it pretty seriously so the salesperson is gonna most likely go to the site take some photos take some measurements they are going to do some code research and then it's gonna turn into design into Casey and then we're gonna do a design and then from there we're gonna give it back to the to the client like a quote I guess well just the design first to see if that's you know exactly what they're looking for close because now you don't know the materials cost and stuff like you haven't done that work yet yep then from there it goes to the estimating department yesterday comes up with a formal quote got a couple guys doing that I've been doing it for a long time Jerry and Ed and that's got to be hard with all the different materials and all the different changing prices of different materials costs it's a move in target and it's called an estimate because it is your most times you're you're just estimating even though it's a firm quote we're giving clients a firm quote they're not you know TNM or anything like that so you know the goal of some some of those estimates we're gonna lose on and some we're gonna win on and we hope the balance that is above the yeah the breakeven revenue operations right yeah so but it's a whole team busy it's an art as much as a science okay so now I said go we you sent me the estimate and uh what happens now yeah so the next step if the sign is x tier and requires a permit there's a few situations where it doesn't but if it requires a permit uh we're gonna go ahead and apply for that and it used to be in Ford Collins you could walk in with one piece of paper and one uh check and you could walk out five minutes later with a permit well in Ford Collins that's morph to maybe a week or two okay especially during not just because of covid but just due to it always been growing but now it's worse now it's worse exactly and in other cities and I'd like to tell people this if they're from a northern Colorado is Ford Collins is hands down the best city to deal with on sign permits uh out of probably the 50 that contractors licenses that we hold my goodness they're great they're well staff they're organized uh they're helpful props do you want to give props to anybody in particular down at the city let's say well I don't deal with them directly anymore and they got in the in the in the staff that I used to deal with it we're all retired right so that's all when I've been doing John's pretty old it right yeah so uh but the new folks are doing a great job awesome awesome okay so get the permit approved I guess or whatever and get the permit approved then it rolls uh right through our pre-production meeting so we have the whole group uh get together it's in a you know a work order folder and uh we've got all the details in there and then um so it's based on what kind of materials and stuff like that there might be a different team this is a metal sign so it's gonna have this welder and this sheet metal guy and whatever or this is stone sign so it needs this or all whoever's gonna work on it has to be there yeah uh well it's just uh the pre-production team would be the designer the estimator and the salesperson and the production manager so there's four people involved in that meeting usually and trying to quick run through handle all the details all the challenges yeah timeline you know uh how soon we have to have it done we usually agree on that upfront sure um and then it goes to purchasing from there so then we're just in time oh uh manufacturing process not much anymore and this is my second go around in the sign industry the uh the first go around it was quite a bit different where we inventory to everything right yeah all materials around a process all the time all the all the materials are in the back and we were just you know making sure that we had inventory but it's gotten substantially more custom yeah uh over the last 20 years I mean different kinds of materials and stuff you just can't stock all those things up so it's we're ordering uh each part or piece whether it's stone or brick or or a stone space on storing all the inventory I suppose it does and you know we we strive to be like Dell I don't know if you've heard this story that Dell you know made their mark in the electronics world by having a part show up you know on the assembly line at the exact moment that it was needed interesting yeah and so uh when it works right you're feeling like that a little bit yeah and it's of course it's always uh you know never perfect but that's the goal is to have it work like that so you know purchasing uh the product show up and then it goes to all the different fabrication processes uh patterns uh whether their physical patterns were routing parts off our cam machine welding cutting spray finishing doing body work we're we're basically we're an automotive shop we're a sheet metal shop we are a metal fabrication shop we're a construction company um compliance department compliance department where uh you well listed manufacturer you have to be you all listed to build electric signs most most of our signs are illuminated sure not all but a great portion of them yeah and so yeah we've got the uh the cities telling us what we can you know how big how high where they can go and all that then we've got you well telling us how we can do it and then of course we got we have the client uh and we may even have the shopping center or the architecture control uh folks giving us now do you get like progress payments deposits things like that uh along the way because you got a lot of money of this or most of your money get when the sign is up and working yeah it's all over the place there but most times if it's a custom product we usually uh require half down and then we do the whole project then we uh invoice for balance um but we're also a subcontractor on a lot a lot of a lot of larger projects uh recent project we've finished um meridian was about a three million dollars on its project it had 13 different pieces in it uh you can see them down along uh c470 and 25 you'll see some big towers that say meridian but um that would be progress billing that was about a year and a half project um so lots of right lots of accounting full you know full time staff people uh involved in billing and that's the other parts of your team probably that we haven't talked about so far is just the the back office function the administrative the accounting functions cutting all the beans sure there's uh you know it's almost become one to one uh you know one admin person to one actual production person whether it's installed which is i think a big number but there's a lot of overhead and producing signs with uh permit people uh the accounting folks the estimators designers um so we need more regulations so that you can increase your administration professionals we would uh if we had one thing to ask for we would like to ask for just uh less paperwork on the permit side and a quicker turnaround there that's the our biggest problem yeah yeah we say it's really easy to manufacture signs it's really hard to get permits so this is um this is your second kind of go around in the sign business as you alluded to let's uh like if there's like a couple things that make you think wow i'm so much happier about this new business than i was the old one or it's different or harder like contrast those two two machines you talked about the inventory a little bit already but shaw sign and awning was your original company so it never never created a business with your last name but you did it no that was uh um yeah so second time around as you mentioned uh shaw sign and awning was founded in 1985 and four columns and had it for 13 years uh we were a very successful company i think i turned 40 and decided i was working way too hard and maybe i should look at doing something else that didn't require so much uh boots on so many boots on the ground all the time and so hung out a shingle and uh i was out looking for something else to do in three months way sooner than i had expected you much than i said the price high enough right yeah yeah and and hindsight i would say that um so yeah so and that's when you and i met pretty much uh i financed a spec house you did some home building that's that's that's right yeah good memory um yeah got involved in the home building business really struggled quite a bit on what the next step was you know after uh being successful in that industry interesting you know uh you know what to do next and and home building is a lot like sign building where uh there's still a lot of stuff to do in contract goes yeah all the different facets and different trades um you're on the job site a lot longer than you are in the other trade and i really enjoyed that that was great and doing really well uh the last project i did a little development on the end of mountain avenue on fry street uh was all set to build five single family homes in old town um and then 2006 2007 happened and couldn't give anything away right right so then i was back in the sign industry and that's when uh founded the venturesign systems and uh back at it so i had the real estate economy not floundered there would you have stayed in the construction business do you think you know that's a good question i might have done both right because there was some overlap there for a little while and i was able to uh manage both and be a pretty good delegator where i wasn't uh so hands on yeah yeah um and of course you know if i could have sat that out from 2007 to maybe 12 right you know just uh cut that part out of the yeah i it's a great time to be in the home building business of course right now for sure for sure so um sometimes in struggle there is learning and you mentioned kind of struggling to find your footing after you sold shaw sign company can you let's take