EXPERIENCE 258 | Meet Dakota Collins! - Professional Slack Liner > Mindful Community Creator > Construction Estimator > Owner of the Fastest Growing Landscape Business in the Region

Dakota Collins was born the son of professional hippies. His mom worked in medicine and his dad in education with construction on the side, and Dakota was raised largely free range in the hills southwest of Fort Collins. He was born with a club foot, which required repeated casting to straighten, and which eventually caused him to develop scoliosis, and then he discovered slacklining. In a matter of months, his mind was straight and his life was transformed, and he soon traveled to nation and the world as a professional slackliner, motivational speaker, and adventurous. He later co-founded Breathe, a mindful community featuring yoga, extreme slacklining, meditation, and more, and met his now wife at a Breathe Festival, where they spent the full week together, and then she immediately joined the man she'd just met on a 30-day backpacking trip in Alaska. I write all this to share the notion that when Dakota Collins does stuff, he does it all the way. Dakota found a gray rock landscape and construction in the fall of 2020, and hired his teenage sister to mow lawns, and built the business to four full-time employees before he quit his full-time job with Learner County. Now five years in, and eighteen employees strong, gray rock has become one of the premier landscape design and installation companies in Northern Colorado, and it's all about culture. It seems everyone loves Dakota, and you will too, so please tune in and enjoy my conversation with Dakota Collins. Welcome to the local experience podcast. On this show, you'll get to know business and community leaders from all around Northern Colorado and beyond. Our guests share their stories, business stories, life stories, stories of triumph and of tragedy, and through it all, you'll be inspired and entertained. These conversations are real and raw, and no topics are off limits, so pop in a breath mint and get ready to meet our latest guest. My guest today is Dakota Collins, and Dakota is the founder and CEO of gray rock landscaping and construction. Our landscape and construction. Landscaping construction. So I guess let's just start with do you remember when we met the first time? Yep, what was your stage in life? You were exiting something. Yes, it was a very, very interesting stage. Well, you know what yoga is? I do, I do yoga four days a week. You know what slacklining is? Yes. All right, I mean that ruled my life for about ten years, and I started this organization called Breathe back in the day. Okay. At the short tagline mission for that, that organization has discovered your purpose awake in our world. It was all tied back to my passion for slacklining yoga, mindfulness, wellness, art, music, all that, and pardon me for saying, but you see them kind of country for a guy that's really into mindfulness, yoga, and stuff. Okay. Which is part of me, I'm part of being, because I met with you in La Port. Yep. Yep. That isn't what we think of in yoga. No, no, not so much, but keep describing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I started that organization, and that's what I've always called as my like for fun business. Okay. It wasn't LLC. It was a for profit business, but there was no profit. Okay. We can, we can talk a little bit more on that, but I grew that organization to be just something that people held so close to their heart. It was a purpose-driven organization. It was something that gave so many people purpose, and I finally was in this point in my life where I was ready to retire, pass the torch on to someone else. Yeah. And that's kind of how you and I got connected. Yeah. I was going right, you know, that was, that was kind of when I was in the middle of that transition was, I was looking to pass on the torch. I'd built this organization over the past 10 years. Yeah. Looking for my next chapter at that point. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yep. And do you remember how you learned about local think tank? Because you kind of, I think you filled out a facilitator application like out of the blue, and I was like, who's this guy? Yep. Yep. Yeah. I mean, I just found you on Google. Really? Yep. Okay. There was a job, job listing. Right. Not a very good paying job as it turned out. No, no. And then how long after that? Because I didn't really have anything at the time. I had no chapters in need of a facilitator. Didn't have enough momentum at the time to start a next chapter. Do you remember like, did you do something between Greyrock and that? You know, I guess I'm trying to think back into the timeline a little bit more accurately here, but I believe that was kind of when I decided I was going to work for the county. Okay. So I was the Lammer County Road and Bridge project manager for a little bit. Okay. So yeah, it had you done that kind of stuff before before the yoga journey. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it grew up that way. It's an interesting story for sure. We'll get back to the early years. Yeah. So you had some experience already. You were qualified for that kind of a role. And then you realized that working for the county was not all it sounded to be here. It was a great job. Nothing, nothing to complain about. Okay. It was I was maxed out. You know, is maybe the next position up would have been 10, 15 years out. You know, the director was there for another 10 years. It's a good job, but you know, I needed to I needed to follow that entrepreneurship blood and yeah. And then what like, how did you go about starting Greyrock? Because you kind of came on to the scene. I didn't know it was you until we were reintroduced again. Okay. You know, six months ago or whatever that was. But I'd seen Greyrock around. I saw that new location and the port and stuff there. But tell me about those first days where you like. Okay. Man got a bulldozer ready to do stuff or just a truck in a ladder or like what did you, what were yours first? Yeah. All right. I walk you through that. So I was working for the county and you know, I was just following whatever you person thinks they should they should do. You know, I wanted a good job that had a good retirement. You know, you wanted a good stable income. I thought that was the right thing to be doing. You know, and it just killed me inside that I wasn't working for myself. So I knew that that's where I wanted to be. But I was also married. We married then too. I wasn't married at that time. Okay. I was in the relationship trying to get to be a secure enough kind of guy that somebody might want to marry someday. Yeah. Yeah. I was with my wife at that point. But we were just trying to figure it out, man. And I knew that I just I wasn't fulfilled. And I, I mean, it's been in my blood. I wanted to be an entrepreneur my, you know, since I was freaking five years old. And I've been an entrepreneur since I was five years old. But never to the point where it was paying the bills like it is now. It is too. Yeah. Yeah. Like it needs to. Yeah. And so I'm going to take all that risk and work that hard. You better get paid at least half as much as you would in a corporate role and hopefully twice. Yeah. So I mean, literally what I was doing is I was utilizing the stability of the county to, and then with the free time, you know, it was, it was nice. It was 40 hours a week, which actually, I mean, we know we've got a lot more hours in the week than 40, but size building the business on the side. Okay. I knew nothing about landscaping. Yeah. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Still don't know. I'm just kidding. Um, and I was listening to this podcast, um, Tommy Mello. He's a garage door fanatic. I mean, he grew this, this billion dollar garage door company. Okay. And I was just obsessed with his podcast, man. And he said, you know, anybody that's looking to take, take a business into these next 20, 30 years, I recommend home services. And so I, you know, I was kind of on this home service, uh, thought process. And he's like, it doesn't matter what it is. Just choose something you'll make it your own. If I was looking at, you know, a trade or a home service to get into, I'd be looking at painting. I'd be looking at landscaping HVAC. And I'm like, okay, I'm just going to do what this guy said because he's really successful. Like I'm just going to try that. So my started a landscape company. And, um, I knew nothing about it. You know, I, I literally, you make some business cards. You got a website strung together. Uh, it was just really a guy and a truck kind of a company to begin with. Or did you, you subbed out maybe some of the work after you sold it or, so I don't get this. I, uh, I hired my high school sister. She was in high school at the time. She was my first employee. Okay. So here I am working into county. I've got this website live. I'm advertising landscape services. I was thinking that I was going to be more of like a maintenance guy at the time. Okay. That's where all these YouTubers were talking about was the, the stability and, and lawn care and maintenance. Um, so that's how I started. Because I just, I had some Craigslist ads. I had a website. And as those, those calls came in and say, yep, all right, we'll come take a look at it. And, um, and so that's we, we started out mowing lawns for like two months. Okay. There was no money. No money there. Like I just, you need, you need, you need quantity for that to make sense. And I was, you know, we had six, seven houses. We are mowing lawns. I'm like, this is, this is making any sense. But I'm going to stick with it. So I started advertising for projects. Yeah. Didn't really know anything about projects. But, um, yeah, I sold a grading project for like $3,000 to go rebuild this guy's driveway. And he liked me. I knew I wasn't able to talk the talk on anything. Yeah. I went to best rental. I rented a skid steer, rented a trailer. I did have a diesel pickup at the time. I pull up to his house and I pull up YouTube how to operate a skid steer. And I'm literally in his driveway in the skid steer, learning the controls. Yeah. And I see him on the front porch, like looking out. And so I've got to back the skid steer off this trailer. Never operating skid steer. You should have backed it off the trailer at your house to test it first. Oh, it was sink or swim, man. I, you know, I had little limited time. I was like, all right, I'm going to do it. And, um, I did it. I mean, that was, that was how I, I did everything. I just, I just learned as I went. Yeah. And, um, I mean, that was the start of it. Yeah. Yep. I got, I got to taste the, for blood. And what did your sister do for you? Like send the invoices and stuff or. Oh, no, she was pushing a motor. Oh, gosh, she was on the lawns. Well, yeah, trying to bid this project work. Oh, yeah. And then her boyfriend was helping me out. And then her boyfriend ended up working out, working with me for two years, I think. Okay. And then, you know, he moved off to bigger and better things. Yeah. But that's how it started. It was, I was literally working at the county for a full year with this side hustle. That was at, at that point, it's sustaining four people full time by the time I had quit my job. Wow. So I grew this business. I was too scared to, to quit my day job. Yeah. Yeah. And I was just holding the business back. I mean, that was, that was the biggest turning point for when, when was this at the stage for me? Well, not too long ago, I started Gray Rock and 20. I got, I got an EIN in 2021. Okay. And so, this point where you've been doing it for a year and you still got a job is probably, you know, end of 2022 or something like that. Yep. Yep. And then you're like, well, and what's that point like when you're like going to pull the rip cord out of the good, you get fired because you had this big business outside of you didn't tell anyone. No, I pulled, I pulled the cord. It was the scariest thing I've ever done. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, people, these jobs are very, very competitive to get. Yeah. You know, when I got that job, there was 200 applicants. Wow. You know, so it's, it's a sought after position. And I wasn't in very long. I loved the job, great people to work with. It just, it wasn't where I needed to go. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it seems like you've been blessed because what's your, what's your scale now? What's your team? 18 full-time employees. Wow. Even through the winter season. Yep. We don't let anybody go. Wow. So no seasonal work, no seasonal employees. Well, this year you've been able to work them all winter too. Pretty much. Warm enough weather. Even in past years, if it snows, you know, maybe we're out for a day, day and a half, but we're out clear in sites. So let's talk about what you're doing now in comparison to the seven lawn mowing jobs that you started with. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Yeah. So we're, we're what's called design build. Okay. So we're in the outdoor living space. You know, predominantly we're, we're focusing on residential projects. Okay. We do offer some so really nice patios, pergolos, fish ponds, perhaps things like that. Yep. Yep. I would say, you know, people, people call us if they're thinking about improving the state of their backyard. Yeah. We don't, you know, we're not, we're not really doing cleanups. We're not doing spring or fall cleanups. We're more of the guys that are going to come in and do an enhancement. Yeah. Right. So if you want a new patio, you want a deck, pargola, like you said, walk away. Not much maintenance stuff anymore or maybe not any. Nothing. Yeah. Just project work. Yep. Okay. Once I got a taste for that first project, I was like, all right, this is where my skill set is. This is my construction management background. This is what I know. Because I mean, I was working for the county. I was working. I mean, my whole, my whole background and general contracting construction management doesn't mean you know how to operate a skid steer. Let's get that clear. That's a project manager out there. Well, it's not mean they know how to operate a skid steer and excavator. So it just, it was a better fit. Once I was in the project world, it made a lot more sense. Well, and I can tell already from this and previous conversations that you're the visionary type, but when you're that type equipped with a project manager's training, now you can see the beginning. You can see the end. You can start already almost imagining the steps between, especially if you got a system to bid it right. Right. Totally. And that I was okay. So one of my previous jobs before the county was I was an estimator for a huge general contest goes the bid it right. Like, yeah, you could bid work to get work or you could bid work to make profit if you get it. Yep. I knew how I knew how to bid. I knew how to put together a detailed estimate that accounted for labor material and equipment and and all the mess ups. Right. So I knew I knew what it took to have a protective bid out there. And yeah, that's how it goes. That's a, you know, I don't know what I'm guessing that's going to be a three million dollar operation or something like that with that many full-time four. Yep. I've did three million this year and we're on track to do four, four and a half this year. Yeah. On your fourth, this will be your fourth year coming up. Yeah. Fourth real year. Fourth real year. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Wow. Good for you. And I'm not pumping the brakes. We're going all the way. Yeah. Oh yeah. Take over the county. The state. The state. We're going big. Is that right? You'd like want to grow outside of Northern Colorado eventually as well. Yep. Yep. Eventually. Yeah. But I mean, right now I need, you know, I need to expand my roots a little bit here. Sure. So yeah, we're, we're peddled with the metal. What's your differentiator? Like aside from your personal skill and background, but you're not even doing projects probably any more much. You know, maybe clean it up when the tickets weird, but you got to hire good people, have them deliver it. Is it systems building that's been your key to growth and good employee acquisition or what's it's culture? 100% culture. Okay. All right. I play extremely hard, you know, work-life balance is extremely important to me. And that was something that I always, I always wanted. You know, in those W2 jobs, I was just jealous of the people that are able to go out and do a month on a road trip or go. And just do something cool. Be freer. Yeah. Yeah. To be freer, right? Yeah. And I think America could benefit like we've kind of mocked it in the past, but of having a 32-hour work week. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, just more flexibility. And some people would accept a lesser income for more flexibility. I was one of those people. In my banking years, I'd be like, you know, you can keep your $4,000 raise. If I could have it in other three days of vacation time, that would be cool. Oh, yeah. It's culture for us. I mean, we all work four-tens. So. Oh, wow. Yep. Even throughout the winter. So we work seven to five thirty. And everyone gets Friday Saturday Sunday off. Is that right? Mm-hmm. Oh, that's cool. And as a new employee, you come on full-time with us right off the bat. You get three weeks of PTO plus another week of holidays. So you're getting, you're getting a month paid off. Whoa. Plus you get three-day weekends every week. So I mean, that's a, that's at the core of this. And so the type of people that that be the kind of company that people really want to work for. That kind of people really want to work for. Yeah. For sure. I mean, you, you look at the people on our teams. They're very outdoors, very outdoorsy. You know, we've got fishermen, hunters, wifeguides, yeah. My wife was a raft guide. So, you know, you can kind of see the trend here. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, really important. Well, a lot of those are high-performance people that in some cases have stayed in the raft guide business or stayed in other places because they didn't want to subject themselves to the constraint of like a big boy job. Yep. Totally. Yeah. Spot on. I mean, to give you an idea, people love coming to work to grow up. We've only had one person quit ever. Yeah. So literally, I mean, we've held on to everybody. Wow. And that's just like, that's just the culture that just keeps snowballing. Yeah. And when you have another position, your current staff is like, hey, Steve, you should come work for us instead of this other firm. Yep. For sure. For sure. Do you hire for like, tell me about that team? Like, what you got 18? Is there X amount of headquarters of so many crews? I know you, we haven't mentioned it yet, but you also do things like replace a bridge or a big culvert thing and stuff like that occasion. That's the destruction. Yep. A little bit. Yep. A little bit. Not so much bridges, but, you know, earthwork, dirtwork. Okay. You know, some some some minor residential, but all residential. All residential. Okay. Yeah. So we're not we're not the guys that are out there building. You don't have any of those giant scraper things. You're not land development. No subcontractors. Nope. You know, we're we've got we've got excavators that you can tow behind a full size pickup. We're not toned stuff with semi trucks. Fair. Right. Okay. So, um, but if you got a 30-acre property, you need some changes to the way that drains and stuff, and it's legal to do it that way. For sure. Let's do it. Yep. For sure. So the way we're structured right now is there's is about five of us in the office. So I've got a business administrator named Sarah. She's our office manager. She's the glue of everything. I think I met her. Yeah. You've probably met Sarah. Yeah. Um, I've got a sales individual. Um, and then we've got Rusty who works for me. He's actually my dad. Yes. I bet Rusty too. So he does a lot of our special projects. I call him the bolt tightener. So he'll look at any, you know, literally he can come in and look at any system, any procedure and and tighten the bolt on. Yeah. Interesting. A secret weapon. Uh-huh. I've heard people like that describe it as sometimes. We've got two designers. Okay. And then we've got, um, a project manager who's kind of office and field. Sure. But mostly office, right? Yeah. It's a lot of computer work and what. And then they have to trust their foreman or whatever the project reporter person is. Mm-hmm. And then we we currently have the the crew broken out or the the field crew broken out to two teams. Okay. Each team has a foreman and then the technicians blow up. Yeah. So it's pretty big teams. Uh, they can go in and crank out a job and move on to the next one. Yep. And then, you know, every once in a while, we'll have like a little small project like maybe we have a French string to put in or something. Yeah. We'll pull two people off of one crew to go do that. Yeah. Fair enough. Um, but that's typically the way, you know, that the teams are built three to four technicians, four men, and then the project manager has two foreman that are reporting up to him. And from an angle of keeping the pipeline full, it's like, well, this project is going to take four days and so we can kind of schedule this here. And you know, weather comes and stuff like that. You got to make adjustments. But totally. Really, it's all about keeping that crew steady busy. Yep. Except for Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Mm-hmm. But honestly, I mean, the secret to our staff is we don't hire for skill. We hire for personality. Okay. I, okay, let's take our project manager, for example, zero landscape experience whatsoever. Just like me, no landscape experience. Well, even, even way different than me because I had construction experience. Right. He was the general manager of green ride groomed transportation. Oh, really? Yeah. I was the banker that financed green ride in the very beginning. Oh, his family owned it. Oh, was it Bob Lynn's kid or a school field? School field. Yeah. Yeah. Thomas Gofield. That's cool. Project manager actually just got promoted to director field operations. Yeah. Shout out to Thomas. Yeah. Listening. Heck yeah. Heck yeah. So it's awesome. Thomas is freaking awesome. Yeah. I mean, Ray is what his dad is what help green ride really get there because Bob was kind of the culture guru of sorts. Okay. His partner. And then Ray was the numbers nerd that could make sure it all penciled. Okay. Okay. And together, they really built the culture as well. But man, that was the kind of business that people, you know, got paid $4 an hour less to work for because they wanted to be part of something. So you take somebody like Thomas, you know, honest guy. He does what he says always. Yeah. He was good on a computer. He's good with people. Very systems oriented. But most, most importantly, he communicate well. So he had just left groom or green ride. But I think it was groom at the time because he had just gotten sold. And like screw these guys. I don't want to work with these guys. No, I don't think it was like that. He's just like, I need to try something else out. So one of our guys, well, I actually went to high school Thomas. So Thomas and I knew each other. Okay. And I had another friend that was working for me at the time. And he's like, Hey, Thomas is looking for some side work. You might want to if he comes and pushes, pushes some wheelbarrows. I'm like, yeah. So he pushes some wheelbarrows. I'm like, dude, I see the potential like you want to come on full time. You want to be our project manager like I'll just like that. I'll get you there. Yeah. That's what happened. That's really cool. Yep. And so I mean, I've got 10 of those stories with with the people in our team. You know, it's because actually our our our lead for estimating in sales. Guess what? He was the general manager for groom as well. He took Thomas's position and then he was ready for his switch. So we brought Muhammad on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's that's the trend. This gray rock is contagious being the kind of place that people want to be a part of it. It's a community of its own for sure. For sure. And it's it's not just landscaping. I mean, there's you know, it's it's like running a business, right? There's there's just so many aspects to it and landscaping is just the smallest bit of what we do. Right? Yeah. You change lives ultimately. Yeah. I mean, both of your team and also the customers whose backyards you change. Yeah. That makes a big difference. Our motto is we build backyard memories. Oh, yeah. Dig it. So what's you know, I'm sure you've got some kind of budgets and plans and what's the changes for you in store for say 2026 in particular. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Well, we're entering new markets. So you strictly like Lairmer County, you know, in Fort Collins, Lumberland right now. Yep. We're staying here. We're staying Lairmer County. I mean, every once in a while, we'll touch Boulder, you know, if the project's right. But I mean, 90% of our work is loved one for Collins, Windsor, Timbeth. Okay. LeBort. Yep. Yep. Actually, buying the property in LeBort was one of the best things we've ever done. Yeah. I had no clue how many projects we're going to come to us just from that ability. And it has been just amazing to go to work and to see these projects and the local community that I'm closest to. Yeah. So I live, I live in LeBort. Yeah. So the fact that we can sell jobs in this this local community and hands the spaces of literally my neighbors. Yeah. I mean, it is extremely fulfilling. Tell me, you lived in a port for a long time. I was born up at Horseshoe, Reservoir. Okay. Yep. Yeah. So you were one of the that country people of over there instead. I lived up there for a year after I moved to town. Oh, really? Like 2000, 2001, something like that. So sweet. You know, I didn't go to the Canyon Grill with my banker outfit on. I put my gear up fit on. Okay. Or maybe this one. Oh, man, we, I was going to the Canyon Grill when I was two, three years old. Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. Believe it. Yep. The question I had was like, what's the perception of like Fort Collins for LePorticans? Like, are they the, you know, little, I don't know, I'm curious from a LePorticans perspective. I mean, it's the truest form of the front range in my opinion. Yeah. It's the epicenter. Yeah, like, you know, I believe that we truly live out in the port, Bellevue area. I think it's the best place you could possibly live in the front range. I'm less than 10 minutes from downtown. Yeah, in part because you got 100 restaurants in downtown Fort Collins to come to if you want to. I can shoot up to Laurie State Park in less than five minutes. I literally, I can hop on highway 14 to shoot up the Puder Canyon like that. Yeah, you're two minutes from the Puder River to go to fish. You know, it's, it's perfect. It's why hasn't it caught on more for development and stuff? I don't know. We got to keep it quiet, man. Well, I know there's a lot of people that would like to keep it that way. When I moved here, I looked at Masonville in LePort because I for North Dakota. Yep. And I was like, I don't know what that's big town, you know, the country a little bit, but it was just more complicated and there weren't that many places to rent out there and stuff, right? I was a total newbie to the region, but like as time has gone on, I've been kind of craving that more. Yep. Agrarian style of living, if you will. Totally, totally. And you know, I think a lot of people that go through LePort, they see, they see kind of the surface image that can, it's like a false representation of it's, if it's real, the actual breadth of the community. I mean, you know, the swing station isn't like, you know, you see some trailers and stuff. So people, they, they instantly are like, oh yeah, LePort, it's a, yeah. I mean, you just go down this road and then all of a sudden you're like, holy cow. There's actually, I mean, there's, there's some money out there. Oh, for sure. Like there's some nice properties and there's some nice style living. I mean, they're big countryside ranches. I mean, there's multi-million dollar homes. It's very much a choice place for a very narrow demographic. Yep. Spot on. Yeah. Yep. And I, you're part of that demographic. I love that. Yeah. For sure. For sure. And you know, it's so funny when we bought that place in LePort, which is the original MioMai pie building. Yeah. Yeah. So many people were coming in and saying, oh, welcome to the community. We're glad to have you in LePort. I'm like, I'm about as local as it gets. I've been here my entire life. And you know, I think that's, I think I was a much more. But that they would come in and welcome you like that as part of the community. That's totally. Yep. That was a win. But there was a lot of criticism at first. People were skeptical that we were going to sell out be some hospital or something. I mean, the zoning on that property that we bought is very, very unique. There's a lot of things that you can do with that product. Right. It is not a great corner. And a lot of people were worried. And so there was, it was, there was just so much talk around that property that people were scared. And they, they instantly thought we were some, some sort of alien company to come in. And so they don't, they don't want LePort to change too much for the most part. Spot on. There's a lot of people that don't want anything to change. And you know, it's okay. Police, that van over there on the risk canyon entrance used to have that, you know, please save our peaceful valley from the developers or whatever kind of thing. And I ride, I'm a motorcyclist. So I ride risk canyon at least 15 times a summer. You know, so that's a lot of my time going through LePort or stopping in. Yeah. I mean, right off the bat, I mean, I had some, some kind of feisty people coming in the office too, like kind of high in a charger. And then I tell my story. And like, oh, you're, you're tiny. Yeah. If I did the same thing, maybe like, I'm like, yeah, I've been walking this put a river trail for over 30 years. Like, this is, yeah, home, dig it. Yeah. And, and so, you know, part of the goal in purchasing that property and already doing some of the renovations that we've done is I'm trying to just kind of change the way LePort has looked at. Honestly, I mean, I modernized that building. I gave it a very unique look. We had the, you know, the big painting done, the mural on the side of the building. It, people will literally stop to go take a picture with them. That's cool. So it's, it's different. And, you know, I, I really align with that. I'm not trying to make LePort corporate or anything like, you know, I'm not trying to commercialize it. I want to make it unique. It's like, it's got, it's got the character. And, but I'm also trying to make it, you know, a little, a little more lively. Yeah. That building I bought was a piece of crap. Well, and it could be, and maybe there's too many people that don't want it, but it could be the kind of town that, like I go over to, uh, Verne's pretty regular too. And it's under time. And I love that place. Oh, yeah. And it's, I mean, Al's done a great job of increasing the traffic, especially years ago. I was like way too quiet over there. And it's picking up. Yep. But it'd be nice to see it as a place where Fort Collins people intentionally go often. Yeah. Totally. You know, just to get off the beaten path a little bit. And there could be, you know, a vibrant, many retail community downtown, the port almost even. Or maybe there is that I'm just not aware of it. There's a plan. Okay. Okay. And, you know, the plan is not necessarily sponsored by the county or whatnot. But there's people that have come together over the past 30 years to put, put this thing together, this report master plan. Okay. I've looked at it. Okay. And it is. I mean, it could be something, man. I know. I think it could. I mean, it could down in bold or even Denver area, the town that's in the coolest geographic location is kind of the coolest place to live. Yep. And to go visit. And stuff like that, you don't think of Morrison or some of those little towns up there, Conifer and whatnot. Right. They're premium over there. But LaPort hasn't become that effectively yet, even for the like tourist traffic. Yeah. How many people come to Fort Collins and never heard of LaPort? Oh, yeah. All of them. Yeah. 90% of them, you know, people that live in Fort Collins, I'm like, yeah, he ever comes to Fort Collins. I'm like, what? All right. All right. It's all good. I'd be railed from my previous question of what's what's up for Grey Rock? Is it just kind of slow and steady around here for now? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing is slow right now. We're bumping up the sales. We're bumping up everything operations. It's a constant battle of making sure we're equipped to take on the growth. Right. So new equipment, new trucks are really good at acquiring customers so far. It seems. Say this, we don't have a problem of getting the phone to ring. Okay. A lot of people are interested in working with us. A lot of people can't afford to work with us. We're trying to figure that out. Okay. You know, that's that's one of the biggest hurdles right now is we're trying to figure out how to be a little bit more competitive on the financial side of things. But we're different, man, for sure. And people see it in our branding when they go to our website, they see our purpose, everything. Yeah. It feels different. And I know it. Because I mean, that's interesting thing about your business is like you've got to level up your equipment, your teams. Like if you're going to get more work, you got to add the capacity. Otherwise, everybody is like two months behind schedule and nobody is happy and you get a bunch of bad reviews and you have it harder to get new work. It's a really delicate balance. It's a cash flow balance. Sure. Right. I mean, because at any given point, what we're trying to shoot for is two to three months ahead. So the designs, the quotes we're working on right now, we're planning to put it on the ground three months around. Okay. If we, if the quotes and the designs we're working on right now are scheduled to go on the ground eight, nine months from now, we, you know, you kind of have some, some issues like a customer, the customer. Yeah. Yeah. No, they're going to go with somebody else four months from now instead of you eight months from now, even if they like you more. Yep. But then if you do it, you know, if you're, if your backlog is only two, three weeks out, you're very volatile. You know, you could, I mean, there's some serious risk there. For sure. We always have to keep this two to three month, like backlog, but also the steering wheel held tight for that six month, you know, yeah, time. Yeah. And you're still trying to sell into that space. And, you know, there, there's, there's a threshold like, okay, one excavator, how much, how much revenue can one excavator do? Okay. You know, where, where's the pushing point for, for four person crew? Okay. Can we push them this extra 200,000 in revenue? Okay. No, we need to split it up now. We're going to go, you know, get a second excavator crew. Yep. We got to outfit a hold on a truck, hold on a trailer. Okay. Well, guess what? A diesel pickup right now is $70,000. Right. You know, an excavator, another $80,000. So there's some serious overhead with it. Yeah. And the capital expense, like, that's supposed to be a tenant, your piece of equipment, probably, or something like that. But, you know, to buy when you're growing and stuff like that, you know, oh, yeah. Great. A lot of complexity. I made the mistakes. I've bought and used trucks. I've bought and used equipment, pieces of crap. I only buy new. Yep. I mean, our strategy right now, we're going to run our diesel pickups for three years. We're going to sell them before they had 100,000 miles, because that's the highest, you know, the highest value we're going to get back. And we're going to go buy new trucks. So we've played it out on paper. It's cheaper for us to run new vehicles than it is for us to put money into old ones. Well, and what even that math doesn't count, a lot of times is the down days. I mean, yeah, you know, I get an old truck and it's out of service for a week because it needs this or needs that. And now you've got stale crews and shift them on to other projects where they can't be productive and all kinds of more troubles. Yep, you're spot on. What would the people in your office say about your management style? Oh, man, I wish we could plug this little video in right here. At the Christmas party this year, they surprised me with a video that they all made. And I mean, it was the most amazing thing. I did. I had no clue. It was coming. You know, we were our Christmas parties are wild by the lot. I'll invite you next time. I mean, we're giving away laptops and we're raffling all sorts of crap off raffling free free days of PTO off all sorts of stuff. And so I'm doing kind of my final speech for the whole year and then I see our office manager. She, she, you know, gets everybody quiet down and turns on this video. And it's every single employee just speaking to me directly through this video and just telling me what they, what they like about working here, what they like about my style. And I was just literally in tears in our time like. And everybody that night, because I invited some past clients, some of our vendors we work with. And they're like, to whoa, I didn't realize this is what you guys have to go. Just starting a movement here. Like this is, this is not construction. This is something different. And it, you know, what I define it as, it's a genuine relationship with literally every single person on this company. Whether or not it's our customers, our vendors, our employees, it's authentic. You know, nobody's a just a number. I mean, life's too short. Yeah. You got it. You had to have some, some genuine relationships. Like that. And my leadership style is, if you're not really going to hear from me, if there's nothing going wrong, like I put, I put a lot of trust in you. That's why I hire you to do what you want. You know, to do what you're supposed to do. And, and if you need some support, yeah. Okay. You'll come to me. Let me know you using some support. I'll help you out where I can. But you have my trust until, until it's broken. And honestly, nobody's broken my trust. So I feel like me giving them that trust helps, helps something. Yeah. Like, and you, everybody hates being micromanage, you know. For sure. And so that, I mean, that's the culture. It seems to really be the focus of your culture is creating the kind of place to work that I would like to work. Yeah. And you worked in a good place. Sounds like, you know, pre-rested this, but a different kind of experience. Obviously, being a part of a big government organization and lots of rules, even to people who are cool. Oh, yeah. Yep. For sure. I'm thinking about, like, you had this kind of association almost with the slacklining in the yoga that we'll dip into here soon. But the complexity of this business in comparison and like I'm thinking about financial management, cash flow analysis, balance sheet management, like, how have you brought yourself up to speed in terms of being the financial steward of the business as well? Oh, I get people on my team that are way smarter than me. Okay. My bookkeeper, my bookkeeper, Tara. Are you from Bamba? My bookkeeper. Tara, shout out to Tara. I mean, she, um, holy cow. I mean, we'd be nothing without her. She's, she's amazing. And I, I have a part-time remote CFO. Okay. Cool. Yep. So I hired this third party company. I'm a big Tony Robbins guy. I listen to Tony Robbins almost every day. Okay. I've done their business coaching programs. Okay. I've gone to, you know, the conference is everything. Got you. Got you. And yeah, I mean, literally one day, Tony's like, hey, everybody in in this room, if you don't have a CFO, go get one. If you can't afford a full-time one, get a part-time remote one. And so that's what I did. And, and then I started on the difference for you. Yep. For sure. But countless hours on YouTube as well. Right. You do learn some of that stuff in college. Construction management is, yeah, it's a business program, right? Right. Right. You know, cash flow management is the number one reason general contractors go out of business. Yeah. So you learn about it for sure. And how do you, like, do you get a nice deposit up front to cover some of the, at least the materials and some of the early install and then do progress payments or what's your, what's your individual project cash flow management method? Yeah. So I mean, there's a couple, a couple pieces to this. You take a deposit of a large project too early. That's a little sketchy. Like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of. There's a lot of stories out there. Nine news.com of people like. We don't do that. Yeah. We, if you want to work with this, we take a thousand dollar deposit. Okay. It gets you on the schedule. You're, you're good to go. When we show up to start the work, we take a 25% deposit. Okay. And then we'll do progress. That usually covers most of your materials cost at least. You would think, but, you know, there's, there's like, there's lapses and, you know, you don't have to try to figure out what exactly that is for each one. You just kind of, yeah, there's some level of trust communicated that way too. You deposit a check. And I mean, doesn't land, you know, you don't have access to those funds for two days, right? And you're buying materials the first day there. So we do float a little bit, you know, you have to, we have a cash flow management tool. So we can look at, you know, any day in the year and see, okay, what's our expected amount to have in the bank right now? And we're, okay, we can, we can track this. So we've got, you know, our expenses tracked for every single month that we know goes out on every single day. And then we've got our projected expenses, you know, some, some things that we don't know that'll go out every single day or the same day every month. But we know, hey, every two months, I'm buying 10 pickaxes because that's just what happened. I'm buying a new set of types for the trucks trailers. So there's some number, you know, so I mean, it's a, it's a very complicated spreadsheet, right? But it allows for us to see, you know, what's going in, what's going out and whether or not. Well, it sounds like you've built some contingency into your projects as well from a previous statement a little bit at least to, I mean, you would think at first, at first, you get a lot fewer projects that it turns out if your contingency is too big. You have to be competitive and you have to know your numbers. And when I was starting out, I didn't know my numbers. I knew how to estimate and you had to cover my ass, but you can't just cover your ass. If you want to be competitive, if you want to grow and you want to gain trust, you got to know your numbers. And I mean, of course, everybody wants to be making tons of money. Sure. Big project. But you, you got to keep it in track. Otherwise, you, you won't win jobs. Well, and I'm guessing your jobs are probably mostly like $2,000 to $100,000 jobs. Is that catch a lot of them? Yep. I would say our average project is about $35,000. Okay. Okay. I mean, we get a lot of $100,000 jobs, but we also get a lot of $5,000 jobs. I'd say it's very rare for we're showing up for under $5,000. We don't have a per se minimum. You know, it's never been how we operated. If you want to work with us, okay, great. We'd love to work with you. We're not going to come trim your bushes, but like, okay, we'll give probably a figure something. But it's just in the nature of the type of customers that call us, the services that we market for, nothing really costs under $5,000. Well, and you got to think about what people do. You know, I would imagine that even your entry level team are probably in the, whatever, $40 an hour kind of range compensation. And so for you to make any money, you got to be charging for their time twice their wage plus some extra for allowance for all that gear and equipment. And so, you know, it's going to be for a four person team that's going to be $5, $600 an hour that you're there, kind of at the minimum. I mean, you want, you want trucks to just show up at your house with the trailer and equipment ready to go. There's a, there's a large job. That's $1,000 to roll that truck up. Yeah, it's a lot of organization, you know, and there's, there's a lot of expenses associated with just getting to the site, right? And, you know, we try and be transparent. I try and educate the customers with, with that process. But I also try and teach them on how they can take advantage of that too. Hey, you know, look, you got two and a half days worth of scope here. What else you need done? We're already going to have our equipment out here. Right. You know, let's get that extra half day built into this because yeah, we're going to maximize the amount of value you get out of this. Well, I was just thinking to myself that, that four tens model instead of eight or five eights, allows you one fewer day of mobilizing all the gear, all the people, all the trucks and trailers, and yep, your spot on. Yeah, it helps. 100%. Interesting. What, what would you say are like challenges for you when you imagine going from a $3 million business to maybe a $5 or $6 million business in the year 18 months ahead? What will you have to get better at doing to get from here there? Yep. I mean, the number one thing is, is, is our sales program. So conversion rate, that's a huge, it's a huge thing that you, you just, you need to heat close. We don't have a problem with getting the phones to ring. But, you know, we need to get our conversion rate up a little bit. We need to get people to hit, to prove on the code a little bit more. Um, I mean, if you look, I mean, yeah, and is that one question I'd have there is that because not yet ready people are contacting you just to see, looking lose, if you will, or is it because, you know, when somebody scratches your numbers with somebody else, they're like, oh, I want the fly by night. A little bit of both. Guys, because they're cheaper. A little bit of both. A lot of people, when they contact us, they don't know, they've never done this before. Right. They don't realize it's the equivalence of a, of a home addition. A major remodel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you would have told me before I started landscaping that a normal person like me will spend $40,000 on a backyard remodel, be like, you're cruel. But I totally see it. And I mean, totally, you know, I'm like, I want so much more in my backyard. 