EXPERIENCE 157 | A Truly LoCo Experience! - Guest Host Viktor Bjerre, 15-year-old exchange student from Denmark, interviews LoCo Think Tank Founder and LoCo Experience Podcast Host, Curt Bear

If you tuned in for our bonus episode last week, you'll know that today's episode is a bit of a change up from our normal routine. I met Victor Bieri a few weeks back while recording the bonus episode on Greenheart Exchange, and he later followed up with an expression of interest to learn more about podcasting. This led to a get to know phone call and soon after an invitation by me to him to serve as guest host on The Loco Experience, interviewing your regular host. Kurt Baer. The occasion is the 10th anniversary of Loco Think Tank, the primary sponsor of the show. I've often said that my special talent is identifying special talent, and I'm proud to say I wasn't wrong about Victor. The Loco Think Tank story is full of twists and turns and big decisions, and Victor did an amazing job in his very first podcast conversation, as the host. You'll get in the time machine and go back to Kurt's native North Dakota, and journey through a career in banking, but always full of bright ideas and community connections. So please enjoy this special episode. A very fine conversation between guest host, Victor Bieri, and the founder of LocoThink Tank and the host of the Loco Experience, Kurt Baer. Cool. Cheers. Skål, as we say in Denmark. Skål, yes, in Minnesota they say that too. Yeah, I hear that. Minnesota Vikings are like, no, we didn't have horns. Oh, was that, uh, inappropriate branding they have going on there? Well, it was some Middle age, uh, but some sort of a thinker artist that kind of, uh, thought that idea. Imagined horns. Oh, really? And kind of just spurred that myth up. Really? Yeah. So I had no idea. Porns are horrible in combat. You, uh, if you have your helmet strapped to you, someone can grab your horn. Now. You can't do anything. Stabby stabby. I see. Well, I've learned something already. Alright. Well, welcome back to the Loco Experience. I'm, uh, guest hosting today, switching around the roles. Um, we're gonna be interviewing, or I'm gonna be interviewing Kurt Baer here. Um, he is Your name is? My name is Victor Baer, sorry. Um, I was on this podcast, uh, a little while back. I don't know if the episode Not currently published yet. Not currently published, so We're gonna do that right in front of this one as a bonus episode. Pre released information, um But I'm going to be interviewing him here. He is, of course, the founder and president of the Loco Experience and the Loco Think Tank. And you've been running this, this podcast for 10 years now, a decade? Uh, the podcast for three. Three. Loco Think Tank for 10. Think Tank for 10. All right. Um, so what is it really you do here at the Think Tank? Who do you work with? Yeah. What services do you provide? You know me from the podcast host, but you don't really know much about the underlying business. Um, so, uh, first of all, I want to just say, uh, kudos to you for, for being a guest host here. Of course. Victor's a foreign exchange student from Denmark. From Denmark, yeah. Are you from the city there? Um, near, near Copenhagen. Okay. So, I guess you could say that. And he's, uh, 15 years old. So, you're sophomore year? I'm actually a junior, but I'm sophomore year, technically. And it's still too easy. I mean, I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. Anyway, to answer your question, Loco Think Tank is a, is a membership business peer advisory organization. Right. So we have, uh, 10 different chapters of small business owners, mostly some business leaders, that meet monthly for a half day meeting that acts a lot like a board meeting for small businesses that are Smaller than would typically have an advisory board or a board. So small business owners can kind of advise each other. And that's the local think tank is the host or the producer and the sponsor of the local experience podcast, which is my current passion project. Local think tank started that way and now here we are. Yeah. So what would you say actually, now that you've gone, you know, 10 years with the think tank and three years with the podcast, what do you think, um, is. The larger body. Is it, is it the think tank that's weighing the most? Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Yeah, no, we have, uh, one, uh, We'll just say under 500 a month sponsor, uh, for the podcast right now, uh, have another one that wants to come on and we need to get that buttoned up, but, um, so that revenue engine is very small. Certainly the five hours a week of my time and Alma's time is not anywhere near covered by that 200. So it's more of a passion thing than anything. Very much so. Yeah. And it expands my network. Yeah. And that's really the heart of Loco Think Tank is like. I was a banker for 15 years before this started and a banker is kind of like a paid networker. You're always looking for, in my case, new business clients that need to borrow some money and you, and you need to have business clients that are good at running their business and will pay your loan back. Of course. Yeah. Otherwise your bank doesn't work as good. And so that kind of. The network that I, that I grew during my banking career was really what made it possible to pull Loco Think Tank together in that very first chapter and some of those very first relationships. And then, you know, people just liked it and benefited and grew their businesses and had less nervous breakdowns and divorces. And, and, and so the, the reputation has just kind of grown. And, and the model is a little different than. We have competition in the role of, in the realm of peer advisory, but our, our, what we call our facilitators are generally semi retired, high achieving business veterans that aren't doing it to make a bunch of money. They're doing it to make a bunch of impact and make a little walking around money. And because they don't charge local think tank headquarters a lot to, to deliver the goods, to run these monthly meetings, and to to hook up one on one with their members, we can serve clients as small as solopreneurs, uh, for 250 a month. Wow. Which most of our competitors are like, they start at 800 a month or, or for the discount brands or local brands, maybe 500 a month. And so we're able to serve those smaller businesses and in part because we also serve CEOs at 1, 200 a month. Right. And so those CEOs help to subsidize the operation so that we can continue to try to turn more of those little guys into medium sizers and more of the medium sizers into big guys and, and that's all jobs. It's all activity and it's all local. It's not big box. I mean, yeah, the loco think tank. Yeah. Local community think tank. That's what it stands for. Fantastic. And what about your team? I mean, you've got you and Alma here, but is anyone else involved in this? Yeah. Yeah. Well, Alma's my, my operations manager, kind of my right hand. She's a producer of the podcast. She's the, the digital neighbor, uh, native on the team. Um, Colin Jones is our director of business development and he's in a roughly halftime role. He previously, um, founded and grew a local brewery called Weldworks up to be a 15 million ish kind of a brewery and, you know, 65 employees when, when he departed, I think, or 60 ish. Um, and I had him on the podcast. And interviewed him on his starting a brewery and growing a brewery and exiting and whatever. And through that conversation, um, his, he started, we started hanging out a little bit. We both ride motorcycles and so. So he was just kept asking me all these good questions about, you know, how I was going to grow a local think tank, what my vision was. And then a few months later when I decided I should, uh, hire a business development person, I was like, you know, I want to throw my hat in there. Is that cool? And I was like, well, yeah, let's talk. That's awesome. So, so there's Colin and Alma. Um, we've added Lacey Carson to the team in the last, uh, basically she's about 30 days in, um, in a marketing coordinator role. Um, so Alma's kind of training her. We, we actually downsized our marketing function, um, last fall. We had a full time marketing person and decided it really needed more sales than marketing. And so that created Salary cap space for Colin and then we hired a part time marketing role to kind of backfill that and almost been kind of doing, um, the marketing and the operations role, uh, since then. And she just took on, uh, Debbie piles has been with us. A shout out to Debbie. She's just been training all just today, even doing some of the facilitator, um, invoicing and the member onboarding and off boarding and surveys. So. Debbie's retiring. She bought a place in Florida. She's moving there and has a boyfriend now and stuff. And so long story short, um, almost kind of the can do most everything within the business. And, um, right now she's just kind of learning Deb's role. And that's her role as the operations managers to even if she trained somebody else to do it in the future. To, to know what's going on and to see if there's efficiencies that she can unlock, because that's her special talent, um, almost been with us for, with me for three years, and uh, Colin just joined the team last fall, and Lacey too, so we're, half the team is old timers now, and uh, half the team is kind of newbies. Well, that's a lot more than I expected actually, there's a lot going on behind the scenes. Yeah, and our job, I guess just to be clear about the headquarters team, we, We look for the smart kids to put into these chapters. Um, those facilitators I mentioned, we've got nine different facilitators that are all high achieving business veterans in their own right. They don't really need a job, so they're, they're contractors, but they're kind of more like volunteers a little bit, because, like, they don't need my money, but they do love the impact that I allow them to make through their experience, through their interaction with the community. And so, We find all the smarty pantses that are abundance minded and kind and fit with our values and that are willing to subject themselves to the scrutiny of getting a room together in a no holds barred kind of questions environment once a month. Um, and, and, so we kind of look for them, we pre screen them, and then we introduce them to a chapter that we think they'd fit with. And so, I'm the mixologist. And, and so that's what the headquarters team does, is really empowers and supports those facilitators that really deliver the goods. To the community business leaders. Yeah, you mentioned something, you mentioned something about values. Um, of course, you strive to make an impact and change here. And, you know. Not only with the Think Tank, but also with the podcast. So, could you explain a bit more about that? Um, sure. Yeah, we, uh, You know, the values as we have printed on our website right now is, uh, Uh, be smart, be kind, be true, be local, be the change, be you. That's a nice motto. Yeah, you know, something you can kind of remember. We had really long. stuff for a while and words that are hard to understand. And I just wanted to simplify it. So last fall we, we did that, uh, when we first started or a couple of years in really, we, we called ourselves a value driven peer advisory because we were so much more affordable than the other concepts in the marketplace. It