EXPERIENCE 45 | Josh Guernsey & Greg Roeder, Co-Founders of Waypoint Real Estate

Today's episode features Greg Radar and Josh Guernsey, founders and managing partners at Waypoint Real Estate in Fort Collins. Josh and Greg founded the firm five short years ago and have grown to become a leading full-service firm in the region, with a staff of 35 providing residential and commercial brokerage, property management and investment services. They attribute their success to attracting great people, who attract great people, who attract great people. We spent a lot of time talking about how marketing real estate has changed, the varying needs of clients, and some of the big changes ahead for our region and the greater industry. This was a fun conversation with a pair of smart, focused and community-minded business leaders. Tune in to learn more about the fast-growing real estate firm and the principles and values that help them find true North with their team, their clients and the community. Let's have some fun. Welcome to the LOCO Experience Podcast. I'm your host, Kirk Bear. This show is produced by me and my team, and sponsored by my small business, LOCO Think Tank, and sometimes others. Episodes feature a range of local and regional business and community leaders as guests in a conversational interview format. Our guests are interesting and successful people with unique business journeys, and the more business education and unbarnished truth we can uncover, the better. You'll feel like you really know our guests after each episode, and if I'm doing my job well, listeners will find business principles and tips on their journey and a greater appreciation for each of our guests. Woven into these long format experience episodes are occasional thoughtful episodes. Topically focused snippets of five to fifteen minutes where our guests unfold important and timely business truths. And also, I'll read the LOCO perspective blog post because I'm lazy to infer to listen than to read, and maybe you do too. Thanks for tuning in, and if you like the show, please subscribe, review, and share it with your favorite people. I'm joined today with Josh Gernsey and Greg Raider, and Josh and Greg are the partners and founders of Waypoint Real Estate here in Fort Collins and around Northern Colorado. And let's just get started by Josh. Why don't you justcribe Waypoint Real Estate as it is today, and we'll let Greg jump in after a bit. Sure, absolutely. So we're Northern Colorado-based real estate company. Started about five years ago, with really just getting our foundation with brokerage. And when about 12 months doing on a platform of commercial brokerage and started the property management company soon after, we've grown quickly. Initially, it was about four of us that started the company, and or started with the company, rather. And we've grown since then. We're about 35 employees total now, and so it's been a really fast trajectory, and just have built a really great team. We're fortunate to have great relationships, and have really kind of grown organically in that time period. Our sandbox is really Northern Colorado, so our contracts extend north Denver. We're pushing into the Wyoming market. So most recently, we've had a couple real estate acquisitions, taken over a number of management contracts and brokerage opportunities in the Cheyenne market. So we're really north Denver all the way up to Cheyenne. And I'd say just kind of blessed to be in an area that is so dynamic like Northern Colorado. People are coming here. There's employment growth. People want to raise their families here. And so I think I'd like to say and believe that we've grown it just through our entrepreneurial spirit, but I think we're eyes wide open to know that we're also really fortunate to be in a great place. And so I'd say we have a tailwind, if you will, behind our entrepreneurial spirit. It's not always been easy, but I think we're eyes wide open to that tailwind that exists. Fair enough. And Greg, why don't you describe why it is or how it came to be that you decided to launch Waypoint? And even where did you come up with the name Waypoint? Like to hear about that too. I think Josh answered that one. That was that was all Josh. He's a pilot. So he came up with that name. This episode is sponsored by Loco Think Tank. Loco Think Tank provides pure collaboration for business owners. We build smart, safe places to help business leaders navigate every stage of the business journey. And we love what we do and who we do it with. Our model features gift-back minded business veterans and the role of Loco facilitators. And we're always looking for abundance minded individuals to add to our membership, facilitate a team, local community, or to feature on this podcast. Listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of Loco Think Tank get their sixth month of membership for free. Just mention the Loco Experience Podcast on your application. To learn more, visit our website at locothinktank.com. That's l-o-c-o-thinktank.com. Yeah, and I feel like a pilot right now. We're sitting here with headphones on. Greg and I are sitting next to try to pick. I'm sitting right seat in a... That's a co-pilot, right? Like co-pilot. Yeah, exactly. So you guys were both with Brinkman partners before that. Josh was a partner there. I was a broker at Brinkman for several years. You know, and really it started, you know, Josh. I remember and I were just kind of chatting one day. Brinkman was really at a stage where he had grown. Was doing great things. Had started in development. Had obviously been doing a lot of construction also. And, you know, really, we wanted to do brokerage. I mean, Josh and I wanted to do brokerage. We were really focused on commercial brokerage at the time. And, you know, as we were discussing next steps, I mean, Josh kind of had the idea. And we sat down and I think it took me, maybe, you know, two seconds or less to decide, yeah, I'm with you. Let's do this. Is that because like Brinkman was becoming increasing the construction focus, and the brokerage was kind of an afterthought. And you're like, you know what, brokerage is actually where it's at for us. You know, I think so. I mean, I think for me, I can speak for myself. I really wanted to be focused on brokerage helping people buy and sell real estate at the time, commercial and residential. And Brinkman was doing, and still is, you know, an amazing construction company, amazing development company. I mean, Kevin and Paul, you know, started that company. And Josh came on board there early, early on. And they did amazing things, you know, well-documented. But yeah, really, I wanted to be in Northern Colorado, stay in Northern Colorado, raise a family in Northern Colorado, and help people buy and sell real estate. So, you know, being that those were my goals, it was, you know, it was an easy decision for me. Fair enough. Okay. And Josh, you and I go back quite a ways. Not long after I first heard of Brinkman, our mutual friend, Paul, from Delta introduced us, and we met with you in Kevin. Gosh, that must have been two or three years after Brinkman first started, maybe. Yeah, I was back in the early days. I think I was obviously out of a closet at the time, at the, yeah, three-person workspace. But yeah, it was, it was great. We do go way back. I think it was, you know, two, three years we met. And that was back in your lending days. Yeah. So we, banker days. Banker days. So, no, it's been all great since then. And, you know, I think it's those relationships that I think we have found come full circle. You know, you start those conversations and you never know where they're going to go. And whether it's, you