EXPERIENCE 26 | Finding Your Path & Building Your Tribe with Jeff Willy & Noah Kline - Loveland Laser Tag, Laserforce International & Time Emporium Escape Rooms

Welcome to the LOCO Experience Podcast with LOCO Think Tank Founder Kurt Bear. Listen in as Kurt digs deep into the business and life stories of business owners and thought leaders at different stages of growth from all walks of life. Launching and growing anything can be a crazy experience, so expand your thinking and level up your understanding of what it takes to find success in the world of free enterprise. Welcome back to the LOCO Experience Podcast. This is your host Kurt Bear and I'm here today with Jeff Willie and Noah Klein and Jeff and Noah are my business neighbors. Noah is an occasional ping-pong lesson receiver from me generally and these guys run the time in pouring escape rooms that are my business neighbor and also a bunch of other enterprises and so I'll let them describe it a bit. I'm going to start with Jeff and so Jeff why don't you just set the stage for everybody. What hats are you wearing for what enterprises in Northern Colorado right now? Oh boy sure well I'm definitely someone of a serial entrepreneur. I started as the owner of Loveland Laser Tag which is a family entertainment center in Loveland and from there I started working for Laser Force which is a Laser Tag manufacturing company so now the vice president of operations for their US operations and then I got roped into starting an escape room business with Noah so I'm the co-founder of time and pouring escape rooms. We've now got two locations in Northern Colorado and then from there we decided why not build escape rooms for other operators around the country so we founded Escape Theory which is a company that manufactures turn key escape rooms for other locations and we've got some customers in Florida that use our product. Okay very good and Noah wrapped that up for me a little bit more with how you fit in here you roped him into the escape room stuff sounds like so I have him to use the thing for being my neighbor. There we go yeah I do or I work for all the companies that Jeff works for or slash co-ums so I started that Loveland Laser Tag is kind of just a basic employee when I was 16. Yeah exactly a grunt and from there grown within the company so through Laser Tag was got the opportunity to start a to be a co-owner with time and form escape rooms and Escape Theory which as he as Jeff said is our kind of way of distributing the escape rooms as turnkey packages and with Laser Force. With Laser Force just kind of an installer so go kind of on the road and install the systems. These systems that like track when you shoot people and all the things like that it's a proprietary system of some sort or technology. Exactly. Very cool man you guys are in figures in a lot of pots grass don't grow underneath your feet so Jeff why don't we oh and you're doing something like right next door to the escape rooms now that's looking no. Yep looking blessed. Yeah and that's going to be what? So right we forgot about that one that one is our newest venture we're opening up a bar and lounge it's going to be looking glass escape lounge and what we're doing is we're preparing a bar and lounge like a really relaxed environment to go with a new concept that we're working on for our company which is to do many escape rooms. So we've we've run into those in our travels and we think that that doing a 30 minute escape room experience would pair very well with the bar and lounge and so we're putting it together as a full package for team building and group events and holiday parties and just people they're looking to hang and chill and go play a game for quick 30 minutes. Exactly we think yeah after 30 minutes of escape room it's a lot of time left to sit down and enjoy a two perfect. Yeah I love it. Well I can't wait until that's and that's going to be coming summer of this year. Exactly. We're looking for a late July opening. Okay so Noah you said you started when you were 16 how old are you now young man? I yeah this last month I guess I just turned 22. Okay so I barely was able to get because that glass of red wine here. All right. I didn't even check your ID. Oh that's awesome it's great to see you know young talent and and just jumping in here. Jeff why don't we start with like your is the laser tag your first venture or had you been in entrepreneurial before that? I had several attempts so I was an engineer and then an operations manager that you'll have but I've always wanted to own my own business and I came minutes away from owning a computer land center back when those were popular which would have been in the 2000s. Literally we were purchasing an existing land center. We had the trek already for closing and then it fell apart over some of the final paperwork. Oh no. And then after that there was an attempt to get into the mail order dog vitamin recurring subscription business. Don't ask how that came about but that was before it's time before now everything is monthly subscription. Right right. And then after that I took a break from entrepreneurship which is probably a good idea otherwise. Okay six for a while to recover that old balance sheet. Oh it needed that and then I probably wouldn't have been married otherwise. Oh it was my wife had been with me long enough she agreed to go along with this whole laser tag idea not knowing what she was about to get into. Yeah well let's let's unfold that that story let's go back quite a ways even on you Jeff because engineers turn entrepreneurs are fairly common but people often don't think of engineers as being like creative types that create enterprises and stuff. So let's hear about how Jeff turned into Jeff. Are you from Northern Colorado? Not actually no so I've been drifting westward my whole life. I was born in New Jersey and then I moved to Texas and then that's where I went to school and then HP relocated me to Fort Collins right after I graduated college and I've been here ever since. Okay and so what's what's the college like computer science kind of normal stuff? Actually you nailed it perfectly I was a computer science major and I was an intern at HP and I started off doing a programming for them before I moved into management. And did you try to move to Fort Collins or Northern Colorado or they were like hey we need another smart guy up there well it's actually right during the tech recession I graduated in 2002 and so is that big like .com bubble bursting and when I was looking at where to work I had been an intern at HP I loved the team and I was worried that they were going to shut down the lab or do layoffs because that was the environment at the time everything was moving offshore and they assured me that no everything was fine that they weren't going to lay anyone off they just had to be worried about maybe they closed the whole lab well three months after I got hired they shut down my lab in Dallas and they relocated some of us to a new location in Fort Collins and so we merged into into that site and they flew me out there to kind of sell me on moon of Fort Collins and I didn't even make it into town before I decided that Colorado is where I wanted to live right you like look at the mountains like you drive north it was amazing just exiting actually I think it took me until I exited Harmony in Fort Collins and then you get that westward view and I was oh yeah I might it was November and I had my windows down and it was just like nice and you know how it's sometimes in November it's not super cold yeah and compared to coming from Texas and you know how hot it is there all time this is this is the place for me the cool breeze in my hair for a change finally oh so nice so how about you know are you born born and bred then around here yeah I was uh I don't have as an exciting story as Jeff um but I was born in the boulder moving some mics around yeah um yeah now I was like I said I was only as exciting as Jeff in terms of moving around the world or well you were 16 when you started here in leveling yeah exactly too much adventures so yeah now I was born in boulder and raised in love and all my life okay so I've always stayed here the leveling high I guess or what's that one to level in high school um that's where I graduated from and throughout all high schools when I had uh worked with Jeff so wow yeah so you you've been basically employed with him your entire career but now call on to some operations as well exactly yep that's been the only um official job that I had with that's a really interesting thing yeah the long term right hand man kind of thing so I love that so Jeff let's talk through kind of that transition um you were with HP love that office for a while had those those entrepreneurial inklings um do you want to share is there some interesting business lessons in that almost but a computer thing or is that maybe a little too private and we should just leave it at that well as far as like what brought me from HP into laser tech no like I was thinking about the computer the land business that you just oh consciousness and stuff oh sure yeah I don't I don't mind sharing it so um a good friend of mine from Texas and I was living in Colorado um but there was a um a gaming center called a magic gaming in uh sugarland Texas and it was the hangout spot um I guess it goes away how much of her note I am for sure but so we would go hang out there and play league legends and world of work half and and all that kind of stuff and so whenever I would come into town to visit friends that's where we'd all get together very cool um even though we had computers at home we were something about gaming you know in person yeah and um and so it was for sale and and that was where we always hung out and so you know we start talking we're like we should just buy it and my friend would be the one you know in Texas that would actually be running it day to day and then I would do like remote support with my tech background and come in you know come down a lot and you know help manage it and sure that kind of thing but but more of the remote person sure although it was possibly a window to get back to Texas and be closer to family and this is before I met my wife and and that sort of thing and so we were really excited about it and we we kept going down the path um I mean that was like one of my first business lessons was um sometimes it's it has to be about the numbers and you know the you know the the details and it can't be all about the kind of the dream the dream was to own this place it wasn't really a ton of money in the grand scheme of things to buy it the problem was uh when you it was never going to make very much money it was never going to make very much money um it was very recent in margins and there were certain things without getting details of the closing documents there were certain things that were like red flags that were supposedly resolved by closing didn't get resolved and we made the tough decision to walk away at the exciting table that's a sweaty palms kind of moment huh exactly didn't it taught me a viable lesson in that um it's you know sometimes it's okay to use emotions to make decisions but at the same time you have to separate emotion from business decisions yeah and as much as we wanted it and all we had to do was just hand the check over it wasn't the right thing to do and and then hindsight being 2020 looking at it we were very glad we didn't do it with the way the the land industry evolved yeah for sure so um transition me through we don't have to tell about the other uh Phil venture talked to me about well talk to me about meeting your wife because that was obviously a big part of like setting your foundations in northern Colorado instead of moving back away or something exactly actually that's really good insight because as much as I loved Colorado all my family was back in Texas and my friends and so after a couple years of being in Colorado Texas started pulling me back a little bit um and so I was actually actively interviewing for programming jobs in Texas when uh met my wife and uh so we were just seeing each other casually at the time and it was kind of one of those turning points when you look at it and you say well maybe uh maybe I should stick around a little bit longer and kind of see what happens yeah and uh it was same for her her name is Julie awesome yeah so um we'll get into the uh the family story a little bit more but I always like to hear about the love story so what was it that pulled you guys to each other so much would you say her what would she say um well that's actually a funny story I don't know if it'll be my my funny story to share for the local part at the end but it was a blind date um I had a friend that was tired of being single and uh he was like you we really need to start going out and and meeting girls and you know you'll be wingman and and that sort of thing and I was like well I'm I don't know if I'm gonna be here that much longer I'm trying to go back to Texas and he's like I'll just have to do it for the two of us so he went out and he actually you know found brought home two girls for you guys pretty pretty I mean it sounds terrible but that's actually exactly what happened he he started uh going updates with this one girl and uh she had a best friend and uh he set up a blind date and we went on this blind date and I uh blooded my way through it but managed to charm her at the same time yeah um it managed to do everything wrong according to like the actual relationship yeah and uh yeah and she was actually so caught off guard by how terrible of the decisions I was making and involving like taking her to a sports bar for Valentine's Day and telling her the wrong uh coffee shop to meet me at and she had a rider bike in the snow to the right one I mean you name it and I messed it up but somehow uh it worked well you were a nerd you weren't that accustomed to dating girls especially not such pretty girls that's that's exactly right I mean she had to find me on Facebook searching for Jeff's with uh that worked at HP because I was too stupid to give her like contact and power things like that um so somehow through all of that it's if I think if I had done the right thing you know she might not have been as interested probably um but it's definitely a project ladies like ladies like a project for sure so as long as you're changeable it a little