EXPERIENCE 123 | Tales of a Creative Engineer with Dan Bennett, Marketing Manager at Lightning eMotors

Dan Bennett is in his second season with lightning emotors, previously known as lightning hybrids, and has had a front row seat to the evolution of a significant local enterprise, now employing over 200 as the anchor tenant on the Forge campus in Loveland. Initially offering hydraulic hybrid drive frame modifications to enhance fuel efficiency, lightning hybrids subsequently shifted its entire business model and name to instead provide fully electric drive frame systems for mid-sized commercial transportation, as lightning emotors. They found a growing market share in this space and are closing it on partnerships with major manufacturers that will position them well for the electrification of our transportation system in the years ahead. Before his journey with lightning, Dan had a long career at Hewlett Packard, beginning in his native UK and opening his path to Northern Colorado, initially as a short-term commitment, but quickly becoming their family's new forever home. Dan's journey is filled with learning and creativity, a passable engineer by his own account, that found more utility and roles involving communicating and demonstrating. Dan has a fun accent and a sparkling personality, and I hope you enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Dan. Let's have some fun. Welcome to the local 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, business stories, life stories, stories of triumph and of tragedy, 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 local experience podcast. I'm going to let my guest today introduce himself because we're trying something new. Look at the camera and tell us about yourself. I'm Dan Bennett and I work for Lightning Emotors, based in Loveland, just down the road. My title there is Marketing Manager, but really I'm just the creative in-house guru doing all the photography and video and animation and websites. All the fun stuff. Because I'm creative, I'm not on the accounting team. You know that you've seen a lot of growth at Lightning Emotors, that's for sure. Seen a lot of growth, both in the market coverage we've got and in the personnel. When I started in the company in February 2015, it was about 30 people. It's now 260. I'm trying to remember when it started. It started 2009. I remember when it was kind of coming out of CSU's venture accelerator that was Tim Reese's project. Yeah, because he was part of the CSU faculty even. I think so. Then brought the idea out. Anyway, we don't need to ask all the questions. One question I wanted to ask with a real hard question right off the bat is in California they've banned future sales of anything but electric vehicles. Starting 2035. Is that something that your organization would celebrate? Does that seem like a little too? Well, let's put it this way. California is our largest target market. Right. Didn't have your feelings. Didn't have your feelings. So what Lightning does, we do electric vehicles, but they are the commercial mid-duty, medium-duty vehicles. So Joe Public doesn't necessarily buy your products. Correct. I mean, the smallest vehicle we do, if I imagine the biggest, baddest transit value I've ever seen, the ones that groomed transportation used. Sure. That's the smallest vehicle we do. I see. Right. And yes, we are talking to groom about getting some electric vehicles. Yeah, yeah. I actually, a piece of history here I had Bob Flynn on the podcast because I was the banker that financed green ride originally, which became groom. Yes, indeed. So I was there even before the company really started in some of their planning meetings and talking about, can we actually think about doing a natural gas-powered bus is that insane? Yes, it was. Yeah. Not a lot of those around. So tell me some of the benefits of electric power trains for these big transportation units. So I could use the entire time talking about that. Tell me some of the keys. I'll try not to get too technical. What gives you benefit? So one of the biggest benefits of all is the cost of ownership. Right. And that's divided into two parts and both are really interesting. One is maintenance costs. Sure. And the other one is fuel costs. Another one is how much money you're paying to drive this thing along the road. To power it up. Yeah. Let's start with the fuel one. There's a key difference between what we call ice engines. Ice is an internal combustion engine. Right. So ice engines like gasoline and diesel. They're everywhere, of course, a very well-proven technology. But they have one big, couple of big drawbacks. One of them is the CO2 they emit. Of course, because anytime you're burning carbon. And not just CO2, but all the generalized produce. Natural noxides and smog. And certain everything. Yes, exactly. All those emissions that are both greenhouse emissions and local air quality emissions. Sure. A lot of that comes from ice engines. But not only are they emitting, but they also have, and not many people realize this, they have really low efficiency. So for the energy you buy. Turning an explosion into forbomentum isn't really that efficient. Correct. Right. So it's about 27% efficient. Oh, is that all? Yes. So of only chemical energy, even diesel. Yeah. So diesel may be slightly higher. But of all the chemical energy that you're buying when you fill your tank. Nearly three quarters of it just gets wasted as heat. Yeah. And that's why we have to have these radiators and keeping them cool. Exactly right. There's tons of heat coming off the engine. Yeah. Which in North Dakota in the winter time, you're like using all of it just to keep the cabin warm. Not all of it. Just a little bit of it. That's the thing. But yes. So, but an electric motor, an automose of electric motor, is typically 85 to 90% efficient. Wow. Right. Which means for the electrical power you're putting in, almost all of that power turns into mechanical power coming out. Yeah. Right. Well, and how efficient is, say, the natural gas plant that created electricity? Good question. And how much loss in that? Right. Good question. The natural gas from what I recall, natural gas generation plants are around 50% efficient. Right. Right. Because they're bigger and they're running constantly and there's no idle time lost and all that. So, they're around 50%. And it turns out that natural gas generation generates a lot less CO2 per kilowatt hour generated than coal. Sure. For example, we can talk about emissions if it's emissions in a little bit. Talk about a little bit. Talking about the cost of fueling. So, there's this figure that we use in the electrical vehicle industry called MPGE. Miles per gallon equivalent. There. Right. And it sounds like it'd be really difficult to calculate, but it's not too, too bad. It's based on the fact that one U.S. gallon of gasoline, and I come from England where the gallons are bigger. Right. One U.S. gallon of gasoline has about what the equivalent of 33 kilowatt hours of energy. Okay. And for the geeks out there, one kilowatt hour is 3.6 megajoules per for anyone wanting to do some calculations. And it's what we at least used to pay like eight and a half cents for. Well, yeah. And now it's four bucks and eighty three and a half bucks for a gallon, right? Right. No, but for the kilowatt hour for one kilowatt hour. One kilowatt hour electrically is about ten cents. Ten cents, yeah. Okay. Easy to. Yes, exactly. Now, so therefore, if we have a vehicle, and this is what I like to talk about, our vehicles, we might have a vehicle with two battery packs. Each battery pack takes 40 kilowatt hours. Okay. This is our smaller vehicle. Yep. We've got bigger vehicles with more battery packs. And that's 80 kilowatt hours in total. I can charge them up and drive this 10,000 pound vehicle 140 miles. Okay. On one charge, right? Yep. Now, each battery pack stores about the same amount of energy as one and a quarter gallons of gasoline. Okay. Which is, so 40 kilowatt hours is a little more than the 33 kilowatt hours in a gallon of gasoline. Yep. So imagine that I took one and a quarter gallons of gasoline twice and put it in a 10,000 pound gasoline vehicle. Would I go 140 miles on two and a half gallons of gas? Hardly. No. I'm lucky to get 25 or 30, right? So for the amount of energy you put in, electric vehicles go around four times further down the road than a gasoline vehicle. Yeah. So whatever you think about, you know, the generation of CO2 from electricity, and I'll come to that topic in a little bit if you want. It's just so much more efficient use of the world's energy resources to drive electric. Sure. Right? Well, I had an electric car for a while, the BMW i3. Sure. Yeah. And outside of the, you know, Mustang beating a stoplit acceleration and in the cheap cost of fueling, as you say. But the maintenance, like the two-year maintenance on it was changed the brake fluid. Yes. Exactly. And that's the same thing with us. So that was the other part of the cost of ownership equation, right? Yeah. So you're perfect. That's a great segue. So the other part of the cost of ownership is maintenance. And you're right. There's very little to do. There's no valve gaps. There's no spark plugs. There's no diesel filter. Transmission fluid. Well, you probably do have that. We have a gearbox. It's a single-speed gearbox. Okay. And it does have fluid. And I think that gets changed every 150,000 miles. Right. Or something. Right. And then we have these coolant circuits that move heat around the system. Sure. Like for... Well, because you have to create heat, right? Well... Just to keep the passengers warm. Yes. Yes. Exactly right. You've perceived that. So with the motor being so efficient, it doesn't throw off enough heat to heat the cabin like a gas engine does. Sure. So yeah, we have an onboard electric heater. So are you... Do you have a marketing background or do you have a science background? Because you seem like at least you've digested this stuff pretty well. Yes. My background is electronic and electrical engineering. Ah. I wondered. Right. But I was a terrible engineer. Always doing in stuff. Having... Well, when I was at university in England, I was supposed to be studying electrical engineering and I spent most of my time hanging out with music students. They were my buddies. Yeah. And then I graduated just about. And then I thought, okay, I want to build myself and an audio mixer. But like the one you've got here in the studio. Yeah. Because this was quite a while ago when that was... I just wanted to put together a quick circuit connected to a three synthesizers together for music making. And I opened up my textbooks and built something. And this thing worked better when it was switched off than when it was switched off. So I thought, okay, I'm not class out for the engineering thing. And throughout my career, because I spend a lot of time working for HP, 23 years on HP, I did some software. But again, I was mediocre at that. And more and more, I gravitated into... When I was HP, I became basically a product evangelist, if you've ever heard that term, which is basically a demo... A demo artist extraordinaire for a certain product line. Well, it's not too far away from like a selling engineer kind of role sometimes. You have to know enough about how this works to be able to sell it. Totally. But be able to also speak the language of the people that have wanted to buy it. So the biggest example of that from my years at HP was when HP entered the market of what's called color critical displays, which is a kind of computer monitor that's used by Hollywood when they're producing the movies, right? Or by top flight photographers. And those monitors are color critical because you need to be able to trust what you see in front of you. Because you're adjusting the color of your content. Sure. Adjusting the brightness, the tone, everything. Yeah, the full experience almost, or not the full experience, but a lot of it. I mean, you think of a movie like 300, right? Sure. The colors on that are just way out. They're very, very fantasy colors. Yeah. The goals and the bronzes. Yeah, almost like a pan tone or something. Yeah, almost. Well, that's what's called a director's look. But you can't be sure that you're editing to that look unless you can trust the monitor in front of you. Sure. And so I found myself demonstrating the first of these products known as DreamColor at the time. And I had no clue what I was talking about. Yeah, that red is really red. That was about how we call that super red. Yeah. And I had to do a super deep dive into color science to understand how the eye works, how the brain works, how color computing works. In order to be able to articulate what the monitor was doing, why it was special, and to be able to talk to Hollywood colorists. Who are super geeky people, right? And so that became a real passion of mine. But you're exactly right. You can't talk technology without understanding it. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I want to talk a lot more about lightning in that journey that you've had because you're one of the OGs now down there. But I think it informs the story when we jump in the time machine early. Okay. And obviously the UK was where your journey started. Yes. Talk to me about the situation of your arrival. Where you know arrival in the UK. What were your parents doing? Did you have older brothers? I have a younger brother. Okay. He's still in London. I was born in London. I was born in London. I was annoyed with my dad recently because there's a term in London culture called Cockney. Yeah. Right. It's called Cockney guys who talk a little funnier than others. And they've got their own language. Their own slang language, which makes it almost impenetrable for anybody else. It's really cool. But the cultural description of Cockney is to be born within the sound of the bells of St Mary Bow. Oh. Right. Now, because it's so noisy now, you can't tell. There's so much traffic. And so there are like three London boroughs where if you're born within those boroughs, then you can call yourself a Cockney. Okay. I was born two miles outside, so I can't call myself a Cockney. Not quite, but dad. You still talk a little funny though for my ear. Sure. So. So I come from a Jewish family. Okay. So my parents both Jewish. They've got Jewish generation. Is that a generation? Pretty common in London. Sure. Oh, yeah. Like a lot of Jews in North London, especially. Even before or was that where like Jews from World War II escaped to sometimes? I would think so. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a little, little hazy on my family history. Okay. I talked to my mom and she says that she's a descendant of the guy who led the Jews back from, from Poland into England. Oh. During the time of Oliver Cromwell. Oh, wow. Because one of the King Edwards, I forget which one of Edward the first, second or third. Right. Bad Jews. He had expelled Jews from England. Okay. That was it. No Jews. Yeah. And Oliver Cromwell thought was his stupid. The Jews are really smart people. Right. Well, and wasn't Cromwell kind of the guy that united the peoples again a little bit around not being so much around a church because it was Church of England and Catholics? Yes, probably. Yes. He was, he was, he was a pretty authoritarian, but more of a manager type of person. Okay. Yeah. I mean, they just gone through the Civil War. Yeah. And the Civil War was the royalist person. No fun for anybody. Right. Anyway, so my mother's ancestry is that. