EXPERIENCE 153 | A Journey through Sales, Management, Ownership, and Leadership with Mike O’Connell, former Owner of Mountain Woods Furniture and former Senior Director of Larimer County Small Business Development Center.

0:00

I met Mike O'Connell in the fall of 2013, early into his final career stop when he became the director of the Larimer Small Business Development Center in Fort Collins, and soon before I left my banking career. The organization had struggled for all the years of my volunteer involvement going back to 2008, and Mike was the third, or maybe even the fourth, director to serve. From July of 2013 through December of 2021, Mike engineered a great transformation of that organization, built many partnerships and coalitions, and became arguably the highest performing SBDC office in the state of Colorado by the end of his tenure. Local Think Tank was just getting started in those years, and Mike saw the value of peer collaboration and partnership from the beginning. The SBDC Mike, I knew well, but his business and personal journey toward that role and what he's been up to since retirement were lesser known. Mike had a high achieving career in sales and then in management and eventually purchased a business, Mountain Woods Furniture in Laramie, Wyoming. Mike shares many lessons learned from his journey into and then out of a small business enterprise and also shares his love for music, his disdain for Donald Trump and his passion to bring to light the squeeze on the common man. He's a good friend and a great conversationalist and I'm pleased to share my conversation with Mike O'Connell. Welcome back to the Loco Experience Podcast. I'm honored today to be joined by Mike O'Connell, a retired business person, retired small business development center director, um, second vice chair of the Larimer County Democratic Party, and the head man at Mike O'Connell Music, and some other stuff. Mike, it's been a little while. How have you been? How are you? Good. I've been good, Kurt. Um, well, it's been about two months, lunch, a couple of weeks ago. Uh, it's been probably over two years since I retired and, uh, good to see you. I enjoyed lunch and I do have to compliment you because I realized when you gave me those sporks during lunch that nobody selects better swag than you do. You have the swag king of Northern Colorado. And good, good usable stuff too. It's, it's one of our rules. Like you have to miss it if you lose it or when it's gone. And we have hot sauces and I think I gave you some spice shake too, didn't I? The spice shake is already used completely. And oh, I need to get you another one. I'll have Alma get us one during the break. And one of my favorite cups I ever saw was the, uh, you're awesome. Keep that shit up cup. That was a classic. And I love that one too. So we, uh, we have fun, you know, we, our members spoil us with. Um, being able to be in community with such inspiring business people and our facilitators. And so, uh, we like to honor them with some gifts. We gave our facilitators little travel kits with a super big Battery, like that'll charge your phone four times or six times or something like that. Oh, nice. Yeah. Cause they all like to travel, you know, so it's useful. You'd miss it if you lost it or if it quits working. Well, you made great choices in that regard, so well done. Thank you. I should probably get a sales tax license and a website and sell some of the crap I put together, but you know, that's a future opportunity. It's perhaps if somebody, I don't really want to be in retail though. So, um, tell me, uh, I guess. Yeah. How do you spend your days these days being, you seem like you've taken to retirement. You're yeah, I have, uh, I, um, uh, as I said, I retired about two years ago. I was with the SBDC for eight years. Really enjoyed that. Um, uh, I'm in a long term relationship with my partner, Janelle. She was already retired and it felt like it was putting us more in sync. I kind of felt like it seems like in all my careers. I'm at about the eight year point and I'm starting to like, I need to do something a little different. I need to make a little switch. So I was at that eight year point and that was enough. Uh, in terms of how I spend my days, I, I exercise or work out almost every day. I'm looking at the book. Thank you. I'm looking to book musical gigs, uh, uh, around NoCo and I play seventies and eighties covers, as you know, still one man bandy stuff. I actually have, uh, a retired fire chief who plays the beatbox and I'm, uh, we're often a duo and, uh, and he's a great guy, uh, lives up in Wellington, but, uh, it gives me a much fatter sound with him playing the beatbox. And occasionally I still play solo too, but, uh, we have a lot of fun together. Um, I don't know if you've heard me describe, uh, we. playing 70s and 80s covers, I describe ourselves as we're the bottom feeders of the musical world. So are you an ear guitar guy or do you have to learn all those songs that you play? You know, a ton. I, I do. Um, and I have to play a bunch because I can't play any instrumental. lead solos to fill the time. I don't have the guitar talent to do that, but we're also very fun with the crowd. There's a lot of, we do trivia, you know, guess the original artists that did this song and you win a beer courtesy of the band. So we're really interactive and everybody has a good time. We're doing jokes. We're making fun of people. So you should actually check your calendar. Um, February 9th, we're having Loco's 10 year anniversary party. Oh, no kidding. And a one or two man band might fit. perfectly into that scenario. I, I will check my calendar. We'll be at, uh, it's at Paradox Fine Art, uh, which is the northwest corner of Lake Loveland. Um, and it's, Scott Jennings bought that building and has remodeled it quite a bit and, uh, yeah, it will be one of their first big parties there. They had the Chiba Hut party this fall and, uh, he's got lots of amazing art, a sculpture garden that's incredible. It's lakeside. It's like this. Super cool building. I will get back to you on that. It doesn't pay much. Just to be clear. But you knew that. Like I said, we're the bottom feeders in the musical world. So we don't expect much. But I do really enjoy that. That's a fun thing for me. I've played guitar. All my life, my mother was very musical. She sang with her sister in duos. You know, the Lennon sisters, the Andrew sisters way back when I have pictures of her, you know, playing and tap dancing, singing and tap. Was she a professional in it for a while? Um, no, she did a lot of amateur. Yes. So she made a little money, but. Yeah, I played some of the local, uh, watering holes and stuff like that, but, uh, so it was, but big, uh, big musical influence. And I can never remember being around the house when, uh, uh, I didn't hear singing or things like that. Uh, and the other things I'm doing in retirement, I like photography. I do a fair bit of that and enjoy taking pictures when we go to Janelle and I, uh, like to travel. We're going down to Phoenix in a couple of weeks to, uh. Hang out with some of my college roommates, which I'm still in close touch with, uh, and then we have other plans for travel as well to, uh, some of my work, uh, which is relatively new with the Larimer Democratic Party. That also keeps me pretty busy too. And this is an election year, so it'll be kind of busy this year through November, at least, and then not much for a while. Not much after November 8th, I believe. We'll get into the politics section later. I'm excited to hear your, uh, prognostications about how this, this, I've never felt less prepared to understand who might be our president next at this point in the conversation. I don't know if I'm going to have any huge light for you on that. I think Vegas is probably like, we don't even know like how to put odds on this. But I, I mean, I do have some opinions and I think my. comments about things I like to think are data driven and, uh, and, uh, and the other thing I should mention, I've done this presentation around, uh, northern Colorado for a couple of years now called, uh, the squeeze on the average American, where I'm kind of doing a deep dive about what do we expect out of government? And I tried to look at that as, uh, I would back when I was a product manager or marketing manager in terms of, uh, how is our government doing for us? How are we performing? What are things costing us? How are we stacking up compared to our industrial contributors? And as you can guess from the title, um, it's working great. It is working great. Uh, and that, that is kind of. the nutshell part of, uh, what those findings show. And it's not a good trend for the average American, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's an interesting thing where, you know, if you're part of a big corporation, which about half of our workforce is, then you just kind of. slave to that machine. And it's harder and harder to like, get something off the ground on your own, a small business enterprise, different things like that. Um, and so here we are. Yeah. And then, uh, as you well know, uh, you know, if you leave that corporation, well, that's probably also the provider of your healthcare. So now if you spin off into the entrepreneurial route, you've got to come up with this extraordinary Uh, work to cover your health care, which may not be, probably won't be that great compared to what you had. Yeah. It's like having a high income earning spouse or an inheritance from an uncle or somebody, you know, it takes some kind of an event for most people to be able to break free from that. Yeah. Handcuffs. Um, well, that, that all sounds funny. Have you been traveling quite a bit the last couple of years? Or, uh, yes, uh, uh, my, uh, Janelle and I, uh, who is fantastic woman. I enjoy her time in our company very much. Uh, we've been together about five years. Uh, we went to Italy, uh, in, uh, Uh, uh, 2022, uh, I'm sorry, 2023. And, uh, we were there for almost a month, so we had a fantastic time. We didn't hit some of the heavily trafficked tourist places like Rome and the Amalfi coast, which is on the Mediterranean side. We went over to the other side, which was in the, uh, uh, province of Puglia, where most of the olive oil is made and towns of Bari and had a great countryside. Yeah. Yeah, had a great experience and saw some incredible history and things. Uh, I will say we did go to Florence, which is pretty well known in the tourist world. Cause everybody says you got to go to Florence and that was pretty correct. We saw some amazing stuff. Yeah, and Rome is like Florence times 11. I bet. You know, uh, and like, you'll probably get your pocket picked if you're not really careful. It's a gypsy Mecca there. Anyway, um, I digress. I never cease to be amazed though in the, uh, when we were at Florence, you see Michelangelo's statue of David. Sure. And I'm just like, I, I can't understand how anybody can chisel that thing out of a block of granite. Right. It's just incredible. It is, uh, something and, you know, just walking around the gallery with Scott Jennings the other days, uh, Like seeing some of these castings and the bronzes and sculptures and stuff and just just you know, I can imagine things I have a pretty good imagination where I can think about what something could look like but how to take it from a block to That yeah, I'm not really I'm an A to Z guy, you know, not an A B C D E F G I I think that everything that I ever tried from the artists standpoint other than music it Ultimately became an ashtray. So it's gonna be an ashtray. So I had great expectations, but it always became an ashtray. Whatever, your furniture company had a lot of artistic stuff, I suspect. Uh, we did, but I can't I was That wasn't you. That wasn't me. I mean, we had plenty of people that could do amazing stuff building the furniture, but, uh, when I took it over. We didn't really have anybody that had a schedule how we're going to ship, how we're going to pull 12 piece orders together. So they go out at the same time to the customer. So it needed a bit of business structure, which is what I brought to it. We had enough people that were furniture experts. I didn't need to be the 24th one or whatever the number was guy. Yes. Yeah. Um, what I think I want to do with today's conversation is. Unfold the background of the Larimer SBDC a little bit because like it or not, you're kind of the person that saved the Larimer County Small Business Development Center after many years of languishing under a combination of poor funding and leadership struggles and turnovers and things. Um, and it's in better shape now than ever. I mean, Hope's way better at it than you. Oh yeah. And I've been told that by many people. But, but just to talk about that journey, you know, of transformation, frankly, cause that's probably what you're what. Best well known and then we'll jump in the time machine and go back to your mama's house when you were a little shaver and she was singing songs that she and her sister were going to be performing that weekend. Sounds like a plan. So talk about, like Maybe set the stage when, when you started thinking about that you had sold. Yep. Uh, it was about, uh, at the very early part of 2012, I sold Mountain Woods furniture and, uh, uh, the plant was in Laramie, Wyoming. I was living in Fort Collins, but, uh, uh, had a gentleman out of Wisconsin that owned a couple of other small business. He was interested in it, was able to sell it, uh, to him. Okay. And, uh, And I stayed on for about three months, uh, just doing some consulting for him. And then I was, was he in that industry? He was, yeah, he was in a home supply industry. He had one business that made these faux pieces of masonry stone, but were much lighter. Uh, he had a trucking company and that's big in the furniture business. You got to be able to move stuff around. Um, uh, So he just saw it as a nice fit to kind of almost a, uh, vertically integrated kind of operation. Yep. And he loved the idea of being able to come out to Wyoming. So he would drive out from Minnesota to Wyoming to fish, to hunt, to stuff like that. So that was, uh, uh, Anyway, I sold the business to him after, uh, uh, my, my ex partner and I owning it for 11 years. Um, and I, for the next 12 months, I took some time off, took a break. Um, uh, I had gone down to Cancun, Mexico just to hang out, kind of get For like a few months or something? No, that was, that was about two weeks I was down there for. But still just kind of getting you centered. What am I going to do with my next chapter? That's something a lot of business. Owners and leaders face is like, okay, I sold this business. That was the goal. Yep. Kinda And now what? Yeah. Uh, and after that, yes, to clear my head, uh, start thinking about what to do with the rest of my life. Cause at that point I was, uh, 52. So still had a lot of juice in the tank for that. I looked at probably three or four businesses that I was going But they had to be in the Fort Collins area. I pretty much drew a protractor on where I live, so I'm not going to Laramie, Wyoming anymore. Something inside of 20 miles from here. But, uh, I looked at a metalworking company that was in Fort Collins that actually fell apart over the lease deal. Uh, because Different landlord than the And the The former, the, the owner who was looking to sell it, he had a sweetheart deal with a good friend who was the landlord. Check your rent as soon as you move in. Exactly right. So, and, but it was a big number. Uh, so that fell apart over that. I looked at a, uh, I looked at a, uh, I looked at a dog boarding company, which was incredibly profitable. And what cracked me up to this day about that is they had this. Very sophisticated software to track all the pets that they would board and I'm looking at their software, and I'm going God, my health care provider doesn't have this much data. Is there tracking these dogs with and, uh, I remember looking at some of the pets names that were highlighted in yellow. And I said, What does that mean about? Biffy there. And well, that means Biffy's