EXPERIENCE 42 | Mechanics and Mindset for the Business Leader with Jeff Schuster

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 Schuster. Jeff is the founder of Mechanics and Mindset Business Coaching and an author of a book of the same name. And he's also a LOCO Think Tank member. And I'm really pleased to have you here today, Jeff. And if you would, maybe just explain Mechanics and Mindset a little bit more for our guests as well as introducing yourself a little more fully, if you don't mind. All right. Well, thank you for having me, Kurt. It's great to be here. Mechanics and Mindset is very purposeful. Mechanics are the mechanics of doing business. So you can get trained on mechanics. Accounting is a mechanic of business. So as setting your price, that's a mechanic. Your sales process, your marketing process, the contracts that you use, all of these mechanical pieces of business are really important. And so I help a lot of my clients with those mechanical components. The Mindset stuff is a little bit more elusive. So a lot of us, we get in our own way. And we don't know it until we talk to a coach or somebody who is seeing our business from the outside of it. And to them, it's obvious. And they just wonder, they even scratch their head, how could you not have seen this problem in your business that you just keep doing over and over and over again? In fact, they may even make fun of you for just being such an idiot. And yet you yourself, you can't really recognize that because you're in your own business. It's kind of the subconscious too. I've heard the subconscious described as that part of your personality that's your oblivious too, but it's obvious to everybody else. Yeah, well, so your subconscious will actually start having you do certain things over and over again. And I'm not a therapist. So I don't really get into the subconscious, although I recognize it. I had one of my clients. She actually was very successful, very smart, had a great business, great mechanics. But she had some childhood trauma. And there was a problem that she had about getting too good at something. And that was something that her therapist was working with her on. But that was also affecting her business. So she didn't actually want to be too successful at business because it was going to actually create lawsuits from lawyers who wanted to go after people with deep pockets. And so some of that messaging came up. Now that's that's something a therapist works on. The mindset that as coaches work on is actually working forward. So we can't work on any trauma in the past. That's for the licensed professionals. But we actually start looking at attitudes that you have in the present. And I'm a core energy coach. And so from a mindset perspective, we look at seven different core energy coaching levels or core energy levels. Okay. And people don't know that they're at those levels. But once you tell them those levels, you just name them. So one is victim, two is conflict, three is acceptance, four is compassion, five is opportunity, six is synergy, seven is total awareness, more creator. Okay. And at first people think, oh, well, the higher the level, the better. And that's not necessarily true. But what I'll do is usually have my clients, what I do, climbing the ladder exercise. So they'll start at level one, go to level two, and they'll describe their situation at each level. And then they're aware that, oh, I had all of these different options. But I kept, I was stuck at a certain maybe level two. And I could have been at level three. And that would have been better for me. So that's that's where the mindset. And where did you come across that? Was that part of, I know you had a business journey before, and we'll jump in the way back machine later and get into that. But where did that core energy concepts come from? Why did you make that part of your practice? Yeah. So core energy coaching is actually, it's a trademarked thing. And it's part of the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching or IPEC. Bruce Knighter, the founder of IPEC created all of these ideas. And that's how they train their life coaches. I see. So I took their life coaching principles and I integrated it with my business consulting practice to now come up with mechanics and mites at business. I see. So even though you're not a life coach, you're a business coach, but you've got a lot of life coach elements built in. And that's where the mindset lay of your practice comes from. Well, and technically I am a certified life coach. But business coach or business owners, I think are turned off by life coaches who called themselves. Well, and don't business coaches get to charge more than life coaches? That's a lot. Dear, you know, I don't know about that. There are some pretty expensive life coaches out there. Business coaches tend to be able to directly connect the financial value of their coaching with their work. Right. And because of that, I think that they do charge more. But they also have a good business coaches have business experience. I mean, real business experience. So yeah. So talk to me about the clients that you work with a little bit. Like, where are they at? And I'm sure it's the spread the gamut. And I know a little bit more than I suggest by that question. But but talk to me about who your best clients are. And maybe some anonymized cases. There are things like that. Well, that's a loaded question with a loaded answer. So I'll try to make this as brief as I can. So my business was an energy services company, or it's called an Esco. And it's a bunch of engineers. We retrofit buildings to make them more energy efficient. But it was a multi-million dollar company and I sold it. So that's that's my core experience level. And and yet when I left that company or when I sold it, I had a non-compete. So I could not coach entrepreneurs in that space for at least five years. Oh, you can even coach them. No, I didn't like that work. That that non-compete was pretty stiff. Anyway, and that that's okay. That but what what then happened was I started coaching tons of service-based business. Okay. Any anybody that had a business that was at least around $200,000 a year up to about five million dollars a year. Okay. And it could be any service. It could be an engineering firm. It could be restaurant owners. It just couldn't be an energy services period. It could not be an energy services. But in the last two years, I have been focusing primarily on CEOs of energy services companies. And so I'm using a lot of the experiences that I've learned in the past. I have a lot of connections in that world today. And that's where my strength really lies. That said, you understand that business more than any other, but you gained a lot of experience just so you kind of cut your teeth on all these other service business stuff. Now you can really serve well. And what happens when you see businesses and you probably know this with local think tank. When you start seeing somebody else's business in a different industry, you start to you start to see other issues in your own industry. And that was definitely true. And the energy services industry. So if you see, for instance, how servers and kitchen staff work on a restaurant and some of the issues that they deal with, they're very similar to salespeople and engineers and energy services. Right. That very similar personality types. You guys got to deliver. You have to deliver what I just got. And the communication. There are a lot of similarities. Interesting. It does help. What is one of the things that people stumble over the most consistently? Well, I'm actually doing a blog post on that right now. So most of my clients, they get to some level of success. So they're actually earning good money, but they're tired. They're worn out. They would call it burnout. And they can't really extricate themselves from their business. So they've developed some level of success. They're usually plateauing. And they're in what I call a growth trap. The secret to growth has been work harder. Right. Exactly. They can't work any harder. They still want to grow. So they've worked as hard as they can. They can't grow anymore because they are the limiting factor in their business. So one of the biggest issues that I coached them on is getting out of that bottleneck role. Maybe we should go together. I've been telling people I want to make t-shirts for local think tank members for Christmas or something. I am the bottleneck. I am the bottleneck. Oh, and it's I would say, but 80% of my clients, that's what they're having me help them on. And it's funny. Even when they get out of being the bottleneck for a certain period of time, they always want to get back. They want to get back in the thick of things because that's where they're getting their energy. And they tend to slow things down again. So that's the number one challenge is getting them out of their own way so that their business can grow. And really empowering their employees because it's those employees that are so valuable. They really are, but it's not just their work effort. It's their minds and their ability to create and grow for you. Do you work directly with those employees sometimes? Or do you work with the client and then you give them the tools to work better with their employees? I do both, but it's pretty common that after about a year of coaching, my client will say, look, this has really helped me. I've got some investment that I would like to invest in training, but this coaching has been so helpful for me. I want to give it to my people. So I typically will end up coaching the employees of the same CEO that I start coaching. Yeah, usually those direct report, those can't employ a kind of position. Right. And sometimes do you stumble across like, well, the reason you can't pass this off to your employee is because they don't got what it takes and you're going to need to get rid of them and hire somebody else. Are you a consultant in that fashion too? Yeah, it's, well, there are two methods of consulting it when it comes to people on that end. And I don't know why this is, but people outside can see your employee decisions better than you can. And it's sensitive because a lot of the conversations I have with these employees are kept confidential. They share a lot of sensitive stuff with me. And so I can't bring all of that back to the business owner. And so if the business owner is considering of making some decision about that employee, I've got to be careful about how I do advise them. Yeah. I have to hold some of their stuff confidential. So to the extent that they give me permission to share, I do. Sure. And advise. And I always get like resumes of people that they'd like to hire. And I also get to interview some of those folks. And