bit malleable that's great why wouldn't say that I think it's it's we've been married now for 11 years and at this point I think she started to give up on some of the things well you could have only changed so many things yeah exactly no aren't you a sickle guy right now you on the marketplace so you gotta leave it out there no I'm uh I'm in a relationship currently okay do you want to take dropping names or is it yeah so I'm uh with this beautiful young lady uh her name's Salmo she lives out in Denver okay and uh I actually work at a coffee shop um as well as kind of like in the mornings to kind of fill my time yeah and so we met through working there and uh she since uh right when I got hired uh transferred out to Denver and moved out to Denver so uh a little long disconnection but you're moving runner on here and they're all all the time anyway so yeah exactly I'm sure it takes you to Denver a lot no exactly it's there and it's a wonderful escape just kind of leave out out of town for an hour and spend spend some time up there and just get away from everything in this area very cool and and Jeff do you have kids too usually I have a seven-year-old okay um and what's her name her name is Elise all right um we'll uh I've got some more fun stuff to talk about later in the family but let's get it back toward the business journey of hey honey I'm gonna buy or build a laser tag business uh well it's actually buy because it was an existing laser tag arena okay um and um I had worked at a laser tag arena in college and with one of those things where I said one day I want to own a laser tag arena because it would be super cool and then uh life happens and you realize that that's that's a nice dream but you know so I go off and do my career at HP and then there's a particular brand of equipment that I really like and as a matter of fact it's laser force which was very lucky because at the time there were only probably about a dozen sites that used laser force equipment it's an Australian company um but um it's it's really fun um and that was kind of what I got used to playing and operating and it turned out there was a site in Loveland um that uses laser force equipment and one of my friends from Texas founded on the laser force website and called me up one day and said hey Jeff do you realize there's a laser force site 15 minutes from your house so he actually like next time he came in a town he took me down there we played it um it's kind of like a hidden town it's one of the only places I've played if it's still your laser tag place now um it's the same one we just we just took it over and it was like very kind of a sleepy site didn't really do a lot of business which is kind of breaking even um it really just had laser tagged or wasn't much else going on so were you fans first and then you came to know the owner a little bit that was basically well turns out the owner um was the original investor so he was the second owner he took it over because it wasn't doing well he was trying to protect his investment and then sell it and so when I was there um I wanted to get involved and and so uh I'm playing laser tag there and and I said you know do you want extra help but you know I'd love to kind of do this on the side and he said no but you're welcome to buy it and at the time I think I was 29 and and he was 69 and you know kind of like cranky there used to be at this laser tag arena all the time and so I said well how much and I find out later through one of um one of his employees that still works for me now that he basically just picked the number that he thought would scare me away you know as like you know young you know kid you know in his eyes and so he picked the number and you know wasn't terrible and uh so I started like talking to my wife and I started talking to some friends and family and it wasn't a no and of course you know I started working for HP at the middle of the tech recession and now here this is uh 2010 I'm looking at doing this which is you know right about where the the next recession was yeah yeah it started there was no way and so that's partly why my wife said go for it um because how are we gonna actually do it but I started talking to a banker um Rex Smith call um I don't know Rex and he's just on the street here yeah and it was amazing and he actually didn't like laugh and tell me to leave the office when I said I wanted alone to buy a laser tag arena well he's like you're gonna keep your job at HP right that's good that's like yep you know it works um and and everything everything worked out um I remember uh of writing my business plan on the first generation iPad in Jamaica as part of the family vacation I'm sitting on the beach like we're typing out my business plan um and uh so I come back from uh Christmas break and submit the business plan and and it happened and everything kind of final place I was able to to get a lease negotiated and put a plan together and it was supposed to be just a sleepy kind of after work kind of like side project um and if you're playing laser I think it's like you're like that's exactly what happens and so and I'm not that kind of person I can just take things just being slow as now I have like 30 businesses so um so there I am like growing in and like putting effort into marketing and we started adding new attractions and then what happened is we get really busy and there'd be a really big weight so we'd add another attraction to keep people busy and next thing and that would have drawn more people and the next thing you know like we're a big fun center like doing big fun center things and I couldn't work at HP anymore so so I cut my hours back at HP and then eventually I call it retirement but I guess it's not technically retirement yeah yeah um but it's step away and focus on laser tag um and that's kind of where like everything else and had Noah was Noah like young on your team yet then or no not quite yet okay so let's uh what that journey from there you eventually got involved with with laser force as well is that during these early years of that journey it was so this was an Australian company they didn't really have a presence in the US and um I wanted a haunted house laser tag game and it didn't exist and so I saw the owner of laser force was at a trade show and I go up to him and I ask for this haunted house game and he said well we don't really just take customer quests so what I did anything that you know at whatever like you would think an engineer would do the only rational thing um that was operations of energy for HP at the time still I put together a presentation like a full like 20 page present PowerPoint presentation why he's created a Halloween thing exactly and he was like wow this is amazing well I'll tell you what you worked directly with my uh my programmer and we'll do the Halloween game and we did and it was successful and and we turned into a game and released it to other sites and they really liked it so then from there when they were developing their gen 7 laser tag he said hey do you want to help out with this development and so I did and I did my piece and then then it was hey do you want to be the salesperson for the US like I know you don't really know sales but we just need somebody and so uh so I started doing that and that was an eye opening experience suddenly I'm traveling around the country visiting laser tag sites and going to trade shows and selling laser tag systems interesting and uh so you're like mr laser tag like you're as well connected in that industry is most anybody you can imagine pretty much I mean I don't want to like you know you're going to brag adotion I don't want to be ragnoshes but yeah I mean I I get involved in laser tag panels and give speeches and educational seminars and I love it and all that kind of stuff so so it's really fun because I have this this laser tag site locally and um you just like it like like to be like grassroots but then I'm traveling all over the place like the best to the best everywhere yeah so I'm bringing all these great ideas back to love a laser tag I get a like network and if you know like sales and things like that you know I get a trade shows and I've got an expense account and I'm like taking clients out to dinner and it's a good lifestyle right so a fun yeah I loved it and and it turns out I can actually sell it better day job then working at HP while you got the laser tag business on the side the structure it fits if it really well it picked my own hours um it's our start selling laser tag and um we couldn't laser force couldn't keep up because they build all the systems in Australia and so then it was hey do you have anybody that can like maybe just make the phasers and so some of my employees at the laser tag arena the ones that had been there a while and we're kind of kind of closer growing out of being a laser tag Marshall now they started making laser tag equipment and then it was can you make the whole system and then it was we need marketing and so next thing you know I have a full office and now we have a second division almost exactly manufacturing and distribution all that yeah we do it all now in house and so it just kept growing and started to remember well and then for a time I stepped up and I started running the global operations for laser force and so I started doing what I was doing in the US but I got to travel to Europe and Asia and Australia and it was a lot of fun and then that's about where Noah comes in okay so let's hear about that no you're you've been sitting there so patient um tell me about like your first joby job like why did you take laser tag actually uh I so kind of funny I was right when I was turning I was 15 turning 16 and I was looking for a job because that was kind of the typical age to get a job and I had two girls you wanted by ice cream for right exactly and I feel like it was more of my parents forcing me to get a job a little bit right time you started up to pay for your own stuff yeah exactly so I went around looking for a job and laser tag was one of the first ones I went to um but I remember I walked in and the manager looked at me was like I know you got to be like 18 and I was like okay so I like shot my dreams down right away um so and I don't know why he said that because I knew people that worked there that weren't 18 but as I was like all right whatever so um and silly that was Adam he's long gone that's really way so yeah and so from there I went to other places I like tried to apply it dairy queen and old Chicago like your typical server jobs or bus boy jobs and uh and uh one day there was a just a job panel kind of a or a job fair I guess you could go to and a bunch of local businesses would be there and you'd meet the owner or a manager or someone and uh got to speak to them and all that and so um we're like all right well why not we'll go give that a shot and uh Jeff was there or I guess the level laser tag is a hole is representing there yeah and um sorry thinking about it and uh and it was about to walk out like it was kind of longing the panel and I was like kind of like none of these seemed to appealing I didn't know I can't do low laser tag and all that so we were walking out and I was like well I might as well grab an application so I grabbed an application and filled it out and turned it in just to give him my best shot and uh yeah I guess from there then I got an interview and uh went through the interview process and uh in what was that first rule um as just your basic Marshall so I got hired learning at that moment all we had you were the guy that teaches us how the safety measures and stuff like that exactly so we didn't have all the attractions we do now so I just learned kind of your redemption so like giving out prizes once kids got um their their tickets and all that um laser maze because at that moment it used to be a podium where the employee had to run our laser maze now it's like a self-serve kind of thing and then laser tag um and so started there and then worked my way up into kind of doing the cafe and learning how to make pizzas and then learning how to party coach and work with birthday parties yeah okay and so how was that like how long was it Jeff before you'd like recognize Noah as somebody that was going to have a impact in your operation overall uh well it definitely didn't know from the beginning they was going to end up being a business partner with them um but right from the beginning I could tell he was definitely going to stand out from everyone else um it was during that job fair so um it was a job panel hosted by the Larimer County Workforce Division and yeah um you they you basically give advice on like how you can stand out for you know applying and things like that and uh and one of the things you know we we tell people is you know make sure you let you take notes during the interview and you ask questions and things like that and what I found was that the advice that I was giving at the job panel Noah actually followed those things when he came into an interview he actually dressed appropriately he had questions to ask I could tell he prepared and he had paid attention in the job fair yeah so that was kind of the early indication but then um what what happened while he was working there is he would just throw him into to he would just throw himself in any task and and just work on that and so instead of just being satisfied being a marshal he wanted to learn everything and he wanted to learn the cafe and party coaching and um where things like kind of the one of the attorney points was we were going to the the big trade show every year um the international amusement expo okay in florida and um we were actually down um our regular team to go attend because I think there was installation at the same time and so um the person that would normally come with us to help run the booth was actually going to go out and do an install and so we're sitting there like my wife and I are talking about who we're going to bring as a backup and Noah overheard it and asked if he could go and I think he was a junior you were a junior in high school right yeah I was a sophomore maybe yeah sophomore in junior in high school so he was pretty anxious he's definitely not on our our list of people to bring to like sell laser tag at a booth at this giant trade show um and so we basically you know said no and we said well you know it's it's the week before Thanksgiving