EXPERIENCE 163 | Headed West with Workday Ninja Micah Johnson, Veteran CEO, CTO, and COO and Process Optimization and Automation Expert

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I was introduced to Micah Johnson by Jeffrey Bale, one of my guests during season one of The Loco Experience, episode 29 if you want to check it out, and one of my spies in the Boulder area.

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By spies, I mean those who would think of me when they meet somebody with an interesting business journey to share and a lot of value to share with the business community through a podcast conversation like this one.

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Mike is what most would call a serial entrepreneur, with multiple starts and exits and some failures.

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Mike's largest business venture to date was GoFanbase, Inc., a social media marketing and community building strategy firm based in Nashville, which focused on multi location businesses such as auto dealerships and restaurants.

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After growing his team to over 100 employees, he and his wife, Elaine, made the decision to exit and search for a next chapter.

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After years of focus on efficiency and teams and automations at GoFanbase, And a choppy merger integration, the bear was left with skill sets essential to their current venture.

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Workday Ninjas.

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Workday Ninjas helps their agency and B2B service clients remove roadblocks to scaling through tools like Monday.

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com, Asana, and ClickUp.

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Having utilized Monday.

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com for the past three years, and currently undergoing a database conversion to the CRM tool offered by Monday, this was an intriguing opportunity for me to learn more about the kinks and capabilities of the platform from an expert.

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And ultimately uncover principles of efficiency, communication, and building high functioning teams.

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I learned a lot and had a lot of fun, and I'm confident that you will enjoy my conversation with Micah Johnson.

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Welcome back to the Loco Experience.

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I'm honored today to be joined by Micah Johnson and Micah is the CEO and founder of Workday Ninja.

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What is, uh, what is a Workday Ninja?

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So at Workday Ninja, we go into generally B2B companies, a lot of agencies.

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But, uh, we help them figure out how do you leverage AI, how do you leverage automation, and how do you streamline your workflows, uh, with project management tools such as Asana, ClickUp, or Monday, and string those all together so that you have, yeah, major benefits across the board.

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So what, what was the impetus, um, to do this as an enterprise?

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That's a great question.

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I've fell into it like the rest of my career.

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Yeah.

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So, um, I, I exited my previous company at the end of 2018 and right before that exit, we went through a merger with one of our competitors.

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Okay.

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Up until that point, I naively thought every business was completely organized and had workflows and completely dialed in, had their knowledge bases, had their processes all squared away, onboarding perfectly.

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Turns out, that's not the case.

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It's not?

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That's how I ran it.

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That's how my brain works.

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I like thinking about systems and making things work so that I don't have to work so hard.

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Yeah.

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But when we merged with a competitor, they didn't have a lot of that stuff in place.

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Okay.

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Nothing against them.

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They were making a lot more revenue than we were.

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Sure.

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Because they focused on sales and marketing instead of systems.

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You're like, look at these workflows and onboarding processes.

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Yeah.

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Exactly.

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Exactly.

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But put together, that should be a strong thing.

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If you can get acceptance.

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And did you bring your tools and workflows into that organization then?

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Yeah, exactly.

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So that was my first attempt, or I would say my first opportunity outside of my own businesses, because that one was my second venture, um, to really come in and say, okay, we've got a big problem to solve.

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We've got a lot of employees.

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We've got a lot of revenue.

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We've got a lot of clients.

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How are we going to take all of this?

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And then we have to invisibly make this all really efficient.

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It'd make it work for and to pass due diligence, right?

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Because our goal was an exit with the merger.

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So, okay, we got a big problem to solve, but going through that.

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So, um, I won't get into all of those details yet unless we get in there, but, um, ultimately that experience and, and after that exit, I just really enjoyed.

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And so I decided to start consulting with companies who are really good at sales and marketing.

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but maybe lacking or missing elements of the systems, the processes, the workflows, the automation and all of that kind of stuff.

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So I would go into businesses, figure out what their giant pain points were on their workflow side and then piece together like, Oh, you could do this CRM to here and leverage this API and centralize all your data here.

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So you don't have a hundred different versions of all this stuff.

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Well, and it's no wonder I've been kind of fascinated by.

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You and the way you think because like loco think tank started, you know, originally just as One chapter of 12 members with a Word document application, you know, we've grown and then we've also strapped on, you know, a business valuation tool that our members can use and how those relational intelligence training that our members are trying to build a common language around and how do we keep track of all those things and actually charge for things when we deliver services and stuff like that.

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Sometimes it's important.

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It's not our core thing of our memberships, but okay, now we can't just forget that.

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So anyway, I was just remembering even more so our, uh, my fondness for learning more about what you know.

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Yeah.

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So you did it just as kind of a, a generalist consultant for a while focusing on these things or were you the workday ninja already?

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No, it was definitely, it was definitely general.

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And.

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I, I remember having a conversation with my wife and she's, she was very integral with scaling the last business and, and helping us get to a much larger piece.

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She's, she's my sales and marketing arm, you know, so that's why we make a really great team.

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Um, so we were even having the conversation of, are there businesses out there that will pay us for, like, we didn't even know, would this market really exist?

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Do they want somebody from the outside to come in?

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Right.

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And try to help them solve this problem.

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Our experience with the company that we merged with, they were not super open for a lot of, a lot of things.

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Right, right.

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Which is Change is hard, you know.

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It is, it is.

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And what they were doing was working to a degree.

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It was bringing in the revenue, it was bringing in the sales.

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Right.

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So I put myself out there and, um, one of my first contracts, uh, was a company that was based in Norway in Oslo.

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They had offices in St.

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Petersburg and Moscow, Russia.

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And, uh, they were basically a nutraceutical.

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So like supplement company for the Scandinavian market, they were doing fantastic, super, super cool stuff.

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Yeah.

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Great product.

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Yeah.

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People were buying it.

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High demand.

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Really, really high end.

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Yep.

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Cornered the Scandinavian market.

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They were doing great.

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But the, they just didn't have the, they were missing the piece of how do we string all these systems together?

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Our departments had silos.

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We had communication issues.

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All of these things.

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And is that like supply chain too?

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Oh yeah.

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So that when we get a bunch of orders, it's already going through and automatically ordering from these suppliers and things like that?

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Yeah.

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Inventory was a Just visualizing it too.

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Was a big issue.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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So I spent about 12 months, uh, working with them and, and how do we train on Asana and how do we bring all this stuff in so that we can manage from a higher level, how do we structure the team?

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So at that stage I was bringing on any, any project that was sounded interesting.

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Right.

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I just got through an exit.

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I'm like, I'm going to have fun and do like, just whatever I want to do.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And so, man, I worked.

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I don't know.

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I don't know the exact number, but it was probably 50 to 70 separate gigs, just consulting where I would go in, figure out what the real sources of the issues were, and then help them build the solutions through.

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And ultimately I got really lonely.

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Right.

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Because, you know, you built Consulting is hard.

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It is.

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Right?

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Way harder than I expected.

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It's nice to not have any responsibilities.

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Yeah.

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Nobody to, you know, make sure you do payroll for and all that kind of stuff.

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And yeah, I'm roam y.

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Yeah, but then you're like, at the end of the day, you're like, okay, wow, that was really cool.

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I don't have anybody to celebrate with.

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Right, right.

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Exactly.

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And when you finish a project, it's like, okay, bye, I hope I hear, never hear from you, I guess.

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Because that means I didn't do something right.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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Yeah, that's exactly right.

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So after a number of years, I decided I want to build a team.

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You felt like you proved the, the model, the value proposition through your consultancies.

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I thought I did, but I was wrong.

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Okay.

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Let's hear it.

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I was wrong.

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I had a major false start.

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So this is now my, this is my third business.

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Okay.

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And I went into, I came out of an exit.

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I'm successfully consulting, making good money.

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And I'm like, I got this in the bag.

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I'll seed it with 50 grand, hire four people.

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Yup.

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Easy peasy.

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Kurt, I was so wrong.

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It was terrible.

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I scaled up to like, I think we scaled up to 12 or 16 people and we're like bringing in the clients.

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All right.

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This is working, finding team members and first few months feeling really good.

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But then.

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then things weren't changing.

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All these team members were just going, Hey, Micah, what about this?

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What should I do here?

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What about this?

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So instead of, I'll tell you what though, I wasn't lonely anymore, but I was, it was just, I was so fatigued because not only did I have to keep things going with the clients.

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Now I had all these team members that I had to support and train and keep going.

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All those people, and I'm sure some of them after a little while, you're like, okay, you're just not going to work because I can't actually detect you making a difference in this client's life.

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Yep, that's exactly right.

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So what I, what I realized in that part of the journey and that adventure was that what I took a lot of stuff for granted, my history, my knowledge, the way I think about things, and I thought I was just going to be able to somehow.

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Yeah.

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get other people that I hired to think about those same things the same, same way I do.

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Right, right.

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Rookie mistake for my third business, but, um, you know, so.

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And so what was this?

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Uh, what was the name of that?

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Well, it's, that's still BGBO.

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So the original name of this business is, B G B O.

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Okay.

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And the idea behind it, because now I have to explain it, is biggest goal, biggest obstacle.

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And the idea was, let's focus on the biggest goal, let's solve the biggest obstacle.

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But in all of those words, I have to say that every time I say B G B O.

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Yeah.

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So.

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And then people are like drifting off thinking, what is my biggest obstacle?

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What is my biggest goal?

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Yeah.

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Well, I have a monologue about the name.

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So that, yeah, that name.

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was not great.

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Um, so we still use it, but we're shifting to Workday Ninja.

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I gotcha.

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So it's the same business.

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We're just rebranding it so that we could Fight through that, like hiring 12 people and stuff?

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Or did you shrink it back down almost to a consultancy again and then rebuilt the foundation?

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I shrunk it back down.

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I kept a few key people that are still with us.

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And, um, yeah, so I basically let the team go and it was really like, you know, I don't, I don't know, just like, uh, almost come to Jesus moment of, Hey, we got to figure this out.

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Like we, we were a little overconfident on this one or I was, and, and so that, that forced me to say, okay, what can I do?

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That I can hire a team for that.

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I can stay focused on.

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And I started to ask myself questions like what's the maximum value that I can provide where in, in all the stuff that we can do, where do I provide the most value?

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Where do you provide it?

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Or where does your team, where does your, is your niche as an operation?

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Kind of, kind of both, both.

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So I had to look at it.

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individually and say, all right, as, as a leader, where do I provide the most value?

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And how can I design this so that it can scale?

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And we're still, you know, we're not out of the woods yet, but we have scaled back up.

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We were able to really focus.

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And that's where we got into like focusing on the automation on the workflows on specific things like B2B and just really dialing back in because there, I think originally we could almost hear any operational issue.

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We could solve that.

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Yeah.

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We could solve that.

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Yep.

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Yeah.

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Maybe not efficiently.

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Maybe not for a paying customer that wants to keep you engaged for a while and actually do the work.

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Yep.

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Qualifying that is hard.

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I'm sure.

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So have you changed your curriculum?

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The, the offering model, like how you work, was it like time and materials?

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Is it like, uh, we, we fluctuated through, I mean, we've tried everything at this point, I think, um, we definitely started with hourly because that's the easiest.

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You can just get up and go hourly time and materials.

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And we go after that.

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And that actually worked really, really well.

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Um, we kept that for a long time.

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There was a period of time where we scaled up.

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We went fixed pricing and tried to do project pricing.

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And boy, did we lose money.

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The problem is, is some projects are this big and some projects are ten times that big and you can't know which.

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Yes.

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Until you get in there.

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Yes.

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And when we're talking about workflows, it's layers of an onion.

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And sometimes Pandora's box.

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Right.

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So, you know, you solve one thing and then all of a sudden you're like, Oh.

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Yeah.

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That's, uh, that's not what we were originally told.

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Hmm.

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Well, it has to be kind of done in the background without disrupting customers or employees too much and all that.

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Well, if you could just burn it down and start over, it would be easier.

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Yes.

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But you can't do that.

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Yes.

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And so we, you know, fixed price, uh, pricing did not give us the flexibility we needed.

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And it was frustrating because for the clients, because every time we.

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tried to do something new.

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It was like, well, that's actually going to be more.

00:15:11.089 --> 00:15:17.808
It either seemed like you were charging them way too much for this little project, or you knew that you were charging way, not enough for this giant project.

00:15:17.808 --> 00:15:18.109
Yep.

00:15:18.149 --> 00:15:24.589
And hourly, um, hourly has probably been our longest run that works well, but it's so variable.

00:15:24.599 --> 00:15:28.749
So if a client has 10 requests come in, we're going to knock those 10 requests out.

00:15:28.778 --> 00:15:34.389
If they're urgent matters, if there are things that need to get done, if they're, for example, automations that might.

00:15:34.614 --> 00:15:36.203
affect sales and marketing.

00:15:36.724 --> 00:15:37.844
So we can't just.

00:15:38.453 --> 00:15:44.203
So do they almost just like send a request into your team and your job is to kind of finger that out?

00:15:44.283 --> 00:15:47.953
Yeah, it's really, it's actually really like, that's my favorite part.

00:15:48.033 --> 00:15:48.384
Yeah.

00:15:48.433 --> 00:15:51.254
Um, but it's like an IT services company in a way.

00:15:51.283 --> 00:15:53.033
It is, it is to a degree.

00:15:53.063 --> 00:15:54.703
And it's this weird, slow ramp.

00:15:54.724 --> 00:16:00.923
So guaranteed at an initial intro call with a client, we're going to hear something like this, man.

00:16:01.384 --> 00:16:03.203
I don't even know what I can automate.

00:16:03.274 --> 00:16:05.964
I don't even know all my workflows right now.

00:16:06.364 --> 00:16:16.594
And within the course of a 30 minute conversation, we'll start hearing things like, well, it sure would be nice if we could automate proposal generation as soon as this, right.

00:16:16.614 --> 00:16:20.019
And they'll start, Like you can hear the gears turning.

00:16:20.349 --> 00:16:21.719
And so there's this slow roll.

00:16:21.719 --> 00:16:22.589
So that's the intro call.

00:16:22.629 --> 00:16:28.839
And then once we solve a couple of problems and implement a couple automations, three grand to fix these problems.

00:16:28.869 --> 00:16:32.139
Yes, because then they're fixed in perpetuity, right?

00:16:32.198 --> 00:16:32.979
Absolutely.

00:16:32.999 --> 00:16:38.259
And that's when the other team members, the other leadership goes, Hey, remember how we solve this?

00:16:38.278 --> 00:16:39.839
Like, what if we did that over here?

00:16:39.859 --> 00:16:46.293
Or what if we, so as we start working with clients, then it just keeps Starts flowing in and more and more and more.

00:16:46.403 --> 00:16:50.413
So in the beginning we kind of seed it and we prompt it and we say, Hey, here's a bunch of ideas.

00:16:50.673 --> 00:16:52.803
You can automate your client onboarding.

00:16:52.803 --> 00:16:54.333
That's super ripe for automation.

00:16:54.344 --> 00:16:54.683
Right.

00:16:54.923 --> 00:17:03.943
And you know, instead of spending, just talking about that with loco here, like, wouldn't it be nice if 60 days after somebody joined, they got a nice little, Hey, hope you're enjoying it so far, you know, whatever.

00:17:04.003 --> 00:17:04.443
Yep.

00:17:04.814 --> 00:17:05.884
So we, we start out.

00:17:06.193 --> 00:17:08.013
You know, getting the ball rolling.

00:17:08.064 --> 00:17:11.163
But then as soon as the clients catch on, Hey, what about this?

00:17:11.163 --> 00:17:12.044
Can we do this?

00:17:12.473 --> 00:17:13.814
And so, yeah, so we've set it up.

00:17:13.814 --> 00:17:15.753
So it's just send us the request.

00:17:15.784 --> 00:17:22.233
And then we set up a backlog that says, here's all of your requests that you've made now let's prioritize them.

00:17:22.463 --> 00:17:28.513
And that led us to our current model, which is a productized agency model, which means you pay a fixed fee every month.

00:17:28.693 --> 00:17:28.903
Okay.

00:17:28.923 --> 00:17:30.614
You can have unlimited requests.

00:17:31.233 --> 00:17:32.314
And then we.

00:17:32.489 --> 00:17:36.898
work with you to prioritize and break these requests down into bite sized pieces.

00:17:37.239 --> 00:17:39.769
And then we focus on the top priorities only.

00:17:40.249 --> 00:17:47.528
But if, if there's a whole bunch of small top priorities in a single month, we're gonna get a whole bunch done in a single month.

00:17:47.989 --> 00:17:54.608
If there's only a few that are bigger ones and we need to work on these bigger projects, then we're gonna, those might take a couple months.

00:17:54.959 --> 00:17:58.528
And that probably includes kind of a strategic initiatives element as well?

00:17:58.528 --> 00:17:58.557
Absolutely.

00:17:58.558 --> 00:17:59.169
Absolutely.

00:17:59.368 --> 00:17:59.709
Yep.

00:17:59.788 --> 00:18:04.878
Um, tell me about these platforms, you mentioned, I think, ClickUp, Monday, and Asana?

00:18:04.939 --> 00:18:05.209
Yep.

00:18:05.499 --> 00:18:07.959
And, why those?

00:18:07.989 --> 00:18:09.179
Why not others?

00:18:09.179 --> 00:18:10.808
Like, uh, Yeah.

00:18:10.808 --> 00:18:13.358
And maybe describe those platforms for, for listeners.

00:18:13.358 --> 00:18:17.058
I've used, we used Asana a little bit for project management years ago.

00:18:17.449 --> 00:18:18.878
I didn't really like it as much.

00:18:18.888 --> 00:18:21.259
When I found Monday, I liked it a lot more.

00:18:21.318 --> 00:18:21.719
Yeah.

00:18:21.778 --> 00:18:25.088
Um, but, but yeah, give me the why about those and what they, what they're up to.

00:18:25.148 --> 00:18:25.489
Yeah.

00:18:25.489 --> 00:18:30.598
So I would say, you know, all three of them tend to call themselves work management tools.

00:18:30.608 --> 00:18:30.979
Okay.

00:18:31.294 --> 00:18:38.663
But nobody else does, so they're project management tools to the listeners, to everybody else in the world, they're really project management.

00:18:38.683 --> 00:18:47.403
I like the term work management because it makes you think of if it's something I'm doing in relation to work, it should probably be in this tool and projects suggest that.

00:18:47.888 --> 00:18:49.199
You're ever going to get it done.

00:18:49.249 --> 00:18:49.808
That's right.

00:18:49.828 --> 00:18:51.439
You know, work is just work.

00:18:51.489 --> 00:18:57.358
You know, we have new members come into local think tank every month and they need to get an onboarding email and they need to do that.

00:18:57.459 --> 00:18:57.769
Yep.

00:18:58.269 --> 00:19:04.788
So where all of this came about was with a previous business, we put Asana as our backbone for operations.

00:19:05.288 --> 00:19:16.088
So all the projects, all the account management, everything that we needed to work on, um, scaling, key, key growth initiatives, as your CRM and everything.

00:19:16.479 --> 00:19:25.909
Uh, we had our, we had CRM separately and we had ticketing separately, but as far as running the operations of the company and streamlining the growth, that was all Asana.

00:19:25.919 --> 00:19:29.898
And so that, and then we in court started incorporating automation even way back then.

00:19:30.459 --> 00:19:37.989
And that was the reason that we could scale with a much smaller team and a lot more efficiently.

00:19:38.038 --> 00:19:38.449
And.

00:19:38.503 --> 00:19:48.834
Um, so I started doing the consulting, that became kind of a mainstay.

00:19:48.844 --> 00:19:53.913
So, you know, when you look at a company having a CRM is really important.

00:19:53.973 --> 00:19:56.794
Having a project management or work management tool is really important.

00:19:57.098 --> 00:19:58.679
As important as an accounting software.

00:19:59.429 --> 00:20:05.818
So, you know, you wouldn't these days, some people still do, but you shouldn't use Excel for accounting.

00:20:06.308 --> 00:20:06.578
Right.

00:20:06.598 --> 00:20:09.709
You'd probably want to use QuickBooks or Xero or something like that.

00:20:09.888 --> 00:20:11.199
Same thing with project management.

00:20:11.209 --> 00:20:15.828
You wouldn't necessarily want to manage your projects in Excel these days.

00:20:16.288 --> 00:20:19.778
Some people still do, but you're going to be a lot better off.

00:20:19.989 --> 00:20:28.709
In a project management or a work management system, the secret behind those is that they can be the centerpiece for integrations and automation.

00:20:29.608 --> 00:20:35.338
And so when we look at how do we streamline workflows and how do we free up time and how do we optimize processes?

00:20:36.493 --> 00:20:45.003
If you have one of those in place, you're a huge leg up over somebody who doesn't or somebody that's using it incorrectly.

00:20:45.364 --> 00:20:51.693
So it's just a massive collaboration tool that instantly breaks down silos across all the systems.

00:20:51.693 --> 00:21:06.124
Well, I'm just imagining probably a very specific use case, but okay, I've got a website and I've got a Shopify on the website or whatever, and when somebody orders Print this, print the mailing label at this workstation.

00:21:06.233 --> 00:21:06.544
Yep.

00:21:06.614 --> 00:21:06.884
Right?

00:21:06.884 --> 00:21:16.153
And then that person just has to go find a box that fits the thing, and they got the mailing label right there, and the inventory is automatically accounted for, and a lot of things, right?

00:21:16.153 --> 00:21:18.334
They just gotta put the thing in the box and stick it in the post office.

00:21:18.394 --> 00:21:18.824
Yeah.

00:21:18.923 --> 00:21:19.384
Or whatever.

00:21:20.064 --> 00:21:20.614
Exactly.

00:21:20.683 --> 00:21:22.913
And whatever that workflow is for that company.

00:21:22.943 --> 00:21:23.644
That's right.

00:21:23.733 --> 00:21:24.273
That's right.

00:21:24.314 --> 00:21:26.503
So it gives you that, that basis.

00:21:26.503 --> 00:21:26.584
Yep.

00:21:26.584 --> 00:21:26.597
Yep.

00:21:26.828 --> 00:21:35.009
That allows you to start somewhere instead of trying, because if you were to try to build all that from scratch, right, you could, but it'd be very expensive.

00:21:35.028 --> 00:21:35.608
Yeah.

00:21:35.788 --> 00:21:41.348
And so, you know, pay a little bit per user per month and you have your starting point.

00:21:41.419 --> 00:22:07.138
Well, and to some extent, the way I imagine, you know, I, Monday is now our platform more for that, but it's almost like that telephone operator person, um, from the old days where the, Oh, yep, we can plug in over here and they got all these different wires and stuff and Monday can just kind of do that with Zaps and, you know, Eventbrites and websites and Shopify, as I'm sure, and all these kind of things.

00:22:07.138 --> 00:22:08.048
Yeah, absolutely.

00:22:08.608 --> 00:22:12.808
So what kinds of companies have you seen really benefit the most?

00:22:12.808 --> 00:22:14.138
Is it, is it service company?

00:22:14.138 --> 00:22:16.479
You mentioned B2B is kind of your niche at least.

00:22:16.618 --> 00:22:16.929
Yeah.

00:22:16.929 --> 00:22:24.608
B2B B2B is pretty big time with that because, because a lot of them do have their heart with project management.

00:22:25.519 --> 00:22:26.489
And so.

00:22:26.844 --> 00:22:28.794
If you're B2B, you're dealing with clients.

00:22:29.064 --> 00:22:32.016
And when you have clients, you generally have some sort of client project.

00:22:32.016 --> 00:22:36.574
Some sort of project for them that you're doing, whether it's an architect or a marketing agency or whatever.

00:22:36.624 --> 00:22:44.614
Yep, so that gives you the ability to set a very clear structure within those tools to say, how do I structure my clients?

00:22:44.614 --> 00:22:46.203
How do I structure my client projects?

00:22:46.203 --> 00:22:48.413
How do I get dashboards of where everything's at?

00:22:49.273 --> 00:22:50.693
And things like that.

00:22:50.703 --> 00:23:08.888
So, um, um, Almost any business can benefit from those tools because every business should have some sort of key growth initiative projects or internal projects that would help them grow, and you don't want to be managing those and notebooks and spreadsheets and things like that.

00:23:08.888 --> 00:23:13.509
So even if you're not using it for You know, the actual client experience.

00:23:13.528 --> 00:23:14.388
Exactly.

00:23:14.739 --> 00:23:23.048
Yeah, there's still major benefits for collaborating across teams collaborating with leadership Collaborating, you know with contract.

00:23:23.048 --> 00:23:25.709
Well, just a accountability within teams and stuff.

00:23:25.709 --> 00:23:29.489
Hey, this was your deliverable It says right March 25th.

00:23:29.489 --> 00:23:31.298
It's March 26 today.

00:23:31.479 --> 00:23:39.429
Yep, and I mean manufacturing is probably a second Manufacturing is probably a second, um, top one.

00:23:39.429 --> 00:23:40.108
Major niche.

00:23:40.469 --> 00:23:41.028
That's right.

00:23:41.028 --> 00:23:47.159
Because you have the new product development process, which can be mapped out, templated, and then leveraging dependencies.

00:23:47.189 --> 00:23:52.278
This is probably getting too technical, but leveraging dependencies, you could move one date out.

00:23:52.278 --> 00:23:56.199
Like, for example, let's say you're waiting on a prototype and the shipping gets delayed by a week.

00:23:56.489 --> 00:24:00.328
You could move the date for that prototype in the project out by a week.

00:24:00.378 --> 00:24:00.818
Oh, right.

00:24:00.878 --> 00:24:02.308
And everybody else's.

00:24:02.509 --> 00:24:04.769
Deadline goes out a week so they can focus on something else.

00:24:04.798 --> 00:24:05.169
Yep.

00:24:06.068 --> 00:24:11.798
And if you're building out multiple SKUs at the same time, that makes a difference.

00:24:11.838 --> 00:24:13.179
That makes a huge difference.

00:24:13.189 --> 00:24:13.689
Yeah.

00:24:13.719 --> 00:24:14.269
Interesting.

00:24:14.719 --> 00:24:18.489
Um, so what's your team these days?

00:24:18.878 --> 00:24:21.618
Uh, are you back up into that 10, 12 territory?

00:24:21.638 --> 00:24:22.209
No, we haven't.

00:24:22.479 --> 00:24:24.148
Well, we're right around 10 right now.

00:24:24.189 --> 00:24:24.648
Yeah.

00:24:24.949 --> 00:24:30.729
So kind of blasted off, hired a bunch of people, managed the heck out of them.

00:24:31.259 --> 00:24:56.858
Um, I, I mentioned, uh, or I didn't mention to you, but I've shared the story how, you know, I kind of got out of college with an economics degree, got right into banking, kind of got pretty good raises and promotions for a long time, and then got this wild hair to try to start this restaurant venture, which turned into a food truck and, You know, I hadn't really eaten humble pie, um, for 37 years of my life.

00:24:57.469 --> 00:25:00.499
And then it was kind of all that was on the menu for a while.

00:25:00.659 --> 00:25:00.989
Yeah.

00:25:00.999 --> 00:25:03.598
Uh, was it as good for you as it was for me?

00:25:04.568 --> 00:25:06.618
It doesn't taste that good at the time, but.

00:25:06.618 --> 00:25:10.088
No, no, but you know, the merger.

00:25:10.634 --> 00:25:12.064
Was a bit of humble pie too.

00:25:12.074 --> 00:25:12.483
Oh, really?

00:25:12.564 --> 00:25:12.913
Okay.

00:25:13.023 --> 00:25:14.513
And it was tough.

00:25:14.574 --> 00:25:17.183
It was a very tough experience personally.

00:25:17.233 --> 00:25:17.513
Hmm.

00:25:17.683 --> 00:25:24.304
Um, even between, you know, my wife and I as partners in the business, that was very difficult.

00:25:24.314 --> 00:25:33.273
There were definitely elements that were, were very humbling across the board.

00:25:34.173 --> 00:25:36.314
And I did not like it at all.

00:25:36.314 --> 00:25:37.893
Yeah.

00:25:37.894 --> 00:25:38.243
But.

00:25:38.808 --> 00:25:52.739
And maybe I'd love to hear if you share the same experience, looking back on eating that meal multiple times was one of the best things that I could, that I could say I've done because that's what led me down this path for good or bad.

00:25:53.078 --> 00:25:56.808
Uh, but you look back on it, you're like, I learned so much.

00:25:57.433 --> 00:25:58.253
So much.

00:25:58.263 --> 00:25:58.483
Yeah.

00:25:58.513 --> 00:26:02.203
No, I've had the same experience and definitely wouldn't, wouldn't take it back either.

00:26:02.253 --> 00:26:02.713
Yeah.

00:26:02.963 --> 00:26:03.973
Miserable going through it.

00:26:03.983 --> 00:26:04.782
Don't take it back.

00:26:04.784 --> 00:26:09.763
I don't enjoy looking at the menu and it has a bunch of humble pie on it either, but, uh, but it's good.

00:26:09.763 --> 00:26:10.344
It's healthy.

00:26:10.554 --> 00:26:11.023
Yeah.

00:26:11.223 --> 00:26:11.493
Yeah.

00:26:11.493 --> 00:26:13.743
I think we all need a little bit every once in a while.

00:26:13.804 --> 00:26:16.574
So what's your vision for Workday Ninja?

00:26:16.614 --> 00:26:19.003
Like are you kind of intending on doing it?

00:26:19.443 --> 00:26:22.114
Remaining a boutique ish kind of a firm.

00:26:22.124 --> 00:26:24.683
Do you want to scale up a larger shop again?

00:26:24.713 --> 00:26:26.493
Is it kind of depend on what the market tells you?

00:26:27.223 --> 00:26:28.013
Maybe both.

00:26:28.104 --> 00:26:35.673
I mean, I would say when we had a hundred employees or a little over a hundred employees, that, that, that was probably not my cup of tea.

00:26:36.094 --> 00:26:37.874
That's a lot of people to manage.

00:26:37.874 --> 00:26:41.354
Um, a lot of people have a relationship with kind of too.

00:26:41.413 --> 00:26:41.993
Yeah.

00:26:42.003 --> 00:26:44.943
When we hit 35, that was a, that was kind of a.

00:26:45.493 --> 00:26:52.963
An end cap experience of, I think we're done with this one chapter and we're onto a new chapter in this business.