passed away. So it's not there. So they even had a way of tracking what the next hierarchy of pets were. So anyway, I looked at a couple of businesses and, uh, the SPDC opportunity came up, um, I had sent it. And I would have been a front range community college employee because they're the host. So they were the ones doing the hiring and the SBDC folks work under the front range financial infrastructure, human resource infrastructure. So they were doing the interviewing. Can you set that stage a little bit? Like how is that relationship? Yeah. And it's, uh, it's. It's, it sounds complicated, uh, but it actually works well from a funding standpoint. Um, uh, in the 1950s, the SBA started and their mission was to loan money to small businesses. And that worked great for about 15 years. And they said, you know, we really need to help small businesses with some training. So the SBA on a national level decided to partially fund. Two organizations. They founded the SBDC and they also funded the score or the service or retirement executive. I didn't realize they were the same time creation of those two. Yeah. Uh, and they, the SBA went to each state and said, okay, you need to pick a lead center in your state that's going to run this organization statewide. And for. Most states, that was the leading, uh, four year, no, academic institution. Oh, like CSU. Yes. Or CU. Yeah. And so, if you look at the University of Wyoming, University of Georgia, they head up the SBDC programs in their state. Okay. Colorado is one of the small number where it's under the Economic Development Office or Oh, at it, which is the lead center under the governor's office. And then that organization decides how they want to break up the SBDC centers. You know, it's Larimer County here, it's, uh, El Paso County, some places there's multiple counties, probably Eastern Colorado, right? Where Lisa Hudson manages, right? Uh, in, uh, Denver, there's three Denver centers. So we have about 15, uh, SBDC centers around the state. And, uh, Hope Hartman is actually much more conversant about that now than I am. Fair. And the SBA throws in some of the chips. Yep. And then a partner like Front Range Community College. Yep. Uh, and Front Range has been a great partner in that program. Uh, the, the main grant is the SBA grant, uh, the host, which was Front Range or whoever your, uh, institution is, they're a big funder. But then you also have to get funding, ideally, from other parties who, Care about the business health in the entrepreneur world. And that could be, you know, for me, that was, uh, Oh gosh. City of Fort Collins, city of Loveland, uh, uh, various banks. Yeah. Yep. Various banks. Cause they, they liked what we did, but they didn't want to have a loan officer tied up for six hours. Explaining it to somebody. Monkeying around with somebody. Yeah. The in and outs of, uh, operating the business. Very much so. So, banks really liked what we did. But, uh, by the time I departed So, let's talk about when you got there. Yeah, when I got there, um So, talk about this decision tree. Like, you're like, okay, you're recruiting me to take over this highly transitionary organization, I suppose. And we're both acquainted with Andrea Grant, who was one of the few people that I was There are years before and well into your tenure. Uh, and also Terry Donovan Kearns was there, who is a spectacular, and we got along, uh, tremendously, but, uh, she was there and I, and I actually had been into the SBDC as a client because a couple of times when I was looking for some of these acquisitions that I talked about, I, Wanted to get help on some things. Um, uh, Lewis Hagler gave me some help with what you could do for a loan in addition to the bank loan. So I got, uh, I got help there from people and Terry set me up with the appointments. And so I had an inkling of some of the talent that was there and I'm thinking this is. Pretty interesting. I mean, there's real people here with skills that can help you, but I wish I would have accessed some of this knowledge before when I was growing up and what I, and I actually remember saying that, uh, shit, why didn't I know about these people? When I ran mountain woods, I could have bumped my head a few times less. And, uh, but I, I would have compared it to a library. I mean, there was like, there was no external sales or outreach effort. And I knew that was missing and there were. So when I stepped into it, there were two, I knew generally what they did, but there were two things to me that just said something is fundamentally wrong here with this. One is the fact that they don't get any money from the city of Fort Collins, irrespective of how much I hear Fort Collins politicians talk about how much they want to support. Uh, small business and the fact that there was, uh, what I would call an antagonistic relationship with the Loveland business development center due to past history and all that stuff. So those things kind of told me this is a mess and it's not productive. And, uh. Uh, and most of that was due to the high level of turnover that was, uh, yeah, my predecessor. I was a volunteer there going back to my early days back to Fort Collins in 07, uh, but knew of the organization even before then. And so, yeah, I was, I taught a cashflow class, uh, myself and Curtis Carlson. Yeah. Props to Curtis Carlson. Yep. Me and him developed a cash flow class, like a two hour thing, and I was the head man, but Curtis did a lot of the work, and so that was my first volunteer experience as a banker. Wow. To be like, hey, figure out how to understand your cash flow, because Yep. I saw a fair bit of incompetence in the small business world, you know, people aren't business operators, they're plumbers and they're whatever welders massage, right? And maybe their parents taught them really good budgeting skills and stuff like that. And especially increasingly today. Probably they didn't. Right. And it's not really how people ideally want to spend their time, and people gravitate towards what they like, but, you know, just take the cash flow. I mean, how essential is that? But people don't normally think, man, I need to stay on top of these people or I'm not going to be seeing this money. Right, right. Well, they told me they mailed a check, so I'm good to go. Time out! Time out! Wait, what system do you have so that you call them back again a week later if you haven't gotten the check? Um, so going back to where the SBDC was at and, uh, um, I went through the interview process with Front Range. Uh, I give a lot of credit to the, uh, the gentleman who was my boss for the first six years, which was, uh, Glenn Plagans, who was a former business owner himself. And, uh, he'd already turned around the, uh, Glenn, if you're listening, we both think you're pretty awesome. Yes. He'd, uh, turned around the North Metro Denver Center and they wanted him to do the same thing with. the, uh, with the Larimer Center and, uh, because, uh, the North Denver, the North Denver Center was also hosted by Front Range Community College. And, uh, so Glenn and I hit it off immediately. He wanted somebody who had real world business experience and, uh, and I actually, uh, I I love the interview process they did because I remember walking through the CSU campus. I was on my way somewhere. It was a Thursday afternoon and I get a phone call from the Front Range HR person and they said, uh, Hey, we'd like you to come in on Monday and, uh, there's going to be some people here and we want you to give them a presentation as if you're the new director and they're the board of the directors, the board of directors, and we want you to explain what you would do with ESPDC. That was And, uh, so I spent the weekend, um, pulling together a bunch of data. I kind of knew what they did, but I said, this is what we did. And I remember coming up with three things and I said, you're not doing this. You're not doing, I would do this. I would do that. Ba ba ba. And most of it was outreach. I would fix the situation with the city for Collins. I would, uh, uh, get very, uh, tactical about, uh, you know, the real. Uh, assets that we're bringing to the entrepreneur community. Anyway, I start promoting it. Yes. Uh, being outreach oriented instead of, and yes. Uh, and you know, outreach was the big thing because, uh, uh, that was what was missing and I, I get the job I'm hired. I go into the, is it just you and Terry? Uh, it's just me and Terry and a bunch of consultants at this point. And I remember, I remember like the first day or two, uh, Watching Terry work. And I said, well, this is a waste of time. I'm just getting in her way. I need to go out and do some stuff out in the community. So she's got this, she knows what the operations require. Yeah. Well, and you had to figure out who at the city of Fort Collins could actually make a decision to give you some money and build bridges to Loveland. Right. And I, I knew who most of those people were, but the, the repairing the burnt bridges part probably took, that took a good 12 months. I mean, you know, getting people to see that the SBDC had real potential, it wasn't a dumpster fire anymore. And, uh, so that had real, uh, that, that was a pretty. important step to fixing those bridges and people like, uh, Josh Berks at the city of Fort Collins, uh, Kelly Jones at, uh, Loveland. So, uh, you know, a lot of good people that really wanted to see the SBDC do well. And then we fixed the relationship with, uh, Loveland, uh, to the point where, you know, one of our former administrators who was part time when I started, Cat Hart, uh, now. does a tremendous job of directing the Loveland business. She just moved to the city of Fort Collins. Oh, I did not know that. Yes, she did. She's working with Shannon and Oh, okay. All right. And they're looking for a Loveland. Maybe if you're looking for a part time job, you should run the Loveland Center. You could never make me do that. Is that what I hear? That's going to interfere with my wordle schedule in the morning. You know, I got crossword puzzles I'm doing. Uh, I didn't know that. So thanks for that. Well, good for her. I'm happy. Yeah, that's awesome. Um, so anyway, so you kind of went about this work and really was that your strength in business in general was kind of taking that big picture view of here's kind of the structural problems with this situation. Well, when we get back in the time capsule, I'll, I won't go through all this now, but, uh, I had a lot of experience with sales management. So I was, I was pretty big on number one, doing pragmatic stuff that would be useful. I was not, I, I did not try to avoid, uh, nonproductive stuff that I, I tried to stay very focused. I love focus money for the business, not stuff that's right. And, uh, and I also, though, I didn't want to see us be spread too thin. I think we, we needed to be really good at what our product was. I believe our forte could be, which was, you know, high powered, excellent consultants who are doing it for the right reasons and classes. And that's kind of why that was your shift. Yeah. And I will tell you, I mean, that's kind of why I was so excited to collaborate with loco think tank is, Oh God, this is really good. Businesses need this. They need all the elements of it. And we can continue to be the content provider. They don't have all that. They don't want to have to create all this stuff. So there was a real synergy that I think we both saw there. Did you have any experience in peer advisory? Did you know, you never heard of anything like that before? I was, I, I had not again, I was like, damn, why didn't I know about this when I was actually owning a cup? I could have used this. Um, I, I think the first time I, I ever knew about it, peer advisory thing was, uh, meeting a vistage person and I'd already had probably Andrea or that was later, it was late. Uh, it was. I'm trying to remember her name. I'm drawing a blank, but anyway, um, and it just seemed like a lot of, a huge amount of money for the services, but, uh, I could see some of that happening on a much more economic level. Well, that's what we did. I mean, ultimately, um, so talk to me about. Like, let's have a short chapter about Andrea Grant, cause she was one of those people that were there before, stick through it, and then, you know, ultimately in 2014, uh, she and I started the first Logo Think Tank chapter. Uh, she was just, uh, and really, really good with, uh, clients. I mean, she, she was excellent at meeting them at where they were, you know, if someone was pretty basic, she could talk to them about that. She could give them the basics of maybe a one person starting a in home sewing company and help them with that. Or she could give real advice to somebody that was, you know, maybe had 20 employees at that point. And, uh, um. Uh, and with a great personality, great way of handling it, uh, And huge knowledge of numbers. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just intuitive about that. Yeah. I'm thinking about when I started Bear's Backyard Grill, uh, I had a grand opening event at the, what was then the Gallery downtown, Indigo Gallery? No, I forget. Wendy Foster's Gallery. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Down there on Oak Street Plaza. So we used the parking lot of that. That was my grand opening event. And it was cocktails and whatever, and I had the food truck rocking. And, uh, Andrea, after that first, I think it was an afternoon, evening thing, she was like, You need help. Like, there's no way that you can operate that physical trailer, like, with all the cooking and all the this and that, and selling all these orders, and you can produce, you need more people than just you. And I was like, well, yeah, it seems like it, but how do I pay them? And she's like, well, that doesn't really matter. Like, you can't really operate your business that you've built without more help than that. And that just shows where I was at. She didn't know anything about mobile food trailers. She just watched me for 30 minutes. I said, Oh God! And, and she had some great experience herself with, uh, you know, she and her husband had that, uh, home, uh, that company. So had done it in real time. And, uh, and, uh, and she was, she was kind of a role model for who I started looking for, for consultancy. And it for completely the right reasons. Yeah. Cause I remember when, uh. I, I, I love this comparison, but, uh, I think my first consultants meeting that Terry and I put together, we were in one conference room in the Larimer County building, and there's probably, I don't know, there's probably 12 people there and, uh, and we're like, Oh great. Most of the consults here. This is excellent. And then eight years later, we were meeting in both conference rooms combined in the Innisphere and there's probably 50 people in there and we're the number one center in the state. Date in terms of clients served, in terms of consulting hours. So it was a big, big change. Quite a journey. Yeah. Really. Yeah. I mean, what was your budget change in that time? It must have more than doubled. Oh yeah. Uh, I think our budget probably went up. I actually think it went up like threefold when you consider Yeah. Uh uh And we need to do that because as you know, we paid the consultants. I mean, no consultants getting rich, but it's at least justifying their time. Right. Well, if they're busier, then you're gonna pay'em a lot more. Right. And if they're busier, that means they're making more impact, more impact. Right. Uh, so, uh, but you know, we, and then we started getting known, we started, uh, you know, we had a lot more, uh, uh, cred, uh, street cred, you know, we had testimonies. I remember, uh, Uh, the city of Fort Collins wasn't quite where I wanted to see him in terms of funding us. And I remember, uh, bringing in, uh, we brought in, uh, probably 10 to 12 entrepreneurs who had gotten help to a city council meeting and spoke with their two minute time limit about the help they got. About the free services are virtually free. They've been at workshop or two and this and that. And now I have. So, uh, we're