us back to those days like did you did you have a plan to take kind of a hiatus afterwards you said the hung the shingle and then three months later you're out of a job and you're like what uh i do now yeah talk about that a little bit yeah it's an interesting time it was very challenging so and i know of of other folks that have been in the same position is okay what do they do next yeah i had quite a few ideas one was commercial real estate i kind of explored that for a little bit but the home building was a good fit for me and i just happened to fall into that and do you do it sure it's too just a little bit yeah a little bit for uh actually uh for a year for uh linden bar tells a no sold commercial insurance yeah yeah learned a lot and actually they were purchased by pfs and we're still up pfs still handles our uh business insurance as well interesting yeah i was with bank of colorado when they made that acquisition oh that's way back in the day so yeah i we've got a few places where our our cross paths right exactly um i think that's what the the laws changed the were banks were then allowed to right financial insurance could be in the same job the exact i think it was it was like branch banking right right you couldn't you couldn't do it right so uh and kudos to to kind of the pinnacle organization bank of colorado pretty pretty well run organization is still your bank yeah still our bank yeah we're pretty laurel we started in uh 2004 with them and we're still with them uh Ryan glowed and right down the street from here so it doesn't need a little better rate on his loan Ryan for that plug so uh any any like words of wisdom to somebody that maybe somebody that's planning to sell their business now i mean is there stuff that either we wish you had done or that like really helped you to figure out where you could catch your traction there there was a lot of soul searching going on there um if i had it to do over again you know there's always regrets right i wouldn't have done it if i had to it actually happened so quickly that i really didn't even know what i had done because you know things were going really well and i really what and and hindsight it really wasn't working that hard right uh you know maybe a little bit compared to where you're a home building and trying to get your insurance agency right right yeah um that i just should have took a a couple month vacation it would have been a better idea so if you get to that point where you're really feeling like you need to do something else maybe maybe really the thing to do first is just take a little time off yeah take a take a break i like that and then come back to it i would say um because it takes a long time to build a business you had 13 years in you had i don't know how big your business was how big your team was at that time yeah it was it was bigger we had 55 people we had we had two shifts and we were definitely running hot the 18 in town we were really good at what we did and we had a a lot of experience people and um yeah so let's talk about that let's talk about your journey a little bit because i think you're a jersey guy right originally from times river new jersey times river new jersey little league champions of the world were you playing did you play little league i did not know a little but uh it was uh after i had moved to boulder in the uh late 70s and so as a grown up though 18 year old 18 year old okay so tell me about third grade in times river like described times river to me and what John was doing yeah times river is a little town that was uh kind of a tourist town uh maybe a little bit like estus park where the population in the summer it was right between the ocean and the bay barnagot bay and the Atlantic ocean and uh so you'd have to go over the bridge and there'd be a little barrier island there yeah and um and so barnagot bay was um to us we we thought we were like timesore and hut fin sure i mean uh good dig crabs and stuff like that uh crabbing climbing fishing dig clams not crab yeah yeah yeah but you know um so a lot of that it was uh no no no shoes no shirt for the entire summer right and you're call us feet call us feet and you were uh what people call now free range kids i've got five brothers and sisters and we were definitely free range yeah yeah same here yeah i don't even know what that was not to be right right so our town was a town of a hundred so the number of miscreants and terrible people that are gonna grab you as pretty low they could keep track you know you might wander to the bar and hang out with those miscreants but uh in our place it wasn't too bad all right so i'm tickled by a story about a motorcycle or something like that you've shared with me when uh it probably wasn't appropriate you want to tell that story this is the local experience podcast we try to get a crazy experience or two but didn't you have do you want to share that story uh did you motorcycle story i don't know so many crazy ones let's say there was cops chasing you on some motorcycle or something like oh yeah should i well i could go i could go on record is probably having getting the most traffic citations at one time probably in any other individual and it's uh it's funny now i guess looking back at it but i think i was seventeen and just had purchased a five fifty Suzuki two-cycle motorcycle and it was actually a trade five fifty two cycles of beast yeah it was a great little bike first one first real road bike and i had traded a buddy for it so i didn't have the you know the insurance and the motorcycle license and all that and i took it for a ride one even go over buddy's house and uh on the way home hadn't even had anything to drink but uh a cop goes to pull me over and it's close to midnight and i think i don't have any i don't even have a motorcycle license so i decide that i could outrun the car you got five fifty ebes right so anyway i was able to but it didn't end well in the end i ended up uh in let's see i don't even know what city that was but i ended up in the polkae overnight so how many people were chasing you there was probably half a dozen cops okay yeah probably half a dozen how did you get busted well finally uh i thought i had lost them all but then there was a roadblock at the top of the hill you're trying to go home or something like that trying to go home roadblock at the top of the hill so i decided okay i just ditched the bike in the woods which i did uh they found me drug me out and up meet the hell out of me on the way into the car you've had that before too yeah and uh um so now meanwhile my dad happens to be the captain of the police department not in this city luckily but he probably viewed the captain of the police department in the city he probably did he probably did so um anyway the next day he has to come and you know get me out of the polkae and uh i have to go to court and they start reading all the traffic citations for the one event and uh it was everybody in the courtroom was laughing because he just he's going down he's going down the list failure to yield uh speeds at excess of a hundred miles an hour trust you you name it it was on there nobody got hurt i didn't get hurt uh none of the cops got hurt where he was really i was wearing a helmet actually you had to in jersey helmets required so well you know you're also required to stop into that cool uh it was a street bike now if it had been a dirt bike you know maybe not so anyway well i remember that story uh probably another occasion so uh apologies john what's your dad's name is he still frank no my dad's not with us anymore but uh frank john is very sorry for putting you through that it was very embarrassing for you in your career at that time i'm sure so you roll out to to Boulder Colorado for college then is that going to be that worked or or not for college road trip okay uh unplanned uh a couple friends uh more reen and joe we're going to visit their brother who happened to live uh in Boulder uh right downtown on canyon okay and they said hey do you want to go for road trip or going to Colorado he said you know i don't really have too much going on i'm still grounded from my motorcycle and i can go to yeah i don't have any transportation so yeah i jumped into car with him we did a great little road trip ended up in Boulder and uh looking for the mountains the whole way out right and you coming in on 36 and it's and it's cloudy and it's fogged over so you don't see anything well then where's the mountains right right so then wake up the next morning kind of roll over and look up there they are there they are yeah and so uh i mean we climbed everything we could find for at least a couple weeks let's go climb let's go climb that and so really uh and uh this is a funny story so uh we decided we better get a job because we're just kind of mooching off his brother hanging out the house right right he at least wants some beer money or pizza money exactly right and um so the way you got a job back in the 70s we walked up to the local construction site which is a north boulder on calmea and the uh in the construction companies wonderland development company and uh walked up and asked him if they were hiring the guy looked at me and handed me a pick uh that was and said i guess the job market was strong the job market was strong so uh yeah that's the whole hiring process no no online interviews yeah yeah yeah resumes i mean it really was that simple yeah and i kind of feel sorry for the whole younger kids today because it's uh you know it's it's kind of a pain in the ass to apply for a job oh yeah it's a lot of work and you know it could be that simple uh of course i've gotten a couple of applications just recently for i don't have a job posted necessarily but uh you know people are trying to keep their unemployment going properly oh i see