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And I asked my dad about his ancestry and he just told me how many aunts and uncles he's got. And I thought, Dad, I was hoping for a little more insight. I don't think he knows. So was a Polish Jews, for example, like was that when the Jews were expelled from, you know, way back when, like, you know, post Jesus kind of and stuff and kind of scattered around the diaspora. Yes. Sorry. Thanks for the word. Was it still that people group that was, or did they kind of marry into an intermingle like with the polls, for example? And so the Polish Jews have a little more. It's probably some of that. But mostly they would remain an intact people. Yeah. Across Europe, there, I mean, this is going right through the, it's a very wandering part of a discussion. It was great. Yeah. There are basically two groups of European Jews. There's the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi. Okay. I've heard of both of those groups. Right. Ashkenazi Jews. I'm just making sure I'm getting this right, right, right, right round. The Ashkenazi Jews are the ones in Eastern Europe, Germany, Russia, Poland, and so on, right? Yep. And then the Sephardi Jews tend to be more in Spain and Portugal. Mediterranean, almost. Mediterranean area. Okay. Yep. That makes sense. So that was, and I think I come from Ashkenazi stock. Seems like. Yeah. Basically on the travel. My daughter, one of my daughters did a DNA test. Okay. And it was really funny. It came up 50% European Jew. Okay. Okay. Well, that's me. Whatever it was in Europe, I'm European Jew. Yeah. The other 50% was English from the South, from a small region in the New Forest. I'm thinking, yeah, that's my wife. Yeah, it's interesting. Her family did not get around very much. That's wild. Well, my, my actually surname bearer, I thought for a long time was like a misspelled German surname, because there's some of the B-H-R on B-A-E-R, but it's actually Old English. And even though I'm just a very small fraction English, the surname carried through a bunch of, you know, Germans and Greeks and Dutch and different things. Spanish. But yeah, and they were here in America in the 1750s, reportedly. Wow. Very unsuccessful, because there's very few bears around the whole country, really usually like at the, you know, the Wilbur's member list, they'll be like, you know, what's your name and I'll be like, bear. They're like, first name. I'm like, I'm probably the only one, you know, I digress. So that was your family background, was I. I was born in London, but my job, sorry, so I was going to, I was going to speculate and the stereotypes that your dad was a banker in London. He was an accountant. Oh, I was really close. Yes. Yeah, he was a certified accountant. So this is probably what, like in the 60s or something, yeah, I was born mid 60s. Yeah, so that's, like Britain has kind of recovered some from, like, losing the reserve currency stuff and things like that, like the post-World War II decade was pretty rough. And then it kind of started getting better, is that fair? Sure. Yeah. That's been, you know, whatever. Yeah. Okay. What one of the interesting dynamics was that I was very nearly Australian. My, during those years, there was a program of, of basically free travel, of very cheap, very cheap, emigration from England to Australia, because Australia was people with convicts. Right. And they wanted professionals like the accountants and the bankers and shoppers, right? Yeah. So in the mid 60s, there was a program going where you could basically pay 10 pounds, I think. Right. And you'd get a ticket to Australia. And my parents were going to do that, but my mum was pretty sick when she was pregnant with me. Yeah. And so they dropped that by, yeah. Yeah. You'd talk even funnier if you were from Australia. Yes. So anyway, so urban environment, obviously, not, you know, not so much. We left London when I was 18 months old. Oh, wow. So I remember nothing of it. Right. It's a suffoc, which is a rural county on the east coast. Okay. It's northeast of London, about 80 miles away from London, thereabouts, because my dad landed a job as the financial director of a regional brewery, bit of brewery. Oh, cool. I, uh, most of my knowledge of, uh, it's been supplemented at least with like all the Viking shows on, uh, and that's okay, but the star not, and that flexed stuff like that because it's all these English towns and different things as the Vikings were battling them. Yes. So we lived out here. We lived outside. It's really interesting. We lived outside Ipswich. Mm. Yeah. Right. And Ipswich is a Norse name. Right. It's short for Gip is Wic. Because the river Gipping that goes through. Okay. And the Wic means like a harbor. Yeah. That's where you can get into that river system almost. But I lived in a village called Codenham, which is actually a Saxon name. Yeah. It's a lake. So quite the melting pot there. Right. Yeah. Going back 1200 years. Yeah. So, so your dad was a high up financial guy for this brewery. Yeah. Free beer always in the fridge. No. Lots of free beer labels. My, my mom used to run a club for sending beer labels. You know, like you get baseball cards or something. Yeah. People used to do beer labels. I don't know why, but she used to send beer labels all around Europe, all around the world. Interesting. She used to write to her and say, could you send me labels from these things? Yeah. So, tell me about your school and like were you? So, my schooling was boys' private schools. Okay. Which I loved. And the first one was a prep school. Yeah. And I was a day boy, which means, you know, taken there in the morning and brought home at night. And then at the age, so that was the age of about six to twelve. And then following off from that, I was at a, what we call a public school. Okay. So, in England, when you say public school, that means a private school. Okay. So, the public schools are the set of kind of like the Ivy League schools in England, right? Oh, sure. And I don't know for sure, but I think they're called public schools because in the past, if you wanted to be in public service like Prime Minister of England or Vice Roy of India. Sure. Then you would better have been to one of these schools, like Etern or Harrow or Winchester. Yeah, yeah. My parents sent me to one called the Lee's in Cambridge. Okay. So, you know, rubbing shoulders with Cambridge University was just great. The real advantage is there. And that's kind of a tear down from the top flight ones. Sure. Not as expensive either. Sure. But I loved it. I was there for five years. Wow. Student from six years old to seventeen. Wow. What an interesting experience. Still a boy's school. All boys. They waited until I'd gone before they let girls. I was just safe after that. And what, did you travel somewhere else for your second, because the secondary would come next, right? You're seventeen now or whatever. Yeah. So at seventeen, I spent a year back at the prep school on staff, dividing software for their administrative database. That was pretty fun. So they advanced you pretty fast and you're learning. Yeah. That was leading edge at that time, right? Oh, yeah. This would have been 1987 or something. Yeah. On a computer running CPM. And probably nobody remembers CPM. It was a. I don't remember that one. Basic. I remember that. How I was writing in basic, but the operating system was CPM. Okay. I gotcha. And yeah, that was fun. Because the school was, school was very idiosyncratic in how it structured its classes and its data. And so I had to write software that reflected that. But that was really fun. Yeah. One of the best experiences actually at my, what I guess you'd call high school in Cambridge, going back to this adjacency with Cambridge University. Yeah. They had a program for the senior boys called the Senior Science Society. Okay. And so every month we'd have some scientists come in and talk to us. Oh, wow. And so because we were there in Cambridge, we had some Nobel Prize winners. Yeah. Right. So Anthony Hewish, whose team discovered pulsars. Okay. He took the credit, but there's actually a woman on his stuff. He discovered them. So yeah. Do you want to name her if you can? Oh, gosh. Because she deserves credit. She does. What was her name? Joyce, someone maybe. I can't recall. Well, anyway. If you're curious that they're listening, you can look her up and give her credit instead of Anthony. Yes. And so he came and talked to us about pulsars, which was cool. Sure. And we had Dr. Max Peruz, who was a, who's this sweet old Swiss guy. And he, his team figured out how to identify the structure of the hemoglobin protein in blood. Using x-ray crystallography, which was pioneering at the time. Yeah. So that was super cool. And I was the secretary, which meant that every time we had a talk, I'd be the one writing it up in this leather red bound, red leather bound volume for posterity. Yeah. Yeah, that's quite a, it sets quite a legacy of, like, how important your work can be. And different things like that. And just that notion of sharpening one another with our thoughts. Totally. Yeah. Oh, it was so inspiring. Yeah. Very cool. So I went to university at the age of 18 in Surrey, which is just southwest of London. Okay. The town was called Guildford. And that's where I studied electronic and electrical engineering. Okay. That's better. What led you to decide that that was your path? Sound like you were gifted in computers already? Okay. Believe it or not, believe it or not. I used to enjoy watching Star Trek. And I just loved this concept of sitting where you've got all these knobs and buttons and switches in front of you and electronics didn't do it. Yeah. Fair enough. How can I get all those knobs and buttons? Right. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. And I enjoyed the course, but I was not really cut out to be an engineer. Yeah. You didn't have any trouble with the math, though. Yes. Totally. That's what convinced me to be an economist instead of an engineer who was Cuck2. The math was, I just failed it. Caculas1, I could muscle through. Yeah. I was a little bit careless too. I just couldn't like make it. No, any engineers listening will probably know what eigenvectors and eigenvalues are. And that's where I stopped. I could not get past that. Fair enough. So what was that early career like for you? So that was accelerated for me because it was a, what we call a sandwich course in the UK. Which basically means there's an internship baked into the program. Sure. And the nice thing is that the university would place you the third year of the program. So it was a four year program. And the third year was an internship. Wow. Right. And then the university would find a place for you. And then hopefully that company wants to keep you after you're done too. Which they absolutely did. Yeah. And that was a company which was a division of user craft. Okay. Called Hughes Microelectronics. Okay. And is Hughes a British company? No. No. No. Okay. The user craft is based out of Long Beach, California. Yeah. That's right. Okay. And then the company was built by an Eastern microelectronics partner being bought by, and I can't remember. This is a century. Right. And we were in an integrated circuit design office. Okay. And that was, that was a ton of fun. Yeah. New stuff at that time, I imagine, right? Well, yes and no. I mean, yes. We were working with non-volatile CMOS technology. Which is, so one of our chips, for example, was one of the very first digital odometer chips on the vehicle. Interesting. Right? So when your car clocks up the miles, you want to make sure that when you switch off the car and take out the battery and put the battery back in and switch on the car again, the mileage isn't forgotten. Yes. That's non-volatile. Yeah. Right? Non-volatile means memory which sticks around rather than evaporates when you take out the power. So we had a chip that was non-volatile odometer for BMW vehicles at the time. Interesting. Were there the first to the market with that? I think so. It seems likely. Pretty close. I don't know, BMW from about those days and it was so weird to see a little digital. Yeah. It was pretty much a new thing. Yeah. And I was involved in helping BMW understand how to use it at the time. So I guess that's a bit of engineering. Yeah. So how does that work? Like, is that almost like, because it's there a supplier basically for BMW and they're like, well, we were a supplier to a company called VDO, or in German, Foudeo. Okay. It's a big global supplier, a European supplier of dashboards for vehicles. Yeah. Okay. Right. Interesting. It's just the sales process quite like you were in a very kind of complex, consultative sales kind of element. Almost right from the beginning. I was not personally engaged in that. I was in the team that actually designed chips. Yeah. Okay. So for example, I am named on a patent from those days. Oh. It was the easiest, easiest patent naming anyone has ever had in history, I think. Right. My manager came to me and one other junior guy and said, we've got this design cooking. We want to make it more fault tolerant. In other words, we want to make sure it's got error correction. Go away and think about it and tell me how you would do it. Truth about it for about 15 minutes and said, well, I would just double up the number of transistors and connect them like this. Yeah. The guy thought about it. We presented our ideas. Mine was adopted and I was named on the patent. Perfect. 15 minutes and that. Yeah. And it's on my resume. Yeah. Should be. Yeah. Should be. Love it. So are you still a single guy? Are you a single guy now? You'll still be wearing a ring. Did you find a lady in long this journey yet? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I found my wife at the university in Gilford. Okay. We now have four kids. Nice. Oh, 29. I think she just turned. And she lives in Atlanta. So is this, she's probably not there yet though at this stage in your career. Is that right? Not following me. Like I'm in the chronology. I'm trying to win the first. Oh, correct. But you're already with your wife at this point in your career early on. Yeah. So she. Correct. So when I was working for this company that did the, this silicon design, no, I didn't, I had my wife but no kids at that time. Well, and the kids helped inform the next choices and things like that. So what's, what's the next step or is there? Well, so I lost the job at Hughes because they closed that office. So we're all laid off. Yeah. And I almost immediately found myself placed by a recruiting agent at HP. Oh. You look Packard. Is that what moved you to Fort Collins? Yes, ultimately. Right away. Or no, they had places over there and stuff too. Yeah. So I was working for HP in the UK probably for about, let's see, about nine years. Okay. Um, but I started in the customer's customer response center customer service telephone. Okay. Support. Yeah. Supporting workstations. Clients that are kind of complex clients. So you got to have just smart enough to talk to them. And then you can figure out what the tech guys, what to really get done. Well, yeah. Sometimes. So one of the best calls I ever had was, um, it was University of Manchester, um, Institute of Science and Technology. I know that because it was called you missed. They had a, a, um, network of a certain type of computer that all their engineers used. And a lot of students used as well. And there's a system called the registry, which allows people to log in. Right. It's not the same registry that's on Windows. It's a different one. So this was kind of unique. And so this went down. And so nobody on the campus could log into these workstations. It's significant. And we knew how to fix this because it happens fairly frequently. Okay. So he calls in. I call him back. And I walk him through a series of steps. Okay. And I said to him, okay, what's happening now? And there's a pause. And he says, there is a smell of saved bacon around here. Oh. If I saved his bacon, you know, Oh gosh. I was imagining toasted wires or. You know, the smell of saved bacon. I love it. I love it. Yeah, I was early in my banking career because I was kind of the young guy and computers were new for somebody in that industry. They were like, oh, my computer's not working. Can you help me turn it off and turn it back on again? It gets a long way. Yeah. That's right. But during that time, I was poached into a team that was actually headquartered out of Fort Collins. Oh, okay. Yeah. Was that a hard decision for you? Were you like keen on an international experience or family? I was fairly keen. So I was in the team based in Europe for a while. And then my manager's manager who lives here in Fort Collins. I'm a great guy. He kept saying to me, come on out for nine months. Bring your family. We'll pay for accommodation and a car and everything. Just get to know the factory, get to know everybody. Yeah. And I thought, you know, my wife won't be interested. There's going to be a bit disrupt if we had two kids by this stage. Yep. And eventually he was persistent. So I spoke to my wife and she could not wait. Oh. I told my dad that we're getting over for nine months and he said, that's it, then, isn't it? You're not coming back. Oh, gosh. So what was it about your early career, I guess, and your, you know, whatever nine years in or something like that, that caused, you know, people to want to bring you in. What was your special sauce that you were exhibiting in your career at that time? I think my expertise was computer graphics. That was what interested me. Yeah. Anything visual, anything we creative with. Yeah. And so there was a desire to have someone on the team who understood that. Was that something that was kind of spontaneously developing? Or were you, you know, a doodler or an artist as a teenager or things like that? Not really. I just enjoyed making pretty colors on the screen and figuring out the technology behind how graphics works. Well, and then later it sounds like you really got into that. Totally. You know, you've got a lot of different stuff and whatever else. So, so we made the transfer to Fort Collins. It was supposed to be a nine month thing. And circling me. This is coming up in the mid 90s, 2000, okay? Yeah. And during the time that we were here, it became pretty clear that nobody wanted to go back. That we could stay. Sorry. Yeah. Right. We wanted to stay. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about those first impressions as a, what, your upper 20s young you can. From the UK. It was for Collins wasn't nearly as well as well at that time. So I remember our first night we went to a store and we bought Ritz crackers because that was familiar. Yeah. It was, it was a bit baffling. HP looked after us really well though. HP actually engaged a relocation consultancy to give us some training and some. Yeah. Just help you get your orientation oriented a little bit. Yeah. It was helpful. But I should have, should have mentioned, this is a piece I didn't mention. So I told you I came from a Jewish background. Yeah. When I was 17, I became a Christian. Oh, okay. And so my wife, she was Christian as well. That's how we met. She was a Christian already. Yeah. Before we met. And so we're a Christian family. And so when we arrived in the US, one of the first things we did was look for a church. Yeah. And the first Sunday we went to, I think, Resurrection Fellowship in London. Second Sunday we were at Summit View. And then the third Sunday we went to a church that at the time was called Fort Collins City Church. Okay. And we are still going to that church. It's now called Southgate. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Our church, well, I used to go to a church called the Meeting Place and we rented space from Southgate Church for a while back in the, I think about the time you were there. I imagine. We did a Friday night service. Yeah. It was a TGIF. Thank God it's Friday. Right. Yeah. So we plugged into that. I've been in your building. Good. So we plugged into that church and it was like having immediate family. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, you know it when you know it. Yeah. Yeah. So your kids at this time are little ankle bitters yet. Well, so the oldest was six and the youngest was three or four. Well, hopefully the sixth year wasn't still biting ankles, I suppose. No. It was okay. And then we had two more kids after that. Yeah, yeah. Four in total. So there might be some highlights along the HP career that are worthy of mention or transitions or things. Yes. So there was one transition specifically during the time that I was working in HP and Fort Collins. I started out as someone who kind of stands in the gap between HP and the companies who write software that runs on HP computers. In those days it was primarily Unix. So you had to invest in certain software companies to make sure their version of their software on your Unix worked really well, ideally better than anybody else's version of Unix. Right. Right. And so I had a team of people who did that and I was on that team. But back in probably, let's see, probably about 2005 or so. Oh, well during that, then the lead up to about 2005, HP created this super complicated, super expensive system for very high-end, very high-performance graphics. Okay. Which was designed for visualizing in real-time cars in styling studios. Right. So good quality graphics. I mean, nowadays it's, it's, it's talking about what that was. Right. Yeah, we've gone way, way beyond there. But in those days it was, it was cutting edge, competed just with silicon graphics, was any other company who had anything similar. And they were the kind of incumbent entrenched provider and we were trying to get into their space. And so I was an expert on that side doing demos and helping customers. Yeah, helped advance the ball in that space, I imagine. Right. Anyway, we were, we were getting ready probably around 2005 for a trade show. And this trade show was Cigraf, which is an annual computer animation and graphics. Okay. So, big trade show. Yeah. And I remember being in a meeting and I remember saying, okay, we've decided what computers we're going to show. What hardware we're going to show. What software are we going to run on these computers in order to demonstrate them? And someone looked at me and said, well, since you asked, you figured it out. And I became de facto the demo guy for workstations and high end displays. Were you taking software off the shelf already that just helped display the graphics? Totally. So, for example, it might be engineering software or geophysics analysis software or medical visual visualization software, 3D tomography. Or it might be creative software like Premiere Pro or After Effects or Blender for 3D or Maya. And you had to be equally capable of demonstrating for the architect as you are for the cardiologist. Exactly right. So, I would get very good at knowing how to load the software, load the data set or model or whatever it was, and do some changes and make it a compelling demo that demonstrated the power of the graphics card, or the storage, or the CPU and multicore CPU, or whatever it was I wanted to communicate the value of in terms of the hardware. Very cool. And so, I used to run the HP Workstation demo center here in Fort Collins. And was the technical lead for a whole lot of trade shows, subject matter experts on trade show flaws as well. I loved it. I always tell people, one of the great blessings of Fort Collins is that HP has had rounds of layoffs from time to time. And those people didn't want to leave Fort Collins. So, a lot of them have started businesses or different things, consultancies and stuff. Right. It's a great resource, you know. Yeah, there are a lot of small technology companies around populated by XHP people. For sure. Absolutely right. So, one of the highlights of this of that time at HP, we had a VIP visit from Steve Wozniak. Yes. So, for those who don't know, he was with Steve Jobs, started Apple. Yeah. And both those guys were HP guys. Oh. And they started by coming up with this concept for a personal computer and HP said, huh? Why would we do that? So, they said, okay, bye. Is that right? That's how I couldn't start it. Yeah. Yeah. So, Steve Wozniak came to HP and Fort Collins because he was at the time with a company that HP was looking to partner with around the time. And so, time was a loss in his schedule for a couple of things. One was that he got the microphone in the cafeteria at lunchtime. Oh. Right. So, he was chewing the fat and reminiscing. And I don't know if you know Steve. He's a very... I don't know. Personally, no. I do. Yeah. So, it doesn't take much to make him talk. I've heard of these, like, one of the more dynamic people you're ever going to be around. Yes. Exactly. He's a force of nature. He's a cool guy. Very opinionated and make sure you know it. Yeah. But anyway, he was just reminiscing about old HP stories at lunchtime. Which was great. And then, the proposal was to have him in the demo room with me for about 15 minutes in the afternoon. Okay. And I thought, I know the way this is going to go. The previous two things are going to overrun and he's never going to come to the demo room. Right. Okay. But I sat in the demo room. Wait. With all my computers set up with mechanical engineering software, CAM software and creative software and medical software and whatever else, right? And my director brings Steven and says, we've got half an hour. Oh. Okay. My director sits in the back of the room. Well, it's just me and Steve. Yeah. And we're going from computers to computer. And I'm demonstrating software. And I'm talking about the underlying technology. Right. The multicore CPUs and high-speed storage and graphics cards and graphics shaders and whatever it is. Yeah. All that stuff. During the demo, Steve doesn't save very much. But at the end of it, he turns to me and said, I am mentally blown away. So I think on my tombstone, I mentally blew away the was. Yeah. Right. That's awesome. That's awesome. So that was kind of a highlight. My very last podcast was with Reino Caesar, the founder of the egg and I, restaurant chair. Yeah. And I was his banker for a season toward the end of my banking career. And during our conversation, he said, you know, until I worked with you, I didn't really respect what bankers ever did. I never really had a banker that was very useful before you. I was like, oh, that's a good accolade. Yeah. Or just bad luck on his part previously. But yeah, those are kind of, those are cool. When somebody that you really appreciate and respect in that way, it attends to you. So there's a bit of, I guess, career advice for those that look up to you. Some foster, you know, foster that a little bit and give them a reason and engage. Like he knew he was that person to so many people probably. Who Steve? Yeah, he was a hero, right? Totally. Right for him to really engage and be that. So he didn't try to vote you. No. No, that was, yeah, that didn't happen. I didn't try either. Right. But I must say that during that time as demo guy at HP, I was more and more getting into creative tools because I was creating videos and about technology. One, the leverage of that then, right? You don't have to sit in front of a computer with somebody you can send them a six minute video that demonstrates the features. Well, there is that. Yes, but not only that, it's just that's what attracted me more and more. Plus of all the various people I talk to, you know, the engineers and the architects and the scientists and so on. I mean, I enjoyed talking to all of them. Of all those people, I think the creative people ones I've found were stimulating. Yeah, very visual effects and music and audio and whatever. Fair enough. So your career with HP, you spend 20, 23 years. 23 years. Yeah. And like, what was, like, what were you up to at the end? Were you a layoff person too? Yeah, pretty much. So I lost a job. The job went away. Yeah. And I had to find something else. Yeah. And so I almost also work for five and a half months. Okay. That's kind of a golden figure because if you're also work for six months, what is it that happens? Things, bad things start happening in your... Like with your unemployment, sometimes everything or something like that. I can't remember what it was, but six months is like a bad amount of time. Or more like employers are like, huh, somebody hasn't snapped his guy up already. Must not be that good. Yeah. Anyway, five and a half months went by, which is a pretty miserable time. Yeah, I'm sure. I got to know World County Human Services quite well and wrote a lot of applications. I finally landed at Lightning. Yeah. I got an entry-level job, which was paying a little over half what I was getting at HP. Sure. And it was just something. As somebody said, any port in a storm. Yeah. Yeah. And I was hired as a marketing coordinator, which means someone who would kind of design some brochures and print them out and put them in piles so that you can go to a trade show. Maybe after a while a little, you do a social media post. Well, maybe so. And I kind of pushed to do the website and it was a while before they let me. Yeah. But I did them away with what I could do. Right. They were not expecting that. Yeah. That never of stuff. Right. Well, and you've been, I mean, like HP really hired a lot of the brightest kids they could for a long, long time and trained them a lot. Yeah. And so I can imagine you were coming into a relatively early stage company at that time and being like, Oh, why do you do this way? You know, even though it was, you know, founded by smart people and things like that. Tell me about what staged lightning was in these days. Okay. So let me give you some history of lightning. Yeah. So Tim Risa started it with a guy called Dan Johnson. Okay. And their project was a car. Oh. A sports car. Okay. And it was not electric. It was gasoline powered. What? And it was actually based on a Mazda Miata. They ripped off the body and put their own fiberglass body on it. Okay. But the reason for doing all this was that in 2010 was the automotive X prize. And you've probably heard of these X prizes, right? I remember that. So X prizes, I don't know who administers them, but an X prizes like $10 million to whatever team can achieve a certain technology goal that has not been done before. Yeah. I remember there was an X prize for like solar powered airplane or something like that. Right. Exactly. That kind of thing. Yeah. And this one was, can you make a sports sedan that can do 100 miles to the gallon? Hmm. Right. And so what Tim and Dan did was they took this Miata and they equipped it with a hydraulic regenerative braking hybrid system. Okay. So you're looking blank-faced. Yeah. No idea of what that would be. But you're listening to this may not. Yeah. So regenerative braking. So regenerative braking is still really important to us with our electric vehicle as well. Sure. But it was the raison d'etre for lightning hybrid, as the company was called at the time. Yeah. So regenerative braking, if you think about it, standard braking in your gasoline vehicle, you've paid money to accelerate the vehicle. Yeah. The vehicle now has kinetic energy, which is the energy of motion. Yeah. Right. Things that move have energy. This is why bullets work. Sure. Because they move very fast. Yeah. So they get their energy from. So, and then it's time to slow down, because there's a dang stoplight or something. So you put your foot on the brakes. And what you're doing is you're converting your kinetic energy through friction into heat. Right. Okay. That dissipates into the environment. Disappaints, and you can't get it back. Right. You've thrown away the energy. And plus a little bit of brake dust. And brake dust, yes. Exactly right. So, you've, so that's inherently inefficient because you've used paid for energy to accelerate. And now you just turn it into heat every time you have to stop. What regenerative braking is, is any scheme, whatever it is, that slows the vehicle