going to have four employees because, uh, yes, because we were on the city's like, Oh shit, four employees means a lot of payroll taxes and sales taxes and whatever else. Yep. And while we covered the County, we made sure they were four Collins entrepreneurs that were there. And because some of the city council people, our budget was on the bubble. And as you know, in the city of four Collins, there's a lot of budget offers and a lot of discussion about what gets funded, what doesn't, what falls below the line. So Uh, but we were pretty fortunate to, uh, uh, have pretty good support most, uh, almost all of that time after the beginning budget from the city, they were, they were very supportive. Well, and that, you know, keep showing some numbers and they almost can't not. Yep. Yep. And then the, the Larimer County, uh, uh, went the same way. City of Loveland, uh, They were liked what we were doing. They liked the fact that we were now collaborating very tightly with the Loveland business development center. Uh, several banks wanted to get involved. And later in my tenure, a couple of credit unions also increased the prestige of the organization, made it easier for people to say yes. And then we got some, uh, and then we got some grant, uh, external grants that we had to apply for, which was a blue ocean, uh, uh, funded us, uh, a couple of years, uh, first national bank was a big funder. Um, uh, I'm sure I'm forgetting some cause my memory's bad, but, uh, there were other people that, uh, you know, did fund us. And those were usually grants that I had to write and did you go out to find. Um, Missing resources as this consultancy team built from 12 to 45 or 50 people or whatever, or you like, you notice that somebody wanted something that you didn't have and then you're like, who knows how to do that? Let's go find them. Yeah. And those people were primarily Terry and Becky. I mean, because they were the ones that were getting, hearing the clients call every day. So I give them full credit for that, but they were really good about saying, Hey, you know, we've had like four people comment about how do I do business on Etsy or, and we, why don't we do a class? And I'm like. Sure sounds good. Uh, who could be in class, uh, and who, who do we know who, uh, could consult and help some people with that? And we did find a couple of people who, uh, uh, you know, had that background of doing e-commerce, because I, I didn't really myself, but, and I would primarily be the one though that would try to find them or the consultants. Would you snoop'em out kind of thing? Other consultants might serve it up. Oh, I know somebody. Yeah, and that happened a lot. And they, all the other consultants were very supportive, but we were pretty good about identifying holes and fill them pretty quickly. And same thing with classes. I mean, there's like, uh, and we made decisions about what classes we should do. Uh, for example, uh, we had many that we would do, but. Organizations like the city of Fort Collins had a tax department. They were doing tremendous tax classes where God, why don't we just promote their stuff? Right, right. So it really fit the bill. Don't do duplication stuff. Yeah. And, and I've always said that, uh, you know, every entrepreneur has got stuff that they really want to spend their time with and there's other stuff they don't want to do at all. And for me, taxes, I despise that stuff. So I, give me a quick contrast, um, from. Managing, cause eight years or 10 years or something with the furniture company and then SBDC, contrast that overseeing a for profit enterprise with a bottom line and all these things and then contrast that to the nonprofit experience here where you ultimately you've got a boss, you've got kind of a board of directors ish function and things and all these funders, right? But also billing people for their classes. Yep. Um, and. I think, uh, the SBDC, uh, I came to that at a good place in a, in a, in a good time. I mean, I, I'd been in the corporate world. I'd been in a, I own my own business for 11 years. And one of the things that I have said about. entrepreneurs is that, uh, uh, ironically enough, any, any human development person will say, Oh, everybody's got strengths and weaknesses. But if you're an entrepreneur, the sad truth is you can't afford to be bad at anything. You can't, you can't be bad with numbers. You can't be bad with people. You can't be bad with your own operations. Uh, you got to be natural curious about your sales, your marketing, stuff like that. and that is just Draining. I mean, for the entrepreneur, which is why I love the whole loco think take it. You can hear this from other people. How did you handle it? Because it's not always something you can talk to your employees about. You might not have the most different kind of job, especially when you have employees and things, you know, the sole preneurship is right, hard in its own ways, um, and whatever, but being that. Yep. That person that decided her. Yep. But I, you know, I remember, uh, I'll jump back to Mountain Woods furniture for a bit. Um, Oh gosh. Um, we had a lot of skilled crafts people. There wasn't much of a business structure. The stuff I primarily brought in was a lot of the, uh, uh, Shipping schedules and getting orders out on time. And our biggest client was Cabela's anything you saw in a Cabela's catalog. We made that in Laramie, Wyoming, and then we shipped it all over the country. So some level of professionalism to deal with Cabela's because. Their big thing was the catalog and you had to bring them your ideas, your samples, your stuff for photography. You had to get that to them nine months before it was going to run into cattle. Right. So it's like making a baby basically. And so you had to have your ideas, your pricing that all had to be buttoned down so they could make it. Otherwise you could just lose it. Yeah. I mean, you could be replaced by frozen shrimp on that page, the next edition. So, um, but they were a pretty big company by that time. They had a lot of metrics about, okay, this products on this page, we got X sales, that's a multiple of four times cost or two times cost. And then if you didn't get above a certain bar, you were out, they were looking to replace you with something else. So interesting. Um, Um, but the, the rest of, uh, uh, you know, owning Mountainwoods Furniture, uh, eventually I got pretty tired of going back and forth from Fort Collins to Laramie because the plant was in Laramie. So I didn't go up like every day of the week. So that's one thing about being the owner is you gotta own all that. Yeah, but it, I did, and it took a while to find a general manager or a shop foreman that You know, we were, we didn't have a problem when you were gone. Yeah. Um, uh, we had pretty long tenure to place. We, we probably, uh, our employees for the most part were on piecework, you know, the more furniture they knocked out, the more money they made. Oh, kind of like a flat rate on a. Yeah, exactly. Auto repair. Yep. Oh, I didn't realize that. Yeah. The, uh, you know, the math was pretty straightforward. If somebody would build a queen bed that we would sell to Cabela's at wholesale for 800 bucks, uh, the builder got paid 200. So that was about the math formula and then Cabela's would mark it up and the thing would sell for 1600 or something. Right. Right. And that's the normal. process. And as long as they're making over minimum wage, then that's. And they were making, they were probably making double, I looked this up once with Albany County average manufacturing wage. A lot of our people were making double the normal manufacturing wage. Wow. So they had, they, uh, and obviously the trade off to that is you got to be watching the quality profile. Right, right. Somebody cutting corn. They had a lot of incentive to go as fast as they could. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So that, that took some management, but the system was pretty good. It worked pretty well. And we had the good fortune of, uh, you know, it was always a profitable business. Uh, 2008, 2009, where that was pretty tough because a lot of, uh, you know, it was going on with the general economy. Yeah. Well, homes weren't selling and stuff like that, and that was people's primary homes, but most of our market was going to people's secondary homes. Yeah. And so that was a really difficult. A lot of our dealers really struggled because we sold to dealers, but what probably saved us was that we also had another part of the business where we'd sell to a lot of commercial and industrial hotels and lodges. And we got a couple of big lodge jobs that came in around the time because that part was not really being impacted by the home crisis. Thank God for us. Yeah. the evolution of most important thing to think about. Yeah. In the private business, like that was constantly at flux and changes throughout the economy and different things. And in the SBDC, the most important things really be we're sta stable. Uh, yeah. We've got funders, we've got systems. We want to grow and add to this and stuff, but the most important things. are very consistent about, you know, our pivots and different things. Yeah. And the, uh, the Mountain Woods furniture business, that was a little more wild and wooly. I remember, uh, we had a Christmas party one year and that was at one of the local pubs and three of our employees drove home in one vehicle and, They got pulled over. They got three different tickets, uh, in the same car, one DUI, one, they pulled over because one guy had to pee. So that was a urinating and public ticket. And then somebody else mouthed off the offer. So I'm like, that's a, that's a hat trick. Yeah. Yeah. And you didn't have any of that with the SBDC. We didn't have that. I mean, I know Terry's trouble. Uh, but she keeps it in her raps probably, mostly. So, that was a much rougher crew at Mountain Woods Furniture. It was a different kind of thing, like, uh, just having the people with the talent to do that work even, really, right? Yeah, and, uh, but they were skilled. God, they could make incredibly beautiful furniture. Um, we'll come back on a passage through Mountain Woods, but I think, um, we'll call a short break. Yeah, sure. We'll jump in the time machine, and we'll be right back. Sounds good. And we're back. So, we were just about to get in the time machine. You want to take me back? Um, you are five years old and where are you? Uh, I am in upstate New York and a very rural part of upstate New York. Okay. I lived till I was 18. Um, uh, tell me more like very rural, meaning like. Little tiny, like here. Here's the comparable, uh, when I was in high, my graduating class in high school was 22 kids. Okay. But I finished in the top 20 of my class, so Nice job. Yeah. I actually say I, I comprised the top 20th percentile of my high school class. Okay. How many? I I was one of five. One of five. number one of five. Yeah. Five in your class. Five, yeah. But that's North Dakota, that's like, that's normal there. I played eight man football in high school. And like, in the map of New York? Uh, we would be By Buffalo? Buffalo would be way western New York. I was smack dab in the middle between New York City on the eastern side. And Buffalo. And we were in the area called the Southern Tier. Very close to Cooperstown, New York, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, uh, which I thought was just a local attraction until later than life. And I realized people go from all over the globe to go to this place. I didn't know that at the time because our school took a field trip there every year. But um. Uh, grandparents, uh, were in town, uh, very Norman Rockwell esque, yeah, uh, community, whatever. People don't move away that much. People don't move in that much kind of thing. Um, uh, my grandmother owned a pretty well known restaurant in the area just about a half mile up the road that was, she started in an old stone building that was a grist mill during the Revolutionary War. And then it was a factory that made, uh, Uniforms for the Union Army during the Civil War and then it was a dilapidated ruins later She turned to a restaurant about 1948 ran it very successfully till about 68 when she sold it My father worked there for a little while And he later became the school's Phys ed teacher and he was my high school football and basketball coach. Oh, it's quite an experience. So when you were five, what was the setting? Um, my dad was working at the restaurant that he owned with his mom and uh, yeah, it's called the old mill. Uh, people, it was a right on the bank of a river. People would, you know, get dressed up. They get the suit on and it was the nice place in town. Kind of was the nice place in town. So my mother was a waitress there for a long time. Um, I remember coming, her coming home evenings with, uh, Oh God, an apron, just full of. pounds of change, because that's, you know, 1965, that was your tips and everything, and, uh, so, uh A quarter of a nickel was a tip for dinner. But they both worked really hard. It was a big dairy farming area. Okay. Um, their Do you have siblings in your household? Yes, I was, uh, uh, my brother, uh, who's 13 months, uh, younger than I am, so Oh, Irish twins, I think they call them. Yes, exactly, right. Ish. And with a name like O'Connell, yes, very much. Um, uh, but, uh, I remember hiking up in the woods, you could go, uh, the woods were nearby and it was just easy to hike around. I'd go across the street and you're right by the, the Unadilla river. And I could fish and think, not a five as it was a little older, I could. Uh, so it was a very, uh, Out in the country. Enjoyable. Yeah. Free range, rural town existence of sorts. Yeah. Dairy farms and chickens were common and whatever. Exactly. Uh uh, especially the dairy farms because, uh, when people here in New York, they tend to think of New York City, but upstate New York is, uh, quite more Midwestern. Yeah, it's a lot like Wisconsin. Yeah. Nick that is feels like. Yep. Cool. Um, how were you, uh, received at school when you went to school? Were you a smart kid? Were you an athlete? Were you a punk? Um, I was, uh, I was probably pretty well behaved, you know, paid attention. I like school, um, love the history classes, love the, uh, uh, not so crazy about math. Um, uh, was into all, uh, athletics, uh, basketball. We had a championship team on my high school basketball team. Oh, that you were on? Yeah. What was your position? I was the forward. I was a shooting, shooting forward. And, uh, um, but, um, I played baseball, uh, foot, football when I left, uh, the town that I grew up in. I walked on at Purdue, Purdue University and I made the team, uh, as a running back and I played for a couple of years at, at Purdue. And had never played football before? Oh no, I played at high school. Oh, in high school too. Yeah, yeah. Uh, but, uh, so I played all the sports in high school because there wasn't a lot of other stuff to do. Well, I mean, you must have been quite an athlete too. I liked athletics. Were your folks Likewise, athletic. My dad was very athletic. In fact, he signed a, I got a clipping of him. Uh, he signed a, he was a really good baseball pitcher and he got all the way up to the triple A's with the St. Louis Cardinals. And there was a shot of him at about like 1955 getting his 5, 000 signing bonus from a St. Louis Cardinals scout. Oh, cool. So that was pretty, which was big money at that time. That was a new car, more than a new car. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Um, and was there other siblings involved or just you and your brother ultimately? My brother was involved with athletics as well. But you didn't have other siblings that come along afterwards? Yeah, just the two of us. Yeah, yeah. That's fun. Um, and so no particular Big stories, big changes in your, you know, kind of a stable community. And then off to Purdue, which is where, where is Purdue? It's in central Indiana, about an hour North of Indianapolis. So that's a hall that's six hours or something. Oh, no, no. It's like 14, 14 long ways from home. Yeah. Um, that was, uh. That was going, it was pretty ironic because that was going from a, uh, really small high school to this 40, 000 student population. Right, right, right. And the irony was that I met all these kids from Indiana and they would say, Oh my God, you're from New York. be so puny for you and they'd be there with half of their high school class at 500 and I could tell, well my class was 22 so I don't know. Did you have kind of an inferiority complex when you got there? Like you thought you weren't going to be as smart as these big city kids. I did. Uh, I went to college. I wouldn't say inferiority, but I remember being lonely. I remember not knowing anybody, you know, didn't know. And my parents just drove out, dropped me off in dorm, turn around and drove back. And, uh, so the first couple of weeks I remember being pretty hard. Uh, but I was, uh, I studied pretty rigorously. I didn't get into the party life too much and I was playing football, which was consuming and it was consuming in the late 1970s. I can only imagine what it's like today. So, um, that was, uh. Very demanding. And then it got, as soon as the football season ended, I'm like, Ooh, I get a break. And then here's, here's winter training coming up like January 15th. I'm like, Oh my God, where's my break? So that was pretty good scholarship on your journey. I never did. And that's kind of why I decide I need to move on. Yeah. And it's just too much. And I ended up, uh, in later years, uh, I worked in a couple of pizza, my junior and senior years. I worked in a couple of pizza places and a retail sneaker shop, you know, cause I was living off campus then and paying for most of my expenses. Not, not all of them. So did you go to school for, um, I was actually planning to be at. teacher. And after a first year, I switched to restaurant, hotel and institute management because largely influenced from the restaurant business that I mentioned earlier. And then I got after about a semester that I said, So I switched majors one more time and I was a business major with a marketing emphasis and, uh, that, uh, I only had to go like a couple of summer classes to do the catch up to graduate, so, so it got me, but I was, uh, I loved Purdue. I mean, some of the, I love being on campus. Uh, some of my best friends today were roommates and I still see him a couple of times a year. Sounds like Purdue is a very much a Indiana place though, or at least was then. I suspect it's more of a like CSU now. So it has a lot more people from far away than it did before. Is Purdue the same? Or I guess you can only speak to your experience, probably. Purdue and CSU have a lot of similarities. Purdue is the land grant college, like CSU is. Uh, probably one of the top engineering schools in the country for all kinds of engineering. I mean, electrical. So very much the same. Well, I went to North Dakota State, which is kind of in that same department. Also probably agriculture. Yes. Big agriculture. Right. Also CSU. So a lot of similarities between all those. Whereas our, our hated rival, Indiana University, Donald Bloomington, they would be more equivalent with, say, a CU, or it's more legal. Yeah, all smarty pantses, lawyers, and bullshit like that that nobody really needs. Highly overrated, absolutely. So it's interesting to me that Purdue, it doesn't say state, right? Uh, like in a lot of them, it's like, if you can't go to college, go to state. Yeah. Uh, I don't know why that is, and there was actually a guy named, uh, John Perdue, who grew up in, like, the, he became wealthy, but he grew up in a one room cabin with him and his nine sisters. Oh, gosh. And he donated the acreage of land to build Perdue, so it was named after him. But, uh, big, uh, Uh, big Astronaut school. Uh, John, uh, first man walk on the moon. John, uh, John Glenn, uh, uh, Neil Armstrong, uh, you know, all Purdue. Cool. Many, many Purdue people, including a building that was named after two of the astronauts that died when, I can't remember what Apollo Mission or Gemini Mission. Burned. Burned on the, uh, on the launchpad. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Um, so, off to what's next, like you get a degree, you get through it in four years? Uh, yes, uh, four year degree, and I ended up, uh, going back to upstate New York, where most of my family lived, and There was a, a big manufacturing plant, uh, that made electrical connectors and these were primarily for military and aerospace applications, but, um, uh, it was called, it was division of Bendix and the plant was 800, 000 square feet. It was massive. It had been there. Uh, quite, since like the 1930s, 1940s, and it got started, uh, building magnetos, which is basically a modified spark plug that every plane with a propeller had to have. So during World War II, uh, my grandmother like wound coils around the magnetos and uh, I got a job there in basically customer service in like about 1980 and pretty shortly before that my grandfather had just retired from the stock room or the warehouse because he worked there for 45 years, both of my grandparents worked there, but I was in a. sales training program. And, uh, then I got sent to be the field salesman in, uh, in Dallas, Texas. So I actually lived in Dallas, uh, for about three years. Are you just trying to find people that wanted to buy your stuff? Uh, yes, but basically my main job was I called on all of the Texas Instruments plants. In the eastern part of Dallas, which was a lot and because most of our customers were, were defense contractors, so we knew who they were, um, you know, were they getting government funding for this project? But then you had to get our stuff designed into the drawings, you know, somebody's building a. Uh, uh, an offensive avionics system. If the architect specs your product, then you get a good sale. Then you get, you get, and you had to be a qualified source. You, you know, if something's going on an airplane, you just can't go out and buy it from the North Korean source because it's cheaper. So you've got to get approved vendors. So that was. I, I learned a lot. I worked for great mentors there who were really sharp people. Um, and, uh, I, I learned a lot there and I particularly, we talked about this one day at lunch, but you know, just walking through that plant and wanted to no manufacturer, we did. Everything at that time in house, we did machining, we did electrical plating, we did rubber molding, uh, so you could walk around the plant and see all of it. And the plant was so big that, you know, there's a lot of pictures there of when people used to run parts around, they did it on roller skates. I mean, a lot of the expediters, mostly women, were on roller skates running these parts back and forth. And cause that was a efficiency time saver at the time. So, um, that was, uh, that was an incredible experience. Well, who doesn't like to see somebody rollerskating by? I mean, really, whether you're a boy or a girl or whatever, it's Anyway. But when you're holding a plate of metal shells, you know, the shell has dumped them all over the aisle, so Um, but that was a pretty fascinating experience. But an interesting thing is that I assume that company, what's going on with that property now? Uh, it's, it's now a solar panel field because, uh, sometime during the nineties, uh, they got hit with a massive flood. So they actually moved the plant up to higher ground and they ended up outsourcing some stuff. So it's not the plant that it used to be, it's not there anymore. Is it, did it be torn down? Uh, yes, they, they tore down and, uh, some of it was flood dam. Yes, exactly. Right. And it's just now a level thing. And occasionally, rarely when I get to upstate New York, I look at that and go, Oh my God, I remember when this thing was all undercover and it literally took you 15 minutes to walk from one end of the building. Well, 800, 000 square feet is the size of that HP plant area down in Loveland where the warehouse is now and Allison is and whatnot. And you've been Yes. You've been around there and seen. That's big. Yeah. I mean they had a thousand square feet is big but I worked for that company and then, uh, after I was in the field sales where I learned a lot about working for people, uh, uh, with people, you know, getting stuff done. Uh. I went back to upstate New York because I got a promotion and I became a product manager because we had different types of connectors and some need more initiative. We'd have to train salespeople. We'd need special focus because we're specking this right now, but it actually our competitors have a. better thing. We better make that better. Exactly. Uh, some, this, this connector was a naval application, so it needed different environmental and sustainability, uh, uh, performance requirements and the stuff the army might've wanted. So there was all that. And most of it was, it was long term selling. I mean, nothing happened quick. You were, you were constantly working to get your position on the drawing and then ultimately get a sale. So, so. Where, where did your career path take you from here? And did you like fall in love and have children and stuff along this path? I started, uh, dating my then wife at the lat this was in the late eighties and we got, we got married. Uh, uh, we moved out, uh, uh, had been eight years. I was kind of ready to do something different. So I left Bendix. We moved out to, uh, St. Louis, Missouri. And, uh, I got a job with a company as a marketing manager, which was what I was doing, uh, in the prior, uh, Bendix Corporation, uh, called Thermodyne. And it was a relatively new company and it was, uh, a guy, uh, who had a good deal of money and he was buying up these welding divisions, all kinds of welding applications and companies. And he was pretty good at it. And in pretty short order, it became the third biggest, uh, metal joining and, and cutting equipment behind two long established, uh, companies. One of whom was Lincoln electric. Another one were electric. Um, uh, so, uh, they needed a lot of help on marketing, uh, all these brands and stuff like that and how to end. How do we go to customers without having six different people from six, six, six different divisions call on them, which is tiring our customers. We don't even have computers yet. Uh, yeah, we, we didn't, uh, you know, uh, hadn't even gotten to Y2K yet. That was still. Um, but I was, uh, I, I have three children by the way, and so they started coming about that time to, um, uh, 32 year old daughter, 30 year old daughter, and a 22 year old son now, but, um, so that was all happening around this time. And I, I moved up, uh, within Thermodyne pretty quickly because I started at one division, then I got moved to a bigger division. Then I became a VP of sales, you know, working with multiple salespeople. And then ultimately, um, I was an executive vice president, like running all of the sales forces for all the divisions. And then I also had our Canadian operation. We didn't manufacture anything there, but we had a sales force that sold all the U. S. made products, which was a pretty common thing in Canada. I mean, what, uh, not to interrupt, but what do you think? that your bosses saw you do and that helped you advance that quickly. And what was your motivational elements or whatever? Um, cause on paper you, that's, you know, you're pretty young guy still at this point. I was, um, I was pretty persistent, you know, I, uh, I was focused on stuff. I didn't get distracted with things that weren't. I was pretty big on, uh, I thought it made sense if you could help your boss do their job, that would create opportunity. And I don't mean that in a sucking up sort of way, but you have to understand what's going on at the higher level. You can't be off doing your own little micromanagement, you know, that isn't related to what people want to see you do. So I think, and I was curious, I was curious about the scope of higher level business and where I could go with that. So, um, Plus you had two littles and one more in the way soon to feed and hoes and stuff. Yep. Yep. And some of these jobs that I was doing now, uh, You know, they were involving travel. So I was on the road quite a bit, uh, which was, uh, challenged, right. Challenging for being willing to be that person sometimes is part of what qualifies. Yep. Yep. And so that had its share of, uh, uh, pluses and minuses. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Uh, but it, you know, it's. Paying really well. Uh, it's, uh, uh, yeah. Got a nice defense account. You're, you're romancing because it's sales too, right? Like it's not, you're overseeing your sales people, but they're also bringing you in to close the big deal that they got on the, on the, on the wiggle. Yep. Uh, and I was also, uh. And I knew a lot of these larger customers because some of them, you know, if you see these big gas trucks running up and down the road, a lot of them were our customers, air gas, uh, Lindy, Praxair, uh, they were all wanting to sell the equipment along with the gases because you couldn't really just be a gas supplier. You had to be doing a turnkey solution, some additional revenue, marginal revenue things. Yeah. So that was, uh, uh, that was a job that I had and they all had. They're different hot buttons. So you had to know what was important to them. And this guy would be about inventory turns. That won't be a brown sales grow. So they all had different things they wanted to achieve. And we had to help them with that. And I was, I think, a pretty good listener in terms of, okay, I hear, and we can help you with this. So, you know, that was a, there was always a win, win to be had there. And if you're talking all the time, you miss that. So, yeah, no, I think probably. Probably the biggest defining characteristic of a very good salesperson is good listener. You know, people have like this idea that sales people talk, talk, talk, but really they listen, listen, listen more. Uh, and we, I think we spoke about this at lunch, but, um, in my SBDC days, I mean, I've interviewed potential consultants and they're like, well, this is what I've done and this is what I did that, that, that, and haven't asked me a single question, haven't asked about the SBDC. What are you looking for from that? Yeah. I don't think this is going to be a good fit. Yeah. Um, so how did that chapter wind up or where did that go from there? Uh, I was, I was getting, okay, we're up to about, we're up to about, uh, 1999, the year 2000, so I've got two small children. I've been with this company 11 years. Um, the CEO. That I was very close with who did a phenomenal job for a long time. He had moved on. We had, uh, we'd gone through a couple of what I call ownership changes. Cause we were, we were equity. Wasn't as much of a thing at the time. Well, we were in early, early adopter. Yeah. We were, uh, we were, uh. We were first owned by a wealthy individual. We spun that off to become a relatively small, but public company for a little while. Oh, wow. Uh, and the public market responded pretty favorably to that. So, uh, Many people, some people got a pretty good payday, you know, when that happened, yeah. Then we got bought though by some private equity individuals and, uh, um, who, in my opinion, has some pretty unrealistic expectations about where this company to go from here, because we had a pretty big market, a great market show already. You're like, what did you expect? So, uh, Um, my boss, the CEO had left and, uh, I was getting tired of the travel, was probably the biggest thing. Oh, you got a little chunk of the action too? Were you one of those? Well, I was, I was in a senior management level, so yes, I was part of that. So you had some liquidity? Yep. Which is what I use to buy Mountain Woods furniture, because that was, uh, we were ready to leave St. Louis. Um, we kind of wanted to have our kids grow up in a little more of a less urban atmosphere. So that's when we moved in. Uh, I remember coming out to Fort Collins, had the big old honking video camera on my shoulder. Just on the random? Yeah. You were shopping businesses or I, I had seen