yeah right right yeah so start working in construction yep started working in construction uh landscape crew there building residential homes and uh it was it was a great a great job and uh i had my uh high school career was in the building trade so you just got a road trip and then you stuck uh no road trip uh and you came back okay gotcha yeah we just yeah so the road trip in your stuck look you were kind of planning on going home but then yeah i don't even think i had a plan beyond you know after that yeah i got a suitcase yeah uh so construction yep any construction trade and then um concrete form setting company and uh you know that's real work met a girl you know met a girl at CU and uh ended up moving the Ford Collins um and decided to that uh if you've done ever done concrete form setting yeah you may want to look for a higher education you have bigger muscles than me if you do that for very long i was in the best shape of my life there's no doubt yeah yeah yeah work hard sweat hard and it's uh you know uh satisfying work uh but ended up going to Colorado State um and got a degree in industrial sciences teach in uh education okay and uh through that and that was uh you're probably too young to remember this but uh in the early eighties uh Carter uh you know the Carter administration when uh interest rates went to you know twelve the eighteen percent right right the whole construction industry collapsed again right um so the economy was really really bad here and uh the industrial sciences program was kind of being unwound from well because nobody actually wanted to take that because there's no jobs in that space or what well not so much that it was uh it was the thinking that uh they wanted to do with the industrial sciences program in schools altogether to they wanted to combine math and computers and take away like the hands-on things oh so the hands-on things being you know building things table saw mail shop and all that and so there really weren't many jobs in that area I had one job offer in Pinedale Wyoming that I decided to pass on because I wanted to stay in four kind of long drive but yeah pretty so so yeah at a school and um grad graduated there and and uh I worked in a bronze casting studio as a swing shift uh in four columns for a guy named Chester Comstock and uh we made all kinds of different bronzes we worked on pieces from uh you know well-known for other artists they would send you their thing and you do a mold or whatever and then do a bunch of them kind of yeah the whole loss wax process pretty interesting yeah to go through that whole thing did patina and did chasing uh the Joe um what did you learn from Chuck was a Chuck uh no uh Chester Chester Comstock yeah he was an amazing artist but not a very good business man so yeah yeah interesting story where he uh he could carve uh he did mostly birds you know Eagles hawks and things like that and he could carve one out of wax in an hour you know just beautiful but then he he ended up getting some contracts with like Buick Buick Hawk would be an award for dealership okay like to make five thousand of them oh sure and he wasn't really set up to do that so he he uh you know hired a whole bunch of people and uh got to go on and we were nobody really know what they're doing including him well he he didn't so much uh from the business side of it but uh we all came to work and there was probably a dozen people working there uh at on East Lincoln and four columns and uh just making these birds from the front end of cars yeah and all kinds of all okay oh it wasn't for the front end of the cards it was being award plaque for dealership right right that sold a bunch of Buick's right right uh but we came to work one day and there was a note that uh he didn't pay any of his payroll taxes and and there was a padlock on the board and you probably won't get your last paycheck either yeah and he was gone and uh so i'm not sure exactly what happened the Chester after well i don't know what we just learned there but uh me well you got you got you have to pay your you have to do the game you're working up if you like yeah so yeah so then what so then um i answered an ad in the news favorite and actual ad the newspaper for a sign company looking for somebody okay and so um i was hired for that job and immediately upon starting it i realized that i really this is great i get to use all the disciplines that i learned you know metalworking woodworking design what was your job for that sign company my job for that sign company was a fabricator okay so i was doing and we made bunches of wood signs back in the 70s a really popular would be gluing up cedar and red wood and sandblasting um not as many illuminated signs there sure and um so then a couple years after that i decided to open my own firm yeah a big decision talk to me about that like that that process did you like save your pennies and stuff like that or you just tell your boss to screw off one day and i'm gonna start my own sign company no what happened was it was still it was still you know in the middle that recession you know in the quarter years yeah i was hanging out and um so there wasn't a bunch of work um and it was only three or four of us there but i got a 20 cent raise and and uh uh my wife was pregnant with my second daughter from like what three bucks to three bucks twenty cents or five bucks to five bucks fifty five eight eight to eight twenty or something like that yeah so you're trying to raise a family and going and i'm looking at the numbers and i go well this doesn't work right right and so i didn't see a lot of our opportunities so i decided at that point it was a tough time for him so probably yeah issues like well yeah you're good here that's why i give you this 20 cent raise if you weren't good i would give you nothing yeah so maybe uh i think what i learned from that is rather than give somebody 20 cents you're probably better off giving them nothing right i say hey i'll make it up to there when i can yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a little bit of it maybe an insult yeah yeah i don't know if my pride was hurt or not but it was definitely a financial decision to uh you know open my own firm did you have like how's that what what i mean it seems like you need a bunch of equipment and different things and stuff like that like that's a financial commitment to do that too no starting right uh started really small uh started with uh you know inexpensive use equipment um and you know you start in your garage and then we rented a place out on prospect and then we rented a place on these Lincoln and you know each time it got a little bigger yeah let's talk about the progression a little bit like was it were you in the garage for a year for three years um and what kind of science like you just have to take kind of smaller less complex signs than maybe you had been working on or you just said yes and then you figure out how to make it from there there was some of that yeah there was some of that you know just well figured out as i go but we made um pretty much similar products that we have now a lot of neon you know neon was the lightest choice then before it was pre LED obviously but everything was neon where it was inside the letters were exposed and so i learned every facet of the trade from doing it myself um so you know making neon patterns uh you know servicing neon and assembly you can make me a neon sign for this office if i wanted it um i not right now i need a little rusty yeah well i didn't bet i didn't bend or blow glass uh that was a different trade that was one of the few things that i didn't do very specialized and uh there's still you know still three or four neon vendors around you should have a neon sign here you should have it's right there facing college i mean right yeah and it would catch eyes yeah um so in the garage building these signs and stuff and then you said link lane was your first step up you maybe just leased a space over there whatever leased a space uh there and then you have some people already on your team by then i guess or i probably had three or four by then and when it's you're just a little like that then what like everybody's got to wear quite a few hats because you talked about having 30 people and they mostly all wear different hats right uh they did there was lot lots more cross-training you would go out and install a sign uh build and then go install it and then go service it and then sure sure yeah the overlap in there wasn't much overlap in design uh or sales typically typically sales was still sales and and the designer were still doing that we're uh doing it all by hand and uh you know one of the interesting stories is when there's no computers to design stuff with right not then i remember the first 286 i don't remember that term but a 286 computer you would yeah you would refresh the screen and you'd go have a cup of coffee right and come back and hopefully it had you know drawing your square for you right or whatever yeah it was so slow but i do remember buying the first fax machine we bought a used fax machine and it was quite an amazing thing that somebody could actually send over hey you could send a picture to somebody in right this is what i'm talking about is that what you're thinking about yeah and it was uh $2,500 for a used can in fax machine wow so that was $19.85 you could probably buy that for $25 today probably could probably get it for free sorry people would give that to you because it had the thermal paper all that were you can't even buy the paper yeah it would roll off of there so so but grew john grew shaw sign an honing pretty rapidly then to be a 55 person company like what would the economy came back pretty strong late 80s or early 90s i guess by the 90s it was doing pretty well okay i think it was