know, something turns into great opportunity, six months or, you know, 12, 15 years down the road, like we are now. I mean, just it's opportunities come, and it all all kind of ties back to relationships. Yeah. We're going to get into the growth and development of building the team at Waypoint and things like that. But I like to give our listeners a chance to like know the people behind these enterprises sometimes first. And so, Josh, why don't we start with you? Where did you come from? Are you Northern Colorado born and raised? Or what was your trajectory to get to this place? My trajectory took me through. Yeah, I'm born and raised here in Northern Colorado. I grew up in Fort Collins. I won her Wildcat, Boltz Phoenix, and Fort Collins High School at Lampkin. So proud Lampkin went to the homecoming game about two weeks ago. So yeah, I grew up here. They've watched it change quickly. Went to school down. I got to say it quietly sometimes, but see you, Boulder. So yeah, it's still about fan, but my heart and loyalty is lie with CSU Rams. But yeah, I went through see Boulder, and actually went, I was an airline pilot right out of college. Oh, wow. So I flew for the airlines for a couple years, and just realized it wasn't the career path that was right for me. So yeah, like what about that? What wasn't right? And do you go to school to be a pilot? I'm not clear on that. Yeah, I started my flight training in Boulder, and then moved on Farmington, New Mexico. That's where I finished my flight training. Okay. It was an exodited program to basically get on at the airlines. So it was Mesa Airlines. 250 hours take you through. They put you in the desert where you can't hit anything. You're flying, it's all. If you crash, you won't kill anybody except you. Yeah, except for yourself. Yeah, so it's just a pretty low risk environment for other people. But yeah, I went through my flight training quickly, and then found myself based on the East Coast. You know, you're flying, doing a lot of commuting, those kinds of things, and loved flying every day. I just realized that I wanted something a little bit different for family life, something a little bit different for challenges, and just the speed I'm used to going. It just, I knew quickly that there was a different path for me. Yeah. Got an opportunity to come back to Denver, is actually I ran into Kevin Brankman, and it was a good friend growing out, ended up being my business partner later. But Kevin was in grad school at University of Denver. I told me about this programming, he was going through masters of real estate, and construction management. So I looked into the program, and just ended up enrolling, and that being a great opportunity. And what was your undergrad at CU? Uh, finance. Okay, so it was in a business school at CU. So I kind of had a platform of business education, then learned out of flyer plans, and found my way back to business school at University of Denver. Fair enough. And Greg, how about you? Where did you come from? Iowa. Iowa. Yeah, University of Iowa grew up in a small town in Iowa, called Grinnell. Oh, that's, uh, we had a Czech exchange student that, uh, my wife and I have known, and she got a full ride to Grinnell University. After, Grinnell College, yeah. Grinnell College, yeah. Beautiful, beautiful college, beautiful campus. Shout out to Misha. All right. And, uh, yes, so, after going to high school, and Grinnell went to University of Iowa. Yep. It's from my mom, and my dad went. It's the Hawkeyes? The Hawkeyes, yeah, I'm the Hawkeyes. And, uh, after Iowa, I went to, went to school, we got a marketing degree, then after that, I spent my parents lived in Arizona at the time, so spent the time in Arizona, actually, and I worked all through college. I had so many jobs. I mean, there's kind of a long list, actually. One of them was selling cut-co knives, which we can talk about later. Oh, yeah. The best knives. Yeah, they're in the rear. Did you know Patrick Edadinson? No. Oh, he was a, a killer cut-co guy back in the day. Oh, really? Yeah. He's the founder of the, the articulate, the co-workers business. Oh, I didn't know Patrick. I didn't know Patrick. Yeah, I don't. But, so, a number of jobs in college, and it saved up some money, so when I got done with college, I actually started a little fitness business. And so, that was the first business that I ever had. Okay. And, you know, really, really didn't do great. And I was able to sell the business. It came out to Colorado, followed my sister after taking a short visit to Fort Collins in 2005. Okay. And just, I thought it was amazing. She was in vet school at CSU at the time. And I thought, this is where I want to live. And, packed up the few things I had and moved to Fort Collins, late 2005. Immediately got into the real estate world. I started in title in my goal. And doing that was to learn the business. Maybe, maybe see how real estate brokers were, what they were doing to be successful or maybe what they were doing to not be successful, but to learn. I thought I would do that for two years. I made it about a year and a half and I just, I just got the it. So, I wanted to get in. So, I got into brokerage, proceeded to do horribly for solid two years. Work nights at Home Depot. I say you could pay the rent. I don't even know if I told anybody that. But, I did. Yeah. How'd you do at Home Depot? I think I did well. I was, I was told, I was told a few times that I'd manage your potential. Nice. Yeah, I see what you could have been. I was, I was, I was selling appliances. Your trajectory looks like this, Greg. Yeah. And then stocking shelves in the late hours. And, you know, that was back when, you know, you could, if you could fog a mirror, you could get a loan to buy a place. Sure. At that time. So, I did buy a town home, packed it full of roommates, worked my night job at Home Depot. That's how I paid the bills because I certainly wasn't selling any real estate. Yeah. It's a tough thing, you know, when, when you're a, whatever, a 27-year-old kid or something like that and you're talking to these 50-year-old people that are actually the buyers and sellers of, of real real estate, you know. And, and they're like, well, I could pick you or this experienced person for the same price. And it's hard to make set yourself apart in those early years, for sure. That was tough. It was, it was competitive then, even, and, you know, it was a, I guess it was a down-market, but even if it would have been an up-market, I don't think my predicament would have been any different. Yeah. Was there a switch that you flipped that, because then pretty soon, when I first met, you were kind of one of the, the killers in the commercial real estate game. And there must have been a learning moment there or something or was it just a peel in that ending until you got to the middle? You know, I remember, I was down to about zero in the bank account, and I was, I decided I was going to put a fly or on every single door in the Harvest Park neighborhood, which I thought would take, you know, just advertising my services. I think I put on there that I discount my listing fee to get a listing. I thought it would take me two hours. I didn't know how many homes were in the neighborhood. Should have done some research. I think it took me seven hours, and I ended it about 11, 15 at night. One of the flyers, one of the houses I was putting a flyer on really late at night, I startled a lady by the name of Grace Norman, who turned on the lights, came outside, actually gave me a chance to meet somebody. We started the conversation, ended up listing her town home, selling it. It was my first sale. I think that was what actually allowed me to stay in the business. Yeah. And keep going. Thanks Grace. Yeah. Thank you Grace. So I think I reduced my fee. And I think she was a painter. She gave me a nice, panicked closing to it. Nice. Nice. So that was maybe a switch. So that was residential real estate. I knew when you were commercial. I got my starting residential, then followed in Josh and Kevin Brinkman's footsteps and went to the University of Denver, got a master's degree in real estate finance and then got into commercial from there and was doing residential and commercial when I was at Brinkman. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, I'll start with Grace. And then, you know, proceeded to, you know, I remember hearing about Brinkman, hearing about Kevin, hearing about Josh, all the great things that we're doing. So reached out to Kevin multiple times, I think after a few or seven voicemails, he agreed to meet with me, have lunch and I got on with Brinkman. Josh was opposite in a coat clause at the time, which was a pretty large upgrade over where I was opposite. Right. You're like, oh wow, I love your office. Yeah, I mean, you know, he had some privacy. He could really, you know, I think he had a file cabinet. Maybe not a lot of good air flow, but... Well, it wasn't COVID nation yet, so that was a big deal. So, I guess that was one of the things I was struck by, honestly, when I met you and Kevin for the first time, Josh, is just your strong grasp of numbers and financial awareness and global market trends and forces and things like that. And we should probably get into some of that at this time, because I suspect you're still in that. And there's a lot of stuff to talk about. But do you attribute really that masters in real estate and construction to kind of the accelerator pace by which Brinkman grew its presence here in Fort Collins and whatnot? Yeah, I do. I mean, I think it provided a skill set that enabled us to add true value. You know, I think there's, you know, we had professors at DU that talked about your golf and cigar broker. Yeah, that's out in a great relationship, hand shake, great smile. But it's a lot of sizzle, not a whole lot of stake. And I think our ability to truly add value, understand deals and understand where to make our clients money. I think that was truly what we brought to us. Special sauce. Yeah, exactly. And I think you layer that on top of growing up here, the relationships we had, all those things. I think it kind of gave us a foot in the door. That, you know, maybe others may not have had. So to get in, foot in the door, we have the ability to add value. Yeah, no question. I mean, to this day, I think happiness is some good wine, some pandora, and cranking on some Excel spreadsheets. That's a good day right there. Good evening. Yeah, we'll start drinking till later in the day. Fair enough. Yeah, but no, I think we still heavily analyze deals that we do, deals for our clients. And I think the numbers have to make sense. And I think we just see a lot of deals where they don't. And so I think it has somewhat enabled us to avoid critical mistakes, you know, for our clients, for us as well. Yeah, and find great returns. I remember back in my banking days, we entertained a loan request. And it was like a fixing flip kind of project. And they had to budget and all penciled out and stuff like that. And there was no profit, nor interest carry. But they could pay off the deal of it. It was like, well, why would you go through all this work just to break even, and maybe not break even if you use it any hiccups. Yeah. And yeah, I think that's definitely. And even waypoints probably, I read your newsletters and things. And market data is probably a hallmark of what you're doing even already. Well, and that is really one of the main components of our platform. I mean, really we're an information gathering business. You know, we're north of 4 million square feet that we maintain or manage. We have a huge brokerage transaction volume. So we just have data and our ability to compile that data, use it for market information. It's really a great advantage that we have. Yeah, otherwise you're guessing at it, right? So Greg, is that your love as well? Or what is the, like, not to be, I don't want to insult you anyway, but to some extent, on paper, you know, aside from your degree, you don't have as many relationships as depth of things, not maybe as number nerdy. What's your special sauce that you bring to the equation? You know, I think I'm probably sneaky, number nerdy. Okay. I went through that same, you know, program at DU, you know, master's in real estate finance and construction management. And, you know, if you're not number nerdy, you probably don't make it through that. Right. Coming out of that, I guess, again, following a Josh's footsteps got the CCAM designation, which is a commercial real estate investment designation. So, you know, I do enjoy that part as well. I probably enjoy more than that the sales process. The relationships, the, the relationships, the, you know, how do you, how do you differentiate? I think Josh brought up a really good differentiator that we have, which is information. Yeah. And, you know, why is that a differentiator? Well, if you look at a market like ours, you might call it a secondary or a tertiary market. Sure. Denver is a primary market. Right. And traditionally in these types of markets, co-star, which brokers like Josh and I, companies like Waypoint and CBRE and Cushman, all the companies up here, they pay a fortune to co-star. And it is to get data. All right. However, I think if you were to get any broker on this podcast, they would tell you that, you know, the data is, you know, in this market, it's just not, maybe not quite as good. Yeah. Is it because it is a secondary market? It's a secondary market. So, if you really want good, accurate data in this market, you, you need to, you need to have properties under management, you know, you really need to be one doing a lot of brokerage volume. So, you have those leases, you have, you know, you just have that information, yet be connected with the owners and really the best way to be connected with the owners and how that information is to do property management like we do. And like Josh said, we have over, you know, four million square feet, you know, we're managing and maintaining properties in some way. So, we have our tentacles into a lot of properties. And we really have a big, big database of local, you know, locally relevant information. Yeah. So, you know, people are coming to us for that. And that allows us to then advise our clients, hey, what are lease rates? You know, what should this person renew at? You know, what, what should I be paying for this building, office, retail, industrial, flex? That information is a huge, huge, huge competitive advantage. And that's nothing that I use in the sales process. You know, and also, you know, focusing on residential, which is really where my focus is at now. You know, then, okay. I mean, we've been so lucky early on to have, you know, just, I mean, we, the company has been built collectively with, you know, from the ground up, collectively with, we had just a few great hires early on. And then those great hires attracting more great hires. Yeah. So, I mean, it's, you know, it really has been a team effort. And we've been very lucky to have amazing people on board. So, you know, we have Nick Norton. We have Dave Katz. We have Jake Arnold. We have these great brokers on the commercial side that are running with that. Josh, running with that in me, really, focusing on the residential side now. And then the residential side, we have other differentiators too. Yeah, I didn't even realize