every year and we basically what we said to be nice was well you have you know school like there's no way you could go sorry and he said well if I could get out of school could I go and so we look at each other and we say if your parents say that you could miss school to go to Orlando for the amusement trade show then sure you could go and so sure enough my parents really would have said yes for that I don't think mine would so that's kind of where we were coming from but but sure enough they said yes and so he came to the trade show and he actually earned his keep really well he did a great job helping set that up he was there demonstrating the laser tag equipment and our sales person at the time at that point I was running the company so I wasn't doing direct sales and Nancy who's our sales manager was actually really impressed like I want to hire him to work with me that's exactly what happened because he was you know the thing is you know a lot of sales people have egos and so Noah was just happy to be there and help out anyway so you've got Noah there that's taking notes for her scanning badges giving demos he was the perfect person to team up with yeah and so she's like I want him at all the shows I love it I love it I want to back to truck up for a moment is has Julie been involved with your business operations the whole time she has so she's an accountant so she definitely helps with the number side but from the beginning she's done whatever's needed so if that that was wiping down party tables at the beginning and baking brownies to sell in the cafe yeah um to coming to the trade shows and kind of yeah you know helping whatever it took to get to the corner kind of thing exactly it's definitely it's it's a it's an all hands on deck effort when you're starting a business for sure and it's she's so she's like an accountant for an accounting firm or that kind of thing exactly she works more than full time for a company that does business accounting okay interesting well I imagine she does your books and stuff too probably exactly nice to have that in-house talent right it is it's and trust you know you can pay somebody a lot of money and mostly trust them or but our future wife and she really knows what she do it then it's really easy exactly and she's really good so there's been a lot of times where she's come through and helped us out with things like like we have no idea that um where we are in loveland is like a development zone and there's a R&D credits as example right you're like oh I can get $26,000 tax credit exactly thanks honey excuse me well Julie I can tell that Jeff thinks that you're pretty much you're awesome so keep it up so let's uh so you got young Noah here who's a sponge kind of a point and click button like here work on that make it better work on that make it better learn about that and uh so what's the transition into I guess the I guess tell me tell me about anything significant along the way toward the escape room uh enterprise because that's the newest thing and really the first time you were an owner right Noah yeah 100% so what started happening was um while Noah was doing party coaching things like that um he was really involved in helping grow level nicer to help make it better so so he kind of started um started becoming part of this core team that would figure out the strategic direction where we wanted to take the business what attractions to add um processes training that sort of thing and so next thing you know um when we're looking at any attraction or improving an area of LLT Noah was right there especially because now he's going all these trade shows he's visiting laser tech sites he's getting exposed to the best of the best that sort of thing right and so um when it comes to things like when we added virtual reality he took point and uh was helping put that together and he at that round that time really started playing escape rooms and so he started putting a bug on my ear about hey I think we should look at adding escape rooms to level laser tag so in his case it started off more as he really wanted to see escape rooms at LLT so Noah I don't know you lead for a while on the escape room thing because you got the escape room bug obviously and thought it was not just a cool thing to do but a cool thing to provide yeah tell me about that um so I think it really started with well we we played our first escape room and my first escape room was actually played with Jeff and some of like uh I think it's like a team adding or a birthday or like it was it was a one in uh four columns yeah four columns uh yeah nigma escape rooms was kind of our first one okay um and so that was our first for everyone the first escape room we heard a bit and we're like let's just go and do it and give it a try and um I thought that was very fun and unique and uh it was a very like back then it was a very basic escape room like you're standard locking keys and pieces of paper that are laminated um but I thought that was a super cool idea that you're putting in the room and you just got to like flip the room upside down and get a start lifting couch cushions and pulling books and looking for the hidden key so I thought that was super cool and it was always like those spy movies and so from there I was like Jeff you should add one of these and yeah and then uh we went to and that was uh then later that year went to a trade show one of the big trade shows and there's a company selling escape room and we played that one and it was more interactive and more theming and I was like no that's what we got to do and and so uh we just kept trying to I just kept pushing Jeff and trying to keep doing it and doing it and doing it and the biggest thing was our space like we didn't have it a true space to just throw it because it takes a lot of space right right and you got all this sound and noise and stuff from all the other activities and you can't like just build a corner right yeah exactly some yelling at them take out the break room and right we don't need a break room exactly the office we don't need the office um and so it was it was an idea it was a possibility but definitely not a realistic one and um so it was always kind of pushing towards there but uh then I guess kind of what happened was then at one moment we Jeff almost took over another location which I don't know if you want to talk about that or sure so yeah so it's as an entrepreneur to entrepreneur it always been you know one of my goals to expand either to make love and lease it like bigger or to do another location and an opportunity came up to acquire an existing entertainment center that was struggling in Longmont okay um and you know we looked at it and I said well it starts with an L so it seems to fit we could be LLT Longmont laser tag just like LLT Lovelin laser right and so um we started uh looking at that space and put reviewing their numbers and putting together a business plan and Noah um being the employee that wanted to be involved in everything that he is um he actually was helping with a business plan and at the time he was studying business at CSU and so it seemed like a good fit to help let him be part of that process and teach him how to analyze financials and write a business plan so on the side while you know we're we're working at Lovelin laser tag we're kind of using the nights and weekends to analyze uh this fun center look at their numbers see where we can make improvements put together a business plan and a bank application and talked about talked to Rex again and talked to Rex again exactly and um they're they had a lot of space that wasn't being used and um the idea we had was what if we did escape rooms there and talk to my wife and given that at this point it had been several years of no working with us and I believe in offering growth opportunities to people and and giving them a shot at things and it became a parent that like the next thing for Noah was give him a stake in something yeah um so that um I mean it's great that he's working for me but I really thought strongly about giving him his own opportunities and so when we talked about something like we would get these turnkey escape rooms from a company um that I met on my travels in Greece um that makes turnkey escape rooms and we would bring them in and introduce them to the US and put them in here and we would put put it in as part of this like this business acquisition package and then Noah could basically lease the escape rooms from us and lease like piece of the building and then he could run the escape room sets his own right and so what we did was while we're practicing I guess is the word on the business plan for acquiring this fund center Noah was then using that and he on the side made a separate business plan for um doing these escape rooms and so it was again it was a good learning opportunity for him um I actually made him present his business plan to his parents and my wife and they actually like the idea and then it became pretty solidified that if I acquired this fund center in Longmont then we basically go to the business together and Noah would have these escape rooms that he would co-locate with my fund center yeah yeah and is that what happened uh no actually um again similar going back to the um the land center um we we did our due diligence and things just didn't line up and we didn't pull the trigger on moving into Longmont um so then but we had been geared up my wife was okay with the second location Rex was okay with uh with supporting us from the bank's perspective we had done all this work on the business plan and now suddenly we had no second location well and plus I think my old banker brain is like plus leveling laser tag had turned from the sleepy little not much of a business into a pretty cash producing every year growing kind of an enterprise window a small part because of someone knows efforts and stuff too exactly um so yes we're left with this plan that Noah helped develop for the escape rooms and there's this empty space in the commercial park right near level and laser tag and then meanwhile laser forces growing the point where it's outgrown it's a little office attached to level laser tag and so we started putting all the pieces together and said well the escape room piece was pretty good what if we took over this new location it had enough space for laser force to expand its offices and then the front half of it we could put our escape rooms yeah and then what I would do instead of having this family entertainment center location that knows escape rooms are in let's double down and do twice the escape rooms and then know and I would each own 50% of it yeah and uh it was again it was one of those things where just like with a hey if you could get a week off of school to go to the straight show in Florida you're in it was the same thing as like if we're gonna do this together you need to bring as much and if that's the case you're in and we'll do it and and he was able to and so do you want to talk about that or you want to share you want to share numbers or you can just keep it vague if you'd like but you know it's friends, fools and family that usually are your sources of money when you're in that kind of a place yeah I mean we can bring that up sure yeah so um so the the cash investment when it comes to the business actually wasn't it wasn't super big it's not a big ticket no it was easing some space and hiring some people exactly well and so at that time because love and laser tech was doing so well and this was going to be an offshoot of it it gives us advantages as far as the startup capital power borrowing power exactly and so we could leverage our down payment into a much higher loan for the bank we didn't have to go through the SBA that sort of thing so we actually invested $15,000 split in half to start Simon Portian and from there we've been lucky that it was pretty much cash flow positive from the beginning once it opened again being able to kind of leverage from love and laser tag and then just you know executing it properly and you kind of used your power your leverage power to help him get into his thing and and that was one of the things I wanted to bring up and and observe from before Jeff is that like the fact that somebody's 16 and then 17 and then 18 and really smart and really spongy doesn't always equate to success and growth and learning it takes that observance of that in that willingness to allow it um you know as a CSU student business student things like that and just say yeah what here's your chance like be a be a part of this thing so I really applaud that and I think that business would do well to take key to that less than a lot of times know what what like what's your background let's talk about like are you from a family background of entrepreneurs at all or you just catch the entrepreneurship bug once you got this this get the laser tag show yeah not too much entrepreneurship I guess in my family that much my dad's a computer programmer okay that's what he does and he's super good at and all that and uh my mom started as a massage therapist that's how she kind of started and then uh became kind of a uh personal chef for people and then I'm just helping around uh that's a little bit on that's very entrepreneurial though exactly and how about you Jeff um so not so much my my mother was a computer programmer um same with my grandfather um it turns out my uh my father um he passed away when I was very little um sorry um but I thank you but I didn't I didn't know until much later but um he actually did um start his own like stamp buying and selling business okay um so so he has a little bit of the the entrepreneur something there yeah well it just comes from somewhere a lot of times so um what I want to get into then the so you got this the first time in poreum and what's circling now a little bit is that 2017 2018 uh it actually it was uh 2019 it was okay when we opened it and so we started with uh business planning in 2018 okay and so time in poreum opens when March 8th yeah 2019 exactly and and like you said cash flows right away and and what's laser force at this point is there is there five six seven people working for that enterprise and out there too we have um three full-time people uh doing production and support in the loveland office and then we have someone that does um marketing and graphic design part-time um there's myself um we have a full-time