00:26:52.983 --> 00:26:56.993
There was a period of time, a little bit of humble pie in here too.

00:26:56.993 --> 00:27:02.213
I've got a side story on the first time I tried developing software and then hiring a developer.

00:27:02.273 --> 00:27:02.703
Okay.

00:27:02.703 --> 00:27:04.554
The short version is I hired a developer.

00:27:04.554 --> 00:27:07.554
He goes, very first day, who wrote this?

00:27:10.233 --> 00:27:11.523
I hope you didn't pay for it.

00:27:11.733 --> 00:27:14.463
Yeah, That might have been a second comment.

00:27:14.463 --> 00:27:15.874
That might have been a second comment.

00:27:15.874 --> 00:27:18.153
And I said, well, like I wrote it.

00:27:18.153 --> 00:27:21.413
He goes, huh, it's really bad.

00:27:21.624 --> 00:27:25.943
This is pure spaghetti code This is, we're gonna have to rewrite the whole thing.

00:27:26.838 --> 00:27:37.314
And, and, um, anyway, that, that's, that's a, that's a, you know, a good number, another humble pie story, but Well, you could trust that guy though.

00:27:38.709 --> 00:27:44.719
Like when somebody on his first day or second day is willing to tell the boss, uh, here's what I'm seeing and shoot you straight.

00:27:44.749 --> 00:27:46.058
I think that's a good indicator.

00:27:46.138 --> 00:27:46.679
Yes.

00:27:46.709 --> 00:27:56.898
Now, I don't know that I want to get back to managing a hundred people, but there was, there was that period as we're building up from 35 and going through the merger where.

00:27:57.328 --> 00:28:30.989
I spent a good, I want to like, not exaggerating, three years of working on myself as what does it mean to be a CEO, what does it mean to be a leader, what, how, how do I improve my people skills, um, and it's, it's a constant learning and it's a constant effort that I put into it, but making that concerted change in myself because, I mean, I also remember as we were growing, we hit around 25, maybe 30 people, and our employees started asking us for team building events, and I'm like, pfft, team building events?

00:28:30.989 --> 00:28:32.298
What?

00:28:32.298 --> 00:28:33.818
Go, go, go for it.

00:28:33.818 --> 00:28:34.939
I don't want to be part of this.

00:28:35.459 --> 00:28:37.328
Yeah, whatever you guys want to do.

00:28:38.374 --> 00:28:44.273
Now, looking back on that, I see, all right, there, there is definitely a better way.

00:28:44.294 --> 00:28:51.374
So you're working on yourself, but you weren't really necessarily paying attention to the rest of those other kind of needing to be developed too.

00:28:51.413 --> 00:28:51.874
Yeah.

00:28:51.933 --> 00:29:02.644
And so while I'm very happy that I had the ability to be part of a team that large and part of a leadership team of that size, it's not gigantic, but it was big, big enough.

00:29:03.173 --> 00:29:06.124
Um, I don't know that I want to get that big again.

00:29:06.144 --> 00:29:06.384
Yeah.

00:29:06.413 --> 00:29:06.614
Yeah.

00:29:07.003 --> 00:29:11.034
And, you know, I didn't have a kid when we started that.

00:29:11.273 --> 00:29:13.003
My wife and I have an eight year old son now.

00:29:13.003 --> 00:29:13.213
Okay.

00:29:13.213 --> 00:29:16.413
So he's been through a decent part of this journey.

00:29:16.943 --> 00:29:20.213
And, you know, what's important to me right now is family.

00:29:20.483 --> 00:29:20.703
Yeah.

00:29:20.854 --> 00:29:22.473
And having the time.

00:29:22.689 --> 00:29:23.419
to do for that.

00:29:23.419 --> 00:29:25.449
So if I'm working all the time, it's a lot harder.

00:29:25.449 --> 00:29:28.318
Well, you're still young enough, you could have another kid or two.

00:29:28.419 --> 00:29:29.249
Oh boy.

00:29:29.588 --> 00:29:30.689
You guys can talk about that later.

00:29:32.858 --> 00:29:42.648
So, um, what would you have people know as kind of the, I guess, some of the principles of Workday Ninja Inc.?

00:29:42.659 --> 00:29:47.948
Because I assume that's kind of, that name, that brand, is kind of like what you're hoping to create amongst young people.

00:29:48.179 --> 00:29:50.479
Your, your client's employees and things like that.

00:29:50.489 --> 00:29:55.308
Like just somebody goes through their workday silently and stealthily, just taking care of business.

00:29:55.318 --> 00:29:58.608
So they don't have to ask you a million questions about what's next.

00:29:58.989 --> 00:30:01.169
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.

00:30:01.169 --> 00:30:04.169
And that, you know, that kind of, that's a perfect segue from the last question.

00:30:04.429 --> 00:30:21.959
What we're working on now is taking all the knowledge and all the stuff that we learned that works, and we're building live programs and online programs that we can say, all right, if you're a do it yourself founder, if you're kind of early stage and you don't want to, You know, pay somebody to come in and do it for you.

00:30:22.409 --> 00:30:24.159
The live programs are where it's at.

00:30:24.169 --> 00:30:27.659
You're going to be able to know, like, answer the questions.

00:30:27.689 --> 00:30:29.628
What, what can I automate?

00:30:29.659 --> 00:30:31.308
How do I set all this stuff up?

00:30:32.003 --> 00:30:34.753
You're going to know how to do it, and then you're going to know how to maintain it.

00:30:34.854 --> 00:30:35.314
Wow.

00:30:35.423 --> 00:30:37.963
And so we're putting all of that stuff out there.

00:30:37.993 --> 00:30:38.604
Oh, cool.

00:30:38.634 --> 00:30:52.173
So that whether it's you have, you know, if you're, if you're a do it yourself founder kind of thing or a small team, um, or you want to hire just a freelancer or somebody in house that has interest, like a project manager is often a very good example.

00:30:52.364 --> 00:30:53.683
A lot of people think project.

00:30:53.913 --> 00:31:01.173
So now I'm, I'm branching into that, this now question, which is a lot of people hire project managers thinking, Oh yeah.

00:31:01.858 --> 00:31:08.249
Like you're a project manager, set up our systems and our templates and everything on Asana, but you know what project managers are good at?

00:31:08.259 --> 00:31:12.028
Managing projects and not building systems.

00:31:12.048 --> 00:31:13.108
Well and building systems.

00:31:13.118 --> 00:31:17.199
People and integrations and techno, you know.

00:31:17.249 --> 00:31:17.788
Totally.

00:31:17.878 --> 00:31:19.118
All the data points.

00:31:19.229 --> 00:31:31.354
I'm uh, I've attracted a couple of people over the years, um, including like before I even got I, there was a gal that met me and, uh, introduced herself.

00:31:31.354 --> 00:31:36.193
She, uh, branded herself as an entrepreneur wrangler and she would help you project manage.

00:31:36.193 --> 00:31:40.663
And I had like 11 teen projects and they were sprinting all over different directions.

00:31:41.094 --> 00:31:43.683
But even since then, there's been people that come around and we're like.

00:31:45.038 --> 00:31:50.578
Loco thinks Tank's cool, you're pretty cool, you're kinda all over the place, let me project manage you.

00:31:50.578 --> 00:31:50.887
Yeah.

00:31:51.169 --> 00:31:52.909
Kinda, as if I was a project.

00:31:53.088 --> 00:31:53.239
Yep.

00:31:55.179 --> 00:32:02.548
And I'm not really, I'm not, it's not easy to manage me, but, you know, what's that, that Kurt Richardson says this, you would like that line, uh.

00:32:03.229 --> 00:32:13.028
Um, people run the systems and the, no, it says in the systems run the business.

00:32:13.098 --> 00:32:13.479
Yeah.

00:32:13.598 --> 00:32:18.878
People run the systems and the systems run the business is really where you're trying to get to ultimately.

00:32:18.888 --> 00:32:19.798
Yeah, exactly.

00:32:20.019 --> 00:32:28.358
And so, I mean, a few kind of key takeaways that I always give is a lot of companies and a lot of founders try to jump right to something like automation or AI, right?

00:32:28.409 --> 00:32:33.479
We use that in our marketing right now because it generates a ton of interest because everybody's going.

00:32:33.943 --> 00:32:36.104
Hey, how do I leverage AI?

00:32:36.144 --> 00:32:37.753
How can I automate this?

00:32:38.423 --> 00:32:41.183
The reality though, is you've got to take a couple of steps back.

00:32:41.453 --> 00:32:45.354
If you don't have the foundation in place, if the workflows aren't working manually.

00:32:46.364 --> 00:32:47.384
Automating them will not help.

00:32:47.523 --> 00:32:49.473
Please do not try to automate them.

00:32:49.753 --> 00:33:06.788
You will be spending so much time and so much money just making all the changes in the workflows and then making all the changes in the automation and then all these customers and like, Asking for their forgiveness for this dumb thing that you automatically sent them 17 times.

00:33:06.838 --> 00:33:07.118
Yep.

00:33:07.709 --> 00:33:08.459
Or something.

00:33:08.499 --> 00:33:09.338
Exactly.

00:33:09.479 --> 00:33:10.259
Exactly.

00:33:10.509 --> 00:33:12.078
So it really comes down to basics.

00:33:12.108 --> 00:33:12.398
Right?

00:33:12.419 --> 00:33:14.618
You gotta have, what are your workflows?

00:33:15.433 --> 00:33:17.344
You got to have those working first.

00:33:17.723 --> 00:33:20.554
So that's step one, having the right platforms.

00:33:20.554 --> 00:33:31.273
Like we talked about earlier, CRM, a project management, accounting, stuff like that, having that baseline and just getting things working with those tools in place is a perfect place to start.

00:33:31.864 --> 00:33:34.544
Then once you have your workflows humming along and you can.

00:33:35.044 --> 00:33:40.804
even if it is completely manual, there's in all those platforms, they have automation within those platforms.

00:33:41.733 --> 00:33:45.334
Um, the real magic happens, just reminders and different things like that.

00:33:45.483 --> 00:33:45.884
That's right.

00:33:45.884 --> 00:33:47.193
So that's kind of phase one.

00:33:47.203 --> 00:33:49.413
How do you get those little things going?

00:33:49.773 --> 00:33:54.394
And once all that's working, now you're in a perfect position and you're going to know.

00:33:54.513 --> 00:34:00.723
And so kind of going back to our conversation earlier, when Clients, how do they, like, just give us a bunch of requests?

00:34:00.733 --> 00:34:01.233
Right, right.

00:34:01.364 --> 00:34:07.023
Once that foundation's built, and once that foundation's in place, it just comes up.

00:34:07.509 --> 00:34:11.338
Because, hey, this part of this workflow sucks.

00:34:11.418 --> 00:34:23.088
And you've got like a customer service rep almost on your team that's like, understands enough about, they've maybe got a half dozen clients or something, but they know enough about each client to really understand the problem they're trying to solve.

00:34:23.119 --> 00:34:23.429
Yep.

00:34:23.539 --> 00:34:24.818
More than, you know, more than not.

00:34:24.929 --> 00:34:26.208
Yep, that's exactly right.

00:34:26.219 --> 00:34:31.918
How do you choose between, you were kind of agnostic on the Asana Monday ClickUp thing.

00:34:31.969 --> 00:34:32.648
Oh man.

00:34:32.659 --> 00:34:35.728
What's, what platform for different people or is it, yeah.

00:34:35.938 --> 00:34:37.159
This is, so.

00:34:37.659 --> 00:34:40.599
First off, there's no perfect solution, unfortunately.

00:34:40.898 --> 00:34:41.818
It's so hard.

00:34:41.998 --> 00:34:44.289
Some of it is purely personal preference.

00:34:44.628 --> 00:34:44.909
Okay.

00:34:44.929 --> 00:34:49.289
So, like, you mentioned earlier, you didn't, like, Asana, you didn't gel with Asana as much as Yeah.

00:34:49.349 --> 00:34:49.858
As Monday.

00:34:49.858 --> 00:34:53.478
You get in on Monday, like, by all means, do not force Asana.

00:34:53.898 --> 00:34:54.168
Right.

00:34:54.179 --> 00:34:54.318
Fair.

00:34:54.318 --> 00:34:57.293
Like, So that's a big piece of it.

00:34:57.393 --> 00:34:59.594
Um, but they all have their pros and cons.

00:34:59.603 --> 00:35:05.034
So for example, Asana is really good for agencies who are just focused on projects.

00:35:05.943 --> 00:35:08.704
And it's, you know, it's been around for a very long time.

00:35:09.043 --> 00:35:10.833
It's a very mature product.

00:35:10.923 --> 00:35:11.164
Yeah.

00:35:11.204 --> 00:35:13.603
Um, when you say agencies, are you talking about like.

00:35:14.099 --> 00:35:14.918
Marketing agencies?

00:35:14.918 --> 00:35:17.559
Yeah, marketing agencies, ad agencies, things like that.

00:35:17.829 --> 00:35:20.969
Um, anything that's really focused on client projects.

00:35:20.998 --> 00:35:21.639
Project work.

00:35:21.639 --> 00:35:21.938
Yep.

00:35:22.568 --> 00:35:28.398
Because essentially Asana is, in Asana's worldview, it is, everything's a project.

00:35:28.409 --> 00:35:28.978
Right.

00:35:29.318 --> 00:35:32.873
So, but there are some weaknesses with that too.

00:35:32.873 --> 00:35:33.889
Asana.

00:35:34.068 --> 00:35:37.568
And Asana's design brings in a lot of administrative burden.

00:35:37.998 --> 00:35:51.128
So unless you have really fine tuned project managers, unless you have a real clear structure on this is how we're going to use Asana here and establish that with every team that's using it and every person that's using it.

00:35:51.159 --> 00:35:51.789
That sounds hard.

00:35:51.909 --> 00:35:53.039
It is.

00:35:53.389 --> 00:35:57.889
And when that doesn't happen, it can create as many problems as it solves.

00:35:59.014 --> 00:36:06.384
So, um, Monday is, is, it's a beautiful piece of software and it is really easy to get started.

00:36:06.443 --> 00:36:12.903
It's really clear on a lot of times what you need to do, but it has weaknesses in some of its dashboard capabilities.

00:36:12.903 --> 00:36:15.023
It has weaknesses with recurring tasks.

00:36:15.373 --> 00:36:21.168
Um, it's got a great ecosystem of, integrations and stuff like that.

00:36:21.168 --> 00:36:23.829
People building stuff to strap onto Monday and stuff like that.

00:36:23.829 --> 00:36:26.759
That seems to be more and more popular since we've gotten on it.

00:36:26.829 --> 00:36:27.918
Yeah, absolutely.

00:36:27.918 --> 00:36:29.518
Their marketplace is great.

00:36:29.628 --> 00:36:31.268
And what's the, the ClickUp thing?

00:36:31.648 --> 00:36:36.338
So ClickUp, ClickUp is my favorite right now because ClickUp has a true hierarchy.

00:36:36.699 --> 00:36:48.483
So that means if I have a space, which would kind of be like a team or a works, a team and a sauna or a workspace and Monday, if you're familiar with those, uh, space allows you to put in folders.

00:36:48.614 --> 00:36:53.134
And folders, you can have lists and you can have lists without folders too.

00:36:54.704 --> 00:36:58.954
But you have that inside of Monday, but it's not a true hierarchy in ClickUp.

00:36:58.963 --> 00:37:02.054
If I look at a list, I'm seeing just the tasks in that list.

00:37:02.063 --> 00:37:13.224
If I look at a folder, I can create views showing me anything in that folder across all the hierarchy or division or whatever, whereas Monday you'd have to build a bunch of.

00:37:13.449 --> 00:37:14.048
That's right.

00:37:14.048 --> 00:37:14.759
Routes back.

00:37:14.938 --> 00:37:15.849
Exactly.

00:37:15.918 --> 00:37:20.739
And then in the space, I can see all the lists and all the folders and get views on that.

00:37:20.739 --> 00:37:27.798
And then there's an everything level, which allows me to build views across the entire organization.

00:37:28.048 --> 00:37:37.878
So if I wanted to manage, say, team capacity or resources across my entire account, I throw one workload view at the everything level.

00:37:38.398 --> 00:37:39.039
And I'm done.

00:37:39.128 --> 00:37:39.418
Hmm.

00:37:39.599 --> 00:37:40.679
It's that easy.

00:37:41.009 --> 00:37:54.579
And then if I wanted to say, Hey, I only want to manage the resources of my production team or my creative team with my client projects, I can put a workload view at the client project space and it just gets everything under that.

00:37:54.699 --> 00:37:54.889
Yeah.

00:37:54.889 --> 00:37:55.179
Yeah.

00:37:55.639 --> 00:38:02.858
So, the amount of transparency that you can get and the amount of questions that you can answer in just a couple clicks is amazing.

00:38:02.898 --> 00:38:05.938
Dashboards are really great too, and integrations are really good.

00:38:05.938 --> 00:38:11.829
So, many times, if you're looking to build complex workflows, complex systems, ClickUp's a great choice.

00:38:11.829 --> 00:38:16.239
ClickUp's a more robust platform to build off of, maybe?

00:38:16.813 --> 00:38:17.313
Yeah.

00:38:17.313 --> 00:38:21.514
Asana tries to be everything for its people more so, maybe.

00:38:21.574 --> 00:38:25.463
Yeah, I mean they, again, they all have like weird pros and cons.

00:38:25.784 --> 00:38:29.003
So like, Monday is very robust and it has a great API.

00:38:29.373 --> 00:38:36.954
ClickUp is, um, I wouldn't, much better, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're Robustness is much better now.

00:38:37.393 --> 00:38:39.003
Um, within the last year.

00:38:39.023 --> 00:38:40.804
A couple years ago, pretty rough.

00:38:40.864 --> 00:38:41.293
Okay.

00:38:41.344 --> 00:38:45.764
Um, the interface is still a little bit more complicated than the other two.

00:38:45.773 --> 00:38:48.034
A lot of people don't like it at first glance.

00:38:48.514 --> 00:38:50.074
Um, understandably so.

00:38:50.333 --> 00:38:50.534
Yeah.

00:38:50.554 --> 00:38:57.358
Um, But when you get into it, like we, for us to manage our projects, we built some simple automation.

00:38:57.358 --> 00:39:02.539
So one of the things that we have with ClickUp is that every task can have a status associated with it.

00:39:02.539 --> 00:39:03.719
And it's built into it.

00:39:03.728 --> 00:39:05.648
Monday has some similar things.

00:39:05.668 --> 00:39:07.768
Asana is complete or incomplete.

00:39:08.039 --> 00:39:13.199
Well, and I'm thinking about with your, the, the workflow thing where people are putting in all these requests.

00:39:13.414 --> 00:39:18.943
Like sometimes it's complete or incomplete, but sometimes it's waiting on this from client.

00:39:18.974 --> 00:39:22.744
Yeah, we have about 12 statuses for every single request.

00:39:23.083 --> 00:39:32.804
And what we set up was, and this is just our internal system, but when it goes into, um, scheduling, that's automatically creating a subtask for our project manager.

00:39:32.873 --> 00:39:35.844
And so now a subtask can be handled.

00:39:36.393 --> 00:39:43.824
And you know, this gets into task management, but we've, we've built a system so that she's trained on how do I manage all my tasks independently.

00:39:43.853 --> 00:39:53.224
So that gives her, her own way to say, Hey, I've got to schedule these three tasks today, but it doesn't affect the parent task of the whole request that came in.

00:39:53.233 --> 00:40:00.123
When it goes into, uh, validation, it looks up the custom field of who's the account manager for this task.

00:40:00.324 --> 00:40:03.193
request for this client, who made the request.

00:40:03.673 --> 00:40:03.704
Okay.

00:40:03.804 --> 00:40:11.684
And pulls that data and assigns that person, the subtask for validation, because the account manager is going to know what the client wants.

00:40:11.733 --> 00:40:12.353
All right.

00:40:12.954 --> 00:40:17.304
So when it goes, But the account manager probably doesn't have the technical skills to actually deliver it.

00:40:17.384 --> 00:40:17.994
That's right.

00:40:17.994 --> 00:40:23.353
So when it goes to launch, That goes to whoever the lead architect is on that request.

00:40:24.014 --> 00:40:42.684
And so all this system is, you know, the same type of automation over and over and over, but because we can manage all of those contained within that single request, now we always have the information of who owns this request, who's the account manager, who's the lead architect, when's the client delivery date, it auto calculates.

00:40:42.958 --> 00:40:45.478
A countdown to the client delivery date.

00:40:45.478 --> 00:41:00.829
So we always know how close we are and it gives our project manager all the information she needs at a glance to say, Hey, when, who has the resources to do this, who has the skill to do this and how soon do we need to get the urgency of it?

00:41:00.838 --> 00:41:01.349
That's right.

00:41:01.679 --> 00:41:05.628
Can you also sort those activities?

00:41:05.679 --> 00:41:10.949
Like what I'm thinking about is you've got kind of this flat fee situation that's kind of unlimited.

00:41:11.548 --> 00:41:14.369
Can you sort it like by who's using us?

00:41:14.719 --> 00:41:17.438
Way too much for us to make any profit on.

00:41:17.829 --> 00:41:22.679
Well, it's a, it's a valid, Hey, we're going to put you in the plus size plan.

00:41:23.398 --> 00:41:24.559
Dial it down a little bit.

00:41:25.469 --> 00:41:29.668
Um, we introduced a client facing Trello board for this.

00:41:30.739 --> 00:41:33.208
And so that acts as our client collaboration.

00:41:33.219 --> 00:41:35.688
Oh, so they can know exactly what you did for them almost.

00:41:35.708 --> 00:41:37.429
Exactly, exactly.

00:41:37.438 --> 00:41:41.009
So the entire, all their requests go into that automatically.

00:41:41.009 --> 00:41:43.278
We have the automation that links the two together.

00:41:43.278 --> 00:41:47.668
ClickUps our internal tool, but Trello becomes a single board.

00:41:47.679 --> 00:41:49.628
That's all the client requests per client.

00:41:49.978 --> 00:41:57.048
And then we single out the priorities and we have a little power up that says, Hey, color this column when we have too many.

00:41:57.289 --> 00:41:59.068
Request in the active column.

00:42:00.309 --> 00:42:02.128
You're getting a little too needy over here.

00:42:02.188 --> 00:42:02.528
Yeah.

00:42:03.929 --> 00:42:04.509
That's funny.

00:42:04.608 --> 00:42:05.099
Yeah.

00:42:05.208 --> 00:42:10.088
Um, what else would you have folks know about, uh, your, your world before we jump in the time machine?

00:42:10.289 --> 00:42:10.929
Geez.

00:42:11.268 --> 00:42:11.699
I don't know.

00:42:11.699 --> 00:42:15.574
That's, um You know, getting the right foundation is such a big thing.

00:42:16.003 --> 00:42:17.704
Uh, oh, I got a good one.

00:42:18.023 --> 00:42:22.684
Most of the time when people ask about, Hey, could we have AI do this?

00:42:22.733 --> 00:42:23.014
Yeah.

00:42:23.344 --> 00:42:26.273
What they really only need is automation.

00:42:26.523 --> 00:42:27.103
Right.

00:42:27.143 --> 00:42:31.623
So, there's, there's just so much that can be done with automation really easily.

00:42:33.054 --> 00:42:33.454
But A.

00:42:33.454 --> 00:42:33.673
I.

00:42:33.684 --> 00:42:39.134
can be really powerful, although it's not as powerful as well done automations and workflows.

00:42:39.273 --> 00:42:40.503
Yeah, at least right now.

00:42:40.824 --> 00:42:42.253
Right now, we've got another year.

00:42:42.253 --> 00:42:42.994
So right.

00:42:43.063 --> 00:42:44.873
Yeah, that'll take over the world year after that.

00:42:45.264 --> 00:42:50.673
Um, before we jump in the time machine, actually, you moved out to the west from Tennessee land.

00:42:50.724 --> 00:42:51.094
Yeah.

00:42:51.333 --> 00:43:04.253
Over the last Um, and that was, you were introduced to me by some friendly that you met, Jeff Bale said you should meet.

00:43:04.273 --> 00:43:06.903
So that's an interesting story because we actually.

00:43:07.518 --> 00:43:16.489
Um, my wife did an accelerator in Chicago, met Jeff, when we rented a short term rental in Boulder to check it out.

00:43:17.429 --> 00:43:18.719
We met with Jeff.

00:43:18.829 --> 00:43:19.458
Oh, cool.

00:43:19.829 --> 00:43:22.708
And, or I met with Jeff, and um, Just asking what's up.

00:43:23.059 --> 00:43:25.409
Yeah, yeah, just to meet somebody new there.

00:43:25.409 --> 00:43:34.123
But we actually met him in Chicago, and then while I was in Boulder for that short term rental, Uh, connected up with Jeff and then he's like, Hey, you got to meet Kurt.

00:43:34.523 --> 00:43:35.054
Interesting.

00:43:35.284 --> 00:43:37.193
So yeah, it's very honoring actually.

00:43:37.193 --> 00:43:37.693
Yeah.

00:43:37.974 --> 00:43:39.934
I thought he probably had met you for a while.

00:43:39.934 --> 00:43:41.083
I didn't know he'd been around.

00:43:41.353 --> 00:43:41.623
No.

00:43:41.623 --> 00:43:42.273
First time.

00:43:42.304 --> 00:43:42.664
Dang.

00:43:42.693 --> 00:43:44.184
You were, you were at the top of the list.

00:43:44.193 --> 00:43:44.693
Apparently.

00:43:45.673 --> 00:43:53.364
Um, well, and we had a lot of residents when we, uh, connected for our first zoom conversation here and you just saw how smart my Alma is on the Monday.

00:43:53.594 --> 00:43:54.094
She's great.

00:43:54.583 --> 00:43:55.103
She's great.

00:43:55.693 --> 00:43:58.724
Um, so what was that decision tree?

00:43:58.744 --> 00:44:02.253
Like Colorado, like.

00:44:03.489 --> 00:44:04.528
Oh, man.

00:44:05.798 --> 00:44:06.179
All right.

00:44:06.179 --> 00:44:08.648
So I mean, you could have done it when you were a consultant, right?

00:44:08.648 --> 00:44:10.108
You did that for like five years.

00:44:10.108 --> 00:44:10.668
Yeah.

00:44:10.849 --> 00:44:11.438
Yeah.

00:44:11.688 --> 00:44:15.318
Instead, I did a bunch of road trips and kept driving through Colorado.

00:44:15.318 --> 00:44:18.929
Honestly, that was that was a big piece.

00:44:18.958 --> 00:44:21.059
So before Tennessee, we lived in San Diego.

00:44:21.119 --> 00:44:21.528
Okay.

00:44:21.858 --> 00:44:26.309
And we had one of our friends from San Diego move up to Fort Collins.

00:44:26.398 --> 00:44:26.652
Oh, okay.

00:44:27.403 --> 00:44:35.534
And so a couple years ago, and you know, prior to that, we had taken a number of road, we would do like a 30 day road trip and take a like, he was three at the time.

00:44:35.534 --> 00:44:37.344
We take our son and four.

00:44:37.373 --> 00:44:38.884
We do like half a month road trip.

00:44:38.903 --> 00:44:39.164
Cool.

00:44:39.333 --> 00:44:42.034
But we, you know, we've got family in Minnesota, Louisiana.

00:44:42.043 --> 00:44:43.534
We got friends in San Diego.

00:44:44.028 --> 00:44:45.239
Um, we'd want to see other sites.

00:44:45.248 --> 00:44:46.889
What's your preferred road trip vehicle?

00:44:47.838 --> 00:44:49.309
Oh, that's a great question.

00:44:50.009 --> 00:44:56.648
I previously had a Dodge Ram that we would take on the road trip because it was the ex, like the huge cab.

00:44:56.648 --> 00:44:57.469
Yeah, super sized cab.

00:44:57.478 --> 00:44:57.648
Mm hmm.

00:44:57.648 --> 00:44:58.418
Mm hmm.

00:44:58.708 --> 00:45:05.028
And we'd fit, sometimes we'd fit our dogs in there and our son, and then we'd load the back with our camping stuff.

00:45:05.059 --> 00:45:05.349
Yep.

00:45:05.548 --> 00:45:07.039
Oh, it was pretty solid.

00:45:07.809 --> 00:45:08.548
It was good.

00:45:08.809 --> 00:45:11.969
Uh, since then I traded that in and got a Jeep Gladiator.

00:45:11.978 --> 00:45:14.398
So like, you know, that truck version.

00:45:14.398 --> 00:45:15.778
Not quite as smooth a ride.

00:45:16.068 --> 00:45:17.869
No, but way more fun to drive.

00:45:18.208 --> 00:45:22.088
Right, on the trails and stuff especially, or even through a bunch of snow or anything like that.

00:45:22.179 --> 00:45:24.739
Yeah, so that's, that's my current favorite one.

00:45:24.748 --> 00:45:25.228
Fair enough.

00:45:25.329 --> 00:45:26.989
Um, Anyway, I distracted you.

00:45:27.018 --> 00:45:30.748
You were traveling road trips around and thinking about We kept crossing through What was next?

00:45:30.748 --> 00:45:31.469
Colorado.

00:45:32.168 --> 00:45:42.829
And every time we'd stay, or cross through Colorado, our best experiences of the road trip were random encounters in random towns, or like Sub cap towns.

00:45:43.588 --> 00:45:44.518
Yeah, totally.

00:45:44.548 --> 00:45:46.079
In, like, whatever, Colorado.

00:45:46.298 --> 00:45:48.099
Yeah, there's one where we stayed.

00:45:48.259 --> 00:45:49.568
It wasn't even open.

00:45:50.208 --> 00:46:00.409
Um, we didn't know that, but you know, the, uh, yeah, the campground people came down and they were, you know, it was, uh, it was like, um, I don't know preseason or something like that.

00:46:00.409 --> 00:46:01.057
Yeah.

00:46:01.059 --> 00:46:01.389
Yeah.

00:46:01.438 --> 00:46:04.469
So they're like, you guys can stay, but it's not technically open.

00:46:05.228 --> 00:46:07.628
It got down to like 30 degrees that night.

00:46:07.869 --> 00:46:09.298
We're all cuddled in the tent.

00:46:09.318 --> 00:46:10.768
It was the best experience ever.