since I've been in the energy services space for a long, long time, I know a lot of those people. Yeah. Yeah. What a fascinating thing. Are you, you seem like you're just really a glowing, I guess, because of what you get to do with and for people in this role? Is it what you expected when you first got into coaching or is it slowly becoming that? Yeah. You know, I would say it's probably, I don't know if it's slowly becoming, it is becoming that. When I left, when I resigned, I really didn't even know what I was going to do. I thought I was burned out and I just wanted some time off. I had had a big payout from selling my business. I got back into this because I was kind of bored and then I started consulting. And then once I took the course from IPEC, I thought, wow, if I would have known all of this stuff, I would have made so many things so different. And so that's, that's what's gotten me excited about it. But even now, it's, I don't know how I should say this. It's easier being the coach than being the person being coached as a business owner because I'm outside of their world. They're inside of it. They, they feel all of those emotions, all the stress. And I feel better. Maybe that's why I'm glowing is because it's not me. You don't have to be the one that's facing their demons and whatever. But, but they need somebody like that that's not wound up. You got to point out those demons like, hey man, you got to slay that demon before you do have on. Exactly. Yeah. Well, let's jump in the way back because I think we'll probably be able to understand you better by by knowing more of you. And I wouldn't even go all the way back. Like third grade. Who are you? Where are you at? Yeah. Oh, way back. Like what were you growing up here? You got siblings? You got parents? Were they entrepreneurs? Engineers? Oh boy. Well, my dad was an engineer. Let's see, going way back to third grade. Well, I'm a Colorado native. I was born in Leadville, moved to Denver, then to Greeley. But spent most of my life on a little town called Eckert, Colorado, which is near another small town called Cedar Edge, Colorado, which is where I went to school, high school, elementary and junior high and high school. I've been through Cedar Ridge, but I can't remember where it's at quite. So it's the best way to it's on the south side of the Grand Mesa. So there's Grand Junction, there's Delta, there's Montrose. If you go north, there's Peonia from Crawford. Yep. So that Delta County area that's, Cedar Edge is on the north side of Delta County, which is right at the foothill of the Grand Mesa. I see. If you keep going north, you end up on I-70, basically North Grand Junction on your way back to Denver. Is that the white river is forest area is kind of on the northeast corner of that, and then south of there would be the, yeah, fair enough. Okay, cool. What an interesting place, were you farmers, or you'd say your dad was an engineer, he traveled to Grand Junction, or something like that for work, or oil services? My dad was a mining engineer to start off with. That's how I got born in Leadville. He worked in the Malibu mine up in Leadville, Climax, and then he ended up working for a lot of different engineering companies. Eventually, moved to Cedar Edge to start his own engineering firm. So he was a civil engineer and land surveyor, and I worked for him as a kid, usually as a Rodman in the mountains, you know, carrying the rod for the survey. Would you mind spelling Malibu for me? You gotta be kidding me. So I'm an engineer, I could just spell three letter words, that's it. So it's their grade you were over there in the Eckert and Cedar Ridge area, and your dad and mom were together all those years, right? Yeah, so my dad was a civil engineer, and he had his own engineering firm actually out of the house for a while, and in civil engineering, the back in the old days when they developed blueprints with ammonia, we had a dat ammonia smell in our house most of the time, and my mom was a registered nurse, but she was a stay-at-home mom, so there were six of us kids, and I had five sisters and no brothers, and I was a middle kid, so I was right in the middle. So you had sisters to boss you around from the top in the bottom? Oh sure, yeah, I love my sisters. That's awesome. Today, but So let's kind of flash forward. Tell me about what kind of a student you became, like in the high school years and stuff, were you a math nerd? That's what I think about when I think about engineers usually. You know, I love math, and still do, and love math then, I was really good at math, but I was not a good, I think I was a C student for the most part, so if you averaged out my English scores with my math scores and my science scores, it was about C, so I was about to see average. I was barely making it on some of those other courses. Now in college, I started to really like to write, and I loved English, and I started to actually enjoy reading. I hated reading books as a kid, and really grew to love it as a young adult. So I think that I don't know why English turned me off at first. It was probably the sentence structure in the verbs and nouns. Maybe you had a bad teacher who knows? Where was college? So college was, I started at Mesa College, which is in Grand Junction. I think it's Colorado, Mesa University, something like that now, but so I went for three years there. It took me three years to get my associate of science. My first semester at Mesa, I was not a great student at all. I had a point to GPA. Was that, you majored in drinking for the first time and girl chasing, and that kind of skipping class? I was just not disciplined as a student, and I decided I paid for my own schooling, and I thought, you know, I either better get my act together and study or drop out. So I got better. I ended up graduating with 3.8. Oh wow. But halfway between Mesa College and my final college, which was Colorado State University in Fort Collins, I joined the Marine Corps. Oh. So I joined the Marine Corps because I thought I wanted to be an F-18 pilot. So I enlisted. The Marine Corps has this program. It's called the PLC program. So you enlist, and then after you finish college, then you go to officers candidate school and you become an officer and become a pilot. So that was my plan, and I was pretty committed to that. And then I joined the Marine Corps, and I thought, I don't know if I like the military. Oops. How long were you committed for? So I was committed for six years in the Marine Corps reserves, and I served all six years. I basically had my honorable discharge in 1990, which was just before the first Gulf War started. Oh wow. Yeah. But yeah, I have a lot of respect for those folks in the military, but for me it was really challenging. How so, like just following the rules all the time. Well, most of my exposure to the Marine Corps was basic training because I was in the reserves. And it was very regimented. Now, the good news is I learned a lot of good disciplines that way. So just good hygiene, good discipline on exercise, and some things. Still make your bed every morning, we leave for the day, that kind of thing. I don't know if the drill had struck, excuse me, drill instructor would say I made my bed okay. But anyway, the bed gets made. Yeah, it looks good. Right. Anyway, from 20 feet from 10 feet is fine. Right. Yeah. So there were definitely some positives. But from a lifestyle perspective, it kind of looked challenging. Yeah. Plus, I became a weapons controller as an enlisted guy in the Marine Corps and weapons controllers. They're the guys on the radar. They see the flights going in and the fights. And at that time, we were the cold war with Russia, with megs. And that was like when Top Gun was filmed. Sure. Anyway, so I saw how easily these fighters could get shot down from surfaced. I wanted to fly that jet because it looked really cool and fun. But well, then you watch Top Gun and you see all these guys getting vaporized by missiles and whatnot. So that was a very real threat. Plus, I had really started to get some passionate about some of the engineering stuff that I was studying. Yeah. Yeah. So you come to CSU and circa me there. That's early 90s by then. So that would have been... Or was the Marines after CSU or before CSU? Now the Marine Corps would have been so I enlisted in 1984. And then CSU, I started in 86 and then graduated in 87. Oh, and so you were in the reserves throughout kind of that season. Yeah. So I would drive back and forth to Buckley Air National Guard in Denver for my reserve things from CSU. Okay. And so then I imagine you didn't just start your engineering energy services company after that. You must have been a work-a-day man for a while. Yeah. So my focus in college was aerospace and robotics. And I really wanted to get a job in the space program. But the space shuttle challenger actually had blown up not too long before that. You're like, man, I don't want to be honest. Well, and what happens in the aerospace industry is they hire a lot of people and they lay them off almost as quickly. So they were in the kind of a layoff mode. And I wanted a job. I needed to pay off my college loans. And so the job, the only offer I got was from the United States Air Force as working in their civil engineering group. And so this was doing engineering on facilities. Right. And yeah, here's an aerospace robotics guy. And I literally asked my new boss. They said, now you guys are hiring mechanical engineers for buildings. I mean, is there anything in buildings that actually moves? So he was very helpful. And he says, yes, we use mechanical engineers. And we need them. There's pumps, there's fans, there's control systems. Mechanical engineers do all of that stuff. Figure out the volume of air the moves here and there and whatever. So I was surprised. I learned a lot working for the Air Force. And I learned that there was some really cool stuff in facilities for mechanical engineers. And so that became my focus. And then, and that's where I met my wife was in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Oh, interesting. It was my first job for an Air Force base up there. K.I. Saw Air Force Base, which is now closed. But the time it was a hustle, hustling and bustling place. Yeah. Yeah. I bet it was pretty interesting going to the UP too. Right. It's kind of a different part of the country up there. It's very different. In fact, probably close to Leadville, I suppose, from a snow perspective. Right. Right. Yeah. Very different, very different culture. Very rural, which is actually where I grew up was rural. So that was a big deal. But I learned a lot from an engineering perspective. Also learned that I did not want to be in civil service for too long. So that's when I applied for jobs in the private sector. Okay. And