sales manager that works remotely from Indiana and our full-time support manager works remotely from New York so we're kind of distributed and that's that's the US office yeah yeah um but now we have um something like 120 locations in north america what um so it's uh it's grown quite a bit as far as where their systems are installed okay and then they service and manage all those things and whatever too exactly oh that's really interesting I bet you have a really close and almost family us relationship with the laser force folks oh yeah they're um they're all loveland laser diagonal employees that um moved into that role um so um like Andy for example who's um the the US regional manager for production and support um he actually was working at loveland laser tag when I bought it as a marginal manager and now he's like full-time doing production and support to support everyone else's laser tag across the country you're like the first bank of laser tags like they only hire young people and then they just keep them forever and find more hard things for them to do yeah it's uh you know we've been really lucky that a lot of our employees um are just such great people and what I found was that everyone has um skills and talents that go beyond just like what this part-time job is and so for example like you know Noah you know he could have just come to laser tag and he marshals and give safety briefings and eventually moves on like you know people at other part-time jobs do but he's way more talented than that right and our graphic designer who's now been with us for like seven years he's the most talented graphics downer I've ever met in my life um and you quickly find out like when he's party coaching on weekends that there's this this other thing there and and how could you just let him just be there every day like coming in and and running laser tag games when he's the most talented graphic designer in the world and that's what he should be doing and uh and it was just amazing so getting to meet people like that and work with people like that and I think that's a that's a good learning lesson for any entrepreneur is like being able to bring great people onto your team and keep them on your team and do so because you're finding things that really align with their talent set for them to do right like you were probably paying some graphic designer outside of the company to do a bunch of stuff for you before you observe this talent exactly and and and they then we get it halfway like they're not there they don't understand it whereas you know it's to you know give Marco some praise he really gets it like he knows like our vision he knows the product he loves laser tag so like the the work he does is more than just it's a job you know he's designing things that are awesome he's taking chances he's growing and so yeah I really believe in giving people those opportunities oh and so when I'm thinking graphic design um no I'm gonna jump right back to you when I'm thinking graphic design I'm thinking like Facebook marketing and different things like that but you're talking about like large format games and different stuff like that a lot of times too um well like the graphics for the game so he at this point now Marco went from again like working at laser tag to um he designs all the graphics that are like on the phaser and on the chest screen and let show up everywhere yeah that's really cool no please yeah oh I was just gonna kind of do you know that is to keep praising Marco for such a good work he does is he's really good at also like knowing the style for each business because now he does everything for laser tag and then escape rooms and laser force and so he really understands the style it's not like you can't like yeah I can't like at each business say oh that's a Marco design um just because he knows time and porn has a very steam punk style and laser tag is a very fun fun family style and laser forces the more uh business that so it's like very cool that like he can he knows what he's designing for and when you see it like you fall in love with it but it's fall in love with for that specific business yeah and it wouldn't fit into another person's business which is really cool and no I wanted to ask you you were a CSU business student have you finished your degree or you are you a dropout for the time or above on pause yeah apparently uh what CSU says is once your reunion never not around I guess but um yeah I know I started uh and I got accepted in the college of business there and I started doing it for uh I did one full year um and then actually my I did I did I did one full year and then I was gonna take time off leave um because I got accepted into the uh Disney program to go work for Disney um out in Florida and just be like a cast member and all that and so I told my parents I wanted to take a year off and do that and my parents were definitely not excited for me for that because they said that's not gonna get me anywhere um but uh so look I did like Cyrus right yeah so that was my that was what I did so I took a year off and I went I was gonna go to Disney and right before that's when the whole opportunity with the Longmont fun center came up and that's when the escape rooms and I said well if we do the escape rooms I guess I won't go to Disney and if then if that doesn't work then I'll go to Disney and then it works so then I stayed and then so then I went so instead of taking a year off of uh college I only took the semester off and then I returned the following for the second semester for my second year and uh very quickly I learned that I just had so much passion and investment into the escape rooms and that I just would always like every time there's either a school work to do or something for work per for a time point but always choose time point before school and so that very quickly took over and uh I decided that it was very hard for me to justify going to school to get a degree that said I can now do what I'm doing right so well it plus you wouldn't know how to do business after getting a business degree either yeah exactly so once I uh I went in I said hey uh I'm looking to drop out and like I said that's what they said is uh once you ram you're always rammed so yeah you can still be the love night association if you yeah and I feel like I have to add a story at this point so um when uh when Julian I said hey let's give this opportunity to know uh one of the things we were actually worried about was we don't want to enable his path out of like going to school like if he makes that decision great but we weren't going to make that path for him so we actually put in our partnership agreement that he had to remain a student to uh to be in this partnership and if he ever dropped out of school while he was owning this business then we basically had the right to just buy him out like we could say that's it that's not gonna happen but um we quickly realized like he said that his passion was was there for the business he was it was he's basically getting education doing it and um both his parents and my wife softened on that you must stay in school requirements um it's really also it was a good business lesson for him when you know he was able to learn that that doesn't hold up in contract anyways so right it was barely 18 when he signed it anyway so um so let's talk to this new this this venture here that made you my neighbor um you guys acquired what had been called the legendary adventures yes um so tell me about that and Brian was a friend and I you know he built his business and started really catching his stride and then the COVID kind of swept his legs and he was like you know somebody find me a pathway out of this lease and this obligation and um and you guys came along and I was like I think these guys are gonna make this work um so tell me about that journey as much as you're allowed to and and honoring Brian and and whatever but acquiring a second location was obviously a big deal for time and podium yeah yeah I think that was always like a future goal um I mean I think we both have the entrepreneur well again Jeff wanted to um open another family fun center and then where I was like well escape rooms might be an easier way to open up a second location but I'll be in a couple years down the road time poems only a year and a half old at that point or what it was right and so I got well down the road we'll do it and then very clearly came up but I'll let Jeff kind of explain how he knows Brian because it's more him that knows Brian than me at that moment sure so um Brian is also in the entertainment industry um he's all right because he's a traveling installer of systems and different things too exactly um he would do painting for laser tag arenas yes that's how our paths originally crossed um he actually came out and uh did painting for love and laser tag arena okay um and awesome job he's actually such a good painter oh it's magic like watching everything come to life and so he actually came out multiple times say he was living in Florida at the time and he would come out and uh and paint the arena and um he's just the such a great guy um so you know it was just enjoyable when he would uh when he would come in and uh so I got to know him pretty well and um and then again I don't want to get it don't get too much of like in a history but um he ended up moving out to Fort Collins and uh opening up the escape room and uh um we came out and played it cause times it was amazing like we'd be able to get this there um so much fun so big like such such cool puzzles um and basically with the pandemic um think one thing led to another and it basically it's really challenging to operate in an escape room in the best of time so especially if you only have one yeah um but then with the pandemic actually literally being forced to shut down right and having a family that you've got to support and yeah so exactly it was time and and and god bless you Brian with your listen to this episode uh we all think the world of you and uh we're I'm glad personally that this escape room is good in good hands still it's not some other office or some random thing right yeah and that's kind of what happened is you know he put so much passion into it um I think it would have been hard for him to just leave and see it like torn down or or even just someone run it that didn't really like appreciate it and so um it ended up being a good fit he asked if we would be interested in stepping in and kind of taking over the lease and and running it to keep it going and we're about to work work something out and uh and took it over and um eventually we talked to the landlord about what the covid rent might be exactly yeah and landlord's awesome um as you know it's you know it's a great person to work with and um everything and just kind of fell into place and um luckily uh the escape rooms you know nothing's really pandemic proof but the escape rooms are actually uh as far as entertainment goes a pretty decent thing to have during your pandemic because uh you only have one group at a time we switched to private and um you can go in it's easy to go in and sanitize and disinfect everything afterwards uh people can come in and and they have very minimal contact with your employee for a few minutes right socially distanced and then they go in and they're by themselves just the family they came with playing the escape room yeah and um so again once we're able to open and the capacity you never have more than eight to ten people in there anyway so right and that was you know so when they switched to no more than ten people um other than you know you're not supposed to go in with friends because you had to stick to your household there really weren't a lot of things that got in the way but do you have to enforce that probably have some responsibility or not really um well we we we make sure we communicated everybody was on the website and on the uh here's what the rules are exactly but um we definitely did and then when like groups would try to book like a viable team we would say hey like you can't really do that right now but we didn't check people's like driver's licenses to check their uh their home address sure so it was it was more people roommates a lot of times and stuff like that and they're in there each other's bubbles and how definitely judge that that's exactly right that well the bubbles that's the key thing is um in the end I think you know as people stuck with their bubbles and then it was okay yeah fair enough um no what's that been like for you like uh you're like okay we're going to Fort Collins and some probably means a lot more work for me and a lot more opportunity for me too right yeah it was um it was definitely a great opportunity the when that moment that opportunity came to be we were I myself and uh another one of our employees we were out in Florida picking up our third escape room for Loveland because we designed the escape rooms out there and uh um design and uh build these escape rooms out in Florida so we're out there finishing up and bringing it back and that was when the opportunity came so we had a third escape room and now we're like going to acquire four consultations that'd be a fourth so it was like a lot at once um and we came we looked at it and it was perfect so we did take it um and it was a very um the rooms very low tech in the sense of beautiful artwork and amazing puzzles but very basic so like you do um for our operations for example in Loveland we have headsets and computers and cameras and monitors so we can watch them and listen to them and we can talk to them and they need help and we have the uh automations on computers that can like automate things when you play something here it does something versus this was very uh pad box and keys and all that sort of stuff and uh like you would listen to the walls like you didn't have a and yeah it sounds like there's stuck I better give them a hint exactly so um so definitely that was kind of the first thing which is we didn't we definitely loved Brian's work um and that was something that we really wanted to make sure he felt happy about was that we weren't gonna change his work because that we loved it and we wanted we didn't want to change it but we just wanted to improve the technology of it so the first thing we did and well technically the really the only thing we've done to it is just made it a lot easier for our