that honestly. I, I, you know, I spent my whole banking career focused on commercial. And honestly, that's where I noticed your signs as commercial real estate listings and things like that. But how did you start doing residential right away? Or do you pivoted toward that as residential volume is increased and your capacity is, you know, I think I've known close to 300 residential transactions, you know, in Northern Colorado. Wow. And really have always done this. So, even with Waypoint, when it first started, you were going to be residential. Okay. It just not, you know, not shining a light on that as much. Well, I just don't pay attention. So, it might not be that. Well, really, that was, you know, that was on purpose. I mean, that was kind of branding. We didn't want to confuse the brand starting out. But once we had the momentum going on the commercial side like we have and the property management side, then really in 2019, we started the residential. And you'll see the, you know, we do primarily work in the luxury category on the residential side. So, you know, 700,000 and up. Fair enough. So, you'll see the Waypoint luxury residential signs. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's really, that's really my focus at this generation. Yeah, bringing differentiators into that side too. Having the great people we have on board, to really have some economies of scale there. So, we can, you know, we can do great videos. We can provide all these services. We can do social media targeting. Yeah. You know, just a whole, a whole lot of things that I think that that stand out in the market. Talk to me about the outside of like the residential focus and the commercial focus. Talk to me about the division of labor a little bit in terms of managing the team, managing the business. Who does the taxes and the bookkeeping and, you know, hiring, firing, all that kind of stuff. And has that changed over the five years that you guys have been doing your own bag? Josh, you wanna start? Yeah, I think that's a good question. It definitely, I don't think any company would say that's a steady state or stays the same over time, right? I think your needs change as you grow. So historically, I've kind of headed up those efforts. We just have a fantastic team too. So I think, you know, as we're approaching 35 employees, I think the, getting to a team of that size, you really get to where you can have specialization. Yeah. And so, you know, I think it's where you're not wearing every hat internally. There's an awesome thing that happens that you just start having specialists and great people that we can lean on with our company. You know, we have someone that's really heading up our accounting team. Does a lot of our HR insurance work. She's great, Laura Papish. We have, you know, marketing, you know, we have a team working on that. So, you know, put these teams that really, we flipped the organizational chart upside down. If you ever see an organizational chart for within our company, it doesn't look like your typical pyramid, right? We flip it upside down and we say, look, they're on the front lines. We're there to support them. And so, really, we have our maintenance team. The other out front lines are the first people that the property owners see, a brokerage team. They're out front lines, talking of clients. We're there to provide the resources, clear the path, get things out of their way. That allows them to do what they do really well. And I think if you can just clear that path for a great team, then you hire really well and maintain, you know, a good team environment. We've just said, like, all we have to do is support that team. So, historically, I guess that ultimately, those responsibilities have fallen to me, but we have a team that's executing on that beautifully. So, yeah. And Greg, what, how would you describe, like your role within the business management element, if you will? You know, I think, you know, Josh and I talk a lot. Yeah. Obviously, we make decisions together. You know, we have a leadership team too, you know, Tom Hall, Beth and the guys, we try to make decisions collectively and go forward. But I think, you know, I'm really trying to be focused on, hey, how are we differentiating our services? You know, what are we doing differently than the conversation, I'm sorry. And how can we keep pushing that? How can we keep kind of, you know, pedaling harder and doing all of these things? That's, I think that's where my role is. Well, I was just thinking to myself that the ability to attract those really strong commercial brokers, those really great agents that have already a reputation in the luxury home market, for example, like if you can give them the data that you've been able to collect and distribute and prepare, that just strengthens their hand when they're trying to get listings or they're trying to make an offer or whatever. Hey, I appreciate that my offer's not the highest, but that one's not going to sail. This one will go, you know, or whatever that looks like. Do you have the same kind of approach in the luxury residential as far as information gather? You know, really, we're lucky to have a great MLS on the residential side up here, Iris, and there's great information in Iris. You know, we do a number of things, you know, like, you know, gathering back in data from Realtor.com so we can see where searches from out of state are coming from, you know, for example, I can tell you that all the out of state searches that come on, you know, on Realtor.com, four homes, properties, and four columns. 4.8% of all out of state searches are from Dallas County. 4.2% are from Cook County, the Chicago area. 3.9% are from Seattle. 3.7% are from the Scottsdale Phoenix area. So knowing these kind of stats, these data points. Then you can target ads on Facebook and Scottsdale or whatever. Yeah, so we put very professional video together and then we place those, we target those specific counties. And if you look at the percentage of, particularly in the luxury category, buyers in our market over this past year that have been from out of state, that, you know, quite frankly, are outbidding our local regional buyers by a substantial clip. These strategies are working. So I would characterize our approach on the residential side is very strategic. I think we're able to spend money because we have economies of scale from a larger platform that's really rolling. And it's benefited, it's benefited, you know, our group and I think our clients. That's really intriguing. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Before we get too far into the business thing, you mentioned you have an older sister that was your Drauta town here. Yeah. Let's go back in the way back a little bit. What's your family dynamic? Were your parents entrepreneurs or anything like that, Greg? Or did you have other family members as well? You know, everyone in my immediate family is some type of a doctor, except for me. Yeah. And I'm actually scared of hospitals. I'm needles, blood, all that. If you don't watch Greg's grow, just ask him. So it's a medical related blood element. Even getting my blood pressure taken, I cannot handle. Interesting. I've got this thing on my elbow. You want to take a quick look? It's strange. Yeah, it's strange. So I wasn't cut out for that. But yeah, sisters of that, brothers of Dennis, my brother owns his own dental practice, Gray Rock dental. And my mom was a retired dentist. She started her own practice everywhere. We moved around quite a bit. My dad is a retired ear nose and throat doctor. Did facial reconstructive surgeries and things we were moving around quite a bit growing up? I think we moved nine times before high school. And I was really kind of driven in. My dad had a lot of great opportunities. And so we moved to follow those opportunities. But yeah, I think a lot of entrepreneurialism in the family and a lot of medical. Yeah, yeah. Josh, same question to you. What was your dynamic there? And we'll talk a little bit more about your own families. But yeah, no, absolutely. So my dad is actually just retiring now as a real estate appraiser. So he's probably done it for 35 years. OK. Residential real estate appraisal. So I grew up here still in Northern Colorado. You want to call a rattle? Yeah. And so I kind of grew up in the business a little bit in understanding real estate, being out and helping to measure properties, things like that. He had his own business. So there's an entrepreneurial slant. And so yeah, grew up with that. Mom was a high school counselor and loved one high school. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, just growing up here, I think, just watched my dad work for himself and realized that I was going to be a horrible employee for somebody. So maybe I'll go start my own. Residential appraising and commercial appraising. But residential especially is one of those relatively rare jobs where you can really be self-employed, make a pretty decent living, have interactions with smart humans on a regular basis. So you're not lonely. But also, there's nobody to tell you what to do too much. It's a pretty cool industry. I don't know if it's still the same. It used to be a lot more relationship-driven and now banks are like, gotta go in order. You gotta have 10 approved appraisers and blah, blah, blah. But yeah, I think that industry has changed a lot. And I just mostly saw with my dad that he coached all those things growing up. And just the flexibility he had to be able to cut out, go coach, come back and work all hours the night. He put in the hours, but he had the flexibility to do that. So I appreciated that. And I think we've tried to design the same dynamic for myself and for our team to give them the flexibility to be able to do those things and be available and take part in family. But we work hard, but you have to be able to balance it. Yeah, yeah, same time. So I wanna jump back to the business evolution of Waypoint a little bit. At first you said it was just four of you that started on the brokerage side, no property management. Let's talk about some of those key player ads along the way. When did you add who, what were the gross spurts, things like that? I know one of the reasons I reached out to you is you celebrated your five year anniversary. I wanted to celebrate that. And also you acquired, I think, investor's property management here locally. And probably there are 10 person team or 7 person team or something like that maybe. But talk to me about those major steps and additions along the way. It sure might. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think as I look back, what has been the biggest game changer for us is the risks we've taken on new hires. Okay. And truly the risk was on their part. You know, they're coming, they were all leaving large organizations, great situations and taking a risk on us. And so I think we respected that and stretched as much as we could to make those hires. But you go back and... Why did they do that? It's interesting, I look at it and our experience has been that people want to be a part of an organization that's not just committed to the dollar and making money. I think people are looking at careers much differently than they historically have. And I just got back from Austin, Texas last week and we went down and kind of studied a different, you know, a couple different large companies and they're just exploding, they're markets incredible. But you look at, you talk to some of the hiring people there, the people that are in hiring services and they've said, you know, people really aren't just shopping salary anymore. They want to be a part of something that is committed to the community, has, you know, that work life balance. There's a great culture there. They're looking at, there's other variables other than salary that are weighing very heavily in their decisions to join teams. And so for us, I think when we started forming Waypoint, it was really important to us that we said, look, I think we've proven, we know how to make money. We can do that. I think we can commit ourselves to something a little bit larger than that. And so we really set off at the foundation of we're given 1% of top line revenue, you know, no games, no, that's not the numbers. 1% just goes straight to community-based causes. Well, so we just take it straight off the top and we're really committed to getting that out to local causes. Our team members, we support everyone's required to have a leadership position on a non-profit or youth organization. So everyone on our team, you have to be a leader in the community. Like everybody, everybody. Property management team, maintenance people, whatever. Yep, and it can be church, it can be whatever their passion is, but be involved, be a leader in the community. It's a prerequisite for working with us that you're going to come in and do that. We've also made a commitment to that life balance. It has always struck us as incredibly strange that you would hire really well, hardworking people that burn the midnight oil. We're on calls at the middle of 11 o'clock at night, we're on every weekend. It has struck us as strange that you'd have people that are committed to that level and yet we would monitor their vacation time, right? So we thought that is just stupid, to be honest. So I think what we've done is we've said, look, we have an employee dictated vacation policy. We trust you're going to be a great team member. You're going to contribute to the company. You're going to get your work done to the quality that we expect of ourselves as a team. And you're going to do all those things and you control your own vacation. And so I think we use that as honestly a task. I know very quickly if you're going to abuse that policy, then we know that you're probably not a great fit for the team. To this day, I don't think that it's been abused by anyone that's joined our team. So it's been a really great policy, but it gives people the flexibility to take the vacations, to coach, to do those things, but be committed. We expect a lot of each other. Everyone's kind of committed in that way. So I think we have a lot of those things that has helped us attract talent. And I went off on a weird tangent from your initial question. So we're going to like Greg talk to that a little bit. But I think you talked about why, anyway, about why people keep coming aboard. And that's ultimately what allows a business to grow, right? Like it's not the business grows so you can hire more people. You hire more people so the business can keep growing. And if you can attract that tribe that believes in what you're doing, that's really the best way. Yeah, and I think it's probably worth mentioning that the people who were early hires, I mean, they played such a huge role in attracting the people after them. Yeah. And I think back to, I mean, really, you asked about at the start, you know, Jake Arnold came over with us from Brinkman. Nick Norton started shortly thereafter. It wasn't long after that that Beth and the guys started with us. And then Tom Hall, who runs our property management, came on. So you look at this kind of core group of people. It's such a phenomenal group that was able to really create this energy, create this culture that attracted everybody else. I think it wasn't us, you know, pushing anything or really trying to be a thing that