was like, yes, we're value driven. We're, we're cheap comparatively, you know, at that time, 150 a month, instead of 800, um, We're value driven, you know, it's it for that facilitator. It's about them giving back to the community in this role. It's not About getting their pockets as fat as they can before they die.'cause they've kind of, most of'em have got their, they've got a, a healthy retirement plan figured out. Some of'em still run active businesses that are profitable and successful, but this is their way of giving back.'cause somebody helped them figure it out when they were returning in favor. Yeah. When they were a painter trying to figure out how to be the owner of a painting company or. Whatever that looks like, you know, there was, there was people along their journey and we just give it some structure, a little bit more intentionality, a little bit more service heartedness and, and to be clear, the facilitators aren't the teachers, they're facilitators. Yeah. The brain power is in the group and the ability of the group to ask good questions and bring. diverse talents to the table. So in that mixologist role, I'm like, okay, do we have anybody really good at marketing this chapter? If not, let's go, let's go find somebody. So anyway. Well, let's take it back 10 years, a decade now to when it all started. How did. How did Loco Think Tank start? Yeah, um, so, let's see, I should probably set the stage. We have, we have a four step process we call the locollaborative process. And I'll, I'll describe that in the future. But, um, but to set the stage, I had been a banker. Uh, I mentioned almost 15 years, just a couple months short. Um, Small business banking was my jam and cooking was my passion in some respects and local food and, uh, localizing the economy. Um, back in the pre 2007 days, I knew that the funny money mortgages were like a time bomb that was going to go off in the economy. And so I was worried about, like, supply chains and stuff. Building the local economy would protect you in case supply chains got disrupted, da, da, da, da, um, and so I became passionate around that to the point where I pitched a restaurant concept to NBC for one of their shows, I worked on a business plan, and that. Business plan discovered that, well, it's not really possible to have a locally sourced restaurant without a local food distribution company. Um, and it's a longer story than, than perhaps you were ready for, but. So I started writing a business plan for a local, locally sourced food distribution company that would go around the restaurants and pick up from farms and whatever. Um. And then, and then the financial collapse really happened, and my boss got let go. Uh, our bank went from a team of twelve to a team of six in about, wow, six months. Um, and we, um, so I, so I stuck. You know, I didn't jump out into this entrepreneurial thing, but I was, you know, just figuring it out. Kind of putting a pencil to it, and then, then all this stuff happened. So, time passes on, the bank just about failed, but we were able to rescue it, and, you know, make it profitable again and successful, and Along that journey, I met a young lady, uh, well, just a little younger than me, but Elizabeth Moser, um, the founder of Loco Food Distribution, and so, um, Elizabeth connected with me in the food environment, and I came in wondering about a bank loan, and I, you know, politely said, you know, you're Just not ready yet. You're not profitable. You're really two years in, but you know, it's just not there yet for a bank loan I want this to exist Like I need there to be a local food distribution company for my restaurant that I'm gonna do someday, of course, and so in my father that year in farming had had made a Uh, a big crop of corn, which was super high price, and he had made a bunch of money. He was feeling his oats, and I had saved up some dollars, and so together, my father and I invested in Elizabeth's company as the first non family investors, and, uh, that helped her kind of get to the corner, and a couple years later, she was So I was like, Oh, well, I guess since she's going to make it, I guess I should, you know, start my local food restaurant now. And so I started nibbling around the edges of that plan. Um, then. Let's see, a few months later, maybe six months later, my boss left, my new boss. They had a new president in the interim. And when I got a new boss after that, that boss was like, Oh, that's really cute that you want to do a restaurant someday. But we see that you've been meeting with real estate owners and stuff, uh, about possible restaurant locations and stuff. And you're on probation and you can't use bank time to investigate this restaurant concept. And I was like, well, but those are also very. Bankable. Worthy. customers and stuff. I'm doing my job still. I'm not stealing from you. You've been hoping to meet with Gino Campana for years. And I just did. He thinks I'm cool, you know? Anyway, it was a difference of opinion on what that was. But long story short is I, I was given 90 days to decide if I wanted to, to be a banker anymore or not. Wow. Um, I said, No, I guess I'll leave in 90 days. I told him right away like the next Monday. I was like, you know, here you go I'm jumping and then Uh, chaos ensued. Not literally, but like going from like a near 100, 000 income to zero, um, with some savings, but not a lot, and duh, duh, duh. Um. And I started Bear Capital Advisors to be a banking consulting business that I could try to make a little scratch while I figured out my restaurant. And, uh, Bear Capital Advisors had a few clients. I made like 8, 000 over the next 8 months in that business. My wife, you know, fortunately, um, got a promotion not too long after. So she went from being a 15, 000 a year income earner to being a 40, 000 something, uh, plus health benefits. And so eventually that change happened. But, um, months later, my, my, my friend Mike said, Hey, Barry, you should start a think tank. Um, like Vistage, like the, the, the big name brand, 800 pound grill in our industry, but, but more affordable and more community oriented. You know all the people. And so, enter Andrea Grant, uh, my co founder, mentor, I had known her, uh, through the Small Business Development Center. She had been a VISTA's chair. Uh, which is like the big 1, 000 a month club. Um, and we made an arrangement where, where if I could bring the group together, because she was introverted and didn't really want to do that part of it, she would run the meetings. Um, and so she would just charge me 500, and I would, you know, charge 150 a piece. So if I had four members, I could pay for it. If I had ten members You know, then 10 members at 150 bucks is 1500, lesser 500 bucks with some expenses and coffees and stuff. I was making a thousand dollars a month, uh, which was way better than I was doing with my. Restaurant that was just sitting there. I didn't have it, you know, and eventually I started a mobile food trailer a few months later And that's its own journey Bears Backyard Grill. It was supposed to be Bears Backyard Bistro, you know a cool international fusion restaurant Food trailers are hard you know 70 hour weeks in the summer and no work in the winter and you know make a little bit of money in the summer and No money in the winter. And, um, so anyway, so, so the, the startup story was just that it was, okay, I want this. Service in my life. I want to rub shoulders with real business people. I bring something to the table. I've been in banking for 15 years. I understand finance. I understand cash flow. And that's at the heart of our business model is like, I'm really trying to bring people that will add something, add some flavor to the sauce. Whether you're really good at finance or really good at marketing, or you're just an idea generator extraordinaire, or you're a process engineer and you happen to run a business now, but that's the way you're wired. All those kinds of personalities fit together and all those strengths and the associated weaknesses. You know, I have a hundred ideas a week if I allow myself. And you can't live, you know, you can't chase a hundred ideas a week. You know, you need people in your world to speak truth and execute some of them. I don't really like to execute them. I like to just have them and then see what happens. So it's really about, you know, connecting to the local community. That seems to be, have been your, you know, restaurant or think tank. Yeah. The community was your goal. Community building is me, for sure. So, what about clients and customers? I mean, how, how, if I was, if I was a client, how would I, you know, learn about you and how would I, um, start attending these meetings? What do you get? Yeah, what do I, what do I get? Yeah, fair. When I first started, it was really, nobody had ever heard of anything like this, at least for, for smaller businesses. Some of the big CEO groups were around for a while, but that was 1, 000 a month, and so they just didn't contact the smaller businesses. But, um, so normally I would have to introduce the concept and, you know, most everybody was hearing about it for the first time. So I would, See businesses that were, that I liked, that I heard referrals about, that I had good customer service experience, try to figure out who was the owner of that business, see if I could buy him a coffee. And if I thought they were cool, then I would say, hey, let me tell you about what I got over here. I got it hidden under this basket. Um, so we have what we call a three thumbs up process. Um, when, when I meet somebody I think is cool and they think the local think tank experience, the, the chapter, and we should probably talk about what a chapter meeting looks like too, but. They think that sounds like an interesting thing that they would benefit from, then we try to uncover which chapter they would fit best in, both their own talents, but also personalities. Who's the facilitator? You know, is this somebody with a tech background? Should that match up with this one? That's got a few more tech companies in it kind of thing. Once we send them to that facilitator, then the facilitator gets to interview them. Also, and learn about them and their business, share a little bit more about the members that are in the group. So, the facilitator can say thumbs down on somebody on step two, and if, but if they don't, if the, if this prospect agrees that they want to visit a chapter and the facilitator says, yeah, they're cool. I'd like to have them in there. Then they visit, and then that's the third thumbs up. So, after the chapter meets them, everybody that currently pays gets a veto. Because it's all about making the chapter smarter, not making more money. And so, yeah, every, even including when we hire new facilitators or bring new facilitators in, the chapter still gets the veto. That's interesting. So everybody goes in knowing they could be, you know, voted off the island, if you will, or not invited on the island. And we have nominations for departure. If somebody's not a value add member, if they're always making promises of what they're gonna do and then they never do it, and they're dragging the group's mojo backwards, like, somebody can raise their hand and say, Are you sure Susie should still be in here? Seems like she's not really motivated to make her business work better. So we have a lot of little, little rules, little customs, but