00:46:10.768 --> 00:46:13.579
We're looking over a lake, looking over these snowy mountain peaks.

00:46:13.579 --> 00:46:15.628
We're like, this is amazing.

00:46:16.168 --> 00:46:17.639
We have no idea where we were.

00:46:18.858 --> 00:46:20.208
At all, at all.

00:46:20.338 --> 00:46:26.789
We've looked at the map multiple times going, Let's see, we came from Durango, I think we were heading North, you know.

00:46:26.798 --> 00:46:27.108
I like it.

00:46:27.119 --> 00:46:28.739
Not that we had too much fun in Durango.

00:46:28.739 --> 00:46:28.949
Right, right.

00:46:28.949 --> 00:46:34.789
It was that, we were literally driving, we see a sign for a campground, we're like, hell yeah! Let's go check it out.

00:46:34.789 --> 00:46:35.268
I like it.

00:46:35.309 --> 00:46:39.568
We, You know, it's one of those like little brown signs like campground, whatever.

00:46:39.818 --> 00:46:40.719
So we went down there.

00:46:40.719 --> 00:46:41.949
We're like, this is gorgeous.

00:46:42.429 --> 00:46:43.369
Nobody's here.

00:46:43.369 --> 00:46:44.278
Let's check it out.

00:46:44.298 --> 00:46:48.869
My wife and I went to Durango maybe for like our third anniversary weekend or something.

00:46:48.918 --> 00:46:49.349
Yeah.

00:46:49.409 --> 00:46:53.409
And it's end of May, which sounds nice and warm, but in Durango, it's really not.

00:46:53.498 --> 00:47:05.862
And it might not have been for our anniversary, but it was, they have a, uh, iron horse race where the, where bicyclists race against the train, the old steam train from Durango to Silverton.

00:47:07.534 --> 00:47:13.512
Every place was booked, like we couldn't find any place to stay anywhere around, except for where we stayed the other night.

00:47:13.873 --> 00:47:19.193
In the campground at Durango Mountain, they just like opened a week before and we were like the only ones there.

00:47:19.853 --> 00:47:27.684
We were like way up on the mountain and I brought my rifle into the tent with me that I had in the car because I was like a bear's gonna freakin come and bite my head off.

00:47:28.213 --> 00:47:29.704
Uh, That's amazing.

00:47:29.704 --> 00:47:33.664
Thankfully they did not, but uh, but I had a similar experience probably close by where you were.

00:47:33.733 --> 00:47:35.134
Yeah, yeah.

00:47:35.653 --> 00:47:46.063
Um, so, so we kept having these great experiences and living in San Diego for a while and then living in Tennessee for a while, very different cultures, very different.

00:47:46.713 --> 00:47:50.143
And, Fort Collins kind of splits the difference or Colorado, Boulder?

00:47:51.114 --> 00:47:52.673
Well, Boulder might not.

00:47:52.844 --> 00:47:55.063
Sorry, anybody who's listening in Boulder.

00:47:56.014 --> 00:47:56.884
I love Boulder.

00:47:58.259 --> 00:48:01.318
But I would say Colorado does seem to split the difference.

00:48:01.349 --> 00:48:09.018
And that's one of the things that we'd pass through and we'd have this great experience and we'd meet random people and we could have real conversations.

00:48:09.248 --> 00:48:10.378
And these are real people.

00:48:10.429 --> 00:48:12.548
And this was cool.

00:48:12.599 --> 00:48:14.068
It's a little bit of West coast.

00:48:14.068 --> 00:48:15.599
It's a little bit of East coast.

00:48:15.599 --> 00:48:17.208
It's a little bit of Midwest.

00:48:17.208 --> 00:48:18.987
A lot of Midwest.

00:48:19.369 --> 00:48:22.099
And I like to say it's a, it's a white cheese fondue.

00:48:24.159 --> 00:48:33.528
It's a bunch of different white cheeses, but it's a melting pot nonetheless, a cultural melting pot.

00:48:33.659 --> 00:48:36.228
And so we kept having that in the back of our mind.

00:48:36.239 --> 00:48:40.369
And we knew, you know, honestly, I do not fit in in Tennessee.

00:48:41.228 --> 00:48:43.369
No, I mean, I was, I was born in Florida.

00:48:44.139 --> 00:48:47.309
I grew up in Minnesota, lived in San Diego.

00:48:47.998 --> 00:48:51.168
Like Tennessee, I do, I just do not fit in.

00:48:51.548 --> 00:48:55.498
And so, you know, we kind of had this in the back of our mind.

00:48:55.518 --> 00:48:56.378
Where are we going to go?

00:48:56.389 --> 00:48:56.559
Yeah.

00:48:56.608 --> 00:49:00.259
And we wanted to get a, get a different experience for our son.

00:49:00.438 --> 00:49:00.759
Yeah.

00:49:00.869 --> 00:49:07.494
And, um, and so one of our friends from San Diego moved to Fort Collins and she's like, you got, You guys should come up and check it out.

00:49:07.503 --> 00:49:10.204
So two years ago, we spent the summer up here in Fort Collins.

00:49:10.864 --> 00:49:12.114
My son's name is Fletcher.

00:49:12.173 --> 00:49:12.483
Okay.

00:49:12.503 --> 00:49:17.253
We put them in, um, like a week summer camp at CSU.

00:49:17.994 --> 00:49:21.153
The very first day he meets his best friend.

00:49:22.094 --> 00:49:23.164
This kid's name is Archer.

00:49:23.789 --> 00:49:29.969
So it's Fletcher and Archer and we got to know Archer's parents who are amazing people, right?

00:49:30.009 --> 00:49:32.679
So we're like, yes, this area is awesome.

00:49:32.789 --> 00:49:46.259
So that was two years ago last summer We rented a house in Loveland and like let's just get Let's get a, you know, uh, uh, uh, explore a little bit and see what the different, different pieces of this front range are like.

00:49:46.909 --> 00:49:52.829
So, um, we rented a, uh, co working space at Deskchair in Loveland, which, shout out to Jim.

00:49:53.048 --> 00:49:53.759
Pretty solid there, huh?

00:49:53.759 --> 00:49:54.469
Awesome.

00:49:54.548 --> 00:49:57.668
One of the best co working experiences I've ever had.

00:49:57.719 --> 00:49:58.059
Agreed.

00:49:58.318 --> 00:50:00.608
And met amazing people there.

00:50:01.188 --> 00:50:09.849
And so, developed friendships, and I've got some great friends in, in Loveland and now Fort Collins, so we're like, alright, we've gotta, we've gotta do this.

00:50:09.909 --> 00:50:16.798
And, uh, so then we continued to work our way down, and we wanted to be a little bit closer to the airport, wanted to be closer to something a little bit more tech y.

00:50:17.509 --> 00:50:18.318
Tech focused.

00:50:18.318 --> 00:50:18.449
Yeah.

00:50:18.449 --> 00:50:18.699
Yeah.

00:50:19.048 --> 00:50:53.902
And so we rented the short term renter and rental in Boulder and And honestly just fell in love with the neighborhood It was reminded us of like the 80s and 90s kids are riding their bikes Playing in the cul de sac knocking on each other's doors And that's really what we wanted to bring for our son because we're on nine acres in the middle of Tennessee right now Oh, well, and he's an only child And he's like begging us, please, can we go to this street, you know, maybe there's a kid my age and it's hard, it's heartbreaking because you don't want that to happen.

00:50:54.313 --> 00:51:01.173
You know, be his childhood, even though like I look at him like nine acres and you can explore, but I get it.

00:51:01.364 --> 00:51:03.123
Like I was an only child too.

00:51:03.153 --> 00:51:06.074
So, but I got to ride my bike to friend's houses.

00:51:06.114 --> 00:51:07.943
I got to like hang out in the neighborhood.

00:51:07.943 --> 00:51:11.324
So now we're introducing that neighborhood experience to our son.

00:51:11.333 --> 00:51:12.358
So are you.

00:51:12.498 --> 00:51:13.639
Settled in Boulder then?

00:51:13.639 --> 00:51:14.929
Or are you still deciding?

00:51:15.168 --> 00:51:16.599
You said short term rental in Boulder?

00:51:16.648 --> 00:51:19.648
So our short term rental was up while we had that.

00:51:19.688 --> 00:51:25.329
We actually found a place two blocks from this rental.

00:51:25.778 --> 00:51:26.588
And we got it.

00:51:27.458 --> 00:51:32.909
So, I won't, I'll pretend not to be offended that you examined Fort Collins, Loveland, and Boulder and chose Boulder.

00:51:32.918 --> 00:51:34.009
And then chose Boulder.

00:51:34.009 --> 00:51:35.119
Yeah, that's cool.

00:51:35.478 --> 00:51:36.679
Whatever, no judgment here.

00:51:37.059 --> 00:51:46.914
And, and, like it's just one more demonstration of it's a, Like, the blessing of being in Northern Colorado for us is that people choose to live here.

00:51:46.934 --> 00:51:49.253
They don't, you know, move here because they have to.

00:51:49.364 --> 00:51:49.903
Absolutely.

00:51:49.914 --> 00:51:50.574
Ever.

00:51:50.623 --> 00:51:50.974
Yeah.

00:51:51.003 --> 00:51:51.873
You know, they get to.

00:51:51.873 --> 00:51:52.994
They have the opportunity to.

00:51:53.224 --> 00:51:53.443
Yeah.

00:51:53.443 --> 00:51:56.373
I mean, Loveland and Fort Collins was definitely, I was like, sold.

00:51:56.393 --> 00:51:57.143
Let's do it.

00:51:57.293 --> 00:51:57.583
Yeah.

00:51:57.623 --> 00:52:01.804
Um, but, you know, there, there were some benefits that we could see.

00:52:01.833 --> 00:52:11.929
Well, even just frankly, from a reputation standpoint, having your headquarters, you Yeah, it can help.

00:52:11.929 --> 00:52:12.498
Yeah.

00:52:12.559 --> 00:52:12.989
Yeah.

00:52:12.998 --> 00:52:15.298
So there you are.

00:52:15.619 --> 00:52:16.358
It's not too far.

00:52:16.358 --> 00:52:17.208
He can come up with it.

00:52:17.268 --> 00:52:18.259
I mean, it's so easy.

00:52:18.548 --> 00:52:22.478
It's such an, I mean, what did we get like eight or nine inches last night?

00:52:22.568 --> 00:52:22.978
Right.

00:52:23.009 --> 00:52:25.568
Dust off the car, put on some boots and drive up.

00:52:25.579 --> 00:52:25.909
Here we are.

00:52:25.909 --> 00:52:26.429
No issue.

00:52:26.458 --> 00:52:26.898
Here we are.

00:52:26.938 --> 00:52:27.168
Yep.

00:52:27.409 --> 00:52:30.804
So, um, um, I feel like it's time to jump in the time machine.

00:52:31.373 --> 00:52:34.733
Um, but maybe take a real quick break first so we can stick a commercial in here.

00:52:34.844 --> 00:52:35.143
Sure.

00:53:18.869 --> 00:53:19.858
You ready for the time machine?

00:53:19.878 --> 00:53:20.648
Let's do it.

00:53:23.289 --> 00:53:26.338
Back in kindergarten, where are you at?

00:53:26.458 --> 00:53:27.869
Man, kindergarten.

00:53:28.588 --> 00:53:31.449
Gosh, I guess I'm, uh, Minnesota.

00:53:31.509 --> 00:53:31.838
Yeah?

00:53:32.148 --> 00:53:32.469
Yeah.

00:53:32.478 --> 00:53:33.699
Where at in Minnesota?

00:53:33.938 --> 00:53:40.418
Uh, just north of the Twin Cities, so just north of So like Red Bear Lake or, White Bear Lake or something?

00:53:40.438 --> 00:53:42.099
No, that's over north of St.

00:53:42.099 --> 00:53:42.458
Paul.

00:53:42.469 --> 00:53:43.309
Yeah, that's St.

00:53:43.309 --> 00:53:43.778
Paul.

00:53:43.818 --> 00:53:46.809
No, uh, uh, Bloomington was, uh Okay.

00:53:46.978 --> 00:53:48.489
Kind of my early stomping grounds.

00:53:48.518 --> 00:53:50.228
Alright, so the city kid anyway.

00:53:50.278 --> 00:53:54.878
Yeah, and then ended up closer to suburbs with Maple Grove and stuff like that.

00:53:54.878 --> 00:53:56.768
Okay, yeah, well that's still, still city.

00:53:57.148 --> 00:53:58.188
I'm from North Dakota.

00:53:58.509 --> 00:53:59.778
Oh, yeah, okay.

00:53:59.789 --> 00:54:01.568
So, and I graduated with a class of five.

00:54:01.568 --> 00:54:01.809
Yeah.

00:54:01.989 --> 00:54:03.059
Yeah.

00:54:03.423 --> 00:54:03.653
Yeah.

00:54:03.653 --> 00:54:09.204
Which, Minnesota, there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of Trump country in Minnesota and there's a lot of city in Minnesota.

00:54:09.534 --> 00:54:10.094
Yes.

00:54:10.103 --> 00:54:14.264
And it's, uh, more diverse they probably couldn't be, hardly.

00:54:15.114 --> 00:54:15.994
I agree.

00:54:16.063 --> 00:54:16.434
Yeah.

00:54:16.483 --> 00:54:17.184
I agree.

00:54:17.224 --> 00:54:21.733
Yeah, it's been, you know, it's been a while, um, we looked at Minnesota again.

00:54:21.744 --> 00:54:21.764
Yeah.

00:54:22.193 --> 00:54:23.239
After, after, after Tennessee.

00:54:23.239 --> 00:54:24.355
It's a pretty cool state.

00:54:24.355 --> 00:54:25.471
Like, could we go, could.

00:54:25.471 --> 00:54:26.594
Could we live with the Minnesota winters?

00:54:26.594 --> 00:54:27.463
Could we live there?

00:54:27.463 --> 00:54:27.914
Yeah.

00:54:27.914 --> 00:54:28.563
Yeah.

00:54:29.048 --> 00:54:31.768
My wife, I mean, she's amazing.

00:54:31.869 --> 00:54:40.608
She actually flew to Minnesota, rented a car, and drove around in some of the most hideous weather Okay.

00:54:40.648 --> 00:54:54.759
that Minnesota could throw at you, to the point where she had an Airbnb, and, uh, she was driving through the alleys, bottoming out, because the ruts were so bad, Right, right.

00:54:54.818 --> 00:54:57.599
from, you know, the ice and the, the snow.

00:54:58.139 --> 00:55:00.268
Not only that, she went to a soccer game.

00:55:01.639 --> 00:55:01.938
Oh.

00:55:02.088 --> 00:55:03.018
In the winter.

00:55:04.809 --> 00:55:05.219
And?

00:55:05.409 --> 00:55:06.289
What was her verdict?

00:55:06.608 --> 00:55:07.429
She could do it.

00:55:07.528 --> 00:55:08.739
I believe she could do it.

00:55:08.739 --> 00:55:08.978
Yeah.

00:55:09.108 --> 00:55:12.509
But she, then she came home and said, Do you really want to?

00:55:12.969 --> 00:55:15.809
shovel that much snow all the time.

00:55:16.739 --> 00:55:20.739
And I said, I really want to shovel zero snow.

00:55:21.039 --> 00:55:21.579
Good point.

00:55:21.619 --> 00:55:22.398
Most of the time.

00:55:22.449 --> 00:55:22.949
Yeah.

00:55:23.148 --> 00:55:23.568
Yeah.

00:55:23.978 --> 00:55:26.958
So, yeah, so that was kindergarten.

00:55:26.998 --> 00:55:31.018
Um, what was the, what was the, the situation you lived with your parents?

00:55:31.018 --> 00:55:31.509
I presume.

00:55:31.809 --> 00:55:32.259
Yup.

00:55:32.688 --> 00:55:33.028
Yup.

00:55:33.219 --> 00:55:34.699
Live, live with my parents.

00:55:34.909 --> 00:55:35.679
Did you have siblings?

00:55:36.039 --> 00:55:37.088
No, only child.

00:55:37.119 --> 00:55:37.498
Okay.

00:55:37.853 --> 00:55:38.224
Yeah.

00:55:38.244 --> 00:55:44.443
So, um, I think my parents got divorced when I was like 11 or 13, somewhere around there.

00:55:44.673 --> 00:55:45.494
We moved a lot.

00:55:46.143 --> 00:55:55.764
What was the, the setting was like chasing your dad's job or trying to find new jobs after he got let go from places or what was the moving a lot?

00:55:55.903 --> 00:55:56.864
I don't really know.

00:55:57.123 --> 00:56:02.184
Um, I think the moving a lot happened a little bit more after, after the divorce, of course.

00:56:02.414 --> 00:56:04.603
So each kind of finding their own way.

00:56:05.574 --> 00:56:08.614
And yeah, that was, it was an interesting.

00:56:09.559 --> 00:56:11.369
It's kind of interesting thinking about this.

00:56:11.369 --> 00:56:13.969
I recently drove to some of the houses that we lived in.

00:56:13.969 --> 00:56:14.548
Oh, wow.

00:56:14.898 --> 00:56:23.849
And, um, yeah, it was, it was, you know, it's not something you think about often, but you have like these glimpses of your history.

00:56:24.744 --> 00:56:37.954
That somebody else now is partying in, but you don't think of it so much that all of a sudden you see this house that you were in for, say, a year or two years, and it's like, man, I remember playing in that field, or I remember building a fort in those woods.

00:56:37.963 --> 00:56:38.423
Yeah, yeah.

00:56:38.903 --> 00:56:39.594
Super interesting.

00:56:39.603 --> 00:56:49.153
If you were up on the balcony watching that five, six, seven, eight year old you, um, what would you have observed about it?

00:56:49.793 --> 00:56:50.494
That person.

00:56:50.523 --> 00:56:53.313
Were you like, really good at school right away?

00:56:53.313 --> 00:56:57.773
Were you bright and inquisitive and curious about how systems works early?

00:56:58.423 --> 00:57:05.063
Yeah, actually, actually, now that you asked that question, a couple of things come to mind.

00:57:05.074 --> 00:57:12.673
So, I liked, beating systems as a kid, as a kid.

00:57:12.673 --> 00:57:20.344
So a couple, the first, the first thing that I can think of, my parents would pay me, I don't know, 10 or 12 to mow the lawn.

00:57:20.523 --> 00:57:20.793
Okay.

00:57:20.963 --> 00:57:25.474
That was my job, you know, a little older than I heard out for only 6.

00:57:25.543 --> 00:57:29.923
Well, that's exactly, yeah, you're beating my story here.

00:57:30.463 --> 00:57:31.623
That's exactly what I did.

00:57:31.623 --> 00:57:37.469
I walked down to the neighbor's house and I said, Hey, Jake, You want to mow my lawn for 6?

00:57:38.619 --> 00:57:40.378
Did you get more clients like that then, too?

00:57:40.509 --> 00:57:41.478
No, but I should have.

00:57:41.798 --> 00:57:42.199
Right?

00:57:42.208 --> 00:57:45.159
You could have had the whole neighborhood paying you 12 and hiring him for 6.

00:57:45.168 --> 00:57:52.789
I was inside playing video games while the neighborhood kid was mowing our lawn for 6 and I was getting paid 12.

00:57:52.809 --> 00:57:55.043
Did you have them do it while your parents were at work?

00:57:55.043 --> 00:57:59.474
So the hell yeah, dad, like, Hey, why is Timmy mowing our lawn, Michael?

00:58:00.063 --> 00:58:02.123
So, you know, that's exactly what happened.

00:58:02.123 --> 00:58:06.014
My mom came home early from work and she said those exact words.

00:58:06.253 --> 00:58:08.284
Why the hell is Jake mowing the lawn?

00:58:09.353 --> 00:58:10.153
That's your job.

00:58:10.213 --> 00:58:11.514
You know, funny you should ask mom.

00:58:11.833 --> 00:58:12.184
Yep.

00:58:12.929 --> 00:58:13.418
Yep.

00:58:13.889 --> 00:58:24.568
So she tells me now, she's like, I didn't know if I should be mad or impressed with this, then it, then it gets, it gets a little bit less, um, innocent from there.

00:58:24.869 --> 00:58:34.358
I, so the high school that I went to, um, it was one of the, I think it was one of the first ones in Minnesota that had a four period day.

00:58:34.864 --> 00:58:35.253
Okay.

00:58:35.313 --> 00:58:36.193
And I looked at that.

00:58:36.284 --> 00:58:37.463
And then I looked at the classes.

00:58:37.463 --> 00:58:40.164
This is my, you know, freshman year of high school.

00:58:40.713 --> 00:58:47.983
And I realized at my freshman year, if I don't take electives, like all my friends were filling their days with electives, right?

00:58:47.983 --> 00:58:50.864
Like let's, let's make school easy.

00:58:50.903 --> 00:58:51.534
And I went.

00:58:52.208 --> 00:59:01.429
Um, what if I only take the required courses, because then by my senior year, the only course that I have left is a senior English course.

00:59:02.539 --> 00:59:05.259
And I couldn't screw around three hours or three.

00:59:05.458 --> 00:59:07.898
Well, I thought worse than that, but it didn't work out.

00:59:08.478 --> 00:59:11.639
And so I did that for three years.

00:59:11.728 --> 00:59:13.878
I only took required courses.

00:59:13.969 --> 00:59:14.478
Interesting.

00:59:14.809 --> 00:59:17.498
And I think I had to take a couple of electives a year.

00:59:19.188 --> 00:59:32.349
Then my senior year came around and I met with the principal and said, basically, Hey, I don't have any more required classes outside of English, so I'm not planning on coming in.

00:59:32.358 --> 00:59:33.278
Is that cool?

00:59:33.889 --> 00:59:39.838
And of course he's like, No, that's not how this works, right?

00:59:39.849 --> 00:59:42.048
And this was my very rebellious stage.

00:59:42.048 --> 00:59:43.318
So I'm like, Hmm, okay.

00:59:43.358 --> 00:59:47.349
And I'm, and I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but, um, I went back home.

00:59:47.748 --> 00:59:53.668
I found a couple, uh, like field trip things that my mom had signed and some other things that she had signed.

00:59:53.668 --> 00:59:54.998
You got good at forging her signature.

00:59:55.068 --> 00:59:56.199
Absolutely, I did.

00:59:57.568 --> 00:59:58.164
Sorry, I keep choking you.

00:59:58.164 --> 00:59:58.878
I practiced.

00:59:58.878 --> 01:00:04.958
I practiced for days, forging her signature, using the same type of words that she would use.

01:00:05.358 --> 01:00:07.088
Using the same notepad.

01:00:07.478 --> 01:00:08.869
Using the same pen.

01:00:09.318 --> 01:00:13.668
And then I would write the notes, to excuse myself.

01:00:14.079 --> 01:00:18.458
First, but, before I did that, I befriended the secretary, which would take all the notes.

01:00:18.469 --> 01:00:19.018
Right, right.

01:00:19.018 --> 01:00:26.119
And I befriended Sergeant Slaughter, who was the um, police officer at the, at the high school.

01:00:26.219 --> 01:00:27.179
How long did you go away with it?

01:00:27.829 --> 01:00:29.559
Almost the entire senior year.

01:00:30.909 --> 01:00:33.869
And so, yeah, I would excuse myself almost every single day.

01:00:33.878 --> 01:00:35.219
Every relative died.

01:00:35.318 --> 01:00:37.389
Every relative had all kinds of sickness.

01:00:37.389 --> 01:00:38.268
Oh yeah.

01:00:38.268 --> 01:00:39.688
It was in my notes.

01:00:39.688 --> 01:00:40.378
In my notes.

01:00:40.378 --> 01:00:40.688
Yeah.

01:00:40.739 --> 01:00:40.958
Yeah.

01:00:41.179 --> 01:00:44.668
In the yearbook, you probably were like, uh, got through the toughest year ever.

01:00:44.829 --> 01:00:45.378
Totally.

01:00:45.978 --> 01:00:46.539
Totally.

01:00:46.668 --> 01:00:49.489
Nobody yearbook at that point.

01:00:50.929 --> 01:00:52.259
What did you do with all your free time?

01:00:52.639 --> 01:00:53.668
Uh, I would skate.

01:00:53.708 --> 01:00:55.048
I would go home and skate.

01:00:55.088 --> 01:00:55.188
Okay.

01:00:55.219 --> 01:00:56.568
And, um.

01:00:57.518 --> 01:01:03.358
At the time, I was really, I guess, still really into computers, so, um, I taught myself how to program.

01:01:03.378 --> 01:01:07.827
When I was 13, I taught myself, I wanted to make video games, so I taught myself how to program C Okay.

01:01:07.827 --> 01:01:17.079
And so I was very, for me, I was very much, uh, I could very, I could learn very easily, like, I liked the feeling of learning something new.

01:01:17.088 --> 01:01:17.628
Right, right.

01:01:17.789 --> 01:01:22.423
So, that was always my And school was almost a Torturously ponderous pace of learning.

01:01:22.423 --> 01:01:23.244
Yeah, I hated it.

01:01:23.574 --> 01:01:24.143
I hated it.

01:01:24.193 --> 01:01:27.603
It didn't, it just didn't work because I like wanted to move on.

01:01:27.614 --> 01:01:28.083
Yeah, yeah.

01:01:28.143 --> 01:01:31.353
And so I would, I would go home and I would do dumb stuff too.

01:01:31.353 --> 01:01:38.543
But like, you know, I would try to look like if it's learning skating or learning programming or Right, right.

01:01:38.594 --> 01:01:48.923
Even when I was 14, I was working for an agency taking Regular graphic logos and then turning them into vectors and uh, illustrator.

01:01:49.003 --> 01:01:49.474
Okay.

01:01:49.724 --> 01:01:50.253
Yeah.

01:01:50.344 --> 01:01:55.304
So, you know, at that stage I'm like, why am I here?

01:01:55.554 --> 01:02:01.134
What, uh, like, what did that translate to at the end of high school?

01:02:01.134 --> 01:02:05.483
Like, I'm guessing you probably didn't get the bestest of grades because of that.

01:02:05.653 --> 01:02:07.884
Well, I mean, they're all electives, so.

01:02:07.943 --> 01:02:08.463
Oh, right.

01:02:08.463 --> 01:02:08.503
Yeah.

01:02:08.768 --> 01:02:17.719
At that point it was, I mean, I had an outdoor adventures, it was called outdoor adventures in the suburbs of Minneapolis, which is like not that adventurous.

01:02:17.858 --> 01:02:22.748
But I mean, as far as like getting into colleges or was that like not your plan or?

01:02:23.148 --> 01:02:25.438
Honestly, I don't, I don't really know.

01:02:25.739 --> 01:02:31.628
I didn't think too much about, I was in such a rebellious state, I think, with my parents being divorced, moving all the time.

01:02:31.628 --> 01:02:32.789
And what did you do with your mom?

01:02:32.798 --> 01:02:34.239
I was living with my mom.

01:02:34.278 --> 01:02:34.759
Yeah.

01:02:34.918 --> 01:02:35.398
Yeah.

01:02:35.458 --> 01:02:37.548
And, and it was, it wasn't a great.

01:02:38.338 --> 01:02:39.148
relationship.

01:02:39.219 --> 01:02:39.559
Yeah.

01:02:39.858 --> 01:02:44.088
Um, you know, my stepdad, it wasn't a great relationship back then.

01:02:44.608 --> 01:02:48.869
Um, he came along pretty shortly after or was your mom single mom for a while?

01:02:48.949 --> 01:02:50.079
Single mom for a little bit.

01:02:50.358 --> 01:02:53.148
Um, you know, not too long, but single mom for a little bit.

01:02:53.148 --> 01:02:53.418
Yeah.

01:02:53.489 --> 01:02:58.208
And, um, you know, that's stepdad thinks he's the new boss of you.

01:02:58.208 --> 01:02:59.909
And you're like, nobody's the boss of me.

01:03:00.168 --> 01:03:05.679
You know, it It was just, my, my dad is a very specific type of person.

01:03:05.679 --> 01:03:08.509
He's a very caregiving personality type.

01:03:09.059 --> 01:03:14.898
And so it was, it was a very like lead with kindness approach.

01:03:15.719 --> 01:03:19.139
And my stepdad is a completely different type of person.

01:03:19.518 --> 01:03:23.409
And it's not at that time, not necessarily lead with kindness.

01:03:23.409 --> 01:03:24.028
Yeah.

01:03:24.338 --> 01:03:30.128
And so, I had never been exposed to anything like that in my younger life.

01:03:30.199 --> 01:03:32.898
And you revolted kind of by just departing largely.

01:03:32.969 --> 01:03:33.708
Oh, yeah.

01:03:33.878 --> 01:03:35.009
I mean Check out.

01:03:35.048 --> 01:03:38.039
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I totally checked out.

01:03:38.309 --> 01:03:38.438
Yeah.

01:03:38.489 --> 01:03:39.528
At that point.

01:03:39.878 --> 01:03:41.289
What was next for you then?

01:03:42.059 --> 01:03:43.458
Well, I was good at art.

01:03:43.539 --> 01:03:47.318
I was good at You know computers all of that kind of stuff.

01:03:47.318 --> 01:03:49.239
So I really wanted to be at the time.

01:03:49.239 --> 01:04:02.539
I wanted to be a Like 3d artist or something in you know, video games Assuming you're quite a bit younger than me, but I graduated 99.

01:04:02.659 --> 01:04:03.028
Okay.

01:04:03.108 --> 01:04:03.389
Yep.

01:04:03.469 --> 01:04:05.409
Yeah, 92 for me.

01:04:05.539 --> 01:04:05.858
Okay.

01:04:06.168 --> 01:04:15.579
Yeah So computers are like the, so I was like computers were very rudimentary when I was in like junior high school and that kind of thing.

01:04:15.579 --> 01:04:17.748
They were coming along quite a bit by the time you were there.

01:04:17.929 --> 01:04:19.599
By the time I was in high school, yeah.

01:04:19.889 --> 01:04:21.869
Yeah, I think we were like in Pentium.

01:04:21.969 --> 01:04:22.418
Right, right.

01:04:22.418 --> 01:04:24.489
Era around high school if I remember correctly.

01:04:24.489 --> 01:04:30.994
So the programming languages and stuff had pretty well been developed and whatever else and, but graphics was a big area of, Huge.

01:04:30.994 --> 01:04:31.414
Improvement.