down in such a way, that you're converting the kinetic energy of motion into a form of energy that you can capture and redeploy. Yeah. Right. On my BMW, it felt like. It was doing it. Yeah, it does that. But it felt like almost like it was like an alternator. Like they just made the alternator go really strong so that the braking force was pretty heavy. It was exactly the motor itself. Yeah. Because any motor can also work as a generator. Sure. Any generator can work as a motor. Even spinning in that direction. Oh, fascinating. So that's what they do. You know, and what we do on electric vehicles too, we do the same thing. Yeah. Whenever you take your foot off the gas pedal, it's probably not, shouldn't call it a gas pedal. Maybe the electrons pedal. Yeah. Yeah. The vehicle is now slowing down fairly aggressive. It feels like engine braking. Yeah. And that's exactly what it is. The motor is now working as a generator. Yeah. And by doing so, it's hard to turn a generator. Sure. Which produces drag on the drive shaft, which slows your vehicle down, which is brakes. Right. Right. But in so doing, instead of turning it into heat, and there's a little bit of heat through the inefficiency, but most of it turns into electricity, which goes back into the batteries. Maybe like if you applied your brakes with the ICE engine, it would put a few drops of gasoline in your tank. Exactly right. And that doesn't happen, right? It doesn't? No. Okay. I tell people this. It doesn't work that way. You put the brakes on a gasoline car. You do not generate energy. You do not generate gas. So with the hydraulic regenerative brakes, was it just like compressing a fluid or something? Yes. And then that's brain force would come back in support. It uses what's called an accumulator. Oh, sure. Which in hydraulic parlance is a vessel that has got something inside that you can compress. Right. The store energy. Yep. You can get a accumulator. Could be an air tank or whatever it is. Right. You can have accumulators that have a piston inside with a spring. So when you push fluid in, that piston pushes against the spring. We didn't do that. We used a bladder accumulator, which means that inside this pressure vessel is a neoprene balloon with nitrogen gas. Okay. And that nitrogen gas is at 2000 psi before we even start using it. Whoa. Yes. So that means that we slow the vehicle down by using a clutch to connect a hydraulic pump to the drive shaft. And then once that's engaged, that pump is pumping fluid into that accumulator around the outside of that bladder. And the bladder is getting compressed from all sides. So the nitrogen gas is increasing in pressure because it's being squished. Right. And so the hydraulic fluid has increasing pressure because it's in the same vessel. So you're increasing the pressure and that is energy storage. Sure. And so the energy, the pressure would go from 2000 psi up to 6000 psi. Okay. And that's quite a lot of pressure. It's a lot of force, ultimately. Right. And then how was it delivered back into the drive shaft? It delivered back by reconfiguring the valves and this fluid rushes out under 6000 psi. Right. So what was in the hydraulic pump now serves as a motor? Okay. And because it's still connected to the drive shaft, it actually turns the drive shaft. Yeah. It has torque onto the drive shaft, which turns your rear wheels. Yeah. Which means you're launching the vehicle using energy you stored last time you slowed down. Sure. Right. And that's where a lot of the power costs are. You know, it doesn't take a lot to keep the car going 50 miles an hour, but it takes a lot of energy to get it up to 50. Right. Now, so that's the idea of regenerative braking and doing it hydraulic. I didn't realize that about lighting. Right. So I remember something about the braking elements. And there was a time when they just wanted to like almost refit other vehicles with these regenerative braking kind of systems or something. Was that? Yes. Exactly. So in 2009, I think it was Tim and Dan took the car. What was the power plant, by the way, the ice engine? I don't know. 1600. Yeah. Some little. Some, you know, whatever it was going to be out of the time. Yeah. Fair enough. And so they took it to the Denver Auto Show. And the head of fleets of Denver came by and said, you know guys, you're going to really struggle to get this to market. It's a passenger vehicle and the hurdles you got to go through are huge. You've got to provide five units to the federal DOT just for crash testing. Right. Right. And if I'm in the vehicle now, that prototype is in our plant and I show it off all the time. And you can see it's not right. Yeah. But the path from here to there on developing a vehicle is there's a lot of capital raising there. Yeah. And you guys have raised some capital and stuff, but not like that. Right. Exactly right. So anyway, but this guy said to them, instead of doing a passenger car, why don't you just develop that hydraulic hybrid component to be a retrofit system for trucks on buses. Yeah. That can just be bolted into an existing vehicle and then I'll be your first customer. Okay. And so the light bulb went on. Yeah. I tell people that in those days it was a hydraulic light bulb. Right. So light bulb went on and the company pivoted Tim and Dan pivoted immediately away from the vehicle. So they dropped their plans of competing in the experts. Yeah. And addressed the commercial vehicle market, which we're still addressing now. How much like power? I mean, like one of the things I think about with regards to the whole solar and energy mix equation and stuff. And we can get deeper into this later. But like those hydraulic with nitrogen kind of things like how much juice can one of those hold? It's a good question. Yeah. Yeah. So the technical way of describing your question is, what is the power density and what is the energy density? Yeah. Right. The energy density is really low. In other words, if you do a slow down or stop event, then you've stored enough energy to drive the vehicle hydraulically for about 10 seconds. And then you're done. Yeah. Right. So it's not like you can drive 40 miles on it. Right. So the energy density, in other words, the amount of energy you're actually storing in here is relatively small. Right. And it's a fairly bulky system side. It is probably about 1200 pounds. Like instead of digging lithium out of terrible mines in different places and stuff like that, you can't just... It's probably... There's a lot of mechanical things to fail and stuff like that then too. Well. And you could just plug it in and charging it up would effectively be squishing that nitrogen, right? Yes. So you get 10 seconds of acceleration, so what's the point? Right. Fair. Yeah. It's got just to complete what I was saying. It has high power density, which means you can get energy in and out of it very, very fast. And that's important because you need to inhale as much energy as you can during the 15 seconds that someone is slowing down from 40 to a stop. So you've got to absorb as much energy. Because you need a lot of energy to get from it. You need to do that with a battery. Yeah. The batteries have lower power density, right? It takes a long time to charge a battery. Sure. Yeah. But much higher energy density. You can charge those batteries up and drive 150 miles. Right. Right. Very different type of thing. Yeah, yeah. So this is kind of... Yeah, tell me like the story, the lightning story from there. Because it was that like, okay, we better raise some capital and do this. I mean, was this all self-funded? Sure. This X-Prize goal and stuff? Tim's major role is going out and is begging to have investors. Yes. Still doing it. Yeah. So BP, British Protroleum, kind of our biggest investors, has been and still with us even when we transition to electric. Yeah. They can see the writing on the wall for fossil fuels ultimately and want to diversify. Sure. So the hydraulic hybrid I joined at the beginning of 2015. So it was already fairly well advanced as a product, but it was still a start, very much a start-up. With the company, basically no one really knowing how to run a company. Yeah. And everything very ad hoc. So the chief manufacturing guy didn't quite know what he was doing. And the financial guy was great. Rob Mulcare. But we had some... Yeah. Well, it's a complex organization and they usually, you know, they don't come together that fast all the time. Right. And we've seen that since, right? Even in the electric side, we've... I can tell you later on, we've made huge, huge, huge strides in being ready to scale. And that's one of the key pushes right now. We can get to that in a minute. But hydraulic hybrids never really took off. And let me ask you a question. How much messaging do you hear from the White House about electric vehicles? Plenty. Yes, all the time, right? Yeah. How much money is coming from the White House for electric vehicles? The Inflation Reduction Act has a bunch in there. Yeah. And then the EPA. EPA money for school buses and state money for Colorado and California. A lot of state money as well. How much messaging do you hear from the White House or anybody on hydraulic hybrids? I haven't heard of it since early in the light of email or story. Exactly, right? It essentially proved not to be a thing, right? And for a number of reasons, one is it's really hard to predict what kind of energy and emissions savings you're going to get from this system. Yeah. It depends entirely on how much stopping and starting you do, how you stop and how you start and who's driving and what the temperatures like, and what your payload is like, and how much kinetic energy you had before the event. Right. And then you still have a system that has mechanical parts and is potentially prone to failure after time. And this is very noisy. Very noisy. So it may be okay for cargo delivery, but in the context of a shuttle bus, not so much. Sure. Yeah. So that's actually a pretty good example of like there's already this company with lots of employees and several investors and things like that. And it ultimately doesn't have a real great product market fit for years. Yes, you're exactly right. I mean, we had some direct competitors trying to do the same thing. Sure. Doing hydraulic hybrids, even some big names like Parker Hanuffin and Eaton, we're doing hydraulic hybrids for the road. Yeah. And one by one, they threw in a towel, hydraulic hybrids for road use, just not really a thing. Yeah. Mr. Market tells you so after a while. Right. For mining equipment, for farm equipment, yes, there's a play there. Right. But for the road use, it was just not a thing. Interesting. And so I don't know for sure, but in 2017, the board of directors must have slapped him around and said, you've got to be doing something different. Interesting. So you were still strictly on the hydraulic hybrids when you arrived there. The hybrid was the product until the fall of 2017. Wow. The company transitioned on a dime, dropped the hydraulic hybrid whole program, like a hot potato, laid off a bunch of people, including me. Okay. So my journey was 18 months out of the company doing something else. Okay. Talk about that if you're interested. And that's when the company decided, okay, we're going to do electric commercial vehicles. That's the future. And it's proved right. Yeah. I didn't really realize it was such a dramatic pivot. It really was. Yeah. Totally. I mean, out of the blue, I was laid off. Yeah. Where was the company located at this time? It had made the move from downtown Noveland to where it is now, the old HP campus. But it had obviously probably a very small footprint at that time. Yes, it had half of the downstairs of building A. Fair. Whereas now we have all of building A, including the Mezzanine upstairs for admin cubicles. Yeah. And then we've got most of building B as well. Oh, is that right? Yeah. That's where we actually do the vehicle. So for those listeners that aren't familiar, there's a, there's a, the original HP plant area in Noveland is called the Forge campus. And it's, you give it, take 800,000 square feet total. Yes, just in the four buildings there. Yeah. And lightning's got probably 300,000 or so. About 240,000. Okay. Yeah. A good chunk. We are the big gorilla on campus. For sure. I've walked by there a few times because one of our local think tank chapters meets down there. Uh-huh. And it's, I love the windows. Like we got this long hallway full of windows where you can see all the different kinds of vehicles that you're working on and outputting and things like that. Yeah, absolutely. It's really even without the tour. It feels like you're almost getting a tour. You should come by for a tour. And guess who gives the tours? It's me. Oh, perfect. Well, yeah. Let's do that. If you want to bring a think tank over for a tour sometime, I'm totally out for that. Oh, that'd be fun. Yeah. Let's talk after the show. We'll plan something up or at least plan some ideas. Yeah. This episode is sponsored by a local think tank. Local 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 and the role of local 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 local think tank get their sixth month of membership for free. Just mention the local experience podcast on your application. To learn more, visit our website at localthinktank.com. That's l-o-c-o-thinktank.com. So, let's talk about what do you stay busy with for 18 months? So, I was feeling kind of smug at the time because I had already lined up a job interview. Because, as you remember, I wasn't very much. Yeah. And I was struggling to guess on with the person I was reporting to. I have to say. Yeah. So, I had... It's hard when you're so much smarter than the person that you report to. I've suffered that a lot. Well, that person was pretty smart. That person was pretty smart. It just worked very nice. It doesn't matter now. Bit micromanaged. Yeah. One of that. Very tough. But I did design the company logo during that time. Okay. So, yeah. That's important. That's been a good legacy. Is it this one? Yes. The one on my shirt. Still rocking it. Proof of it. So, I had reached out to Baker Instruments. Maybe familiar with them. Yeah. They were in Fort Collins. At the time, they were part of SKF. Swedish Bullbearing Manufacturer. Okay. And so, I had applied for a job there as a marketing guy. Yeah. And I was laid off on the Monday, knowing that I had a telephone interview on the Tuesday. Oh. So, I was feeling a little... A little like my phone might be cushioned. Right. And so, I had that telephone interview. The first thing I noticed, when I spoke to the guy on the phone, who was the manager I would be reporting to, I said, you're English, aren't you? Oh. And he was based in the US, but I could tell. And he had an English accent with Australian intonation. Interesting. And sure enough, he was a Brit who had lived in Australia for a number of years. I could navigate this accent mess. We got talking. Turns out, he grew up in Suffolk, which is the county I grew up in. Near Ipswich. He grew up in a village about 15 miles from me. Wow. He knew my village because he used to come and play soccer there. He knew my prep school because he used to go swimming there. Yeah. I knew his school in Ipswich because I went there for a music semi-campus. Sure. So, I mean... You were the done deal. You were pretty much tired. Well, so yeah. I was holding the next day for a face-to-face interview. Yeah. And then got the job offer on the Friday. Similar kind of work. Yeah. I mean, it was... It was pretty much. It was creative marketing stuff. So, with Lightning, like you mentioned, we think about marketing. When I think about marketing, usually I go right to finding customers, making flyers, designing logos and stuff like that. But probably, you're pitching to investors, doing slide decks, and different things like that as well, or is that somebody else? No, that's somebody else. Okay. Yeah, we have actually a VP of investor relations. I see. Who does all of that. So, that messaging was their ball. He has... He has thick skin right now, with a current stock price. Is that... I haven't been paying attention. Is it... Yeah. Then a struggle. It... Stock price is a huge struggle at Lightning right now. And since we're a public company, I'm not allowed to talk. Okay. Simply about it. Other than to say a couple of general insights. If you look at... When we went public, we went public in 2019. No, that's... All right, 20... What was it? It must have been 2021, I think. We went public. I was there. I was on the podium in the New York Stock Exchange. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I got to be there because I had done all the creative stuff that was playing on the banners, and I had a... When you ring the bell for the first time. Yeah. When you go public, you get a banner that they pay for that is... Oh, yeah. 72 feet wide and 38 feet tall. Well, it is... This big, plastic bag. Hey, you joined the exchange. With your logo and whatever you want on it, on the side of the Stock Exchange building. Oh, wow. With the girl that used to be facing a bear. Do you remember her? Yeah. In the statue of the girl. Not the bear, the bull. The bull. The bull is somewhere else, I don't know where, but the girl is looking at this. That makes a great photograph. That's pretty cool. The girl looking up at this banner I designed. Because of that, a few other things I said to my boss. I probably need to be there to make sure that, you know, that videos are running and everything. Of course. So, I got to be on the podium when we were running the bell. Very good. So, but we were one of those companies on the SPAC bandwagon. Yeah. Right? So SPAC is a special purpose acquisition company. Right. And the mechanism there is instead of taking yourself public with all those interactions with the SEC and everything. Right. And you kind of... There are these companies who... There are these investors who create a SPAC and take it public. But it's basically got no operations. Yeah. And then they look for someone to do a reverse merger with. Right. Some existing private companies... To merge themselves into the SPAC. Into the SPAC, yeah. Basically. And then the SPAC identity goes away. Oh. And you become a public company. Yeah. Because the SPAC has already got a symbol and it gets renamed. And you are now a public company. Yeah. Right. When you launch, usually people buy into you. Right. And there's a lot of awareness and more sales follow and things like that. Yeah. In some extent. It's equivalent to... It's equivalent to taking a self public. Sure. But it should be easier. But the... It was a thing at the time. Yeah. And proved not to be the best idea. But a lot of companies in the EV space did it all at the same time. Okay. And there were one or two bad eggs in there that really soured the market. Because there was... There was some fairly prominent... There was at least one fairly prominent company that was promising the world. And it was basically fraudulent. And so the market has soured against... Especially on those mid-sized areas or whatever that might be. Yeah. Has soured against these electric vehicle market companies that went public at that time through SPACs. So our stock prices just gone down and down and down and down and down. But it's true for all our peers as well. Sure. Now, we personally, as a company, think it's unjust on us because anyone who comes to see our operation see that we've got vehicles going out the door all the time. We have about 500 vehicles on the roads compared to some of our peers who may have 10 or 20 that they all just recalled. That's a good thing. We're actually doing really well. Yeah. So we have a number of things in the pipeline which are designed for high quality and scalability. Yeah. That most of our peers don't have. But because of the grandiose projections we thought pre-COVID. Yeah. People are kind of beating us up that we didn't... You haven't hit your goals, you have estimates. That's the one thing I've told bankers and my... I've told customers and my banking career was ask for enough on the startup loan because if you don't hit your projections and you need more money later, it's going to be way harder. Right. And so you start missing some of those things and stuff and feel like, wow, I think it... So you've got quite a few vehicles in the road coming about. Is your product still the retrofit of conventional chassis to an electric train? Or are you going like closer to the start here? No. So currently every vehicle we do is a standard gasoline vehicle that we perform decontenting, which I call engineectomy. Yeah. You remove the engine, the fuel system and the exhaust system. And then we put our powertrain in it. But the key thing to remember is that these vehicles are not yet registered. So they're still new vehicles and they give our factories. Okay. So that means they're eligible out the door for the tax incentives from federal and state government. Oh, interesting. And how about warranty and stuff like that? Is the manufacturer, plus you kind of have a shared thing there? Yes, essentially. Or the powertrain is kind of your baby and the rest of it's theirs? Yes, exactly. And that's, that's a case in point is our latest product, which is the electric, what we call ZEV4. Okay. Because it's a class four vehicle, which to no class four is a certain payload capacity. Yeah, for a certain size of vehicle. So class four would be if you're, so the groomed shuttles are class three. Okay. Class four are the bigger ones. So you go to the airport. Like a coach kind of size. No, not that size. Okay, the next step up. Okay. Yeah. So for our class four vehicle, it's a general motors chassis. Okay. It's the, what do they call it? The Chevrolet Express or GMC Savannah. Yeah. 4,500. And we've worked really closely with GM on our design for the electrification. And they've given us a list of requirements we need to fulfill. And we've done that. And we've had our design approved by GM. So that they know that what we do is, is producing a quality vehicle. Okay. And their side of the bargain is twofold. One of them, it means, one of them is from a technical perspective. They give us documentation, which is very valuable to us, which is like the, the protocol of the, the digital communication between all the components of the vehicle. Yeah. So we don't have to reverse engineer that. Right. Really useful. Right. We've had to do that. I'm sure. Yeah. Because they're satisfied that the final vehicle is actually a really good product. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a chance that they would like come on and directly issue to the marketplace? A little bit of vehicles. No. For that particular platform. No. Okay. They are doing something in the lower in a class two space. Okay. What it bright drop. Because that's a vehicle that they see a large dispersion for in companies like Amazon. Sure. For package delivery and neighborhoods. Yeah. That's why they're developing that. Right. And a vehicle like that doesn't have much customization. That vehicle works for Amazon across the nation. Right. And so they can invest in a plant that will build hundreds of thousands of those. And that's the way they're going with that. That's why they're developing that vehicle. Whereas the vehicle that we're making. It's, it applies to a number of smaller niches like school buses, the type A school buses. Yeah. So we started talking. So school buses and shuttle buses and. So you're not talking about like big rigs, box trucks. No. We don't compete in the big rigs. Yeah. Right. There are companies that are addressing that Tesla. Right. It's an example, for example. Right. Nobody really wants to compete with the Tesla that much. Well. Generally. No. There are. So companies like Volvo. Oh, sure. Yeah. Well, yes. And all of them have like bigger balance sheets than you guys. Well, yes. That's true. And again, when they're when you're developing a big rig tractor. I mean, there's customization for, you know, how the bed is arranged and all the stuff inside. Sure. But basically the vehicle is the vehicle. Yeah, yeah. Whereas what we do is a chassis that we electrify. It's got a cabin and chassis. But it can be a shuttle bus. It can be a school bus. It can be a work track. It can be a box track. Yeah. The service truck, you know, kind of thing that you see plumbers go out with. So talk to me about the specs on this product a little bit. Like once I've got my, well, we'll just use that that groomed shuttle bus as an example. You mentioned 140 miles. Is that kind of a range? No, that's just an example. That's the that's the two battery version. Okay. Three battery version is more like 200. Okay. Right. And like operating costs we talked about a little bit. Do you guys provide like a warranty kind of thing too? Yes. It's a similar model. And so it does this have like you've got like the the wheels and the tires and the chassis and the stuff all there almost. In this case, because the van actually comes from Ford. Yeah. You do an app index me. Yeah. Or the internet to me. And then what do you sell those engines back to Ford or whatever? Don't tell them to Ford. We sell them to a guy who buys and stuff with them. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. And then it's a separate ticket from the customer from you guys or whatever. Or the like when they buy it. Are they buying it from lighting emulators? Potentially. Sometimes it depends. Yeah. I mean, sometimes we can buy the vehicle and we sell the vehicle. Yeah. Sometimes a dealer will buy the vehicle and still owns the document that as if there's a pre registration document called an MSO. I see. And so sometimes the dealer will own the MSO and then when a customer buys it, MSO gets transferred. Sometimes it's the customer that sells by it. So for example, we have, I think it's 50 or 60 cargo vans running around New York City with DHL. Yeah. And DHL bought those vehicles directly from Ford, I think, or from a dealer, probably directly from Ford. And then send them to you guys a dozen at a time. Yeah. Exactly right. Very cool. So we were wall to wall yellow vans for a while. Right. I think I was down there at that time, actually. I remember. So what's the like future for lightning look like? And I'm sure we probably skipped some chapter phases along the way and we can bounce back. Right. But I'm thinking about, you know, there's investors and they want to exit and stuff. And I was it to really become the chosen provider in that mid-tier space, like bigger than passenger cars and trucks and smaller than Volvos and Allison's. You've already got it. Yes. Pretty much got it. I think the one of the mission statements is like one third of electric mediums, duty vehicles by 2027. Okay. We'll be running lightning powertrains. It's kind of aspirational vision. Yeah. Yeah. And it could be that way. Yeah. So the key name of the game is scaling here. You've got to scale. Otherwise, you'll never get your cost down to make it work. Exactly right. Yeah, exactly right. The reason the White House is pumping money into the market right now with the Inflation Reduction Act and the EPA Clean School Bus Program and that states like Colorado and California are pumping money in as well is to accelerate adoption. And so we are, we're on a surfboard riding that money at the moment. But that money is going to go away. And so what we're counting on is that during the five-year window, during which that money is being dished out to accelerate this market, that will increase adoption to the point where we have to scale to meet the orders and demand. Sure. The supply chain will scale as well and become more reliable. We've still got the post-COVID jitters in the supply chain. Sure. Well and stuff with China, which probably use some of those pieces and stuff too. Right. And we can talk about China in a little bit. We're not using Chinese components. No good. Actually, it's not quite true. We've got one to do. Barely. And so by the exit of this deluge of money from the federal government, we're hoping that we'll have scaled by that stage to the point where costs, you know, prices are down. Yeah. Costs are down and therefore prices are down. So the adoption just becomes more natural or whatever. Because there's probably a lot of units like compared to the annual replacements. These are probably more like 10 to 20-year assets. After the time in service, as compared to the cars, there are only five to 10. Well, we thought so. We, a couple of us spoke to a potential customer down in Denver. They operate a couple of the hotels on Tower Road. Sure. Their vehicles run to DIA and back, DIA and back to these hotels. And they last 18 months. And it's not just that the engine gets tired. It's, you know, the shock absorbers are gone and the chassis is starting to fall to bits. And we're thinking, well, our powertrain, we're designing our powertrain to last, say, 15 years. Batteries may be needed to be replaced once during that time or not. We don't know yet. We've not been in business long enough to exactly see what the pattern is there. But the rest of the vehicle may be starting to fall apart soon, depending on the rigors of the job. So what's the company look like today? How many employees and like, what are they all doing? Are you developing a lot of new stuff still? Or is a lot of it just actually doing the things? Okay. So, can I answer the first question? About 260 people. Okay. Most of them here in Loveland. We do have some remote people in regions, like regional sales guys and regional service technicians. And then they're one of two people to just work remotely because they work remotely. Yeah. We've got a guy in Glenwood Springs, for example. So that's the size of the company. So the answer to what's going forward is there is a tension on everything that we need to move forward. So we are making sure that we have our manufacturing ducts in a row, so that we're ready to scale. So right now we can produce, we can probably do about 500 vehicles a year right now. If the supply chain is good and the orders are good and everything, we probably have a manufacturing scale of somewhere in that region. What happens if we add another shift? Bam. Twice the amount, you see. Right, right. So we can scale. And then it's the case of getting more footprint and we can scale fairly rapidly. Yeah. So, but in order to be able to scale, you've got to have the manufacturing management systems in place. So that it all works. Yeah. Flow of material, flow of assets, flow of work orders, technicians who are trained, technicians who are deployed appropriately. So these work orders can be executed. All of that needs to be managed and we've got most of that activity in place right now already. And it's an extent that we're sure none of our comparative peers except for the big companies like Ford have anything similar. Cool. Right. Are you using, I guess I have two questions kind of, but the first I'll start with is, are you using like an operating system, like an EOS or six sigma or lean principles or things like that? Yes, probably. Remember I'm the creative dude in marketing. Right, right. So some of the admin stuff I'm not sure about. Yeah, I think that's right. Yes. A lot of documentation of roles and different things like that and whatnot. Exactly right. Yeah, we're actually right now getting ready for ISO 9001 audit. Okay. Right. And that should tell you something. Yeah, that seems like an important thing. ISO 9001, as I understand it, is it's a quality management system audit. Right. And so we've invested heavily in quality and I'll talk a bit more about that. But to get ISO 9001, you basically have all procedures documented and an audit that confirms that you're adhering