the point is to, to have this kind of iron sharpens iron. Everybody gets smarter every, every month. We kind of take turns focusing on the members and, and maybe, maybe now is a good time to describe that member experience, I suppose. Yeah. Um, so Each group will meet like, uh, on a fixed rotation. Uh, third Wednesday afternoons is one group. Moses group, my landlord. Uh, third Tuesday mornings, third Thursday mornings, fourth Thursday mornings, whatever. This, this standard rotation and, um, When they come in, it's been typically a month since they saw these people, other relationships develop and whatever, but so we'll have a check in. So like two or three minutes, maybe four minutes per member. How's your business? How's your personal? A lot of groups do scale of one to ten. Some do a scale of one to three to have less finite. And you know, where are you trending? Uh, if things are tough, what's, what's tough right now? Maybe what do you need to? Talk about more later. Yeah. Um, so really just a check in and like I said, we say two parts business, one part personal setting the stage. Set the stage, yeah. Like yeah. Reconnect. Um, then we have a focus member, um, and that's kind of the, the member that gets the most attention from the group that month. Sometimes we even have it on site at that member's location, so, um. That focus member, we give them a template that we've developed over time. Uh, here's my business, here's my org chart, here's my customer demographics, here's my mission, vision, values. Here's a SWOT analysis on my company and on me. Our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. I don't know if that's a familiar term. I don't think I've heard that. Yeah, SWOT, they call it. Um, and really, what does my company look like behind the curtain? You know, we know what it looks like on the website, what it looks like from the retail storefront. But in the operations, what does it take for me to create value with my business? So a deep dive into kind of a deep dive. Yeah. Yep. And then after 30, 40 minutes of that, then the member. Um, and that's what we call the low collaborative process. So, could be, you know, I've got four locations, one keeps losing money. Can I fix it or should I just shut it down? Um, I've, you know, whatever, I've, my, my sales manager just left. Should I hire a new sales manager or should I promote Bob? Um, whatever those questions are that are coming up in this person's place. I've been leasing for three years. My lease is coming up pretty soon. Should I buy a building? You know, and those, those kinds of questions, whatever those questions are. So that's what we call setting the stage. So you're like, I've been leasing for this. Here's the background of this. I've really always wanted to buy a building and this one's a little bit of a stretch. So you set the stage and then ask the question, a simple question. So that's step one is, you know, for me. In 2015, it was, should I add a second trailer to my mobile food trailer business because I'm working way too much, not making enough money, don't have anything to do in the winter, um, and life is too hard right now. I need to get revenue built so I can be sustainable. Um, then the second step of this, uh, this look collaborative is everybody else gets to only ask questions for about 15 minutes. of that presenting person. So instead of solving their question right away, you don't get to answer that question right away, you only get to ask questions back. Um, in that story I mentioned here, my, uh, the first big question was, you know, how do you like always working when your friends have time off and always having time off when your friends are working? Uh, how do you like, uh, you're a very creative guy, how do you, now that you've created the menu and the brand and all this stuff, do you, how do you like just making food every week? Is that still fill your creativity bucket? It's not just the business, it's also about the person itself. For sure, yeah, they've been starting to, you know, they knew me for 18 months at this point. So they're like, you know, you're a very creative guy, you got a lot of ideas, but now it just seems like you're slaving over the cook stove every Wednesday night and then slogging through another week of events. Is that fun for you? And then another one was, uh, You know, how do you like not having any time or money for your philanthropic pursuits that were a part of your life in your banking journey? Because I was just swamped. I was the president of a, of a non profit board at the time, not really delivering as much value to them as I should have been, because I was in chaos mode with the food trailer. A lot of stuff going on. A lot of stuff going on. Um, and then, so step three, and those were, those were three example questions, the ones I remember most, honestly, out of probably twenty questions. Step three is suggestions. So now that they've heard my answers to their questions, Okay, now it's time for suggestions. And that was, uh, Bear, Uh, you need to park that food trailer in your backyard and go get a job. Yeah, sometimes it might be hard to hear. We have a phrase, we say, It takes a good friend to be a frontstabber. You know, I could continue to live in my delusions that I was going to have a happy, successful life with a thriving restaurant organization in A year or two, but in reality it was probably gonna be five years of desperation followed by Covid closing me down if I had done it. Oh right. Yeah. Even if I had done it. Yeah. Shutting everything down. It was at that time, you know, five years later. Um, so once you get these suggestions and the other one was, and yes, bear do get a job. And get a job that's flexible enough that you can work on local think tank. Um, because I had already started a second chapter by that time, that first winter when I had to shut the food trailer down, I was like, Well, I'm bored. Maybe I'll start another local think tank chapter. At least that part of my business is working and stable. And so that's, uh, that was basically what I did. I, I went, uh, Parked the food trailer after, at the end of the season, got a job selling investments and insurance with Thriving Financial, and, uh, You know, worked on Loco Think Tank. Kind of, every year I would basically start a new chapter for a few years. Interesting. So how many of these chapters do you have now at this point? Uh, there's ten total chapters, um, stacked in five different services. So like the little guys, the middle size, the big ones, and then key employees, like the number two is almost in a catalyst chapter for the key employee of a medium size. And then, um, Next level catalyst is what we call the kind of the number two for the larger organizations. So it's 40, 50, 100, 200 employee companies, right? And how large are these chapters? How many people do you have? Oh, up to 12 to 12. Yeah. That's a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. Focusing on one per month. Yeah. So it takes kind of a whole year to give everybody a focus membership, but We've also, within that chapter meeting, and I didn't get there yet, but there's usually one or two, sometimes even three more issue processing, where you don't have the full template, the full SWOT analysis, and financials review, and stuff, but just a question that came up, uh, oh, this circumstance happened, and what should I do? Um, so there's open opportunities there, and then the rest of the meetings, to the extent there are some, we have some exercises, and different thought questions, and different things, but also a lot of outside experts, people that are, Great at culture building, people that are great at marketing, people that are great at financial understanding or basics, um, and based on the chapter's interest, that's part of the facilitator's job is to, okay, what does this chapter want to learn more about? What do they need to learn more about? You know, in my, experience, I can ask the right questions and build that relationship. Yeah, so you, you participate in every single chapter. No. No, I'm a member of one of our next level chapters now, with the more sophisticated businesses, just, I don't know, because I own a local think tank, I can go where I want, I want to be with the big kids, but, but more significantly, um, Uh, the facilitators really deliver the value. So, so each chapter runs highly independently of headquarters. Um, yeah, we just have to keep them full enough of members. And, you know, we, we, one of the cool things is like these, these people, these business veterans, they don't want to. Dink around with trying to collect dues and update credit cards and things like that so they can just send us one invoice we send them a, you know, we direct deposit into their account based on how many members they have and things and we do all the monkey business. We've got the newsletters and the website and the credit card renewals and, you know, the content, the speakers, the relationships with hosts, I guess that's I should mention. That the, the InnoSphere here in Fort Collins hosts several chapters, the Better Business Bureau in Windsor hosts several chapters, the, the Loveland Chamber and Visitor Center hosts a chapter, and so we have all these business community partners that have like a, a awesome conference room that isn't always busy, and so we kind of have that same recurring meeting in their space, and they usually give us a discounted rate, or even free in some cases, because they believe in what we do. They think that we're helping to make Businesses smarter and stronger and that's part of their mission in the community as well. That's awesome. So Chambers of Commerce have hosted before, the Fort Collins Chamber, we've got a lot of partners that, that dig us. Alright, well, let's go, we've gone 10 years back, but now let's go even further back, all the way back to the beginning. To the beginning? To the beginning, yeah. So let's go back to about kindergarten and work our way up from there. So, who was Kurt Baer in kindergarten? I was trying to think of my kindergarten teacher and it was Mrs. Schaefer. Um, uh, Noelle Schaefer was, I just saw Noelle last summer, that was his mom, um, in a very small town, Buchanan, North Dakota, which, um, let's see, merged when I was in second grade. So, my first couple years, kindergarten and first grade, what was just Buchanan, uh, grade in elementary school, probably a school of about sixty kids, K 12. Um, and then my second grade year we merged with, um, With Pingree, the next town to the north, and then we had about 60 kids in the grade school, and about 50 kids in the high school. Uh, and so yeah, that's where I came from. And who was Kurt Baer? Um, you know, actually in kindergarten and first grade, I lived out in the hills. So, I had literally about an hour. bus ride after, before and after school. So I had to get onto the school bus. My dad had a farm up in, up in what we call the hills, uh, around there, about 20 miles away from the town. And, uh, he eventually, we, we had had a fire, uh, maybe the year before my kindergarten year, and it burned. And so we lived in a trailer house on this property where the home had burned. And then my dad kind of gave the He had a farm that he bought on contract for deed, returned it to the owner, quit farming for, for a short season, um, and then we moved to the town of Buchanan, and, uh, that was where I grew up, was