01:04:31.653 --> 01:04:33.634
Oh, it was skyrocketing at that point.

01:04:33.634 --> 01:04:33.903
Yeah, yeah.

01:04:34.034 --> 01:04:37.534
So, my big plan was to go to the Art Institutes of Minneapolis.

01:04:37.534 --> 01:04:37.864
Okay.

01:04:38.164 --> 01:04:44.023
And, I enrolled, got in, and it was for two reasons.

01:04:44.233 --> 01:04:49.969
One, I really dug art girls at the time, and two, like, that could Help me get into that career.

01:04:50.009 --> 01:04:50.478
Right, right.

01:04:50.619 --> 01:04:51.878
So it was like a win win.

01:04:53.389 --> 01:04:54.608
Who doesn't like art girls?

01:04:54.679 --> 01:04:55.219
I mean, come on.

01:04:55.998 --> 01:05:03.048
So, yeah, so I, I went there for about a semester and had just these things, all these things kind of happened at once.

01:05:03.059 --> 01:05:13.438
One, I took out a little bit of student loans, hated it, went to college, and with my previous experience working at that, or working for that agency at such a young age, You do it right.

01:05:13.938 --> 01:05:14.818
I already was.

01:05:14.889 --> 01:05:18.648
I learned 10 times as fast working at 14 that I have at this college.

01:05:18.659 --> 01:05:19.059
Right.

01:05:19.059 --> 01:05:23.858
So now I have to borrow money, pay for this education that I already know.

01:05:23.909 --> 01:05:24.528
education.

01:05:24.608 --> 01:05:24.898
Yeah.

01:05:24.958 --> 01:05:30.338
And, and then while that was happening, I got a job to pay for college as a telemarketer.

01:05:30.728 --> 01:05:34.518
And I got a job as a telemarketer at a web design and hosting company.

01:05:34.539 --> 01:05:35.409
Oh, sweet.

01:05:35.458 --> 01:05:36.179
And you're killing it.

01:05:36.509 --> 01:05:37.259
Yes.

01:05:37.719 --> 01:05:42.864
So my very first call, I get, and, and up to this point, again, being naive, I'm naive.

01:05:43.003 --> 01:05:47.804
Up to this point, I thought, Hey, CEOs, founders, executives, they're a different breed.

01:05:47.864 --> 01:05:50.643
I'm not that breed, different type of person.

01:05:50.954 --> 01:05:51.673
They're the elite.

01:05:51.884 --> 01:05:52.373
Cool.

01:05:52.684 --> 01:05:54.574
So I was super nervous.

01:05:56.364 --> 01:05:56.684
Yeah.

01:05:56.733 --> 01:05:56.893
Yeah.

01:05:56.893 --> 01:05:57.134
Yeah.

01:05:57.143 --> 01:05:59.043
Who should be upper echelon.

01:05:59.054 --> 01:05:59.554
Yeah.

01:05:59.554 --> 01:05:59.804
Yeah.

01:06:00.184 --> 01:06:02.963
And very first call, I closed the deal.

01:06:03.543 --> 01:06:10.853
And it was like the biggest rush I ever had and absolutely loved it.

01:06:10.884 --> 01:06:17.284
And so then I honed again, going back to, I really like learning, I did everything I could to learn how to close a deal.

01:06:17.619 --> 01:06:18.289
On a call.

01:06:18.449 --> 01:06:18.809
Cool.

01:06:18.858 --> 01:06:20.648
On a cold call and how to cold call.

01:06:20.659 --> 01:06:24.329
So, um, I practice and practice and got really good at that.

01:06:24.329 --> 01:06:31.009
And at the same time, I went to the owner of that company and said, Hey, I can design websites and so.

01:06:31.393 --> 01:06:33.583
You know, it was 99 or so.

01:06:33.583 --> 01:06:37.833
So he like gives me a magazine article and he's like, here, design a website about this.

01:06:37.833 --> 01:06:47.733
I went home, downloaded my free trial of dream weaver and designed a website and put it on a three and a half inch floppy, brought it back in.

01:06:48.153 --> 01:06:49.603
And he's like, wow, this is.

01:06:50.199 --> 01:06:52.429
Better than what we're currently doing.

01:06:52.429 --> 01:06:52.958
Right, right.

01:06:53.018 --> 01:07:00.699
And so I was getting, I was going to college, cold calling for my job, closing deals, and then working on these projects at night.

01:07:00.699 --> 01:07:01.429
A little bit of moonlighting.

01:07:01.458 --> 01:07:01.978
Yeah.

01:07:02.548 --> 01:07:06.248
And then I was like, why am I doing this for somebody else?

01:07:06.318 --> 01:07:06.648
Yeah.

01:07:07.239 --> 01:07:10.574
And so I quit, I called my mom and dad up.

01:07:10.724 --> 01:07:25.273
Independently and I'm like, so I'm going to quit school and I'm going to move to a different town and I'm going to start my own business and I'm going to cold call people until they buy from me and then I'm going to work on these projects at night.

01:07:25.393 --> 01:07:25.853
I love it.

01:07:26.443 --> 01:07:28.219
And they're like, No, you're not.

01:07:29.489 --> 01:07:30.838
That's a terrible idea.

01:07:32.168 --> 01:07:42.378
I was, uh, so Alma, who you just met and interacted with, she was in her like first semester at front range community college when she came to work for me.

01:07:42.429 --> 01:07:44.768
And then she was hired as a marketing intern.

01:07:44.778 --> 01:07:45.628
And then her.

01:07:46.713 --> 01:07:49.094
The, my marketing manager left a week later.

01:07:49.483 --> 01:07:50.034
Oh, wow.

01:07:50.043 --> 01:07:51.373
So all of a sudden it's me and Alma.

01:07:51.563 --> 01:07:52.054
Yeah.

01:07:52.094 --> 01:07:57.054
And like, instead of being freaked out, she was 18 at the time, first real job.

01:07:57.364 --> 01:08:02.244
And now she's only 21, but she subsequently has, has quit taking classes at Front Range.

01:08:02.244 --> 01:08:04.293
She took a UX design course online.

01:08:04.324 --> 01:08:08.204
She has access to learning whenever she wants, but same thing.

01:08:08.204 --> 01:08:11.804
She's like, I learned like five times as fast.

01:08:12.219 --> 01:08:21.439
at my job where I get paid at Loco Think Tank than I do when I go to this dumb school that's also like online classes and stuff because it's COVID nation and that's just dumb.

01:08:21.859 --> 01:08:22.078
Yep.

01:08:22.189 --> 01:08:23.819
So can I go full time?

01:08:23.868 --> 01:08:24.958
I was like, yes, you can.

01:08:25.418 --> 01:08:25.679
Yeah.

01:08:26.279 --> 01:08:26.559
Absolutely.

01:08:26.559 --> 01:08:27.099
Very shortly.

01:08:27.368 --> 01:08:27.878
Absolutely.

01:08:27.899 --> 01:08:31.948
And hopefully she doesn't go starting a competing peer advisory organization or anything like that.

01:08:31.948 --> 01:08:33.099
I think she likes it so far.

01:08:33.099 --> 01:08:39.519
But it was really such a similar, and because of the free thinkingness, like she's like.

01:08:39.863 --> 01:08:41.814
I've got these data points, and you were the same way.

01:08:41.814 --> 01:08:42.974
I've got these data points.

01:08:43.453 --> 01:08:47.323
They all suggest that I should save my money and do something different.

01:08:47.363 --> 01:08:47.734
Yeah.

01:08:48.033 --> 01:08:49.724
So, what happened after that?

01:08:49.724 --> 01:08:51.003
Did your folks, uh, relent?

01:08:52.033 --> 01:08:52.993
They didn't have a choice.

01:08:53.043 --> 01:08:53.373
Yeah.

01:08:53.583 --> 01:08:54.684
I mean, whatever.

01:08:54.703 --> 01:08:55.583
What are they really?

01:08:55.623 --> 01:08:57.264
I was already, I already moved out.

01:08:57.524 --> 01:09:00.423
I moved out as soon as I could and got my own place.

01:09:01.033 --> 01:09:05.663
And, um, I met a really good friend at that art, at that art college.

01:09:06.064 --> 01:09:08.484
And so we ended up moving to a town.

01:09:09.609 --> 01:09:10.149
I don't know.

01:09:10.498 --> 01:09:12.029
About an hour and a half south.

01:09:12.128 --> 01:09:12.559
Where?

01:09:12.859 --> 01:09:13.899
Rochester, Minnesota.

01:09:13.908 --> 01:09:13.958
Oh, sure.

01:09:13.958 --> 01:09:15.078
It's where the Mayo Clinic is.

01:09:15.078 --> 01:09:21.788
Yeah, and the next, uh, I mean, the next smaller downsized town, really, and there aren't that many other medium sized towns in Minnesota.

01:09:21.798 --> 01:09:22.279
No.

01:09:22.349 --> 01:09:22.779
No.

01:09:22.798 --> 01:09:25.319
So we, we started up something there.

01:09:25.319 --> 01:09:34.029
We sent out press releases via faxes to, like, get some press about what we were doing, and cold called all day long.

01:09:34.038 --> 01:09:35.538
Like building websites and stuff?

01:09:35.538 --> 01:09:35.969
Yeah.

01:09:36.029 --> 01:09:36.319
Yeah.

01:09:36.319 --> 01:09:36.350
Yeah.

01:09:36.350 --> 01:09:36.384
Yeah.

01:09:36.543 --> 01:09:37.333
Yeah, we did that.

01:09:37.333 --> 01:09:40.524
We sold hosting, resold hosting and sold websites.

01:09:40.524 --> 01:09:41.003
Yeah, yeah.

01:09:41.404 --> 01:09:47.904
And, um, yeah, and it got to the point where I had to stop cold calling because the phone was ringing.

01:09:48.384 --> 01:09:55.203
Ringing so much that we were getting referrals and it really worked out, so.

01:09:55.253 --> 01:10:02.463
Did you go to Rochester just to kind of go to some place that wasn't quite as saturated with people trying to build websites?

01:10:02.503 --> 01:10:06.814
I mean, honestly, I was trying to have some integrity with the previous company.

01:10:06.814 --> 01:10:09.264
I didn't want to just quit and step on their toes.

01:10:10.724 --> 01:10:11.293
That's kind of cool.

01:10:11.363 --> 01:10:11.814
Yeah.

01:10:11.854 --> 01:10:17.014
I, you know, it was, um, really just wanted to get a different market.

01:10:17.014 --> 01:10:19.073
So it wasn't like, Hey, cool.

01:10:19.083 --> 01:10:19.314
Sorry.

01:10:19.314 --> 01:10:21.224
I'm stealing all those customers I got for you.

01:10:21.283 --> 01:10:22.863
Right, right.

01:10:22.873 --> 01:10:24.474
Like I just didn't have the heart for that.

01:10:24.543 --> 01:10:24.724
Yeah.

01:10:24.724 --> 01:10:24.934
Yeah.

01:10:24.934 --> 01:10:25.833
So I like that.

01:10:25.863 --> 01:10:26.033
Yeah.

01:10:26.033 --> 01:10:27.774
That's mainly, mainly why.

01:10:27.854 --> 01:10:32.378
I mean, I think that's, uh, Most people wouldn't uproot their whole life for that.

01:10:32.389 --> 01:10:37.009
They might've refrained from actually calling on that person's customers, but I think that's pretty neat.

01:10:37.088 --> 01:10:44.259
I mean, when you say it like that, that makes a little bit more sense, but at the time, you know, everything's up for an adventure.

01:10:44.399 --> 01:10:44.719
Right.

01:10:44.719 --> 01:10:46.279
Well, and I think that probably.

01:10:46.779 --> 01:10:50.498
And enables you to give a little more space between you and your mom and your stepdad and stuff.

01:10:50.828 --> 01:10:53.048
And just kind of like, okay, here's the line.

01:10:53.168 --> 01:10:55.649
It felt, it felt like a chapter end.

01:10:55.969 --> 01:10:59.059
Which, I think over the years is important piece of it.

01:10:59.059 --> 01:10:59.448
Totally.

01:10:59.679 --> 01:11:02.349
You gotta close a chapter before you open a new one, kind of.

01:11:02.378 --> 01:11:03.868
Yeah, so that was that, but I remember.

01:11:03.868 --> 01:11:07.288
So pretty soon you're Hands over fist all these customers referrals.

01:11:07.418 --> 01:11:07.868
Yes.

01:11:07.908 --> 01:11:08.229
Yes.

01:11:08.229 --> 01:11:09.509
And no, I'm not charging enough.

01:11:09.509 --> 01:11:12.248
So you're not really Definitely the case.

01:11:12.259 --> 01:11:13.378
That's exactly right.

01:11:13.378 --> 01:11:27.594
I remember God I mean, well, there's this there's this piece to it where The previous owner tried to sue me anyway, because we got in the paper And then he's like, well, I taught you everything you knew.

01:11:28.054 --> 01:11:32.663
And so the first thing I did was I interviewed a bunch of attorneys.

01:11:32.694 --> 01:11:33.533
Yeah, exactly.

01:11:33.583 --> 01:11:40.253
I interviewed a bunch of attorneys and, um, anyway, I found one that was like really aggressive.

01:11:40.583 --> 01:11:41.573
He scared me.

01:11:41.684 --> 01:11:42.064
Right.

01:11:42.113 --> 01:11:44.814
And I'm like, okay, this is, this is my guy.

01:11:46.394 --> 01:11:50.213
If I'm paying him and he's intimidating me, like, well, yeah.

01:11:50.894 --> 01:11:54.743
So yeah, nothing really came that way, but yeah, it was interesting.

01:11:54.743 --> 01:11:55.783
Well, you're just like this.

01:11:56.439 --> 01:12:04.849
19 year old, 20 year old guy going to art school and hustling on the side that he would take the time to, like, sue you is wild to me.

01:12:04.859 --> 01:12:06.899
You must have, I mean, you must have made a mistake.

01:12:08.104 --> 01:12:13.814
been a difference maker, obviously for him and that he would cared enough to pay attention, really.

01:12:13.934 --> 01:12:20.354
I mean, it's, it's hard to say because that was such, such an early experience in business.

01:12:20.394 --> 01:12:20.774
Right.

01:12:21.003 --> 01:12:22.533
I had no idea what I was doing.

01:12:22.533 --> 01:12:23.833
Yeah.

01:12:23.833 --> 01:12:30.884
I mean, completely winging it and just trying to get by during that time, I developed a fear of checking the mail.

01:12:31.554 --> 01:12:31.753
Okay.

01:12:32.404 --> 01:12:34.783
Because, you know, I didn't want any more bad news.

01:12:34.783 --> 01:12:41.484
And at that same time, I remember thinking in my head, if I just had 10, 000 in the bank, that's all I would need.

01:12:42.583 --> 01:12:43.344
And then.

01:12:43.759 --> 01:12:54.809
You know, it's, it's so funny to reflect on that and then to think about how fast you can spend 10, 000, especially in business.

01:12:54.809 --> 01:12:55.208
Yeah.

01:12:55.269 --> 01:12:55.509
Yeah.

01:12:55.509 --> 01:12:57.599
And especially if the revenues aren't flowing in.

01:12:58.149 --> 01:12:58.519
Yup.

01:12:58.838 --> 01:12:59.208
Yup.

01:12:59.248 --> 01:13:01.899
So, yeah, so that was, that was my first foray.

01:13:01.899 --> 01:13:08.009
So we, we scaled that up, um, ended up merging with an email marketing company based out of Minneapolis.

01:13:08.519 --> 01:13:24.019
Um, And then they had an office, I think it was through, I think it was through economic stimulus money with the state of Nebraska, but I ended up running their office down in Nebraska, which was awful.

01:13:25.168 --> 01:13:26.229
In Omaha or something?

01:13:26.509 --> 01:13:31.088
No, Beatrice, which is like a 45 minutes or something out of Lincoln.

01:13:31.109 --> 01:13:31.538
Yeah, yeah.

01:13:31.578 --> 01:13:34.198
Yeah, literally surrounded by cow pastures.

01:13:34.198 --> 01:13:35.628
It was a lot more country.

01:13:35.628 --> 01:13:39.048
Uh, one of the young bankers I was trained with in.

01:13:39.269 --> 01:13:44.738
Community First National Bank was from Beatrice, and he described, uh, Have you, did you do any noodling while you were down there?

01:13:44.759 --> 01:13:45.519
No.

01:13:45.569 --> 01:13:46.319
You know what noodling is, right?

01:13:46.349 --> 01:13:47.569
No, uh uh.

01:13:47.569 --> 01:13:53.509
Uh, noodling is where you, I think you start by drinking a lot of beer, um, I did that.

01:13:53.548 --> 01:14:03.738
And then you go to a creek side, um, and the catfish hang out in the little cave things, and you put your arm down there and reach your arm right into their, I did hear about people doing that.

01:14:03.998 --> 01:14:08.269
catfish like bites your arm while you're dragging this 40 pound catfish out from underneath the shore.

01:14:08.279 --> 01:14:09.208
Oh my gosh.

01:14:09.219 --> 01:14:09.448
Yeah.

01:14:09.488 --> 01:14:09.788
Yeah.

01:14:09.809 --> 01:14:10.578
Never did that.

01:14:10.908 --> 01:14:12.639
I, I, I used to want to try it.

01:14:12.908 --> 01:14:13.219
Yeah.

01:14:13.248 --> 01:14:14.158
I no longer do.

01:14:14.189 --> 01:14:16.219
Like that, that phase has passed.

01:14:16.298 --> 01:14:20.868
Like during my twenties and maybe even my early thirties, I was like, it might be fun to go noodling sometime.

01:14:21.429 --> 01:14:21.719
No.

01:14:22.048 --> 01:14:23.548
I did drink a lot of beer there.

01:14:23.569 --> 01:14:24.088
Well yeah.

01:14:24.298 --> 01:14:25.019
I also.

01:14:25.029 --> 01:14:26.158
The midwestern thing in general.

01:14:26.179 --> 01:14:26.859
Yeah.

01:14:26.859 --> 01:14:26.934
Yeah.

01:14:27.083 --> 01:14:29.543
And when you're trying to dull the pain of having to move to Nebraska.

01:14:29.573 --> 01:14:32.613
That was, I mean Sorry, Nebraska.

01:14:32.634 --> 01:14:35.644
But it was, you know, I was, what, 23?

01:14:37.554 --> 01:14:38.054
Right.

01:14:38.583 --> 01:14:40.423
In the middle of nowhere in Nebraska.

01:14:40.453 --> 01:14:44.059
It was to the point where I'm like, I'm not I'm not touching a girl.

01:14:44.088 --> 01:14:45.389
I'm not dating a girl.

01:14:45.469 --> 01:14:48.399
I'm not, there's no chance I'm going to get a girl pregnant out here.

01:14:49.479 --> 01:14:50.158
Exactly.

01:14:50.338 --> 01:14:53.779
Like, I do not want any ties to this.

01:14:54.498 --> 01:15:02.189
And I ended up speaking at an event in Fort Lauderdale and, um, took an extra day, hung out at the beach.

01:15:02.248 --> 01:15:02.588
Okay.

01:15:03.208 --> 01:15:07.099
And I was like, Oh, this, this is where I need to be.

01:15:07.099 --> 01:15:08.149
Florida is what I like.

01:15:08.189 --> 01:15:08.668
Yeah.

01:15:08.698 --> 01:15:12.868
Beaches, ocean, palm trees, Alligators.

01:15:12.868 --> 01:15:13.009
Alligators.

01:15:13.009 --> 01:15:14.009
Alligators.

01:15:14.969 --> 01:15:27.328
And the very, like, so I had this, like, moment, and I'm relishing this moment, and I'm, the very next day I'm at the airport, I'm sitting at my gate, and I'm just thinking about, like, why am I in Nebraska?

01:15:27.759 --> 01:15:31.498
And my phone rings, and it's one of my original clients.

01:15:31.868 --> 01:15:32.979
From my first business.

01:15:33.009 --> 01:15:36.609
And he goes, Hey man, I got this idea and I want you to be part of it.

01:15:36.698 --> 01:15:38.309
I'll fly out here to San Diego.

01:15:38.309 --> 01:15:39.279
No obligations.

01:15:39.328 --> 01:15:40.588
Oh, check it out.

01:15:40.618 --> 01:15:41.729
I already got an office.

01:15:42.679 --> 01:15:48.288
I'm like, yeah, sounds a lot like Florida.

01:15:48.288 --> 01:15:48.729
Yeah.

01:15:48.958 --> 01:15:51.109
Sounds also a lot, not like Nebraska.

01:15:51.149 --> 01:15:51.679
Yeah.

01:15:51.689 --> 01:15:53.599
So I flew out there, checked it out.

01:15:53.599 --> 01:15:54.798
I'm like, this is cool.

01:15:55.288 --> 01:16:01.394
And so, and you were like a partner of this merged enterprise still, or you kind of Sold merged into this other thing?

01:16:01.423 --> 01:16:30.684
Well, so I got pretty scared like I was dumb and didn't hire an attorney when I merged my first business with this email marketing company, and so I got royally screwed and You know learn you learn so it goes I mean, I'm sure like if If I were to be on the other side, I probably wouldn't think I was royally screwed, but, you know, at the time, I was like, Oh, that wasn't what I was expecting.

01:16:31.094 --> 01:16:31.554
Gotcha.

01:16:31.623 --> 01:16:33.564
And so, yeah.

01:16:33.564 --> 01:16:35.413
So there wasn't this big dramatic exit?

01:16:35.484 --> 01:16:36.088
It wasn't.

01:16:36.088 --> 01:16:37.203
It wasn't.

01:16:37.644 --> 01:16:41.554
More like they underpaid you for what was a pretty nice going concern kind of thing and gave you a job?

01:16:41.963 --> 01:16:42.554
Pretty much.

01:16:42.573 --> 01:16:44.184
I had a job, so.

01:16:44.408 --> 01:16:49.929
You know, I signed a contract, then I hired an attorney, got out of the contract, and then moved to San Diego.

01:16:50.679 --> 01:16:51.109
Got it.

01:16:51.338 --> 01:16:52.519
So I was in San Diego.

01:16:52.529 --> 01:16:56.819
I moved to San Diego around like, um, 2005, 2006.

01:16:56.819 --> 01:16:57.168
Okay.

01:16:57.729 --> 01:17:01.128
And, um, of course I was right before 2008.

01:17:01.399 --> 01:17:04.769
So everybody that I was meeting was my age.

01:17:05.043 --> 01:17:07.333
in the mortgage industry, right?

01:17:07.373 --> 01:17:11.604
Making like 20, 30, 50, 000 a month.

01:17:11.634 --> 01:17:12.213
Right.

01:17:12.293 --> 01:17:17.384
I went to one mortgage company and my friend brought me and he goes, dude, just, you got to come here and see this.

01:17:17.413 --> 01:17:19.694
And it was like commission check day or whatever.

01:17:19.703 --> 01:17:19.913
Right.

01:17:19.913 --> 01:17:20.054
Right.

01:17:20.104 --> 01:17:31.889
And it's just like in the movies, like people were like, Throwing out this wheel of like commissions and like 20, 000 check and 50, 000 check.

01:17:31.889 --> 01:17:36.929
And this guy's like, yeah, I went to Vegas last weekend and blew 50 or 60 K I don't even remember.

01:17:36.929 --> 01:17:41.809
And I'm coming here from Beatrice, Nebraska going, what the hell is happening?

01:17:42.229 --> 01:17:43.349
What is this?

01:17:43.578 --> 01:17:47.509
Everybody is just a gorgeous person, you know?

01:17:47.599 --> 01:17:53.439
And so, yeah, it was, I, I very much enjoyed my time in San Diego.

01:17:54.054 --> 01:17:55.073
Do you like the girls there?

01:17:55.703 --> 01:17:56.644
Yeah, they were okay.

01:17:56.734 --> 01:17:58.043
That's where I met my wife.

01:17:58.083 --> 01:17:58.713
Yeah, well.

01:17:58.764 --> 01:17:59.274
Yeah.

01:17:59.413 --> 01:18:00.594
I liked one of them a lot.

01:18:02.064 --> 01:18:04.533
So what were you doing in, in San Diego then?

01:18:05.253 --> 01:18:10.173
So I helped out, I didn't want to be a partner of this company that, um, brought me out there.

01:18:10.524 --> 01:18:11.923
And so I helped them get going.

01:18:12.373 --> 01:18:16.033
In this kind of marketing website tech space or what were you doing?

01:18:16.033 --> 01:18:16.753
It was still tech.

01:18:16.753 --> 01:18:18.713
So it was, uh, kind of an analytics play.

01:18:18.753 --> 01:18:19.073
Okay.

01:18:19.134 --> 01:18:21.104
And we raised a little over a million dollars.

01:18:21.113 --> 01:18:21.413
Okay.

01:18:21.524 --> 01:18:24.344
And we scaled up to about 19 people.

01:18:24.594 --> 01:18:26.354
That was right at the beginning of social media.

01:18:26.394 --> 01:18:34.003
And so I started seeing the writing on the wall and I'm like, Oh man, there's, there's something here.

01:18:34.404 --> 01:18:36.543
And so I got the itch to do my own business again.

01:18:36.554 --> 01:18:40.963
So long story short, turn that company into my first business.

01:18:41.198 --> 01:18:50.649
Client for the, my second business and then continued to find new clients that my pitch at that point, the social media wasn't even a term yet.

01:18:50.929 --> 01:18:53.238
So I called it, like started Oh seven or something, right.

01:18:53.238 --> 01:18:54.908
Or something started getting really popular.

01:18:54.908 --> 01:18:55.439
Yeah.

01:18:55.479 --> 01:18:56.198
Five, maybe.

01:18:56.269 --> 01:18:56.698
Yeah.

01:18:56.698 --> 01:18:58.679
So I called it social arena marketing.

01:18:58.679 --> 01:19:10.048
So I'd go to again, call up companies and say, Hey, here's a way that you, instead of spending advertising dollars that you don't know what's happening right now, track it.

01:19:10.524 --> 01:19:15.333
Well, spend it with me and I'll help you reach your audience without any ad spend.

01:19:15.604 --> 01:19:16.194
Oh, right.

01:19:16.394 --> 01:19:18.083
So that was my original value prop.

01:19:18.724 --> 01:19:21.134
Because that was when you had forums and blogs.

01:19:21.184 --> 01:19:22.423
It was so easy.

01:19:22.444 --> 01:19:23.993
So everything was organic.

01:19:24.024 --> 01:19:24.363
Right.

01:19:24.613 --> 01:19:24.953
Right.

01:19:25.363 --> 01:19:31.944
My food truck business from 2014 got like 700 followers in a season.

01:19:32.194 --> 01:19:32.764
Totally.

01:19:32.844 --> 01:19:33.203
Right.

01:19:33.423 --> 01:19:33.913
Totally.

01:19:34.043 --> 01:19:35.248
And I post something and people like it.

01:19:35.448 --> 01:19:36.998
Forty six people would like it.

01:19:37.009 --> 01:19:40.179
Now I post something and I'm way more famous than I was then.

01:19:40.779 --> 01:19:44.048
And four to six people will like it unless I spend money.

01:19:44.248 --> 01:19:44.779
Yes.

01:19:45.234 --> 01:19:47.003
So that was right at the peak.

01:19:47.043 --> 01:19:54.274
And, um, and so I scaled that up a little bit, hired a few people and just continued writing that peak.

01:19:54.274 --> 01:20:01.113
And one of the way that we And they would just pay you as a consultant, basically, because the rest of it's free.

01:20:01.203 --> 01:20:01.833
Yeah.

01:20:01.934 --> 01:20:02.184
Okay.

01:20:02.224 --> 01:20:02.594
Yeah.

01:20:02.594 --> 01:20:09.944
So I would help them set up all their systems and reach their, their specific audience before it was, you know, Yeah.

01:20:09.944 --> 01:20:13.024
And before all the tools were there to do so, so easily and stuff.

01:20:13.024 --> 01:20:13.493
Yeah.

01:20:13.894 --> 01:20:16.703
And is that the one that continued to scale then?

01:20:16.844 --> 01:20:17.134
Yeah.

01:20:17.134 --> 01:20:27.823
So that one continued to scale and, um, one of my first hires was a salesperson and we ended up getting connected up with, um, uh, automotive dealership in San Diego.

01:20:27.953 --> 01:20:28.323
Okay.

01:20:28.514 --> 01:20:35.764
And that automotive dealership, uh, was part of the second largest automotive group in the country at the time.

01:20:36.484 --> 01:20:40.533
And, um, and it was, it was just.

01:20:40.859 --> 01:20:42.649
You know, luck and perfect timing.

01:20:43.429 --> 01:20:44.819
And so good job for them.

01:20:44.819 --> 01:20:47.559
And then pretty soon you're doing stuff for them all over the country.

01:20:47.588 --> 01:20:48.628
That's exactly right.

01:20:48.788 --> 01:20:50.899
So, you know, that was Southern California.

01:20:50.899 --> 01:20:51.889
We got a bunch of stores.

01:20:51.889 --> 01:20:54.569
Then Northern California is like, Hey, what's Southern California doing?

01:20:54.809 --> 01:20:56.929
Then East coast is like, what's West coast doing?

01:20:56.929 --> 01:20:57.198
Right, right.

01:20:57.649 --> 01:21:08.538
And so we continued to scale that up and, um, yeah, and we really focused at that stage, we kind of shifted gears and we said, let's focus on multi location businesses, which automotive groups are perfect.

01:21:08.538 --> 01:21:09.538
Right, right.

01:21:09.828 --> 01:21:15.689
And so now we started solving problems that only companies with multiple brands and or multiple locations.

01:21:15.769 --> 01:21:16.319
Right, right.

01:21:16.469 --> 01:21:19.189
RAN into a social media which differentiated us.

01:21:19.238 --> 01:21:25.838
Well, and that really changes the dynamic for, like you talk a lot about agency and multilocation.

01:21:25.849 --> 01:21:29.588
Those are kind of your niches that develop through that in some ways.

01:21:30.029 --> 01:21:41.668
And your buildout, if you will, of, You In your case, Asana, to get this project management stuff was really essential to navigating the really rapid change in social media.

01:21:41.698 --> 01:21:42.168
That's right.

01:21:42.798 --> 01:21:43.208
That's right.