that, uh, the furniture company was for sale. And so we thought we'd come out. What's it looking like? And, you know, and it'd gone far enough along. This wasn't just a wishful thinking anymore. This could be, you'd had some conversations and documents and starting to get into, you know, due diligence and me looking at things. And, uh, but Fort Collins looked pretty good. It was pretty cool place to live. We also went up, looked around Laramie thought Fort Collins would be a little better place to raise a family. Yeah. A little more cultural things to do, whatever. Yep. And in, uh, especially when you're coming from St. Louis, right with all three rivers coming together, or we couldn't, yeah. But, uh, um, and then I think it was, it was August of 2001. We actually had. Sold the house in St. Louis. We moved into a place in La Porte. We lived in, actually lived in La Porte. And, uh, and we hadn't closed on Mount Wood's furniture yet. From the suburbs of St. Louis to La Porte. Right, right. The suburbs of Fort Collins are different than the suburbs of St. Louis. Uh, So, and three months later, two months later is when we actually closed on the Mountwoods furniture. So whether or not that was going to happen, you were going to move. We were moving here. Yeah, yeah. And haven't regretted that a bit. I like, really like Fort Collins. It's been nice. Tell me about how and why you chose that furniture business. Was it just you saw some upside opportunity? It was just Steady Eddie, and you had a partner. Uh, well, that was my ex wife. Oh, your ex wife. That's what, yeah, that would have been the partner who, uh, uh, you know, did a, did a great job with some aspects of that business as well to some of the marketings. And, and we had a retail store, which was an old town. The plant was in Laramie, Wyoming, but there was also a retail store that we bought as part of the transaction that is. Where the little bird bakery was, but there's now a different business. Explorato market. Yes. That's it. Which is very nice too. Uh, I haven't been in there yet. Yeah. I just went in there. I've been in like two, three times so far, but it's cool. Okay. Well, I'll have to check. So that was your retail location. That was interesting. It was. And we sold to, you know, uh, the Laramie, the Laramie plant, um, sold to. We sold wholesale to dealers and Cabela's and lodges, the, uh, the retail store sold to John Q public. And, uh, and we had a lot of accessories, but the same general inventory is going to both lines and whatever. And if you've got some extra on a production run of something for a hotel, you can be like hair. Featured list for a while down there in the retail store. Yep. Or a special or whoops, one of the builders made a mistake. Now we got a bookcase that somebody can't fit in there. Let's, let's put it and we'll put a hot price on it and try to sell it. And we actually sold that retail store in about 2006 where the plant, uh, didn't sell that until about, as I said, 2012. Oh, interesting. And that retail store continued on as a furniture store? For about a year, but, um, the people that bought it, we did sell it, they did it for about a year, and then they moved it to save on rent, but there was really no traffic, there was no people nothing more expensive than a bad location. That's well said, and they, they actually had proved that, unfortunately. So, but that was, Uh, that finished, uh, they closed up about 2008. But you guys grew with Cabela's in some ways. I mean, it sounds like at least that was the heart of kind of your business victory. Obviously building the right thing. So Cabela's wants to keep you and keeping your craftsmen drunkard employees in place. I'm just kidding. You told me the story about that before. Um, but, uh, yeah, the relationship with Cabela's was good, but I mean, you had to have some sophistication to be able to get the shipping done because we ultimately got linked into the Cabela's IT system where, boom, here's an order from Jimmy in Tucson, Arizona. And then we would take it from there and we would drop ship to Jimmy on behalf of Cabela's with Cabela's shipping labels on it, things like that. And just, you know, some guy building the stuff in his garage, you know, wasn't going to be able to pull that off. Obviously not. No, it's a matter of, like, that was part of your special sauce too, is just having the scale of People, right? That you could deliver these big things and not starve to death between those big orders, whatever, probably. Uh, and that, that's, that was important because if somebody gave a big order to a ru and in the rustic furniture world, we were a pretty big player in the overall furniture world. We were a dinky tiny spec right? One 15th of 1% or one hundreds of 1%, right? But for what we did, we were a big. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is the operation still going? Yes, it is. Uh, it's still up in Laramie. I mean, I have not been in the plant, but I've driven by it on my way to go skiing, and, oh, they added this, or, oh, they got a new forklift, and I see things like that. What, uh, talk to me about that exit, if you would, if it's, well, to the degree that it's public or whatever. Yeah, no, I, uh, that's always an interesting part of everyone's story. Well, it had been It had been about 10 years, so I was pretty well past my 8 year limit. Right, right, right. So, uh, that was done. Were you still with your wife at that time? Uh, we were getting divorced. Okay. So Because you went over your 8 year limit. If you had just turned it sooner, you might have still been Anyway, I digress. But then Janelle would be upset because she wouldn't have met you. Anyway. Yeah, well said. But I remember for a couple of years, that was pretty damn tiring work. I, I was running the business because, you know, it was still an ongoing operation. I was working to sell the business and we didn't get, we found a business broker. Found two or three bad buyers or four. Yeah. Um, but, and then, uh. And I was also getting divorced. And so there was a lot of moving parts and sign off on everything that you got to, Oh, but you know, I will say we, uh, uh, to her credit and mine, I mean, we really put the kids first and that was the key thing. We both understood the importance of selling the business, uh, and, and for the employees, don't break it before you sell it. Right. Right. And, and you don't want to see it. Sales go away, devolve into nothing. And, uh, so that was some, it was some pretty hard times, you know, all the way around there, but, uh, uh, but it got done and the economy wasn't that great either at the time, right? Right. You were kind of coming out of, yes. Right. Yeah. But I will say we had a couple of pretty big lodge jobs that saved us. I remember, uh, Uh, I remember, uh, uh, and then we found the gentleman from Wisconsin and, you know, we did probably three or four months of negotiating him with the broker and we ultimately closed on it. And I remember there was a big gambling casino that an Indian tribe was building in central California. And I'd been working with them for months, months, designs and vanities. And, uh, the tribe operated on a consensus. There were like 40 members and everybody had to agree before anything could go forward. So it took forever. And then, uh, I, uh, literally the day we closed, we were supposed to go sign the paperwork and I get this check in the mail for the six figure check. And it was the down payment for the lodge job from the, uh, the Indian tribe. And I, I just. I gave it to the new buyer and I said, every day in the rustic furniture business is just like this. Here you go. And I gave him a check because he was the one that was going to have to ship it and build it, but that was a, that was a memorable, that was a memorable moment. Here you go. Here's your first of many six figure checks. Um, But, you know, we were working with a business broker. Uh, I I've seen some that were better than others and, uh, they, they did find us a buyer. Um, I, I wasn't real thrilled with some of the stuff that I thought they should have been doing that I ended up doing myself just to kind of make sure the deal got done. And so. Yeah, that's about fair enough. It's done. You can trash that person's name here online if you'd like to, but I don't think they're still in that business anymore, actually, probably for reasons that I just alluded to fair enough. Um, I feel like we're nearly there on the business journey and it's. It's, it's almost 420. I do have a joint in there if you want to smoke a joint, uh, but I'm guessing you don't, it's a public appearance, but you're already retired, so, um, This, uh, sponsored by Chiba Hut. No, it's not. You know, I will say, the, the Times, and I have smoked previously, but, uh, I'm not surprised. The, uh, you know, Um, they always talk about how smooth it is and it's just like, Oh, I got to try, you know, it's just, I'll get this mellow feeling and it's still inhaling stuff down into my lungs, the smoke's still ripping my throat apart and I'm going, this isn't how it was marketed. I like it. No, that's, I can appreciate that sentiment very much. Yeah. Um, so here we are at the turn. Um, actually one thing, what would you say, like. Just to would be startup business operators people, especially people in a corporate situation. Maybe they've done pretty good Maybe they're 40 years old 45 50. I mean you were almost 40 by the time when you bought Mountain Woods or 35 Yeah, I was 40 40. Yep Um, and had a successful run, and then had a successful run after that. So let's talk about that, that 40 year old person that's like, got this dream, they want to do this thing, they freaking hate their new boss. Yep. What are you going to do to be actually successful in terms of acquiring a business and making it work? Um, and should you do it in today's world? You know, there's, uh, that's a great question. Uh, and I will first, I'll, I'll answer that with a couple of, uh, comments that I don't know if we'll directly answer it, but, uh, you know, It's a broad base reason of why you might have wanting to spend more time with your kids. There might be a family balance thing. There might be a, I need to continue my health insurance, so I don't think I can do this. But in my case, it was just like, I really wanted to own my own business. I mean, that was something where I didn't want to be on my deathbed and then say, well, I never did it. When you were 15, 20, 25 years old, you're like someday. Yep. Yeah, because of grandma. Uh, I think that was part of it. I think, uh, you know, you hear the words, I want to be my own boss and, uh, you know, I, I later came to believe that, uh, you'll be your own boss, but you're basically, but then you're going to work for your employees, your customers, your vendors, your. Bank, you know, those are your new, you've just got a shitload more. And then you realize my boss was carrying a lot of stuff on his or her shoulders that, uh, you know, I probably didn't appreciate too much. But anyway, um, I, uh, you know, and. I mean, literally to, to the day I bought Mountain Woods and the day I sold it, I could have thought of 20 reasons why I shouldn't have bought it and 20 reasons why I should have sold it. And the same thing when I did sell, well, you know, things are on the upswing economies going back and forth, but ultimately it's, um, are you glad you did it? I am very glad I did it. Yeah, I'm glad I did it because it was an incredible experience. I mean, but boy, there, there were days as I'm about to tell you, I mean, there were days when you're like, Oh my God, this could, this. Could this be any more of a train wreck? Oh, yes. It could start worse. This just happened too. I, I clearly remember, you know, Cabela's was probably 30 percent of our sales, so they were a big, big number. But I remember, uh, one of the buyers, he knew we had a store. And he called our store, which he knew we owned in Fort Collins from Sydney, Nebraska. Right. And he found out that on some dining chair, we were selling that for a lower price than what was in their catalog for. And, uh, oh, they were pissed. And they, they hung me over the railing. even know. I know. Like, I didn't fucking know. I'm like, We need to get rid of that chair. We had 16 of those chairs. I dropped the price. Like, fuck off. Nobody cares. Nobody else is gonna see this shit. So I'm dancing with a hi hat and cane. Duh duh duh duh duh duh. Um, uh, but boy, the pressure. I mean, you're just thinking, Oh my god, if this goes up. Oh yeah, and you got all this fear. Yeah! And Cabela's goes sour. I'm screwed. All it takes is one of the Cabela's brothers going, Get rid of those sons of bitches. And then, and then there's 20 people running around looking to replace us. Yeah, and you gotta lay four people off. Oh my god, yeah. Or something. Yeah! Yeah. And I've still got a bank loan at that time. Right. So, uh, and I do remember, I will say, on the other hand, one of the best feelings I had is, uh, pretty close to the time I sold the company. You know, all my bank loans were paid off, right. So I, I owe it free. Clear cashflow changes there for a moment. Yeah. And, uh, but I will say, you know, um. When I bought that business and I was running that business, I had a lot of experience in me. I mean, I was already running plants. I mean, I was, I knew inventory turns. I knew vendor payments. I knew, yeah, I knew how to do price increases, which a couple of the companies that worked for, they were pretty big on doing that. So, and I used every trick in the book. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of work to, you know, make sure Mountain Woods Furniture did what it was supposed to do. But so when I see people are saying, gosh, somebody's told me I'm pretty good at baking muffins, so I'm going to start a business and quit my job. I'm like, what? Right. Yeah. Be prepared. Yeah. Have you thought of all the stuff you need to know to make, do you know what rent costs in old town or downtown Loveland? I mean, Oh God, there's a lot to learn. Right. And we can't really have you losing 50 grand trying to start this business that's going to fail. Yep. And throw people into unemployment unexpectedly or this or that, you know, it's just, it's, it's a journey for the prepared. Uh, it is. And so to that point, I would say, and the other thing is we've mentioned a couple of times is, oh my God, there's business resources out there. Use them, listen to what they're telling you, particularly, um, you know, I know many people, uh, Poo poo bankers. And you came out of this industry. But the one thing I loved about bankers is they've seen a lot of businesses. They, they know why they fail and they know why they succeed. And that's invaluable advice. And if you're listening, you'll, you'll hear that. And they're mostly pretty dorky and stuff and they're annoying to be around, but you're, you're, you're truly included in that. But, um, so let's bounce to, uh, the. The turn, the faith family politics, where we've talked a little bit about your family. Um, do you want to, uh, let's talk about your kids. Yeah. Um, we always do a one word description of the children. Oh, each one or each one? Yeah, no, give them a name and age, uh, one word description, and then you can talk a little bit more about each. All right. Casey, 32, um, soulful. Allie, 30. On point as I know, it's two words and a hyphen and Chris, Chris, 22 accomplished my woods. That's impressive for a 22 year old. Do you want to share any, a little bit of tidbit on each of these? Uh, what makes it a 22 year old accomplished? Uh, I am, I am never ceased to be amazed by what he knows about construction and what he knows about redoing homes. And you know, he graduated high school. Young man that started the landscaping company. Landscaping. And, uh, I mean, it's. Yes, he did exactly. And, uh, uh, he still does landscaping, but the, the, the ways he finds to make money and the skills, you know, a quick, funny story, uh, bunny with skills. I, I, I was redoing my base, the basement a little bit. And I said, I'll have Chris come over and help me and I'll give him, you know, we'll. Exchange a few pointers with, with each other. And I'm like, within five minutes, I'm like, Oh my God, he knows so much more than I do. I mean, I think he told me, why don't you put down your purse and you'll be able to do that a lot faster. Oh, um, Yeah, so I'm pretty proud of him for what he knows. And then how about your older two? Uh, Allie, Allie is uh, the, the, uh, the 30 year old. She's on point. She's, she's getting ready to buy a house in Idaho Springs. And, uh, she is a, I. I'd say a market research, uh, manager for a boutique consulting firm in Denver. They work, they work with a lot of large consumer products companies. Uh, she's, uh, uh, helps with a lot of messaging for them for some pretty big, uh, clients, uh, and they're, they're almost like a specialized type of consultant in the areas of messaging and social media and how you get your message out. Could she be a potential future entrepreneur? Uh, yeah, I think so. Possibly. Yeah. How about, uh, your oldest? Uh, Casey is, she is in Australia right now. Oh, wow. And she is doing, uh, uh, yoga retreats. And she works for a company that actually kind of plays matchmaker for, Uh, yoga retreats around the globe. She'll help place people. Oh, you're looking for this kind of yoga retreat. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and she is, uh, she was a former teacher. She, she's the one that lived in Thailand for about eight, six years. And it's not in the teaching field anymore, but, uh, and she's enjoying Australia and it's about summertime there and like 90 degrees. So that's fine. Yep. Um, let's talk about Janelle just a bit. Um, she came along later. Yeah. Your journey, she, uh, she had a long career in the business world in Manhattan, Kansas, and where she grew up in Kansas. And then, uh, she had bought a cabin in Estes park and we started dating when she was kind of going back and forth, still working in Manhattan, Kansas. Yeah. Uh, cause she was remodeling this cabin and she's got. Mad, uh, design skills and construction. You know, how to put things together and how things look, how to good and uh, uh, really, really good at that. Uh, far, far out beyond where I'm at with it. And, um, you know, we just started enjoying each other's company and, um, you know, it really impressive lady and I very grateful to be able to, to be with her. So, but, uh, and then, uh, uh. She, uh, after a couple of wildfire evacuations, though, we kind of said, maybe up in the mountains in Estes is not quite where we want to go. I clearly remember standing on the balcony of hers in Estes Park at like 11 o'clock and watching, like, it wasn't the East Troublesome Fire, but the other one roaring across the valley. It literally looked like a scene from Lord of the Rings where the orcs are, fires flying up every gust of wind. Birds throwing at them. It was nasty. I mean, it was truly a, you just think of, Oh my God, how does anybody get around this? So she did sell that cabin. And then we live, we live out by the Budweiser plant in North Collins. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, Why did she say yes to her third date with you? She's a desperate woman. Lonely. She was coming all the way from Kansas. Made anybody cool yet. What do you think she enjoys the most about your, your character, your personality? Oh God, that's a good question. Uh, we actually watched a comedian the other day. Um, I'll answer your question directly in a little bit, but we actually watched a comedian not too long ago, and the comedian said, It's all about finding who can stand you. That's you got to do. I love that. Find somebody who can stand you. But, I think she likes the sense of humor. She likes my curiosity about things. She likes my, um, Probably your adventurousness. Yeah. Music and different things. And we like going to museums. We like We like, uh, oh gosh, we like, uh, we like, we like travel, um, we like, uh, being outdoors. So that's not lately in the last couple of days here in Fort Collins, but yeah. What, what, uh, what made you ask her out that third date? Like what's your, your favorite things about her? I thought she was sharp. I thought she was funny. I thought she's very attractive. Um, just Great rap. Yeah. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't say that. I was just leading question. Anyway, um, and I don't even remember actually. I don't, anyway, I digress. Um, faith or politics? Do I, we choose, or? Yeah, we're going to talk about both. Which do you want to hit next? Let's do faith. Um, you know, You mentioned Catholic O'Connells and Irish and things like that, but Well, I told you about the super small town I grew up in, sounds like you did as well, but uh, we had two churches. We had a Methodist church and we had a Baptist church. Oh, interesting. I was in every building in the town. I don't think I was ever in the Baptist church. So I, I grew up in the Methodist church, um, a little bit because everybody was a little bit something. Yes. Yeah. And my mom thought it was important that we get some grounding, whatever. My dad's higher power was watching NFL football, so he was not going to church. But I, I guess I gradually, I enjoyed here. Unity of Fort Collins, non denominational church, I, that's been a, uh, I went there for several years, and I guess I would probably just call myself, I, I like to consider myself spiritual, but no former religion at this point, so. Um, agnostic? I mean, is there a creator force, or is it just a Yeah, I think there's, uh, I think there's fates, I think there's, uh, higher powers, uh, I don't know if Multiple ones, or one? Uh, I don't think I have an answer for that. You know, when I was, uh, uh, I'll say, uh, sixth grade, seventh grade, I was pretty infatuated with the Roman and the Greek gods, different gods for different things. And people would pray to this God for help in this area. And then later it became, uh, Poseidon was the God of the sea or, uh, hate my aunt. I'm going to pray to Ares, God of war or whatever, for whatever valor in battle or something like that. And so, well, and then there was, but. Like from that same region is like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and stuff. And they're like, Hey, there must be a prime mover, the unmoved mover that spun this whole thing up. Otherwise, who did that? Yep. Uh, and I don't know the answer to that either, but, uh, the Greeks had their. the Romans did. Um, I, um, I like to, I find it interesting that every religion, they've got some version of do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Every religion has that, some language. So, uh, I find, uh, And as I got older, I did find a little disconcerting that, you know, for all these religions that claim to love each other, if you look at every, almost every hotspot on the globe, it's always two religions battling over some who's, who's, who loves more, arguably like the Muslims are slowly taking over Europe right now. Right. And the Middle East has largely been slowly taken over by them as well, despite being, you know, some centuries ago. Yeah. Christian realm. Yep. Uh, so it's quite, and Europe isn't really Christian anymore, right? Like they're, they don't really have a religion to buttress their defense against the Muslim invasion. I don't know if it's that or not, right? Like, or is it a bunch of poppycock, right? Like, and we all be better off. if we were secular. Yeah. You know, Turkey had a good spin at being secular for a long time, and they've been drifting more and more into Islamic, you know, law. Yeah. Sharia and whatnot. Uh, and You know, there are what I'd call moderate Muslims that just say that, hey, part of our religion of Islam, that's getting hijacked by extremists. Totally. Totally. No, I'm not, I'm not saying that we should all like be against those people or anything, but I am saying, seeing big picture transitions of Uh, you know, look at, uh, if I look at, uh, China, communist China, as we know, you know, they're trying to tamp down any religion because they want your loyalties to the party. So that's who you would, uh, well, and that's, I think that's, you know, maybe that should be our, well, actually we can stay in faith for a moment, but somebody I listened to and enjoy is like, if God isn't, you Real than your highest power is the state, whatever the government of your, of your system is, that must be your like highest power. It certainly isn't the individual, especially not in such a situation where you weren't implanted with. Uh, free rights. And so let's, maybe we should talk about that. Yeah. Some people might say, okay, maybe that higher power is myself, or maybe the higher power then is my family. Yeah. Yeah. Does it have to default to, uh, government? Are there natural rights? Uh, what do you mean by a natural right? Like Yeah. You know, are we like walking meat bags that respond to our thing or, you know, like if I want to stab you and take your money, I could just do that because there's really no natural right that you have to prevent me from doing that. Yeah. You know, I guess that depends on where you live. If you're in a certain part of the globe, no, there are no natural rights. Right. So if you're in China, then you don't have any natural rights, really, at least to free expression. Yeah. Or For example. Or you're in Iran and you're a young woman and you're getting beat up because the, what do you call it? The morality police didn't like the way you wore your head scarf. Well I think that's where some people like myself would argue that the existence of a creator force implants the supposition of a natural right where if I'm a young woman and I'm. I ran. You should not be able to kill me because I choose not to wear a headscarf. My natural right is to be, to exist, to be free of that constraint of you being, having the power to just snuff me out. And true. And we agree on that, but unfortunately the morality police have a completely different view that, Oh my God, you've offended the higher power by your display of brazenness. Right, right. So that's, well, let's transition to the intersection of. and politics now. Let's talk about Israel. Hamas. And uh, no, we don't need to talk about that, but because it's again, one of those things that's so complicated, how do you fix it? You know, it's been, they've been at war for 2, 500 years in that part of the world. So I find it a little ironic that One politician from whatever Western country in some short period is going to fix it. Uh, I always flashback to Golda Meir, who was the premier of Israel, I think in the 60s or 70s, you know, very, very powerful leading lady. Uh, she used the phrase that. I don't know if there'll ever be peace in the Middle East until the, uh, until the, I think she said the Palestinians love their children more than they hate the Jews. And there, there's some truth to that. I mean, it just seems to be, I mean, when you have countries around Israel who stated State goal, country goal is to, well, we want to exterminate Israel. That's fundamentally wrong. And, uh, well, and if you look like the mission statement for Hamas is like three or four things that mean like America is evil. Israel is dead and go Allah. Yep. Right. And that's, uh, there's no, there's no, do you sympathize with Israel in the current time where they're like. Listen, we got to take care of this a bit. Uh, I, I We can't have this Gaza cancer growing in the side of our I, I don't know how you can observe what happened last October 7th and not have sympathy for Israel. I mean, and the pervasive element of fear that if you're an Israeli citizen, you're even living in, considering the neighbors that they have around them, I mean, it's Yeah, it's a tough environment. I do know there is a lot of Uh, there's a lot of controversy about their reaction and how far should the level of how many babies, how many children should you kill to make up for that? But I, but I don't know how you, uh, how do you leave Hamas standing right by Israel? I mean, you can't do it. Almost can't. Yeah. I almost think all those people from Gaza have to go to West Bank. Like, I don't know how to go about it. And it's a big chore and it's, uh, but with Egypt acting the way it is, I just don't know how those people in God that could ever be financially successful, economically successful, being surrounded by this population. Yep. Uh, you know, I'm actually pretty amazed that. Israel has the sort of economy it does. I mean, they actually have a pretty good entrepreneurial network, uh, in Israel, considering how much fear you should have about getting a missile strike, what they're surrounded by, you know, I do think, uh, you know, if you listen to. Some of the experts on this, uh, Palestine ultimately probably has to come up with their own state or their own place. But maybe that's not all Israel. Maybe some of the other neighbors contribute to that, but they're not willing. They just want Israel to take 100 percent responsibility for fixing the problem. So I'm not seeing an easy path to, you know, solution here. Well, and yeah, like we're talking to you, uh, Jordan, like you could give them some property. Maybe Egypt can give you some money. Uh, West Bank can be kind of something, something, and now we can have a state for these people and start creating institutions that create a culture for the long term. Uh, and you know, I will say, um, Uh, the former president, George W. Bush, he used the term axis, axis of evil, and I'm not sure what entire countries he was talking about. It was Iran, North Korea, and Iraq at that time. At that time, but I would say, I would say there's a degree of, if I look at China with what's happened, particularly after the invasion of Ukraine, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, that is an axis of evil, and they are working really hard. To provoke what I call democratized countries. I mean, look at the Iranian proxies that are waging war. And they just want them to spend a much money and make themselves broke. Fucking around with it. They do. And, and they don't, they don't care if they're citizens starve. They just want to, you know, get a couple of people's ego satisfied. Look at, uh, North Korea is now given artillery is a handy foil for China. Really? Uh, but they're giving, uh, artillery to Russia to use against the Ukrainians. That's occurring now. And then China with the saber rattling in Taiwan, and that's gonna continue, and, uh, well it's probably only going to get worse. And they're, they're actively pushing autocratic, Uh, policies and programs and statehood against democracies. For sure. So I have a real fear about that. Yeah. Agreed. Um, I'm going to call another quick break cause I have to pee and it feels like we have more to talk about. Do you have a hard stop at five? No. Okay. Back. Okay. Back into the politics segment. So. What was it, second vice chair or something of the Democratic Party? Sounds very formal, doesn't it? Second vice chair. What are your duties? Uh, I'm primarily, uh, helping with volunteer recruitment and volunteer organization. Okay, find some door knockers and different things like that. Yeah, but there's a lot to it. There's various committees. There's, uh, uh, candidate support. And that's like Broad ballot, right? You're not like working to get Biden reelected as much as you are to help the general Democratic Party in Larimer County, right? With some vested interest in maybe areas outside of the, I mean, political, uh, territories, if you will, uh, You know, they can maybe have a part in, right. Cause some of the representatives in the region or whatever, even though one might fall mostly in the Weld County, but parts of it could be in Lublin. Well, you guys own Fort Collins now, right? Cause what's her name? The only conservative city council person got bounced, which was a shock. Cause she was such a smart lady. Uh, I didn't know her personally. I do know, um, that was a really interesting election when she got elected because there were. There were four left leaning people running against her in that election. 29. 