employees to run so everything's automated so instead of when you play something here and you get a code to a padlock we just said when you place it here the thing opens instead and um added all the audios and cameras in there so that they can actually see them and talk to them um and that was kind of the the the one and only upgrade I mean we've always kept it up to date when you rebranded of course that was a few months too yeah we've uh since changed from legendary adventures to time and point and four cons to help kind of bring the brand together and um do all that so well and talk to me then about like was the thought of a lounge already in mind or was that something born of opportunity not at all it was uh definitely we just took the escape room like cool uh we definitely thought we were gonna have the escape room for six months to a year maybe and then replace it with our own style of escape room so um it is the supposedly the largest escape room in northern Colorado or Colorado um which doesn't really work in escape rooms phasor paper yeah exactly so um so we were like well let's take it down and put like two maybe three escape rooms down there um and then we get to go that's sort of a concept you're talking about actually we're just gonna do regulars um at that moment that was what we were thinking is just replace it with two three standard one hour escape rooms and that was gonna be good and then once that's that we'll find other locations where else and keep going right or do another fun center perhaps or whatever the opportunities are yep and then um yeah and then the moment arise where um so for the people listening we're in the basement of this entire kind of complex uh right above the edge of uh old town fort collins yeah exactly so the right above us became available the space and we looked at it and we're like uh it's all right like there's some poles in the way and some the kind of size is a little weird so we were like we were super excited to do it but then we said no we won't take the space okay and then um then one of the other neighbors in this whole entire area decided to downsize their office and move into that and so then a bigger office became available and uh that started to make sense the inside makes sense let me take that yeah it was one of the things where um we had talked like no and I about uh just future concepts yeah and we had just you know you have like plenty of time when you're traveling you know stuck on airplanes right things like that a trade shows between setups and this and that whatever exactly the last day trade shows where nobody ever stops by your booth um so so we started talking about like our just our crazy concepts and um no has always been interested in opening up his own bar or nightclub or things like that and um we had this idea of like pairing entertainment with the bar and maybe doing 30 min escape rooms just because we saw from running the one in loveland that an hour is a long time for a a team building event or a company party that really people value mingling and socializing and they like that but if if they're all just in a room for an hour then that becomes the focus right and you don't really get a pair that with other things yeah I've done two escape rooms with people before and it's like okay we go meet for a drink and then we go to the escape room and then it's like I guess we go home now because the escape room was a big thing yeah yeah and uh so I kind of like that like a escape room a mini escape as a part of a night out with people yeah that's that's exactly right so we kept that idea in the back of our head we thought there's and um at the time too um we able to go into this exercise um I don't know if you've heard of the blue ocean strategy yeah so um yeah the bluish the ideas you look for markets of non-customers just for anyone listening and so an example be Nintendo didn't want to compete with uh Microsoft and Sony on just building beefy or consoles to compete with the Xbox and PlayStation so they made the Wii so now suddenly a sudden consoles to grandma's to play bowling right and so we started talking about like how would we do that for our business because there is a very large market of non-customers for escape rooms totally and and we look at barriers to entry and we said well there was a 30 minute experience just think about how many more people would try it yeah totally I like that so much and I think that it's very easy to one of the things that you were talking about Noah about the escape room experience when you first got interested was the just turning the room upside down and stuff and to me one of the really significant things was I observed that the puzzle was too hard for me to figure out by myself like so it took two or three brains four brains five brains all working on it and successfully working on it to do it in the time available and so when you shrink that time you maybe kind of intensify the the collaboration intensity or requirement to to succeed yeah well I think that's like one of my favorite parts about just running escape rooms is like like you said is there's some people that you'll look at a puzzle and you'll have no idea how to solve it and you think like dang that's that's just unfair like there's no way we can solve it and someone look at it and just solve it instantly right just understand it and so that's the coolest part about escape rooms kind of almost we did we did escape rooms here with my nephews I've got nephews that are all teenage boys and Elijah is like the super a student musician blah blah worthless in the escape room in Sam the terrible student but mechanically inclined and stuff he's crushing everything out he's so smart of the escape room and it's just like oh listen to Sam he's got the right answers so it's really an interesting thing about how different brains think differently and stuff yeah so um so I guess you cut the deal to to make the looking glass lounge and you start tearing up the concrete doing this and that and uh so what's the offerings so looking the it's two pieces we have the upstairs and downstairs um the upstairs looking glass lounge um it's the main thing is it's going to have bar and shareable bites so we want to make uh I'll let no actually talk about the the drinks um in a second but we'll we're doing drinks and like appetizers and things like that um and the plenty of seating so you can mingle and socialize before after doing the escape rooms um we're planning to put some escape rooms uh not escape rooms uh some arcade games yeah one of the sides so some retro games you know geared more towards an older audience yeah some pinball maybe Pac-Man that sort of thing and then ultimately we'll end up with a stage where space of meters space of meters so yeah there's some cool uh remixes on space and Gallagher Gallagher yeah that's my favorite okay and then downstairs downstairs we'll have um four 30-minute escape room experiences um we're we're doing one which is like a mystery mansion where you're trying to solve uh who done it and figure out like who did it and where kind of like a takeoff on the clue board sure sure we're doing a wild west theme where you're basically trying to rob a train we're doing a um Dracula's crypt where you basically are vampire hunters that have to find Dracula's coffin and get it open and grab a stake through his heart before midnight and he wakes up in the like it comes to get you and then our last one um the uh is actually kind of a a funny journey it's the um it's gonna be the Chiba Hut uh dorm experience or um codename uh the golden sandwich trying to score in the college doors so I'll actually uh so I'll let Noah's two passions part of this project are definitely the drinks and then this like crazy uh dorm room escape room ideas awesome let's let's do it yeah tell me what the lounge Noah yeah so kind of the upstairs uh we kind of went with I mean four columns is very saturated with bars every every door is a bar in some sense um so we knew we couldn't compete in that sense especially with our size it's not the biggest space that we have and um so we knew that we couldn't compete with that so instead we were like let's create more of like a cocktail style lounge where we'll offer higher end drinks and um and just the entertainment aspect of it so I have um have the uh have the escape rooms there more like the social is that what you're saying? yeah exactly kind of the social and kind of except for nerds yeah in a sense right? yeah yeah that's a pretty good way yeah intellectuals we can call them intellectuals it sounds better I think yeah exactly I'd rather be called so a craft cocktail lounge and games uh would you all in addition to the arcade games we also have like scrabble and monopoly and random things not really that but we'll have we do a scrabble on one of the walls and chest on another area we do have scrabble okay I didn't know that um but we have I know we have chest so I think the theme of the bar is actually kind of the unique part is um just like the escape rooms you always try to go above and beyond and think of something wild and weird um so there actually isn't truly a theme itself to the uh to the bar lounge but it's more of like a whimsical like you go in and there's some Alice in one Dylan feel and that's kind of where we got the looking last name from oh sure and uh a little bit of some like under two thousand leagues under the sea or 20 000 leagues on the sea like things are not as they seem here maybe yeah so kind of everywhere you look is a little bit weird and off and unique and nothing fits um but in a kind of a cool way so that's what we kind of are shooting for for the lounge and hopefully that's what we'll pull off and then the uh the dorm room uh escape game and and for yeah it's got Jennings uh the landlord here is the founder of Chiba Hut and uh and so the Chiba Hut dorm what was the name um well we don't have a official a name for us that's what we call it the golden sandwich um I don't know how much we're allowed to say of it so I mean I'll keep it basic in the sense of it's definitely going to be just uh it's got don't care right exactly um but basically it's kind of a your your college dorm room like your stair typical what it would look like and then you're gonna be stuck in there and you're um almost uh you need to you're hungry and you need to get some money for some food yeah and uh so that's kind of your you would hang out hitting the bog a little too much for friends now you're gonna get a sandwich money together yeah exactly so uh the whole kind of thing is the find enough money so we're doing a twist on you see a tv ad that says time and point him has an escape room where you can get a free sandwich from it uh so you're gonna save up money to play the escape room to get the sandwich instead of just buy the sandwich and if you win the escape then you get a free sandwich you'll see um right exactly something that we're gonna sponsorship something like that but then so they see that ad but yeah there are in the escape room for that ad so it's kind of like a twist so then they're gonna be playing the escape room trying to find money to go to time porn escape rooms but then they're in time porn so it's a little bit of a mind-backing yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like the uh the little the stairway that you can't actually get up yep that the asher yeah yeah yeah that thing um so what else in the business journey should we like uncover for you guys or is it time to transition into the latter half of the podcast engine we need a pie breaks or anything I mean I'm good okay I'm doing okay all right what do we miss it is there any I don't remember Dominic is also a fairly playable ping-pong player not strong uh but he's he's a key guy for the escape rooms or but also for everything else too anybody else you want to shout out in this whole team that I you know that don't come around here yeah I think for escape rooms um um um um um um um um um um but he does a lot of our social he should react feed dammit now he enjoys it I'm gonna keep calling him Dominic intentionally there yeah but yeah no so he does a lot of our social media um that's kind of all he really does with yeah I mean he's always like there to do anything like he's always excited to it's a key key core team people yeah you'd like to shout out we should definitely give a shout out to um the rest of the escape theory team so yeah uh Doug Hummel he's here in Colorado and he's the wizard that brings things to life so he's the guy that goes in with the actuators and the mac locks and the switches and pairs them up with the programming that I do and then we're that makes everything automated and open up so um he's the guy where we come in and we say we want a upside down staircase where you can push buttons on each step to play it like a piano and have it change different colors he's like okay I can do that I love that and so Jeff I have to ask I guess is you're like the the mad scientist with the special sauce the powers a lot of this is that fair like your software abilities but also you kind of the games master designer generally too when it comes to the games designers it's definitely a share between now and I okay um so um like all of the the games we design ourselves and now we're getting input from the team as well um on like you know puzzle ideas and things like that yep um but I definitely um you know I'm more of the programmer and so when no one I works together on something you know he can come at things from a very creative side and uh and you know I think I've got some creativity but it's definitely I think in terms of how would I program that right and it tends to work out pretty well because um I think a lot of times you get constrained with the design by like oh we how do we do that right and um between um my programming and then someone like Doug that knows how to like use all the mechanics and then I'll give a shout out to Keith in a second who's the the theming master um there really isn't anything that we look at and say it can't be done yeah and it comes down to we think we can do anything given enough time and money right and so then it just becomes like do we go for it right and put a pencil to the time and money thing exactly so um you know I'm really thankful to be part of a team where when I say I want a slide in my next escape room like I want someone to actually be