to all your procedures. Wow. Okay. And that's an independent audit by a registrar who comes in and checks that you've got it all documented. What happens when, you know, this part fails inspection. Yeah. Right. That's a process. Yeah. We do that. Replace this part. See if it works. But there's also, you know, the investigation of what's wrong with that part and how do we roll that back into manufacturing to make sure it doesn't happen again. Yeah, yeah. All of that. Right. So. So yes, we're investing in being able to scale and that's a management system thing. Investing in quality hugely. And an example of that is what's called customer uptime. Right. So it's a big deal in commercial vehicles. Sure. It's a pain if your car doesn't start. But if you're out there, you know, your Budweiser about to deliver drinks to. Right. King Super and whatever. If your truck doesn't start, it's a nuisance because you're missing out on generating revenue for the day. Yeah. You're a hotel whose customers don't get picked up at the airport. Exactly right. So you're missing out on revenue. And so therefore uptime is a big, big deal. And so we have a threshold. We want a meter of ninety seven ninety five percent uptime. And we're now at ninety seven percent uptime. Which is a result of all the engineering, all the quality work that's gone into make reliable vehicles. What's the typical internal combustion engine? It's less than that. Yeah. I wondered. So diesel vehicles... Even just maintaining an oil changes and stuff like that. Right. That's all down time. That's scheduled down time, which is less painful than unscheduled down time. Sure. Right. But you've got diesel filter. Diesel particular filter is not working right. Sure. That seems to be... I mean, I was talking to some guys recently who are... Vehicle service techs from the rural energy authorities around Colorado. They came for a visit. Sure. And they nodded a lot when the service director said, yeah, when it seems like, you know, for diesel vehicles, they're always in the shop. They're always a check engine light and you've got to figure out what it is. Yeah. So for us, uptime is key. Right. And that separates us from our peers. The smaller start-up peers. Every time we've spoken to a customer who's used... And I won't mention any company names, but used products from those. They say they hate them. Things just don't work. Whereas ours, 97% uptime. Go get it. And that is so important to the company that one fourth of our bonus calculation is uptime. Wow. It is gated by a certain threshold of uptime. That's awesome. I mean, it really demonstrates your values when you put it like, like, right on paper, right? Right. Yeah. So, um, it talked to me about that process of, like, shifting, because your job... I came back, I guess, from this... Baker instruments. Baker instruments place. Yeah. rejoined lightning. I did. Baker instruments got... That division, Baker instruments got sold from SKF, the Swedish bearing company, to mega, which is a British measuring instruments company. Okay. And I was part of that. I had to redo all the branding. So, if you actually go to the Baker office right now, it's on, on Murray just south of... Okay. ...in Fort Collins. You'll see all the mega branding on all the signs. That's vinyl that's applied over the SKF branding. I did that very quickly because the CEO was going to come and visit. And it's still there. Well, quite a few years later now. Yeah, exactly. So... So, you journeyed back to lightning in about time to have the pivot, right? I got an email from the person I used to report to saying that that person was leaving the company. Right. The reason you left has gone. And I just said, well, is there any possibility I might come in and take over from what you were doing? Yeah. And that person said lightning would be lucky to have you. That would be great. Well, let's go. I then reached out to Tim. Yeah. And we're back on board pretty quickly. Very cool. Yeah. So, a lot to do right away too, right? Because you're now an electric vehicle company. I mean, this is basically lightning 2.0. Yes. 3.0 in some ways. Yeah. Because the first was the sedan thing, right? Yes. And that's been motoring along. Increasing revenues and products kind of all along the way as far as I know. Up and downs here and there. Up and downs. Yes. We've had a history and this is, I mean, bear in mind, the electric commercial vehicle industry is new. Right. It's young, which means the whole ecosystem of supply chain, people making batteries, people making nurses, it's new. And then alliances. So we need alliances because we need to get the vehicles that we can convert to electric, right? So we need alliances with GM and so on. We had some alliances on the table that we thought we're going to pan out and then these OEMs said, you know what? We're going to electrify ourselves, go away. And so some of the things we planned for didn't materialize. That's the hard thing when you're a relatively small company playing with giants that don't care about you at all. That's kind of right. Yeah. Yeah. So which is why uptime is an important thing because that's the best way of demonstrating. We've got quality products and it should be paid attention to. Do you worry that like over time these manufacturers could go straight to market or do you have dreams as lightning of bringing your own like super nuts product to the marketplace or a mixture of all. Yeah. Bear in mind we're a public company so I can't tell you too much about the plans. But I guess the major thing is we are pursuing what makes most sense at a given time. Yeah. So right now it's school buses because of all that EPA money. Sure. Right. So school buses are a big big thing for us right now. Yeah. Well and there's a lot of school buses and they wear out. Well right. And not only that but there's you know local mandates for school buses to go electric. Yeah. For quality and so on. Well it's probably really good. Like for town school buses you know I grew up riding a school bus like 20 miles to school for a while. So that would be tough to do that whole loop around potentially and stuff. But you know any city oriented bus it's a great mix and would save a ton. Right. And even if you do a rural route you still have the middle of the day to recharge. Right. Well and it's 200 miles you know that's a long way is to do a school bus route you know. 200 mile loop. Yeah. No we didn't do that. No but you said with the three batteries you're thinking go 200 miles so that would catch most day. That's about 130 miles for three batteries. Fair enough. Yeah fair enough. But yeah. So. It's a good match. Anything like I feel like the lightning story has been told pretty well. I mean what do people want to know that's like that you can tell me but that isn't not allowed for public companies any. Any lightning history or some old you know any any cultural intrigue or anything like that. I don't know. I can I think of an example of soon after I joined lightning. Now I have a confession to make. It may not be very apparent but I personally am not very interested in trucks and buses. Fair. Right. My passion is the creative stuff I do. I do video and photography. I do 3D animation. I do 3D rendering. I do the website. I do graphics and printed graphics. Vehicle wraps. I do brand management. I do all of that. I love it to bits because that's what I do. Right. I would happily do it for another company in the B2B space. It doesn't have to be trucks and buses. That's not a not a personal deep passion for me. Fair enough. But back in the hydraulic hybrid days. My boss at the time was perceptive enough to see that I was not quite getting the emotional feeding from this environment that I really craved. And so I actually had the chance to do some freelancing at for a booth at NAB which is the National Association of Broadcasters trade show. It's like 120,000 people attend this week long show in Las Vegas Convention Centre. When I was with HP, I did this year after year after year. And made connections there. And then I left HP. And then the guy who ran the booths that we used to put our workstations on at HP workstations reached out to me and said, hey, Dan, you want to come and hang out on the booth. And I'll pay you. Right. Not to money. And you can train. I was training. Was it student journalists? How to do video editing? Love it. It was a blast. Yeah. Anyway, so my manager at the time at Lightning allowed me to go and attend this show without allocating PTO days to it. Oh, fun. Which was great for my heart. Yeah, yeah. So I did this two or three times. And one year, I was at Las Vegas Convention Centre at NAB just loving it. Immersed with my people and doing this training. I love training. Love training. Doing video editing, doing technical stuff and surrounded by cool cameras and all the stuff I enjoy. Three weeks later, I was back at Lightning, but attending a trade show on the representing Lightning in the same convention centre in the same hall, probably about 100 feet away at a booth at Waste Expo, which is a trade show. Garbage tracks. Right. Showing off the hydraulic hybrid on cast rolls, but cast roll is a division of, I think it's a division of BP that does lubricant rails, right? Let me just tell you, compared to NAB, it's not the same. It was kind of shoot me now kind of experience. Is that something that you would like in a next phase, Lightning goes big time and you cash out or something would you like to be more directly involved in like the broadcasting space or something? Maybe. I enjoy B2B creative stuff, actually. I start myself as the in-house one man creative agency. I like it. It's basically what I am. And that's transferable to other companies. And I got one or two irons in the fire. And my boss isn't listening right Nick. Just kind of idly there. Just in case an opportunity comes to try something else. But that's exactly what I did at MEGA, the Baker Instruments. You like it when you have a lot of extra to do. I do. And I like it when I have a wide range of things to do. Fair enough. I think we should take a short break and then we'll jump into the closing segments. Okay. All right. The local experience is sponsored by InMotion, providing next-day delivery for local businesses. If you need anything delivered in Northern Colorado, InMotion's flat fee service is a great resource for your business. Delivering from the Wyoming border, to Denver, and anywhere in between. Their clients range from small breweries to realistic companies. InMotion can deliver almost anything you can imagine. If this fits a need for your business, contact InMotion directly by emailing them at InMotion, NoCo, at gmail.com. That's i-n-m-o-t-i-o-n-n-o-c-o, at gmail.com. And mentioned you heard it on the local experience. And we're back. So, as you know, we always have kind of a standard closing segments here, part of getting to know the person behind the journey. Faith, family, and politics are always standard talking points. Okay. Where would you like to begin among those three? Oh, let's start with family. What about? Yeah. You mentioned you've got four little's now, that aren't so little anymore? Correct, yes. And your oldest was a daughter, and she's 29, I think. 29, yes. And her name? Her name is Zoe, and she's in Atlanta, Georgia. Yeah. She was married for a while, but that didn't last too long. But during the time she was married, he landed a job in the Atlanta area. That's why they moved. Yeah. But she loves Atlanta. Really? Loves it, loves it. Yeah. She's not quite in downtown Atlanta, but pretty close. Yeah. She actually lives pretty close to the Jimmy Carter Center. Okay. So, I've never been. I've heard it called hot-lanta, which is just about enough for me not to want to move there. It probably does get that way, yeah. Yeah. But it's culturally very thriving in that. That's what she enjoys. But we always do a one-word description for the children of our guests. Do you have a one-word that you would choose for Zoe? Oh, creative. Yeah. She basically does what I do. Oh, that's cool. That's awesome. She works for a creative agency. She was freelancing for a long time. Yeah, yeah. Creating new branding, not just logo, but branding for small startup businesses. Oh, cool. And now she's got a salary job doing pretty much the same thing. Very good. Yeah. By the way, the hot sauce I get to do there is from Zoe's bakery in Leveland. Okay. So, if you'll remember that. Yes. And number two. Number two is Harrison. Harrison. He is 27, just turned 27. Hey, Harrison, if you're listening. I actually have to set him to listen, but that's a long segment for one mention. Yeah. He's still living at home. Okay. So he's not quite, not quite there for the kind of success in life that he's got some learning difficulties. Yeah, sir. So he really enjoys doing casual work or kind of headhawk work with some buddies. Yeah. He's got, he's been, he's been really, really busy recently. He works for a guy who does kind of clean up in after things like flooded basements and the number of those recently. So, yeah, he does, he does kind of manual stuff. Do you imagine he'll stay with you guys for a long time or does he crave his own kind of independence? Okay. It's all right, having him around. Yeah. He's certainly craves independence. Yeah. He just doesn't have the regularity of income. Penciling it out a little bit. Fair enough. He's got some very, very good longtime friends who used to be neighbors of ours. Cool. Who were looking at moving to Livermore. Oh. And they've got a like a mother in law apartment. Oh, cool. They might let it to him. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Just been talking about that. Well, nice. I like to go up. We go to read for the legs and stuff a lot. So, yeah. Go through there often. Oh, one word for Harrison that you would put forward. One word for Harrison. People, probably. Yeah. He's a very people oriented. Gravitates. Person. He's very connected into a church, not, not Southgate, a different church. Yeah. But he's always trying to help people. He's always interacting with people. He knows tons of people. Interesting. Yeah. Not necessarily common for someone that isn't high achieving elsewise within school and jobs and stuff like that. We don't know for sure that he, whether he's on, you know, autism spectrum or something. He's probably not quite. We've had two or three people evaluate him. Yeah. And kind of scratch their heads and think, hmm, not sure. Yeah. Which means he never got a formal diagnosis of anything. But no, he's very people oriented. Yeah. Very cool. And number three. Number three is Catherine. Okay. Like Catherine. Yeah. She's great. She lives independently. She has an apartment around the corner from us in London. Yeah. And that's something she really wanted to do. Be a homemaker. She has two jobs. Okay. One of them is she works at the Denny counter in one of the safeways in the area where she is extremely reliable, very competent and destined for leadership. Yeah. So she's an even at the age of, she's 20. She's her favourite already. Pretty much. Yeah. But she was away in the UK for two weeks and basically fell down. You're back. You're back. So yeah, she's very valued there. But dance is, Chris is key to her life. So she's a very core member of Lighthouse Dance Company. Oh, sure. In Love Note, Christian Dance Company. Yeah. So she's not just being a student, but she's on staff there as well. How cool. Yeah. And what's her one word? Oh, sorry question. Yeah. I would call her loving. She's very loving. That's sweet. Very loving. And then for the last but not least. Is Sun Peter. Hi, Peter. He is 16. Okay. He's just going to go into his senior year in high school. Okay. Yeah. He goes to CEC, Colorado early colleges. Yeah. Which is the Browns. I don't know if they're still involved on there, but yeah. Yes. I don't know if they still have, but that was like middle school, I think, Browns. He's in high school. Cool. So that's his education. Yesterday was a red letter day for him. Okay. Because in one day he started a new job. And acquired a girlfriend. Oh, boy. That is it. Not related concepts. No. But did you get the job? Well, then I'll go out with you. That was a pretty cool day. Nice to hear you had a good red letter day there. Yeah. And your wife. Well, so the one word for Peter? Oh, yes. One word for Peter, thank you. One word for Peter would be smart. Smart. Very smart. Smart technology. Smart with just understanding stuff. Yeah. Quick and smart. Yeah. I think you mentioned your wife's name, but I just placed it. Okay. Hi, Sarah. Yeah. Sarah with an age or no age. No age. No age. Okay. Is that more common in England? Or not really? Yeah. Same here. It's like it's kind of 50-50 years. Like everywhere. Yeah. And what was it about Sarah that first caught your eye? Well, we were in a Christian fellowship group together on the campus at university. Okay. So a friendship first kind of thing. I think so. Yeah. It was kind of funny because she was studying nursing at the time as a degree. Yeah. And she went on a placement to a local hospital. Okay. And since I was the leader of the fellowship group, I said, I need to come and visit you as a kind of, just a possible visit, just to make sure everything's okay. Sounds like you had an alternative. Maybe so. A bit mild, anyway. And what was it about her that you, rather, that charmed you? That charmed her, rather. That's a good question. I was pretty eccentric at the time. I would wear loud clothes and was very creative. You're not eccentric now. Well, you know. I have mellowed a bit. Okay. Approaching 60, you kind of. Well, I think that authenticity, like willingness to be a little different than the herd, probably sounds like something that appealed to her. I think so. It's one of those things that we started any serious and she was praying about it. And that's, to her credit, that's what I really enjoy the fact that she sought God for an answer as to whether I should. Interesting. Whether she should accept my advances. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. You mentioned kind of initially it was a nine-month thing. But your dad called it right from the start basically. Yeah. See you later. Was that ever, like, as the nine months were approaching or, like, what was that, like, for your family? It was probably when we'd been here about six months. Yeah. It's actually really cool here. You know, and not only that, we were praying about it. Yeah. We were plugged into the church. We were beginning to put down roots. Yeah. You know, had a lot of connections. The work I was doing at HP was very stimulating and enjoyable. It helps. Of course, Sarah couldn't work here until the green cards came through. Right. Because she was a dependent. Sure. And so we went through a long, and we came over in 2000. It wasn't until 2008 that we got green cards. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's interesting. It was quite an investment, too. Like, you were kind of accustomed to being a two-income family, perhaps, or... HP sponsored. Oh, wow. And so HP paid all the legal fees. Oh, wow. I know. My boss was very generous in wanting me here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he said, no, HP will take care of it. Okay. So I don't think I paid. I might have paid a couple of things just so that it was paperwork. But you did forego a lot of income from her, like, she was not able to work for, for a while. But she was busy having and raising little, so probably had enough on her plate anyhow. But then we were also given an apartment, an HP paid for. Oh gosh. Oh, so you didn't have a financial hardship to come here? We made money coming in. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it was actually kind of cool. Do you go back and visit pretty regularly? Not regularly, but we have just made a visit. In fact, my wife is there right now. Oh, wow. Yeah, she's with her mom. Okay. As we speak. And are your folks, are there grandparents? Or are they still with you? Or is it going to be the age from someone? Yeah, my parents are still alive. Sarah's dad passed about five years ago. Okay. So they could see the grandkids once in a while, at least, and stuff. Sounds like that's awesome. I went there with Peter in December. Oh, that's great. About three weeks. Yeah. What an experience. For a young man, I'm sure. Yeah. So anything else in the family front that would really be worthy? I don't think so. Okay. Not really. Well, talk to me about faith, if you don't mind. You mentioned, I think, did you say 17 or 18 years old? 17 year old. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me about that situation where you're a religious Jewish person before that was your family going to temple and stuff like that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We called it synagogue. Actually, we called it Shul. Oh, which is the Shul is actually a Yiddish word meaning school, but. Oh, okay. It's a word that a lot of people learn synagogue. Yeah. It's quite a Shul. Yeah. So yes, I was brought up going to synagogue from a very young age. The nearest synagogue from us was about 25 minutes away by car. So it was not because there are not many Jews out in the country in the right areas of England. Yeah. And London, it was more common. I'm sure. Yeah. Not that I remember that. Right. Absolutely. Lots of synagogues in London. Sure. And so I was brought up Jewish. My dad trained me and then my brother in Bar Mitzvah. So for the Bar Mitzvah, I was trained to read the right passages and sing them correctly in Hebrew. So that was a core part of training. And can you read Hebrew now? I can. And speak it a little bit. Yes. Yes. It never I never learned it as a spoken language was just for liturgical purposes. In other words, reading the texts that are there in the religious books. Yeah. Right. And I know what some of the words mean. Sure. Actually, there's a funny story about that. One of the bizarre things about my dad's training is that it was liturgical. In other words, being trained to do and sing and say the right stuff. But with no spiritual side to it. So in other words, my dad never said, this is all part of your relationship with God. That said anything like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're Jewish therefore we need to be able to sing this text. Yeah, yeah. So it was purely liturgical. And it never occurred to me to think otherwise. That was just what I was brought up on. Yeah, yeah. And when I was trained on the texts that I was supposed to sing from my bar mitzvah. My dad never even said, okay, let's look at the English so you can see what you're actually singing. Yeah. Yeah. And I never questioned that. Yeah. Good. We're reading this passage and this passage. Anyway, at the age of 17, I became a Christian and I can talk about that. Three or four years later, I remember thinking, huh? Those texts that I read at my bar mitzvah, I wonder what they were. Right. So I kind of had to dig around a bit and find out what it was I read and then figure out. And there's a section called Haftara, which is a section of one of the books of the prophets. Okay. In this case, it was Jeremiah. Okay. And it was Jeremiah chapter 10. All right. And I looked at the verse numbering in the Hebrew book, opened an English Bible. And it said, it started out by saying, the dead bodies of men will lie like dung in the open field. Oh. And I thought, well, that's not a very encouraging scripture. Maybe this isn't. And then I looked at the Hebrew and thought it doesn't say that. I can see words here like God and stuff like that, which is not in that. Yeah. And I did a bit more digging and discovered discovered that the two Bibles were one verse different. Oh, fascinating. And that that verse was not part of my passage. Oh, that's good. And that my passage starts with starts with, let him who boasts not both of his wisdom or his riches, but boasts that he knows that I am God who delights in it and righteousness or something similar to that. That's a way better. Yeah. So tell me about, like, did you have a concept of a God or is it? I've heard from some kind of Jewish background that's kind of varies a lot of whether there's like a personal relationship with that creator being entity. Yeah. I had none of that. Yeah. No one ever said to me, you should have a relationship with God. And that obedience to the Jewish law is how you get that relationship. None of that. Yeah. God was in all the materials. You know, when you're doing Passover, for example, you go through the story of how God took the Israelites out of Egypt. Sure. And as God did this, God did that. And the Eamana and the Veda. But there was not a single exhortation to me to consider my personal relationship with God. None. It was just the Jewish, you know, the particular style of Jewish practice. Which sounds as though that at least within your sphere of influence, it was pretty kind of normal. Yeah. I would say so. Yeah. And then I went to boarding school in Cambridge, as I said. And there was a young boy. I was 17 and this boy was 13 or 14 and he came from a what we might call a feeder school. Oh, sure. Which was a prep school in Cambridge, where for a short time the religious education teacher was a very charismatic Christian. And had his class speaking in tongues and working miracles and paintings and all of this. Yes. And the boys just lapped his up. And then this boy came from that school into our school, full of this. Yeah. Right. So he was a junior in the boy, a junior in the school and I was kind of more senior. Sure. But he came to me after a few weeks and asked me, I can't remember what it was, but he saw me as a kindred spirit. We both liked science fiction. We both liked classical music. He was a huge Marla fan. He was already writing symphonies in the start of Gustav Marla at the age of 13. Oh, wow. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. That's quite a prodigy. Yeah. And we connected immediately. We were both great, great friends. Yeah. And then he soon after we started talking to me about his experience with Jesus, his face of Jesus. And he'd been raised in a Christian background. I don't think so specifically. Yeah. If anything. It was this experience with his school. Huh. And he. That doesn't happen these days. I mean, it does. It does. I mean, there's a reason for fellowship of Christian athletes and all these things. Right. But you don't hear that being the source of that is often. Right. We'll say. Right. Yeah. And how did your family react to this situation? Well, a lot of you continue first. So he started talking about Jesus. Yeah. I didn't question anything he said. And my immediate thought was, I'm not supposed to be paying attention to this because I'm Jewish. Yeah. But it's clearly true. And the reason I tell people now that I had this guy, Edward, his name was sitting on one side talking to me and the Holy Spirit sitting on the other side talking to me is how I describe it. Right. Because that's, that's, you know, the Bible says that the things of God appear foolishness. Yeah. The Holy Spirit touches your heart and it becomes, you know, it reminds me of a story. It's in the gospel somewhere. But I guess it's probably an axe actually where I think it's an Ethiopian or something and they're doing something. And he's like, here's the message and he's like, well, why shouldn't I be baptized? I'm ready. Yeah. I've heard all I need to hear. God kind of lifted Philip out of where he was. Philip, yes. Drop some down on the road. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Fantastic story. Yeah, it is. That's reminiscent of, in your experience, just like that. It wasn't long before my friend sent to me. So, do you want to accept Jesus? Yeah. I said, yeah. So he prayed a quick prayer over me and I just felt totally transformed. It was almost a physical thing. Well. Cleansed and peaceful and aware, hadn't done ever before. That's cool. And then he turned to me and said, so do you want a gift of tongues? Like, okay. And received the gift of tongues right there. Really? Yeah. So you can do it, can you do it right now? I could. I don't know that I would. Okay. It's been a while since I practiced that. Anyway. So. I thought you might have changed for a girl because you mentioned your wife with a Christian early on in this story. That was after. Yeah. I was, I made an assumption already. I was like, oh, you made a cute Christian girl and that. So coming from a Jewish family, I started connecting with Christians in the town. Well, that didn't even do that much. But I started connecting with Christians when I got to college in Gilford. But I still hadn't told my parents because I didn't know how they'd react. Yeah. But eventually I felt that I should get baptized. And I felt that I should tell my parents before then. It seems like. And so I did. And they were not happy. Yeah. But they didn't throw me out or anything. They didn't come to your baptisms, is there? No. Yeah. No. They didn't want to know when I got baptized, actually. Yeah. That's one of the fastest faith-acceptance stories I think I've heard really. A lot of times there's little dinks and chinks and the armoring and stuff like that kind of a long way. It was pretty quick. Yeah. And I've been Christian ever since. Yeah. It's what? So I'm 41 years later. If, if say a Jewish person or like some of my friends describes themselves as a Jewish person that doesn't really have a concept of Yahweh. Right. What would you tell them or share with them about what? Aside from just the presence of the Holy Spirit, right? Like, what was it like that made you know that that was true when you heard the good news? From a, I don't know. I don't know that I intellectualized it at the time. Yeah. Really. It was it was more of a emotional and spiritual experience. Yeah. I think intellectually the position the Jews are in is that the law is still in effect. Right. Other than the parts relating to sacrifice. Right. And still nobody can keep it. And totally true. No one can keep it all. And so what the Jews have done is for every single law that God gave Moses in the Torah, which is the first, first five books of the, of the Bible. And there are laws, you know, what you wear and to kosher foods and all that stuff. Right. So for every single law, there is this huge cloud of Jewish laws attached to it. Right. Right. So that if you obey all these laws of which there are probably tens of thousands. Right. Then you can't even get close to accidentally transgressing one of those laws at the core of it. Right. Right. So a good example is there's one law that says do not cook a kid or baby goat in its mother's milk. Sure. I've heard that before. Yep. And so Jewish households now have two sides to the kitchen. There's a milk side and a meat side. Right. Yeah. So that there's absolutely no chance that you can do that. And if you've got a meal with meat, you can't have any milk products. Right. So a cheeseburger is out. Right. Oh. Right. Yeah. The milk that was making that cheese, not that American cheese has any milk in it, probably anyway. Yeah. And all it really said was don't boil the baby goat in the milk. Right. Which is kind of humanitarian. Seems reasonable. Yeah. So anyway, that's how it goes. Well, I was just thinking that for years and years and generations, the sacrificial system was like how you atone for these transgressions of all these laws. Exactly right. And so now are they without the sacrificial system? Are they kind of without atonement? One would think so, yes. And not that I mean, like Christians confess or whatever, right? Or whatever. Well, so that's the thing. That's where Christianity comes in more specifically where Jesus comes in because he was the sacrifice. Right. Right. Right. One