4 percent of the vote. And, and her near, I mean, if any one of those other four had dropped out, the next person would have bounced up. Do you think that's healthy or good? You believe in the kind of left principles enough to think that? Fort Collins is better with seven city council people, uh, and no conservatives, or do you think a balanced voice is better or, yeah, talk to me about that. Uh, well, I would classify myself as, uh, probably a moderate Democrat and moderate anything is kind of shrinking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Get more. Are you a blue dog Democrat? Semi financially conservative Democrat. Like, yep. Fix the world, just don't go broke trying to do it. Yes, I am. Uh, and you know, I, you learned that through experience. Yeah, I was going to say nobody uses that phrase anymore, but that's, that's true. I, I would classify myself as, uh, I'm definitely democratic on, uh, you know, socially liberal, fiscally conservative. I think that fits. So libertarian. Um. I'm just saying, that's what I hear a lot, you know, like socially conservative, fiscally or socially liberal, fiscally conservative, that's what libertarians are. It's like 80 percent of my guests, um, but nobody wants to be labeled with the libertarian party because both Democrats and Republicans hate libertarians more than they hate the opposite of their camp because they think that we're throwing our votes away every year. Um, I And that we're ignorant. I haven't seen that. I mean, nobody's really described it that way to me. I, my experience in the political arena, and I wasn't independent by the way, through most of my voting tenure. So I, I came around to, I decided I wanted to get a little more involved with politics and, and it's. It's hard to get involved as an independent. So obviously, well, not obviously, but I, I lean more towards the Democratic party and the Republican. So I got, uh, involved with the Democratic party and, uh, you know, worked on some campaigns for a few candidates starting some extent when probably only four or five years ago. Okay. Uh, and I will say, um, I am not a Donald Trump fan. So the ascension of Donald Trump was kind of off putting to me and I, yeah. Yeah, very much so. And, uh, and I said, uh, well, if you're going to get involved, there's now is probably as good a time as any to do that. Um, I, I was just not, uh, I didn't like what I saw about, um, the saber rattling, the, the, the, the, Well, he didn't really have any wars. I was going to ask you actually, when we were in the Middle East about the Abraham Accords. What do you think about that? I'm not familiar with that. The Abraham Accords? Yeah. Oh, well, he basically bribed, uh, Saudi Arabia and. United Arab Emirates and a few other people to normalize relations with Israel. Who are you talking about? The Trump. Oh, Trump. Well, but it was, it was in the Middle East where we just were, we came back from the Middle East, but the Abraham Accords is kind of an initiative spearheaded by Kushner, uh, in during Trump's administration, where they kind of got a bunch of leading voices in the Arab world to. Um, not to say we don't want to kill you, Israel. Oh, okay. That's, that would have led up to the the Abraham Accords. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. So that would have led up to the normalizing of Saudi Arabia and Israel relationships. Which is what's thrown all of the, some of the terrorist groups into chaos. Arguably, too. Because they don't want to see that. Right. They don't want to see that. So that's why they're fighting against it. But Yep. Israel's like, no, it's actually good if we have normalized relations With our neighbors. Yep. Yep. Or at least get him to say, we don't want to destroy you. Yes, that was right. Right. Well, and that was like, I don't know, have you heard, um, like talk to me more about what motivated you against Trump? Was it just his asshole ishness? His narcissism? Yes. Yes. Um, I don't know why, but I, I, you know, I grew up in upstate New York and, uh, I recall growing up, you know, younger Donald Trump. I mean, it was kind of like more of a pitch man, P. T. Barnum type character. Yeah, Gotti. I'm thinking about, uh, and, uh, and that really didn't change. I mean, he. He really got traction with the Republican Party. I didn't like the elements of, of racism where, you know, you're pulling in these proud boys and three percenters and oath keepers and thinking that that's part of where we want America to be. Very uncomfortable with that. Do you think he gathered those people intentionally or did they just rally around him as being kind of a new voice for We have a different perspective on this. Honestly, I think Trump was a populist and that same squeezing of the American middle class that you speak against is kind of what he spoke against and what caused his campaign to catch fire. Like they thought that middle, that, that Indiana, you know, that Pennsylvania, those people is what came around Trump. And that's kind of who you're talking to. But so was he. Uh, yes, I will, uh, and I'm probably going to say the latter. They were definitely attracted to him, which he, you know, he's a good marketer. He's a charismatic guy, for sure. And I will say in 2016, he had the benefit of running against a highly unpopular opponent with Hillary Clinton. I totally, like I wanted some, any other woman, past or future, to be the first female president. Like, just some other woman, I mean, no offense to Hillary Clinton, but she's a despicable bitch. And why would he want that role model for, I mean, that's just my opinion. Um, I, But a lot of people shared it, obviously, that's why Donald Trump won. Yeah. And Bill Clinton talked Donald Trump into running so that he would cause havoc in the Republican primary. I hadn't heard that part. Oh, really? It was in the Atlantic. Yeah, they tried to scrub it from history, but Bill Clinton is who presumed, seemed to have nudged Donald Trump into the Republican race, thinking it would fuck shit up and let his wife win. Okay. And then he was wrong. Even given that, I mean, in the Republican primate, what were there? There were 17 candidates running. So he climbed a lot of mountains to get that nomination, regardless of who talked him into getting there. But, uh, but I wasn't also comfortable with, uh, you know, uh, Eight different U. S. intelligence agencies saying that, Hey, the Russians are interfering with our election. Forget collusion, I'm not talking about that, but just the Russians are interfering. And he says, no, I agree with Vladimir Putin. Um, wrong answer. You saw the Steele dossier and like the result of that case, which was that it was basically a. Puffed up piece of junk, right? I'm not talking about the collusion part. I'm just talking about, are the Russians putting The accusations of collusion. I'm not even talking about that. I'm saying the Russians are putting bots and things like that out there to mess with our election. And we've had like eight different intelligences. You don't think that was misinformation? No. How about the 53, uh, intelligence experts that said that the Hunter Biden laptop thing wasn't pertinent, wasn't pertinent, like it wasn't relevant. Like it wasn't credible. Um, I'm not crazy about Hunter Biden. I'm also not crazy about Jared Cushner using, agreed. No, I think they're just equally despicable, but I would challenge you that the 2020 election was impacted by the media complex by burying that Hunter Biden story right on the eve of the election. That would have changed the results. You know, that's fascism, when media and government work together to have some ends, which was basically canceling Donald Trump, just like they did to the Brazil guy, Bolsonaro. Like they canceled Bolsonaro on the media companies. He was a Facebook, Twitter guy, but they snuffed him out so that he couldn't reach his constituents. That's the media choosing the president, not the populace. In my, in my thinking. I'm just, I'm trying to be clear headed about it. Yeah. Um, cause I, I would, I'm not going to vote for Donald Trump probably even if he wins this nomination and I'm sympathetic because he seems to be probably about half the Biden voters have, um, DRS, uh, or TRS rather, no, TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome. Where they just, like, think that Trump will be the next Hitler if he's re elected. Do you, do you fall into that camp? I think we could do a lot better. I don't know where he's gonna go with that. Do you think Biden's a lot better than Trump? Uh, I think, I think Biden and Biden people are better than Trump. Less, less destructive. I think, I look at the cabinet. The Biden has, let's say, Oh, right. Trump had a ton of turnover in his campaign. Nobody could fucking get on board with working for the asshole. Nobody could work for them. Nobody. And the people that were there at the end, they were just lackeys. They were taking a direction from Donald. They weren't there to run a job or run a aspect of the government. So it's, uh, I just think the, The executive branch is in better hands with Biden structures could be, and it looks like it's coming down to that, even though 70 percent of Americans don't want that, right? Well, isn't that a symptom or a sign of actually more corruption in the system itself? Like, why does the system give us? Hillary versus Trump and then Trump versus Biden and then Trump versus fucking Biden again. Like what kind of like the, so, uh, Brett Weinstein has a quote, the, uh, the, the outcomes of a system prove what it was designed to do. And at this point it looks like it's designed to provide us with. Cognitively failing or personality flawed, both sides corrupt. Um, I don't think that the, the Ukraine thing with Biden, like that's not clean at all. The China stuff with Biden is pretty ugly. If, you know, 20 years from now, we're going to look back at that and go. Ooh, this was pretty sticky. Well, I thought I would like to see, uh, there's a lot of stuff about our political system I would like to see cleaned up. I don't know if you remember this, but well, Elizabeth Warren actually put out, I'm not crazy about the rotating stuff between congressmen and lobbyists. Oh yeah. Cause it's completely middle class. As you get out of the Congress, you can be a board member for Pfizer. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look at the accusations that Nikki Haley's dealing with right now that all of a sudden, you know, Boeing's got a plant in, uh, South Carolina and then she's gone from being broke to being a millionaire that's being bantered around. Well, and she kind of did go from being broke to being a millionaire. And so has, what's her name? You know, the, the champion of that, Nancy, right? Like she's the best. Pelosi? Yeah. Yeah. She's like way better than Warren Buffett or freaking. Yeah. You know, anybody else you've ever met, Jim Rogers or Steve Ackerman or Bill Ackerman or any of those people, like, she's way better at stock picking than any of the previous investment geniuses we've ever had in our nation. Yeah. Or she's corrupt. One of the two things. She's either a freaking financial genius or she's corrupt. Which do you think it is? Well, I I don't have an exact answer for that, but I would, I would say that, uh, I find it very disconcerting that to me, the vast majority of American politicians right now, they don't work for Americans. They work for their donors. And that is, I mean, everybody, every American should be deeply disturbed about that. But we're too distracted. We're watching TV. We've got our PlayStations. We've got the NFL playoffs coming up. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, people aren't paying attention to it. And, uh, you know, I, I mentioned earlier, I've been doing this presentation called the squeeze on the average American and the way they got started on that was, I don't know when it was. Uh, I was at front range community college and, uh, I had the opportunity to do this lunch presentation and I got so tired of just hearing like little anecdotal talking points about various political stuff and I'm going, you know, I used to be a marketing manager. I'm going to look at, do some, a deep dive here, the way. I would have to analyze like a product in the corporate and explain it. And, and you had to be pretty accurate about it and tell what you knew. Cause otherwise somebody was going to say, you know what you're talking about. So, so, uh, uh, I mean, I'll just take one, uh, healthcare, um, the healthcare system in America, it's the most expensive on the globe. Um, with less than average results, I mean, we're paying Mercedes Benz prices for a Honda Civic product, or even less than that, because the Civic looks pretty good now. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Honda before it was good. Look at, look at, uh, Uh, the, the drug insulin with, if you're diabetic, you need it. There's 30 million diabetics in America. That's about the population. Yeah. It should be a completely unregulated product basically, in my opinion. Could be. Yeah. It's pretty simple product to make, but, but for some reason, We, we sell this product to Joe consumer for like 80 bucks for a standard, uh, uh, unit. Everybody else in the world is paying eight to 10, right? Well, it's because big pharma pays a ton of money to all kinds of Congress people. And you've even got the U S chamber of commerce. That's joining in a lawsuit with big pharma to help keep those prices high. Cause if you remember the, the IRA act. That came out recently. Yeah. That's supposed to allow the federal government to negotiate drug prices, which we in a free market system should want, not, not set the price, just negotiate the price, but we're getting pushed back about that. But the government shouldn't buy anything. Well, we do. That's our Medicare system. Well, yeah, for sure. And that's, uh, are you familiar with, uh, do we talk about Javier Bile? Never heard of him. He's the Argentine president now, the first libertarian. in the world. Oh, okay. Yeah, and he's like He ran against, uh, Bonacero, right? Um, no, that's Brazil. Uh, what did you say? Argentina. Oh, I'm sorry. Argentina. Yeah, so he's the crazy The new guy. The new guy in Argentina. Okay. And One of the things he's done by executive order is say the government can't say something is free if the government is paying for it. Like it's not free, because somebody pays for that shit. Uh, and same thing applies kind of to what we're talking about here. Um, but yeah, everything that has a cost has a price. Yeah, uh, and you know, there are going to be We live in a country, 330 million people, you know, not all of them are going to be able to go out and intelligently source products. Uh, you know, even the fact that, uh, you know, when you and I were growing up, uh, pharmaceutical companies could not advertise and now we're there. Yeah, one of the very few billion dollars of that's all you see, like, that's all you see on regular TV anymore, um, which I'm like, whatever, I'm not going to buy any of your shit ever. So fuck off. Um, anyway, I think, well, they just want you to go in and ask about it to your doctor. So you're a doctor. Oh, yeah. Right. Right. Prescription. And the doctor's probably getting a kickback from pharmaceutical company to do that. So, so to zero that question down, like one of the things that libertarians argue, frankly, is that if we you. decrease the power structures, then it's not as corruptible a system and you can't, we won't have these kind of market clouding things where we pay 80 bucks for insulin and other people pay eight bucks. Um, the reason I would say that Libertarians can't get any traction even though like half the country is basically libertarian is because there's no Nobody to give the goodies to to get goodies for me. Like there's no insiders in libertarian land It's like here. We just set up the system and we live by it and you don't get any Kickbacks or goodies or insider things. So why not that? Well, first of all, what do you mean by unwind the power structure? Like, how does that, like, so, okay. So a hundred years ago there were six, um, no, there were 96 private enterprise people for every one. Um, government official. Oh, okay. Now there's six private industry people and we're on our way to three. Like in about 20 years, if, on a, on a, on the trajectory we're on. So there's a It's kind of like China, like China is going to go from 1. 