able to do a stick slide and they don't laugh me out of the room yeah um you know and I may not get my slide here and um not here we're we're looking at doing a slide in a pirate's room but um you know and it may not happen because of space or the flow or things like that but but no one says no you can't have a slide Jeff yeah and it's the same with like any other crazy idea we come up with um we look at it and we're like well actually we could do it here's how like we could have this door blow open with dynamite and and that that sort of fun thing um and I better stop talking about puzzles when I was gonna be pretty pissed that I'm giving off giving out all these things but um we don't have that much listenership anyway it's okay um but yeah so I also need to give a shout out to Keith and the whole team at artifact studios okay um he is a laser tag arena builder and he's done some really cool work uh for mutual customers he built the entrance to love and laser tag and when the the idea came up that we would make our own rooms instead of just buying rooms from someone else we gave him a call and said hey I know you make a laser tag arenas but do you want to make escape rooms and now like I don't know how many rooms we've we've actually constructed where we're at like nine oh I constructed and like none you know all the ones here in Fort Collins and development plus another couple of themes for other clients in 2021 so you're escaped theory business it builds for others and so that's kind of you guys designs and software and stuff and then his execution and installation and so him being willing to pivot after like 30 years in the industry making laser tag arenas to say yeah I'll gotten on this crazy journey with you and and be all in on it where he actually now has his own escape room location and Tallahassee Florida running them and we'll call him on a Tuesday night and instead of being at home relaxing with his wife and the dogs he's like I'll call you back I'm running an escape room right now so you know major props to him for for going on this journey with us for sure I like it I like it anybody else in the team that needs a needs a shout well I think that yeah that that entire escape theory team which Jeff mentioned so dog and Keith and their entire theme and team definitely just a huge shout for their creativity when we say we want a pirate ship or we want a Egyptian themed room that they all together come together and make that is awesome and then I just want to thank our staff like we we don't run the rooms we yeah our employees are on the rooms and so your people are great by the way whenever I enter a room they're always polite they're like why aren't you wearing your mask and I'm like well because it's just me in my office so I'll just go to the bathroom I'm just going to be here anyway but yes like all of our staff is just and we have an incredible staff and I mean all of our reviews are always shouting out our staff and so I think just them is I can't thank them enough for what they do for the company and they're always they can definitely tell them that they're they're not there for just a job to make to pay the bills yeah they're to kind of enjoy and have fun with the the group and they enjoy laughing and I mean there's always the fun moments of making fun of the customers yeah yeah but yeah so it's always cool well as one of the I think Jeff you'd agree probably and and you two know now after a little time that there's a great advantage in being a business that people have some draw toward actually working for you know instead of just oh I mull lawns for whatever unless you love mulling lawns and then that's great right and so yeah that's great that you can have that kind of people that are really engaged in the idea of hey I bring joy to some people with this escape experience oh yeah so we always turn to the face family politics conversation after the turn and it's as much or as little as you care to share um we are about 60 days now into the Biden administration we're approaching um you know most everybody can get the vaccine now if they want to you know so some of the the the suppressing things on small businesses like yours I mean you're you're enterprise even though escape rooms got through better than some a lot of people just haven't been going out so I have to think that you're anticipating greater revenues in the in the weeks and months ahead and that's kind of a relief to to hopefully see the vaccinations take hold enough to really allow full capacity stuff so anything on the front like who who wants to start Jeff you're the elder statesman here do you want to jump into any of those pots you've been shouting out Julie a little bit one of the things I like to ask in the family section is a one-word description of your your daughter right my daughter yeah and she's seven seven yes and and you have a one-word description that you're equipped for well she's too young to listen to podcasts I think I I can say anywhere I want and I think your wife might listen though true she'll definitely well but I'd have to say teenager ooh she definitely feels like a seven-year-old going on 17 for sure that's uh let's comment these days because there's such sponges and there is no limit on the information they can take in that in the so she's super smart super super well well spoken um and like you know great reader and that sort of thing so you know to that to that extent technically you know yes she's definitely beyond her years mature about her years she spent a lot of time at the businesses so you know she can hold her own a conversation with the employees um in fact uh if Noah shares his crazy story that I think he is I'm gonna top it with you know what my daughter's response to that crazy story like it but um teenager and that the sheer amount of drama that this little seven-year-old is able to produce is amazing she is so like so quick-witted and uh and everything um like we were on a road trip to visit family like during the pandemic we drove instead of flying and we went to visit uh to see our new um nephew in Chicago and so we're there and we were like sitting sitting in the car like eating our our fast food like on the way um because we don't want to go there's no flights you can't even go inside yeah yeah so and then so with this like they just this giant amount of trash and I was like well I guess I'm gonna go like hike to find a trash can it was nice knowing you and uh at least it was like see you later thanks for everything daddy we'll miss you yeah well you're gone so yeah and and just yeah she's just just so much drama like all the time I love it I love it um so that's family uh immediate family anything uh where's Julie from is she a local girl uh she's from them in west she was born in Iowa okay went out here to do grad school let's see us you oh in what uh accounting oh yeah of course yeah yeah and then um she ended up staying out here and getting a job okay anything that you would care to uh share with the world that you particularly love about Julie um well besides just you know I love spending time with her yeah the bet definitely puts up on me but at the same time it's um you know she definitely uh has no problem calling me out yeah and uh and so you know definitely I don't think you can stay married for 11 years if you're not um you know without not being afraid of uh calling each other out and challenging each other and and things like that and not like she she supports me but she doesn't always take my side right and so sometimes you know I'll I'll be venting her about something and she'd be like no I actually like on your team but I have to agree with Noah well that doesn't happen very often but no but yeah I mean she so that's that's definitely good you know um having a partner in life yeah travel with and you know that you know famous podcaster uh Jordan Peterson says that you want your spouse to be somebody that you can contend with yeah you know and that you sharpen each other by that wrestle of like making each other better as best you can just listen to the podcast yesterday really yep it's awesome and who's the word no but uh what would you say about family from your perspective you've talked a little bit about your mom and Pa you got siblings too I am an only child actually child yeah so like that's the good and the bad of it um yeah no uh I love my family like super close and tight and they live out here and uh leveling and uh so I try to see him at least once a week and um super close with them and they've been super super super supportive of my decisions and my goals and like I said when I when it was very much like you go from high school to college kind of path and when I started breaking away they were definitely like if you on my decision on your yep but they're always saying there was always supportive and if that's what I want to do that's what I could do and now they've seen where it's going and where it's growing and so they're always very supportive yeah well I've always uh I've always said one of my special talents is an eye for talent and I I see what you guys are building here with this escape room concept and the lounge and it won't surprise me if you have you know three times as many businesses as this together 10 years from now so uh keep doing fun stuff um so that was family uh faith or politics know you get to go first in this one faith well any faith background in your family and yourself yeah Catholic was kind of the strongest part of us so um born and raised through a Catholic family and uh go to church regular still yeah not not as much now um when I was living with my parents it was every kind of Sunday and all that and all the special masses and all that um now with uh being living on my own it's in my time commitments stuff I don't always put that first which aggression um but I still do as regularly as I can and I have I get a prayer groups and all that so I still practice as much as I can what would you tell people um because I'm not Catholic but I've known a lot of Catholics but in some of their ways are kind of mysterious you know like the little ash thing on ash Wednesday and you know we just had a big fish cook or one of our close friends lost her husband recently and so we had dinner with them and it was on a Friday and it was like we can't bring you any any meat on Friday right like it's like yeah actually uh during the lent season yeah so tell like would you care to like for us lay persons that don't really know the behind the scenes like what what is those traditions and things that people would want to know yeah well I think the big one is kind of what you described which right now is during lent which is uh between um midfiberate uh now or between Easter and um that's kind of the big moments of like falling or faith and holy week which was last week is the days coming up to uh Easter and kind of in your beliefs in our in our beliefs of like how uh Jesus resurrected and all that and so by doing so on Fridays we don't eat meat um just during lent season so it's not like a year-round thing so um but we don't eat meats we don't um we like try to create something in the beginning of lent that we were gonna focus on whether it's stop doing something or give us a fast of sorts right a fast of sorts and they don't have to be literally can be um like I'm gonna decide to pray more often and that's it's not a fast but yet it's a commitment to try to be better I've been doing six hours of my phone every day I'm gonna drop it to three or less exactly so yeah so exactly so that's kind of that's really the big one and then Christmas obviously and stuff like that fair enough fair enough Jeff any background in the in the churches of sorts or for you um yes but um kind of a not a straight line so um my background is um my father was raised Jewish and uh my mother is Unitarian okay um and so um we got both sides growing up like we celebrated um like you know that we we've got a Unitarian Church um pretty regularly and we'd celebrate Christmas um but then uh we also have the Jewish Church and whatever that kind of stuff um although my uh when my father father passed away when I was seven so we kind of stopped uh like tell me about that a little bit like was that a medical illness or a good passing it was um he had multiple sclerosis um and back in the 80s they knew a lot less about it than they now and so back then it was only something they can take a minute took him down pretty fast and wow yeah so um I was lucky and that I got to um I have memories of him before he got sick um but he was like sick for most of my life well um and then unfortunately passed away when I was seven or eight what a hard thing and I guess your mom became the caretaker or never she became the the caretaker um but she worked full time yeah um and so I would spend summers with my grandparents and then we always had to live in nanny um and that was um can tie it back to religion um every one of the nannies had a different religion and a lot of times we would they would take us to to their service on Sundays right so we had a um a Mormon nanny and a Johova's witness uh-huh nanny and a Catholic nanny and um we actually had a Buddhist nanny as well interesting Taiwan and so we were exposed to all sorts of religions well for a unitarian that's like pretty money right like that's exactly right is like more like you know studying religion and um instead of having like one concrete faith yeah and so I did get exposed to a lot of different religions and then my mom remarried um some of that was Catholic and so then um when I was like growing up uh like in middle school in high school um I would go to Catholic mass every Sunday and yeah and do that um but kind of as a result um I don't really identify with any one religion just because I had so I went to so many different ones like Fask and Robbins like it's in flavors right yeah so yeah so it's so you know so I definitely I have faith and I feel spiritual um but I definitely have almost more of an academic approach to yeah to religion if that makes sense like really being fascinated with the the history of it and the traditions as opposed to personally identifying with any single one tell me if this I tell people sometimes that I consider myself a Christian very much so but I have studied a lot of the other faiths as well and I kind of say they're all talking about the same force the same person the same creator