still pretty slow in the late 80s so you stayed kind of small for a while and then really took your hockey stick growth later yeah we you know as four columns grew northern Colorado grew um you know we grew right along with it so we just kept bumping out walls and leasing the next space sure and then we actually bought uh we got to the one we decided we needed our own building so we bought the corner a lot on Lincoln and link lane not where Alan's at uh right across the street just to the north yeah it's a communications company now but we bought that long yeah sure yeah and we had plans drawn and we were going to build a facility there and right about the time we're getting ready to do it uh Gerald construction uh a general contractor who was to the west of us yeah their building was foreclosed upon uh because they had gotten involved with uh farm more i don't remember the farm yeah they were doing the uh uh creative accounting where they're counting everything twice and then uh you know it all fell apart and they got hung up in that and i think uh Gerald was a good construction company but got caught and so we were able to move into that building in weeks wow so we bought that building uh just to the west of us and move in there and then sold off the lot yeah yeah um so that was the first real facility and what were some of the things you learned in that like well two things that come to mind in my questions is when you were like a three or four person team we're a three or four percent or three person team right now is there anybody from back in those days that really advanced the ball for you and made your life easier that you made just not a made it if it wasn't for them sure let me think um i'm trying to think currently it's our designer Casey who does such a great job who really change the uh the way things your life insurance policy and Casey right like we need one yes his brother his brother his actually his brother worked for us first his brother's an excellent designer as well and how big is this brother you said his brother is seven two yesterday oh my god yes the duck under a doorway yeah the large man yeah you don't meet people like that if he gets asked if you played basketball oftentimes he does all the and it's crazy because if you go anywhere with him every everybody has how tall are you how tall and you think he'd get like annoyed or but he there's there's such good guys just gentle chance yeah they don't get bothered by it all super cool it's you know i think that's uh so they're they're your tribe you know that's one of the things i've said in the past is a business is kind of limited to the size of tribe that you can get to be want to be on your team you know and and Casey and his brother have been even though his brother doesn't work for you right now sounds like you're friendly with him and and you would be on your tribe if it made sense and whatever and that's just part of that building a business because you can't always be the highest payer you can't always create the best work of you can't do all those be everything to everybody right you have to have a tribe yeah and um as you mentioned you know it's not always about money especially in the design with designers you know they're really invested in the creative art right and it's one of the reasons Casey likes being with you is because you give him opportunities that he wouldn't have everywhere yeah he's he can pretty much you know just design whatever he thinks works for that and he doesn't need direction now he's very independent so yeah yeah um i like that i'm thinking back to the previous question uh you know everybody was uh one of the first guys uh Robert Olson uh we hired a bunch of uh folks from your neck of the woods there was uh the only technical sign school in the entire country was in Fargo yeah or dl to try like yeah yeah yeah yeah and they had a like a vocational school for the sign trade and he was uh i think our first hire and uh i still talk to him today um it seemed like he was so much younger than me but we're just a few years apart right right uh and he's doing doing well and uh so we hired and now it's once we brought him on he would just ping his buddies back at dl and say hey if you you know come down another job coming right yeah and we had like three or four of them so yeah and with their like oh i get a chance to move to Colorado get a good job in Fort Collins exactly yeah Fort Collins is a big draw for sure but um interesting and so now we're probably coming up to the point you moved into that new building and stayed there for a few years through the team and then got a quick offer on the sale and you're like okay build some homes yeah so we were there in that new facility probably 10 years oh okay so like that yeah yeah yeah little stagnant and then pop up pop up a lot of stuff going on yeah and we and we uh won some national accounts oh wow some franchise national accounts okay one account that was north of a million for uh a sandwich franchise you can't say the name of their Blimpies. Blimpies. I remember Blimpies. Yeah, and I don't believe they're around anymore. There was one on the May that I used to go to occasionally, but yeah, Chiba is just too much better. Chiba Hot Rocks. Yeah, so we had some pretty good national franchise accounts and that allows. That's kind of you can really build your team because you know they got this steady production coming in, right? Yeah, we would actually inventory product. So it really makes a giant difference where you would do completed signs and you would stock them. Sure. So you could actually treat at the same time and it probably makes it easier instead of every sign custom custom custom. Yeah, it's it's a totally different business than the traditional custom sign company that's local and you know, so it's pretty hard to compete in that realm. Right. In Colorado, you know, wages are high, cost of living is high. Most of the companies who do do do repeat work. We're they're doing, you know, hundreds of city signs or a lot of Kansas where labor is a little lower and big pieces of real. Southeast Texas. Yeah, cities will give them buildings to stay there. Right. You know, there's a lot of economic incentive. So Alabama. Gotcha. So if your dollar store and you're going to buy a hundred and forty dollar store signs this year and they'll have to be like this. That's not you. That's not us. They're coming out of Tennessee cookie cutter. Everyone is exactly the same. Yeah. So so John and I John actually got me into running a few years ago when we've run in a couple of Wild West relays and the horse tooth half marathon. I remember I was just reflecting on the first time I went running with you and like a mile and I'm just like pouring with sweat and out of breath and dying and so I wanted just before we go to a far end of that. Just thank you for being a great encourager in that. I feel so much healthier now than I did even five years ago. But you're always a man of many pursuits. You're a you're a surfer. You're a runner. You're a bicyclist. You're a motorcyclist. Like talk to me about that quest for adventure in your life and and some of your favorite highlights or stories. Let's get let's get another local experience out here maybe. Sure, sure. And what we're going to go for a run right after the podcast is over. I got my running stuff in a car. Well, no, I've been drinking whiskey already. That's okay. You'll be fine by then. Maybe. Okay. So nice day. Anyway, yeah, where was that? Was that reservoir ridge? When we first started running. Yeah, yeah, it was reservoir ridge. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I did that religiously for like three years. It's Tuesday running club. Tuesday, Thursday. I got too successful in the city said. Shut him down. Shut him down. There's too many people showing up. Yeah, yeah. And when I first started, there was like 20 runners, 25 runners sometimes. And I'd be like number 22 out of 23, you know, it's stuff. And then eventually, I worked my way up until I could finish closer to you kind of middle of the pack because, you know, yeah, anywhere in the middle is a good place to be, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. They're pretty kind group. The Fort Collins trail runner group. It's a no drop run. If you ever get the urge to go, whether you're walking, you know, fast or yeah, though, there's a couple stops to wait. And so it's a good entry point into it. And the trail running is really a lot of fun. So, but we can come back to that. Sure. Yeah, tell me some of those stories. You go surfing a couple of times. Like nobody in Colorado serves more than you, I don't think. Yeah, you're going to love this. So I was the, I was the new port beach shout out for a cozy radio the other day from a friend who runs a surf shop there. The frog house, shout out to the frog house, Mike Bejo. They did a little piece on me. I was the the best surfing in Colorado. I'm probably one of the only surfers in Colorado. I don't know anybody else that spends much time at it. You know, every time every other person I meet, like they finally tried surfing for the first time when they went to Costa Rica or whatever. Right, right. And that's a good place. So was that something you took out from Jersey? Yeah. So Jersey is a got a big surfing culture there. And I grew up surfing as a kid. And then, you know, obviously stopped when I moved the boulder, but then picked up snow boarding after that to kind of fill in the gap. And then, you know, got busy with kids and raising a family and running the business and really didn't surf for almost 20 years. And so recently, I don't know, I guess maybe since, you know, mid 40s, 50s, I started again and hooked up with a group out of California, actually, from Jim Mochler, local real estate agent. He's