we weren't. I mean, it was just getting the right people who then attracted the right people. Well, and happy people who doesn't like to go to work with happy people. You know, and happy people attract happy people. Yeah, yeah, and the kind of people they're just committed to, I mean, working hard and having fun and bringing a good positive attitude to the office, all these things. I know Jake very well personally, but I remember that he represented or helped Matthew's house with a couple of conversations early on and I've been involved in that organization for just about forever. And for what it's worth, Jake, if you're listening to this, Jerry Schmidt thinks you're just the neatest young man from the Matthew's house. So I hope you hear this and think the same of her. I'm pretty sure you likely do. Yeah, you'll never see Jake without a smile on his face. For sure. He's just a great example of what we're talking about here. Yeah, you're also never going to see him with socks on. He's a sockless wonder. Nice. All year. Oh, your pants are long, doesn't matter. Equal opportunity. European loafers. Yeah, nice. I like it. He's up the singlehandedly up the fashion statement in our office. So he keeps the bar high. Nice. But Greg mentioned Bethany Geisser. So I think it's an interesting case study for us. And you look at different decisions that we've made that put us on a different trajectory. And we met with Bethany to hire her. And yeah, oh, good. And so with Bethany, she was coming over from a large organization and had great compensation, great benefits, all those things. And so we made the decision. We'd like to move forward, make the hire. On a parallel path, we also interviewed another person, Madeline Winner, who also a fantastic fit. And so as an organization, Greg and I sat down, we looked and couldn't afford either one of them. But just thought and saw the talent what they could bring to our team. So after a lot of deliberation back and forth, we couldn't afford one of them. And we chose to hire both of them. And I think the decisions like that have put us on a different path. Madeline single-handedly taken our marketing to heights that I don't know that we would have taken it, for sure. Bethany, from an operation, transaction management, different level, all together. So decisions like that going all in has put us on a different path. Similarly, I got Tom Hall. Tom managed a portfolio of property for the largest real estate company in Northern Colorado. They're now doing stuff across the country. And Tom had no reason to come work with us. He was doing big things, great things, front page, newspaper things, and made the decision. Because a lot of things we talked about, a lot of things we had to offer as an organization came over. And he has taken our portfolio from zero to four million square feet, five years, actually less than five years. So you look at hires, like Greg said, like that that just put us on a different path. And people follow people like that. And so it's a flywheel. We subscribe to Jim Collins and everything. He writes and says, I think it's brilliant. And the flywheel philosophy. It's those hires and people lock that has taken us to next level. Very cool. Talk to me about the future of real estate in Northern Colorado. Where's it going? Where a secondary market, prices aren't quite where they are in Denver and some places. But we've definitely seen a lot of price appreciation. And probably most people that live up here would much rather live here than in the Denver market area, or even do business up here, I think, in a lot of ways. It's a smaller fish bowl, but you get to be a bigger fish kind of. What's that evolution look like to you, both on the residential and commercial side, if you don't mind, like in your mirror of the future, we got so many dynamics right now with energy crisis approaching and interest rates and debt balls being rolled up hill and infrastructure plans coming to a boil and whatnot. What's it look like here locally? Greg, you want to take that one on? It's easy. Yeah, sure. And before I start, that I want to go back really quick, Josh mentioning some of these hires, I think your audience is business owners, a lot of people that are thinking of starting a business, have started a business, or wherever they're at in their journey. But the right hires that have been made, have been the right people, those hires have created opportunities, and I would just be remiss not to mention Madeline winner, Josh mentioned her a minute ago. That's a great example to me. We would not have had the opportunity to get into residential, to make that a primary focus like we have without her. I mean, she's really helped a lot. So I just wanted to shout out to Madeline. Cool. Shout out to Madeline winner. The residential market, I'll speak to that. I think if you look at our inventory levels, I mean, it's all about inventory levels. Yes, traditionally in this market, going back to when I started, maybe take out a few years there of a really abhoration or session, where inventory levels were 11 to 13 months. We're generally seeing inventory levels four to six months, four to seven months, depending on the season. And right now, we're at an inventory level in Fort Collins of 0.8 months, meaning that no new homes were to be listed. It would take just over two weeks for all the current listings on the market to sell. The inventory in the Greeley market is even lower, by the law. Really? So I think when you look at constraints for a new inventory, how is that equation going to balance out? How is that inventory level going to go up to balance out that equation between buyers and sellers? So it's not as much of a seller's market. I don't see anything happening in the short term for that to occur. I think we are looking at a seller's market for the foreseeable future. Inventory levels are low, barriers to constructing new homes, probably everyone will talk about the price of construction. Water, materials, infrastructure, land. Land, the political process that can sometimes be involved with developing land. So all of these are constraints on inventory levels. We need housing, our market's growing. We have a robust local regional economy. And I think you're going to see more upward pressure on prices. I think it's not an old for statement to say that I think the next two years could look a lot like the last two years. Is there a gem out there? To me, every time I go to births, and I'm like, I don't know how much the prices are here, but this town just hits my charm button kind of. But is there a best bang for the buck region as far as your perspective around right now? Maybe not in that super luxury market, but even just the average $500,000 regular family home kind of thing? Sure. I think there are several. Birthed, I agree. I think a lot of people have discovered birthed at the stage, and you'll see that in the market. A little late to that game. That market has seen a lot of appreciation over the past two years, particularly. But I do think there are several neighborhoods that I would point out as gems, where I think that for whatever reason, they're overlooked on some level, and there is good value. And I have that list, and that list fluctuates, and if anybody wants to sit down and chat for an hour, I'm happy to give my opinions. Fair enough, fair enough. Josh, why don't we shift over to the commercial real estate marketplace? Maybe even segmented a little bit in terms of some retail industrial commercial office, ABC. Talk to me about trends and inventories, and circumstance in that regard, if you don't mind. Absolutely. I think the narrative coming out of COVID was office spaces is done. People