01:21:43.219 --> 01:21:45.059
That's what allowed us to be so agile.

01:21:45.158 --> 01:21:45.538
Yeah.

01:21:45.698 --> 01:21:46.088
Yeah.

01:21:46.128 --> 01:21:48.118
And then we added a software component to it.

01:21:48.208 --> 01:21:53.198
And so then we started building out, um, some softwares, uh, like essentially a software suite.

01:21:53.448 --> 01:21:54.439
So to help with, uh.

01:21:54.448 --> 01:21:57.078
Like the posting tools almost, the HootSuites and stuff like that?

01:21:57.088 --> 01:21:59.248
No, we, we took it a different direction.

01:21:59.429 --> 01:22:03.599
So I came across, um, man, it was like an, Yeah.

01:22:03.599 --> 01:22:03.613
Yeah.

01:22:03.613 --> 01:22:06.354
It was one of the earlier online contests.

01:22:06.384 --> 01:22:10.033
I think maybe Marriott was running it or something like that.

01:22:10.484 --> 01:22:14.993
And I'm like, Oh man, this is a brilliant campaign.

01:22:16.033 --> 01:22:21.644
Then the second thought I had was I could build a tool that allowed anybody to make this.

01:22:22.344 --> 01:22:23.173
So I did.

01:22:24.104 --> 01:22:30.173
So I built that tool to rapidly create contests and giveaways and social media.

01:22:30.418 --> 01:22:30.498
Yeah.

01:22:30.719 --> 01:22:35.668
Oh, and that was your big driver to your growth plan, sounds like.

01:22:35.729 --> 01:22:36.529
I wish.

01:22:36.569 --> 01:22:36.908
No.

01:22:39.189 --> 01:22:39.788
So.

01:22:40.029 --> 01:22:41.259
I mean, it seems like a special tool.

01:22:41.259 --> 01:22:41.729
Very useful.

01:22:41.738 --> 01:22:42.969
It was, it was very good.

01:22:42.969 --> 01:22:50.158
So there was a, there was a similar tool at the time called Wildfire and you know, social media was so new.

01:22:50.198 --> 01:22:52.469
Again, very good life lesson here.

01:22:52.929 --> 01:22:54.639
I focused on sales leads.

01:22:55.003 --> 01:23:02.224
Because I'm thinking I'll build a tool that's leveraging social media with contests and giveaways and can build sales and can get sales leads.

01:23:02.224 --> 01:23:11.474
So we're getting like tons of qualified sales leads coming in because they're entering in these contests that are coming in.

01:23:11.474 --> 01:23:15.854
So we had like a travel company that got like 30, 000 sales leads in a month.

01:23:16.064 --> 01:23:17.404
Too much for them to handle.

01:23:17.413 --> 01:23:17.814
Right.

01:23:18.703 --> 01:23:19.163
Cool.

01:23:19.344 --> 01:23:22.134
I'm thinking this is going to be it.

01:23:22.144 --> 01:23:23.373
We're going to skyrocket.

01:23:23.373 --> 01:23:29.389
Meanwhile, While we're doing that, Wildfire is saying we'll build followers and fans.

01:23:30.109 --> 01:23:33.118
And I'm internally Like, what the hell's the use of that?

01:23:33.118 --> 01:23:33.679
Right.

01:23:33.969 --> 01:23:35.399
I'm going, that is That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of.

01:23:35.408 --> 01:23:36.439
Exactly.

01:23:36.498 --> 01:23:37.908
Exactly, Kurt.

01:23:37.948 --> 01:23:39.439
I'm like, that is so dumb.

01:23:39.439 --> 01:23:40.868
What are they gonna do with this?

01:23:41.458 --> 01:23:43.378
But you know what was happening at that time?

01:23:43.748 --> 01:23:57.059
All the old chief marketing officers were going out and all the new ones were coming in and the new ones were being tasked with figure out social media and build us fans and followers, and I'm selling sales leads.

01:23:58.509 --> 01:24:03.529
And so I'm not even in the marketing discussion for this software that is working amazing.

01:24:03.884 --> 01:24:05.993
Because they're like, we don't want sales leads.

01:24:06.014 --> 01:24:07.913
We want fans and followers.

01:24:08.623 --> 01:24:10.234
You're like, why don't you want sales leads?

01:24:10.264 --> 01:24:10.623
Yes.

01:24:10.884 --> 01:24:12.224
Isn't that what you're trying to do?

01:24:12.363 --> 01:24:14.923
Do you know how much Wildfire sold to Google for?

01:24:16.003 --> 01:24:16.533
2 billion.

01:24:17.134 --> 01:24:18.923
450 million.

01:24:18.923 --> 01:24:21.974
I was guessing high just because I assumed it was going to be some dumb number.

01:24:21.984 --> 01:24:22.444
Yeah.

01:24:22.493 --> 01:24:22.724
Yeah.

01:24:23.094 --> 01:24:26.953
Well, you probably wouldn't be right here right now if you had gotten 450 million for your thing.

01:24:27.073 --> 01:24:28.293
Yeah, you never know.

01:24:28.384 --> 01:24:29.543
Yeah, you might be.

01:24:30.224 --> 01:24:39.444
Um, so, so this kind of continued, you just kind of slow grew from this kind of 5, then 10, to 20.

01:24:39.463 --> 01:24:44.283
Like, you mentioned kind of a sweet spot 30, 35 space.

01:24:44.283 --> 01:24:48.604
Yeah, and um, You know, at that point, how did you get to Nashville?

01:24:48.613 --> 01:24:50.123
Were you already, that was, you moved?

01:24:50.134 --> 01:24:53.493
No, we were saying, no, we were still in San Diego this whole time.

01:24:53.524 --> 01:24:55.163
So it was Nashville, right?

01:24:55.573 --> 01:24:57.213
Uh, yeah, outside of Nashville.

01:24:57.224 --> 01:25:02.734
So we, we continued to grow and it kind of got to a point where it's like, I'd like to do something else with my life.

01:25:02.844 --> 01:25:03.184
Okay.

01:25:03.213 --> 01:25:09.248
Like this is, This is years now I'm spending in the automotive industry and the radio industry and things like that.

01:25:09.248 --> 01:25:12.519
There's a few small niches, but mostly you're just dominant in a few channels.

01:25:12.609 --> 01:25:16.048
Yeah, so I'm like, all right, I could do something else.

01:25:16.378 --> 01:25:23.179
So I, like, talk to my attorney and, you know, uh, like, hey, I think I'd like to sell this company.

01:25:23.378 --> 01:25:23.748
Okay.

01:25:24.109 --> 01:25:27.139
And he goes, dude, you're, you can't sell this.

01:25:27.559 --> 01:25:30.229
So what do you, what do you mean I can't sell this?

01:25:30.229 --> 01:25:33.578
He goes, you have a massive client concentration problem.

01:25:33.698 --> 01:25:34.059
Right.

01:25:34.128 --> 01:25:36.748
I'm like, what the hell is client concentration?

01:25:36.988 --> 01:25:37.948
What does that even mean?

01:25:38.439 --> 01:25:40.349
You're like, he's like, you got like six clients.

01:25:40.408 --> 01:25:40.788
Yeah.

01:25:40.788 --> 01:25:44.179
He, and I'm like, no, I have hundreds of clients.

01:25:44.819 --> 01:25:48.399
He goes, yeah, but they're all from like a few groups.

01:25:49.578 --> 01:25:51.469
And I'm like, he's like, nobody's going to buy that.

01:25:51.479 --> 01:25:52.298
That's too risky.

01:25:52.298 --> 01:25:53.658
If one of those groups pull out.

01:25:54.288 --> 01:25:58.689
Their entire investment in your company is at risk.

01:26:00.219 --> 01:26:00.788
Huh?

01:26:01.399 --> 01:26:02.439
That's not good.

01:26:03.899 --> 01:26:17.128
So, so that's, uh, that's when we started, like I started, you know, I was just exploring options, so I started talking to a private equity firm, um, that private equity firm was like, Hey, you're not big enough, but like, here's another company.

01:26:17.128 --> 01:26:17.889
That's not big enough.

01:26:17.889 --> 01:26:18.918
Maybe you guys should meet.

01:26:18.929 --> 01:26:20.599
And he just introduced us via email.

01:26:20.639 --> 01:26:21.009
Okay.

01:26:21.309 --> 01:26:24.229
And so we started talking and that's ultimately.

01:26:24.474 --> 01:26:26.224
What led to that merger.

01:26:26.734 --> 01:26:31.713
And so, yeah, it was just this random, uh, kind of email introduction.

01:26:31.713 --> 01:26:32.934
We went out and met with them.

01:26:32.934 --> 01:26:33.833
We compared our books.

01:26:33.844 --> 01:26:34.884
And they're in Nashville?

01:26:34.944 --> 01:26:36.314
They're in Salt Lake City.

01:26:36.373 --> 01:26:36.713
Oh.

01:26:37.634 --> 01:26:38.154
Or were.

01:26:38.194 --> 01:26:39.253
Well, bring me around.

01:26:39.283 --> 01:26:41.033
Like where does Nashville come in?

01:26:41.043 --> 01:26:49.514
So we hit like this gold, before the merger, we hit like this golden era where I could like go into work, answer some emails, go mountain biking all day.

01:26:49.554 --> 01:26:49.814
Yeah.

01:26:49.814 --> 01:26:50.104
Yeah.

01:26:50.163 --> 01:26:53.963
Come back, answer some emails and questions and help, help the staff.

01:26:54.274 --> 01:26:57.863
And I was like the perfect golden era of this.

01:26:57.873 --> 01:26:59.203
Virtually semi retired.

01:26:59.354 --> 01:27:02.203
If my salary's I live in San Diego.

01:27:02.243 --> 01:27:04.234
Yeah, it was, it was wonderful.

01:27:05.333 --> 01:27:13.654
And, um, you know, it's, as we started traveling, my family's in Minnesota.

01:27:13.684 --> 01:27:15.684
My wife's now we're married.

01:27:15.684 --> 01:27:17.413
My wife's family's in Louisiana.

01:27:17.493 --> 01:27:17.863
Okay.

01:27:18.243 --> 01:27:19.764
And San Diego to.

01:27:20.413 --> 01:27:23.474
Any place is kind of a, kind of a hike.

01:27:23.484 --> 01:27:25.003
It's, except for California.

01:27:25.073 --> 01:27:25.493
Yeah.

01:27:25.493 --> 01:27:26.873
So LA is really easy to get to.

01:27:26.993 --> 01:27:28.104
Right, right.

01:27:28.163 --> 01:27:28.493
Yeah.

01:27:28.493 --> 01:27:30.734
And Palm Desert, Palm Desert's pretty easy, you know?

01:27:31.234 --> 01:27:34.203
So, um, Tijuana.

01:27:34.484 --> 01:27:39.003
Tijuana is very easy, getting back is harder than getting there.

01:27:39.014 --> 01:27:40.243
Depending on how much you had to drink anyway.

01:27:41.644 --> 01:27:43.224
So, so yeah.

01:27:43.224 --> 01:27:45.064
So we're like, you know what, what are we going to do?

01:27:45.073 --> 01:27:47.003
Let's, let's get some property somewhere.

01:27:47.003 --> 01:27:47.054
Yeah.

01:27:47.373 --> 01:27:48.679
Let's have an Airbnb.

01:27:48.684 --> 01:27:48.783
Okay.

01:27:48.814 --> 01:27:52.743
And let's rent this out, and then we can reserve it when we want to.

01:27:53.073 --> 01:27:53.194
Yeah, yeah.

01:27:53.694 --> 01:27:57.564
And we'll, we'll find a place that's a little bit easier for your family.

01:27:57.564 --> 01:27:59.873
A little bit easier to get to my family.

01:28:00.474 --> 01:28:03.019
And so, um, we had a bunch of, it's not Missouri.

01:28:03.088 --> 01:28:05.904
It's not Missouri, so we, sorry, Missouri.

01:28:06.743 --> 01:28:10.314
We ended up, uh, having a bunch of clients, uh, a bunch of stores and.

01:28:10.759 --> 01:28:11.368
Tennessee.

01:28:11.389 --> 01:28:14.219
And so we toured the whole state of Tennessee, my wife and I.

01:28:14.828 --> 01:28:16.569
And, um, we really liked it.

01:28:16.569 --> 01:28:17.548
It was gorgeous.

01:28:17.698 --> 01:28:19.059
I think you'd make worse choices.

01:28:19.099 --> 01:28:21.649
It seems like Tennessee's got it shit together pretty good.

01:28:21.658 --> 01:28:22.038
Pretty well.

01:28:22.069 --> 01:28:22.689
Overall.

01:28:22.729 --> 01:28:23.279
Pretty well, yeah.

01:28:23.288 --> 01:28:27.208
I mean, you got, like, geography and weather is just kind of, you're stuck with that.

01:28:27.288 --> 01:28:28.484
And so what are you going to do with it?

01:28:28.484 --> 01:28:28.899
Yeah, yeah.

01:28:28.929 --> 01:28:31.529
I mean, it is a gorgeous state.

01:28:31.639 --> 01:28:31.859
Yeah.

01:28:31.908 --> 01:28:33.059
It is absolutely gorgeous.

01:28:33.059 --> 01:28:42.363
So we, uh, We ended up finding outside of Nashville, we found this property on nine acres, this gorgeous home, like an elderly couple had built it up and it was like a Dutch colonial.

01:28:42.363 --> 01:28:45.694
So it was like, it was red with like white trim.

01:28:45.703 --> 01:28:46.113
Right.

01:28:46.184 --> 01:28:49.724
Like it looks like a, like a, the painter of light picture.

01:28:51.373 --> 01:28:51.913
Yeah.

01:28:51.913 --> 01:29:03.953
And we have like, It's surrounded by woods and we could build mountain biking trails in the woods and all this stuff and we could start farming and like, you know, the idyllic, let's, let's go out to the country kind of thing.

01:29:04.323 --> 01:29:12.073
So our goal, we packed like a frying pan, our dog, two weeks worth of clothes in our car, drove from San Diego.

01:29:12.314 --> 01:29:13.384
Yeah, fresh start.

01:29:13.514 --> 01:29:14.434
To Tennessee.

01:29:14.623 --> 01:29:17.344
Well, no, we were just, we weren't planning to move there.

01:29:17.434 --> 01:29:20.184
We were just going to drive out there for two weeks to take ownership.

01:29:20.184 --> 01:29:20.844
Oh.

01:29:21.184 --> 01:29:23.814
And then come back to San Diego.

01:29:24.354 --> 01:29:27.234
And so like, because we bought the interior of the house too.

01:29:27.373 --> 01:29:28.663
We bought all the furniture.

01:29:28.713 --> 01:29:29.253
Oh, all ready to go.

01:29:29.274 --> 01:29:29.533
Yeah.

01:29:29.543 --> 01:29:29.694
Yep.

01:29:29.713 --> 01:29:31.554
All the linens, everything.

01:29:31.644 --> 01:29:33.094
We bought all the tools.

01:29:33.559 --> 01:29:33.769
Everything.

01:29:34.408 --> 01:29:34.649
Yeah.

01:29:36.158 --> 01:29:41.609
Um, so our plan was literally drive out there for two weeks, get to know the place, take ownership of it.

01:29:41.609 --> 01:29:41.889
Yep.

01:29:42.479 --> 01:29:44.069
Put it back into the VRBO.

01:29:44.189 --> 01:29:45.368
Put it on Airbnb.

01:29:45.538 --> 01:29:45.998
Right.

01:29:46.088 --> 01:29:49.658
And within those two weeks, like in San Diego, you don't really talk to your neighbors.

01:29:49.878 --> 01:29:50.219
Right.

01:29:50.509 --> 01:29:53.189
So And you got people bringing you pies and cookies and stuff.

01:29:53.189 --> 01:29:57.088
We have one neighbor and he's like, Hey man, like come up and have a beer.

01:29:57.509 --> 01:30:00.429
And uh, we got like an outdoor fireplace on our porch.

01:30:01.069 --> 01:30:03.059
And so I'm like, okay, cool.

01:30:03.059 --> 01:30:14.288
So like I go up and like have a couple of beers with our one neighbor and his porch has this awesome fireplace outside and it's looking over the property that we just bought in the sun setting.

01:30:14.788 --> 01:30:17.819
And I'm like, holy crap, this is calming.

01:30:18.538 --> 01:30:19.929
This is peaceful.

01:30:19.929 --> 01:30:19.969
Cool.

01:30:20.458 --> 01:30:30.488
This is nice, this is really cheap, and yeah, and so, you know, we look at that and we're like, wow, that's, that's awesome.

01:30:30.779 --> 01:30:37.128
And my wife was having similar experiences, and within those two weeks, we ended up going, what if we just lived here?

01:30:37.538 --> 01:30:40.038
And then traveled to San Diego.

01:30:40.109 --> 01:30:40.389
Yeah.

01:30:40.698 --> 01:30:41.488
So we did.

01:30:41.708 --> 01:30:42.878
Did you have the little guy yet?

01:30:42.998 --> 01:30:44.448
Not yet, not yet.

01:30:45.149 --> 01:30:48.293
Being in a peaceful, quiet place makes it easier to think about.

01:30:48.884 --> 01:30:54.333
That yeah, so that happened So that's pretty cool.

01:30:54.344 --> 01:30:56.014
I like that change of pace.

01:30:56.014 --> 01:31:05.524
You're just like, yeah pivot Yeah, we even went to farm school and before any of this we went to farm school in San Diego I love it just to learn how to grow organically sustainable stuff.

01:31:05.524 --> 01:31:08.998
So you're like that Kind of these city ish people.

01:31:08.998 --> 01:31:11.578
Is your wife from like the city of New Orleans?

01:31:11.588 --> 01:31:12.189
Baton Rouge.

01:31:12.238 --> 01:31:12.649
Baton Rouge.

01:31:12.679 --> 01:31:12.899
Yeah.

01:31:12.899 --> 01:31:14.009
So the city there too.

01:31:14.009 --> 01:31:23.399
And so you're like kind of these ultimate kind of, at the time, especially perhaps, liberal kind of granola eating.

01:31:23.628 --> 01:31:24.009
Oh yeah.

01:31:24.009 --> 01:31:27.109
Like, give us all the, like, we want to adopt a llama tomorrow.

01:31:27.248 --> 01:31:27.828
Totally.

01:31:27.828 --> 01:31:29.759
We got chickens.

01:31:29.798 --> 01:31:30.599
We got bees.

01:31:30.599 --> 01:31:31.139
Right, right, right.

01:31:31.309 --> 01:31:34.208
We got outdoor cats to chase away the mice and the moles.

01:31:34.338 --> 01:31:34.779
Totally.

01:31:34.828 --> 01:31:35.219
Yeah.

01:31:35.878 --> 01:31:37.779
And, which is cool.

01:31:38.088 --> 01:31:40.578
And it just, like, it ain't that easy.

01:31:41.359 --> 01:31:42.118
It's hard.

01:31:42.828 --> 01:31:42.868
Right.

01:31:43.288 --> 01:31:44.319
It's not easy at all.

01:31:44.328 --> 01:31:45.878
No, it's way easier to live in the city.

01:31:46.288 --> 01:31:46.479
Yes.

01:31:46.488 --> 01:31:47.238
In so many ways.

01:31:47.319 --> 01:31:47.939
Yes.

01:31:48.399 --> 01:31:54.309
I've got just a half dozen chickens and, you know, a little small property and stuff, and it's just a lot.

01:31:54.904 --> 01:31:55.564
It's a lot.

01:31:56.134 --> 01:31:56.944
It adds complication.

01:31:57.333 --> 01:31:57.503
Yeah.

01:31:57.503 --> 01:31:57.804
Yeah.

01:31:58.064 --> 01:31:58.463
Yeah.

01:31:58.463 --> 01:32:01.694
So, but we, you know, we really enjoyed it the first couple of years.

01:32:01.694 --> 01:32:03.863
We had a giant like quarter acre garden.

01:32:03.863 --> 01:32:05.073
We planned all this stuff out.

01:32:05.554 --> 01:32:06.863
We bought a tractor.

01:32:06.884 --> 01:32:08.644
I put up fencing around that.

01:32:08.644 --> 01:32:10.054
So we had a nice yard.

01:32:10.703 --> 01:32:11.774
Got another dog.

01:32:11.774 --> 01:32:16.033
In 300 years or so, you'll have all that infrastructure paid for with the output of that garden.

01:32:16.064 --> 01:32:17.274
Yes, at least.

01:32:21.583 --> 01:32:24.304
But it was, it was super rewarding and it was, I love it.

01:32:24.384 --> 01:32:29.014
I mean, now, you know, all that stuff and it's, you'll probably do some of it for the rest of your life.

01:32:30.583 --> 01:32:33.104
It was definitely, definitely.

01:32:33.104 --> 01:32:39.054
I mean, the house that we have now, they have like, uh, six raised beds that were already put in and we're like, that's perfect.

01:32:43.194 --> 01:32:46.304
We don't have to plow it, but we can still have tomatoes.

01:32:46.314 --> 01:32:46.623
Yep.

01:32:48.048 --> 01:32:53.899
So, I mean, it's, it's definitely one of those where I'm so glad I did it and I do not regret any of that.

01:32:55.918 --> 01:33:01.048
It got to the point where you, and I think we traveled so much during that phase.

01:33:01.269 --> 01:33:08.389
It's kind of hard to like explain the, the thinking that we had because we loved it, but we would travel all the time.

01:33:08.389 --> 01:33:12.769
And when we come home, it was like, Oh, yes, this is wonderful.

01:33:12.779 --> 01:33:26.679
Cause we could go travel to a city, we go travel to Europe and come back, but then we're like in our little sanctuary that we, we have deer that come up to the fence and like owls fly over and hawks.

01:33:26.679 --> 01:33:27.788
And that's fair.

01:33:27.819 --> 01:33:28.429
So.

01:33:28.769 --> 01:33:35.259
You know, there were many years, but then, you know, we did have our son and again, it, it wasn't, it wasn't that bad.

01:33:35.269 --> 01:33:44.139
It was when school started and when he really needed to develop friendships, that's when it really hit home for us personally.

01:33:44.788 --> 01:33:57.043
And, and also as we've been trying to scale this business, because nobody, In, outside of, you know, rural Nashville outside area is like, Hey, let's start a tech company.

01:33:57.613 --> 01:33:58.024
Right.

01:33:58.064 --> 01:33:58.333
Right.

01:33:58.363 --> 01:34:00.564
And even in Nashville, it's a great city.

01:34:01.019 --> 01:34:15.309
But it's grown extremely fast stuff, mostly they, yeah, and there is some tech, but it's, it is just not like we come from San Diego and like visiting the Bay area a bunch and having friends in LA.

01:34:15.338 --> 01:34:19.458
And so like, we're definitely like West coast tech scene is what we're used to.

01:34:19.458 --> 01:34:22.918
And that is not Southeast Texas, right.

01:34:23.139 --> 01:34:26.588
By any means, Northeast Nebraska or yes.

01:34:27.128 --> 01:34:29.819
And so, you know, it just, we, we.

01:34:30.038 --> 01:34:34.479
We tried, but it was just, uh, we needed a change after a number of years.

01:34:34.529 --> 01:34:37.649
Well, and you can, you can probably rent that place.

01:34:38.158 --> 01:34:44.399
Is your, uh, So ten years later, our Airbnb vacation home will be on Airbnb this year.

01:34:44.618 --> 01:34:44.769
Oh, nice.

01:34:45.238 --> 01:34:45.418
Perfect.

01:34:45.488 --> 01:34:47.288
Oh, you kept your Nashville place then.

01:34:47.599 --> 01:34:49.328
Yeah, we're keeping that.

01:34:49.368 --> 01:34:50.979
Um, we had bought a lake house.

01:34:51.389 --> 01:34:53.458
Um, we had scored an awesome deal.

01:34:53.469 --> 01:34:59.349
So just North East of Nashville, there's a lake called Dale Hollow, which goes in into Kentucky.

01:34:59.908 --> 01:35:03.298
Um, but we ended up scoring a lake house on that lake on the bluff.

01:35:03.298 --> 01:35:05.759
So three bedroom, two bath, we paid 80 K cash.

01:35:05.779 --> 01:35:05.798
Wow.

01:35:06.543 --> 01:35:07.163
Yeah, it was amazing.

01:35:08.184 --> 01:35:08.644
Amazing.

01:35:08.743 --> 01:35:09.184
Right.

01:35:09.283 --> 01:35:10.363
The 800k here.

01:35:10.474 --> 01:35:11.104
Yeah.

01:35:11.384 --> 01:35:17.644
And, um, we absolutely loved that place and then we started renting it out and then we ended up selling it to Simplify Our Lives.

01:35:17.644 --> 01:35:18.844
We sold it about a year ago.

01:35:18.884 --> 01:35:19.264
Okay.

01:35:19.583 --> 01:35:22.344
And, um, and did well on that.

01:35:22.344 --> 01:35:22.654
I'm sure.

01:35:22.654 --> 01:35:25.354
And then after the exit, we put some money towards a commercial building.

01:35:25.354 --> 01:35:27.184
So we've got a commercial building in Tennessee.

01:35:27.184 --> 01:35:27.644
Yeah, yeah.

01:35:27.823 --> 01:35:28.634
That we rent out.

01:35:28.663 --> 01:35:32.663
And so, you know, it's all these little things that add up.

01:35:32.854 --> 01:35:33.154
Bye.

01:35:33.503 --> 01:35:38.043
Now we'll have a Airbnb and reserve for ourselves when we want to go back.

01:35:38.064 --> 01:35:38.354
Yeah.

01:35:38.413 --> 01:35:38.984
I like that.

01:35:39.113 --> 01:35:39.783
That's a good notion.

01:35:39.863 --> 01:35:41.944
It only took us 10 years to execute that plan.

01:35:42.354 --> 01:35:49.578
What, uh, talk to me about your wife's role in, What was the name of the social media company, by the way?

01:35:50.009 --> 01:35:50.439
It was GoFanbase.

01:35:50.439 --> 01:35:52.849
GoFanbase, okay.

01:35:52.849 --> 01:35:57.069
Yeah, the original name was Chief Ingredient, but everybody thought we cooked stuff.

01:35:57.149 --> 01:35:57.529
Right.

01:35:57.819 --> 01:36:00.158
So, don't ask me for naming things.

01:36:00.838 --> 01:36:01.269
Fair.

01:36:01.668 --> 01:36:03.338
Because Second chances.

01:36:03.338 --> 01:36:05.054
Don't have a hot streak so far.

01:36:05.054 --> 01:36:08.889
What was your You kind of talked about your role in your imagination.

01:36:08.918 --> 01:36:11.599
Your wife Was it part of it right from the start?

01:36:12.014 --> 01:36:13.878
Uh, or did you come into it after?

01:36:13.878 --> 01:36:18.399
Man, I don't know if I want to answer this one, but I hired her.

01:36:19.118 --> 01:36:21.708
Oh, so that was how you met her.

01:36:21.769 --> 01:36:22.908
That's how I met her.

01:36:24.109 --> 01:36:24.859
yes.

01:36:24.859 --> 01:36:25.934
This, it's, it's okay.

01:36:26.203 --> 01:36:31.338
It's, it's a great, it's honestly a great story and I wish she was here to tell her side of.

01:36:31.873 --> 01:36:33.224
Because here's what happened.

01:36:33.644 --> 01:36:40.594
I had, um, a guy that was working for me and he goes, Hey, I've got a friend who I think would be really good for this position.

01:36:40.804 --> 01:36:41.083
Uh huh.

01:36:41.444 --> 01:36:45.604
And at the time I think I was a, it was like a part time social media manager position.

01:36:45.604 --> 01:36:46.033
Right, right.

01:36:46.083 --> 01:36:48.083
Something, something kind of low Entry level.

01:36:48.094 --> 01:36:48.894
Low key.

01:36:49.524 --> 01:36:52.713
And so I'm like, cool, like, introduce me.

01:36:52.764 --> 01:36:52.984
Yeah.

01:36:53.014 --> 01:36:53.644
That'd be great.

01:36:53.684 --> 01:37:03.429
And so he did and we, I don't know why, Man, but for some reason, we decided to meet at a restaurant over mostly a bar.

01:37:04.019 --> 01:37:17.279
And, um, I was sitting down, I had my laptop, I had my interview questions planned, and then she walked up and swear to God, I don't remember anything.

01:37:18.088 --> 01:37:23.509
That happened, but six hours later, I was getting her number after making up in the parking lot.

01:37:23.509 --> 01:37:29.498
And she, she had long, straight blonde hair and she was wearing a An incredibly sexy black dress.

01:37:30.559 --> 01:37:31.698
And that was it for me.

01:37:32.069 --> 01:37:33.918
You're like, that dress is not appropriate for this interview.

01:37:33.918 --> 01:37:34.618
Blacked out.

01:37:35.429 --> 01:37:37.078
Completely blacked out.

01:37:37.118 --> 01:37:39.748
I was in love at first sight.

01:37:39.809 --> 01:37:40.519
Hands down.

01:37:40.519 --> 01:37:42.929
Uh, you hired her?

01:37:43.149 --> 01:37:43.828
That I guess?

01:37:44.458 --> 01:37:48.708
So I went back to this guy that referred her to me.

01:37:49.069 --> 01:37:52.639
And all I said was, dude, what's her story?

01:37:52.729 --> 01:37:53.179
Right?

01:37:53.269 --> 01:37:56.328
And he looked at me and he could see it in my eyes, obviously.

01:37:56.354 --> 01:37:56.514
Right.

01:37:56.514 --> 01:37:57.259
He was spitting, right?

01:37:57.259 --> 01:37:57.618
Yeah.

01:37:57.618 --> 01:38:00.969
And he's like, he's like, oh, no, no, no, no.

01:38:00.974 --> 01:38:02.154
Don't, she's off, don't she?

01:38:02.158 --> 01:38:03.833
She's way too outta outta your league buddy.

01:38:03.904 --> 01:38:04.194
Yeah.

01:38:04.328 --> 01:38:07.509
She ba he, he basically said, don't get your, she's outta your league.

01:38:07.719 --> 01:38:07.988
Yeah.

01:38:08.639 --> 01:38:10.259
He, she only dates rich guys.

01:38:10.269 --> 01:38:10.868
Like, don't worry.

01:38:10.929 --> 01:38:11.899
And I'm like, Oh, okay.