in this little town of about a hundred kids, and, uh, eventually, a couple years later, my dad restarted the farm, and this time it, it worked, but all on rented ground, and, you know, parking tractors that, Grandpa Jim's place and like we were, we were farmers, but without a farm site for more than 10 years. Wow. And how long did you stay there in Buchanan, North Dakota? All the way through grade school and high school or? Yeah, all the way through grade school, high school. Um, when I was in college, my dad actually bought his first real farm. where, where they could park tractors indoors and different things like that. But otherwise, we, we were in Buchanan. Um, to go back to the, who is Kurt? I was, I was Kurt the squirt. Uh, so I was tiny, tiny. I was, uh, always the smallest child in my class. Um, I had a class of about eight or ten most of those early years. Um, when I was When I was in 6th grade, uh, a bunch of kids, like 3 or 4 kids got, um, minor in possession of alcohol, so they got kicked off the basketball team. And there wasn't enough kids to field a basketball team, um, unless they took up some of the, what we call, B Squad. Some of the, like, junior high kids to play in the varsity, the senior high team. And they had to pull me and my uncle. My dad's youngest brother was my classmate. My best friend growing up, Jim. Uh, and uh, so they pulled me and Jim. We had to leave school early and go up and practice to the high school and practice basketball. Cause we were on the B squad team as sixth graders. Uh, and then my seventh grade year, me and Jim both played on the varsity team. I lettered in basketball my seventh grade year. I was first man off the bench. I scored about 40 points. Our team went about three and 20 or something. Like we got whooped all the time. We were terrible, terrible. Um, but I was a, I was a really smart kid. I understood math and computers and people tried to push me into those kind of engineering and sciences. And it wasn't until college really, where are my. My appreciation for theory and people and relationships and psychology and stuff kind of, uh, bounced me from, from engineering into economics, and that's a longer story. But, but yeah, so I played basketball for several years. I, at the, so seventh grade I was, uh, four foot eleven, about a hundred and ten pounds. Um, so, and playing basketball was varsity. And by the end of my tenth grade year I was five foot one and about a hundred and fifteen pounds. So, I had a very late puberty, uh, and, uh, didn't, um, basically didn't grow from the beginning of my 7th grade year to the end of my 10th grade year. Barely. That's interesting. Yeah. And, so where did you go to college? Was that also in North Dakota? It was, yeah. North Dakota State University. And, uh, what did you study there? Yeah, I started in, um, engineering. Like, uh, mechanical aerospace engineering kind of notions. Um, and like I said, I had always been good at math. But my, my high school didn't really, we didn't have a pre calc. Uh, could have got it. And calculus just kind of kicked my butt. Like, I couldn't understand calculus. Without doing the homework, and I'd never done homework before, really. Uh, I was pretty much an A student in high school without trying very much. And then calculus proved that I couldn't do that. Accounting also proved that. Chemistry kind of proved that. And then, uh, you know, one of the markers of my life is that all of the Bad things that have happened to me have mostly had silver linings that resulted in better things occurring or whatever. And so halfway through my sophomore year of college, I got busted. Literally, I was, I was holding the door open to my apartment. Um, but I didn't go in when the police shined the flashlight on me and said stop, and I got a DUI. I had been drinking and driving, they followed me to my apartment, I got all the way to the door, and then I should have just pulled the damn door shut, but anyway, I got a DUI. And I was like, well this sucks, it's expensive, and my, I told my dad, and he's like, well I guess you're gonna have to start Paying your own insurance now, I guess you better look for a job. And, uh, so it was a dose of independence of reality. I was on my own dime for college anyway, um, just loans and scholarships and stuff. But, um, at that time I, I had two roommates and I was like, Well, guys, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop drinking so much, um, and I'm gonna start smoking weed instead. Why didn't you do the other? Yeah, well, you know, you just, you don't get DUIs for that. At least you didn't at that time. And it was, you know, it was still pretty prejudiced at that time. I mean, Colorado, you see, that you see now is way different. I mean Oh, yeah. In the North Dakota that I grew up in, like, drinking at 14 was pretty normal, but if you smoked weed at any age, uh, you were terrible, and you were probably gonna go to hell in a handbasket. Um, but I, I'm, I'm a free thinker. I'm not one to kind of believe the bullshit. I had met some Grateful Dead fans my first year in college. I smoked weed a couple times, barely, but I was like, you know what, just not gonna risk it. And then the other thing I did as a result of that is I, I quit buying textbooks, um, because, both because of drinking too much and not wanting to get up in the morning, but also because I imagined that I would read the textbook and catch up before my, um, tests. Uh, I would skip class a lot. Cause, you know, in a school of five, seven students, you can't skip class. Like, they don't Everyone has their own. Yeah. Now I'm going to classes with 300 kids, 200 kids. You know, nobody cares if you come to class or not when you go to university. And so, by quitting buying textbooks, I saved a bunch of money so I could buy weed. Um, but more importantly That's not true. Uh, but more importantly, I went to class religiously. I was like, okay, I'm just, I got to go every time and I'm going to listen the whole time and I'm going to take copious notes. And after that, it was pretty much Dean's List, Dean's List, Dean's List, Dean's List. I was rocking a 2. 13 after three semesters trying to do it on the standard format. And, you know, professors test on what they teach. And so if you take really good notes, you know, I, I still recommend it today. I'm pretty sure that's probably still works. If you take really good notes. And then my test studying was read the notes, you know, take an hour or two hours to read the notes before the test. And then I was like, literally getting A's on everything and economics started to make sense and everything just. You know, when you pay more attention, everything makes more sense, as it turns out. That's very interesting. So anyway, and I didn't become like this. I was part of an elite, uh, elite gang. We lived across the street from Sigma Chi. And so, uh, Jeff Buckley and Jeff Skari were in our elite club of Like super high achieving Dean's List and super underground incognito regular weed smokers and music listeners and concert goers. And we went and saw Bob Dylan with those guys and this and that. But anyway, so that was my kind of college experience. So in college, where, where did you see yourself going? Where, what was your plan after college at that point? You know, I don't know. Um, away from North Dakota, um, actually grad school. At that time, um, the internet was just in its nubbin state. Like I got an email during college was my first email. Um, and I barely used the computer for anything other than the email still until I got into the working world. Um, but, uh, so at that time, like getting an MBA, uh, I looked at, um, Some schools out in California, and a school up in Idaho, but ultimately decided that Boulder, Colorado was supposed to be pretty cool. And so I targeted Colorado to move to because I didn't have nearly enough money to afford in state tuition for a graduate degree from Boulder. And so I had to move here, get a job, figure something out, and then I could go back to school. Um, so I started kind of looking on that end, and as it turned out, one of the, one of the girls I knew, it's about relationships, I didn't, there was a girl named Kim, my freshman year, and she ended up working in HR for a local business called Community First National Bank. Um, and this bank was headquartered in Fargo, North Dakota, where, where the university is, and they had a credit and management training program. Every semester, basically, they would train six recently graduated young people to be good managers, good credit analysts, good bankers, ultimately, and put them through this cohort of classroom training, followed by internship, and then when you get done, you get a job. Uh, and they had just bought 23 banks in Colorado. And so, my plan before that was Wait until graduation and then move to Colorado on my credit cards and hope for the best like find a job which probably would have resulted in like a long restaurant career because Most of the people that served my food and stuff had degrees from CSU when I came here But they didn't want to leave to go get those jobs, you know And so I was lucky I was blessed and I I think that's probably a principle of life is gratitude and recognizing Like even at that time at that young age. I was like Dang, you know, if I hadn't been lucky enough to get into this training program with this bank, I wouldn't have this salary job and I wouldn't have this foothold into this professional development path kind of like, uh, like a lot of these other folks. It was hard to get on to the economic ladder of success, if that makes sense. So, you know, you stuck with the, the banking side of things after, after college. Mm hmm. Yeah, you just did that for, right? Yeah, 15 years, yeah. Same company or switching around? No, I switched around a few times. Uh, again, relationship oriented. My, uh, uh, Kim Day, she deserves a mention. She was, uh, one of my Co workers when I first got to town and she got a job with Bank of Colorado a few, six months, 12 months later and, and she was like, hey, go get Kurt. And so Bank of Colorado came calling and offered me a, a nice role where I could continue to learn and that wasn't a, a more stable, more, they were kind of an A tier organization. They taught me a lot of. What being a really good banker was, uh, they also invited me to move to Colorado Springs, uh, where they had just acquired some banks and I could kind of be their, their inside guy down there on these new acquisitions. And that was an awkward environment ultimately, but, um, my wife and I moved down to Colorado Springs for three years and, uh, you know, work for them and for Adams Bank and Trust and then move back to Fort Collins, uh, with a bank called, uh, Capital West National Bank. Oh, I've actually heard of them. Yeah. Oh, they, they, they, uh, they eventually changed to Capital West Bank and sold a couple of years ago, but, um, so very smaller and smaller banks. I like to be, like, I work for a really big bank and then a smaller bank and then a smaller still and a smaller still, and I like to be where I can actually make an impact. Always about the, the local communities. Yeah, yeah. And, and seeing the results of your efforts, you know, when you, when you, You can tell, like, that part I planted, that part I didn't, you know? And when you work for a huge company, sometimes you're like So how did all the efforts that I've made