40,000, I'm not even going to touch what I want or what I need in my backyard. Right. Right. So a lot of people just don't know, you know, and it's, it's one of the unfortunate things about trades is oftentimes we're seeing it as like commodities, you know, and they, they think they're comparing apples to apples. You know, you get three quotes. Well, if you don't have a design, you have no clue what you're comparing. Right. Right. So a lot of people will go out, we'll do a consultation. And I mean, I'm sure a lot of home services see this. You know, it's not just landscaping, be kitchen remodels, whatever it's say, hey, you know, we got a quote for 30,000 dollars. Well, okay, do you have a design? Oh, yeah, we're going to do new new cabinets here. We're going to do new island here or if you're a landscaper. Yeah, we want to do a patio over here. We want to do a water feature over here. Okay. Well, what's the materials? Yeah. How big is the patio? Yeah. Well, like maybe about here. It's like, okay. So it's it's a difficult, you know, it's a difficult line of work. So yeah, you know, you well, a lot of unsatisfaction of people when they choose that lower price because they don't get what they imagined they got what the landscaper felt like they could deliver for that price. It's the right profit. Whereas if you've got a drawn out design, which I imagine these days are like not just the graph paper sketch that I'm imagining from 15 years ago when my wife and I had that, but instead it's probably almost like a both graphed and also like you can look at it. What it will look like. Oh, yeah. Virtually full 3D you could. I mean, right. You can put on VR goggles, look behind the water fountain. Yeah. See what it looks like when you look up through the burglar. But you'd be amazed at how many projects we install without a full-blown design. Because customers, they, I mean, they are shopping around. You know, everybody has been taught. Your parents taught you get three quotes, right? They're going to do a project. To get three quotes. It's hard. I mean, that's, it's a hard, I mean, that's the biggest challenge, you know, is we're trying to redefine the way people look at their backyard, right? And you have to educate them on the process. There's so many things that you could do in your backyard, so many different materials. I mean, all that comes into play and really the only thing that we're trying to achieve is making sure that the customer wants to work with us for who we are and they trust that we can walk them through the process towards a successful, you know, result. And I mean, that's what we're good at, we're good at selling, right? That's what we're really good at is we provide the best damn contracting experience you'll ever go through. It's like going to a damn massage part of it. Delivering the goods is what you're at first at. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we're very, very quality oriented. But I, you know, you'll never see on my website, we are the best paper layer and Northern Colorado or the world. Right. Dude, I sell ourselves on the experience. We're human beings. We know your struggles. We know how to avoid those. We're going to give you a damn good experience. And so I mean, that's, that's the difference. And you know, when I look at 2026 or just growing from, you know, three to 10 million, you know, some, some of the difficult things there is you need, you need more quantity, right? So you need to get this, this, this message out to more people, you need to, you need to sell that, that process, get the conversion rates up. We don't, we have all the, all the frickin leads we could ever want. We quoted out 29 million dollars last year. Oh dang. You know, so, you know, there's plenty of room to, yeah, which is a lot of extra time spent, putting gloves together. Yep. So the biggest challenge right now is get those conversion rates up. Yeah. We're working towards that. We're building out our sales tools box, toolbox. We're trying to educate the customers a little bit more difference here. Yep. Yep. And I've never had a problem. If we have the work, I've never had a problem getting it done. Yeah. Like you can attract attract the crew that you need and buy the gear that you need to get it done. I had to say that it's almost the easy part, man. Yeah. Yep. Like we can teach people how to landscape. People when they buy their backyards, you, you're just buying time. You know, we're not, we're not doing cancer surgery. We're not, we're not open enough. Right. Right. Time and rocks. You can gravel, you know, whatever. I tell any homeowner, regardless of their age, you can do what we're doing. Yeah. You know, of course, we're going to do it right the correct way. There's some correct ways to put in payers and there's some bad ways. But, you know, you're buying time. My wife and I have a old brick bungalow in on the port avenue right downtown and we have a lot of half. So we've got a quarter acre. And when we bought the property, it had a little patio, but then there were 300 square feet or something of old Fort Collins sidewalk segments all scattered around the property. Oh. And so like their first couple years of living there, I gathered all those up and now we've got a giant patio that's, I don't know, 1200 square feet of mostly old Fort Collins sidewalk slate. Some of it's six inches thick. I know you're talking about that was real man work. Those things in place. And it's pretty unlevel anymore. Like some of the roots are going here. This and that. And I've just kind of dreading. But I, yeah, the making it right. Mulberry and Laporta Avenue, man. I mean, that's that's every, every freaking house there. The roots are pushing everything. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. We had our cottonwoods taken out a couple years ago. So there's, we don't have to get our sewer clean out quite as frequently anymore, which is nice. But, but yeah, that's one of my projects for this summer is actually re-leveling and getting my patio kind of back to where it should be again. Totally. Which I'm sure I could hire you for probably close to your minimum. But yeah, yeah. I'm an old guy. I'll just do a little more time myself. You know, and it's funny too. Like a lot of people that were like, Oh, yeah, I could go rent a skid steer and excavator. Sure. Okay. Yeah, you can. But I mean, I got those things on trailers ready to go every single morning. Right. You like, there's, you're definitely, you're definitely buying a skill set. You know, you're buying people. I know what they're doing. We can, we can chain up a skid steer on a trailer in two minutes. Yeah. If it's your first time, you're going to rent it. Good luck. It's going to take you 45 minutes to chain that skid steer down. And do you have the right truck? Oh, okay. Now you got to rent a truck for that. It's like, you know, there's, there's a lot to it for sure. Well, and like, from my own experience of laying a legstone and stuff like that, like that's a skill set in itself, getting the bass rig and the sand right and whatever else. You're enjoying all that. Yeah. Yep. So, you know, it might take the average homeowner. They could do it, but it would take him probably three times as many hours as your crew would compile and getting it done. At least. At least. At least. I mean, we'll do a $40,000 job. Our average is about three and a half days. Okay. So, giving the idea. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a long process. We have a very, very good process in place. Right. Every project we start, we've got a site logistics map. We've got a schedule built in place. We've got all our material quantities. You know, Foreman's having the check-ins with their crew. They know what the daily tasks are. Yeah. Yeah. They have to finish line. Well, not just for us, but for the customer too. Do you do kind of a clean out first almost before the crew shows up to build it back? I'm imagining, like, when you do fixing flips, sometimes you strip everything down to the studs and then you kind of blank slate to kind of build back up from, or you put it in addition, or whatever, but is it the same with a landscape? Or do you? That's 80% of the work. Good enough old stuff out of yeah. I mean, that's the hard part. Yeah. And, you know, those are the details that really matter. Getting the correct excavation depth, making sure you've got the right amount of space for your new material. You've got your grade, your slope, the drainage all figured out. That's what takes the long time. I know, imagining even just knowing where the plumbing lines or the sewer lines are in the electric lines and you can't dig here and whatever it is to part of the project manager's job. You don't have to worry about that anymore. Oh, yeah. You learn those mistakes directly. Yeah, we haven't had anything in a while. I've got a special treat. So this is our, I love to bag open the other day after I'm podcasting money. I want to make sure they want to stay all I didn't want to. But we've been giving hot sauce away to our podcast, yes, for the last couple of years and I ran out. So I don't have any hot sauce for you to take home today. Well, you make it one of these samples whichever one you like better. Actually, I'll send it the rest with you. So a badador, Mexican grill has been working on us to create this crazy ginger. It will be called, which is a peach carrot ginger garlic lime habanero or the core flavors in there. And this is ginger, crazy ginger number two and number three. So I want your honest impressions. Three is a little bit less hot than two. So I'll let you start with, start with three. I'll get you forward up here. You are hot sauce guy. First time you get in my office, you run me hot sauce. Is that right? Yeah. Well, that would have, you see, if I would have not given you that, then I would have had one to give you today. I ran out like three weeks ago or something like that. But I wanted to get the hot sauce right. The new one. So this is the number three. All right. You can swing that out. You'll be fine. So I want your honest tasting impressions and then contrast with two once. She got a kick. Yeah, yeah. You like it. I like it. But damn, she got a little crazy ginger. That was part of what I didn't think that the part of the sauce that I gave you last time was wild enough for a podcast called The Locoh Experience. That was good though. That was really good. Thank you. Kudos to the editor. The first one was spicier, man. It was spicier to you. I think so. Okay. Or I'm just maybe it just. Well, I think people react differently. Number two has a little bit of ghost pepper. Oh, now I'm tasting it, man. Come on. Yeah, I got me. Number three has no ghost pepper, but twice as much habanero is number two. Huh? Which one did I have first? Three. Three. Okay. So that's no ghost double habanero. And then number two is less habanero, but a dash of ghost. Dude, I think I'm pretty good with hot sauce and that got me hot. I feel like if somebody wasn't good with hot sauce, you would have just messed up bread. Yeah, we might have a funny bathroom break later. That's good though. I would buy that. Good. I mean, that's the goal. I would for sure. My goal is to get more than just a matter is going to make it. But an old town spice shop is going to carry it on a handshake, but I'm hoping to get. I'm going to try to get ginger to carry it over at Ginger Baker, because I think a hot sauce named Crazy Ginger would be perfect in her store. So you know, one of the guys in my think tank, he's got a hot sauce business. Oh, dude, if you're watching this, I'm so sorry. I forgot your name. It's only been two meetings. It's a, it's an addition, you know, handyman business. Oh, yeah, the noco handyman guy. Yeah, Derek. Yeah, he's got a hot sauce, hot sauce business. I don't know if I knew that. Uh-huh. Oh, he makes it. I probably should have asked him to make it for me instead, but, uh, hit him up. Um, he gave me, he gave me some for Christmas. I'm too far down the road with, uh, with Crazy Ginger and Matador for now, but maybe I'll have him make the next one for me. Yeah. Or a sidekick one. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, which of those would you like? Because I should have some more by next week. I'll do the first one, man. The three. Yeah. Okay. There you are. Thank you. A model of Crazy Ginger, uh, sample number. Melt your, melt off your face. Well, that's just the Matador label. We'll have a different label for Crazy Ginger. That's right. Heck yeah. Thanks, man. You're wasn't good. I see a little sweat on your face. No, I'm sweaty, Betty. That's good, man. What I think I might want to do is call a short break and then we'll jump in the time machine and go back and hear about little Dakota, but also slackline Dakota. I can't wait to get into that. Yep. All right. Cheers for now. Hi. This is Clint Jasperson, managing partner at Purpose Driven Wealth. We believe financial clarity leads to a life of contentment and purpose. Our mission is to guide clients through the complexities of wealth management, retirement planning, and legacy using a values driven stewardship based approach focused on provision, contentment, and enjoyment. With more than a century of expertise through thriving, we offer tailored strategies to help individuals and families achieve their goals and embrace generosity. Whether you're navigating a life or business transition or planning for the future, we're here to partner with you every step of the way. To learn more about Purpose Driven Wealth, call 970-330-741. This is the seed and spirit line forage and fire line, the high-ride bourbon whiskey. Cheers. Cheers, Elliot. Tasting notes for our listeners. Oh man, that is fantastic. Awesome. Dad. They do pretty good. I really like the high-ride. The bourbon is kind of a high-quality mid-shelf, but the high-ride is not much different price, but it's for my taste buds. I really like that. That is so good. Holy cow. Well, they are. Damn. Yeah, they're quite the local kind of focused organization. They grew corn. They bought an old-ass jundercombin that was like the one my dad had when I was a teenager and brought it up from Alamosa area or something and made it work so they could harvest the 40 acres of corn that they planted themselves so that they could sprout it and then make whiskey out of it. Wow. And there's no rye around here, so you had to bring it rye for somewhere else. Okay. Okay. But their intention is to be as local as you can possibly be. Sweet. Yeah. Vertically innovative. Heck yeah. Yeah. So look for more from them. They're in the back of the funk workspace and we'll soon have a tasting room and a oyster bar as well as a barbecue and a what is the hot oven pizza? oven pizza food trucks on the outside. So it's going to be like the coolest new hangout on the east side pretty soon. Damn. All right. Maybe I could get down. Maybe every. Maybe May. I love how I love how you know we should have a party there. Yeah. A local social. Let's do it. Hey, if you're listening to this Joel and Jess from Seed and Spirit, let's let's talk soon. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Sweet. We were going to jump in the time machine when we got back in here. So where were we when you're when you're when you're where were you born? It's born P.V.H. P.V.H. Chair and your folks lived in the port or now they're there. Of course. Okay. Horstooth. You said what are the other couple of these live? There's a couple of clumps of him. Yeah. It's around here. Came home in a Volkswagen beetle. I like it. Mm-hmm. We lived in this little cabin up at right across some horses mountain park. Okay. Were you first first for them? Baby. Mm-hmm. Okay. Only. Yep. You have some things too. Yep. There's three of us. Okay. On the oldest. Yep. Yeah. And what were they doing? Like, why were they living up there? This is what I guess I've hold. Are you your young 30s somewhere? Yeah. Yep. 32. 32. Okay. So you're not very old yet. What's that? What's 26 now? So 1992. The year I graduated high school. 93. 93. So I graduated high school before you were born. I don't think that probably makes you feel as terrible as it makes me feel, but so it goes. No, man. I had a kick ass childhood. I mean, we had the sweet cabin up of, well, it was a cabin. It was like 800 square feet. Oh, okay. And my parents, they were constantly in an addition, in an renovation, my entire childhood. Okay. So when I say I was born into construction, I literally was born into construction. Yeah. Your home was a remodeled zone almost always. Yep. But it was sweet, man. Like, what were they doing? Well, my dad was the executive director of Neighbor to Neighbor. Oh, really? Oh, I know Kelly well. I saw her just the other day. Evans. Okay. I, you know, I don't really know much. Yeah. But yeah, he, he was kind of like near founder of the organization, even pretty pretty. I'm close. Okay. I don't know right at the beginning. He grew them from just a small little thing to own and all the real estate they do now. Wow. Yeah. He was a huge piece of that. And then he ended up going to the Bohemian foundation. He was the executive director over there. Gotcha. And then, well, no, no, yeah, that's correct. And then he was a realtor. I'm sure at the group after that. But, but while you were growing up, those years in horse tooth, he was a low paid non-profit guy that was not hiring contractors, because he couldn't afford them. Yeah, I mean, we had some, some contractor, you know. But, yeah. But my dad, he was always doing stuff in my grandpa. Yeah. I mean, every Friday, Saturday, Sunday morning, my grandpa was there with breakfast, you know, 7 a.m. And, you know, today we're putting in windows or today we're, we're doing signing whatever. I mean, my dad and grandpa literally did everything. That's cool. And it's, it's not, it's not that my dad's very handy. Like, but, you know, determined, yeah, determination and just a little bit of skill matters. Yeah. Yeah. But like, you know, and people were like, oh, yeah, you know, I was born into construction. They think like, oh, yeah, they're to head on to a general contract. Yeah. And you're something like that. Not the case. I mean, I just was born into a construction project. So I had to, you know, I was swinging a hammer at a young age. For sure. We were just figuring it out, right? Yeah, with my fourth sibling came along. I had to move into the attic. But the attic hadn't been drywalled or nothing yet. So I had to help drywall the attic when I was nine or something or 12. Yeah. And I never did get painted for some reason. But we had, we had a sweet plot. I mean, I could sled in my backyard. I mean, back, we just don't get the same snow. But I was sledding, building snowboard jumps, rails, all sorts of things. My brother and I, we were into BMX, we're racing as a kid. We ran the local BMX track. Oh, really? So we had dirt jumps on our backyard. I mean, we had a half pipe. Whoa. It was, it was full on like adventure park back yard. My parents kind of free range kids. Oh, yeah, man. And at the time, like, we had a golf cart, a neighborhood golf cart. And my parents, I was probably nine. My brother was four. They're just like, yeah, all right. You can take a brother down the line. You guys can go around the, go around the neighborhood, whatever. We had dirt bikes and ripping them. I mean, I was building jumps on neighbors properties and stuff like that was, it was cool. It was really cool. I dig it. I mean, we had 11 cats that were outdoor cats that, you know, just were the ranch cats. As I said, it was in a clump of hillbillies. Yeah, yeah, totally. And that in a good, in the most good way. Totally. I mean, my parents are hippies, 100%. Yeah. Professional hippies. My mom's occupational therapist, always, always. So professional by trade, but hippies by, you know, love grateful debt, bluegrass, all that. And you have this adventurous childhood where you're a good student, too. Mm-hmm. Okay. It's a great A student, man. Nice. Yeah. Graduated honors, scholarships and college. Okay. Yeah. Did you go far away for college? CSU. Okay. Not very far. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, my first year at CSU, I know clue what I wanted to do. I had an absolutely no clue. I was also discovering myself. I had hair done here. Okay. Yeah. I didn't wear shoes for a year. A year. Like your first year at CSU or something? Yeah. Yeah. I was discovering myself. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you had hippie parents, clearly. Yep. Exactly. So, I mean, you can kind of imagine what that day-to-day looked like. Right. But I didn't know what I was going to school for. I had the grades to be in. I think you're pretty good at Hackysack. I was very good at Hackysack. But I never Hackysack barefoot. It was always a deed of samba. Those were the shoes to Hackysack. Yeah. A lot better flat spot. Yeah. I was I was going from mechanical engineering and it was easy, but I just wasn't passionate about it. Okay. So, I actually I dropped out. Yeah. Freshman year, I was living I was living in the dorms. Everything was fine. I'm not into this. And you had scholarships and stuff to help you a bit. Just wasn't it didn't feel right. And that's when I had found cycloning. Okay. So, a little backstory too. I was born with a club foot. My right foot is three sizes smaller than my left. Oh, really? Spent the first four or five years in a cast. I learned how to walk in a cast. Okay. So, you know, day one or day four out of the womb. They fit. You know, I came out like this and my foot was club like a nine iron. Right. So, the surgery flattened out. Oh, dang. I mean, if I was born a hundred years earlier, I'd be walking around. You know, they would have never been able to fix it. Yeah. Yeah. And then every month or maybe every week, I can't remember new cast. Oh, like embrace it almost. Straighten a little bit at a time for a long time. Yep. So, what it did is, I mean, the whole right son of my body was four or five years behind the left side of my body. Sure. And so, in high school, I had really bad scoliosis. I mean, my spine was just like this. And if you look at my right calf compared to my left calf, yeah, it's like half the size. Wow. And so, it was messing with all sorts of things. And then I was in college. Was that part of your barefoot thing that it was helping? No, that was just more for being fighting. That was just being connected to the earth. Yeah. And but I found slacklining. And it started to shore me up because they wanted to get me, they wanted to do surgery. They wanted to straighten my spine out. I didn't, I did not want anybody cutting in my spine, found slacklining. And then a year later, they're like, could you get vertical because the way you got to stand on that thing? I've tried it a little bit. I've stayed out for a couple seconds before. I mean, slacklining is an incredible tool for anybody looking to change anything in their life. Whether it's physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, it'll do literally everything. It's the best type of therapy you can find because you know, you get on the line, you have to be completely centered, balanced, focused, you got to keep your eyes forward. If you're thinking about anything else, you're going to fall off. You've got to be completely in the moment. It's the true form of meditation. Oh, yeah. We'll get after that another day. I mean, it literally, it felt like enlightenment for me. It was, it was a full spiritual awakening. It was never really religious or anything like that. But I mean, I felt more connected to everything than, than everything, than anything I'd ever discovered. So that's what I, that I fell in love with it. Yeah. And that's what you dropped out ultimately was you kind of fell in love with slacklining. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't know. Like combination of not in love with any other path. And so, I wasn't in love with any other career path. I found myself. I found kind of my purpose and and it's straight in my back out. So I was a firm believer. Right. Yeah, evangelist even. And so right then and there, I just said, you know what, I'm going to hold off. I'm going back to school. And I'm going to pursue, pursue being a professional slacklining. Okay. It was, it was kind of a brand new thing at the time. Okay. And I did it, man. I was making money slacklining. I was traveling around the world. I had sponsors, making videos. Wow. And I was making more money at the very beginning of like YouTube, I suppose this is, I guess you're not as old as I said, you know, not quite then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was YouTube videos and everything. But slacklining was very, very new. Okay. But who was sponsoring you? Like the slackline supplier companies or something like that? Yes. Who's got a vested interest in creating more slackliner people? Yeah. If you're spot on and I wasn't the best slackliner. Like, I mean, I was in the top, but there was better slackliners out there. But I, I knew like I needed to create a business behind it. Well, I changed your life and became an evangelist about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I started this company called Rocky Mountain slackline. Okay. And it was all about integrating slacklining into the community. So we did workshops with the school districts. We did workshops with all sorts of different organizations, YMCA, all sorts of things, kids camps to get people learning how to slackline. And then we were getting hired to go do entertainment, you know. So yeah. You're going to do in performances and company picnic and you get to go there and Oh, yeah. You know, Chiba Hut hired us to do an event right across Laurel Street. Okay. Like when they were opening their stores in a grocery party, a 420 party. Yeah. There's all sorts of types of slacklining. There's what we call tricklining. You get the line really, really tight. And then you bounce on it. It's like acrobatics. You can backflips, all sorts of things. Right. Almost like gymnastics that we're thinking about, you know, that are going on. Our Olympics are going on now, but the gymnastics part of the balance beam kind of stuff. Yep. Yep. You're spot on. And so for anyone that doesn't know slacklining, it's a it's a narrow piece of flat webbing strung between two points. Like a toast trap basically. Toast trap between two really big tractors that aren't getting unstuck. Yeah. Yeah. But it's narrower. We typically are on something one inch. Oh, really? At least the pros are or is that what the size is? It's it's pretty standard. If you're doing tricklining, which is the bouncing, we're on a two inch line. But everything else is one inch. My neighbor just around the corner has a slacklining strung between a couple trees just on the street, maybe on a little miss or grant. I think grant maybe. Cool. And it's just hanging there most of the time. And I feel invited to do it if I want to. But it seems like it's wider. Like they probably have it, you know, it's more of a beginner's own kind of slackline kind of deal. Yeah. That's kind of where the industry has gone over the past couple of years is they think a wider a wider line means easier to walk. It's not necessarily a case. That's where a lot of manufacturers have gone. Interesting. Because I feel like with my foot that that space between the I guess right on the second toe, like the toe beside the big toe, like that pushed up a little bit. That would be the natural channel. Yep. And I mean, I prefer a one inch line because your foot kind of wraps around it, right? Right. That's what I kind of feel like that. It's like that you got a little slot instead of like being on top of a thing. But it I mean, it's yoga and steroids. You're on that line. You have to have breath just dialed in. You're looking at the end of the line and you're spying it perfectly upright. You're just so in touch with every little movement. Every movement you put in the line is amplified 10 times back at you. So you do, you know, a quick movement here. It's going to hit that shape and it's going to come back. I shake, you shake, we shake, we fall. And so the natural progression of slacklining for anybody is you want to go longer, right? So you start out in the park 10, 20 feet long. And so because you get longer, it gets harder. Right. Because the amplification gets multiplied. And so now people are walking mile long slacklines. What? But in order to walk a mile long slackline, you need to really hide because it's going to sag like over the grand Canyon. And so I mean, that became a part of my business. And a part of, you know, my athletic journey was was taking slackline to the heights. And so yeah, we call it highlining. You're wearing a harness. You're connected the line. You fall. You're safe. It's fine. I mean, there's some risks, but it's safer than getting in your car. Sure. It's like rock climbing, right? You know, you're connected to rope. You as long as you do the right thing. Rock climbing with like good anchors instead of little peanuts that you stick in there and hope for the best. Yep. Yep. And so I mean, yeah, man, I developed this friend group around the business where, you know, we were slacklining all the time. But then I was like, Hey, guys, I got this gig. They're going to pay us $10,000 to go slackline between these two buildings. So you guys down, they're like, Oh, yeah, like let's go. So I mean, I had a website and we were getting leads. I have been jobs and everything. So that, you know, I was running a business. Yeah. And I was, I mean, I was living the dream, man. I was 19 years old, freaking getting paid to slackline, travel around the world. And, you know, it's really cool because slacklining, it feels so spiritual and so community oriented that like, there's a greater purpose out there. And that's kind of how the start of a breathe all formed. Yeah. I got hired to go out and teach slacklining at this yoga festival. Okay. And met the co-founder of breath. His name is Michael matter, Jack. Okay. Ham and I, we've been friends now for 14 years. And we started to breathe together because he hired me out. I came out, taught the workshops. And I'm like, Hey, man, this, I like what you're doing. Yeah. I like you. This venue is really cool. We should approach the owner and we should see if they let us throw a slackline festival here. And that's how it started. We threw a slackline festival in the first year looked like a party where just a bunch of slackliners came and we rented out the place, set up lines over water. We had nets over the water. All sorts of things had come up, you know, his wife was a yoga teacher. She was teaching some programming and everything. And that first year, man, like people came up to us and they're like, there's something here. There is something here. Like we feel it inside. And we just ran with it. We called it breathe. And yeah, that's how that I get a festival every year kind of grow, grow, grow, grow. Yep, grew, grew, grew. And it not only a festival, but a full on community. I mean, our community is over 10,000 