01:38:11.908 --> 01:38:12.838
I'm going to be a rich guy someday.

01:38:12.908 --> 01:38:13.408
Cool.

01:38:13.448 --> 01:38:13.849
Yeah.

01:38:13.849 --> 01:38:15.189
I'm like, all right, cool.

01:38:15.509 --> 01:38:16.578
And like, move on.

01:38:16.628 --> 01:38:25.069
And I don't say, or I hired her and I don't say or do anything for a year and a half.

01:38:28.878 --> 01:38:33.798
But would you believe it that, um, almost every day.

01:38:34.213 --> 01:38:37.264
We would strategize after work.

01:38:37.293 --> 01:38:42.154
We'd go and have some beer and some pizza and strategize on work.

01:38:42.154 --> 01:38:44.774
There was a point where she sent me a message.

01:38:44.783 --> 01:38:48.163
She's like, we need to talk like, Oh crap.

01:38:48.163 --> 01:38:48.894
She's going to quit.

01:38:48.934 --> 01:38:50.944
And she's, you know, she came in and she like.

01:38:51.349 --> 01:38:52.418
Knocked it out of the park.

01:38:52.469 --> 01:38:52.798
Yeah.

01:38:52.838 --> 01:38:55.618
She just completely yeah.

01:38:55.658 --> 01:38:58.139
Crushing people two years, three, five years senior.

01:38:58.139 --> 01:38:58.578
Yes.

01:38:58.588 --> 01:38:59.588
Crushed it.

01:38:59.628 --> 01:39:05.399
And so I'm like, crap, she is going to smart and talented and I can't fire her so that I can ask her out.

01:39:05.509 --> 01:39:06.609
Yeah, exactly.

01:39:06.698 --> 01:39:08.088
And now she's going to quit.

01:39:08.128 --> 01:39:12.859
And so now this is like my worst nightmare, the worst situation.

01:39:12.868 --> 01:39:17.259
So we get together, we sit down and she goes, I don't know.

01:39:17.399 --> 01:39:21.958
I think we should fire everybody and build back up, except for a couple of people.

01:39:22.538 --> 01:39:24.509
And I'm like, Oh, thank God.

01:39:24.668 --> 01:39:25.859
I thought you were going to quit.

01:39:25.929 --> 01:39:27.538
And she's like, no, I don't want to quit.

01:39:27.559 --> 01:39:30.309
I just don't want to do the work of everybody anymore.

01:39:31.118 --> 01:39:32.269
And I'm like, Oh, okay.

01:39:32.609 --> 01:39:34.399
And she's like, you're terrible at hiring.

01:39:34.708 --> 01:39:35.729
Let me do the hiring.

01:39:36.979 --> 01:39:43.878
And I'm like, okay, and you're like, do you want to just get married and run this thing together?

01:39:43.889 --> 01:39:44.368
Yeah.

01:39:44.429 --> 01:39:44.738
Yeah.

01:39:44.738 --> 01:39:52.628
I'm like, yeah, well, you just marry me now, but so sure enough, we, we let a bunch of people go.

01:39:53.113 --> 01:39:58.073
In the, like, in the peak of us doing This is when you're like 35 and you shrink back down to 20 or something?

01:39:58.094 --> 01:39:59.104
Yeah, what were we?

01:39:59.104 --> 01:40:03.404
We were probably 15 or 20 and we shrunk back down to like 6.

01:40:03.413 --> 01:40:04.003
Wow.

01:40:04.064 --> 01:40:05.484
And then rapidly hired.

01:40:05.493 --> 01:40:07.144
But I let her do the hiring.

01:40:07.173 --> 01:40:07.713
Yeah, yeah.

01:40:07.823 --> 01:40:10.743
And, uh, again, life lessons, man.

01:40:10.764 --> 01:40:11.993
I learned so much.

01:40:11.993 --> 01:40:17.109
Like, when I would hire people, I would look at their good traits and their bad traits and I would re be really tough.

01:40:17.599 --> 01:40:22.798
Try to balance like, hey, they're going to be really good at this, but maybe they suck at these things.

01:40:23.219 --> 01:40:26.548
But I can overlook that because they'll be really good at these things.

01:40:27.248 --> 01:40:29.569
And she's like, no, we're not going to do that.

01:40:29.618 --> 01:40:34.219
We're going to hire people that are going to be good for this position and only good for this position.

01:40:34.229 --> 01:40:35.288
No bad traits.

01:40:37.359 --> 01:40:39.158
And so, yeah.

01:40:40.123 --> 01:40:44.154
We went with it, and I even, I even tried to like, test the water.

01:40:44.154 --> 01:40:48.913
I'm like, I think this hire will be good, and I'd hire someone, and they fucking fail.

01:40:51.363 --> 01:40:54.033
So she was the secret sauce, really, to your growth.

01:40:54.333 --> 01:40:57.713
She, she was a huge, huge piece of it.

01:40:57.783 --> 01:41:02.493
Yeah, a huge piece of it, because she's the, she's almost the direct opposite of me.

01:41:02.533 --> 01:41:02.873
Yeah.

01:41:03.519 --> 01:41:16.894
And, um, whereas, like, I want to plan, and I want to build systems, and I want to, like, systems and kind of cold, relatively unfeeling in comparison, but she's like Imagining exactly where people are coming from, why they might want to be here.

01:41:16.904 --> 01:41:17.923
Yep, yep.

01:41:17.953 --> 01:41:20.774
She's like, dude, we're just gonna start selling this shit, okay?

01:41:20.793 --> 01:41:23.934
We're gonna stop building, and we're gonna sell this.

01:41:24.543 --> 01:41:25.963
I'm like, okay.

01:41:26.354 --> 01:41:29.613
So like, that's, that was the dynamic that we had.

01:41:29.613 --> 01:41:36.168
So she was, throughout, throughout the growth, right, she's very, Client facing, um, we actually made a really great team.

01:41:36.168 --> 01:41:45.569
There was a number of times where we would go in together because she would be the beautiful woman that would show up for a general manager of an auto dealership, right?

01:41:45.639 --> 01:41:56.509
And then sweet talk, um, not just sweet talk, but like she has obvious sales skills and like would really sell it, but they're not just going to trust the salesperson.

01:41:56.509 --> 01:42:01.109
So then I get to be the person that comes in and be the technical person.

01:42:01.149 --> 01:42:01.939
And, and so they're like.

01:42:02.493 --> 01:42:07.533
Oh yeah, I get to work with you, and I have you supporting on the technical side?

01:42:08.573 --> 01:42:11.463
We're, we're good, we're good, yeah.

01:42:11.654 --> 01:42:14.814
So that, that was kind of our, our MO.

01:42:14.863 --> 01:42:23.738
It's almost politically incorrect to acknowledge that the auto industry is impacted by things like I don't know that I said that.

01:42:24.759 --> 01:42:26.099
Well, you did not say it.

01:42:26.748 --> 01:42:27.238
No, you didn't.

01:42:27.538 --> 01:42:28.878
Well, it's, it's funny.

01:42:28.878 --> 01:42:32.859
It's like acknowledging truth is almost politically incorrect these days.

01:42:32.918 --> 01:42:33.458
Yes.

01:42:33.458 --> 01:42:34.519
Yes.

01:42:34.519 --> 01:42:47.328
One of my previous employees was a very attractive young lady and I was like, you know, like it or not, your looks would open up a lot of doors for us if you decided to exercise them.

01:42:47.389 --> 01:42:49.788
And, and she really didn't want to and I never made her.

01:42:49.958 --> 01:42:50.359
Yeah.

01:42:50.448 --> 01:42:55.453
Uh, And I think you can say things like that without getting thrown in political correctness jail.

01:42:55.474 --> 01:42:56.123
Should be able to.

01:42:56.123 --> 01:42:56.654
Yeah, yeah.

01:42:56.833 --> 01:43:00.404
Anyway, so where did the, uh, the romance start then?

01:43:00.654 --> 01:43:03.894
Like, was she already your business partner before you asked her out then?

01:43:04.413 --> 01:43:08.984
So, I mean, this is, yeah, this is, this is where it gets, um.

01:43:08.993 --> 01:43:11.134
Nobody HR is judging this conversation.

01:43:11.144 --> 01:43:12.713
We, we were HR.

01:43:12.729 --> 01:43:14.708
Right, right, exactly.

01:43:15.088 --> 01:43:16.639
We were HR at that time.

01:43:16.639 --> 01:43:23.418
So, I mean, it got to the point where we would go out almost every single night, strategize on the business, each from our own perspectives.

01:43:23.418 --> 01:43:25.118
We really enjoyed each other's company.

01:43:25.118 --> 01:43:27.498
Of course, I'm still head over heels in love with this girl.

01:43:27.509 --> 01:43:28.958
Right, well, where's the first kiss?

01:43:29.259 --> 01:43:32.479
So, we were doing that for a while.

01:43:32.599 --> 01:43:33.349
Like a year and a half.

01:43:33.588 --> 01:43:38.559
Yeah, and it was on my 30th birthday, and I invited her out to my birthday party.

01:43:38.609 --> 01:43:39.029
Okay.

01:43:39.149 --> 01:43:45.788
And, um, at the time she was practicing Lent, so she wasn't drinking.

01:43:45.798 --> 01:43:46.168
Okay.

01:43:46.168 --> 01:43:49.578
So she's like, sure, I'll come out and I can be your designated driver.

01:43:50.139 --> 01:43:53.208
And, um, so, I had a bunch of my friends.

01:43:53.208 --> 01:43:54.128
We were all out.

01:43:54.149 --> 01:44:02.698
She ended up showing up and she tells this story much better than I do because I was already half in the bag by the time, yeah, I wasn't practicing Lent.

01:44:02.729 --> 01:44:12.439
So the way that she tells it is that my eyes just lit up when I showed her, when I, when I saw her come in, come into the restaurant or the bar at the time.

01:44:13.219 --> 01:44:25.543
And long story short, You know, we, we hung out, um, somehow all of my other friends just disappeared throughout the night and it was just left between her, her and myself.

01:44:26.043 --> 01:44:30.234
We're at this bar called Nunu's in San Diego, which is a very classic bar.

01:44:30.538 --> 01:44:32.319
Kind of like cool dive bar.

01:44:32.378 --> 01:44:32.548
Yeah.

01:44:32.548 --> 01:44:32.838
Yeah.

01:44:32.918 --> 01:44:46.628
And, uh, so we were, we were sitting in this like vinyl booth and we were shoulder to shoulder and she gets up to go to like, some guys were, um, chat, chatting her up a little bit.

01:44:46.668 --> 01:44:47.918
And then she gets up to go to the bathroom.

01:44:47.918 --> 01:44:48.998
The guys were like, dude, sorry.

01:44:48.998 --> 01:44:51.158
Like, you know, no offense, girl.

01:44:51.189 --> 01:44:51.578
Yeah.

01:44:51.618 --> 01:44:52.198
Kind of thing.

01:44:52.198 --> 01:44:53.259
And I'm like, no, it's cool.

01:44:53.269 --> 01:44:53.998
Like not a big deal.

01:44:53.998 --> 01:44:54.958
We just work together.

01:44:55.229 --> 01:45:00.319
And as soon as those words came out of my drunk mouth, I'm like, What the hell is wrong with me?

01:45:01.399 --> 01:45:03.488
Like, what am I doing here?

01:45:04.708 --> 01:45:08.088
So she comes back to the bat from the bathroom, sits down again.

01:45:08.088 --> 01:45:14.439
We're like sitting shoulder to shoulder and not my smoothest move ever.

01:45:14.878 --> 01:45:16.198
I turned to her and I go.

01:45:16.679 --> 01:45:18.269
You ever think about dating me?

01:45:19.509 --> 01:45:20.899
And that, that was the beginning.

01:45:22.078 --> 01:45:25.689
That was the zinger that sold it all.

01:45:25.689 --> 01:45:26.779
You're a little bit tipsy.

01:45:27.988 --> 01:45:29.958
I'm not asking, I'm just curious.

01:45:29.979 --> 01:45:37.899
Yeah, and uh, she looks at me and she goes, I kind of feel like we already are and I'm like, okay.

01:45:38.288 --> 01:45:39.838
And so, yeah.

01:45:39.849 --> 01:45:43.319
So from that point and, and I think, yeah.

01:45:43.319 --> 01:45:47.779
So February 14th, like we had both broken up with our girlfriend.

01:45:47.779 --> 01:45:48.939
Your birthday is Valentine's day.

01:45:49.423 --> 01:45:59.024
No, but, um, my birthday is March 15th, so, before Valentine's Day, we had already broken up, so we did a platonic Valentine's Day that Claire and I went out.

01:45:59.024 --> 01:46:00.764
Just pretending we're platonic at this point.

01:46:00.774 --> 01:46:12.283
Yeah, and so, we, you know, that, that continued on through to my birthday party, and, um, yeah, so, you know, we, we kind of didn't know what to do from there.

01:46:12.283 --> 01:46:13.234
You kind of courted him.

01:46:13.904 --> 01:46:16.894
Yeah, it was a different way than normal, but very different.

01:46:17.033 --> 01:46:25.913
But, uh, yeah, so we were kind of like, we showed up at work the next Monday and we're like, Hey, Hey, this is super awkward.

01:46:26.673 --> 01:46:28.533
So we decided to go out and chat about it.

01:46:28.533 --> 01:46:33.184
And we had a very long conversation about everything because we both very much enjoyed working with each other.

01:46:33.474 --> 01:46:35.694
We did not want to sacrifice the work relationship.

01:46:36.224 --> 01:47:08.458
So, We closed every bar down every nightclub down that we could go to we sat outside my house at the time that I was renting in her car and continued to like talk about every topic related to like if we Try this right, you know, let's cover all our bases up front all the importantly good things Yeah, if that doesn't work out, yeah somehow and so that that was that was it analyzed So first kiss was that night After you've worked it all out.

01:47:08.509 --> 01:47:13.399
After we worked it all out, we decided, yeah, 14 hours of conversation later.

01:47:16.009 --> 01:47:16.399
I love it.

01:47:16.408 --> 01:47:19.279
So yeah, so that was, that was that.

01:47:19.288 --> 01:47:21.118
And then we didn't tell anybody at work.

01:47:21.229 --> 01:47:21.788
Oh shoot.

01:47:21.889 --> 01:47:23.609
So we would, we would like.

01:47:24.109 --> 01:47:39.958
We were officially dating and it was kind of one of those things where we're such a good pair, we're so opposite that it like, it just fit in lockstep and it just started working and, but we didn't want to make anybody uncomfortable at work.

01:47:39.958 --> 01:47:49.738
So we would hold hands until we were like two blocks from the office, come in at slightly different times.

01:47:50.889 --> 01:47:52.878
You just sit on this park bench for a minute.

01:47:52.899 --> 01:47:53.618
Yeah, the just.

01:47:53.639 --> 01:47:55.198
So silly.

01:47:55.649 --> 01:48:05.639
And, um, within three, let's see, yeah, within three months, you know, the way, the way that I think back on it, it's like I never really understood marriage growing up.

01:48:05.668 --> 01:48:05.998
Yeah.

01:48:07.048 --> 01:48:08.670
It just didn't, just didn't get right.

01:48:08.684 --> 01:48:10.024
You hadn't really seen a great example of it.

01:48:10.024 --> 01:48:10.823
What's obviously, yeah.

01:48:10.828 --> 01:48:11.998
What's the point, right?

01:48:12.298 --> 01:48:17.639
And when I met her I was like, okay, I have this urge.

01:48:18.939 --> 01:48:21.538
To like, I think I understand marriage now.

01:48:21.548 --> 01:48:29.288
I have this urge to be able to say, I'm dedicated to you and, you know, let's do this life together.

01:48:29.679 --> 01:48:31.139
And all of a sudden it made sense.

01:48:31.519 --> 01:48:38.498
So I think it was within three months of us, of my 30th birthday, we were engaged.

01:48:39.349 --> 01:48:41.708
I proposed at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

01:48:41.769 --> 01:48:42.328
Oh, wow.

01:48:42.368 --> 01:48:42.939
Yeah.

01:48:43.479 --> 01:48:44.819
And, uh, have a supai.

01:48:44.899 --> 01:48:45.359
Yeah.

01:48:46.038 --> 01:48:46.859
You know, I think.

01:48:47.208 --> 01:48:58.809
I'm a, I'm a, I'm a really libertarian leaning person generally, and like, we don't have any contracts with our members, we don't have any contracts even with our facilitators who are effectively my service delivery model.

01:48:58.889 --> 01:48:59.269
Right.

01:48:59.298 --> 01:49:00.359
Because I just don't think it's right.

01:49:00.359 --> 01:49:03.109
I think if you want to be gone, you should just go.

01:49:03.798 --> 01:49:08.988
Um, and, like I see the tremendous value of a covenant.

01:49:09.819 --> 01:49:10.408
Contract, right?

01:49:10.418 --> 01:49:16.868
Like a marriage covenant where you're like, you know, you break both your legs and get a head injury.

01:49:17.059 --> 01:49:18.088
I'm still with you.

01:49:18.189 --> 01:49:18.698
Yeah.

01:49:18.798 --> 01:49:19.618
That's my covenant.

01:49:19.668 --> 01:49:20.689
That's my promise.

01:49:20.719 --> 01:49:25.838
Because there's so much value to both people to live knowing that you've got that other person there.

01:49:26.118 --> 01:49:38.354
Yeah, it just, you know, as, And those three months seemed so long, seemed like such a long time, but you told everybody after you got engaged, I presume, uh, yeah, yeah, at the office.

01:49:38.354 --> 01:49:39.373
We finally did.

01:49:39.884 --> 01:49:40.913
Hey, yeah.

01:49:41.144 --> 01:49:45.463
So, you know, we got engaged last weekend and I think, I think, uh, yeah.

01:49:45.463 --> 01:49:47.363
So is my birthday is in March.

01:49:47.783 --> 01:49:49.583
And then by the end of August, we're married.

01:49:49.644 --> 01:49:50.014
Wow.

01:49:50.043 --> 01:49:50.604
Same year.

01:49:50.684 --> 01:49:51.243
Very cool.

01:49:51.583 --> 01:49:51.963
Yeah.

01:49:51.993 --> 01:49:53.054
And nobody was surprised.

01:49:53.283 --> 01:49:54.583
I, I think her parents were.

01:49:54.583 --> 01:49:54.953
Except maybe her mom.

01:49:54.953 --> 01:49:55.194
Yeah.

01:49:55.194 --> 01:49:58.634
I think her mom was like, You're gonna what?

01:49:58.724 --> 01:49:59.474
Your boss?

01:50:00.713 --> 01:50:00.923
No.

01:50:00.923 --> 01:50:02.304
How old, was she younger?

01:50:02.463 --> 01:50:03.474
She's three years younger than I am.

01:50:03.484 --> 01:50:04.833
Okay, but not a lot younger.

01:50:04.884 --> 01:50:05.594
So it was the same.

01:50:05.823 --> 01:50:09.934
So she was already, you know, not an old maid yet, but getting up there.

01:50:10.243 --> 01:50:13.104
Ah, she's still, still wonderful.

01:50:13.104 --> 01:50:13.264
Yeah.

01:50:14.373 --> 01:50:18.823
Um, I'm going to call one quick break, then we're going to go into our closing segments and wrap this up.

01:50:18.913 --> 01:50:19.623
Sounds perfect.

01:50:20.394 --> 01:50:21.354
And we're back.

01:50:21.734 --> 01:50:25.844
So we, uh, we've been talking about Elaine a little bit already.

01:50:25.844 --> 01:50:31.753
I think, uh, in our, might as well do our closing segments here of Faith, Family, Politics and Start With Family.

01:50:32.144 --> 01:50:32.793
Sounds good.

01:50:32.873 --> 01:50:38.908
Um, do you want to, I mean, you've kind of Talked a lot about why you liked her so much.

01:50:38.908 --> 01:50:40.819
Do you want to talk about why she might have liked you?

01:50:41.588 --> 01:50:42.719
I'm still figuring that out.

01:50:42.748 --> 01:50:43.139
Okay.

01:50:44.788 --> 01:50:46.509
If I asked her, what would she say about?

01:50:46.948 --> 01:50:52.618
If you asked her, I mean, I think, you know, I don't know.

01:50:52.679 --> 01:50:54.488
I'm not that handsome of a guy.

01:50:55.529 --> 01:50:56.139
You're pretty cute.

01:50:56.149 --> 01:50:56.559
Thanks.

01:50:56.559 --> 01:50:57.359
I was fishing.

01:50:57.529 --> 01:50:57.838
Yeah.

01:51:00.208 --> 01:51:04.849
But, um, you know, I think we just connected.

01:51:05.078 --> 01:51:07.389
So, there's, there's You didn't push it.

01:51:07.819 --> 01:51:08.418
No.

01:51:08.529 --> 01:51:09.069
No.

01:51:09.208 --> 01:51:13.198
I mean, that's one thing is, like, she is stunning.

01:51:13.288 --> 01:51:19.479
And so, you know, I, I was completely, like I said, head over heels.

01:51:19.479 --> 01:51:22.779
Intimidated, kinda, but also I think that's the difference.

01:51:22.809 --> 01:51:23.759
I wasn't intimidated.

01:51:23.759 --> 01:51:24.198
Yeah.

01:51:24.328 --> 01:51:24.548
Yeah.

01:51:24.599 --> 01:51:27.288
And I think a lot of guys around her were.

01:51:27.448 --> 01:51:32.338
were and she's used to guys being intimidated, so I didn't have the intimidation.

01:51:32.338 --> 01:51:33.479
I had the confidence.

01:51:33.488 --> 01:51:33.658
Yeah.

01:51:33.658 --> 01:51:33.979
Yeah.

01:51:34.269 --> 01:51:42.328
And we work together so she could see me execute and she could see me that you had skills, lead, focused and all those things.

01:51:42.378 --> 01:51:44.529
So all those important factors.

01:51:44.588 --> 01:51:50.628
I, uh, I have, I haven't a few superpowers, but one of them is that Beautiful women love me.

01:51:51.359 --> 01:51:52.359
It's a good one to have.

01:51:52.448 --> 01:51:57.359
It seems like the more beautiful and the smarter and more capable, the more they seem to like me.

01:51:57.748 --> 01:52:03.038
And partly it's because I'm not like, dumb, drippin over my tongue around them and stuff.

01:52:03.238 --> 01:52:04.779
I'm married for twenty some years.

01:52:04.779 --> 01:52:09.319
I don't care how pretty you are, or how big your boobs are, or whatever.

01:52:09.319 --> 01:52:09.559
I don't care.

01:52:09.569 --> 01:52:10.538
Right, right.

01:52:10.538 --> 01:52:13.038
And I can tell that you're an amazingly powerful person.

01:52:13.323 --> 01:52:13.724
Creature.

01:52:14.384 --> 01:52:14.583
Right.

01:52:14.583 --> 01:52:14.934
Good job.

01:52:15.663 --> 01:52:28.604
You know, and they get, yeah, anyway, I don't mean to talk about myself in that, but I think it is, especially for very attractive women, not having, having dudes around that fumble over themselves.

01:52:28.673 --> 01:52:29.144
Yeah.

01:52:29.493 --> 01:52:29.783
Yeah.

01:52:29.814 --> 01:52:34.944
I think, I think it was, I mean, I hope, I hope I, the interview, who knows what I said.

01:52:35.604 --> 01:52:35.764
Right.

01:52:35.894 --> 01:52:36.974
But other than that.

01:52:36.974 --> 01:52:37.554
Yeah.

01:52:37.644 --> 01:52:43.644
Uh, you know, I think just having that confidence to be around her and treat her like a normal person.

01:52:43.734 --> 01:52:43.974
Yeah.

01:52:43.974 --> 01:52:43.975
Yeah.

01:52:44.123 --> 01:52:46.253
Not something I was trying to win.

01:52:46.314 --> 01:52:46.583
Yeah.

01:52:46.673 --> 01:52:47.963
Put on your menu.

01:52:48.083 --> 01:52:48.594
Yeah.

01:52:48.594 --> 01:52:49.163
If you will.

01:52:49.224 --> 01:52:49.703
Yeah.

01:52:49.703 --> 01:52:54.623
So, and you know, and we just, we, we both really enjoy entrepreneurship.

01:52:54.623 --> 01:52:55.793
We both enjoy business.

01:52:55.798 --> 01:52:55.854
Yeah.

01:52:55.859 --> 01:52:57.444
We're both super ambitious.

01:52:57.654 --> 01:53:00.923
So while we align on all kinds of things.

01:53:01.434 --> 01:53:09.024
We also are, take it from such different angles, which later in our relationship was more difficult than in the beginning.

01:53:09.033 --> 01:53:09.743
Right, right.

01:53:09.774 --> 01:53:14.293
And so now we're kind of circumventing around back to, uh, making it a positive.

01:53:14.354 --> 01:53:21.373
I did a little workshop for the Founded Foco stuff, uh, building a team with shared values and diverse talents.

01:53:21.823 --> 01:53:22.394
Ooh.

01:53:22.734 --> 01:53:23.184
Yeah.

01:53:23.264 --> 01:53:23.734
I like that.

01:53:23.823 --> 01:53:25.713
Uh, and really that kind of notion.

01:53:25.713 --> 01:53:31.798
And like Alma, who you met here a couple hours ago now, like if We look at that.

01:53:31.838 --> 01:53:33.719
I mentioned that hallows relational intelligence.

01:53:33.809 --> 01:53:34.958
She's the opposite of me.

01:53:35.519 --> 01:53:38.069
I've got no organizer, no integrator.

01:53:38.109 --> 01:53:38.599
Almost.

01:53:38.609 --> 01:53:41.979
She doesn't have very many ideas and she's not very people person.

01:53:42.118 --> 01:53:42.729
Yeah.

01:53:42.828 --> 01:53:47.658
Um, she's probably a lot more like you and me and Elaine would probably connect better, easier.

01:53:47.798 --> 01:53:50.099
Probably beautiful.

01:53:50.118 --> 01:53:51.378
So obviously she'll love me.

01:53:53.498 --> 01:53:58.418
We always do a, uh, a one word description of the children in this podcast.

01:53:58.509 --> 01:54:00.463
Would you like to attempt that with, uh, Uh, Fletcher.

01:54:00.694 --> 01:54:01.323
Energy.

01:54:01.474 --> 01:54:02.203
Energy.

01:54:02.344 --> 01:54:02.743
Yeah.

01:54:02.753 --> 01:54:03.154
Nice.

01:54:03.394 --> 01:54:03.844
Yeah.

01:54:03.894 --> 01:54:04.684
He is.

01:54:05.373 --> 01:54:07.423
I mean, he's just on top of it.

01:54:07.564 --> 01:54:07.894
Right.

01:54:08.043 --> 01:54:12.764
Turned on in the morning, and when he finally turns off, then he's been going full power all day.

01:54:12.833 --> 01:54:13.234
Yep.

01:54:13.573 --> 01:54:25.753
Yeah, it's, um, I didn't really, being an only child and I was always the youngest in family settings, I didn't really understand what to expect when I had a son.

01:54:26.434 --> 01:54:31.974
And, uh, and honestly it was extremely difficult the first six years of his life.

01:54:31.993 --> 01:54:32.423
Oh, really?

01:54:32.703 --> 01:54:33.573
Very much.

01:54:33.654 --> 01:54:34.203
Very much.

01:54:34.203 --> 01:54:35.623
To the point where I feel like For you?

01:54:35.663 --> 01:54:35.993
Yes.

01:54:35.993 --> 01:54:36.354
For him?

01:54:36.363 --> 01:54:36.703
Both?

01:54:36.703 --> 01:54:42.229
Just that Well, you know, uh He definitely, he loves me.

01:54:42.238 --> 01:54:44.038
He loves his mommy, of course.

01:54:44.498 --> 01:54:49.469
Um, I, I think it was very, it was very difficult for me.

01:54:50.309 --> 01:54:55.269
I just couldn't quite grasp how to be a dad.

01:54:55.368 --> 01:54:55.838
Yeah.

01:54:55.929 --> 01:54:56.099
Yeah.

01:54:56.099 --> 01:54:56.958
It was tough.

01:54:57.059 --> 01:55:01.698
Well, and probably he's got a lot of his dad in him, so he doesn't really like being told what to do.

01:55:02.708 --> 01:55:03.168
Yeah.

01:55:03.708 --> 01:55:07.349
And you've been like leading people and telling people what to do for a long time.

01:55:07.519 --> 01:55:10.399
He's the perfect mix between me and Elaine.

01:55:10.439 --> 01:55:10.698
Yeah.

01:55:10.698 --> 01:55:10.764
Yeah.

01:55:11.104 --> 01:55:20.613
And so he's very outgoing, very like front of the room, but he's also very analytical and he's got this wit to him.

01:55:21.014 --> 01:55:24.413
But as a baby, of course, none of that comes out.

01:55:24.453 --> 01:55:27.554
It wasn't until he could start talking.

01:55:27.934 --> 01:55:29.524
He hasn't stopped talking yet.

01:55:29.934 --> 01:55:33.003
But once he started, then I was able to relate.

01:55:33.033 --> 01:55:35.663
But before, He was really talking.

01:55:35.663 --> 01:55:36.783
It was just so hard.

01:55:36.953 --> 01:55:41.524
Yeah, like I just could not get a get a grasp on it.

01:55:41.564 --> 01:55:55.868
Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah What would you say about your extended family is your mom still around Uh, today I have no idea.

01:55:56.009 --> 01:55:56.259
Really?

01:55:56.259 --> 01:55:58.259
She, uh, have you seen Nomadland?

01:55:58.979 --> 01:55:59.538
No.

01:55:59.738 --> 01:56:05.078
It's the story of, uh, I think it, I haven't watched it because it hit too close to home.

01:56:05.899 --> 01:56:06.488
Yeah, fair.

01:56:06.509 --> 01:56:08.918
But, it, they basically sold their house.

01:56:09.423 --> 01:56:20.064
Bought an RV, have been traveling around, um, they work at the Amazon, um, whatever you call it, where you're doing the, the packaging and stuff.

01:56:20.613 --> 01:56:23.734
The Amazon Center's on, uh, like, for seasonal work.

01:56:23.804 --> 01:56:25.833
Yeah, and then just travel, nobody?

01:56:26.354 --> 01:56:28.264
Yeah, so With your stepdad still?