being and they've got all everybody's got a blurry lens because it's such a challenging thing to understand but for me at least the Christian faith because there's so many pages of direct testimony of what he said and did and and so much prophecy of his pre-reservate a pre-pre-incarnation even and stuff like that that it seems like the least blurry lens it seems like his statements were pretty spot on with what it got that I can imagine is does that resonate with you or do you like yeah no they're all the same pretty much um a little bit um but I'm probably more in the lines of like they're all I don't want to say they're all the same yeah um but um but yeah it like you said it's kind of academic yeah it it becomes kind of academic and um and then there's the aspect of like churches community which I think is really important um and just having faith and believing and so um you know one of things that's important to me is like being tolerant of other people's faiths and so so being able to be exposed to all of them you know I never look at it and say well I'm you know I'm this religion and so then I don't I think all these are wrong you're gonna burden hell because you're not what I am exactly yeah I can I can actually appreciate you know as long as it doesn't cross the line I can appreciate that people have a strong faith even if it's not one that I identify with yeah so you know as example my my mother and father-in-law are evangelical yeah um and you know that's not a religion that I identify with but I I can appreciate how religious they are and how important it is to them yeah um you know I think that's and where does Julie fall in this conversation not that she shouldn't speak for herself on it um well let's stop I'll I won't speak for her since you know that's very private for her fair enough I'm imagining that that was at least somewhat challenging for parents or kind of self-identifying evangelicals and she's like uh you get enough church in your life daughter yeah I mean it definitely you know you know without again without like going to her personal details I'll say that you know it's definitely you know challenging especially you know having a daughter and in her parents living closer you know trying to find out you know you know you know as a as parents like what what we teach our daughter and making sure that she you know while she you know is raised like knowing things but you know she that also feels comfortable making her own decisions yeah we definitely don't force her down in a certain path yeah that's fair I like that I appreciate I think even from any perspective that that tolerance of people having different ideas and nobody really if we wouldn't call it faith if you could prove it right yeah exactly and plus you know if you want to if you want someone to go a different path than you want just try forcing them down right for sure yeah 100% so we're left with politics faith family we've touched politics you want to touch politics so who wants to potato go for it I heard hi well now do you want to jump into politics or you have a question we just had a mayor election congratulations to Jenny aren't here for Collins mayor yeah well I guess I'll jump into it's a national politics sure if you want to just buy it off whatever you want to so but yeah I'm you know definitely like really pleased with the direction you know that that country seems to be going in the last couple of months okay you know I think looking at it from a pandemic standpoint in fact we keep on beating our vaccine goals I think is huge okay I think that's the path to getting back to normal life you know without waiting into you know any of the politics around um vaccine passports and you know should everyone take vaccine or well you want to why don't you jump in there yeah yeah what did they look at so um so I got the the first vaccine shot I'm planning on my second and and I've encouraged my employees to you know for a level laser tag I've you know offered a bonus for anyone that does you know from a business standpoint it you know not having employees gets it can have to quarantine half my staff is is big it's worth it sure but then also just from a society standpoint the sooner we can reach those numbers and get this thing under control the sooner like everybody can go back to normal um but that being said I'm also personally against the pandemic passport or the vaccine passport I should say um you know if if that's a requirement to go visit another country or come from another country I think that's one thing but as far as like checking vaccines for people to come to your business or go to sporting events um cross state lines yeah cross state lines I think that um while it's a great idea on paper to say well sure like that's how you prove you're safe and you're not caring it there's so many reasons that that's not okay like as far as people that don't have the same access to vaccines you know now you're you're you know you're saying well you can't participate the same way other people um medical reasons you know again that becomes the thing religious reasons religious reasons or even just I don't want the vaccine now you know I I think uh it's a two-way street if if you want to be able to say I want the vaccine then I think um you you have to be somewhat tolerant of people that that that don't want it now I I'm against anti-vaxxers that you know think it's a conspiracy I didn't get injected with 5G or or anything like that um but I think there are there are enough reasons to not get the vaccine that I don't think it's my place to tell you and I think it's definitely fraught with danger to have a piece of paper that says you don't get to participate this in a way because yeah you have different rights because of your choices exactly fair enough all right you know uh anything more you want to add on the topic of politics um yeah so I just say so I you know I I like you know the fact that we're that the the vaccines being rolled out so well and that things are sounded open up I think um there's certainly just a tremendous amount of optimism that I see coming yeah and um I also would say the response to the threat was pretty much in line with what we should have done or it was it was under because of Trump and that's why we fucked it all up or like in terms of the closures things like that like I got to be curious a little bit here oh man well I I think uh my personal opinion is I think we overdid it on a lot of the risk the way we've opened things back up I think with what we knew at the time I can't fault anybody for choosing lives over business when we closed last March yeah we didn't know you know there were a lot of questions people were gonna say dying sure but I think as we learn more I think some of the rules about opening were very arbitrary yeah there were you know it's just based on categories and people's opinions that maybe weren't qualified to make those decisions or shouldn't have been picking the lines they did yeah and uh we were lucky in Colorado but as example some of my my peers in the entertainment industry um they haven't reopened right it's a year and it's very arbitrary they're a laser tag arena and they're told they can't open but down the street there'll be a trampoline park that's open right and uh it was just because somebody is on a list that's what I've said a few times more than a few times is we don't know a lot about the COVID virus but what do we do know is it responds to arbitrary rules yeah yeah so so I think that was that was tough and um yeah I mean speaking back to politics I think the lack of leadership and like and maturity and you know yeah and communication at the top trickled down to where you didn't was the Wild West wherever we're just kind of making their own rules fair um so I do like kind of the direction things are going I think we we over did it on closing but it's but it's being corrected now fair and uh you know I think when you look back at things uh all you can do is just with mistakes remain yeah you can't take the pasture out of the past yeah um no you're a pretty young guy you get any political uh things to share not too much um not just not because I don't want me which is more I try to stay out of politics as much as I can in in terms of what's going on um more in the sense of like I guess when we always travel I think I just think of like um you and Doug and stuff is when we always travel it's always like there's always politics and always talking it's kind of it's enjoyable but uh it's it's entertaining um but I try to stay out of it as much as possible but in terms of I like to stay in the politics that affects the businesses directly okay um so like COVID and kind of stuff is the way it's going like Jeff said is I'm pleased with the sea that more restrictions are lifting in terms of like what didn't seem fair in a sense yeah um like we're saying like I think here like we had parts where like bowling alleys could open and escape rooms technically couldn't open at certain moments right like if a bowling at lane next to you it's almost blind but an escape you mean an entire building by yourself like how does that technically fair so I think that's what's the part that like it's hard to be the decider well yeah uh from outside well there was like a time as an example where um we classified ourselves in the gyms and recreation categories and it got approved so we were allowed to operate with the right capacity to do escape rooms but then like another business like another escape room business didn't go that route they said they're indoor entertainment right which they decided they that's not essential so you guys are screwed so they got served with a shutdown and then we didn't because like they approved our application right and so we we did it legitimately we were part of the level of program and and we're operating yeah and then you know meanwhile very arbitrary you know one of our you know peers in the skipper ministry wasn't able to stay open yeah yeah well I got the level up certification I was actually one of the first dozen or so in the community even though I didn't think I'd really need it but and I didn't really feel that good about it to be real I was like it feels like I'm applying to say that I'll do things that I'm the right way may or not yeah the right way but it's like me applying to the government get my rights not instead of the government protecting my rights yeah and that's what really fell awkward about it I think that was us too well at least I mean let Lonely's tag got the level up and it was very good for Lonely's tag but for the scabrooms we got the level up and it was like all right what can we do now and it's like do the exact same thing it didn't change anything for us so we just had to put a stick on it right but there's nothing new that we unlocked in essence yeah we're saying yeah would they're like do you want a bigger capacity we said no we can't allow more people in this country yeah exactly it fits but that being said I do want to like you know give props to the health department you know they did the best they could with you know rules that are coming out and you know that even just putting the level up program together yeah I would agree it was in the props to to Mindy and Anne and the chambers and other folks that really put that together because they were helped Delta heavy hand from Polis in the state administration frankly and you know they had to react and do what they could yeah I mean I every interaction I've had with the health department from a business standpoint has been positive cool they've been helpful you could call you know someone and they answer and they'll give us advice and and it's it's not always it's not always advice you would think oh they're gonna say don't do this don't do this don't do this they actually like work with me to come up with common sense rules for level laser tag as an example and you know we just had frank conversations and you definitely tell they were they were on our side they wanted to help us but they want to keep people safe too sure fair enough well let's jump into the local experience shall we um no you've got a shorter lifespan to consider is it does it doesn't matter in terms of the order on stories but the craziest story that you're willing to share with a public audience if you're lifetime well I should have probably been thinking about this a lot longer um so I didn't have too much time to think about it but then Jeff said we're talking about at least now smart she is and then he said if I say the story I was thinking of so I guess I'll stay say the story um so I guess my kind of create one of my craziest experiences uh which isn't like that crazy and that was a lot of people but um uh it was working for uh the Firenights Festival which is a festival that Lovellin does yeah um where it's really cool it's they're doing February yeah um and they mix kind of they build ice sculptures out of actually been a couple times yeah so Lovellin Lasertag always has some sort of little booth or laser tag thing there and so this was a couple years ago and um and uh so I was there and setting it up and we brought like laser tag and virtual rallies we had all the equipment and back then I drove a like a old 2000 well not old but like a 2003 Honda Civic um and so why exactly so I had this Honda Civic and loaded up the car and my parents live up that was when I was living with my parents and they live up in the uh foothills in the kind of the the country on the county roads so uh headed home and that Firenights Festival was brutally cold and it was snowing and it was icy and all that so as you can see where it's going um and so headed up to my parents it's very curvy roads um and I was going plenty under well I wouldn't say plenty but I was going under the speed limit um I was going like you weren't going too fast how many going too fast you were going too fast for the conditions exactly yeah so um yeah I was going like 45-50 miles an hour and it was kind of those windy roads and just one of those moments where you uh where it just came in and started going sideways and sideways some more and I've always learned the life advice of never overcracked but when you're in that moment you overcracked very quickly so overcracked it and I um basically t-boned into a guardrail the edge of the guardrail and so inside the guardrail saving me I hit the edge of it and went into