4 billion population to 800 million population over the next 20 years and a lot of those people are going to be old. Like, watch for China to start executing old people because they can't afford that shit. And, and in a way the same kind of thing applies to government and Functionality and whatever, like you got to do what you got to do right now. The powers that be with money can influence either the Democrats or the Republicans. Yeah. To do shit that makes them a bunch of money. Yeah. Like the bank reform thing that basically was funded by the big banks and quashed all the small banks in the country over the span of about five years. Yep. Like they fixed the problem by making it worse. Yeah. Which is what I would argue as a libertarian that government is best at, is fixing a problem to make it worse, like homeless people, like, or the people that work in government to fix homelessness, like they're motivated to like, keep homelessness a big problem. Yeah. Well, I would also say to that, that, uh, so the, the politician, they've also got a motive to keep themselves reelected. So. Uh, looking tough on defense is a biggie. So we have this defense budget that is bigger than the next 10 countries combined to protect our relatively small percentage of the population. We're almost easily defensible comparatively. Yeah. Like compared to Europe and stuff. Like we gotta come by the ocean and attack us. What? But we're not spending it. We don't spend it smartly. We got naval bases in Kansas and Iowa. I mean, not. ship ports, but, uh. Well, in 118 other countries, Yes. that are all burn rate and increased animosity. Not all of them. Yep. So, it's not even defense policy anymore. Its, its, its, its workforce industrial policy. We're just gonna keep funding, Yeah. these big defense budgets. We wrap it around the flag and American Pie, But it's really spreading out the pork to all these Congressional districts, so nobody kills the project. The Exactly. And by the way, I don't know if you knew this or not, but I read a article about this the other day. And in Eisenhower's initial drafts of that, he didn't just say the military, he didn't say the military industrial complex. The original drafts had the congressional military industrial complex. Well, yeah. I mean, that's how it gets, it keeps getting that pork past. It is. Somebody knocked that out. But so I think that is, uh, if you want to see an area where we are so Yeah. And I'm a big believer in having real smart tactical defense system, but yeah, but never canceling anything, never canceling any dated weapons system is just nuts. It's just, I mean, the military is saying we don't use this anymore, but Congress, uh, we'll keep, we'll fund it. We're going to keep making them. And what do you think about the medical industrial complex? Oh, it's, it's bad. I mean, it's like, I mean, when, when Pfizer. The administration to like mandate stuff through OSHA. That was like easiest selling ever, right? Mm hmm. Like, don't even have to spend any marketing dollars through the pharma ads online. You can just be like, everybody's mandated or you could lose your job. Yeah. Well, I, I don't know about the, uh, That sounds like fascism to me. I mean, when you talk about the government and private industry working together to make sure that somebody benefits. Well, it had its purpose. I mean, a lot of the vaccines that I think you got to keep in mind that around 1900, you know, our average life expectancy was like 42 years old and we had polio and we had smallpox and, and, you know, some of the vaccines took care of that, but people had going backwards for the last 20, 30 years a little bit, uh, as far as life expectancy, uh, for the last four or five, I mean, we're clearly, uh, below. European countries, I mean, they're living to 82, 83, we're at 76, we're going to get up to 78. So there's a big gap. Fair. But what about this, this element of Pfizer gets to, you know, get the hookup. Is that dangerous to our society or is that the right thing to do? Well, it depends on what the need is. I mean, if we're coming out in the middle of COVID and there's a crisis, yeah, I hope people are reacting quickly, but I hope they're doing it for the greater good. Now, what is that? That's arguable. It feels like we should like drop the whole 10 year testing thing for everything if we're going to drop it for this thing. I don't know. Well, there's a lot, I know there's a, I'm not an expert on the. process, but, uh, you know, I remember sitting in some presentations about and listening to people talk about, uh, Hey, if we can get this drug, uh, this has got this little extra feature on it and it'll dissipate the drug more quickly. So it's basically the same drug, but let's try to get another 17 years on the patent train. So that's, well, it's all the same, right? It's like using the. powers of the government structure to protect your market position. I'm going to give you a little different spin on something though about, uh, so we talked about concern of the government, but I, I'm going to go back to when I was in the corporate world. You know, if you had revenues that were over like a hundred billion dollars, you were a massive company that was like the IBM right now, chemicals and the Exxon's. And now, you know, as I look at Amazon and Google, they're 350, 400 billion a year. They're extraordinarily huge. And if who's going to match up to them, no individual can do it. Uh, if we don't have a government that can look out for people, assuming they're looking, that's why we need a big government is to offset the power of those corporates. Yeah. I mean, to a degree. by those corporates? Well, they are. They're mostly funded by them. They are based off of how our, uh, campaign system works. That for sure. And I will say the one thing to me that was just a backbreaker for the greater good and the average American was the Supreme Court decision in 2013 about money. Money has a vote. Money deserves, it's just a first amendment right. Right, right. I'm like, so Elon Musk's vote should be worth about the state of Colorado population for that. Yes. Well, and all of that actually is what swept Joe Biden into power. I mean, Facebook guy. And I mean, I don't want to get into this too, but. The, the crypto crook dude, like he donated a double shit load to the Democratic Party, all of which was basically stolen by financial fraud and they're not going to prosecute him for that part. Yeah. I don't know. Nor did anybody give him his money back. Hardly. I don't put him in any different category than the Koch brothers donating to all the conservative. Well, except for they have legitimate businesses and he was a. Well, uh, he's not the first person to come up with a pyramid scheme. I mean, look at the, look at the bank. Well, but usually people will disavow the person that had the pyramid scheme. Uh, anyway, I digress. Um, uh, I, I will say, uh, yeah, that's, that's kind of why when we had some sort of control about, Hey, how much can you put into Kim, we'd be better off if. Okay. If you're a congressman. We're going to, the government's going to give you a million dollars, but you can't take any other, it's ridiculous. And so no American should feel like a politician's really looking out, or there's very few anyway, but, uh, they're looking out for donors. That's what they spend their time doing. Why my hero is Javier Millet, uh, who wants to like take 75 percent off of the size of the government. It's just a smaller machine to be corrupted and increase representation. That's my other big idea. Like instead of 435 representatives, we should have 15, 000 so that you could actually have influence with your elected representative of your little district. Well, uh, you know, the, the Congress that did have a representative number that it was supposed to be tied to, and it's far too small. Uh, the, the thing that frosts me is that right now, uh, the U. S., it's one of the most incompetent organizations on the globe. We can't get the simplest thing done. Um, I, I gotta show you my one, uh, thing I wanted to show you. Oh yeah, please, yeah. I wanted to see that. It's LBJ? Yeah. Well, Janelle and I went to, we were in Austin, uh, we took a road trip and we were, uh, uh, visiting Janelle's son and, uh, we went to the LBJ presidential library and I had never been to a presidential. I had no idea what to expect, but, but it was fascinating. Just the history and civil rights was going on in Vietnam, but I bought this mug because it had, you can't, your audience can't see this, arts and humanities, war on poverty. Yeah, but, but this was stuff, it was legislation, it was stuff that got done, legislation that got done during LBJ's tenure and he wasn't even a full two year, a two term president. And I'm like, God, our Congress today, we couldn't do this in 40 years. And it's just, it shows you how little we're able to accomplish and our expectations are so low. And, uh, uh, it's just, it's not the same organization that used to be. And I'm, I want to see more. I want, I want to demand more progress. And, uh, and I will say, you know, we laugh about communist China, but they will, they are focused and they have a plan and that's not good for us. A shitty plan, relentlessly executed might beat a. crappy plan. No doubt execution. Well, and I'll just quote you some numbers. Uh, you know, right now their GDP is, it's roughly two thirds of ours. But if you go back to, I think 2000, their GDP was 10%, 10 percent of ours. Yeah. Well, and they're on the verge of collapse. So don't hold them up as a, as a benefactor because they, um, Yeah, I'm not a fan of, I mean, the Soviet Union showed us that by the way, who do you think, uh, are, uh, what do you think about? Um, Kennedy, RFK Jr., we're still in it, because he was, because LBJ was there because Kennedy was killed, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, he was the vice president. Yeah, yeah. So he stepped up. Who do you think killed Kennedy for realsies? I have not seen him. Do you think it was the CIA, or do you think it was some dude? I, I think it was the some dude, some dude, I have not seen anything to prove into the contrary that it was some other plot. I mean, I'll be, I may too much willful blindness. Yeah. Um, what do you think about Alex Jones? Um, I, I hope, I hope they, the people that won the bankruptcy, uh, the suit against him, I hope they get every penny and I really, I'd like to see him. Crushed. Huh. That seems sad. Um, tell me about your loco experience. Oh. Um. I'm gonna jump. That's alright. It's time. Um. It seems sad that you'd want to see somebody crushed. Because he, like, even if he was wrong, he shared some You know, he was like, Sandy Hook was a big false flag, whatever. Like he also said, it was a hoax is what he said. A hoax. Yeah. But he also said that about nine 11, which, eh, you know, it seems 50, 50, that there was some monkey business in that whole situation. I don't know, but he lost in a. court. A court found him guilty. It was punitive. A court found him guilty. Like that isn't really real in today's world. We are a country of laws. We pride ourselves on that. a country of laws. Do you think we still are? Do you think there's different classes of law receipt? Sure. Do you think it's, here's a good question. Do you think blacks suffer more or do conservatives suffer more from I'm just kidding. I'm just playing with you. Let's go to your local experience, crazy experience you want to share. All right. I remember when I was working at the, uh, uh, the Bendix connector plant in the eighties and I went into, uh, I had great mentors, love my boss. And I, when I was playing a practical joke on him and you know how you used to open those cards and had a little chirping device in it that made a noise. And well, I took one of those out of the card and I taped it under his desk. And whenever I'd go in there, I'd hit the button and the chirping go off and it's. Rick, what the hell is that noise? What's going on? I don't know. It's driving me crazy. And he would go through and shuffle. And, uh, and a couple of weeks later I walked in the work and there are six or seven pretty serious looking guys in dark suits and ties that are in there. And I'm going, who are those people? What the hell's going on? And they said, uh, there was, there was a bugging device that fell off under Rick's desk and they, they think somebody had bugged his office. Cause this was a guy that was doing a lot of high level negotiating with. Boeings and McDonnell Douglas and, uh, and I said, oh shit. And it was one of those moments of truth. And I just went in his office very sheepishly knowing this might be my last day. And I said, Rick, that was me. I kind of taped that under there. And that's, I was the one making the chirping noise. And he went in to tell his boss who went in to tell the plant manager, who wouldn't tell the police force to investigate. There was, uh, the Broome County Detective Force, there was the FBI Regional Branch that was in there. So that was what my, that was my one, uh, experience in, in the 80s. And the other one, I will tell you, um, uh, I was with Thermodyne, um, I was a pretty, I was an executive vice president. We'd done the corporate, uh, spinoff and we were with the private equity group. But I clearly remember being in a meeting, our new venture capital people said, uh, you know, you make good money, cashflow is great, but what we could move this plant to Mexico in Dallas. And we had like. Five, 600 people working there, good jobs, just like my grandparents used to have. And, and I'm sitting there thinking about that. And this is formed where I'm at today. And I remember thinking about that and I go, Oh my God, this is going to trash the lives of 600 people. And there's going to be about a dozen people that will benefit from this who are already. Really, wealthy right. What is the point of this? What are we doing? And you know when I say where could government play a role? I'm like, how do we have policies that let this happen? I mean, this is there. I do believe that. So that's my second part. But I do believe that Yeah. As a country, it's reasonable. Like we set up, we get the results that we created. We do. And I would say we used to have, we used to have a capitalist system, but that was balanced by some concept about offsetting government and whatever. And we, and we had people that were smart enough to understand the difference. And I would say that today, we certainly don't have people that are smart enough to understand the difference. So it's much more in play and it's not panning out very well for the average American. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's, unfortunately, it's as much a cultural decline as it is a system decline in some ways, you know, that both lead to be the other. So. I read a very good, I read a very good book by, uh, uh, Nebraska, former Republican Senator Ben Sasse. And it's called, uh, Them. And he talks about, you know, people aren't packing the high school gym anymore. Boy Scouts are down, church participations is down, everybody's in on the computer, let's watch some TV. Yeah. There's another book that, uh, one of my past guests mentioned was, uh, Join or Die. And this decline of civic engagement generally is like part of the decline overall. And. Like, probably even, like, Europe is suffering that, like, there's no civic connection almost. And that's what allows, you know, 20, 30 percent foreigner populations to, you know, potentially become 50, 60 percent before too long, and then it won't be Europe anymore. It'll be the Islamic Republic of Southern Europe. Anyway, we'll talk more about that next time. All right. Michael, appreciate you. Kurt, I sure enjoyed it. Thank you. Godspeed.