01:56:28.373 --> 01:56:28.673
Yep.

01:56:28.844 --> 01:56:30.064
Wow, interesting.

01:56:30.173 --> 01:56:36.514
So, I think they were in Utah for a while, I can't remember where they're at right now.

01:56:36.543 --> 01:56:37.003
Interesting.

01:56:37.003 --> 01:56:38.354
But we'll talk every once in a while.

01:56:38.363 --> 01:56:38.823
Yeah, yeah.

01:56:38.823 --> 01:56:38.859
Yeah.

01:56:38.859 --> 01:56:38.894
Yeah.

01:56:39.243 --> 01:56:39.703
Yeah.

01:56:39.854 --> 01:56:42.243
Um, any other extended family out there?

01:56:42.444 --> 01:56:43.974
Um, my dad Monselk and cousins?

01:56:44.003 --> 01:56:44.463
Whatever?

01:56:45.003 --> 01:56:49.163
I've got, you know, I've got some cousins, um, kind of still in the Midwest.

01:56:49.304 --> 01:56:49.634
Yeah.

01:56:49.753 --> 01:56:53.453
Um, most of my grandparents have passed.

01:56:53.453 --> 01:56:55.363
I have my grandma on my mom's side.

01:56:55.404 --> 01:56:55.703
Uh huh.

01:56:55.774 --> 01:56:56.934
She's in a memory unit.

01:56:57.024 --> 01:56:57.793
And Yeah, yeah.

01:56:57.793 --> 01:56:59.877
My grandma on my dad's side Not really with you much anymore.

01:56:59.877 --> 01:57:00.753
Also in a memory unit.

01:57:00.753 --> 01:57:01.003
Yeah.

01:57:01.333 --> 01:57:06.269
So they're kind of both at the end of their You started mentioning your dad.

01:57:06.279 --> 01:57:07.899
Have you had a relationship there?

01:57:07.939 --> 01:57:09.498
Yeah, we have a good relationship.

01:57:09.618 --> 01:57:11.128
Um, he still lives in Minnesota.

01:57:11.198 --> 01:57:11.418
Yeah.

01:57:11.418 --> 01:57:14.349
So, uh, yeah, we talk, we talk often.

01:57:14.429 --> 01:57:17.628
And, um, you know, it's him and my stepmom.

01:57:18.253 --> 01:57:22.144
And, uh, we, yeah, we've got a really good relationship with them.

01:57:22.154 --> 01:57:22.703
Yeah, yeah.

01:57:23.224 --> 01:57:28.314
Definitely a smaller family tree in, at least in action than a lot of folks I've talked to.

01:57:28.314 --> 01:57:29.073
Super, super small.

01:57:29.094 --> 01:57:30.283
I thought it was normal.

01:57:30.333 --> 01:57:30.673
Right.

01:57:30.673 --> 01:57:34.363
Like, there'd be times we'd get around, like, I've got a, I've got two uncles.

01:57:35.003 --> 01:57:42.503
And, um, growing up, uh, most of our family gatherings, we could fit everybody around a large table.

01:57:42.554 --> 01:57:42.974
Right.

01:57:43.418 --> 01:58:03.238
And then I, when I met Elaine and I go hang out with her family, there's, I still, after 12 years, almost 13 years, cannot keep track of all the extended family and like relationships, let alone remember all of their names, her family's huge.

01:58:03.378 --> 01:58:08.899
Well, my, my dad was one of nine siblings and then his.

01:58:10.333 --> 01:58:15.033
Dad was one of nine or something and my dad had 53 cousins when he was growing up.

01:58:15.094 --> 01:58:15.793
Wow.

01:58:15.823 --> 01:58:19.484
Yeah, that sounds more like I think Elaine's mom I'd like nine.

01:58:19.684 --> 01:58:26.533
Yeah, and I don't have anywhere near that I think I've got like eight cousins or something like that, but it's still a little quite a bit different.

01:58:26.533 --> 01:58:27.668
I've got Yeah.

01:58:27.668 --> 01:58:34.038
I have three siblings, and then three step siblings in my case, and a bunch of new babies and stuff, so.

01:58:34.038 --> 01:58:34.509
Wow.

01:58:34.509 --> 01:58:34.899
Yeah.

01:58:34.899 --> 01:58:37.849
It's really interesting thinking about such a compact family.

01:58:37.958 --> 01:58:38.378
Yeah.

01:58:38.529 --> 01:58:39.038
Travel light.

01:58:39.048 --> 01:58:41.019
Because one of my uncles never had kids.

01:58:41.029 --> 01:58:41.368
Yeah.

01:58:41.578 --> 01:58:43.458
Uh, my other uncle just had two.

01:58:43.538 --> 01:58:53.238
Um, my stepbrother has never had kids, so my, my stepsister, she was, uh, mentally handicapped.

01:58:53.389 --> 01:59:04.048
She was, uh, a year, can't remember now, a couple years older than me, but, uh, she unfortunately was, uh, she passed pretty early.

01:59:04.048 --> 01:59:10.219
Um, She choked on a piece of banana and was nonverbal and couldn't Oh no shit.

01:59:10.349 --> 01:59:12.279
Yeah, couldn't What a tragedy.

01:59:12.328 --> 01:59:14.458
Get to anybody, right?

01:59:14.548 --> 01:59:17.998
So, you know, she's in a wheelchair and she's nonverbal.

01:59:18.069 --> 01:59:18.689
Oh wow.

01:59:18.738 --> 01:59:20.009
And Huh.

01:59:20.059 --> 01:59:25.288
Yeah, it was just one of those I actually had a banana save me, uh, not too long ago.

01:59:27.719 --> 02:00:01.863
I can eat all my vitamins in one shot, like a little handful, and just a little splash of water, and just drink them all down well, but I forgot that I had these new chewable vitamin C's that were like a disc the size of like a Rolaids, or bigger, like a Tums, and I got it stuck, like, in my throat, and I can, like, talk, and breathe, it's just very uncomfortable, and I'm, like, talking to Jill, and researching online, and apparently eating a banana will help with something like that, because you've got enough mass that you can Push it, but it's soft enough and squishy enough that you can, like, pick it back up really easily if you don't get it down and stuff.

02:00:02.024 --> 02:00:02.604
Jeez.

02:00:02.613 --> 02:00:10.444
So I, like, was drinking water and trying to dissolve this freaking vitamin C thing that's stuck in my throat and then eventually ate some bananas and pushed it down.

02:00:10.493 --> 02:00:10.734
Yeah.

02:00:10.844 --> 02:00:11.463
There you go.

02:00:11.484 --> 02:00:12.144
So, anyway.

02:00:12.203 --> 02:00:12.514
There you go.

02:00:12.524 --> 02:00:13.564
I had a better experience than you.

02:00:13.788 --> 02:00:15.588
Yes, much better, I'd say.

02:00:15.988 --> 02:00:18.578
Um, family, faith, politics.

02:00:18.588 --> 02:00:20.838
Do you prefer faith or politics discussion next?

02:00:20.859 --> 02:00:21.708
Let's do faith.

02:00:21.788 --> 02:00:22.208
All right.

02:00:22.708 --> 02:00:26.708
Um, I know your wife went, uh, took Lent seriously at a time and place.

02:00:26.719 --> 02:00:26.738
Yeah.

02:00:26.748 --> 02:00:29.748
Which was probably not that common in San Diego at that time.

02:00:29.878 --> 02:00:31.048
No, not at all.

02:00:31.059 --> 02:00:32.179
So that's Catholic, maybe?

02:00:32.179 --> 02:00:32.859
It's Catholic, yep.

02:00:32.868 --> 02:00:33.109
Okay.

02:00:33.168 --> 02:00:35.039
Yeah, so she, she was raised Catholic.

02:00:35.039 --> 02:00:35.824
Her mom's Catholic.

02:00:35.824 --> 02:00:36.087
Okay.

02:00:36.087 --> 02:00:37.918
She went to a private Catholic school.

02:00:37.918 --> 02:00:38.442
All right.

02:00:38.442 --> 02:00:39.751
Um, had a great experience.

02:00:39.751 --> 02:00:40.012
Yep.

02:00:40.012 --> 02:00:43.958
You know, there's a lot of people from LSU and, and Louisiana that.

02:00:44.029 --> 02:00:45.738
Does go to, oh yeah.

02:00:45.798 --> 02:00:49.849
'cause that's kind of, uh, San Diego, French Catholic kinda scene there.

02:00:49.849 --> 02:00:50.118
Right.

02:00:50.179 --> 02:00:51.679
So it was, it was cool.

02:00:52.059 --> 02:00:56.128
Um, so she, I mean she definitely had friends that were doing that.

02:00:56.128 --> 02:01:01.668
I think moving to Tennessee when we first was Baptist land there, right?

02:01:01.878 --> 02:01:02.029
Woo.

02:01:02.029 --> 02:01:02.448
Yeah.

02:01:03.319 --> 02:01:08.118
When we first moved to Tennessee, she was like, well, maybe we should find a Catholic church.

02:01:08.698 --> 02:01:09.569
And, uh, yeah.

02:01:09.569 --> 02:01:14.708
That didn't last long, so we, we never ended up going to one, but, um.

02:01:15.514 --> 02:01:32.713
Yeah, uh, you know, my religion experience was, I remember going to Sunday school in Minnesota, and I remember asking too many questions, and then the, uh, children's pastor asking that I don't come back.

02:01:32.713 --> 02:01:37.243
I like it.

02:01:37.573 --> 02:01:39.684
So that was, yeah, kinda.

02:01:40.373 --> 02:01:43.354
Good Sunday school teachers like it when you ask hard questions.

02:01:43.373 --> 02:01:44.283
Yeah.

02:01:44.404 --> 02:01:45.594
But not all of them.

02:01:46.243 --> 02:01:55.663
So that was, yeah, so that was, I mean, and I think that really identifies my experience with religion throughout my life.

02:01:55.684 --> 02:01:56.453
They checked you out.

02:01:56.453 --> 02:01:57.533
So you kind of checked out.

02:01:58.033 --> 02:01:58.764
In some ways?

02:01:58.913 --> 02:02:03.304
A bit, but it offered more questions than answers for me.

02:02:03.844 --> 02:02:10.154
I never felt like I could get the answers from religion that it felt like a lot of people did.

02:02:10.184 --> 02:02:16.033
Now, when my parents got divorced, my mom, they, I mean, Micah is a book in the Bible.

02:02:16.703 --> 02:02:19.984
Neither of my parents were religious, raising me when I was born.

02:02:20.404 --> 02:02:24.088
And when they got a divorce, my mom, became pretty religious.

02:02:24.088 --> 02:02:24.658
Oh, OK.

02:02:25.009 --> 02:02:28.189
And so, and she joined a church with my stepdad.

02:02:28.698 --> 02:02:32.529
Um, it is interesting that they named me Micah out of the Bible Right, right.

02:02:32.529 --> 02:02:33.679
not being religious.

02:02:33.689 --> 02:02:34.139
Right.

02:02:34.529 --> 02:02:40.448
And then later Well, your stepdad was kind of a hard guy in comparison to your father that was kind of bound in kindness.

02:02:40.509 --> 02:02:41.109
Exactly.

02:02:41.139 --> 02:02:44.578
Um, so you had this kind of contradictory Very, yes.

02:02:44.599 --> 02:02:49.594
Which further reinforced Not getting involved in any type of religion.

02:02:49.604 --> 02:03:02.474
That's fair, yeah, no, I mean, that's uh, probably more people are kept away from the hypocrisy of the people that they see that call themselves Christians than the mixed messages they actually get from the, from the pulpit.

02:03:02.474 --> 02:03:05.404
But you've got an eight year old now, and Yes.

02:03:05.649 --> 02:03:15.179
Yeah, and we sent him, I mean, it was, again, Tennessee is a great place, but maybe not the best fit for us.

02:03:15.439 --> 02:03:19.929
So we, you know, we would send him to like, Mother's Day Out was put on by the churches.

02:03:20.578 --> 02:03:28.668
And so the local church, we'd get him there once or twice a day and let him try to make, um, Get exposure and see how he felt.

02:03:28.988 --> 02:03:30.918
He just got very confused.

02:03:30.929 --> 02:03:31.328
Right.

02:03:31.509 --> 02:03:37.298
So he was combining the story of Jesus with storks, delivering him.

02:03:37.788 --> 02:03:43.319
And for a very long period of time, when he could first speak, he thought it was Jesus that taught him how to speak.

02:03:43.649 --> 02:03:44.149
Right, right.

02:03:44.149 --> 02:03:49.849
After the storks delivered him, just mixing up all the messages that the churches were given.

02:03:49.849 --> 02:04:14.269
So, um, but, but yeah, it's, I think, you The culture in Tennessee, and I would say the hypocrisy, like we ran into things where our son would have very good friends in school, we would try to get together with those kids and have playdates and stuff with our son, but the parents wouldn't return our calls or our texts.

02:04:15.014 --> 02:04:18.243
The assumption that I'm making with this is because I didn't go to their church.

02:04:18.314 --> 02:04:19.783
We didn't go to their church.

02:04:20.384 --> 02:04:22.734
And so it was this very exclusionary thing.

02:04:22.743 --> 02:04:23.203
Right.

02:04:23.253 --> 02:04:26.823
Instead of like, it's not like we're worshiping Satan over here.

02:04:26.833 --> 02:04:27.333
Right.

02:04:27.684 --> 02:04:29.894
We're just not going to the Baptist church.

02:04:29.904 --> 02:04:30.463
And yeah, yeah.

02:04:30.703 --> 02:04:36.854
No, it's a, it's an interesting, a podcast I listened to recently was talking about status.

02:04:36.944 --> 02:04:37.423
Mm-Hmm.

02:04:38.144 --> 02:04:43.203
Um, and like how like a hundred years ago, like status was a lot easier to measure.

02:04:43.203 --> 02:04:48.724
It was mostly measured by your local church, whoever, whichever chapter you were a part of, kind of Oh, interesting.

02:04:48.724 --> 02:04:51.003
Like however good of a Christian you were.

02:04:51.333 --> 02:04:51.694
Yeah.

02:04:51.694 --> 02:04:54.234
Kind of a, a, a affirmed, affixed.

02:04:54.234 --> 02:04:55.404
A lot of the status to you.

02:04:55.873 --> 02:04:56.113
Hmm.

02:04:56.173 --> 02:04:56.713
And the last.

02:04:57.184 --> 02:05:07.524
50 years, especially it's maybe been a little bit more about like entrepreneurism and you know, living the American dreams and the tech founders and different things like that.

02:05:07.524 --> 02:05:17.503
And maybe the last five years or something, it's more about being your true self, whether you're furry or they, them or whatever.

02:05:17.793 --> 02:05:18.533
Yeah, totally.

02:05:18.543 --> 02:05:24.554
You know, and so there isn't really a scale by which to affix status.

02:05:24.963 --> 02:05:26.663
That's really interesting.

02:05:27.394 --> 02:05:37.104
And so I don't know where that goes, but I have, there's a, uh, check out Elon Musk's feed if you, uh, there's a video that just got released.

02:05:37.104 --> 02:05:40.814
It's like, you know, we're all racist now, we're all racist now.

02:05:40.953 --> 02:05:41.884
You might've seen it already.

02:05:41.884 --> 02:05:42.854
It's been pretty viral.

02:05:43.194 --> 02:05:44.283
But it's like, basically.

02:05:45.154 --> 02:06:00.923
We got all the things, we're, we're racist, and then the last one was, you know, I've got dyslexia, my mother's got bulimia, my wife has this, and it gives me anxiety, we're all mental now, we're all mental now, just waiting to see what's next, and Right.

02:06:01.634 --> 02:06:09.149
There's some that I listen to that I affirm that think that, you know, if God is really dead, it kind of fucks us all up.

02:06:09.819 --> 02:06:18.788
As humans, like, because then the state is the most important thing, and if the state is the most important thing, then they act like it, and now we're back into freakin feudalism.

02:06:18.948 --> 02:06:19.359
Right.

02:06:19.838 --> 02:06:20.828
Or something worse.

02:06:20.838 --> 02:06:22.729
Yes, yes.

02:06:22.729 --> 02:06:33.059
Can you talk to me about that, and I guess what the follow up question is, is, like, are you interested in trying to investigate that faith topic from a more blank slate foundation?

02:06:34.149 --> 02:06:38.668
You know, it's, it's a tough question for me to answer.

02:06:39.128 --> 02:06:46.248
I think in my past, like there's been times where I'm like, I'm going to go to college and study theology.

02:06:46.389 --> 02:06:46.819
Right.

02:06:46.969 --> 02:06:48.779
Because I want to know how all this works.

02:06:48.788 --> 02:06:52.198
The concept of it is super interesting to me.

02:06:52.463 --> 02:06:54.613
How did we get organized religion?

02:06:54.823 --> 02:06:57.804
How do they overlap so much across the globe?

02:06:58.444 --> 02:06:59.703
Things like that, right?

02:06:59.783 --> 02:07:08.823
There's these unanswered mysteries and questions that really intrigue me, but almost from a scientific perspective instead of a faith perspective.

02:07:08.844 --> 02:07:09.804
Yeah, yeah, that's fair.

02:07:10.154 --> 02:07:20.529
So But I think that's just part of the way my brain works, systems and no, yeah, that's, you can't help it like kind of that piece.

02:07:20.559 --> 02:07:29.349
And so, but I will say I have kind of explored, like, you know, what, what is my version of it?

02:07:29.359 --> 02:07:32.948
So what, what do I think is except not acceptable?

02:07:32.948 --> 02:07:37.139
I don't think that's the right word, but like, how do I make peace?

02:07:37.899 --> 02:07:45.009
With, I guess, my own spirituality, not having a predefined one that I prescribe to.

02:07:45.019 --> 02:07:46.998
Like, how then should one live?

02:07:47.048 --> 02:07:47.628
Right.

02:07:48.059 --> 02:07:48.378
Right.

02:07:48.408 --> 02:07:48.908
Yeah.

02:07:48.998 --> 02:07:52.149
And so that's kind of what I've been going in on.

02:07:52.149 --> 02:08:00.538
And so I do like reading, like, I went to a meditation retreat with my dad, actually, where we did a silent meditation retreat for, I think it was four days.

02:08:00.548 --> 02:08:00.899
Wow.

02:08:00.899 --> 02:08:00.929
Yeah.

02:08:01.274 --> 02:08:05.224
And I was pretty apprehensive, like I was excited to do it, but I was apprehensive about it.

02:08:05.963 --> 02:08:13.734
And it felt like a little bit of like, okay, this is a little too far on the side of like the spectrum of, of this.

02:08:14.134 --> 02:08:14.953
On the woo woo side?

02:08:14.993 --> 02:08:17.194
Yeah, where I'm like, I don't, I don't know.

02:08:17.194 --> 02:08:21.024
But I went with it because I'd much rather have that experience than not have the experience.

02:08:21.024 --> 02:08:24.094
It was honestly one of the best experiences I've had in my life.

02:08:24.144 --> 02:08:24.533
That's cool.

02:08:24.878 --> 02:08:31.048
And, um, it just really helped my brain go, hold on, it's not like things slow down.

02:08:31.519 --> 02:08:31.809
Yeah.

02:08:31.878 --> 02:08:33.418
But it just got a lot more simple.

02:08:33.418 --> 02:08:33.819
Yeah, yeah.

02:08:33.859 --> 02:08:43.078
And I could parse things a lot more because I didn't, it wasn't always conversation, it wasn't always engagement, it wasn't always solving problems, it wasn't always this.

02:08:43.429 --> 02:08:48.618
I could just Like, the monks there would teach us, Hey, here's how you do walking meditation.

02:08:48.698 --> 02:08:50.359
Here's how you do yoga meditation.

02:08:51.009 --> 02:08:54.859
And then, my meditation experience before that was about 10 minutes.

02:08:54.868 --> 02:08:55.208
Right.

02:08:56.059 --> 02:08:56.479
Right.

02:08:56.969 --> 02:08:59.788
And the very first meditation was 60 minutes long.

02:08:59.809 --> 02:09:00.168
Wow.

02:09:00.533 --> 02:09:03.003
And I'm like, holy crap, my legs are falling asleep.

02:09:03.394 --> 02:09:05.154
But you do that multiple times.

02:09:05.243 --> 02:09:07.264
And it's just a fantastic experience.

02:09:07.274 --> 02:09:09.184
So I know that's not the same as religion.

02:09:09.184 --> 02:09:12.051
Well, that's why I use the term faith.

02:09:12.051 --> 02:09:12.409
Yeah.

02:09:12.409 --> 02:09:14.560
Because religion is kind of yucky.

02:09:14.560 --> 02:09:15.636
It gets, yeah.

02:09:15.636 --> 02:09:17.427
Religion is what you avoided.

02:09:17.427 --> 02:09:18.145
It is.

02:09:18.145 --> 02:09:19.578
But faith is useful.

02:09:20.118 --> 02:09:20.469
Yeah.

02:09:20.479 --> 02:09:29.408
You know, to me, faith is like, whatever it is that you kind of believe in, that you hang your hat on, that you find value redeeming stuff.

02:09:29.469 --> 02:09:30.038
Yeah.

02:09:30.229 --> 02:09:33.798
And I think I'm still trying to figure a good part of that out.

02:09:33.819 --> 02:09:33.988
Yeah.

02:09:33.988 --> 02:09:34.219
Yeah.

02:09:34.238 --> 02:09:34.729
That's fair.

02:09:34.988 --> 02:09:41.788
Um, do you like, do you use like terms like atheist or agnostic or whatever?

02:09:41.788 --> 02:09:45.328
You don't have, don't have to even think about that question because it's not relevant really.

02:09:45.458 --> 02:09:46.139
Not really.

02:09:46.179 --> 02:09:46.498
Yeah.

02:09:46.529 --> 02:09:47.698
No, I think that's fair.

02:09:47.698 --> 02:09:47.918
Yeah.

02:09:47.918 --> 02:09:48.279
Yeah.

02:09:48.288 --> 02:09:50.529
It's, um, you know, I.

02:09:51.344 --> 02:09:51.793
I don't know.

02:09:51.793 --> 02:09:59.333
It, it, um, because my wife and I, we talk about this every once in a while, like, she definitely believes there's a God.

02:09:59.863 --> 02:10:00.394
Okay.

02:10:00.904 --> 02:10:06.753
I don't believe that there's a white man in the sky.

02:10:07.163 --> 02:10:08.194
A big white beard, for sure.

02:10:08.194 --> 02:10:09.804
With a big white beard, right?

02:10:09.823 --> 02:10:12.604
Santa's brother or something, like, you know.

02:10:12.604 --> 02:10:15.373
I don't believe that.

02:10:15.684 --> 02:10:17.243
But is there a creator?

02:10:17.703 --> 02:10:19.564
There's got to be something right?

02:10:19.753 --> 02:10:24.283
There's got to be something even Aristotle thought of the unmoved mover, right?

02:10:24.304 --> 02:10:24.644
Right.

02:10:24.974 --> 02:10:37.707
So, you know, in that context, like I don't, I don't know that it's like, I'm going to believe what other people say that it should be like this way, but yeah, you're not like a, his name is God.

02:10:37.707 --> 02:10:38.963
And here's his old Testament.

02:10:39.003 --> 02:10:40.613
Here's his new Testament kind of guy.

02:10:40.863 --> 02:10:41.054
Right.

02:10:41.644 --> 02:10:44.154
I do like the concept that we're all matter.

02:10:44.163 --> 02:10:44.613
We're all energy.

02:10:44.654 --> 02:10:47.014
Energy and we're all going to be recycled.

02:10:47.014 --> 02:10:53.644
And there's, there's something that made this and we're part of a much bigger thing than any of us can imagine.

02:10:54.274 --> 02:10:56.413
And it does help think about.

02:10:56.838 --> 02:11:01.759
Well, how much do the little things in life really effing matter?

02:11:01.798 --> 02:11:06.338
Yeah, and so getting that perspective over the years has really helped me.

02:11:06.458 --> 02:11:06.729
Cool.

02:11:07.349 --> 02:11:08.948
Um, politics.

02:11:09.498 --> 02:11:10.368
Everybody's favorite.

02:11:10.918 --> 02:11:11.838
Everybody's favorite.

02:11:12.908 --> 02:11:15.173
My, my March blog is almost like a book.

02:11:15.173 --> 02:11:15.514
It's done.

02:11:15.514 --> 02:11:18.663
It's, uh, being titled, uh, March into Madness.

02:11:20.904 --> 02:11:29.993
Because between the Russia Ukraine stuff and, and frankly, like this New York fraud case against Trump where nobody lost any money, but they're trying to bankrupt him.

02:11:30.823 --> 02:11:48.113
Anyway, as a warning to future would be fraud, something, something like, it's just really bad, like, and for the Russia, Ukraine thing, the worst part to my mind is that we seized all these Russian foreign reserves assets and dollars and all these oligarchs and stuff.

02:11:48.113 --> 02:11:50.354
And we're like, okay, dollar don't mean nothing now.

02:11:50.354 --> 02:11:52.944
We'll just take it whenever we think, which just.

02:11:53.338 --> 02:11:57.779
It's gonna destroy the value of the dollar over time and really allow a lot worse things to happen.

02:11:57.788 --> 02:11:59.998
Anyway, that's what I've been doodling on just lately.

02:12:00.009 --> 02:12:01.259
And the same thing with New York.

02:12:01.948 --> 02:12:13.054
Like, if you start, like, suing people like Donald Trump and taking their money just for being somebody that doesn't like the state of New York's rules, or, not the rules, but the, doesn't want to bend the knee, Yeah.

02:12:13.064 --> 02:12:14.073
To the state of New York.

02:12:14.753 --> 02:12:20.793
Then a lot of people are gonna be like, I'm gonna go build stuff in Florida or North Carolina or not New York.

02:12:20.894 --> 02:12:21.253
Bye.

02:12:21.514 --> 02:12:23.583
I mean, but that's New York's problem.

02:12:23.623 --> 02:12:23.963
Right.

02:12:23.984 --> 02:12:25.663
Well, with the unintended consequences.

02:12:25.703 --> 02:12:26.113
Yes.

02:12:26.163 --> 02:12:26.944
Are significant.

02:12:27.073 --> 02:12:28.173
And it's not New York's problem.

02:12:28.173 --> 02:12:33.764
It's all the people that live in New York that are dutied with this tax that they got to pay someday.

02:12:33.904 --> 02:12:34.373
Yeah.

02:12:34.673 --> 02:12:35.384
Yeah, that's true.

02:12:35.434 --> 02:12:35.753
Anyway.

02:12:35.783 --> 02:12:36.194
That's true.

02:12:36.213 --> 02:12:38.003
What would you like to say about politics?

02:12:38.734 --> 02:12:40.484
Ah, man.

02:12:40.484 --> 02:12:40.524
Yeah.

02:12:40.524 --> 02:12:40.564
Man.

02:12:40.953 --> 02:12:41.854
I don't know.

02:12:41.894 --> 02:12:53.194
I, I would say it's been so uncomfortable for so many years now.

02:12:54.439 --> 02:13:04.288
For so many years, um, I'm not, I'm not a Trump fan, uh, you know, and it's, but it's, it's for personal reasons.

02:13:04.359 --> 02:13:04.679
Right.

02:13:04.708 --> 02:13:07.349
Like, I just can't handle him talking.

02:13:07.399 --> 02:13:07.998
Yeah, yeah.

02:13:08.868 --> 02:13:12.889
Like, uh, you know, I look at that as, as a leadership perspective.

02:13:12.889 --> 02:13:15.298
I'm like, that's just not a good leader.

02:13:15.948 --> 02:13:16.048
Yeah.

02:13:16.198 --> 02:13:16.939
Not a good leader.

02:13:16.988 --> 02:13:17.609
Not a good leader.

02:13:17.828 --> 02:13:23.498
But, you know, it doesn't, that doesn't mean I'm, Biden doesn't inspire confidence.

02:13:23.639 --> 02:13:24.139
Yes.

02:13:24.139 --> 02:13:37.009
That's exactly, that's it's we're in this like strange, super uncomfortable medium point where it's like, we're literally, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to share a story, super quick.

02:13:37.418 --> 02:13:46.168
And one of the first houses that I lived in in Minneapolis, there was a white fence and it was one of those where a square posts and then it had like, like one by fours.

02:13:46.373 --> 02:13:46.804
Slats.

02:13:46.863 --> 02:13:47.423
Oh, sure.

02:13:47.474 --> 02:13:50.984
With the width of it was like the one inch facing up.

02:13:51.274 --> 02:13:52.724
And I got the brilliant idea.

02:13:52.993 --> 02:13:54.203
It's amazing I have kids.

02:13:54.203 --> 02:13:55.873
I think you'll probably know where this is going.

02:13:55.873 --> 02:14:03.833
I had the amazing idea that I would climb up, stand on one of the square posts, and then balance beam across this one inch.

02:14:04.094 --> 02:14:05.804
One inch fence to the next post.

02:14:06.514 --> 02:14:11.194
I made it about halfway, lost my footing, and straddled that fence post.

02:14:11.684 --> 02:14:13.484
Yeah, my feet did not hit the ground.

02:14:13.493 --> 02:14:15.104
That's where your politics are right now, too.

02:14:15.113 --> 02:14:18.484
That's what it feels like politics are right now.

02:14:20.003 --> 02:14:24.819
There's, there's no, there's no, like, Yeah, where can we be here?

02:14:24.859 --> 02:14:26.828
Where, where do we go from here?

02:14:26.828 --> 02:14:27.738
How can we be here?

02:14:27.779 --> 02:14:28.309
Yeah.

02:14:28.378 --> 02:14:28.658
Yeah.

02:14:28.658 --> 02:14:32.578
Biden is like, I don't want to, I don't want to support anybody.

02:14:32.639 --> 02:14:39.208
I feel so sorry for him, kind of like if he was your grandpa, you would put him in a home and be done with it.

02:14:39.583 --> 02:14:43.703
Like you wouldn't make him try to sign up for another four years as the president of your company.

02:14:44.234 --> 02:14:46.083
I mean, I had to stop following stuff.

02:14:46.154 --> 02:14:55.283
Like I deleted news apps off my phone because I would get into this and then be so depressed and then get so frustrated and it's, and it's both sides.

02:14:55.283 --> 02:14:58.243
It feels like both sides are the same thing just from two different perspectives.