got a bunch of brothers that grew up in Huntington area. And they all surf. And so Jim and I, and another guy, Kyle Lundy also serves from California. We went and watched the Maverick surf contest at like 40 foot watched. We didn't compete to the 40. No, we were watching in a boat right next to it. And so that was one pretty cool trip. But there are quite a few other California transplants that still So what do you love about surfing? Like, is it the company? Is it the thrill of the, could you get squished and broken? Yeah, everything about surfing is just, it's great. You're out there by yourself. And, you know, recently I just did a trip and surfed Tressels is right by San Clemente. It's famous surf spot there. And I spent a week there and it was just awesome. I mean, people are friendly. The water's warm. It's totally individual. It's really not, I mean, it can be competitive in the lineup, you know, to get good waves, to get your share of waves. But it's just awesome. There's nothing like it. And I've done a lot of different things in my life and surfing by far is definitely one of the most fun. A bunch of wrote and I grew up, you know, Jersey was cold water all winter. So the average winter temperature of the water, there was like 42 degrees. And we didn't have very good equipment. And I would not do that again. Right. Right. No, no, no, no, thanks. I mean, it's a super duper, what suit maybe? Yeah, yeah, with much better equipment. They say, one of the one of my bucket list items is to, in Alaska, there's a few places in the world, you can do this where you get ski ski the same day and you go, go surf. So in Alaska, my daughter lives up in Saldana. I can ski Alieska and then go surf a spot in Alaska. That's like an hour from there. Well, in the same day, it's a tidal bore on a river where the tide comes in up the river. And the river going against that tide, but creates the way. So tidal boars are like all of their, they're pretty crazy. I haven't surfed the one yet, but hopefully one day sounds like a hoot. I think, I think Moses Horner, one of our facilitators, longtime member, does a lot of surf from behind his boat. So I bet you could talk him into going up to Alaska in some tidal bore. Oh, yeah, I bet I could. Yeah, we say we started that here at Horse Tooth because, you know, we've been doing that for 25 years before it was a thing. Before it was a thing. And now there's a, there's a new, I guess it's called a jet board and only in jet board out. It's like a medium-sized surfboard with a jet built inside it. Like a powered thing? Powered thing. It's all right. Well, just now we got batteries and little motors and stuff like that. That makes them things different. I think you're going to, I haven't seen one in Colorado yet, but I think you're going to start seeing them on Horse Tooth and Boyd here this summer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're still pretty pricey. So I think it's time for you to buy a boat. We'll talk about that after the episode. So I want to get back into the business journey just a little bit. You're done the home building things and and had some successes, had some challenges with the industry there and stuff. And then let's talk about the refounding or the actually the founding of the Vinci science systems. That was what you're 2017 for 2004. Okay. Sure. So yeah, I've always admired the Vinci. So you know, borrowed the name and decided that was this is another garage thing? Or did you start with a proper facility and stuff this time or actually started and rented a facility right off the bat and then hooked up with a previous designer, Matt Sharbinow. Okay. And let's see a few of the first projects we did in 2004. We did the Tri-City cycle. Oh, yeah. Which is still there and still works great. Yeah. And you know, nice looking display and you know, signs well made last a long time. Yeah. So that's a seven, 16-year-old sign. It's still looks great. It's got exposed neon on it. We could upgrade it if you wanted to. But it's still doing good. We could. We actually had electronics involved in it, but couldn't get a permit from the city of law. Oh, really interesting. So it was tough. Well, but so a a couple small team small facility, Da Vinci sign systems is like the economy was pretty good right then 2004 to eight, basically, I suppose. It was really good. Yeah. Yep. That four years. So it was, you know, you're starting out. You've got low overhead and there's just a few of us right off the the bat designer myself. Mark and then we had a part-time office person, Karina. So and I would do the sales and you know, all the all the other stuff that and permitting. And then then we had a couple of fabricators. So yeah, we were out back out in the four Collins incubator industrial part. Right. You know, that link lane area is really quite an amazing thing. It's in the enterprise zone out there. So there's some benefits to being out there for new businesses and usually the rent's a little less expensive, but that's changing quite a bit now since brewery row is out there. Right. Right. Right. But yeah, so many small businesses have spawned and then grown out of there. You know, there's a lot of 5,000 square foot business spaces that can be used and grown out of and stuff like that. Right. Yeah. It's a good good place to start. I wonder what the list would look like. I bet there's dozens and dozens of of larger companies now that got their start over there. I'm trying to think of a few custom blending. Oh sure. That's a good one right there. Yeah. Let's see who else. Yeah. So it's a long list. I'm sure you get started out there. So take me through the journey of growth with DaVinci signs a little bit like is there key elements that allowed you to grow out of the original facility move into your current space and which I know you're kind of I don't know what like a 10 pound 10 pounds of stuff and a 5 pound bag over there at your current facility as well. Yeah. Yeah. It's way small. We keep leasing additional space. So yeah. So the the location and East Fort Collins we were there just a few years and we did really well. The economy is doing well and we're managed to save a whole bunch of money. We did all the the new high schools in town. We did the fossil bridge high school trying to think of some of the bigger projects we started out with. But that allowed us to get a down payment on a piece of ground in Windsor and we decided on Windsor at the top of the hill there for geographic reasons really only to be able to to go to Greeley, Loveland, shoot down the down there. Yeah, the Golden Triangle, right? Yeah. And then you don't get back to Fort Collins. I feel like maybe we lost some of our Fort Collins roots by going there. Yeah. A little bit. So that was only negative I could say. But yeah, we had built a 10,000 square foot building specifically for us. And and now we lease about another maybe about another 10,000. Oh wow. I didn't realize that. Yeah. Interesting. So you mentioned that you're kind of a just in time inventory operation now. Was it that way the whole time that you've been eventually signed systems? Yeah, pretty much is the business had changed. It's morphed quite a bit in just that short period of time where with computers and routers and the time frame is shorter. You know, the thing you have to turn around. So so pretty much started that way. Yeah, because the design, well, let me back up here a little bit, but the sign industry and if it's and it's when I was introduced to it, designers would say sign companies build boxes on sticks. And so it's very derogatory. And what they meant was that there would be square rectangular cabinet. Right. It would be a pole with a light behind the cabinet. Yeah. And you know, it was fairly true. In this area, there was one major sign company. That's pretty much what they did. And they were the big player. It was excellent advertising. And that's really all they made. And so what happened in about late 80s, early 90s, people started getting creative with computer software and design software. You could make changes quickly. And so things got really innovative, like way different than before. And some of those I have to give a hats off to a Merv Ekman. Okay. How to pretty good vision. He was one of the equipment signs. Adcon. Yeah, it's not in same ownership anymore. But he had brought that vision. One of the first signs that he did that I had worked with him on was the center for advanced technology. Okay. One is a three really oblique shapes, you know, like a C three of them together. And it was over by Dracon Shields. And see it was a CSU project that was supposed to be all high tech innovative that never came to fruition. But the sign was killer. The sign was killer. All signs fall. Yeah, it wasn't a signs fault. Yeah. So it was killer. So he really changed things. And now it's to a degree where like most of the stuff we look at would go, you know, how are we going to manufacture that? And we always figure it out. But it's super challenging. Everything we do is there's there's no such thing as straight lines hardly anymore. Everything is very complex. And with lighting and a lot of shapes cut out by something, you know, on this specific shape. But then you got to well it together or do this or that? Yeah, every, every piece is really a head scratcher. But with a good team, you know, he's figure out how to make it. One of the last ones we just finished was a little project downtown Denver 99917 Street. And it was a bunch of geometric shapes fabricated out of metal with a big piece of tempered glass in front of it. And then the letters were the 999 part were all carved to fit one of the angles at two different. Oh, interesting. Two different, you know, receding angle one way and another angle the other way. So everyone was