aren't going back to the office. Worried about restaurants, people aren't going to restaurants. Industrial space, I think that's always performed well throughout the COVID process, and so is multifamily. But as you look at it, I don't think that narrative is played out as a reality at all. Our restaurants have had record numbers over the summer. I mean, they came out of a cannon out of COVID. People wanted to get out doing remarkably well. So if you look at sales numbers, the restaurants are doing great office space. If you look, there's been no substantive new office development, probably in the last eight years. So as you go back, there's a growing inventory problem for office space, and using our company, I think most of our team wants to be in the office. I think that varies by different business type, but especially for service companies. The 80% of our office users in Northern Colorado are 10 employees or less. So we're a small company market, right? Interesting. So if that boils down to 2,500 square foot office spaces or very high demand. So if you look, I think we're going to have inventory on the office side, inventory problem on the office side of things. So I think demand for space is high. We are seeing rent growth. I think one of the biggest changes in our market is just in my career time frame, called 15 years in Northern Colorado, we're seeing a lot more outside capital coming in. My meetings are less so with local investor capital and much more Silicon Valley. Almost coming here, coastal dollars. And so I think there's a growing recognition nationally and internationally about our market, what's happening here. And as yields are getting compressed, tax situations are different in different states. They're seeing Colorado and particularly the front range is a great spot to invest. So we're seeing a lot of those dynamics. Is that good for the market overall? Is it make it too hard for a small business to buy its own office? Because it just can't afford it. Because it drives those cap rates up and whatever. For larger deals, no question. I think there is just so much capital in the market. Lenders are needing to deploy capital. So I think there's great financing available for those owner users. Right now, our experience has been there's enough smaller deals. That outside capital isn't necessarily chasing the smaller deal. But I own our occupied opportunity. So I think that right now there's opportunities for everybody. But there is local and national capital chasing deals to an extent that we're definitely seeing huge price increases. We used to be talking five years ago, a 75 bucks a foot for industrial space. We're seeing new industrial space come out at 185 a foot. Wow. And so the replacement cost right now, I think the, you asked about great opportunities in the market. I think if right now we're trying to identify really well-located real estate that is at a substantial discount to replace my cost. So for instance, we're working on a couple of office projects right now, priced $125, $130 a square foot. That same office is probably going to cost you $450 a square foot to be doing a nice remodel on that old junky office for 300 bucks a square foot. But timing's now. It's there. You got in place cash flow. And you have a third of replace my cost. I like that kind of deal. And so we're working with our clients. We're partnering with our clients. We're advising clients on those types of deals right now. That's where we see the opportunity in the market. Cool. Cool. What's next for a waypoint? Is it a 35 team right now and brokerage and property management, residential commercial brokerage focused, are you going to just keep growing? Are you looking to grow into other markets, other service offerings to your existing clients? What's that look like? Yeah, it's interesting. We had a five year business plan that we executed on quicker than we thought we would. And even with some huge hiccups, i.e. COVID in there, we've gotten through that business plan very quickly. And we're really happy with where we're at. But I think we're doing some soul searching going forward. And I think it is alternative service that offerings for clients. I think that's a key area we're looking at right now. There's some tertiary businesses, things that we think we can offer as a great service to clients. We're really building out our investment platform. So partnering with clients and acquisition and development work, I see that being a growing part of what we're doing going forward. And really solidifying our footprint of North Denver into the Cheyenne market. There's some really great things happening in North of the border. And that's the cost and the basis up there. It's a little bit different down here. So I think there's some dynamics that we like up there. So I think it's really kind of a maturation of our current service offerings. Doing what we do to the best we can do it. And then really building that out into a couple other offerings for clients. Are you playing a little close to the vest? Do you have some ideas about what those offerings could be but outside of the partnering on investment stuff, you haven't really tipped your hand too much. Is that by intention? Yeah, I go two more glasses of wine here, Kurt. Now we're looking at some opportunities right now. And I think over the next three to six months, I think we'll have better clarity on those. But there's some things we're really excited about. And I look, we just have an opportunity to have an impact locally. And I think we're proud of our team. And having people be able to enjoy going to work every day and being a part of that and their families are a part of that. And I think we just see as we, the bigger we get, the bigger impact we can have community wise. It's more dollars we can give out, more people that are involved in the community. So I think from that being the why behind why we would grow, I think it's always for ego or money, right? And I think for us, maybe it's the ego side of serving the community and allowing bigger impact of bringing more people on our team. That's compelling. But I think we're doing some soul searching to be honest. I'm here in some echoes of Kurt Richardson and the Otterbox. And we don't just make phone cases. We change communities and change families' lives and stuff. Has that been part of your inspiration in terms of how you've modeled this? And we'll just keep talking through the train, by the way. At least one per podcast. No, that's on Beyonce. No, I mean, no question. I mean, we have role models in the community, like Kurt Richardson, that have done it and done it, right? I love that right now. We would hope to have the impact that he's had in the... A tenth of the answer. Yeah, exactly. And I think for a tenth as impactful as they have been, we'd be feeling really proud of that. Yeah. And so I think they're, I just look, I mean, you look at the Everett family. You look at the Richardson's. We just have a very good model of people that have done it right and given back and meaningful ways. And I think if we can get our team aligned to that, you know, I think we just see great things. But I mean, it's not our model. I mean, we're just taking really great notes. I don't have any good new ideas in the world, really. Somebody's done a lot of it. Greg, what we just say to that topic. And I also had a question about, like, with those community causes, getting that 1% stuff. Do you have some favorites that you'd like to shout out and just bring maybe a spotlight onto what some of the great things are that you've been able to co-invest with? We do. I think maybe the first question I think, you know, our passion is really, we want to