members. Oh, wow. So I mean, these are people that are dedicated to slacklining arts, yoga, music, sustainability. Yeah. And so, you know, people were coming to this four day event and they'd have tons of programming. Uh, kind of our niche was if you, if you have something to share, you know, our mission was to discover your purpose in our world. If you got something to share that you think that kind of puts you in the program, you know, is going to contribute to people living the best versions or the best version of their life as possible. Like, let's do it. Let's support you. So we never denied a workshop application. Oh, wow. So I mean, we'd have two, three hundred workshops over the weekend. And, um, yeah, a lot of coordination, a lot of project management too. Yeah. Yeah. And what was your, like, was there an exit from that formally? Or did you sell it? The organization or give it to your partner or something or what was the culmination of that journey? Mike and I have had a very, very interesting business relationship over the years. There's nobody I'd rather go into business with than that guy. I'm the sole owner of Grey Rock. Everything else is it's me, you know, that's who it is. But Mike, I trust with my life. Yeah. We, you know, it was never profit driven. We had to run it like a business. I mean, there's tons of expenses. You got, you got a lot of money going out. You got to have some money coming. Yeah. Yeah. So we had to run like a business, learned a lot. We empowered over 50 people to run that event. You know, so we had an executive director, team. We had directors and committees under them. I mean, there's a lot of going on there. And, and finally, I mean, we just, we got to the point, man, where it was, it was so powerful. And, um, there's just so many people wanting to be involved. We're like, all right, let's pass a torch. Let's see what the community can do with this. Like, you know, all right. We had 10 years with it. Like, let's, let's see what else, let's see what else the community's got. You know, yeah. So that's a pretty recent development for, you know, um, we, we passed it off. And, and now it's a nonprofit. It wasn't LLC. All right. You know, so it was for profit. No, no, it was for profit. But, you know, on the books, but theoretically, yeah, yeah. So I mean, that taught me a lot. I mean, we had some really incredible people. It was kind of a small farm. Like, in, in my home country of North Dakota, like, sometimes a farmer will have a successful farm. But he's got three kids. And so he, when he dies, the three kids get one, thirty each of the farm. And then each of them has a farm that's too small to really support a family. Yep. And, you know, this never got to the level of profitability, but we're both you and your partner could be financially successful from it. And it would have ruined it for us. Right. We didn't want that. Yeah. I mean, there was a red bull approach us and said, hey, we want to buy you out. We want to buy this event. Yeah. I mean, sign on the dotted line. Well, yeah, but we're not really red bull kind of people. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, it doesn't align with our values. Yeah. So we're not going to do that. We make our money in our day jobs. Like, yeah. So the kind of volunteered driven with kind of a board nonprofit style at this point. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So there's some, there's some new things. Well, if you do it right and and spin it, there will be kind of a cycle through of people whose lives are changed and totally totally. So I mean, that that's the story of breathe and and slacklining and how it kind of was full circle for me. I mean, it was it I never would have guessed that slacklining would have taught me so many things, man. I mean, it grounded me. It taught me about business. It taught me about relationships and family and and it, you know, the funny thing was the the most balanced I've ever been in my life physically on a slackline. I, you know, I went for world records. I mean, I was I was full blown. I mean, this is this is what I was, I was I was a slackliner. I realized that my life was the most out of balance it had never been. I I was completely occupied by slacklining. And I figure, you know, well, shoot, dude, I mean, I got a like I got to figure this out. Like I want to be able to retire one day. I want kids. I want a wife. I want, you know, I need some, I want to own a home. Yeah. And so I went back to school. Oh, he did. Yeah. What was this? Oh, shoot, 2016. Okay. You know, is yeah, yeah. Older than everybody else in the program and student older than average. Yeah, yeah. And got a degree in construction management. Hmm. For oh, I knew what I wanted to do. Did that feel like a sacrifice at the time? No, no, no, you were ready. Yeah, I knew you kind of had your hippie season. You're like, if for the omniscience that are the going away, you know, you, yeah. And now you run your business a little bit like with those hippie roots a little bit of freedom, culture, independence and trust and for sure, man, all that for sure. Everything that needed to happen happened. One, I mean, I'm a true, true believer of like, you know, the universe, it's got a plan, man. Like, let's just, let's just go with the flow. Like, I'm not going to fight it too hard. I don't push it too hard. Like, you can, you can swim, but make sure you're swimming with what God's got for you and the direction. Oh, yeah. That's in mind. At one point, I was totally lost. I didn't know what, I was like, I'm just freaking slackline. What am I doing? And did you ever go to the, the, the stupa up in red feather? The, the great stupa of dharma kai. It's this. Oh, yeah. The Buddhist temple. Yeah, I've been to that property just once for there was somebody had a meeting that I knew that was kind of in that space or whatever. Yeah. Man, I'm not religious or anything, but I went up there because a friend was like, I thought it was a cool place. Yeah. Like, you need to check this out. It's a great piece of architecture. Like, you can go just being the quiet space. Yeah. Just talk to yourself, whatever. And I'm up there and I was meditating, just trying to figure out, I was just asking for guidance, man, like, what, what am I, what should I be doing? This is crazy. This is crazy. I, I get out of the stupa. I'm, I'm walking around and I'm taking a walk through the forest and I freaking stumble across a slackline in the middle of the freaking forest, dude. And this slackline, it's worn out. It's faded. This is when you're like at the end of your rope with slacklining. No, this is like, this is, I'm probably 20 years old. Oh, and this was the sign that's like, you need to follow slacklining. At least do it for a little bit, man. And I'm so glad that that freaking slackline was there. I walked that line. Yeah, don't regret that season. No, man. No, I freaking walk that slackline. And I knew this is what I, this is what I got to do for a little bit. And I never realized like, it's cycling. It's just a metaphor for life. It's not, it's not anything. It's, it's just, it's life, dude. So, um, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. I found that slacklining. Like a year later, I discovered that some Buddhist during a camp had set up that slackline and forgot about it and left in the forest. So, yeah. But I just happened to stumble across it when I needed to find it. And say it was like, well, and it healed you as well, right? Physically. Oh, yeah. Mentally too. Yeah. I was just thinking your property in the port there. Like, there shouldn't be some big ass rocks with slacklines between them. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Um, you're, you're seen in the future. Sure. I don't know why there would be. Yeah. Except for your interintation. I argue with you. And ultimately, I mean, cycling. Get some of those little rubbery, penalty rocks things that they have at playgrounds. Oh, right. Yeah. For sure. More than anything else, man. The reason I started breathe, ran breathe. Is it it brought me to Lauren my wife? Yeah. Tell me about that. Yeah. I'm running. This is like, Hey, Lauren. This is one year before I retired. So this is kind of like in my prime, I'm the big boy at the festival is the biggest the festival's ever been. It's like 6 a.m. And I'm up at the front gate, making sure the teams all set up. Yeah. And volunteers are rolling in. And I'm yeah, you're you're you're you're breath famous. Yeah, yeah. And I see this volunteer. I'm like, Hey, you just want to say thanks. Like, we really appreciate you coming here. It's awesome. It's a volunteer. You get a camp. You get to go to the event for free or that. And she was with this guy. And I'm like, Oh, damn, like she really like her. This guy. Dude, this is crazy. So we we we go and we do a sound bath like later in the weekend. And I hadn't seen her since that Frankie check. That's a brief encounter. And I'm at the sound bath, which for anybody that doesn't know is, you know, crystal bowls, you're laying on the ground and you're just listening. Yeah, yeah. Just just relax and dig it. And I'm I'm seeing some crazy stuff. I wasn't on anything. Not on mushrooms or LSD or nothing. Okay. I'm seeing some freaking colors, feeling some stuff. And I just open my eyes in the sound bath. And I see this girl and she's got this freaking orange orb over her. I'm like, what the heck is going on? And it was Lauren. And after that sound bath, I'm like, Hey, I don't know what was going on by is seeing some stuff on you. And she's like, I was seeing some stuff on you. Oh, wow. And that's how it all started. Literally the next day. I mean, we were inseparable. We hung out the entire day at the end of the event. I said, Hey, look, I'm doing a month long backpacking trip in Alaska. You want to come? She's like, yeah, I'm like, okay, it's in two weeks from now. She's like, okay, sounds good. I'm supposed to give two weeks notice that by job anyway. What was she doing? I want to hear about what her place in life was. And was she with that guy in a relationship? Nope. She just rode with that guy out. Some dude, though, is 25 years older than her too. She was living in Bloomington, Indiana, working an outdoor retail store. Yeah. So she was your kind of people already. Like, if people might want to work at, you know, if you know, if you know, if you know, nobles is like, you know, national outdoor leadership school, like, really, yeah, really, really cool girl. Do you know a brother's fountain, by the way? You know those guys? No. No. You got a, they're campfire folk musicians. Okay. What's cool? A brother's fountain. Okay. And it's AJ and JJ fountain. AJ's a member. You know, the now, you know, oh, you need to go to Jameland. Okay. Jameland up in Red Feather is like the bestest outdoor music festival ever. And they get maybe only a couple hundred, three hundred people up there and stuff. But they have like seven or eight bands, Friday Saturday night. They bring up generator and build a stage and it's like a total outdoor hippie music festival. All right. I love it. Yeah. So you need to come to that. Okay. Sweet. Just so you know, sweet. Anyway, we're talking about Lauren. Yep. Yep. So I mean, literally at the end of the weekend, I'm like, all right, you want to go on this backpacking trip and Alaska. We're going to be up there for a couple of weeks. She's like, all right, I'm in. I'm expected to get lucky. And then, um, I mean, it's so crazy. I've heard to say yes, except for you saw, like, it was love first time. You saw. Yeah. Literally at the end of the festival. I'm like, I know this is crazy. This is my wife. Yeah. And she's like, I love you too. So we're talking on the phone for the next two weeks before we got up to Alaska. And I'm like, Hey, and you were living here or wherever? Yeah. Okay. And I'm like, Hey, um, you just want to move out here? She's like, yeah. I'm like, all right. So after Alaska, I'll buy you a ticket to Denver. She's like, yep. So literally, man, she came up to Alaska with two freaking check bags. One check bag was her backpacking, you know, set up the month. Tempted wherever. Yeah. And then the other bag was her moving. And that was it. I love that like slate story. Yeah. She moved to four columns after that with me. Never went back. And yeah, we're getting married. And I mean, yeah, the mountains have been at the core of our relationship. That's really cool. Yeah. Outdoors is everything. My, uh, my wife Jill, like, after our second date, she told her mom, like, this is the guy. Yeah. And I do it too. Like, actually, after our first date, I was like, I don't know if I want to ask Jill out again, because I might not get to ever dating any other girls. And I kind of like dating girls, you know, but I've never going to find anybody better than Jill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, or more right for me. Mm-hmm. You know, and then that's probably the same for you guys. Like, you know, you just, oh, yeah. When you're matched, you're matched. And it's been flawless. Literally, I don't know what she's having. Do you guys have an ankle better is already? We've got two dogs. Well, I just said that, man. We just lost one of our dogs. Oh, sorry. Oh, we have one dog, but we had, we had just turned 13. So I'm like, our 13 to 14, we just said by to the 13 year old. God. So we're, we're going to have some kids. That's, that's an excellent goal. If you haven't already. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now is the right time. Yep. Yep. Yep. So we, we've got a really, really exciting next chapter ahead of us. I mean, we're in a, we're in the best place we've ever been. I mean, literally, dude, I'm freaking happy. I love what I do every day. I love going to frickin' work. I love going home to Lauren. I mean, I love where I live. Everything's frickin' perfect right now. So we're, we're, we're, yeah. I love it. I'm so glad we reconnected again. Yeah. Yeah. On this. I have another question about Lauren, actually. Yeah. How does she spend her days? What's, what's she doing? Other than being a dog mom and grieving dog mom at that. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. Yep. I mean, so she's, she's been in the outdoor field forever, you know, but it never was able to pay the bills. Right. You know, you can't go get a mortgage as a Raff guy. Right. Yeah. So there's a point where she decided to go, go back to college. She got an MBA. Okay. So I mean, she went from being a Raff guy to all of a sudden getting a master's in business, freaking kickass, Lauren. Yeah. And so she, she kind of followed this event world. It just kind of fell into her lap. She's working for Otterbox at the time when she was going back to school. So she was managing trade shows and stuff like that. Got hooked up with this other cool company and managing all sorts of trade shows and events. And then yeah, just got a new job here in Fort Collins. So I would not be surprised if, if in the next couple of years, Lauren's got her own, own little thing going on, you know, okay. We'll see. But you know, at the same time, like we got parenthood and like, yeah, you know, well, and maybe she'll want less to do in some ways. And maybe you can, she can get smart enough to let your CFO go and she can be that person for you or something. What I, what we've always, we always keep that separate. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Grey rocks my thing. She's got her thing. We've got our things, you know, which is, which is really, I don't want to be your boss. Right. You know, and that's kind of me too. Like when I could finally fire Jill as my bookkeeper for, you know, what was the reason my food trailer and the local thing tank and stuff. And I could afford to hire a bookkeeper to do it right because she's a social worker. Totally. It was way better. Yep. And Jill's coming back onto the team recently. Sweet. Because she's been wanting to be involved. She thinks what local thing tank is is kind of cool and stuff. And she's super cool. Super solid administratively. And I mentioned Lauren that joined the team as my chief of staff. Yep. So now Jill works for Lauren. Sweet. Doing, that's a better dynamic. Doing the onboarding of our new members and the facilitator expense reconciliation things and some of that kind of stuff that needs to get done by somebody that's detail oriented like Jill. And so yeah, fingers crossed. It works out great in that space too. Heck yeah. I mean, you know, Lauren, she was the nature conservancy. She was some big way to volunteer for them. Yeah. Helping out with the prudery of her festival. She's, she's doing just so many cool things. Yeah. And so she's, she's going to leave a legacy here for sure. So I've been kind of wanting to do a local thing tank camp out sometime. Oh, that'd be tight. Right. Like anybody who wants to, we've got to figure out like the right place. I think it's going to be like dispersed camping national forest somewhere. How many people are you saying? I don't know. Like, I don't know how many, like, there ain't that many hippies in local thing thing. Most of them haven't been camping in 20 years because they got kids that are 17 years old or 12 and are two. I know a flat field with five acres that we could do it on. Well, my backyard, bro. We could get a brother's fountain. Yeah. To complete music. There we go. Let's do a backyard camp out at your place. Let's do it. We'll get Mike from Foundry. Sonas comes out for sure. We have sonas. Oh, no, no, no. This is going to be not just a camp out. This is going to be a freaking I'm down music festival sauna event. I like it. Okay. You know, Mike sent to for sure. He would be Oh, yeah. Cold plunges. Yeah. I'd love it. Yeah. We're going to jump into the local experience. All right. So this is, I mentioned our spirit sponsor. Yep. Seed and spirit distilling. They have Whizcal as well as the the high rye bourbon or they also have gin over there, but nobody's hardly taking me up in the gym so far. But there's some of the gin in here. Oh. And so this is a combination of basically Whizcal, tequila, bourbon, rye whiskey and gin. So would you like a half shot of Whizcal or infinity bottle? I'm going Whizcal. Seems like people have been favoring that we got a little bit of Laporte roots on this. Yeah, there's corn grown in the port in this Whizcal. Do you know where they grow that? I don't. I know they got a little field over there somewhere that they You're listening. Oh, and I got some land and Joel and Jess were events people. Really did this the arise music festival and a bunch of other shit. No way. Yeah, that was their venture together before they did Seed and spirit distilling. I mean, arise. So you need to connect with Joel for sure, 100% sure. Arise is kind of on that same playing field. And I food trucked that arise. Really? Yes, I was bears backyard grill. No shit. And yeah, we had like We had like required operating hours of 9 a.m. till 2 a.m. Daily, like we had to have our food business service for those hours every day. It was a crazy ass festival. All right, so we shoot in this, we're just sipping it. We're getting flavor notes and stuff on the Whizcal. So yeah, we can just start there. Fantastic. Man, I'm buying both of these bottles. Good. Wow. I'm going to sell a lot of booze for these guys with this spirit sponsorship. You know, you know, I ran a food truck. Really? Which one? Well, it was called Colorado dogs. Okay, hot dog cart. And I operated in Denver for events. So I mean, that was we skipped a couple chapters of years, actually, but that's okay. We'll have it back. Yeah, we did. I mean, so this is at the same time as Rocky Mountain Slackline and Breed starting. Right, because you're not actually making us a single income. Not really. I mean, they're I mean, it's okay. I was I was able to pay for rent. I was able to pay for stuff slacklining, which now many people are able to not even not very professional slackliners out there. Not even many professional athletes unless you're like in the NFL or yeah, you know, so I mean, there's 40, $50,000 a year, but that yeah, right. You don't have to be like, you could be a Davis office manager. Yeah, you know, so it was cool, man. I was living the life night, 19 years old and I'm like, for sure, you know, it was cooler when you were 19 than when you were 26. Oh, yeah, or whatever. And I was telling my dad, I'm like, hey, I'm thinking about going back to school. And he's like, you know what? Why'd she just chase business for a little bit? Like, hmm, let's let's think about some some opportunities here. He's like, I think, you know, I always wanted to open up a hot dot car. I'm like, okay, yeah, screw it. He's like, I know this guy started a hot dot car and he makes 200 grand a year. Right. I'm like, all right. Well, let's let's do it. So yeah, I had my buddy whip up a logo and we we bought a we bought a car and had to go through the whole health commissary. That was terrible. And this is Denver. I don't know. I'm sure four columns. It was pretty rough to. Yeah, I actually knew Fini's Weenies. They were in my commissary when I first tried to create a food truck association here to stop the food truckers from like catering parties at retail price. I'm like, dude, if you're catering a party, you got to get $22 per head, not 12. Yeah, yeah. It's not going to work. Yeah. But anyway, all your slots are fucking up for the rest of this. That's the world these days, right? All the slots are fucking up for everybody else. Yeah. It ladscaping and real estate and you know, they sell it, but they don't deliver. Yeah, man. So I was your hot dog run. It was, it was great. I mean, we started the business, had the licensing, everything, you know, we were compliant. That really taught me how to run a frickin business. Good. I needed, I needed a cash flow management. Yeah, on paper that construction management stuff was good, but well, yeah, but having handled all that cash, like for me, the big change for me when I became a food trucker, this is embarrassing to admit kind of because I've lived kind of a blessed life. And then I like, I mean, I grew up super poor. I was five foot one until the end of my 10th grade year. And so I didn't have a club foot, but I was I was crit the squirt. Like literally, I was the littlest guy and I hated. Number one, I had a second puberty, basically, you know, when I was like 17 or something. So you got to be like six three now. I'm six two now. I was six three almost at my peak. But yeah, so I kind of had this almost guilt about how much I've been blessed. I'm pretty smart. You're pretty smart, you know, but then I was super short for, but so I I think feel like my empathy, my ability to connect is partly associated with all the bullying and the being the squirty guy for a long time. And you were the little limpy guy with scoliosis, right? Like it helps you. Like it sounds like a curse, right? But like you wouldn't have gotten 16 videos of how cool I think Dakota is for your Christmas party, probably without having that as part of your story. You're right. I mean, everything. Yeah, everything plays into it. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Um, so we're going to jump into the final segments to the local experience. So this is the craziest experience that you're willing to share with our listeners from your whole life. Yeah, for sure. Right after that last little bit of Whiskale. Isn't that easy to drink? And by the way, Joel, if you're listening, you have made this a lot better than the first time I tried Whiskale like two years ago, like the the whiskey is like originally was almost a way to like blend whiskey and it's something that people would drink. It was kind of hot kind of young, you know, just like whiskey always is, but as it's gotten aged up a little bit in this repassade over and has come out, it's like I actually really like it now. Oh, yeah, because I'm not a big fan of mezcal. Yeah, you know, or even tequila. Yeah, I mean, I can drink a margarita, but you know, like a smoky margarita, you know, like this, I like whiskey, but this is freaking good. Easy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, same. Yeah, shout out, man. This episode is sponsored by Loco Think Tank. Loco Think Tank provides pure collaboration for business owners. We build smart, safe places to help business leaders navigate every stage of the business journey and we love what we do and who we do it with. Our model features gift back minded business veterans and the role of Loco facilitators. We're always looking for abundance, minded individuals to add to our membership facilitator team, local community, or to feature on this podcast listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of Loco Think Tank get their sixth month of membership for free. Just mention the Loco Experience podcast on your application. To learn more, visit our website at locothinktank.com. That's l-o-c-o-thinktank.com. So, that experience for you, yes. Yeah, yeah, you know, you let me know that this was going to be coming. Yeah. And you've already shared some pretty crazy stories and so I was almost like, tap the brakes. Don't share this story yet. Yeah. It has to be with cycling. You know, all right, so I mean, I was chasing that. I was hungry, right? Yeah. Fricking hungry. And try to hurt everybody in this slackliner. Oh, yeah. And I wanted to be the best slackliner in the world. That was my goal. And I was I was on track to do that. And you heard it, yo 70? You know, yo 70? Yeah, yeah, yeah, LCAP, all that. Yeah. So there's this little camp called camp 4 in yo 70. It's where all the clients, it's called a climbers camp. So you go hang out camp 4 and you know, you eat pasta at night. And then during the day, you go fricking climb. Well, for slackliner, this is where slacklining was born was yo 70. Oh, really? Yeah. So literally climbers in their in their off days or on their off days were training for climbing. So they started setting up some of their climbing material between trees. Sure. That's how slacklining was born. Really? So it was just a climbing rope at the beginning with. Well, you know, the webbing was was a particular material that you could use for climbing anchors. So they had a little bit of that hanging around. And so they were stringing it up between trees. And that's boom, that's how it was born. Okay. So it was literally born and camp. Well, and the core strength that develops is huge. I've climbed some rocks before. Not a lot. It's been 10 years, but I understand the concept. And I'm pretty good at it. Compared to how Wimpy I am. I would not be determined. And I was smart, you know. Yeah. So, you know, camp fours were slacklining was born. And it was always a gold mine to go camp camp for camp four. Camp four, like, you know, you watch some of these Alex Honol movies and everything. And, you know, there's always a reference to camp four. I mean, it's the home of climbing. It's the home of slacklining. It's, it's a mecha of sorts for that community. Totally, totally. So it was, it was everything to me to go and just stay camp four. So I stayed camp four. Did you have super long hair at this time? I'm curious. When did you cut your hair off? I mean, I probably did. Yeah. No, you know what? I did cut it off at this point. Yeah. I cut it off. That's another thing. I had some dreadlocks. Oh, really? Yeah. You went big. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. dreadlocks for a couple of months, but that was, yeah. That's not me. Not for you. Not me. I thought I was, but that's not me. So I camp four. So slacklining, born in Yosemite, have you ever heard of Dean Potter? Have you heard that name? Yeah. Big route climber, mapper guy. Big, big rock climber, base jumper. Unfortunately, he passed away a couple of years to a base jumping accident. But I mean, this dude, we call him like the father of slacklining. Okay. Because he took slacklining and he brought it up high. Okay. So he brought slacklining to highlining. And he realized like, okay, like there's, this is different than climbing, like this can be its own sport. And I'm going to start setting it up really freaking high. And I'm going to tie a harness and I'm going to connect a rope to the line. And if I fall, I'm connected to the line. And I think it'll work great. So, you know, I mean, that's how it all started. Yeah. So, um, but it was at the absolute extreme because Yosemite, it's known for the highest clips. I mean, the biggest rock faces. Yeah. I mean, LCAP, it's the biggest slab in North America. Yeah. So, um, well, most of the climbing was at tricky rock up in red feather area. No, down by a Colorado spring. Oh, oh, yeah. I've been down there, man. I'll show you a picture after this. And it would probably be as appropriately suitable because there's so many opportunities to tie things on these ridges and stuff and cracks, easy cracks. Yeah. So, so here I am, my young 20s and, you know, Dean Potter, this big inspiration, huge, like, father of slacklining. I mean, the literal campsite where slacklining was born, um, freaking hungry. And it's me and my buddy. And we want to rig every slackline in the valley that's that's ever been established and more. So, we're rigging these high lines, man. And, and, and Yosemite, what it takes is you, when you say you're rigging them, you're like sending them up to walk later. Oh, yeah. So walking is just the smallest part of the project. Right. We call it a high line project for a reason. Right. If you're going to go set up a high line, it's like, okay, we have a day of planning. We got a day of rigging and we got a day walking and then a day of derrick. Well, sometimes you can, you can combine those into one day, but depending on how severe the project is. I'm thinking even from a engineering standpoint, and probably you should have went to at least two more years of engineering school. It would have made you a better slackliner. Um, but you're probably like anchoring this anchor point, even to go the other way with something that can withstand the force of this. Right. It's so funny. You say about because you start as a slackliner, a hippie slackliner, and you come out after you've high line, you come out with a PhD in structural engineering. Right. So you, you understand how to rig and how, you know, forces and all sorts of crazy stuff. Yeah, but you could have used a calculator actually instead of yeah, yeah, right. So, you know, we're out there hungry. We're rigging all these iconic lines and one up. And the very first high line that's ever been rigged is one of the most impressive high lines still two days. It's called the Lost Arrow Spire. The Lost Arrow Spire is this finger that sits 2500 feet up off the deck. So off of the ground. And I mean, it, it's about as exposed as you can imagine this when I say a finger, it's a spire. Right. So it's, it's about a 20 foot diameter rock that just comes straight out of the ground straight up in South Dakota is the needles. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. One of those things. Yeah. We've rigged some lines up in the needles before. So, yeah. So the Lost Arrow Spire, the first ever high line ever rigged, the most iconic high line slackline that's ever been rigged. And, you know, my buddy Davis and I, we decided, yeah, we want to go after this. Like we, we want to, we want to rig this line. It's, you know, like what, let's do it. Okay. We were not climbers at the time. In order to be a good high line or you got to become a good high line, a good climber in order to get to these, these places. Yeah. Well, we didn't really know, I mean, we knew how to rig a slackline. We knew how to be a high line. We didn't know how to freaking climb a 25 climb spire. And you climb five sixes. Yeah. You have five eights, but dude, like eight climbing a 512 route, 2500 feet off the rope on my back. Back. Back. It's a completely different story. So, Davis and I, we know the complexity of this rig. We've gotten the beta from other friends that have rigged to be before. And we put this note on this like community camping board. We say, looking to rig the lost arrow high line. We need a climb. We need a climber to climb the tower. Come to campsite, 28 or whatever. Dude, we get it. We give this guy from Australia. He comes with a campsite. He's like, I'll put it up for you. You're the rest of this tiny splash. All right. Is this the same one as that? Yeah. So, uh, we did more whiskey guys. This guy, this Australian comes up to camps, is I'll put it up. Give me a rope. I'm like, are you fucking, you'll put it up for us? You call that a knife? Yeah. So I literally give him this freaking $300 rope. I'm like, all right, man. Like, when are we going? He's like, oh, I'll put it up in the morning for you. It'll, I'll fix the line. You'll be good to jog it. Like, I'll have everything ready to go. We're like, wait, you don't need our help. Like, what do you mean? You're going to just fix the line on this tower? Yeah. Like, I would climb up there tonight. Okay. So, dude, we, so give him our, we give him our rope right then and there. Right. Davis and I pack up for the biggest highland expedition of our lives. I mean, this is, it's, you know, the, the spires, 2500 feet off the deck, but you got to climb up, 3500 feet via the steep trail. Just to get to the top, you got to set up a base camp, everything. So we pack all of our gear for the nice couple days. We get up there. We've got the highland gear, camping gear, everything, food, what, you know, whatnot. And we're just praying that our rope was fixed on this tower. Yeah. So we get there and in order to see whether or not the rope is fixed on this tower, you have to repel down this cliff face. I mean, and you didn't mute up with the guy or nothing. No, I literally gave him my rope and was like, you'll set this up. Okay, cool man. And dude, I mean, I'm not a climber. Like, I was highlighting at the time, but I repelled down this frickin' face and it's 3000 feet off the deck. Like just straight 3000 feet, sheer, like these redwood trees. You've had a double knot at the bottom, right? These redwood trees that are 200 feet tall literally look like frickin, you know, little tiny cartoon characters. So I go down there and I'm like, holy shit, dude, he did it. The rope is on the tower. But you don't know how it's attached. No, you don't. You don't. So you have no frickin' clue. So I repelled down and I walk you up to my buddy, Dave, so I'm like, dude, the rope is on the tower. He climbed the frickin' tower. I think we're good. So I continue repelling down into this gap. This little like, you know, we call it a saddle. Yeah. It's this 10 foot saddle between the sheer cliff face and this tower because the tower, you know, it had a road. Yeah, you don't want to go down the next 300 feet to get to the actual bottom. Or 3000 feet. Right. You know, so there's a narrow spot. I get this saddle in and then I've got this 300 foot rope. I got a sand and I'm like, okay, I'm going to trust that this dude did it, right? Like I got a freaking one. Are you still attached to the other side? I am. But you have to disconnect at this point. Yeah, at some point, you know, so I frickin' I start juggling this rope up this tower, man. And completely fine. Does that mean juggling? Mm-hmm. Juggling. Like just trusting, like you're just climbing the rope, but it's like, what's the process of juggling? And it's just a smooth rope, like a literally like a climbing rope. Yeah, it's just a rope and we've got these two handheld devices. Okay, so you've got some equipment to help you hold on to it kind of. It's not just like the old gym class that holds in your heels on it. Right. So they move up the rope but not down the rope. Mm-hmm. You're connected to this device that makes you keep moving up. Yeah. And so it's heavy for sure. It's so you're sure. Here I am. Like the degree of danger is very high right now. Cause in order to get this line from the cliff face to the spire, you got to get a rope across, right? Right. So I repel down into this saddle. I'm all of a sudden juggling this rope up the spire, but I've got the other rope connected the back of my harness because I need to get the line. Right. Okay. Now I get it to the spire, right? And I'm just trusting that this dude tied a knot. Sure. A good. That's all you can do. I mean, you know, it's a good rope. It's a good rope, but you know, you're trusting this knot. So I'm juggling this 300 foot tall spire that's 3,000 feet off the deck. Absolutely scared out of my mind. I get to the top of the tower at the rope held. It was good. He did a good job. Yeah, yeah, he did fine. You know, so we rigged the high the high lines insane, man. I mean, you walk out to this fricking point. Oh, dude. And everything like looking down from 3,000 feet off the deck, I got I got a YouTube video that I could I could put in. We'll try to, yeah, we'll try to link it to this somehow. And it's insane. I mean, so you're 70 miles from the background. What's the distance? You gotta walk across this. It's not very far. It's only like 60 feet. Right. Okay. But you're 3000 feet up or 25 hundred feet up or so. Yep. Yep. Exactly. And you rig off of these old shitty climbing bolts that are put in my hand on top of it or something. Trust me a lot. Well, that's what I was talking about when I was climbing back in the day is like, even the bolts, you can't really trust because a lot of them were put up in the 70s or something. They're screwed into the rock, but yeah. But then there's also the, what do they call the little peatons? Peatons and stuff you put into the cracks and they're theoretically they're going to expand as soon as they get any force to them. Oh, the cams. Yeah, you cams. You actually rig off of some of these things for this line. So yeah, yeah, it doesn't make you feel very good warmer. Yeah. So you know, it's high, like it's, you're not worrying necessarily about dying because yeah, everybody else has done it. But, but there's a lot of mistakes that can be made. So I rig up this anchor. I've got the freaking rope back to the other side. I roll across the 3000 feet off the deck, hoping this rope is going to hold everything's good. I get back to the anchor, finish rigging everything up here. Night time falls. We've got the line rigged. So I sleep at night. And I'm thinking, man, this is, this is insane. Like this is the, this is like the most iconic moment of my life. Right. I got a black line heaven right here. This is this is the freaking line to walk. And so normally you walk with a harness. And you, you, your harnesses the texture of the horse. Right. Right. Normally we call it free solo if you don't walk with a harness. Right. No, it's not what I did. But there's, there's a segue between harness safe leash leash walking and free soloing. And we call it swami belt. Okay. And what a swami belt is is you take a rope where a piece of webbing you tied around your stomach. Yeah. And you just tie it up. There's no harness. Nothing. And then you, you, you connect it to the line. So if you fall, you're going to break your spine, but you're not going to die. Right. And if everything hang there with a broken spine with no way to really get yourself to freedom, but at least you didn't crash to the deck. It's like kind of the ultimate consequence. So you know at night, I can't go to sleep. I'm just thinking, man, this freaking line is epic. This is the most crazy thing I've ever seen. So I, I kind of got this idea like I want to make this last like I want to remember this. I wake up and do the freaking clouds are over the valley. And I can't see the valley floor, but the tower is coming right up out of the clouds. I rappel down to this, this, this, this ledge. It's about six inches wide. And that's where you tie it in the line. You're 3000 feet off the deck, but I've got clouds underneath me. Like it literally looks like I'm freaking in heaven over these clouds. And all you can see is the tower front of you. I said, man, I'm only going to do those ones. I got to, I got to make a worth it. I get butt ass naked. Take off everything. And I tie a freaking swan it up. I love it. And because there's like, you know, this is this is a no fall line. Like you got to be just so freaking in the moment. Like yeah, if you fall, you're, you're not in it. Yeah, you're not, you're not fully aware of the like the cross. You got to just put everything there. So when you, when you approach a line for the very first time that you've never walked, we call it onsite. Okay. So yeah, it's like a blank canyon and a motorcycle. And that's what I do for my son is motorcycle riding faster than I should with a older motorcycle than I should. Yeah, you know, because I don't even freaking tracks control and all that bullshit. I'm on site it. Yeah, and going new places. I've never been and going as fast as is prudent and a little bit more. So you got to kind of put it on the table. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to onsite this. I'm going to make it worth it. So I get, I get naked man. And I freaking decide to take the harness off and I tie up a swammy belt. And I freaking walked out. Well, you dragged the swammy belt behind you instead of having this thing that's in front of you. Harness wise. Kind of. It's yeah, yeah, you're right. Because like it's attached to your back. Right. Yeah. So if you fall, you're like hung there stuck. Yeah. Yeah, you can get out, but like, dude, people don't fall swammy belt. Right. It's not. Well, it's not a good thing. I mean, nobody wants to fall and die and wreck the sport for everybody kind of thing, right? Like that's the prevention against that is all. Yep. And so in that moment, man, I'm used in and out. 100% and I soaked up every second of it. I stepped onto that line. And when you know that like, you cannot fall, things change, man. Like it's yeah, I've done, I've done one free solo in my life, which is where you walk a high line with no harness, not even comparable to this line. It was much lower, you know, and like, you know, that's like kind of the ultimate test. Can I can I separate mine from matter and everything? And can I put the physical test? You know, here, it's the same reason people do tight replicas. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's a test. And you know, this was a test, but also like a little bit of a safety blanket, but man, it felt so. Well, so much more dramatic though. Oh, yeah, man. It was incredible. I got a freaking video of me walking that thing naked in and every once in a while, I just have to watch. You want to send me the link for that? I can send you that. You just said that to me. I'm not going to put it in the pocket. It was, it was my banner on my website for a while. I had, like, like an athletic way. Yeah, that was when you were peak pursuit in some ways of that. I was full blown professional though. You know, like, yeah, you know, I was marketing myself as an athlete. I was sponsored everything. Yeah. You know, I was making money slacklining, but it just it was the ultimate. It was the craziest thing I've ever done in my life, man. I want to ask a quick question before we wrap up, which is like is it disappointing to you that slacklining hasn't gotten more cooler over the years? Like you, you're definitely an advocate for the industry, the practice. I'm a yoga guy. I'm curious about that. Full transparency. I'm just not doing it anymore. You know, it kind of goes back to that thing. I said earlier, like, well, you know, it became, you know, this is what I would advise to anybody. Be careful making your passion your job. Yeah, it can ruin it for totally. I mean, that's why I started a food trailer business. Dude, like something that was so sacred, so so filled with wisdom and knowledge, like, all of a sudden I was having to monetize it. And I will not let it ruin it for me. It really did. And I have had to kind of step back and you know, I battled like a pretty bad head cold like five years ago. I freaking lost my balance. I had like a bunch of business things. I had tonight's thing or not a tonight's, but like a thing where if I turn my head fast, I'd like lost my balance and would like crash my car almost very similar. I went through something. That was during 2020. Yeah, before the COVID thing. Almost same time for me. Huh. Yeah. That's probably we were probably both early COVID people probably. Probably the first the first train ran around and give people weird balance. Yeah. And so thanks Bill Gates and Fucker. It was a humbling time for me, like, yeah. You know, so that's when I was like, you know, I got to work on some of these other things in my life. And you seem like more balanced. I can cyclone still for sure. Yeah, I'm sure. You know, it's like a bike. I can hop on and I can freaking walk cycling. But do I go and rig it up? I mean, dude, I was cycling every day. Well, and plus what are you going to do now that's going to be even comparable to some of the shit you did in your past life? I mean, no, I've got I've got some things. Okay. Well, we'll look for that. I'm full on addicted to backcountry snow. We'll be laying right now. Okay. I'm trying to chase that. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm full blown. I'm committed. It's like, yeah, you chase the things. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. Yeah. I'll adrenaline junkie for sure. So do you want to tell people where to find gray rock landscaping? Yeah, landscape and construction in corporate a couple ways. Just Google search gray rock landscape. There's only one company that's going to come up. It's going to be us. Go to grayrocklandscape.com. We got an Instagram. You know, I've got a personal Instagram and everything. If you just search Dakota Collins or Dakota dream big, you'll find me. Dakota dream big. That's my that's my personal kind of model. That's what I was doing. It's a personal brand kind of style. Yeah, for sure. Between entrepreneurship, dreaming big, freaking following your dreams, all that, you know, like. Yeah, yeah. I'm local. No co bear is my personal Instagram. It's good. It's crazy. Northern Colorado bear. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure, man. So yeah, I mean, hit me up. You can always stop in the office. Say what's up. Yeah, bye. Check out the graphics. Yeah, for sure. There's a lot more to come. We're just getting started. All right. Before the next conversation. Yeah. Cheers, man. Bye for now. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Logo Experience Podcast. Proudly produced and sponsored by Logo Think Tank. Colorado's premier peer advisory organization. This is your producer, Ava Menus. To find all of our episodes or nominate a future guest, check out our website at thelogoexperience.com. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X.com, and LinkedIn at the Logo Experience. To support the show, be sure to follow, subscribe, and share. Until next time, stay Logo.