in the last year really change the world of the company? Uh, don't, I don't know, but I can see it when I'm on the ground level. Right. So, you know, coming from a small town in North Dakota and then, you know, wanting to perpetuate that kind of local community. Yeah. In other places. Yeah. I think that's probably fair. Yeah. And, and seeing these situations, like those entry level, um, Classes at college and stuff where there's there's no community. There's no connection There's no interconnectedness at all and feeling kind of that, you know fish out of waterness, I suppose So after moving to Colorado, did you you know stick around in Colorado for yeah the whole time? I met my wife a few months later I ended up so I This is a pretty funny story. I moved to town on a Friday night I had lived in this Worthington, Minnesota town for, for a year roughly. And, uh, got to town at like 7 o'clock on a Friday night and, uh, I was like, well, guess I'll go downtown. Looks like downtown, we still didn't have cell phone maps or anything. So it looks like downtown's that way. And, uh, I pulled my Pontiac Grand Prix behind a U Haul truck that I, Took all my worldly possessions out here in and, uh, went downtown and went to Old Chicago's. Uh, there's still some Old Chicago's around town, but I was familiar with that because they had them both in Fargo and Minneapolis as well. And so went there and like moments later, uh, met a group of people that were out celebrating one of their group's birthdays. And they're like, you just moved to town like 10 minutes ago. And I'm like, yep, here I am. And everybody was moving to town at that time. Kind of in Fort Collins has always been like, well, welcome to Fort Collins. And these particular people were like. Welcome to Fort Collins, you gotta come bar hopping with us for Katie's birthday. And so this Ten minutes after arriving you were already, you know Making friends. Making friends. And then some of those relationships I kept for years and would still recognize a couple of those folks if I, if I, uh, saw them on the street. But yeah, went bar hopping, went to an after party, like, found my way. Home at three to the hotel across town at four o'clock in the morning. I wasn't I quit drinking after the bars just to be clear Um, I smoked some weed after the party, but whatever anyway, it's Colorado. Well, it wasn't at that time. It was illegal at that time still But yeah, I was like this place is Fuckin awesome, you know? And, uh, so anyway, I found a place to live the next day, that Saturday, that happened to be a two bedroom apartment right over by City Park. You've probably been over by City Park before. Yeah. Um, and the next day, my friend from my training class that lived in Denver, came up and helped me move all my stuff in, um, and about a month later, Angie moved out, uh, from Minnesota. She was my best buddy's ex girlfriend from Minnesota. It was platonic strictly, but her town sucked where I had moved from, and she had just graduated from two year college, and I was like, Angie, I'll give you the hookup on this extra bedroom I got. Um, and, uh, You know, give you a discounted rent and all that. I just would love to have a roommate, whatever. And plus your town sucks. Like come check up for college. It's awesome. So Angie moved out, got a job at Shopko. And then a couple of weeks later started bringing my wife and her twin sister over. So I was like this 25 year old young banker with three 19 year olds hanging out with them on a regular basis. Uh, and, uh, longer story short, uh, Jill got a crush on me soon after I, I. Broke her heart because I told her she was too young for me. Um, but then when she was 21, uh, I was like, Hey, Things change. Things change. Yep. So anyway, uh, Jill and I became really good friends actually. And all those girls are still good friends today. Um, of course, but, uh, yeah, so I chaperoned, uh, to some extent, some unruly. Uh, upper teen girls for a couple years and eventually married one of them. Alright, well, on that note, yeah, I think we should move on to family. Sure. Yeah. No, I think it's a good time. So, uh, you mentioned your, your dad briefly, but let's, let's talk about your, your, your parents and where they're from. I assume they're from North Dakota. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I'm the first of four kids. Uh, my parents are Donald and Val Bear. Um, they've since divorced. My dad remarried. Um, And his, uh, wife is Diane, and, and she brought three step siblings, uh, to the equation. So, um, like I said, I'm the oldest. I was born when my dad was 20. Uh, he was a motorcycle mechanic, um, that never went to college, uh, buried my mom when he was 20, and my mom was 21, and, uh, had me right away, and, you know, just a hard worker. Um, smart, uh, but also just very driven and entrepreneurial. He built a A garage for himself, that he fixed cars on evenings and weekends, and motorcycles, he worked at the motorcycle shop, and then, you know, when I was six or whatever, seven years old, he started a farm, and he ran the farm evenings and weekends for over ten years, and kept his day job. So he would come home, sometimes not come home, sometimes go straight to the farm from work. Um, come home at 11 o'clock at night, you know, Saturdays and Sundays was, dad was working all day long and by the time I could, you know, by the time I was 11, I was, um, operating farm equipment. By the time I was 12, I was driving grain trucks and tractors and combines and things like that. Yeah, I guess that's, you know, he had a big influence on you with his Yeah, yeah, yeah, I continue to be a motorcycle rider. So that's my dad. My mom, uh, grew up in California, actually. Um, my grandfather moved from North Dakota to California, uh, to work for Boeing after World War II, which he served in. Um, and then, uh, yeah, my mom was like, I'm moving back to North Dakota. It's way cooler there. And like a year later, very much so. Yeah. A year later, her parents followed her back, but she, you know, wanted to find a farmer and marry him in North Dakota. And that's kind of what she did. Although my dad wasn't a farmer, just a, a wannabe farmer at the time, or wish I could be kind of a thing. Um, and so that's them. My, uh, as far as the siblings, my brother, Andy is two and a half years younger. He's, uh, he's the service manager for a local John Deere dealership. So he oversees, uh, maybe a dozen or more, um, mechanics that work on big farm equipment, um, also interacts with the customers and frankly solves the hardest problems when nobody can figure it out. Usually, and he can, he's in contrast to me, he's super patient, super, uh, persistent, uh, if I can't figure something out like twice, I'm like, well, fuck it. This is impossible. I'll hire somebody. Uh, he's not that way. My brother, or my sister Donna is five years younger than me. Um, Donna, uh, had a baby when she was a freshman in college, actually. But she's an amazing mom. Her kids are both, uh, grown now. Which is, is cool because she's still young and vibrant. And she works at, uh, Catholic Charities Hospital. Uh, is married to Rich. And then my youngest brother is Joe. And he's ten years younger. And basically a genetic. Duplicate ish of me. Um, although I'm way smarter. When Joe hears this, he's gonna realize that's true. But, no bias. Sorry, sorry buddy, it's just the way it is. Better looking too. But you got more money than I do because you're a farmer. So Joe's the heir apparent to Dad's farm. Together they farm about 10, 000 acres. Um, which is You know, probably, maybe most of the size of Fort Collins. Yeah, that's still in North Dakota. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, uh, so that's, that's kind of the family overview, I guess. I don't know, other questions along the family front? I mean, yeah, I mean, you've now started a new family here in Colorado with your wife, Jill. Sure, yep, uh, we don't have children. Um, we've got You know, we'll have, uh, ten, uh, we just signed up, I think, for our newest exchange student, so we'll have ten host exchange kids, uh, that we claim. We've got, uh, ten nieces and nephews. Uh, each of my siblings has two kids, and then, uh, Jill's brother has four. Um, so Jill and I have been married for twenty years, uh, coming on twenty one years in May, and, uh, She told her mom after our first date that she was going to marry me virtually, and I, and I told my roommates before our second date, I was like, I don't know if I go out on another date with Jill, I might never get a chance to date another girl in my life, and it was true. Um, and so we've just kind of known. And so I guess that's a piece of advice. If it, if it feels hard with somebody, probably just move on sometimes, you know, not that we haven't had a hard times, but you know, you can tell when, when you're called to be with somebody. And if, if you're going to jive, I think sometimes. So, that's Jill, um, she's got a twin sister, and then her brother is also, uh, her sister lives out in, uh, Portland area, Vancouver, Washington area, and her brother is here with the four nephews. So, that's the part of the family we see the most, probably. And, uh, yeah, we're just excited for the days when we can, you know, get loco think tank working well enough. that I can debug and travel and her work is largely remote anyway. And so we just have dreams of like going to Brazil for a month and visiting. We've got two exchange students that have been from Brazil, so we could visit both of them, you know, for days at a time and do a bunch of other independent travel. Right. And just reconnect with those relationships that. You know, right now they, they like my food pictures on Instagram because they remember when, when I was making them food back in the day, but that's, you know, we don't have that much opportunity to just really connect with those things that were once very important relationships. You know, when you got it, when you, I'm sure you've had the same experience, right? You're. What, six months or so into your exchange experience? Yeah, about, just over half a year, uh, came here in August, so. And, and, describe that relationship of, uh, that you have with your host parents. I mean, it's, it's interesting, you, you know, meet someone, people who are complete surrenders to you initially, but then become just like, uh, a second family to you. You know, you feel like you really know them, and sometimes you even forget that. This isn't actually your real family. Like, you, you, you know, spend every single day with them and live in their house and, you know, um, it's, it's really an amazing thing. Yeah, yeah. But, let's, let's talk about these exchange students you've had. How did you get in, how did you learn about it? How did you get into it? Uh, the very first one was, uh, Up With People. Have you ever heard of Up With People? I don't think so. Uh, It was a really popular thing back in the 80s, but they, they basically grab international students from all around the world that are musically inclined or theater inclined and stuff and they put on these big performances and they, they'll, but they stay in town for a week. So they'll come to town, do a bunch of practice and training, uh, and then. Do a big performance thing and then they're gone. And so the Up With People organization finds all these one week temporary host homes. Um, and, gosh, I can see his face, but