of the things I love doing, which I do every year, when I haven't done it every year, we stopped it during COVID. But what I have done, I did it this year, was to lead a satire, a Passover satire meal for a church. Right. And I learned how to do this from my dad. Of course, my dad didn't do it with any Christian messaging in it at all. Yeah. But it means I can do all Hebrew and explain, you know, what the resting symbolizes. That's so cool. For a church and we did this for Southgate on Good Friday, which is the best night to do it. So if Passover and Good Friday coincide, that is absolutely the best night to do it. Because that's the supper in the upper room where Jesus broke bread. And it's just perfect. Well, in the whole Passover kind of story, it's like a preforeshadowing of Christ anyway. Exactly right. And that's the whole point of, well, not the whole point of the Passover, but it is. It's a redemption of people from slavery through the agency of sacrifice, which in the Exodus story is lambs. Sure. And exactly right. The fact that Jesus is called the Lamb of God is not coincident at all. And there are really, really cool things. You've got the three muts heart, which are the three crackers, as it were, of unleavened bread. Why are there three? Well, Jewish practice doesn't really know, but there are always three. But we know. We know it's representing the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. And then during the thing, one of the first things that happens is the middle one is taken out. It's broken and part of it is hidden to be found later. And the kids go and find it. Fascinating. Right. So, and then not only that, but if you look at Muts, I don't know if any of your listeners have looked at it closely, but it's got these kind of rows of holes through it. And the reason for that is when it's cooked in the oven, it's actually got pins that go through the dough to stop bubbles getting too large. Because if the bubbles get too large, you could argue it's now leavened. So these pins actually pierce the dough as it's being baked to stop bubbles getting too big. Right. So you look at it and it's got these rows of holes. So at the end of the meal. The body was pierced for the transgressions. Muts is brought back to me by my son or whoever goes and finds it. And I hold it up and I say, OK. Speaking number one, this is a piece of Muts that was hidden for a while and is now found again. It was hidden and is now revealed again, just like Christ in the tomb when he was resurrected. And now you can see it's got all these holes. And those holes are in rows, so it's kind of got stripes. Right. So that Isaiah scripture talks about it's pierced for our transgressions and by his stripes we are healed. And not only that, but I am convinced that there's a special piece of Muts called the Afrocomon, the one that the middle Muts are that gets broken and hidden and so on. I'm convinced that that's almost certainly the one that Jesus distributed to his disciples into the meal. Oh. That makes sense. Like that custom seems like something that could have been around way before then even. Absolutely. Yeah. Or obviously it would have been right. I mean the whole path of a meal and the unleavened bread, there's a requirement from the Torah. Yeah. God said to Moses, this is how you'll celebrate every year to remember the Exodus from Israel, unleavened bread. Yeah. So that's a really good stuff. Love how that stuff ties together. Absolutely right. So I would say to my Jewish friends that the whole sacrificial system is a foreshadowing of what God later did through Jesus. Yeah. Boom. Yeah. Enough said. Let's talk about politics. You seem like a really hyperpolitical guy. I'm not. No, I was teasing him. Yeah. No, I have politics going on in my head. But for one thing, I'm British, right? So that means that, and I still have a British passport. I'm not a US citizen. Yeah. Right. Which means I can't vote here. Yeah. It's fair enough. So that means that I'm always slightly wary of engaging in US politics. Yeah. The positives. Let's talk about Canadian politics. Do you think about Canada's slow drift toward authoritarianism? I don't know. No. Got no comment on that. Okay. US politics, I think I... Let's put it this way. As a Christian, culturally, Christians across the US tend to fall on their Republican side. Fair. Especially in red states, especially in the Bible belt and so on, right? Yeah. And I've known people who, whole family is basically say, where Christians, therefore, we vote Republican. Right. Huge, right? And a lot of messaging from the Republican Party is to Christians, right? And part of that is because Christians take issue for good reason with some of the progressive things that Democrats promote, right? Around abortion, for example, gender and so on. Yeah. And that's understandable and good. For my personal politics, though, let me just say that every month that Trump was in the White House, I moved further and further left. Interesting. Fair. Well, and I don't think of Trump as being highly right. He was highly nationalistic, but that... No, he was highly Trumpistic. Right. Trumpistic, whatever he was. But I mean, he was a... he was a Democrat for most of his life that switched to virtually switched to the Republican Party to run in the presidential election. So I think claiming that that Trump is really right. Now, he's a narcissistic crazy person, and I'm not going to argue with you on that. Right. But saying that he's really far right, I don't think is really... No, he was more of a central populist in a lot of ways. I guess what I'm saying is I was a support. We don't need any more assholes. I was so oppressed. I was so appalled at Trump. Well, I don't think... Pretty much every way. I don't think we need any more octogenarians generally running our country either personally. But I was definitely rooting for the Democrats to get Trump out of the White House. Fair enough. Fair enough. I think that's understandable. I voted for Kanye, and so... He did? Yeah. I pretty much voted third party my whole life, voted for Ross Perot, which was probably a name that preceded your arrival here. Well, I know the name here. He was the first person that really messed up the two-party one-choice system kind of thing. So you started EDS, didn't he? I think? I don't know. Yeah, I think so. Could well be. And HP purchased EDS back in the day. Sure could be. Yeah. Would be surprised. So I guess from a, like, personalities aside, when you think of politics, like... Like, I think City Council is contemplating a local minimum wage here, which is fairly... You know, we were talking about the market quite a bit earlier, and even as it affected the hydraulic compression and things. And I tend to be one that's, you know, Mr. Market will figure a lot of things out better than the Decider. Obviously, lightning, you know, having large subsidies of certain industries and stuff is very much in your wheelhouse. And progression, but what, where do you find the role of government, especially in choosing winners and losers in the marketplace? I'm not sure. I have an intellectual comment on that. Really? Yeah. I mentioned I'm an engineer, a creative, right? Not an economist guy. Yeah, you want me to do an animation about that? Sure. Yeah, I don't think I have any formulated opinions. Fair enough. Remember, I'm not engaged with American politics, because I'm not a voter. Yeah. Do you, can you vote? I have a lot to go by. In UK? I think so. You haven't really exercised your... What's going on over there? Who's the... Prime Minister now is Richie Sinek. Yeah. It's a very smart guy. Yeah. And I think a lot of us are relieved that it's him and not Boris Johnson anymore. Yeah. It's slightly more even keeled and level-headed. Yeah, yeah. But any time there's anyone in politics, just like here, there's always an opposition, and people saying he's doesn't know what he's doing. Sure. In neglecting this. We can talk about... Well, we've got to go in a few minutes here, but Brexit. Oh. Does the average UK person think, oh, that was Sherdum, or are they glad for it? I don't know. I don't remember. I'm not there. There are a lot of people who think it was pretty dumb. Yeah. It was for sure me, for sure. Yeah. It should never have happened. It's just... There's no point. Can they undo it now? No, I don't think so. It'll be a long time before they go back cap in. No, just... That's one thing that Brits will do is suffer for a long time before they admit that they were wrong. If I put it... Exactly. Yeah. I mean, so for example, I have a British passport. Yeah. Before Brexit, that was a super powerful document. Sure. Because I could work and study anywhere in Europe. Yeah. No problem. Now, it's kind of the case, but much reduced. It's been a masquerade. I said it was a document. Fair enough. Yeah. So it goes... So it goes. Last segment is the local experience that crazy experience that you would like to describe for our listening. Well, okay. So many years ago, and this is also related to my Christian faith, many years ago, I went on a short term mission to Morocco. Okay. This would have been 1980, which one was it in 1987 or 1882? Wow. So this is quite a while ago, you know? Yeah. It was... Yeah. It was while I was... I had finished being a student, so I was working then, but... And there was a small group of us, kind of student age, or just graduated, and we were in a small town in... in Atlas Mountains of Morocco. I was any member of our small group of about five people who spoke French. Okay. And so the educated people in Morocco, they speak French. Right. So our host was a young man. His mother was in the building somewhere we never saw her. Okay. She provided food, but we never saw her. And he hosted, as he found us, kind of walking through the village, and he said, it would stay for the night, which, you know, that was kind of part of the plan, basically, except hospitality. Yeah. Yeah. And so he was talking to us quite late into the evening, and I was doing one of his understanding, but I was kind of giving translation. How big a group is this? This is about four or five people. Okay. And he said that there was an elderly couple in the village who had been accused of stealing olives. Okay. Right. This is a Moroccan thing that you might be accused of stealing olives. Okay. Don't happen around here, but they were accused of stealing olives. And so someone had paid a holy man to put a curse on their house. Okay. Right. And this is pervasive in places like Morocco throughout Africa. Interesting. Right. Where Islam is blended with animism. Yeah, and kind of voodoo, almost style. Yeah. And so the upshops of this was that stones were being thrown inside the house. Oh. That there was no visible agent for throwing these stones, but this old elderly couple would be sitting at the table and a stone would clatter on the floor. And this was happening kind of fairly frequently at all times of day and night, I think, I don't know. And so this elderly couple spoke to the young man who gathered a few more young men and they staked out around the house throughout the night to see who was throwing stones. Nobody came by, but the stones were still coming. This was clearly looking demonic at this point. Right. Supernatural. And so this couple then engaged another Muslim holy man who came and sprinkled water and prayed and stuff. The stones got smaller after that. That's good it goes. But they still kept coming. Anyway, so then this young man decided to go out at like 11 p.m. or something at the stage. He goes out on the town to hang out with his friends. And so I now talk to the group together and explain what that story was. And so we decided to pray. We prayed in the name of Jesus that the stones would stop in their household. And then it was tired. There's late at night we went to sleep. Next day we were out in the village kind of together and talking and praying or something. And the young man came and joined us. And then an old man came along. He was using kind of a hoe to direct water through irrigation channels, which is a cool kind of thing. And the young man said, this man lives in that house when the stones were being thrown. So we said to the old man who didn't speak French. So I was going through the young man. I said to him that we prayed about the stones. We prayed in the name of Jesus that those stones would stop coming. And the old man seemed kind of grateful. Because in Islam, Jesus is just regarded as one of the prophets. Right. So he's there. He's not really despised or whatever we might imagine. He's actually accorded certain miracles and things that he's done and so on. But he's not at all regarded as the son of God. That's a primary sin called shirk, which is where you associate something with God that shouldn't be associated with God. Anyway, he seemed grateful that we prayed for the stones to stop. Anyway, we finished our mission trip and went back to England. A couple of months later from the young man saying stones had stopped. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Any theories that like, I mean, as far as you could tell, it's just the way it happened. There were stones. They got smaller and then they stopped. Yeah. I was waiting to maybe have like a ceiling was falling apart and shedding stones or something. I didn't have the idea. That's all the information I had about that thing. But it was worth it for him to write you the letter that said the stones are still stopped. Right. Yes, they stopped when after we prayed. At least that's what I'd like to see. So from our perspective, it was a supernatural thing that was happening. And across Africa there is, there's a lot of demonic supernatural things that happen. Yeah. That we don't see so much in America because contrary we're less observant or open to that kind of thing. Yeah. Whereas in a culture where that kind of thing is parts of the cultural background. Yeah. I think demons operate in that way. Do you think that there's like like with school shootings and random attacks and stuff like that? Do you think that's like, is that cultural like too many games of Man of War or whatever on the video games and cultural isolation and stuff? Or is it actually spiritual forces acting on people's mental state? It could well be. Yeah. Yeah. Spiritual forces could certainly apply. You know, the Bible has this concept of demonic possession. Sure. Jesus encountered a bunch of people with demons and class those demons out. And that absolutely happens. Yeah. Fair enough. Well, for those that want to look up lighting emulators, maybe buy some stock or anything like that. Where do they find us? Find you guys? So the web address is lighteningemotors.com. Uh-huh. And if somebody wants to find you... Find us physically, we are on the old HP campus in Loveland. Yeah. That's where Taft crosses 14th Street, which is kind of like 402. And then you are... I am... If somebody wants to stock you. Oh. You're Dan Bennett. Dan Bennett, the marketing manager. LinkedIn maybe or on the website, whatever. Yeah. Stock you there if they want to... Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Find a creative use for you in some fashion. Sure. I can do that. I can do some freelancing. Why not? It's been a fun conversation, Dan. Good to get to know you. And glad to have you on the show. And I wish you nothing but successes in the Ventures of End. Thank you so much. Got speed. Great. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Loco Experience Podcast. Produced and sponsored by LocoThinkTank. This is your producer, Alma Ariana. Check out our website at TheLocoExperience.com to find all of our episodes, nominate future guests, or leave us a message. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn at TheLocoExperience. To support the show, please subscribe and share it with your favorite people. Until next time, stay Loco.