the big Thompson River so I like nose dived right into the edge of it um and it's like just I mean it was frozen over so it wasn't like I went underwater anything would uh just riding into it and uh my um demario the the other guy that works with us he was headed over to head um to come meet with me so he was right behind me um he was about like 10 minutes behind me so I instantly called him and uh I remember I called the uh I called the police and uh lady answers the phone she's like no no no one is there some emergency I can put you on hold and I was like yeah you can put me on hold and uh and like all the airbags are gone off and like I'm crashing this day it's I thought I rolled over definitely because I when that moment happened I like closed my eyes across my arms and I was tumbling and that's all I knew so uh and so I was on hold for like 30 seconds and she's like oh what can I do for you and I was like oh I just rolled my car in the big Thompson River and she's like that's an emergency and uh but I said I was like but I'm alright and uh nothing's fine and she's like well if you're alright uh unfortunately we can't do anything for you because it's a busy day for a or busy night evening for us so since you're okay uh you'll have to deal with everything yourself and she's like is there anything else I can do for you and I was like well I guess not I called the Mario I called the Mario and uh called my parents and it was an evening till 1 a.m trying to pull the car out of the ditch um and thank God at least you didn't go to UI exactly I didn't get right no uh no tickets nothing like that uh totaled the car um I ended up selling it for scraps but uh well what any lesson how does it at at least at least before so you left out a very big piece of the story the chili the uh jumbo lia the jumbo lia so we have uh we have this story gets brought up like because there was an employee that we had that I was never that fond of he was always kind of online on my nerves and always uh always just kind of he never did anything wrong he was not a bad employee but he was just one of those like always just right behind you like poking you all the time yeah and uh the one good thing he did was he decided he bought a nice big pot of jumbo lia warm hot jumbo lia for me and uh it was right before we leaving his cold and that was like the nice thing he's done for me and I was like oh thank you so I put it in my car and of course that was the day of crash so when I looked open my eyes after the crash there was jumbo lia from head to toe in the car covering everything all the laser tag equipment my body so uh now to this day I no longer like jumbo lia for that oh yeah well I guess I won't take us for Creole yeah more bed of gumbo we're going for lunch it was from a bed of gumbo I've got free I've got free lunch for you from from more bar of gumbo anytime yep there's still some in the car Jeff your local experience well so it's all I've this story about Elise on top of that it just gets better okay so Elise was probably three at the time and so when she hears that Elise or that Noah crashed his car into the Thompson River she says he's just like Cruella de Ville Cruella you know is that guess at the end of that she crashes his car okay nice yeah that is quick thinking yeah she's gonna very fast micro processor she does she does um what's your local experience all right so sorry this is the railroad thing um so I thought about the railroad thing um but that's like a college story um so I have a crazy business story sir what would be more appropriate a crazy college story a business story it's cool I'll do the business right now probably more PC anyway probably yeah so um there's actually the first time with laser force I got to visit Taiwan oh so a lot of our rock components are put together there so our circuit boards for the laser type vest the actual vest themselves are stitched there that sort of thing and then they're shipped to us to to put together and all that um so I got a chance to go out to Taiwan with the owner of the company Lynn Kelly and we uh we toward the uh the factory and all that and so getting to to fly into to Kaohsiung the um the owner of the company that makes all our stuff he like he met us and gave us the vi he makes sure stuff and he makes stuff for a bunch of other people or not that many probably exactly our volume for laser type is in that great so basically to get share time share like in a uh chip uh you know factory or PCB factory you know you need to know someone that can coordinate that yeah yeah your time for everything to be stamped yeah so so we go out there to meet meet Alex from you bright and we're getting the VIP treatment and so just flying to Taiwan is you know a long experience you know it's it's like a 19 hours right you know flight kind of thing and so I get there and it's like in the evening and I'm tired and jet lag but they like take us we go to the hotel and check in and drop it in the off and then they take us like right out to to go experience everything and I didn't really notice at the time but they're definitely like like giving us like the VIP treatment but also kind of like you know where the the westerners and they're kind of like pulling our chain a little bit at the same time but not in a mean way but just in a like you know let's let's show us to do yeah so so they tell us at the beginning that like you know the rule is like they're we always have to drink and so everything for the whole like three-day time I'm on this trip um the instead of like water or soda or whatever it's just literally like the bottle of whiskey and then they were just pour it like warm and uh you know so this is like August and it's like really hot too and like humid and I'm just every meal whether it's like lunch or dinner or whatever it is a snack or just having like just drinking whiskey out of the glass and so like I'm just perpetually like drunken sweaty like this entire time and uh and also like never once was there that I ever get a chance to order from a menu they're like take care of everything right and so they're ordering all these delicacies just shows up in front of you just those are great things rich things so we're talking about like you know fish tongue was the first night like just literally a bowl of stir fried fish tongues and and everything and so and I was studying up with drunken sweaty drunken sweaty and like you know I'm you know I was I read up that you're supposed to accept everything and finish everything and and all that kind of stuff so they took me on a culinary journey um through Taiwan for three days where um you know I'm eating tree fungus soup and crunchy fish head stuff with rice and they put down like this like the squid like right in front of you and you just have chopsticks and you're just picking it's a whole squid a whole you're just like cut up just not cut up you just pick it's dead but you pick it up with a chopstick you just eat it like chunks off of the squid literally but in chunks off of it and and then watching down with whiskey and and like literally like doing that everywhere and then we go like into like the country in Taiwan where they actually make our uh phaser cables so they make HDMI cords and stuff like that and it's literally like this rundown building it's like three generations like making these things it's like literally grandma the parents the kids all making these cords and um they had never seen someone from outside of Taiwan before they never traveled outside Taiwan like I'm from America and lens from Australia and they were just fascinated I did drunken sweaty and um and actually I've been out there twice now and both times the uh the guy that like in charge of this little like place that makes the HDMI cables I have a beard and uh and my beard was a little longer back then too and they don't really grow beards in Taiwan and he was just like fascinating to my beard and he didn't speak a lick of English and so literally it could be the car driving places and he went with us everywhere after like we we right up with him and he would just like say something and then they would say Jeff he really likes your beard and I was like well tell him you know thank you thank you and then he would nod and laugh and then he really likes your beard can he touch it I'm like okay and so like this guy's like touching my beard and then he would say something and you know and I didn't know what he was saying and so like just just and but literally then we would take stops and drink more whiskey and and uh it was just amazing and so gone by is the the toast um okay and uh so every time somebody would like pick up their glass and say gone by gone by means you had to do like you know another shot or another swig of whiskey I like they would just do that all the time because you know we were the you know the foreigners and so just so much so much whiskey and and you got him must have revolted like when you got home or on the way home and just like dude you killed me it was it was amazing but that was the last day we're like out there having um so I told them I like crab but like crab like in America's like crab legs and stuff like that well we actually went someplace where they actually like they went down and then they caught crabs there's like as fresh as you can get but they literally just take the crab and they just like they boiled it but they need to sit in front of you and you just eat the whole thing like you rip the shell off and it's like a big crab with like little eggs and stuff and so like apparently it's like it's very very good to eat the brain it's like it's good for like meal vitality and everything so they're all like watching me because like they were so proud like you know I said I like crab and I had to like rip the top of the shell open and like like grab with the top six grab like the crab brain and like eat in front everybody and then you could I drink a nauseous and then I was like could I order like water or like water if she's right or it would be cool and they started laughing and they said yeah do you think we just drink whiskey all the time that's when I found out that they were just doing that for us because we visited it so and it was it's a whole thing and so like and they took us to like karaoke and so I got it chance to experience karaoke and again it's culturally that it's much different there to where like everybody would have like it's an art like a woman from the karaoke place that would just sit there and then their job was just to give you your drink and so we would just sit there and they would just pour your drink and then you would have another drink and then do karaoke and so service baby so you're there at like at a you know it's a karaoke place with like the owner of this factory and you're singing and it's just it's such it was such a different experience it was like a wild so much different than anything else you've ever seen yeah and and then they met a business you do like you tore the factory for like an hour and then it's okay let's go drink and you know I now like you know years later I look back at it and I've done this a couple times and you realize the whole time you were getting business done but it's you don't do it directly you know it's not about like seeing the factory or being in the office like hashing over an agreement it's really about like what you do the whole time like trust relationship exactly experience together yeah like that you frankly that you were innocent enough and trusting and like part of their thing to be like guess I'm drinking whiskey you don't have to drink whiskey but I appreciate your college effort yeah well that I love it guys anything how do people find your various enterprises do you want to drop some websites stuff like that here yeah time poem really in any way of looking up time poem with Google time in the forum exactly Google time poem Instagram Facebook time dash and poem dot com is our website but if you look up time poem you'll find it just as fast okay um level laser tag yeah we have laser fund center dot com okay for that um and then um looking glass um it's we're still like very early in the construction like digging out concrete so um that doesn't have a website for it but you'll either get to it through time and pour him or you can go to looking glass dot bar once we have the website built okay got this got got the territory grabbed already exactly although on that one until we looked up you know could we do looking glass dot com and I've what what was the quote we got it was like something crazy it was like I have five hundred thousand dollars you don't have enough money you are also interesting so we're looking glass dot bar that bar it should be more like that pub that feels like probably a public house well one day they're gonna open up like dot room and then we'll grab a scape dot room all right yeah that would be good move so thanks you guys um appreciate you being here on the look experience I appreciate you being good neighbors and uh good entrepreneurs like Jeff thanks for giving young Noah here an opportunity to to have something of his own and and Noah thanks for having that that vibe that just uh jive and unbusiness and growing and learning all the time so for both of you um got speed thank you same goes for you thank you for thank you for letting us join your podcast all right got thank you for listening to today's episode of the local experience podcast this is Kurt Baer founder of the local think tank and hosted the local experience and I'm here with Rory Sharer local business developer and hosted the local shorts episodes we hope you heard some new ideas and business perspectives in this episode our mission and all that we do including this podcast is to share collaborative business ideas and solutions that uplift the business community subscribe and follow us for you listening to podcasts to get new episodes as they are released curious about logo you can learn more about us at localthinktakes.com where you'll find more information about our chapters business resources and events for business owners and seniors if you're looking for perspective accountability and encouragement along your business journey why not apply for a chapter near you today why not why not why not we'll catch you next time on an in-depth local experience podcast with me and with me Rory provide size business lessons in the local shorts bye