I cannot remember the young man's name from Mexico that stayed with us that first time. But it was, you know, maybe it was 2013 or something like that. And we hosted, uh, a young man for, for a week. And it was funny, we had a good time and stuff, but they were very busy training and stuff. Right. And then we had this. Uh, enormous snowstorm, Roberto, Roberto Gonzalez, uh, sorry, Roberto, if you listen to this. Um, so, uh, and they canceled the big show. So I, I called a hooky day from banking and, uh, me and Roberto went snowshoeing and he's like this 21 year old kid and he's like, assuming he's going to totally kick my 40 something year old, but at that time or 38 year old or whatever, but elevation, you know, man, yeah. Anyway. So we. Uh, went on a, had a whole, kind of a, almost like a father son day or whatever. So anyway, that was Roberto. And then, um, I've been a member of the Rotary Club for, for over 10 years, 12, 14 years now maybe. And Rotary has a very vibrant youth exchange program. And so our first real exchange student was through the Rotary Exchange. Um, actually our first real one was from Denmark. Oh wow. Uh, and. Her name escapes me because, um, she was also 15. Um, we tend to have a rule that we don't take 15 year olds anymore because they're just a little too fragile sometimes. Yeah. Uh, Dita. And, and Dita and Jill have stayed connected. They had a conversation even six months ago. But Dita unfortunately went home like Six weeks later. Oh, she, she, she got her first boyfriend right before she came and she was just homesick and heartbroken and couldn't be with her boyfriend and like, Jill took her to Seattle to see her sister and stuff and we tried really hard, but she was, she was Dita Downer kind of for about Six or eight weeks, and then she went home. So we misfired on that first one. But then we got Leticia from Brazil, um, and she was with us, like, literally right as I'm starting my food trailer business. Oh, yeah. Chaotic time. Chaotic time. We signed up for it before that. It was all, uh, happening, but So Leticia, uh, literally She couldn't work for money, but she, we put her to work a couple times at some of our original events and things like that. She loved it. She thought it was a hoot. But, uh, you know, I was thinking about that when you talked about that weird relationship. Because Leticia was, she just turned 18, like a week before she moved in with her home. She had been a, uh, a teen model in Brazil. She was gorgeous. And I'm like this dude that's like, okay, I, I live in a small house with my wife and I've got a former model, 18 year old moving in and nothing like no, like pervy old guy thing. Like she was my daughter, like almost immediately, you know, it's, it's a weird thing. Like when somebody is under your care, I don't know. You know, if I looked at a sports illustrated magazine and there was an 18 year old Brazilian girl, I'd be like, Oh, look at that. You know, and I'm not to. I'm too authentic not to admit that, but that's been one of the interesting things that I've noticed, uh, and even, like, right away I was like, no, cause I was kind of worried, right? You're like, am I inviting trouble by having this beautiful young woman move into my home? But, but no, it's never, it's never been that way. And so anyway, we've had Karim from Turkey. We've had Kay from Japan. We've had, um, gosh, so many it's like insults at least one or two, if I try to name them all, but, but it's been amazing. We had Manuela from Brazil last year. We had Enrico from Italy last year. Um, and we've got, uh, maybe Lenny from Norway as he's our top choice right now. We'll see if he's. That's so awesome. I mean, expanding your network, not only locally, but internationally as well to other countries. Yeah, right. If all these kids could start local think tanks in their home country, we can, like, blow this franchise up someday. Um, Hey, actually, I'd like to, uh, take a potty break. Do you mind if we do that? No, that's fine. Yeah. Alright. So, uh, and we're back, right? We are back. We finished it with family. And so faith or politics are kind of our next categories. And you can, you can lead us back in. Alright. We are back. Let's, uh, let's move over to faith. We've gone family. Okay. Let's, let's see faith. So, uh, growing up, you know, in small town North Dakota. Did your family have any sort of religious leanings or? Um, you know, we were kind of outcasts of sorts, almost. We went to, uh, a congregational church, um, in a region where most everybody was either Lutherans or Catholics. Um, and so it was probably like, I would guess it was probably like 50 percent Lutherans, 40 percent Catholics, and 10 percent other or N. A. And, and we were part of that and, and really, um, we went to a church to check that box, but, and I don't know about your faith background, but I didn't really know what the good news was like, why Christ came, why Jesus was important through almost, you know, eight years or something of Bible school and getting confirmed and stuff. I still didn't really know what the message. of salvation was, um, and so I came to faith much later, um, and I always, I mean, my perspective on faith in that time was pretty cynical. I guess I've always been kind of cynical because it was like the time of, um, when like Northern Ireland and like the Catholics were bombing the Protestants and the Protestants were bombing the Catholics and there was all this strife and I was like, well, shit, if this is the way Catholic, or the Christians. Respond to each other and behave. Well, then I'm not interested, you know, that doesn't seem very Christian of them turn the other cheek I mean, yeah, exactly and that was my perception. And so So I didn't have a lot of faith background. I mean my parents would have said they were Christians and I think that they are like the existence of Christ and his Place in the world wasn't really questioned culturally, but kind of what to do about it was maybe a little less clear. And so for me, my faith journey kind of started in college in some ways. I had a, my, my, one of my roommates was a religious studies major. He was a Catholic by background, and I didn't really know that many Catholics. I didn't really know the difference, but he started. Telling me some of the differences and the difference between Protestant and Catholics and, you know, how do the Jews fit in and, and all those elements and, uh, but didn't really do much with it. I did study, um, I studied Greek, uh, I studied, uh, philosophy from, uh, like, so like. Greek, uh, metaphysics and, uh, ethics and different things, all from a, from a Catholic seminary professor named, uh, Peter McCullough, no not Peter McCullough, Herb McCullough, Herb McCullough, I don't know what his name was, McCullough, Dr. McCullough, um, and, uh, so that was, but that was the old school stuff, it was the, the Greeks and the Aristotle and Kant and, and different things like that, it was the, the, I guess you'd call it the secular faith. It's kind of more a philosophy than ethics. Conversation, more philosophy than, yeah, philosophy and ethics, and, and ultimately if, if God isn't real, then ethics is fake. I mean, you know, human morals are interesting. I mean, I, in Denmark we're Protestant, you know, most of us, um, I've also been confirmed myself and baptized, but I wouldn't call myself like a devout Christian or anything. Right. If anything, I'd say I'm more agnostic than anything, you know. Don't, it's, it's hard to know if there is one or not. I think it would be cool if there was, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and there is, you know, for me at least, cause you're talking to somebody that's cynical and eventually I, as I studied and had more conversations and the biggest difference that I came to unfold is that with Christians, there's grace and God's path to heaven is from grace. Like his choice, he's the decider. And compared to like, you know, as long as you pray five times to Mecca, or you do follow these 456 rules of the Torah, like that, that legalistic element of, even Hinduism has mostly legalistic kind of elements of getting to the promised land, whatever that is. Whereas Christianity is like, God's the decider. Kind of, and he's the one that opens the path to connection with him, not you doing it on your own strength. And that was like the, the, the click moment for me. And then, my wife, uh, was from a Christian family. I, I kind of cynically attended church with her a little bit. And then, then it clicked, and it made sense. And I made an emotional response, but then I started investigating if that was the right thing. Um, and I signed up for this thing called Bible Study Fellowship. Um, the first year was History of Israel and the Minor Prophets. And if you take 40 hours and study the History of Israel and the Minor Prophets, and then enough of the Gospels, you'll be like, oh yeah, these prophets foretold this person. There really isn't a way to deny it. I guess, yeah, there's, you know. There's a lot of opinions to have on religion. For sure. And there's And I'm not saying that that's, like, right. There's no real right answer, I mean. Right. It's, um, it's why But the data really suggested to me, like, when I finally did really dig into what was the real data, which is, frankly, reading a significant portion of the Bible, I was like, oh yeah, all this evidence points to this. You know, it's like C. S. Lewis, you're familiar with. CS Lewis. I feel like I've heard of him before. Yeah, mere Christianity is one of his really good books. Uh, but he is written a bunch of really good books and, and frankly now he looks like a prophet because he wrote a lot about the nanny state and like the destruction of societies'. Based on trying to do the right thing like like with when this is flashing forward to politics But I wrote about Europe years a couple of years ago now that like with all the green stuff and shutting down all the nuclear For Germany, they've cut off their own hands to stop themselves from sinning You know, you want to decapacitate your own ability to compete and Denmark says the same right there farmer Limitations and different things that they've been placing. It's like You want to stop producing food? Like, food's pretty important. We've also been staunchly against nuclear power and such. Right. Now we're re evaluating that. Is that really a good idea? Right. Do we want to, like, suck Putin's dick or do we want to have nuclear reactors? Well. Yeah. You know, one of these days. Both of these things are bad. Make your poison, man. Yeah, exactly. There is no free lunch. Um, so anyway, that's my perspective on faith. Uh, Jill and I go to a little church called The Crossing that's uh, down at Shields and Horsetooth. It's uh, part of the Crossway Network, so there's, like for me, the heart of my, heh, The heart of my faith is God is real. Christ is real. There's a real message there and God is the decider. So if God lets in a bunch of Hindus or a handful of Catholics or whatever, like I'm not, I'm not here to say that if you don't believe what I believe, you're definitely going to hell. Cause that's hard for me to believe in a God that's like that stern about it in some ways. Um, and I guess it verges in the politics, but, but power corrupts. People are, humans are. Terrible people. If, if, if not subjected to rules and society and civilization, if we can just do