02:14:58.243 --> 02:14:59.243
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:14:59.554 --> 02:15:01.554
You know, I told you what Dictatorship with two parties.

02:15:01.583 --> 02:15:01.963
Yes.

02:15:02.373 --> 02:15:05.274
When I, it was, it's, it was a little bit eyeopening.

02:15:05.283 --> 02:15:08.243
That first client when I was consulting that was based out in Oslo.

02:15:08.274 --> 02:15:08.583
Yeah, yeah.

02:15:08.793 --> 02:15:09.953
I flew to Moscow.

02:15:09.993 --> 02:15:14.474
This was, um, and met with the team and there was Ukrainians and Russians.

02:15:14.514 --> 02:15:15.354
I was part of the team.

02:15:15.354 --> 02:15:20.104
It's about a team of 40 and amazing, just an amazing experience.

02:15:20.104 --> 02:15:21.743
There's no way in hell I'd go there right now.

02:15:21.804 --> 02:15:22.184
Right.

02:15:22.274 --> 02:15:22.724
But.

02:15:23.078 --> 02:15:24.319
I'm so glad I did.

02:15:24.328 --> 02:15:26.229
It was, it was a great experience.

02:15:26.229 --> 02:15:30.309
But what, what I really felt like was the people of the U.

02:15:30.309 --> 02:15:36.798
S., not the government, and the people of Russia, not the government, are very similar in culture.

02:15:37.149 --> 02:15:42.219
And it was almost like the two countries now, speaking about, were like brothers.

02:15:42.229 --> 02:15:43.238
Kindred spirits of sorts.

02:15:43.328 --> 02:15:45.109
Kindred spirits, like brothers that hate each other.

02:15:45.118 --> 02:15:45.668
Yeah, yeah.

02:15:45.708 --> 02:15:46.618
Like we grew up.

02:15:46.689 --> 02:15:48.519
Well, and Iran's kind of the same way.

02:15:48.519 --> 02:15:53.463
I've met so many Persians over my lifetime that were just Regular people from Iran?

02:15:54.359 --> 02:15:55.149
They're amazing.

02:15:55.259 --> 02:15:55.679
Right.

02:15:55.729 --> 02:15:56.009
Right.

02:15:56.009 --> 02:16:17.929
They have a lot of the same kinds of characteristics except for, you know, now the Iranians are trapped by these ayatollahs and this and that, and the Russians are trapped by Putin and his kind of autocracy, and Americans are now trapped by whatever the fuck this yucky thing is that's smeared all over our Washington, D.

02:16:17.929 --> 02:16:18.729
C.

02:16:18.738 --> 02:16:18.779
area.

02:16:18.788 --> 02:16:19.229
Yes.

02:16:19.309 --> 02:16:20.618
That's where I was going with it.

02:16:20.618 --> 02:16:20.689
Right.

02:16:20.689 --> 02:16:22.929
Because now it feels like internally.

02:16:23.069 --> 02:16:23.368
Yeah.

02:16:23.408 --> 02:16:24.048
We're, we're trapped.

02:16:24.048 --> 02:16:24.970
We're facing the same kind of shit.

02:16:24.970 --> 02:16:25.809
We're facing the same kind of divide.

02:16:27.993 --> 02:16:29.564
You know, it's, it's hard.

02:16:29.573 --> 02:16:36.744
Like, this is, it's a, it's, it's, you know, Tennessee was a, and I would say the Southeast and the rural Midwest.

02:16:36.754 --> 02:16:43.683
Like, there's places that you can go that you should not be open about your thoughts.

02:16:44.164 --> 02:16:44.584
For sure.

02:16:44.593 --> 02:16:45.304
Right now.

02:16:45.343 --> 02:16:46.023
Right, right.

02:16:46.244 --> 02:16:47.144
And that's sad.

02:16:47.234 --> 02:16:48.394
Yeah, a hundred percent.

02:16:48.554 --> 02:16:49.054
So.

02:16:49.103 --> 02:16:49.793
No, that's fair.

02:16:50.154 --> 02:16:50.914
Um.

02:16:51.338 --> 02:16:52.111
How about RFK Jr.?

02:16:52.111 --> 02:16:53.468
Are you gonna vote for him instead?

02:16:53.879 --> 02:16:56.318
Man, I, you know, I don't know.

02:16:56.328 --> 02:16:57.459
Too scared to throw your vote away?

02:16:58.439 --> 02:17:01.398
Just, that, but that's, that's the, the crux.

02:17:01.398 --> 02:17:03.478
The media is telling you he's a kook job though.

02:17:03.918 --> 02:17:06.099
Well, I mean, the media's gonna tell us.

02:17:06.699 --> 02:17:07.338
Whatever they do.

02:17:07.338 --> 02:17:12.033
Yeah, I mean, But it's like, do, like, how would we vote?

02:17:12.834 --> 02:17:14.293
How do you vote right now?

02:17:14.424 --> 02:17:15.894
It's, it's impossible.

02:17:16.203 --> 02:17:21.203
Like you can't vote for the people that you really want to vote for all the time, because you do feel like you're throwing your vote away.

02:17:21.603 --> 02:17:26.203
And then it's going towards whatever mainstream is going to, I don't know.

02:17:26.943 --> 02:17:27.623
I don't know.

02:17:27.953 --> 02:17:37.054
And so I, so I asked, you know, the, the Russians that I, that were showing me around Moscow, you know, I asked, they're like, yeah, let's go to the red square and we'll walk by the Kremlin.

02:17:37.093 --> 02:17:39.574
And I'm like, Is that safe?

02:17:41.234 --> 02:17:42.984
Isn't the criminal like the source of all evil?

02:17:42.984 --> 02:17:43.363
Yeah.

02:17:43.363 --> 02:17:48.634
Like, can we talk about things outside the building and stuff like that?

02:17:48.644 --> 02:17:52.984
And it was, it was interesting, but I did ask, like, I didn't know what was okay.

02:17:53.613 --> 02:18:05.023
And not okay to ask them about stuff because all I knew up until that point was what I was told as a kid, what movies tell me, what mainstream media tells me.

02:18:05.814 --> 02:18:07.953
And so I asked them, I said, what is it?

02:18:08.203 --> 02:18:09.974
What is it like living here?

02:18:09.974 --> 02:18:13.533
Like, are you guys able to internally talk about Putin?

02:18:13.564 --> 02:18:17.943
Are you able to talk about politics, like, and not fear for things?

02:18:18.613 --> 02:18:28.884
And their response was, essentially, there's the Russian government, and there's the Russian people, and they're two very different things.

02:18:29.754 --> 02:18:30.623
And that's it.

02:18:31.523 --> 02:18:33.244
And we don't talk much more about it than that.

02:18:33.474 --> 02:18:37.773
And that was even back in 19, so 2019.

02:18:37.974 --> 02:18:38.443
Right.

02:18:38.523 --> 02:18:41.963
And even at that point, I was like, huh, that's an interesting concept.

02:18:41.963 --> 02:18:42.293
Yeah.

02:18:42.353 --> 02:18:50.894
But since then It now starts to feel like, huh, that is getting closer and closer here.

02:18:51.654 --> 02:18:55.334
Like there's kind of the government that gets to do their own thing.

02:18:56.144 --> 02:18:58.183
And then there's the American people.

02:18:58.584 --> 02:19:03.314
Man, it's a, this new Supreme court case with Missouri was Missouri versus Biden.

02:19:03.334 --> 02:19:07.574
I don't know what it is now, but I was kind of frankly shocked about.

02:19:07.873 --> 02:19:17.773
How much the, the conservative justices agreed that the government should kind of be able to tell social media companies what they can do and who they should pull and stuff.

02:19:17.953 --> 02:19:18.363
Yeah.

02:19:18.443 --> 02:19:20.519
Like that felt like Really?

02:19:20.888 --> 02:19:35.189
Like, after all the Twitter files were dumped and it showed how much corruption there was and all that, uh, Alex Berenson exploration with some of the stuff, I, that just feels like so completely wrong and it looks like they're going to get away with it.

02:19:35.519 --> 02:19:35.849
Of course.

02:19:36.088 --> 02:19:36.519
Yeah.

02:19:36.519 --> 02:19:39.129
I mean, what, what else is going to happen?

02:19:39.129 --> 02:19:40.978
I don't know.

02:19:40.978 --> 02:19:42.218
I just want it to get better.

02:19:42.689 --> 02:19:43.168
Yes.

02:19:43.209 --> 02:19:45.088
I think, I think everybody does.

02:19:45.728 --> 02:19:46.779
I think everybody does.

02:19:46.779 --> 02:19:54.648
I think everybody wants, and we all have, just like Elaine and I have totally different perspectives on how we execute on business.

02:19:54.668 --> 02:19:55.029
Yeah.

02:19:55.259 --> 02:19:57.058
That doesn't make one right or wrong.

02:19:57.349 --> 02:19:57.588
Yeah.

02:19:57.638 --> 02:20:01.769
It's just different, and I kind of feel like the American people are in that phase right now.

02:20:01.769 --> 02:20:05.138
I guess if we could decide what we're trying to work toward, it would be better, though.

02:20:05.138 --> 02:20:06.279
That is, that is the key.

02:20:06.398 --> 02:20:09.058
That is absolutely the key, because we're going in two different directions.

02:20:09.058 --> 02:20:09.728
A hundred percent.

02:20:09.728 --> 02:20:09.898
Yeah.

02:20:09.898 --> 02:20:09.998
Yeah.

02:20:09.998 --> 02:20:10.398
Um.

02:20:10.693 --> 02:20:25.763
You know, I was pretty sure back in the nineties, for example, that, or especially even like the early Obama years that like race relations had finally been kind of put to bed and the meritocracy was cemented and affirmed.

02:20:25.773 --> 02:20:27.599
And like, Yeah.

02:20:27.599 --> 02:20:37.968
Character is more important than color of skin, and then, you know, now we've put this new effort to fix racism with more racism, and it's hard, and it doesn't seem like it's gonna work.

02:20:38.918 --> 02:20:40.209
Yeah, I don't think so.

02:20:41.158 --> 02:20:41.728
I don't think so.

02:20:41.779 --> 02:20:51.629
Well, it's working, just not toward the supposed, you know, every, you gotta name everything like the Inflation Reduction Act these days and stuff, like do the opposite land of what it's actually gonna do.

02:20:51.629 --> 02:20:52.123
Yes.

02:20:52.463 --> 02:20:53.033
Yeah.

02:20:53.443 --> 02:20:54.213
So, yeah.

02:20:54.213 --> 02:20:57.564
I mean, I think my politics are much like my religion.

02:20:57.974 --> 02:21:02.353
It's just really confusing.

02:21:02.523 --> 02:21:02.834
Yeah.

02:21:03.174 --> 02:21:04.574
Well, because you can't understand it.

02:21:05.113 --> 02:21:05.623
It's bigger.

02:21:05.623 --> 02:21:06.703
It's bigger than all of us.

02:21:06.754 --> 02:21:13.773
And people, like, people make rational decisions and people in large groups somehow, sometimes.

02:21:13.804 --> 02:21:14.154
Yes.

02:21:14.384 --> 02:21:15.933
At least with power corrupted anyway.

02:21:15.963 --> 02:21:24.013
And I think a big, big piece of it for me is, you know, we've firsthand interacted with a lot of people, like being an analytical thinker.

02:21:25.449 --> 02:21:40.808
Or self proclaimed analytical thinker, I should say, um, it's hard for me to associate when I, when I have conversations that are just soundbite clips with people, it's like, I just tune out, like I'm done.

02:21:41.129 --> 02:21:43.363
Yeah, I'll never remember that again.

02:21:43.363 --> 02:21:45.179
Yeah, like it's okay, cool.

02:21:46.134 --> 02:21:49.064
But, you know, we just have a lot of that.

02:21:49.123 --> 02:21:49.664
Yeah, yeah.

02:21:49.724 --> 02:21:50.113
Fair.

02:21:50.783 --> 02:21:53.304
Um, let's move on to the closing segment.

02:21:53.304 --> 02:21:54.744
The loco experience.

02:21:54.773 --> 02:21:54.834
Yeah.

02:21:55.074 --> 02:22:04.504
The craziest experience that you're willing to share, either solo or with Elaine or, uh, whatever crazy experience being in business.

02:22:04.509 --> 02:22:09.814
It could be a moment, a near death experience could be a year in Moscow, in Norway.

02:22:09.814 --> 02:22:10.744
It could be, oh, geez.

02:22:10.804 --> 02:22:14.825
Uh, I, I have no idea what your crazy experience is, whether it's a moment or a.

02:22:15.049 --> 02:22:21.228
Man, crazy experience.

02:22:22.369 --> 02:22:22.939
I like it.

02:22:24.078 --> 02:22:24.748
I like it.

02:22:25.558 --> 02:22:28.468
I don't know, my closest near death experience.

02:22:29.144 --> 02:22:44.023
Was I, you know, honestly, my crazy, my crazy, this sounds super lame, but my crate, my personal craziest experience was the transformation of finally understanding what it was to be a dad.

02:22:45.283 --> 02:22:45.603
All right.

02:22:45.654 --> 02:22:51.894
That, that, I mean, it's like my own personal thing, but it definitely affected my son.

02:22:51.894 --> 02:22:53.484
It definitely affected my wife.

02:22:53.574 --> 02:22:58.293
And was there like a moment or what was that trigger or yeah.

02:22:58.293 --> 02:22:59.963
Heroic dose mushroom trip.

02:23:00.043 --> 02:23:00.433
Okay.

02:23:00.773 --> 02:23:01.093
Yeah.

02:23:01.943 --> 02:23:02.443
I like it.

02:23:02.754 --> 02:23:03.134
Yeah.

02:23:03.873 --> 02:23:10.763
I, my wife and I like accidentally overdosed ourselves on mushrooms down at Palm Desert when we were down there.

02:23:11.144 --> 02:23:11.863
And it was hard.

02:23:11.873 --> 02:23:17.884
Like I accidentally ordered two pizzas online and they went to the wrong place, the wrong timeshare thing.

02:23:17.884 --> 02:23:23.853
And I like gave up and stripped down and was like laying on the bed while like she was like, are you just going to give up?

02:23:23.884 --> 02:23:25.814
And I'm like, yeah, I think I am.

02:23:25.824 --> 02:23:26.353
Yeah.

02:23:27.023 --> 02:23:27.543
Anyway.

02:23:27.623 --> 02:23:30.494
Um, so tell me about, uh, being a dad.

02:23:30.904 --> 02:23:41.324
Yeah, so, I mean, I, I signed up for therapy, I tried to find, like, I, I had a therapist that really You were just kind of a shitty dad for a while, kind of just had a hard time connecting?

02:23:41.634 --> 02:23:42.504
I couldn't connect.

02:23:42.584 --> 02:23:42.814
Yeah.

02:23:42.853 --> 02:23:43.574
I couldn't connect.

02:23:43.593 --> 02:23:44.904
That was, that was exactly it.

02:23:44.933 --> 02:23:45.734
I couldn't connect.

02:23:45.754 --> 02:23:53.078
So, um, yeah, it was just Um, it's hard to explain it other than that.

02:23:53.078 --> 02:23:55.818
I just could not connect with my son and I didn't know how.

02:23:55.849 --> 02:24:25.213
And I think it was because I, I have struggled with a connection with my mother and I, I think, uh, my wife said to me, we were laying in bed one night and, um, I can't remember exactly what she said, but it, it made me realize that if I continue on this path, I'm going to, I'm going to be, He's gonna be me and I'm, I'm gonna, we're gonna have this very large disconnect for the rest of our lives.

02:24:25.334 --> 02:24:25.603
Yeah.

02:24:25.693 --> 02:24:27.463
And that was very soul crushing.

02:24:27.613 --> 02:24:27.824
Yeah.

02:24:28.234 --> 02:24:32.943
And, um, and so I needed to change and I needed to figure out how to solve that.

02:24:32.949 --> 02:24:38.824
So this, this, it's a longer transition period, but I, I got, uh, a therap.

02:24:38.853 --> 02:24:42.424
I sought out a guy that, like a male therapist Yeah.

02:24:42.424 --> 02:24:43.863
That could help me from a.

02:24:44.634 --> 02:24:47.754
masculine perspective as a father.

02:24:48.273 --> 02:24:49.424
And that was the start of it.

02:24:49.424 --> 02:24:50.314
That was really good.

02:24:50.754 --> 02:24:56.023
And then, um, you know, I had dabbled with mushrooms a little bit just in your twenties.

02:24:56.023 --> 02:24:57.453
A lot of people do.

02:24:57.613 --> 02:25:00.443
And I had a couple experiences with them.

02:25:00.574 --> 02:25:01.674
I only did it twice.

02:25:01.674 --> 02:25:09.599
And both of them led to like these visions of, you know, Like one of them, I was, it was right at my very early stage entrepreneur career.

02:25:09.939 --> 02:25:30.838
And, um, it was when I was cold calling a lot and I had this vision of me sitting at the square or the circle table in the middle of this giant room with a spotlight only on the table, but it was an out of body experience where I was looking down on myself, like working away on my computer and the feeling that I got was the feeling of what I felt.

02:25:31.498 --> 02:25:48.488
People were getting when I'm closing everybody else out and just focusing on this and that vision Caused me to change how I started reacting to people and interacting with people and prioritizing my life So it wasn't just business as an escape.

02:25:48.498 --> 02:25:48.728
Yeah.

02:25:48.728 --> 02:25:55.748
Yeah, so I started thinking about that and I just had this pull to do Another trip.

02:25:55.968 --> 02:25:56.168
Yeah.

02:25:56.168 --> 02:26:02.978
Yeah, and so I I don't know how much of this I should share, but we literally drove from Tennessee to Washington, D.

02:26:02.978 --> 02:26:14.138
C., where you can go to a dispensary, buy something, get gifted magic mushrooms, drove back to Tennessee, tripped on my nine acres, and, um.

02:26:14.148 --> 02:26:14.728
Just solo?

02:26:14.888 --> 02:26:15.359
Yeah.

02:26:15.869 --> 02:26:28.338
Yeah, I mean Nobody around you, nothing, just Well, so I was outside, and, um, I like, made the tea, and went out and drank it, drank it way too fast, and I'm like, Jeez, maybe these are, maybe this didn't work.

02:26:28.338 --> 02:26:28.539
Didn't work.

02:26:28.539 --> 02:26:39.759
And then like 10 minutes later, you're like, It's working! I laid, I laid down, and I was looking up at the sky, And all of a sudden this blue wave in the sky just comes through and I'm like, Oh shit.

02:26:39.988 --> 02:26:44.918
And I set up and the trees are like, Oh, wavering a little bit.

02:26:44.918 --> 02:26:46.449
And I'm like, Huh?

02:26:46.449 --> 02:26:49.289
And I'm like, okay, this is coming on really fast.

02:26:49.519 --> 02:26:52.158
I'm going to be stuck out here in the woods.

02:26:52.398 --> 02:27:00.748
So I made my way in and my wife and son were downstairs and I, and I went upstairs and we have like a, it's like a complete upstairs.

02:27:00.759 --> 02:27:02.029
So I went upstairs and.

02:27:03.119 --> 02:27:05.369
And it was a very difficult trip.

02:27:05.838 --> 02:27:12.408
I essentially, um, met the real, like, I was having conversations with myself.

02:27:12.408 --> 02:27:21.689
So to give context to this experience, I would watch other fathers, and they were so patient, and they would say the right things.

02:27:22.338 --> 02:27:28.939
And then, like, my son would say something to me, and I would Not have the same patience.

02:27:28.949 --> 02:27:29.238
Yeah.

02:27:29.488 --> 02:27:34.259
It wasn't like I would lash out, but I didn't act the way that I wanted to act.

02:27:34.269 --> 02:27:39.119
And then inside of me, I'd have this little voice that would be like, that's not you.

02:27:41.599 --> 02:27:42.498
You really mean.

02:27:42.498 --> 02:27:42.869
Yeah.

02:27:42.869 --> 02:27:44.359
That's not who you are.

02:27:44.459 --> 02:27:44.779
Yeah.

02:27:44.818 --> 02:27:54.668
And so when I was tripping, the walls broke down and I got to have a conversation with myself and the roles switched post trip.

02:27:55.718 --> 02:27:58.388
So, and you know, and there were like.

02:27:58.873 --> 02:28:14.763
I won't bore you with a trip report here, but like, basically those, the roles switch and I got to be me and when I woke up, I could hear my son playing downstairs, coming, you know, coming down from the trip and.

02:28:16.248 --> 02:28:17.968
It, it was like joyous.

02:28:18.238 --> 02:28:22.289
I felt joyous hearing it and I'm like, okay, that's interesting.

02:28:22.759 --> 02:28:29.838
And I was stable enough so I could walk down the stairs and I opened up the door to the kitchen and there was like this beautiful light.

02:28:30.088 --> 02:28:33.718
And, and like my wife and son were at the oven or at the stove.

02:28:33.728 --> 02:28:35.408
They were making homemade eggnog.

02:28:35.408 --> 02:28:36.738
This was like Thanksgiving weekend.

02:28:39.328 --> 02:28:45.179
They're making homemade eggnog and they're laughing and they spill a little bit and nobody's mad at anything being spilled.

02:28:45.209 --> 02:28:49.279
And I look at Fletcher and I'm like, is mommy always this happy?

02:28:50.019 --> 02:28:52.648
And he looks at me, he is like, yeah, daddy.

02:28:53.429 --> 02:29:00.789
And um, and it was just, I had never seen my wife and son like, like I had never seen them.

02:29:00.879 --> 02:29:00.939
Yeah.

02:29:00.939 --> 02:29:02.439
I had never seen them like this.

02:29:02.439 --> 02:29:06.459
And then my son sticks something in my face, which is usually like, I'm like, oh my God, get it right.

02:29:06.459 --> 02:29:06.459
Right.

02:29:06.519 --> 02:29:07.509
Get it outta my face.

02:29:08.179 --> 02:29:09.318
Didn't phase me at all.

02:29:10.209 --> 02:29:16.418
And my wife looks at me, and she could just see it in my body language and my face, that something had changed.

02:29:17.168 --> 02:29:21.459
And, and, like, we just Hold each other and started crying.

02:29:21.468 --> 02:29:22.539
That's really interesting.

02:29:22.568 --> 02:29:30.418
And, and it was since then and integrating from that trip that I was able to rebuild my relationship and like actually be a dad.

02:29:30.418 --> 02:29:31.738
So that is my.

02:29:32.318 --> 02:29:38.019
Which probably also really rehabilitated your relationship with your wife too, or strengthened it.

02:29:38.109 --> 02:29:38.418
Yep.

02:29:38.578 --> 02:29:42.959
I'm, I'm, I'm imagining you as, and partly because I know Alma.

02:29:43.629 --> 02:29:50.648
Uh, she's like such a systems thinker and not really emotionally invested in truth kinda.

02:29:50.658 --> 02:29:50.709
For sure.

02:29:51.478 --> 02:30:01.138
And with a little kid especially, but also with a woman, but in the case of, of, of Elaine, you were like, wow, she's an amazing thinker.

02:30:01.179 --> 02:30:02.908
Look how useful she is.

02:30:02.929 --> 02:30:11.716
Look how, like, in addition to her extreme beauty, you also were smitten with the way that she processed informations and integrated things and stuff.

02:30:11.716 --> 02:30:16.748
And this little baby is like, fade babe, here, stick my hand in your face.

02:30:16.748 --> 02:30:18.539
And you're like, what is the usefulness of.

02:30:18.978 --> 02:30:21.029
This thing everything I didn't understand.

02:30:21.088 --> 02:30:25.558
Yeah, but then when you like my first instinct isn't really the systems thing.

02:30:25.619 --> 02:30:26.728
It's the emotion.

02:30:26.849 --> 02:30:27.918
It's the love.

02:30:27.939 --> 02:30:29.658
It's the whatever.

02:30:29.668 --> 02:30:43.799
And so by having that conversation with the real you in there, you were kind of given freedom to just love because yes, yeah, and it was It was so wild because my wife is so supportive on all of this.

02:30:43.818 --> 02:30:50.648
In fact, of course my son had no idea any of this, but her and my son made a notebook.

02:30:50.918 --> 02:30:55.398
And it was this leather bound notebook, and they stamped it with like a little, uh, tiger.

02:30:55.818 --> 02:30:59.779
Uh, like a kind of wood burning but leather burning with this tiger on it.

02:31:00.158 --> 02:31:02.664
And in the, like, I was in the bathroom.

02:31:02.804 --> 02:31:03.773
I had to go to the bathroom.

02:31:03.773 --> 02:31:13.963
So I was in the bathroom completely tripping and I opened the door and she's standing there and I'm like, totally out of it.

02:31:13.963 --> 02:31:14.343
Right.

02:31:14.384 --> 02:31:16.254
And she hands me this notebook.

02:31:16.644 --> 02:31:22.634
And so that like brought like all this emotion that I had been holding up for all these years, just completely.

02:31:23.099 --> 02:31:25.679
I surrendered to it all during this.

02:31:25.689 --> 02:31:32.488
So there'd be one time, there'd be one minute I'd be laughing my ass off, the next minute I'm bawling like a psycho.

02:31:33.009 --> 02:31:38.668
And if somebody could have watched me, right, I'm like, just this, like, parsing through all these years.

02:31:38.668 --> 02:31:44.568
And in fact, it was like going back through all these years and all, all these different experiences that I had.

02:31:44.619 --> 02:31:49.259
And that was the trigger of whether it was a laugh or a cry, or a, you know, Exactly.

02:31:49.259 --> 02:31:50.439
Or whatever, almost.

02:31:50.498 --> 02:31:51.259
Exactly.

02:31:51.259 --> 02:32:06.199
I, I have a lot of respect for Elaine to just witness you in that situation and appreciate the, I guess, both the gravity of and the levity of the situation, kind of.

02:32:06.238 --> 02:32:08.179
Like, she could see that it was a new page.

02:32:08.498 --> 02:32:11.789
Oh, and, and that notebook was so that I could write down.

02:32:12.138 --> 02:32:17.869
What I learned on the trip, which was like unbearable support, right?

02:32:17.869 --> 02:32:25.078
Like I couldn't even handle the thought that she had thought of that and, and supported that.

02:32:25.109 --> 02:32:27.029
And so.

02:32:27.509 --> 02:32:44.199
There was, as I was coming down, I didn't even realize, like, it was dark outside at this point, and there were no lights on in the room, and I wasn't for sure certain if that was part of the trip where she handed me this notebook, or if it happened in real life.

02:32:44.238 --> 02:32:44.648
Right, right.

02:32:44.648 --> 02:32:47.869
Because I got to the point where, like, Like the ego dissolution.

02:32:47.869 --> 02:32:49.349
Like, I didn't remember my name.

02:32:49.388 --> 02:32:51.039
I didn't remember what I did for work.

02:32:51.039 --> 02:32:51.488
Oh, wow.

02:32:51.549 --> 02:32:52.949
I don't know what day it is.

02:32:53.099 --> 02:32:54.248
That was some strong tea.

02:32:54.379 --> 02:32:59.918
It was very strong tea, and I reached out to my nightstand, and I felt this leather book.

02:32:59.929 --> 02:33:00.299
Right.

02:33:00.568 --> 02:33:04.088
This leather notebook that they made me, and it was like this, Like the most cherished thing.

02:33:04.158 --> 02:33:07.519
And reality, like, just like, Okay.

02:33:07.568 --> 02:33:10.179
Sucked right back in, and here I am.

02:33:10.189 --> 02:33:10.509
Boom.

02:33:10.574 --> 02:33:20.144
And that, and that was like, I don't know if it was my brain re rewiring or what it was, but it was like that moment, like solidified everything.

02:33:20.174 --> 02:33:22.453
And then it gave me that experience to feel.

02:33:23.033 --> 02:33:24.414
That emotional side.

02:33:24.703 --> 02:33:24.963
Yeah.

02:33:24.994 --> 02:33:25.404
Again.

02:33:25.424 --> 02:33:25.654
Yeah, yeah.

02:33:25.664 --> 02:33:27.463
Anyway, so that's Is that easier for you now since then?

02:33:27.474 --> 02:33:28.213
Much easier.

02:33:28.263 --> 02:33:28.494
Yeah.

02:33:28.513 --> 02:33:29.113
Much easier.

02:33:29.123 --> 02:33:34.783
And I've, and I've developed, you know, been working to develop that over, you know, that was a couple years ago now.

02:33:34.793 --> 02:33:35.254
Yeah, yeah.

02:33:35.543 --> 02:33:36.773
So Very cool.

02:33:36.824 --> 02:33:37.283
Yeah.

02:33:37.314 --> 02:33:38.554
Well For a year and a half or so, yeah.

02:33:38.584 --> 02:33:41.433
I think, I think that's a tremendous loco experience.

02:33:41.613 --> 02:33:42.283
Alright, cool.

02:33:42.314 --> 02:33:48.408
Um What, uh, how do people find you if they're looking for a Workday Ninja?

02:33:48.449 --> 02:33:49.299
Workdayninja.

02:33:49.299 --> 02:33:49.638
com.

02:33:49.699 --> 02:33:50.408
That's easy enough.

02:33:50.429 --> 02:33:50.818
Yep.

02:33:50.949 --> 02:33:53.019
Um, is that the right place?

02:33:53.019 --> 02:33:53.959
Contact form?

02:33:53.998 --> 02:33:55.549
Contact form's Yep.

02:33:55.549 --> 02:33:56.898
LinkedIn, Micah Johnson.

02:33:56.998 --> 02:33:57.269
Yeah.

02:33:57.549 --> 02:33:58.119
Easy peasy.

02:33:58.199 --> 02:33:58.408
Yep.

02:33:58.429 --> 02:34:03.468
Well, thanks for making the big drive up from, uh, Boulderville here up to lonely Fort Collins, Micah.

02:34:03.949 --> 02:34:05.308
Welcome to Northern Colorado.

02:34:05.318 --> 02:34:05.859
Thank you.

02:34:06.039 --> 02:34:10.599
And, uh, you know, look forward to seeing where we can intersect our paths in the months and years ahead.

02:34:10.689 --> 02:34:11.248
Love it.

02:34:11.388 --> 02:34:11.709
Alright.

02:34:11.709 --> 02:34:12.099
Godspeed.