like custom fit like a piece of jewelry. Sure. So, but it came out excellent. We actually won a little award for it. And that's that that's that multifamily stuff you were talking about. It's like, it's not the Armstrong or this or that is 99947 Street. Right, right. That's the address. But now you got to make that sexy and you have it stand out a little bit. So what's the sign? The numbers are this. Right. And you'll see you'll see a lot of these days. You can get around some permits by just calling it an address. You know, if it becomes the brand for the building, the address of the building, which is a pretty good idea. Yeah. Um, so let's say where were we going with that? Where was I going with that? I don't know. That's what this is hard. These podcasts are let's take a break. Okay. Good. And we're back. Um, so John, we were just starting to get into some of the the main business learnings you've had and stuff along the way. But also, the recreational things that that you've enjoyed. And I think there's some parallels. Ride the Rockies. It's an event that you've done. How many times have you done ride the Rockies? You did it by yourself this year, virtual water, something. Yeah, it was an interesting year. Doing it solo. But I think I've done it 13 times. Okay. Something like that. And what is ride the Rockies? Most people don't know what that even is. Yeah, that's a bike tour about a week bike tour in Colorado. They change the route every year. It's awesome. It's a lot of fun. It's like I've just one big circus on the race per se. Not a race. It's a tour. And, um, like describe a, describe one year. Yeah, one year. So let's see four Collins. Let's say we finished in four Collins. Maybe a few years ago, I'd owe Del's. Uh, let's see, where did that start? Might have started over in like Winter Park. You'd pedal over Berthard Pass. Um, come down the front range then up through Estes. Uh, one of the best days on a bike I can remember is from Estes Park to O'Dells. Uh, down the Golden Haven Road. Downhill. Uh, it was, uh, super fast, super fun with a group. We paced line most of the way. And, uh, I think it was like two hours from, uh, the Stanley to O'Dells. And you know, it's just barely more than with a car. Right. Not not too much, but we actually pass cars coming down the the Glen Haven Road. Super fun. So yeah, it's a great ride. It's, uh, about 2,000 people. I think they used to have a cut off where I think just the last few years was the first year um, that they didn't actually sell out. So that's interesting. That's the first time that's happened. I think that the riders are getting older. Well, you got to ride up the hills to go down the hills, right? You got to ride up a lot of hills. Yeah, average, uh, you know, a lot of days you'd have 10,000 vertical feet of climbing. Whoa. So, you know, big days and, and uh, when I first started it, I tell everybody that I would say on your left a lot, which means I'm, I'm passing you. Uh, now I hear a lot more. Yeah. So, uh, things change, but you're still out there. I'm still out there. Um, so it was canceled this, uh, you know, talking about business parallels. This is up one, um, I think is relevant for persistence. Um, uh, it was canceled this past year because of COVID. So I decided to go anyway. You know, so the first thing is, okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to go self-supported and no big paniers. I just, uh, get a little pack and get the bare necessities and I changed the route up a little bit. So I peddled from, uh, house and leveling to Boulder up to Shatakwa. If you've never stayed at Shatakwa, I would recommend it. And, uh, so did the first day piece of cake. It's relatively flat, rolling hills, nice day. My wife comes, joins me for the evening. We have a nice dinner on the patio. It's awesome. So then I'm going to mix it up a little bit. So the second day, um, I climbed both the flat irons. It sits right underneath. They're the first and the third. And, uh, I'm not a real big climber. So I have a guide, uh, helping me out with that. Oh, you mean climb climb? Climb. Yeah, climb summit and repelled off the, the backside on those, uh, so super fun. And, um, and then at the end of the day, decide to just pedal down the Pearl Street. So I go down to the ball. I'm going to get something to eat. And I lean my bike up against the railing of the place. I'm, uh, having a slice of pizza on the east end of the mall. And, uh, guide comes up and grabs me. I didn't lock it because it's like five feet from every slice of pizza. Yeah. And not even in. I'm sitting on the patio. Yeah. So he grabs my road bike and takes off down the wall. And I'm in biking cleats. And it's like chasing them, chasing them can't catch him a couple of people saw him. And so then I, uh, I rent one of the city bikes to see if I could find them. And there's, I guess there's a whole bunch of bike theft going on there. Yeah. And, you know, so, uh, bike parts everywhere. So lock your bike up if you go to debt boulder and don't leave it overnight. And they'll leave it in a lot of times they'll cut those locks. So yeah, uh, yeah, pretty crazy. So lost the bike. And it's about, I don't know, by the time I finally gave up, it's eight or nine o'clock at night. I go back, take a uber back to the hotel, uh, up at Shatakwood. So, okay, what am I going to do now? So I try and buy a bike from one of the bike shops the next morning. Sure. And, uh, it's COVID and everybody knows what happened then. There is no bicycles for sale anywhere. Everything's gone. Uh, there was one high end road bike that might have been my size for about seven grand. I could have picked up, but I decided against that. So, uh, I go to Craigslist and, uh, start poking around on there. And there's, you know, quite a few. And I actually, uh, get an old steel lawned for 300 bucks. The guy actually puts it in his car, brings it up to Shatakwa. It's a 56 centimeter, fits me perfect. I'm sure a whole bunch of stuff. So, uh, I, uh, I pay them on Venmo and I go down to the bike shop and get the other stuff that I need. It's a tubes and this and that pack and water bottles and all that again. Luckily, my wallet was on the bike when he stole it, right? Um, so, uh, you know, and then it's noon on the third day. And so I take off for Estes Park and it's about 100 degrees. So, but end up in Estes and, you know, so, uh, you got to be persistent. And then I continue the ride for the rest of the week over Trail Ridge Road to Grand Lake, Grand Lake, the hot sulfur springs, hot sulfur springs to Edwards. And then my wife met me there and, uh, and my brother and we did a little ride up to Vale Pass. That was, and I was the last day. Wow. Super fun. You didn't ride home from there. Did not ride home from there. Yeah, put it in the car. But, uh, actually tried river surfing for the first time the last day in, uh, in Eagle, they have a, uh, a river surfing park. Oh, right. Uh, and like most things, it looks way easier than it actually is. So even if you know how to surf, it's not that easy. So there was some quite a few accomplished river surfers there. Um, so pretty cool. Pretty fun. Learn some things. Learn some things. Yeah. Whole families doing it. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty neat. Well, we always make sure we, um, find some time for faith family politics at the end of these experience conversations. Um, maybe do you want to start with family? You just mentioned Rhonda. Uh, you guys have been, I went to your wedding. Maybe is it five years you guys been married now? Yeah, it's been about five years. Yep. Uh, Rhonda, my, uh, wonderful wife and, uh, we've got six kids between us. Um, they're all about close to the same age, hers, uh, and mine. So we've got four daughters and, uh, two sons and, uh, they're all, uh, grown up and out of the house. And, uh, I think five, four out of the six, all I've got masters degrees, uh, you know, one, one's a scoop instructor in Hawaii. Uh, the other one, uh, has got his masters in tropical diseases. Um, so yeah, Rhonda's a business owner as well. Yeah, Rhonda owns, uh, dental practice and leveling level and family dentistry. Yep. For, uh, over 20 years. Wow. Okay. It's great. And, uh, well, sounds like a heritage of creating hardworking people, you know, and that's pretty big legacy just in itself. We're both pretty, both pretty independent. Um, let's see, I'm trying to think our any of our six kids, uh, entrepreneurs, uh, I don't think so. Maybe they saw how hard, uh, we both worked and decided there was an easier route. Is there any grandkids out there yet? There's, uh, four grandkids. Okay. Yeah. Oh, I've met a couple of the boys. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, well, I like to have one word descriptions for, uh, these are kids, kids grandkids. If you got a one word description for your girls, her kids, uh, you gotta get those. Let's see one for each one. Start with the grandkids if you want to start with the grandkids. Well, uh, let's say Logan and Camden, they're like twin brothers, uh, but they're not, uh, let's say, uh, they're the not twins. Yeah, they're the not twins. Or yes. Uh, yeah, I don't know, uh, Cooper, uh, is up in Alaska and guy, but we do miss him. Uh, we have not seen him that much. Sure. Recently. So, uh, he is the cutest little kid in the whole world. So I've got a bunch of videos of him. So, uh, so he's the youngest grandkids. He's the youngest. Yep. Uh, and how about your girls? I actually have met all three of your daughters here and there. Sure. Elena, Janine and Kaylee. So Kaylee's up in Alaska. Janine's down in Denver works for Denver water. A good, good job for public utility. Right. And, um, Elena's a social worker, uh, Colorado, Colorado youth for a change trying to keep kids in high school and, yeah, from going sideways and, uh, she's working hard at that and, um, challenging. Just a bunch of, uh, mission driven people that, uh, in your, in your, in your spirit. Yeah, they're great. All of them. And then, uh, yeah, Aaron in, um, Omaha, around his daughter, Aaron, is, uh, dental hygienist. So she's in a dental trade as well in the industry. Yeah, in the industry. And then, um, let's see. And then, uh, yeah, Keaton and Chase and Hawaii. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you guys been to Hawaii, we've been there a few times and we're going in February, uh, gonna take Bristol with us and, uh, stay with, uh, Chase and, uh, his significant other and, uh, and Keaton and, uh, you won't go surfing. I'm sure, uh, let's see, uh, hope to get a couple days in there. I'm sure you will. I'm sure you will. I'm trying to get them tied in the surfing pretty well so that, uh, you know, we've got it. We've got to try to go. So, yeah, yeah. I'm working on that. Well, I'll, uh, I'll save my pennies. We've got to, uh, Hawaii tripping with you someday. So, um, you know, we're, we happened to be just today on the, the eve of the capital riots and the transfer of power stuff and, um, is anything you want to say, just about kind of the state of the nation or politics in general, um, in this kind of really unusual time. It won't get you in trouble. Yeah. It's, it's really scary to see, uh, I heard about it yesterday. I didn't see anything, uh, on the news or hear it myself, but I heard, you know, a lot of staff came in and we're excited about it. Yeah, we're, you know, worried about it and everything. And, uh, I never thought that's something we'd seen in the United States. Right. And, uh, like all the commentary, it seems like it's third world. Right. Excuse me, politics. When you read the headlines, you're like, this is our country. Yeah. Really is really scary. So how do we fix it? Like, like, and, and you can say it's all Trump. If you want to and you can say it, isn't that, but it, it seems like it's deeper than that. Like, I've heard a lot of people say that Trump was a, a symptom of the disease. He's not the disease. And, and I don't want to say that it's a party thing necessarily. It seems like both parties are kind of sick in the way that they power struggle and whatever. Is there, like, is there fixes to it on a national level? Yeah. Good question. I wish I, uh, I wish there wasn't easy fix. It seems to be a pretty big division. And, uh, the things that I've read recently is a lot of people say, it's, you know, it's, it's a race issue. It's black versus white. It's, uh, you know, democratic versus Republicans. Uh, and that sort of thing. But the most, uh, I think one that hit home with me, the division is rural versus urban. Totally. And it really is. That's the scariest one to me. I mean, Biden won 500 counties from 1,500. Right. So why, so why such a big division in the US between, we need both, uh, you know, family line each other. Yeah. It's team work, right? And, uh, rural farmers sell their goods to city dwellers. And, uh, it has to be that way. Yeah. And it seems like, you know, the shift in, in most Western countries and maybe even third world countries is towards cities. Right. I don't, I don't know the real reason behind that. But so that's the scary one. Well in China, you know, everybody that wants to get off the farms and into the cities where they can at least have a factory job. It's miserable, but at least you're not starving on the farm. Yeah. So I think, uh, I think that's part of the division. And, uh, I'm from both, you know, I, uh, Tom's River is a pretty rural town. Yeah. Uh, and I've lived in urban places as well. You know, Boulder, um, well, you've got a special passion on the race relations thing. I look at Think Tank to the sponsorship of, uh, Darrell Davis. Yeah. Darrell Davis. Yeah. I had a rotary piece, uh, conversation here a couple of years ago. No. Yeah. Last year? No. It's two years ago. Two years ago. I think you're right. Yeah. He was, uh, he is, uh, an amazing, uh, man that he actually, uh, wanted to have a conversation with, uh, Clansman. Yeah. To understand, uh, you know, where they're coming from. It's like a blues musician, right? Yeah. He's a blues musician. And, uh, you know, where that comes from and everything. And so he took it upon himself to actually engage with them, you know, with all the reasons you would not want to engage. Right. Right. A black man with a clansman, right? Uh, and actually, uh, made some pretty big, uh, dozens and dozens of clan clansmen. Yeah. They gave up their robes and he's got a closet full of them and denounced the clan altogether from conversations that he had with them directly. And, uh, something like that seems, uh, in order in, uh, in United States and, uh, another thing that I think that's really, uh, evident as part of the problem is the one big difference, uh, now then maybe in the last couple of elections is social media. Right. So the, uh, I don't know if, uh, some of the audience has, um, you know, the whole YouTube thing. So if let's say you're a little bit right at center. Right. They'll, uh, feed you while you're eating. That's exactly right. And, uh, and it, it amplifies anything that you're looking for. Right. Good or bad. Right. Right. Right. It's going to amplify it. And so I think social media does it, whether it's Facebook, uh, do you watch the social media? I saw it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wanted to delete all the social media accounts right now. I did. Yeah. Well, I deleted my Facebook. Yeah. And I, we were actually, it's either a tool or you're the tool. Right. Uh, DaVinci was actually advertising on Facebook with a, we, uh, canceled that really right after watching that. Uh, the other ones I think that are really, uh, kind of bring some of this to light or the, uh, the perfect weapon. Watch the few nights ago. Okay. Uh, documentary. And, uh, it's pretty important. Shed some light on, uh, a lot of the same issue, um, with social media. So I think it's something, I think we need a, like a national. We hate your social movements movement to, uh, delete your social media account because I think that's really part of the problem. And I, and so, you know, uh, I've been in four counts a long time. And I know a lot of people here, 50% of them are so far right to the Trump side supporter. And the other 50% are got their points. So anti, uh, and think he is, well, I think there's like 10% of us that are like, both these factors kind of suck, you know, no offense, but like, like both these parties, I'm not talking about Biden. I'm not talking about Trump, but the parties wield so much control, I feel like these days in a national stage. Is that wrong? Well, maybe not because Trump kind of took over the Republican party, like it was his. I've never seen anything like it. And, uh, I don't know, the disappointing part to me is I don't see the other rep, because I voted on the Republican side and the Democratic side. I think I'm a good bridge builder. You're independent, independent. And, uh, you know, depending on the person and, uh, I know a lot of people say, party Trump's person. But, uh, in this case, I can't say that, um, you know, and I don't always follow that down the line. But, uh, so yeah, it's scary times. Yeah, for sure. Well, I think, uh, you know, it's, uh, it's a challenge that we don't know how we're going to find our way out of it. I hope it's not with guns. Yeah. I guess is what I would say. Um, so faith, family of those faith. Uh, what's that journey been like for you? Well, it's an interesting story for me. I was, uh, raised in a good Catholic family. Um, you know, five brothers, sisters, uh, my dad's, uh, French Catholic was born in France and moved to, does he speak French? Uh, he did when he was a kid. Right. Um, I think later in life, he lost it, uh, from Bordeaux and, uh, my mom, Southern Baptist. So, so they got together, uh, met in a, um, in a hospital. He served in World War II in Panama, got malaria, went to, uh, Georgia in a, in a hospital in a hospital, uh, met my mom there. So, you know, French Catholic, uh, and he's from, uh, New Jersey. And so they, they moved there, raised Catholic, pretty strong Catholic. Interesting. And then, uh, oh, moved to Jersey, where there was a lot more Catholics. If they'd moved to, right. Yeah, maybe, maybe it would have been Baptist, but, uh, uh, uh, so from there, then, uh, moved the boulder, uh, met a girl, got married and she's, uh, the Jewish faith. Right. Okay. And so I actually converted the duty. They had to to marry her, right? Um, at the time. Right. Oh, they don't require that anymore. Well, it's never really acquired. If you want to, you know, I guess be, keep peace in the family. And you know, I was really never, you know, as a young man, really never strong, not too interested in it, anyway, uh, in any faith, right? So, and they're very common. There's, there's, there's a lot in common there. Sure. So converted to the, uh, to the Jewish faith and, uh, you know, it's, and lived in La Port, Colorado for 15 years. So, you know, not that many Jews in La Port. No, not that many. And, uh, we were probably the only ones. And we, you know, uh, um, she was not very, uh, yeah, Jewish. Jewish. I hear. Yeah. Sometimes she, she was not, uh, practicing faith and, and I didn't either. Of course. So, I mean, we're both, you know, mostly, uh, I wouldn't say agnostic, but, you know, not, not like a lot of Catholics aren't. Yeah. Not religious. Yeah, not religious. You know, I mean, it's about raising family, but, uh, so there and, uh, and then we split after, you know, uh, a long marriage and everything. And so then I'm kind of, uh, I say, uh, I'm the true Judeo Christian, yeah, because, you know, great. You got a little bit. I've got a little buff, but, uh, well, and then Rhonda goes to church sometimes and stuff like that. I've seen her at events and stuff. Yeah. Rhonda's, uh, and I, uh, joined Rhonda in church quite a bit when she goes on when it's not COVID. Right. Um, yeah. And, uh, you know, uh, there's a good message there. Most times, uh, so foundations. I, I've drugged to St. Joe's on occasion. Okay. Yeah. Oh, even to the Catholic church. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. So, um, I can hear the St. Joe's bells from my house. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a nice tradition. Well, it sounds like you have like a strong appreciation for like the, the wisdom and teaching of these various elements of faith, but not necessarily an active interest, if you will. Not, not too active. But, but the wisdom, you know, you say, uh, good teachings, good, good talks and stuff like that. Yeah. It's a good foundation. Can there be, like, that was one of the things that kept me away from faith for a long time was, was frankly the, the Irish Catholics were bombing the, the Protestant stuff and like, if these guys are both Christians and they're killing each other, like, what kind of Christians are they? Yeah. And it, does that play into your background too? Oh, definitely. You know, especially with what's going on with the Catholic church now. Well, in the politics, the politics and, you know, all of that. I mean, there's a lot, and there's a lot of negativity there. Right. Um, so yeah, it does kind of, uh, most of the people that I meet that are very anti-religious, it's because of, you know, people they've met our stories at red or whatever, they're like, uh, no, I don't want no part of that. Yeah. I don't know what I want a part of. And I think that's part of maybe what the world is struggling with right now, not just our country, but the world as a whole is what is the purpose of life? Like it was one thing, you know, it was like, okay, we're supposed to try to do these things or do those things and there's like, whether you're Catholic, there's a pope or whether you're this guy and you could kind of have a sense of direction, but if you got nothing, then what am I aiming at? It's a good question. Yeah. So if you didn't have any of those backgrounds, uh, you know, where does it lead you? But, you know, the other thing that that I've seen and feel that, uh, you know, a lot of religions are divisive. Right. You either believe this or you're wrong or you're against me or you're against me with me 100% and I don't believe that and never have. Yeah. And, uh, it's still, you know, we have a big problem with that. I mean, either it's either my way of the highway. Um, so yeah, no, it's kind of a, is there more harm than good in it sometimes? Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Um, well, thank you for for sharing. I know it's an interesting way to end a podcast is to, uh, to delve into the third rail topics. Is there any other third rail topics you'd like to touch on? We want to talk about masks, abortion, um, race, those things for, let's see, how many more hours do we have? No, we don't have enough. We don't have enough time. Let's see. Um, let's see, I've got, I've got a funny story I can tell about the sign business. Let's hear it. Yeah. Let's see. So, um, you know, electronic message centers you'd see, you know, we can change the message, uh, from a computer. And so we've done a whole bunch of them throughout town and we happened to do one on East Harmony Road for a restaurant. Okay. Somies. And so, uh, a lot of the common message centers for a restaurant that had a bar might say happy hour, four to six. Sure. And so they were there for a while and then down the street, uh, we did one for cruise elementary school. Which happens to be maybe a half mile away. Uh, they get a different time for their happy hour, uh, brand new display. And so I don't know, a couple of years later, uh, we get a phone call from the, the principal want to know why his, uh, that he thinks he's been hacked by the students that their message centers has happy hour, four to six. And so the messages got crossed, uh, due to the, uh, physical distance. And I like to say that, you know, his, uh, parent teacher conference went up by like 200%. Right. Everybody wanted to come to have the hour in the school at cruise elementary. So, yeah, that's my funny message center story. That's awesome. Um, well, I think we might as well just wrap this up. If, if you had like one or two things that, that aspiring manufacturers or aspiring entrepreneurs would want to know, like early on, like if somebody's working in industry, they've had a knack for it. Like when you first started in the sign business, you're like, this has got all the things that I really like. You know, maybe I can make my own way in this someday or whatever. Like are there things that you would really resonate with sharing with them? Yeah, I think the first thing is you have to be really flexible. Okay. Uh, as far as, you know, what, what's the market going to do? And you have to be in tune with that. Um, you know, where's, where's it headed? And, um, be able to turn, you know, a lot of big companies, uh, you know, example, Kodak, in Windsor, right? I mean, everybody's gone digital 10 years before in Kodak, still making regular cameras. And like they weren't able to turn. And they invented it. Correct. Right. And so, uh, they're too, too big to be able to be, uh, agile. So you've got to be able to make sure that where that opportunity is now where there's not enough people providing for that thing. Sure. You've got to be able to make changes to whatever the market demand is and stay in front of that. Um, otherwise it'll just go right past you. Um, and say an example for us might be, uh, I don't know, sandblasting, uh, of cars, stone signs. Like that got really big. And, you know, we jumped on board trying to get in front of that and, you know, bought the tools and equipment, people like that. Right. If you thought it was just to do, like, we're going to have this one sign and then we're going to just outsource our sandblasting and our stonework and whatever. But then it just keeps coming and keeps coming. So you got to have that capacity to take advantage of those options. Yeah. And invest, invest in that part of it. And, uh, so, um, that and then their persistent story, you know, my rather rocky story just to be persistent because there's all kinds of roadblocks, uh, speed bumps, cones, um, to prevent you to get you from where you're going. And you have to, uh, just keep that vision and keep a positive attitude to just, you know, keep going. Um, let's, let's regulation and industry and one of our big challenges is just, you know, how to pay sales taxes when you've got 30 or 40 different jurisdictions. Uh, Colorado is like one of the most difficult in the country. And you're selling big expensive stuff to a limited number of things. Imagine if you were selling $50 things to 80 or 150 different jurisdictions. Right. It's, it's challenging. So, yeah, lots of challenges, but you just stay focused in, you know, uh, and I say, uh, you know, hire the E team. Instead of the 18, the E team is, uh, everything. Right. You know, uh, staff that, uh, have it all, you know, what's your special sauce in that? Like you've been able to have some of those tribe building, some like, why do people like to work for John and Chai? I think it's, uh, A, uh, hopefully they like to work for me as much as they like to work for Da Vinci and the industry as well. Right. Uh, that it's a creative field. And, you know, I think I've always been able to put myself in, in the shoes of, uh, the staff, you know, because I've been there. Right. Uh, you know, and, and you've worked all those jobs, worked, worked all those jobs and, and I kind of know, uh, you know, the problems with it and, you know, I can see where they're coming from. Right. I think I have a pretty good understanding of the challenges there and, uh, sympathetic to, to those, you know, to help people succeed. And, um, so yeah, so the E team, you know, positive, good attitude, good work ethic. And I like to say spreads pixie dust. Right. Wherever they go. So, you know, spreading to some of that around. Leave good cheer, not otherwise. Well, and if you can, if you can build an E team, it's easy to add to the E team. It's hard to add people to a broken team. Right. When you have the E team, they're going to come to you. Right. Right. Because they're going to hear about it, because it's a small community. And so, uh, yeah, we've got Eric is on our E team, ease for Eric. He does a great job for us too. So, hey, um, thank you, John. Okay. This has been a fun time. And I want to just, uh, just say thanks for making. Thank you for listening to today's episode of the local experience podcast. This is Kurt Baer, founder of the local think tank and hosted the local experience. And I'm here with Rory Shah, local business developer and hosted the local shorts episodes. We hope you heard some new ideas and business perspectives in this episode. Our mission and all that we do, including this podcast, is to share collaborative business ideas and solutions that uplift the business community. Subscribe and follow us for you listening to podcasts to get new episodes as they are released. Curious about logo? You can learn more about us at localthinktakes.com, where you'll find more information about our chapters, business resources and events for business owners and engineers. If you're looking for perspective, accountability and encouragement along your business journey, why not apply for a chapter near you today? Why not? Why not? Why not? We'll catch you next time on the in-depth local experience podcast with me, Kurt. And with me, Rory, for Bite Size business lessons in the local shorts. Bye!