whatever we want and be whatever we want and decide if we want to be a boy or a girl, like if there isn't rules around public behavior and, and elements to it, then, then we're, we're only not very far from collapse at any point in time. They do say that, um, when people start, you know, switching around with genders and stuff, that's when popular or society collapses. Um, Yeah. With examples. Rome. The Rome. Yeah. Roman Empire. Where they started doing that and then, you know, everything came crashing down. But, I think that's a perfect segue over into, into politics. Um, we've already been talking about it a little bit, but where, where would you say you, you stand on the, let's go with the, the standard American spectrum, you know. Sure. The, the Democrat, Republican. You know, which is flawed, but. Uh, two wings of the same corrupt bird at this point in time. Um, in our country, we're a, a dictatorship with two parties. I heard it put recently. I mean, that's definitely a way of putting it. Um, certainly an oligopoly or oligarchy. Um, you know, obviously like even the evidence of Robert Kennedy trying to, as a, as a legitimate candidate, trying to primary, you know, have a primary debate with Biden and just being totally. blocked out. So I've voted third party. I'm a libertarian at my heart. Um, Ayn Rand's, uh, books, the, the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and her utilitarianism objectivism kind of viewpoint informed a lot of my early thinking, especially pre Christian. And then through my faith journey, I've realized, uh, an obligation of them, those who have been blessed much to, to, to do much to bless in return. Um, and so I've kind of got a, a combination politics of So my motto before Loco Think Tank and our motto at Loco Think Tank is ask of your needs and share of your abundance. And it sounds pretty simple, it sounds pretty good, maybe? I don't know, what do you think of that phrase? Yeah, definitely, you know, on paper it sounds like a good thing, but in practice might be more difficult than Well, and it's, it's, there's a lot of depth to it that people might not hear like the, like don't ask me of your wants. What is your needs exactly? What is your needs exactly? And do you even know what your needs are? You might be like, well, I need a 2, 000 a month welfare check. Well, no, actually you need some self respect and to go get a fricking job. What you want is 2, 000 a month for free. So you can just play video games, but that's not what you need. That's not actually going to benefit you. That's probably going to harm you longterm by taking away your own ability to, to be self substantiated. Like you can think you can be a healthy human being just by. Sitting on your fat ass and collecting checks and eating bonbons. No, you'll never be healthy unless you earn some of what you get But if you have real needs, I'd love to be able to help cover some of those right like I'm not gonna let somebody starve So that's the ask of your needs and then the share of your abundance is a call on those who've been blessed much You know, I appreciate people like like Warren Buffett that have committed to donating most of his earned wealth to charity as he departs this world and things like that. Um, and you know, share of your abundance. Don't tax my abundance. Don't take what you think is my abundance. You're not here to decide what my abundance is, right? Like, like they have these notions of equity, like wealth taxes and, you know, an unearned equities and different things like that. And it's like, so you're just going to take what, well, you know, the government is the only. Only organization that's authorized to murder and to take and to harm like everybody else has to Like live within that rule, but the government can imprison anybody they want they can kill people by themselves Like look at this Julian Assange thing right now like that guy the charges that he was Originally jailed with were totally trumped up and fraudulent. That's been proven and The, the guy that, uh, the, and you might not be familiar with this case, the Wikileaks is, is this guy's organization. I think so. I, I've heard of Wikileaks before. Yeah, so, uh, this guy, now a girl, Chelsea Manning, uh, a guy that decided he was a woman and I think is maybe back out of jail. Delivered a bunch of military stuff to a website, Wikileaks, and, and Julian Assange was running this platform. It's like, hey, if you got dirty shit on Hillary Clinton or the government in general, and you want to upload it to have everybody see it, put it right here. Uh, and the government is, is trying to, the UK looks like they're going to extradite him to the US, where he'll probably get, uh, what's the term? Um Who's the pedophile guy from New York? Uh, Madoff. No, not Madoff. Uh, recently died. Um, there's this whole scandal. Uh, Epsteined. Oh, Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, so, so probably Assange will get Epsteined. Uh, if he makes it to the U. S. And, and that's just not really Like, the U. S. would have a stronger voice in telling the world how to behave better if we behave better. We're lousy. We're corrupt. Like, Biden is obvious evidence of that. He's, like, I feel so sorry for that poor, mentally, uh, disintegrating man to have to be in the role of a president. I think everyone can agree that he's clearly not, you know, equipped to be in such a role of responsibility and stress. I mean, he's What, how old is he now? He's 81. He's 80, yeah. And age isn't really about it. Ben Franklin was 81 when he helped the Constitution come together. Fair. Uh, but he wasn't Joe Biden. Yeah. Yeah, well, and you're, you're, as an outsider looking in, I mean, you're a 15 year old kid from Denmark. Right? If you can see that our president is a laughing stock, then. Yeah, we've, uh. We like to spectate the American politics. Right. You know. And what do, what, what do people from Denmark think about Trump? I mean I bet there's some division now. There are definitely some people that support him. Like the tractor people are like, Fuck yeah, Trump. Most, most, I'd say most people are, you know, just think he's a bit silly. Um, you know, he's just, I don't think it's a threat to democracy like they've been trying to do here. Like the Trump derangement syndrome, he's not, you know, they don't really see him as a threat to themselves or like a threat to, to Danish people, but they definitely aren't outright supporting it. A clown of sorts. Yeah. I mean, it's like a reality TV show. Well, and how in the world, like if there's a phrase in business that, uh, that a system is designed to create the outcomes that it creates. Well, then we got to fucking break our system and start it over because clearly if these are the outcomes that the system that we have now Then it's then it's broken and and it's because of that corruptibility. I was I was turning around to that like Everybody is so corruptible and that's why you need a really small government and and frankly to take my politics to another level I'm a libertarian, but I think there probably should be some kind of a tax to the general fund on capital concentrations Like these Black Rocks, Vanguards, State Streets, um, even the Apple, Googles, Microsoft, like it's not just about monopoly power, but it's like the banks, you've heard of the phrase too big to fail, do you know what that means in America, or even globally? Um, perhaps, but explain it to me. So, Too big to fail is a concept that if these major banks like JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo some of those Would fail it would like mess the whole economy up So the government has an obligation basically to bail them out which they did back in the 2008 2009 crisis Those banks that are too big to fail borrow their money about a point or a point and a half lower Then there are smaller competitors. Wow. So they've got a built in competitive, a significant and sizable competitive advantage based on the fact that they're too big to fail. So to me, too big to fail is too big to exist. If there's, if there's systemic risk companies, they need to have some sort of a drag put on them until they decide to break into smaller pieces or something, in my opinion, because they can't just, they just can't be trusted like Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg spent 400 million in 2020, mostly at city and county and local level increments, to influence the 2020 election. Look, that's not really right. Like he's the owner of the media and he's buying the media and telling us what to think, you know, and people are pretty dumb and It's unfortunate that they are so dumb, but people are pretty dumb. I like the saying a person is smart, but the people are dumb Yeah, yeah And a person is only as smart as what they've been exposed to and right now with our media God bless Elon Musk, because X is the only channel that you're getting some of these stories about what's really going on, how much censorship, like the level of censorship that the Biden administration did on day one upon entering office is Overwhelming. Uh, direct communications of take this down, shut this guy off, de emphasize him, and that's not free speech, and that's, like, losing free speech means you're on your way to losing the rest of the ten. Right. I don't want to, like, take any sort of stances or agree or disagree with anything because I don't think I'm well enough informed in American politics to take a proper stance. Tell me about Dutch politics, or Danish politics a little bit. Our system has, we have a lot of parties, um, we have about 16 that are in our parliament, we have a single, or a, It's not called again, uh, single chamber system. So we don't, we don't have to So there's no House and Senate? No, we just have our, um, we call it a folgetzing. A folgetzing? Folgetzing? Um, and that's, you know, just our, um, legislative branch. Okay. Um, of which we don't have an executive branch. Our prime minister, who is the leader of our country, is part of that legislative branch. Oh, is a functionary of the legislative branch. So, you're right, there's no, you know, uh So he's like the executive function of the legislative branch, kind of. Right, but still, um Bound to the same things that the legislative, legislative branch is yeahinteresting. So there's no, you know, interesting power. There's no executive power bullshit and stuff like that between, you know, with checks and balances. And then how about the judiciary versus the legislative? We definitely have a, uh, judiciary branch that is, you know, their, we have our own Supreme Courts. Okay. Um, and I mean, does the Prime Minister appoint the Supreme Court then, or is that, I don't actually know the specifics of that. Yeah. Um, but I, I say I prefer our system compared to the two party system.'cause you can probably find a party that agrees with you. In most, you won't always have someone that agrees on everything. Yeah, like anybody that agrees with the whole plank of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party in our country is like a moron. So like, it's hard to agree with everything. Like what do you mean you agree with everything? Come on. But there are some, there's a large spread of parties for most people. And if you think there's something missing, you can probably create a party. I mean, and you know, the bar isn't super high. It's about a 2 percent of the popular vote. to get a