my strength was control systems. Okay. Yep. And so I applied to all the big controls companies. And Honeywell actually decided to interview me. And it was an interesting story. So I'm the hardcore engineer. I'm the kind of guy that loves math, loves science. I love crunching numbers. That's that's my thing. Yeah. Don't like talking to people too much. It didn't back then. It didn't. Right. And so when I interviewed with Honeywell, the HR rep, she says, you know, you're going to be an ideal candidate for this position. And she hands me the screen sheet of paper. And she says, now your next interview will be a sales call role play for our local branch here in Minneapolis. And I thought sales call role play. What are you doing? So it was a sales job. And it was an engineer as part of a sales team. Yeah. It's probably more accurate selling engineer a lot of times I hear a call. Yeah. So I that so so I didn't I kind of went into the facilities engineering a little bit resistant. And then I went into sales very resistant. Yeah. But both things ended up turning out to be really blessings. Yeah. So I sold for Honeywell for a while and then became a sales manager for them. And then they moved me back down to Denver. And that would have been in 94. And then in 97 was when Honeywell was going through another one of its big reorganizations. And I decided it's probably a good opportunity for me to leave. They had like early early departure things or you were just low enough in a total poll. They were probably going to ask you to leave anyway. Well, I was a sales guy and they caught our sales commissions by a lot. Oh, I see. So that year was Honeywell a good company. I've mostly good positive things. Honeywell is a great company. They they are good company focused on their people. Really strong in technology. Yeah. And and they've actually since I've left allied signal on them have merged and they've grown and they they are a good company. Yeah. That year though they cut sales commissions by quite a bit. 300 people in kind of my field ended up leaving the sales for Honeywell. So there's a good chunk of more than they expected. I imagine. I'm thinking so. Yeah. How do we find sales now? And so where did you wander off to? Well, I actually started. That's when I started my company. Oh, just like that. Well, I started as a consultant at first. So I had some friends that some some consulting agreements with utility companies. So this was the late 90s and electric utility companies were concerned about deregulation. So especially on the west coast, they thought, well, if we're going to have to compete for electricity, we're going to lose our profits and we need to find something else. So they wanted to start up energy services companies. So they hired all of these ex sales people who were experts in this industry of marketing and selling it. And they decided to start up their own businesses. So I was a consultant helping another group with engineering and sales for energy services for electric utility companies. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then that consulting company eventually grew into energy services company with own. Well, so in the late, I don't know if you recall, but so deregulation kind of went away, probably around 2000. Yeah. And so I was thinking, well, should I go back to work for Honeywell? Or should I? Right. Because there was a question that one of the guys asked me from the utility company. He says, you know, if these energy services companies are so great, why don't you guys start your own? I thought, oh, well, why don't I start mine? It's so I did. And actually on the first time out, found success, I competed with seven fortune 100 companies and one small. You didn't have a staff or nothing like that at this point. I had nobody. I was at a home office. You know, I had a lot of connections with consultants that did a lot of stuff, but no employees, no, no office space. So talk to me about this contract. Like, what were you bidding to accomplish? Is that like, are you changing control systems, putting in new heaters, that kind of thing, you know, putting insulation in the roof? What are you doing, ultimately? Well, each contract is a little bit different. That first one happened to be this, it's a little school district out in eastern Colorado called Stratton School District. Okay. And a small district, but most of the rural, while most schools in general, they were installed without, or they were built without air conditioning. Oh. Well, air conditioning is definitely needed in, in schools today because of all the internal heat gain and everything from the computers and everything else. And so, so they wanted to install air conditioning, but not increase their utility bill. Oh. And so anybody that could come up with a way to do that would be their hero. And, and so I was one of those folks. I helped them get some grant money to help offset some of the cost of that. And, and we retrofit, we installed several rooftop unit air conditioning and heating units improved their, their environment substantially. Yeah. Better ventilation, better lighting, just great success. So what were the costs cutting portions of that, like without increasing their utility bill park? So the way they had heated the building before was with hot water heat. Yeah. Hot water heat tends to actually waste a lot of heat to the outside of the building. So it heats the inside of the building, but it also heats the outside, especially with some of those post-World war two constructed buildings, which most schools are. We're talking about old boilers, right? Basically, right. Yeah. And so, so saving that energy and then actually installing new windows and some other things we reduced. And then we retrofit all their lights to use about half as much electricity as they did. So, so their energy bill basically ended up flat. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. And that's that particular project, other projects could be run the gamut, whatever, you know, just put more shade over the windows, whatever, you know. Yeah. It, you know, it gets really involved. We had about 200 different energy conservation measures that we, we could install the backtricks. Our backtricks is gigantic, but so how did you accomplish this project? Like, is it you and a couple of your buddies right away then? Well, so we figured out how to do this stuff, and you apply for the grants and you do this and that, and then you hire companies to go and do this stuff. Yes. And all energy services companies will subcontract to specific trades. So we would hire an electrical contractor. The HVAC guy does that part. HVAC contractor and HVAC supplier and controls systems and that kind of thing. So we subcontracted all the construction parts. And then the engineering, I, I had some guys that were consultants of mine and we worked together. Because there was too much engineering that you brought in some other people in. Well, and, and I, well, I'm not anymore, but I was a licensed engineer in six states. So, I could have always done all of the engineering myself and stamped the drawings. Yeah. If you could, right, but sometimes you've got too many euro salesmen, right? Like, so if you sell in too many projects, you know, that's basically the start of hiring other engineers I imagine. Right. Well, so I was, I was a kind of a control freak back in those days. So I did do everything and I did the construction management, some of the engineering and, and sales, but eventually I did hire people. And talking about those first couple of people, like, what were they doing? Then just the same thing as you, just more of it. Yeah, you know, the first guy I hired was almost a complete accident. A good friend of mine. She was an HR attempt. She worked for a attempt company. He had this guy. He was a mechanical engineer, a degreeed mechanical engineer from Georgia Tech. But he was helping her file invoices. Okay. So he was, he was just not really gainfully employed. Right. At least to my opinion, but he was my first engineer. Yeah. It worked out great. It's just like after 2001 then when about 2001 session. Yeah. Yeah. And each time we had a recession, the energy services business actually boom. So it's actually the opposite of the recession. Yeah. Yeah. Because companies are looking for ways to save money and whatever. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. They need to get lean. And then what when you come to the highlights of that evolution, and what was the name of your energy services business? It was called Innovates spelled with an E. So ENNOVATE Corporation. So energy innovation. It was a much together of those two words. Yeah. That's a pretty good mashup. Yeah. And like, yeah, talk to me about some of the highlights of that evolution of that business. You hired this young man that was filing things and then, hey, I can give you some engineering work. You want that? Yeah. So really up until I had about five employees, I hired my first business consultant. And you know, I was at first, it was just to help us do marketing because we felt we needed, you know, every small business wants more customers. Sure. Right. That's we always think that's the recipe for everything. All right. Get more customers, more money. Then life will be easy. And life will be easy, right? So I hired this consulting firm and they were going to help me with marketing. But as I started looking at my company, I said, you know, you don't have a real business here. He says, you're making money on an annual basis, but you have no future. You don't have a vision. You don't have a plan. You're actually spending money on contractors when you should have employees and all this stuff. And I thought, you know, you're right. You're exactly right. So this would have been about 2005, I wish I had five employees. And then I decided to get serious. So I took their advice. I did a real business plan. We did grow to 30 employees. Yeah. And a lot of that was just bringing what had been subcontractors in house then and getting getting pro style about. Yeah, we always kept our trade contractors because they were they were experts at what they did. And we didn't really want to do that. We were contracting out some AutoCAD work and some drafting. And then I was still subcontracting out some engineering. So the core skills, sales, marketing, engineering, construction management, administrative, bookkeeping, that kind of stuff. We all wanted that in house. Got you. Got you. But the growth came from just being intentional about it. Fair enough. Because honestly, that first five, well, up until 2005, at least, we were getting business from referrals from word of mouth. We became like the small school district dominant niche player in that industry. And and then we decided to actually start competing with some of the bigger companies and expanding outside of the state of Colorado into Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming and Montana. Interesting. Yeah. So you want to give a shout out to that consultant to tell you to get your ducks in a row a little bit. Yeah. Well, so it's Bob Davis from American Business Advisors. Great guy. I don't know if he is actually still working. But he had he was a great guy and he had a great group of guys working for him. And they were in, well, their office used to be just on the southeast part of Denver. Okay. Shout out to Bob. And were you a Denver based company? Yeah. What so our company was actually technically speaking, we had an Aurora address, but we were literally on the east border of Denver. Fair enough. Okay. And then grow up to 30, 30 individuals there. When did you start thinking about having an exit or was that always part of the plan? Yeah. You know, I think as I got, it would kind of come and go as things were going well, I actually didn't want to exit, but as things got stressful, I wanted to get out. And it's funny, you know, and I coach a lot of my own clients this way, but that's almost the exact opposite timing of when you should sell. So you should sell when you probably don't want to sell. And it's so different than, you know, trying to figure out when to sell a house. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I had had thoughts of selling probably for the last three years of the business, which would have been 2010, 11, 12. Okay. Yeah. And those were, but those were recession years, kind of. So you should have been fairly okay. Yeah. But not necessarily in that round. Yeah. So probably one of our best years would have been 2011. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. We were doing very well. 2008, 2009, when everybody else was really hurting. Right. Right. Yeah. So people looking for a business are like, well, all these businesses think. And then what did that look like? I mean, a 30 employee company. It's probably bigger than like somebody with an SBA loan. Did you market it through a broker? Did you like just approach a larger competitor and say, Hey, I got all these people in contracts. Do you want me or what did that look like? And how did you make that decision? That's a good question. Well, so I had approached some brokers prior to that to get some valuations. And they gave me some valuation numbers that were just ridiculously low. And it's interesting, even now as I coach my own business owners and they get numbers from business brokers or accountants, those numbers are ridiculously low. And, and, and so that was never really a good opportunity for me to have a financial sale. So there was a company that ended up buying my company was called Ameresco Incorporated. They're out of Framingham, Massachusetts, which is a suburb of Boston. Okay. And a great company today. They're publicly traded. So you can find them on the New York Stock Exchange at AMRC and I own some of their stock in full disclosure. Yeah, right. Was that part of the deal? Well, it was, although I actually mostly separately. Okay. So very good company, very similar culture. So their company had also been started by an engineer. He bought up a lot of the assets from the electric utilities when the electric utilities decided deregulation wasn't an issue. And they were having a fire sale on their energy services companies. Interesting. So he bought up a lot of those assets, which is what people? Well, it was people, but at that time and still today, there's some generating assets. Oh, I see. Okay. So the utility companies would actually install site generation for some of their larger clients and renewable energy system generation. And so those were some of the assets that they acquired. And so so the bank looked at those that was worth a lot they got to leverage those as well. So then they started going out and buying small energy services companies. Because these assets, we need some more people to kind of make best use of them. I want to go back and just a step because you talked about you didn't have a real company. You didn't really know what you're trying to become when you grow up and stuff. Like, tell me about, talk to me about the process of I'm imagining, you know, not just a business plan, but now you've got to develop, you know, mission and values and culture and things like that. Was that a Jeff project or was that a Jeff and key leadership? Or did you involve your kind of getting large staff by that time? Or and what were those mission vision values kind of things? Oh, that's a good question. See, you said that you would ask me questions that I wouldn't have to prepare for. Well, you wouldn't have to nail it necessarily, but so that's a good question. I came up with a lot of the initial core values, mission and vision statements for and of a corporation. And so a lot of those, you know, and I still am kind of grateful that I didn't get sued at retrospect. No, because the first, my first core value was honor in God. Today, I think you'd end up in court if that was one of your core values. And yet, it tended to resonate with a lot of my employees. Now, I had atheists and boys. Sure. And treated them no different than any of my other employees. But but if you go around dropping the G dammit all the time, we're going to have to talk. That's right. Well, I'm sure they did that outside of my air shot. Perhaps. Yeah, I just felt like that was something that companies were missing was just having that spiritual connection, understanding that the CEO, the leader, had some ultimate accountability. Yeah, yeah, I like that. Yeah. And so I imagined a lot of those other values that would have flowed to us like integrity and, you know, whatever. So if I had time to prepare, I could have told you that the whole word spelled out the word or are all of our core values spelled out the word gracious. So God was the first one. That was a G respect. I think or something like that was the next. Yeah. So so we actually had them in the words. And it was every time that we had onboard a new employee, they would learn our core values or vision and our mission statements. And so we had that that stuff in place. Yeah. It was challenging because as an engineer, you try to get a little bit too accurate. I think in your mission and mission statements. And then when you don't live up to certain things, like, Oh, I got to tweak something or change it. Right. Do I either have to act differently or change my mission vision statement a little bit? Fair enough. Well, I appreciate you going back there, even though I didn't give you time to prepare for that. So, so Amoresco comes along. Did you honor? Did you entertain other suitors or things like that or not necessarily? It was just like, Hey, we're thinking about this and then and then that relationship. And how did that relationship come about? Were you like publicly listed? You know, with a broker or something or just industry connections and stuff. So it was mostly industry connections. And they always say that you shouldn't sell yourself to a competitor and we were not listed. Amoresco had actually approached me earlier than that. Some of this stuff, I've got to kind of watching what is confidential and what isn't. But they had approached me three years prior to that and they had made an offer. And I had always felt like Amoresco was probably the only large energy services company that had a culture very similar to ours. And it's really even to this day, I would say that that's still true. That's, you know, one of the things when you build a company like that and your people are, you know, they're not your kids, but the company's kind of your babies, so that your grandchildren are something at least. And so you don't want to have them be adopted by some jerk. Exactly. Yeah. So, well, I'm glad you still feel good about that today. And so, so you get get a nice payday in 2012. I gather 2013 or whatever. First part of 2013. And were you the sole owner of this the whole time? Or did you have other key employees that got a chunk of the equity? Yeah. So, so I was a sole owner. I actually did give my employees bonus checks. Just, you know, there was nothing in writing or anything like that, but I felt like the right thing to do. Yeah. That's cool. And then, like, did you just go sit on a beach for a while or talk to me about that adventure? Well, so when I sold the company, I still remained as part of the company. So, I became a vice president in Amoresco of the Rocky Mountain region. And so, what ended up happening was Amoresco consolidated. They already had some operations going on in the Rocky Mountain region, which would have been Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, and Nebraska. Right. Don't know how Nebraska got in the Rocky Mountain. But they were they were losing too many contracts to you and stuff, which is one of the reasons they wanted to review. Well, and then they did want what that momentum that we had in the Rocky Mountain region. And so, they combined offices and then I became the VP. And so I managed that group of folks. And what happened is probably not quite well, it would have been six months after I sold the company. I finally actually got a physical because as a business owner, I just never had the time to get a physical right from a doctor and he says, you know, you could like this heart problem. And I thought, oh, wow, that's interesting. So then I went to see the cardiologist and then eventually a heart surgeon. He says, well, you're going to have to have heart surgery on your mitral valve. We're going to have to repair that. And all I remember is, you know, he tells me you're going to have to have heart surgery. And I said, well, how much time am I going to have to miss work? Right. He says, you're going to have to miss six weeks of work. This is a serious surgery. You're going to have to recover. And and all I just remember was the smile, came off my face. I thought, I have never missed that. I've ever heard it all my life. It's going to be great. And so, so I'm sure that he was a little bit shocked by that. But so I took white. I had the heart surgery. Everything went perfectly fine. I got my six weeks off. But then I reflected back on that time. And I thought, sure, if heart surgery was like an upside to work, you better really think about how happy you are about what you're doing. Well, especially you got a chunk of change in the bank besides. Right. Right. You know, it's one thing to work because you have to, but a different thing to work just because you can work. Well, and I did feel obligated because they had acquired my company. And I was a big part of that company. And I felt like, I just can't leave. Right. But