seat. Uh, we have 179 seats. Okay. Tell me about your family. Uh, like your, you mentioned your dad is in business. Uh, yeah, so my father's name is Asger. Asger. He works for a company called BD. Beckton Dickinson, if you've heard of it. I think I have. It's a big engineering firm? Uh, no, it's more like medicinal tools. Oh, okay. You know, machines and whatnot. Okay. They, you know, produce a lot of, I believe they produce things as advanced as MRI scanners, but also things as simple as, you know, syringes for COVID vaccinations, for example. Tooth cleaning things or whatever. Bunch of things. High durability, high precision. Fun fact I like to, uh, say is that they produce more plastic items and things than Lego. That's awesome. Yeah. And of course, like everything from little clips to this and that Legos are Danish too. Oh, yeah. It comes from like God, it's a it's a kind of a combination of which means play well. Oh, that is Danish. I heard Legos are on a big upswing. Oh my god, adults are buying Legos now and playing with them a lot more. I that's probably one of our most successful companies. I wouldn't doubt it. Yeah. And my mother, she works also in banking, but she's not a banker. She's um, She's assisting expats and onboarding. Oh, cool. You know, welcoming people into the country and having, you know, their accounts set up. Like expats being Americans and other It could be Americans, but also other people from Brits and Germans and different things like that. Getting them into, getting them set up Oh, cool. And both of those jobs require, you know, an international focus and also speaking English. Okay. So that's probably where I've gotten a lot of my information. And so where do they lie in a, in a, the political spectrum, if you will, or, I don't know if you fall far from the tree in that regard. I don't really, I'm actually You're still developing your politics, you don't really know. Yeah, I don't know what they vote for actually. I mean, we, we kind of keep that as our personal things. Even within the family? Yeah, but I'd say they're um, You know, they're not extremists in any way. They're either pretty moderate in their thinking. Moderate, yeah. I'd say, um, I'd say if anything they're, you know, because Denmark has invented this, uh, concept of social liberalism. So we have a lot of, um, social programs and, you know, welfare. For sure. High tax rate. Right. Uh, but then again, you also have a lot of, uh, freedom and the liberty to do. Yeah. What you want. Yeah, yeah. Um. So, I think it's probably one of the most optimal forms of government. Yeah, I think with a smaller country, especially if it's productive and efficient, I think that's a pretty amazing system. Yeah, exactly. It might not work for everywhere. I mean, America's getting pretty big and pretty diverse. Like, it doesn't matter what you do, you're just not going to make Alabama work like California. Um, it's just not going to happen. Where we were only like, we're reaching 6 million people, but we're very, very small and, uh, you know, pretty homogenous. Yeah, yeah, we definitely, we accept immigrants of course, but. Pretty homogenous. Yeah. Well, tell me about that. Has that become, like, obviously the Middle Easterns and the Muslims are, well, I think Mohammed was, like, the fourth most popular name for Buddhists last year. I mean. Is that, is that in Denmark as well, or less so there? We're pretty homogenous. Because it's farther away? 80, 90 percent, um, that are like, you know, white Danes, if you could say that. Yeah, yeah. Um, but we definitely have done a lot to, um, accept and encourage, um, other people to come to Denmark. Yeah. Um, we've Probably because you need lower priced labor to make things work okay. Yeah, um, sometimes, you know, this might be a little offensive to some people, but we like to refer as the Polish to be our Mexicans. Right. Um, you know, uh, we Yeah, well, and the, and the Turks are the, are the Polish. Mexicans. Right. Like, if you're in Poland, then the Turks come up there. If you're in Germany, then the Poles come up to you. Or, or Denmark. I find amazing about Europe is, especially in the Schengen area, is you can freely travel around and, you know, collaborate. Is this Schengen? Uh, Schengen, yeah, so this is, uh, an agreement that expands beyond the EU. Oh, is it? And it's, um, you know, it includes countries, you know, the E European countries, but also countries like Switzerland and Iceland. Okay. So it's, uh, making travel easier. Cool. So, if I wanted to, from Denmark, I could Just walk to Germany without a passport check or anything. Oh wow. Um, so that's really great and allows, uh, business and commerce. Could I too? Uh, well, you're not part of the, the United States is not part of the Schengen area. Well, I don't, but yeah. No, but if I was just there, like I could just walk were already in, uh, the Schengen area, you can walk. Um, you know, I don't have to show my passport to go from place to place or don't quote me on it, maybe at airports and stuff, but yeah, when you're flying, you definitely have to show airport, um, passports. Um, but less so when flying internally, more so when flying into or from. Yeah. So, I mean, to get back to the, the heart of politics. So we have, we chase rabbits around here. It's cool. Um, less is more, more freedom is better. And, and in some ways, like your, your social liberalism, like you talk about, there's, yeah. A way for that to create more freedoms, potentially, as long as it's shepherded. Yeah, um, we have a, um, a saying, which is, Due di nein, luger smil, which means, You are your own's, uh, you're the smith of your own success. Yeah. Uh, so like, if you want to put in the effort for it, you can become successful. Yep. But if you don't want to, um, do anything, then you will not become successful. So we have programs that, you know, incentivize. Doing something for yourself for people who don't have a job. We have so many great ways to you know Get back into the market if you're willing to and if you don't then you won't succeed. So yeah Perpetuating, but will they have a like a low income level that some state support, you know They definitely keep you in a house always beans, but you don't have steak and you can't like You can live off of it, but it's not a great life. And it's But you don't really have any homelessness to speak of or anything because of that. Except for real drug addicts and but less so. So, let's Did we cover faith, family, politics? I think we did. Faith, family, politics, we've kind of covered all those. So, let's move on to the iconic loco experience. The iconic? You have many I've heard. Um, do you have any? I mean, when I was on here, you know, a month ago. Oh, you shared it a little bit. I shared one. Um, I don't know if I've gotten any crazy ones since. Um, I'm trying to remember which of my, I've shared a few because my guests sometimes ask about my local experiences and I, I don't really have like a top one. I've got like a top 10. They're all kind of crazy here. Um, I think probably the, the, the first, Oh gosh, there's, there's one for you. Uh, I mentioned a couple of times about how, how small I am or was back in the day, you know, and, and I had all these Big classmates. There was like, there was me and three guys that were like six foot tall as eighth graders. Oof. And, um, one girl. Right? Randy, Troy, Donnie. Maybe one more. I don't know. Anyway, and I was a basketball player, and I was, I was, you know, kind of lippy, even back then, and smart, you know, I was, you know, I was smart, just like you. You're smarter than most of the people around you, right? I'm not gonna admit that. It's true, though. Um, and, and I had a sharp tongue, and no muscles, and, um, you know, tiny, and, so anyway, sometimes people picked on me, and, The craziest like bullying experience I had was we were, we were in the showers, locker room showers, and I don't remember what the situation was, but that we had these walls separate the showers and they were about five feet tall. So like to separate you from being seen while you're showering, whatever. Um, and these guys were trying to like drag me, I think they were trying to like drag me out of the locker room naked or something. And, and so I'm holding on to the top of this wall, and there's one guy on each of my feet, like, pulling me backwards. Like, trying to, and I'm like, I'm gonna fall, like, I'm gonna, I can't hold on anymore, you gotta stop, you gotta stop, and they just kept pulling. And then I fell off, and my head fell five feet down to the freakin locker room floor, cause I, how the hell am I gonna catch myself with my feet being, yeah, it was a That one's like a, it was like concrete. And this big old egg on the front of my head when I came out of the locker room afterwards, my mom of course was like, whatever. So that's like a super shorty, uh, loco experience. Um, you know, probably, you know, not to oversell it, but this weird place in the world that I live. In this moment in time where I've got this, this company and I, you know, I, I literally know hundreds and hundreds of business owners. I, I, I, I know thousands of people in Northern Colorado without question that, that I can, you know, if I can't name them, I can tell you where I met them and how they fit into the world sometimes. And then usually in 30 seconds or a minute, I can name them too. And that's a really weird place to be, you know, to have such a constant experience. I'm Fort Collins famous. That's the, that's the loco experiences. I'm, I'm Fort Collins famous for this function that I'm very passionate about, that's business oriented, that I do believe is making people better, smarter, less anxious. Um, more able to, to face the challenges of the day and, you know, I want to bring it to Denmark and Omaha, Nebraska and Fort Lauderdale, right? Like everywhere there's give back minded business veterans that want to give back to their community and stay involved and have hard challenges in, in, in their brain on a regular basis to keep them vibrant and reflective and aware of the current trends. Like. It's just such a win. That's one of our phrases is, uh, at local think tank. We look for the win, win, win, win. Uh, but we'll settle for the win, win, win if necessary, you know, and it would be such a win, win, win, win. For our country and especially communities where there's a real community sense if we could get it there, too So that's about all I got to say about that. Well, I think we've kind of covered most bases here I don't it's been fun. Have you had fun? I've had fun. Oh my god. This has been great It's gonna be on your university application someday. Well, I mean, you know universities free so in Denmark. Oh, yes. Yeah I'm pretty sure can I come? No, I'd have to be a citizen, I reckon. My mom works in expat, you know. Perfect! I'm looking forward to the visit already. Um, but yeah, thank you again for having me on here. Thank you for agreeing to this. It's a really, uh, a bold move for, for a young man, and so I'm, uh, Take some risks. Yeah, why not? Um, and thank you, listeners, for listening in, you know, to this little, uh, Thank you, Victor. You did a great job. I'm gonna give you a b plus little different a, you know, maybe a different type of podcast, but I think we got through quite all right. We did. It's gonna be a, it's gonna be a bestseller. God's Pizza. You too. Appreciate you