I went to see a therapist and she says, look, you know, you got to live for yourself. And if this is what you want to do. So in May of 2014, that's when I resigned. I see. And so I didn't go to vacation on a beach or anything. Probably should have done it. It stretches back. Yeah, maybe. But I kept you a little longer if you had a good break between times. But I imagine you probably knowing your heart and your character, I'm guessing that you spent a lot of that intervening time like preparing your key people, coaching them up, kind of helping them to get to a place where your absence wouldn't be as destructive to the organization or whatever. Right. Right. And I did. I was available as a consultant to the company if they ever needed me to step in or sit in on meetings or whatever with customers. And that kind of stuff. So I was available. But, you know, I was I was pretty happy. I think I trained the folks that work for me pretty well. They did very well. Yeah, without me as hard as that is for my ego. Right. Right. But they did great. And and so I left. I really didn't know. I think I mentioned this early. Didn't know what I was going to do. Yeah. And then thought, well, you know, I'll consult, I'll help small business owners. Right. Because I've I've was successful as a small business owner, kind of do the same stuff Bob did for me. And so I started, you know, looking at financial statements, the basic stuff of, okay, what are you doing? You know, how is your profit and loss looking and how can I get better? And and that that was okay for a while. And then a friend of mine said, Jeff, you know, you're a really sharp business guy, but you're missing something. And so he he recommended I get my life coaching certification. Gotcha. And that's what I went to I pack and learned about core energy coaching. I thought, oh, this stuff is really cool. This is this stuff right here. I could have had a lot better company if I didn't use that. Interesting. Um, it makes me want to learn more about I pack actually. Yeah. I'm perhaps even hire you someday for me. Well, there's there's a video that I've actually created on YouTube. It's called what's what's core energy? Okay. And it kind of it goes through, you know, obviously a very high level. Sure. The core energy coach. Okay. I'll find it out. Yeah. And so now you're even better equipped as a business coach. Um, let's talk about like if you can, like talk about some of those cases along the last seven years now or whatever that is, seven years that you've been doing it where, you know, you took lemons and made lemonade with people that kind of thing. Is there some some real success opportunities and stories that you'd like to share in that vein? Just because you're proud of these people that you work with. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I'm sure it's confidential and I have to be careful to say so on here. Um, most of what brought you up before come. Let's talk about that because that must have been part of the thing too, right? Yeah. And you got married along the way, but we haven't really talked about that, but we'll come back to that too. Oh, boy. Well, that's that's a lot of bunch of stuff. So what should I cover? Let's talk about, uh, let's talk about those success stories first. Okay. Um, so, so the first correction, I think I need to make as a coach, I actually don't make the changes for my customers. They actually do inevitably make the change. Yeah. And they also sometimes don't make the changes on their own. Right. Right. But but when they make the changes, so some of the ones that I had, one of one of them is an insurance agent owner. They owned an insurance agency and it covered a few different states to try to be as vague as I can because I don't want to nail them down too much, but they were doing really good with insurance sales and they were very successful. The company was actually inherited from the father who had also been successful. And this person was a rock star producer for the insurance industry. Yeah. Their problem was as they couldn't elevate themselves to be the sales manager of other producers. Right. And so, um, they were, they were doing okay. They were maintaining their revenue at kind of the, the same old level. But the bottleneck is there, you know, if it's, if you're the only real rainmaker, you know, it only rained so much. Right. In fact, I, I had one of my clients and I said, look, I think this would be an ideal client. They need insurance. And, and could you send an agent out to talk to them? And he said, oh, I'll, I'll go out and talk to them. I said, no, can you send an agent? Right. Well, eventually, through our coaching relationship, he learned the value and, and really got jazzed about watching other people be successful instead of just getting that six sales success himself. Yeah. And to this day, he has not gotten back out on another sales call. So he has a lot of mentoring meetings and things. Oh, and he's a prolific writer. He writes on a daily basis. Great guy. Um, and, and I'm, I'm watching just how he's living the rest of his life. Yeah. That he wouldn't actually have had had he not gotten out of the producer role of his own company. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think we have probably some similarities in that, you know, some, some of my members at local think tank are living a completely different lifestyle than the one they would be right without that experience. And they did the changes. You know, I was even there a lot of the time. But, but, but it empowers those change. And that's really a neat thing. So let's talk about coming to Fort Collins then because you're in Denver this whole time, right? And yeah. So we, my, my family, we grew up, well, my wife and my two kids, we all grew up, where they grew up in Highlands Ranch, um, the Highlands Ranch part of Denver. Okay. And my business was in Aurora. So there's kind of some community. But for the most part, from 1994 till, let's see what would be nine or 2018, we were in the Denver. Oh, wow. Okay. It's a pretty long time. So I must have met you like right when you moved town just about. Yeah. Yeah. About a few years now because we met. So right, 2018. And, um, Fort Collins had always been, um, you know, I went to a school at Colorado State. I always liked Fort Collins. Um, it, it had immediate access to the mountains, which I love the mountains. Love, love fishing, love doing hiking. Um, and it just felt like, you know, this is a right size of a city for us. Plus, my daughter was living in Greeley. Okay. Um, and they, they were just starting a family. So we wanted to be close to them. And my son, at least at the time, was anticipating also going to see us. You those plans have since changed. But at the time, at least, that was one of the drivers to. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. And, uh, is there other chapters of the business story that we should get into or it seems like it might be time to go into the family portion of our, uh, faith family politics and talk about the love story a little bit and the kids. Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, I think from a business perspective, um, yeah, most of my focus is on energy services companies today, where it wasn't really initially. Right. Um, and, and really, uh, having great success. This is probably going to be one of our best years. Awesome. Um, and so I'm looking at growing in the future. And, and the future dreams for mechanics and mindset business coaching are really to get other specialty coaches who use the mechanics and, and mindset model, for their, um, niche industries. Yeah. Let's talk about that just a little bit. Maybe is, is the book and the framework. Sure. And because you do have a bit of a, uh, framework, it's not just, you know, mechanics is this, but, but I know that there's more, underlayment there. And, and I'm sure that it's, you know, when built on some of your own experiences and what you see as gap areas and stuff. So, so if you would, why don't you talk about a little bit more theory and the book stuff and then we'll move into the other. Yeah. Um, well, I've always, and this is probably my mechanical engineering background. I've, I've looked at businesses like machines. And so the mechanics of the, of a business is you have to market to get leads. And then you have to go into the grocery store and then you have to close those leads to get sales. So the, the marketing and sales are kind of the first two cogs in the wheel of the business machine. Then you need to deliver on whatever you're selling. That's the operations piece. You have to do something. You have to deliver, uh, quality. And then, um, the other cogs are the people just how, what's your people culture? Um, financially, what are you taking care of financially? How are you setting your prices? What you're margin, right? What's your margin? You know, a lot of new business owners, they don't understand even these terms. But even experienced business owners don't, don't always go back to their numbers or they, they know their numbers. They just don't want to admit what their numbers are telling them. Right. Or pulling up a regular. Right. I remember early in my banking career, um, we had a landscape company and he had like six rate employees, you know, two or three, probably like three crews going out there and, and it was busy times like stuff was happening. This was pre 2001 and the recession and stuff. And he was setting his bids based on, you know, $500 less than the best bid that this person had got. And he had no idea what his costs were. And he was losing money all the time because there, there, you know, had been too many the times were pretty good and there was too many landscapers in town. And so it was kind of a cutthroat industry at the time. But better to do some jobs that actually make money instead of more jobs that lose money. And he was busy. You know, and I'm sure you've probably seen that in some year coaching too, you know, just, just don't have enough price margin to be able to cover the rest of the right needs of the business. Well, in fact, that's a lot of contractors get into that. It's, it's basically this cash flow model where they're okay as long as the economy doesn't tank or go down. That's when it exposes how poorly they've managed their money. Totally. And, and then some of them just decide, well, we'll file for bankruptcy and start over some other time. Right. Yeah, that's, but I've watched that model work. In fact, I've even watched large companies attempt to use that model. Yeah. And, and to their demise, obviously, at some point. Right. So was it really taking this IPEC program that inspired kind of the mindset portion of the mechanics of mindset? You always kind of looked at the business as a machine. Right. But then the mindset stuff got folded in from that experience. Yeah. And I've seen both sides get exaggerated. So I see a lot of licensed life coaches who try to life coach business owners into success. Right. I've also seen a lot of business consultants try to mechanically force business owners into success. And I think both, both extremes are detrimental to the business owner. And so the mechanics and mindset take the mindset pieces and they merge them with the mechanics pieces. So the book that I've written, it actually goes chapter by chapter on each mechanical component and talks about how mindset plays with that specific mechanical component. For instance, marketing. Right. So a victim marketer will say, oh, it's not even worth going out and trying to find customers because they don't want my stuff anyway. It's just not worth it. Right. Right. So obviously there aren't many victim mindset marketers. No, there shouldn't be. And if you find one, don't hire them. Then you go to the next level up, which is conflict marketing, which is so that's the mindset of the mechanical piece of marketing. They think, oh, I have to beat my competition. I have to be better than them. And so I'm going to go to my customer and I'm going to say, this is why all my stuff is better than my competition. And you should buy my stuff. Right. And that usually doesn't work either. So then they start seeing the different mindset levels mixed with the different mechanical components. And it connects. Otherwise, if I just said, well, here's core energy coaching. And it just feels too woo. Right. Right. But you pair them together and it makes sense in a practical example. Okay. That makes sense. Let's jump into the family. You mentioned that you met your wife in the peninsula there. It was at a quick romance. And what was it about you that caused her to fall in love? Oh, dear. I don't know. So I went up to the upper peninsula, Michigan. Obviously, I was kind of a stranger and a strange land to some extent. And I met my wife actually dancing at a bar in Marquette, Michigan. We actually still go back to that place ever once a while. But what was interesting about that was I didn't know this, but I was actually working in the same office with her stepfather. Oh. And so I go back the next day after that weekend saying, oh, I met this girl and she seems really cool. And he's just smiling. He didn't even say anything. But yeah, all the time, she was telling him the same story from her perspective. But eventually she actually I lived in Marquette, Michigan. She lived in Houghton, Michigan, which is literally for it's two hours north of Marquette. I didn't even know there was such a place. But it's where Michigan tech is. Okay. It's nose even more there. But we were traveling back and forth over the weekends. And you know, we just really hit it off. Got to know each other really well. And we've been married 31 years. Wow. And so. And what's her name? Lisa. Okay. Yep. And how old are your kids? So my daughter is going to be 27 this year and November next month. And my son is going to be 22 this coming January. Okay. And you said your daughter has some kids son as well or is he? So I was just watching him today. But my grandson Asher is a little over one one year and three months. It's a challenging time. But I always have my guests give one word description for the for the little ones in the spear. You got one for Asher. Oh, he is happy. Just happy. Yeah. He's smiling. It looks like a happy baby. Yeah. Unfortunately, the dog nipped at him today. So he had a he had a crying spell well-deserved. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Everybody gets to cry when the dog wins him. Talk to me about the extended family. I guess you guys made the decision to have your life out here in Colorado instead of in the UP or anywhere around there. Yep. So my wife's family for the most part still lives up in the UP. She's got let's see. Point now. I'm going to miss it. So she actually has a mixed family. But two brothers, three sisters. And so pretty. Yeah. Yeah. She didn't have all brothers like I had all sister. Right. Right. Yeah. And she was the oldest. I was the middle care. Otherwise, there's a lot of similarities. And then you never really answered my question about what it was about you, the cause of the fall and low. But but also what was it about her that caught your eye and especially kept your heart? Oh, dear. I can't really answer her question for me. I honestly don't know what that is. I think though that she was attracted to a lot of just core value that I think I had at the time. I had probably matured by the time I met her because she probably wouldn't have seen that five years earlier. But maybe the Marine Corps helped me out with some of that stuff. In any case, what attracted me to her was just, you know, she was certainly beautiful. That was attractive. But her heart was very caring. And still as to this day, she volunteers for a lot of church organizations, cares for people. So they can't care for themselves. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. What's didn't include you at the time. I don't know. Yeah. Maybe I'm in there and I just don't know it. Yeah. Well, it seems obvious that family is pretty important to you. And I'm excited for you to be able to kind of be, you know, around your families as they continue to blossom and grow. We've already kind of stumbled on it. But let's talk about faith a little bit before. Was that something that was really important for your family when you were a little guy and stuff? Or is it something that really became more important to you than it was to your previous generation? And where did it come from? It's up to come from. So I grew up a Catholic boy. That was an altar boy and two different Catholic churches. And that that was probably kind of the foundation of my spiritual path. But then my father and mother got divorced. And the Catholic church really did not look. No, they're not too keen on that. Yeah. And so my mom started going to the assembly of God church in Cedar Edge, the old town of Cedar Edge. And so we went with her. And we really got exposed to a lot more depth, I think, of faith in that church. So we started reading the Bible verses and stuff. And in the Catholic church, we just never did that. You get them read to you again. We get them read to us. And we did go to Catechisms and we learned a lot of the kind of the core stuff. But we never actually read the Bible ourselves. Yeah. So that really kind of started me off on a different path of just learning a little bit more. But our family, because our parents had gotten split up, we got split up too. Yeah, I was going to ask that. Did you stay with your mom mostly and then just visit that once in a while? So I did stay with my mom. All of us did. But at some point, my oldest sister ended up living on her own. Second oldest, she had started school soon after that. I went to live with my dad. My sister just younger than me lived with another family. So kind of all split up a little bit. We all came back for thanks-givings and Christmas. We're all good that way. But we lived separately. And that then changed, I think, where we attended church just because. But for the most part, I was in a Christian youth group with the assembly of God Church and Cedar Edge. But in college, I really didn't do much with my faith. In fact, there's kind of a desert as far as a spiritual path goes. Fairly common, honestly. And I really reconnected. So after my wife and I got married in a Catholic church. And I just remember- Was she a Catholic also? Yeah. Well, she had grown up Catholic, but she was kind of not the most most regular church attender. But that was a big deal to her. And I just remember, in fact, she was- I can see her now just frowning at me because I would get an argument. Theological arguments with the priest who has got a barriers. That's not on the way to being married. Interesting. But in any case, when we moved to Minnesota was probably when my spiritual faith picked back up. So I think a big part of that was, okay, we're going to have kids. And I really want to be engaged spiritually so that I can start to really have dialogue with them about God and a lot of these things. And so we started really getting into small groups and learning a lot more. And what church did you pick and how did you pick it then? So it was a non-denominational church in Minnesota. They didn't have a denomination. So it was just a Protestant non-denominational church. And then when we moved to Denver, we shopped around for a very similar kind of church. And it ended up going there for a long, long time. That became our community church or family church. And where did you choose when you moved up here to Northern Colorado? Oh, so today I go to Timberline Church on Timberline and Drake. But we love it. It's bigger than we're used to. So we're still, we just recently, because we haven't been here long, but we just recently joined a small group and with COVID and everything else people were hesitant to meet about anything. How was Timberline's approach to the COVID? I know like our church we shut down for a few weeks or maybe five weeks or something. Then pretty soon after that, we were one of the first maybe to open back up and head services again before June, I think. I think Timberline tended to follow whatever the state of Colorado was recommending pretty close. And they got such a big church and a big population that is tough when you got 50 person capacity. It's like, well, it's 800 people can't come. So they did have the social distancing. They did have masks. I think they lost some members along the road because I think there were people that were upset that they weren't reopening this question. I feel for all of those folks because our decisions are definitely lost some members because we were too aggressive and moving back into services and stuff. And so Timberline even to this day, they still do that so you can go on Facebook live and you can still see the service. So there are still some people sitting at home watching it. And I figure as long as you give people the choice, yeah, that should be as middle of the road as you can. Right. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I appreciate that. So any particular faith moments or elements that you would share maybe with people that are exploring their own faith or even exploring a Catholic faith that hasn't been blossomed for them or whatever like what's what what are some of the highlights for you in that conversation. There's a lot of stuff there. So in my business, I think I'd already mentioned that God was a center of the core value. And so I actually would publish a prayer every week. Wow. That you'd write make up that I would write. I would email it out to all the employees. And it had to do with the work. So if you wanted to keep up with what was going on with that of it, you'd have to read the prayer because I would pray about all of the stuff there. And again, really just trying to express my feelings and my heart because as an engineer, that just doesn't usually happen in normal conversation. Right. So a prayer it did. Yeah. Kind of forced you into that mode. There was one event though that was is I always look back at it and I look at it as a God thing. So when I worked for Honeywell, there was this big account. It was Fort Morgan School District. And and I was working on it really hard and and wanted to close it. It was a large opportunity. And it fell through. And this was a big part of my core faith. I'm like, God, you know, what's the deal? I was praying. I was praying. What happened? Well, then as Innovate, I actually closed a $3 million project with Fort Morgan School. All right. So I thought, had I closed that deal? What I wanted it back when I worked for Honeywell, I would have never had this deal as as a business owner. And I'm much happier with the deal today. Thank you, Lord. Right. Right. Yeah. It's an interesting perspective on that. So it's there's there's a lot of lessons that I think I've learned. I don't know that I've really just seen a lot of miracles popping up, but it's just how to live life better. Yeah. And a more godly way. Yeah. That's an interesting perspective. I so I had like this vision to start a restaurant and bearers backyard bistro, which became a bearers backyard grill food trailer and stuff. And I was just kind of driven. I felt called to do this thing. And now in retrospect, I really feel like that was a mechanism by which God could draw me out of that bank career that I was in and that local think tank is what he had planned all along. But it was maybe a little different more difficult to enunciate what that was going to look like. But my love of food and my people and community could pull me out of there with that with that food journey instead. I think that's exactly right. I can look back at almost every event in my life and think, you know, this is what that was for. Right. Providence. Yeah. Once you start seeing Providence in your life, it becomes a lot easier to see it again. And it helps you through the rough times because you then keep thinking, okay, whatever this is. There's a server lining. I'm can't wait to see what it was for. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that perspective a lot. So thank you for sharing. Politics is a touchy subject, especially for some of the coaches, anybody. But there's plenty to talk about on that topic these days. And I guess I would just invite you to share some thoughts. If you don't share enough, I'll probably ask you about specific topics, maybe we've got a we're considering suspending the debt ceiling now instead of raising it. But there's a lot of pushback. Maybe we'll get rid of the filibuster so that we could not default. There's a lot of active conversations going on right now. Oh, Lordy. You know, so when I had my heart surgery, I wrote a political book. Oh, and it was actually called trial and error tales of well-being political decisions. I love it. I'm all about unintended consequences. There you go. And then I followed it up with a reengineering education book. Both of them are political fiction. So that may give you some insight into my political views. But I've actually I'm an unaffiliated party member. I don't belong to either party. I would consider myself. So sometimes I look at the news and I literally switch back and forth between CNN and Fox news. That's how I get. That's how you try to get an accurate picture. And I actually feel like that could be causing brain damage because there's two different worlds out there, clearly. It's like, wow, yeah, I'm here two different things. And now your brain has to figure out, well, what's the truth? So it's a tough political environment. What I'm hopeful for in politics is that people just start to listen to each other and start to because I believe that there is merit on both sides. But what tends to happen is we tend to talk past each other. So, you know, and in fact, I've done some toast master speeches on this very thing. As soon as you say what you are politically, people are going to classify you. So I say, just don't ever do that. And then they're more liable to listen to what you have to say. And just make sure you don't use it a name colleague or anything like that. But yeah, it's it's tough. I would say the toughest part for business people is the the economy. It's hard to understand because it feels like today, the economy is so contrived and manipulated by the Federal Reserve and by our government. And it's it's hard as an objective person looking at the economy. Well, as an inflation happening, should I be looking at Bitcoin or gasoline or you know, it's just it's almost impossible to make good business judgments as it as they relate to the economy because it's just so challenging. For instance, I mean, if you look at the S&P 500, most of the stocks are selling at prices that they're just not worth. Right. And so, but but then the problem is is where can you put your money? Right. You can't put it in bonds because the bond market is artificially kept low because interest rates are low. Because government has so much debt. Because the government has so much debt. And so what's happening is we're creating this economy that's not real. And so then it's hard for small business owners to figure out, okay, so you know, how do I navigate? Do I sit on the sidelines or does it even matter? Do I just keep doing my own business stuff and try to forget about it? Right. And there are so I do coach a lot of my business owner clients about getting too wrapped up and what the government's doing. And I think so. So as an opportunist in as a business person, you have to just react to what the government actually does. And that's even getting hard. So if you had a predictable tax rate, for instance, well, then you could plan financially, okay, this is how much how much taxes I'm going to pay. And I can predict that. And so I can set my prices, I can set my costs and everything else. The challenge happens when in 1993, and I'll never forget this. I don't know why, but Bill Clinton had actually passed the law. Actually, it wasn't just Bill Clinton, because there was a Congress too, at that time. But they they had a tax increase and then they made it retroactive. So they actually went back to the first of the year. And the law passed, I think it was an August or September of that year. I thought, wow, that just doesn't seem right. And so all these business owners, they have to pay back taxes and they never even knew that it was coming. So those are the kinds of things that I just don't think that lawmakers fully understand how those kinds of things impact small business owners. And I remember one thing from my economics classes, just one thing. But that businesses don't like uncertainty. And how much uncertainty we've packed into the political systems these days is pretty crazy. Well, and especially in the industry that I focus on, which is the energy services. Right. Are you going to get a bunch of big credits to do this thing? There are grants coming in. There are penalties for urban credits. And yeah, it's just it's all over the market. Yeah, sure. One of the things. So back in whenever that was when like the defensive marriage act was happening and stuff, I was like, can we just let the gaze marry and just not call it marriage so that the Christians can be happy and the gaze can be happy and and I don't know if Gaze is the term I can use anymore. But anyway, you know, because that seemed like the obvious compromise to me, like treat people equally, have civil unions that give you insurance benefits and can be on people's insurance plans and stuff. But but no, the Republicans were like, we got to put all these barriers in place. And then obviously eventually it's going to flow over that barrier. And now, you know, soon we'll probably be able to marry three people if we want to and and and a goat. Yeah. Or whatever, you know, I don't know. Well, and I think there is a lot of middle ground on a lot of these topics that become so polarizing. And unfortunately, I just don't see us getting there because the conversations just are not in fact allowed to talk about the ground. Right. So from a core energy perspective, we call this level two, which is conflict and politics is constantly in either conflict or victim, which is one or two, they never even make it up to three, which is what, which is just acceptance and moving forward. Right. So it's just like do something. Right. But so what happens is we're we're going to swing from Republican dominated Congress to Democratic dominated Congress. And we're just going to get the either way is going to be dominated. Yeah, we'll get whacking us on both sides. And so yeah. Yeah. What are the so I have a I'm kind of a libertarian with a pro life stance, I guess is probably how you characterize a lot of my politics. But that number three acceptance, the way I see this playing out is likely that the our union is going to get fractured eventually. You know, the the super broke super liberal states are going to pass some kind of a bailout kind of thing. And the rest of the states can be like, if you were out starting with Texas and then with North Dakota, you know, where can we be Canada? You know, I don't know. But if we could just get to that level three of acceptance and have a looser union and allow states to not have a national minimum wage that is going to mess up everybody's business in Alabama, but protect everybody's livelihood in New York or San Francisco because they're different because we have to be different because we are. Well, and I think what happens and this is what what I believe is happening with polarization is once people get they pick a side. And it doesn't matter if you're rooting for the Denver Broncos or the Democratic Party or or whatever. Once you pick that side, your psyche is liable to to support that regardless of what logic tells you. And it goes both ways. And so what's happening with a lot of people is they have to start becoming aware of themselves and just kind of check themselves and say, okay, so this is a reasonable thing to fight for politically. And this, this, but I don't need to do it this way. Yeah. There's there's a civil way to do it. And there's there's a way that's going to get the best. Unfortunately, those people are not rewarded today. So when I publish my book, trial and error, I started entering a lot of discussions on political blogs. Were you managing your business at this time still? Well, I was kind of this was the startup of my consulting stuff. So I had a few clients, but it wasn't serious, serious until a while after that. And I even thought that well, maybe I will be a political fiction writer if these books take off or something. Right. Um, in any case, if you're in the middle, what happens is you get just you get hated by both sides. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. As a, as a kind of openly expressed libertarian. Yeah. Like the only thing that Democrats hate more than Republicans is libertarians. Right. And the only things that Republicans hate worse than Democrats is libertarians kind of. Right. Well, look at the two senators who are kind of in the middle today. Right. They're getting. Oh, Christ. Yeah, they're getting it from both sides that they're hated all around and good for them for just sticking the guns. Yeah. They feel as right. I just mentioned that in my podcast or this week, you know, the most hated people in the world, according to headlines, are still prompt, obviously, they're forever perhaps until he dies. And then mansion and right, cynic or whatever her name is, Christen and I forget. So, okay, well, we covered that pretty good. And I think we're pretty resonant on our cynicism about the current state of affairs. And even what is needed, you know, people have to listen to each other. And occasionally, it would be good if people would compromise. And once in a while, if somebody would change their mind based on new information, that would be cool, but or express when they've made a mistake. That would be cool. And I don't even know. I don't know if people would actually change their mind. I think that there's just, there's a middle ground that they could both accept. For instance, abortion is a really heavy topic. And yet, and I see both sides. So there's the liberty of the woman involved. And then there's the life of the baby. And those are two delicate topics that are both important. But I think there is something that we can say, okay, look, here's here. I don't think it needs to be a national issue. No, I think it, I think having a be a state issue is the right answer for that. And if you want to move to a state where it's legal, then great. If you don't want to, then that's great too. Well, and then, you know, for me, I guess, when my tax dollars, so when I'm paying the government, and then they're sponsoring abortions, that's where I, I, for sure, I get a plan. Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm actually and directly to killing babies. Yeah, my friend Ben, he used the life liberty and pursuit of happiness. Yeah. And he says life, liberty, liberty, Trump's pursuit of happiness. And I kind of jive with that notion on a big picture scale, including according to abortion, but also according to masks, you know, according to closures, things like that, even, you know, and your pursuit of happiness is great. I'm all for it. But if it starts to dig into my liberty, including taking too many of my tax dollars. Right. So you can have the pursuit of happiness of having fun employment for nine months. Right. Then I don't really like that. Right. So the local experience, final segment of the, of the show here today, the craziest experience of your life that you're willing to share with our listeners. Oh, dear, might be crazy, impactful. This is a little embarrassing. So I am a Colorado native, as I mentioned, I grew up on the western slope. So four-wheel driving is a big deal there. We go up in the back mountain roads all the time and we're always experimenting with new things. So my story is about, it's a story that happened in my company, my last company, me and, well, call him a friend. He was my employee, he was a project developer for me. We worked with school districts a lot and the two school districts that we had meetings with at the same day was Gunnison School District, Gunnison Valley School District in Gunnison. And then we had a meeting, a board meeting that evening at Eagle, an Eagle Colorado Eagle County School District. Yeah. And there's theoretically a pass that goes between us. Right. Well, I get to that. Well, so there, this was back in the old days. We didn't have Google Maps then. And I can't remember the specific year. I want to say like 2004, 2005, anyway. So he prints out this map from Excite Maps. That was back in the day. And he says, oh, well, we're going to have to go from Gunnison all the way back to Solida. Then we're going to have to go up through Leadville and then we'll get I-70 and go west on I-70 and get to Eagle. I thought, wow, that's a long ways. And that's a lot of driving. By the time I have to present at that school board meeting, I'll be like burned out. Is there like a shortcut? And so sure enough, he says, oh, yeah, there's this shortcut. So he prints out a new Excite map and sure enough. So we finish our meeting and I want to say it was around 2 p.m. in Gunnison. I think we grab some lunch on the road and we get up to Crestabute and then the road on the Excite map turns into gravel. I thought, oh, this is a bad deal. And I want to kind of backtrack a little bit. So excuse me, we're an energy services company. So our company cars were Toyota Priuses. And so we were driving a Toyota Prius because that was the most energy efficient. And so we wanted to drive our Toyota Prius. And so we're going over this gravel road. I thought, well, that's not too bad. And this is going to be scenic and sure enough, we're seeing these beautiful mountains. And then the road gets a little bit narrower gravel. And then it gets even narrower and now it turns to dirt. And it's still going uphill. But I thought, well, if we make it to the top of whatever we're driving on, then the rest is going to be downhill. And it should be. Right, get wider and wider as you go downhill. Free sailing, right? So we even, I remember this. I'm sure I've got this in my archive somewhere. We took a picture of ourselves when we got to the top at the Toyota Prius. And right next to us was the sign of Skullfield Pass, summit, whatever. And we decided, okay, well, we're going to go down the other side. And one of the things that gave us confidence was right in front of us was a two-wheel drive van. And I figure, well, you know, if a two-wheel drive van is going to make it a Prius. Prius could do that. But as we're going down the other, the north side of Skullfield Pass, it's shaded and there's snow drifts and it's a muddy. And I'm thinking, you know, I don't think we can get back up through this. So hopefully it just gets better. Well, we get to the bottom and this van stops. And when the van stopped, then I noticed something. The van had California plates. Oh, God. I thought, oh, dear. So we're following. I'm following the blinder. Okay. And I have this Colorado guy. So they stop and in front of them as a creek, it's flowing across the road. And we think, well, there's no way the Prius is going to get pass that. So our plan now, we couldn't get cell phone service. So we couldn't call anybody. We decide we're going to all get in the van. It was it was some poor family, a man of wife and two little girls. And so we're going to all get in the van and we're going to get across. We're going to leave the Prius there and come back and get it. Well, right about then, somebody comes across the river in a four-wheeler and they said, you know, what are you guys doing? He said, well, you know, we're going to go across this river and over this creek and then we're going to go on the van and then send back help and get the Prius or tow it out or something. He says, oh, yeah, just so you know, like after this creek is the crystal river, you have to drive through the crystal river. Then after you get through the crystal river, you have the devil's punch bowl, which is right after that. And the road is very narrow. And every year, a family falls off it to their death. I mean, every year we can predict it. I thought, because, and he says, why? Well, because your brakes are wet from the crystal river and you can't stop. And so people go off it, whether it's raining or something else. And we thought, well, we're stuck. There's no way we could get back. Well, this may have been another God said, but right across the river comes this Jeep. He's got a wench and they went just both back up over Skofield pass. So we got out of there. And I made it to the school board meeting. I had all this mud splattered on my shirt. And I got to tell them this story. And as soon as I said Skofield pass, they all knew what that was. And I was just, I was thankful that they didn't think I was such an idiot for going over that pass at a Toyota Prius that they would still do business with me. That's awesome. After that. So pretty good. That's pretty good. When I went on my 76 BMW R75, I went over a pass between Basalt and Leadville, I think, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, German pass. Oh, and my friends that I was with on they were on Suzuki dirt trail kind of things. But mine was a street bike. It wasn't made for that at all. And we got up to the top. One of my friends dumped his like three times. It was just a super difficult level Jeep trail. And we got to the top. And there was this old guy in a, in a Jeep and another guy on a BMW GS, you know, and he's like, young man, that's pretty impressive. I've seen a lot of BMWs up here. But never a, never a street person. Yeah. But I got that old BMW back down the pass. And it sounds like a similar story. Jeff, it's been a pleasure. I enjoyed hearing about it. If you wouldn't mind, share with our audience how to find mechanics of mindset business coaching and, and in what channels your best easiest to find on. So, so the best way to find my website is, is really where I keep everything is at www.mmbizcoach.com. And you'll, you'll find me there. I hang out a lot of times on LinkedIn. I'm, I'm posting there almost weekly, if not daily. I have a YouTube channel that I am just starting. And so on a weekly basis, I'm publishing videos. And hopefully try to turn those videos into podcasts, still trying to figure out the technology to do hard. I can do it. So, but I am actually putting a lot of stuff out there. And you can buy my book on Amazon. And it's business mechanics and mindset, how your mind can either create or sabotage your business success. So, yeah. Well, it's been a pleasure. I hope you have a great rest of your week. And I look forward to learning more from you in our next conversation. It seems like I learned something every time. Well, thank you so much. All right. Good day. Thanktank.com. If you've been enjoying this series, don't forget to subscribe. We love great reviews on Apple podcasts or wherever you're listening. And don't forget, always keep it low-code.