create wealth and net worth for our people at waypoint, our employees. So we're really passionate about that. I think if you look at the number of the investments that we've made, our team members are involved in those. So we're really proud of that. And we also want to create value for our clients. I mean, extremely passionate about that. And we're always pushing that envelope. How can we do more? How can we create more value? So you mentioned, you know, it sounds like we're pursuing some things in VR, but that's the filter we're using. How can we add more value to our clients? It's really simple in that way. Yeah. So, you know, and it is nice, too. I've mentioned not being a large conglomerate, you know, with the, what happens to have a satellite office in four columns, where we're homegrown, we're local. We do not have to go through 7, 8, 12 layers of bureaucracy to get something approved. If we want to do something, we pursue it. We talk about it as a leadership team. You know, we'll share it with our team members and then we'll do it. Right. So that's really fun. Now, yeah, the 1% back, I think, you know, Josh mentioned earlier, we keep it really simple there, too. It's just, you know, there's not 12 different silos of, you know, it's, it's 1% or whatever percent of this silo. It is 1% of gross of everything we do goes back to the community. And that's gotten to be a very large number. Yeah. And, you know, one cause that we're very passionate about is ramp strength. There's a tailgate coming up this weekend. I think it's, this is the ninth, that's the Saturday. This won't go live before that anyway. So we'll talk about how awesome that event was. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I would say that's, that's one that we've been very involved in. And Josh has been incredibly involved in ramp strength throughout the years. And ramp strength is a cancer funding mechanism through CSU, a related to CSU. Is that right? Josh, be better to speak to that, you know. Yeah, Michelle Boyle's the executive director there. So Michelle is Sunny Lubick's daughter. So it's really the Lubick foundation, but it was born out of, yeah, Mark Lubick, who is Sunny Sun, being diagnosed with cancer, he's a cancer survivor. Michelle has grown that organization incredibly well. It used to be ramp strong. Now it's ramp strength. Okay. Yeah. Complaints of the Livestrong Foundation. Shout out. Yeah, enough said. So ramp strength, but it is, I mean, another remarkable organization. But we look for those, I mean, it is providing money to local families to get through. It's the bandaid that gets them through cancer. The hardest time. Hardest time. So maybe it's a red payment. Maybe it's car payment. It's when they need it the most. It's not a huge application process that takes months. It is the bandaid that gets them through to the next step. And so I think we look for organizations like that that are local, dollars stay here, that are, you know, our teams passionate about. And so, you know, I think we're, we like those dollars stay in here and we realize that just giving back in that way, just as the community goes, we go, you know, and it's a CSU goes, we go. Yeah. And it's just, it's all interconnected. I was, I was reflecting when you were talking about that big organization thing and my, my first intern, I, I figured even what the policy we made, it was something about leave time and we have basically the same policy around here is, you know, take as much vacation as you want as long as we can get the things done. None of our, you know, nothing won't get done really at loco, but, uh, we chatted through it. She's like, we should, you know, consider making that like a, a policy or whatever for, for the organization. I was like, we just did. Like it's done. Like I ain't no more to ciders around here than me and you. And along as we're both on board, it's, it's a done deal and, and, uh, I appreciate that ability of, of small companies to just do the right thing when it's the right time. Yeah. Well, and honestly, I mean, I think that's a big part of the impact Greg has had on our organization is I think Greg, his best quality is probably lack of patience for any kind of red tape, anything. So make a decision, let's move quick. And so I think that that's probably his influence coming through that, uh, we really remove those barriers, make quick decisions and move on. Yeah. And so, yeah, most of them have been right and a couple of wrong and you learn from them. Yeah. Well, it's probably worth mentioning too that that, you know, that's, I think by Josh and I complement each other well because that can get you into trouble. Yeah. Um, so, you know, him, him balancing that and being a, being in just a mature influence throughout, throughout throughout the process of our growth has been, it has been huge. Yeah. Well, I can appreciate that as well. Um, what else would you have listeners know about weight point and, and the team, the culture, the building of that organization, um, we're going to transition over to the, the latter portion of the, of the show here soon. I think we might call it path and break before we do that. But, uh, anything else we should talk about in that, like building this organization? Hmm. Yeah. I mean, you touched on the, the fun piece. I think it's so critical, you know, just talking with a couple of, uh, you know, friends who are going through a job search or maybe they have a spouse going through a job search and it's, you know, you get to a spot where it's, yeah, that, you're making a career decision and it'll pay the bills. It's, I'm not super passionate about that. I think we've really tried to vet that out in interviews and, uh, good relationship. Actually, Jay Hardy, uh, who had an opportunity to work with, uh, with Brink Ed Brinkman. Uh, so I can't take credit for this quote, but, uh, you know, in an interview, are you running to something or running from something? And we really try to vet out, are you running to us? Um, if you're running from something, I don't think that we're the right fit for you. Mm-hmm. If you're running to us, we want to know why and it's, uh, and it needs to be fit RY. And if it does, I think we've kind of found that to be a pretty, pretty good indicator. Uh, and, uh, our culture lets us know right away if it's not, uh, we've hired 99% right and, but I think we'd be, yeah, be revisionist history to say we haven't had one or two misses. And, uh, art, a great, strong culture, but you know, right away and it is a severe reaction and, and you know it as a, as a, as a, as an owner of your response kind of thing. It totally is. Uh, and so I think we've seen that, but, you know, I think we, we really try to vet that out on the front end and it's served as well. That would just, I agree so much with all of that and I would say just being really open to opportunity to, again, if you're a listener, it's just being very open to opportunity because it'll, it'll kind of hit you at unexpected times, right? You know, I remember being out to lunch however many years ago, you know, wasn't long after we started Waypoint and a contact of ours is now a phenomenal client of ours and mentioned that they were, you know, looking to sell their property management company and at the time we did not offer property management, uh, they were maybe on the, you know, 15, 20 yard line with another group that was looking to acquire that, you know, Josh and I knew Tom Hall. We thought, boy, if we could get Tom Hall to come on, maybe we could accelerate our five year plan and we could do, you know, that's a property management that much sooner or whatever. Instead of three or four years from now, maybe it's like, uh, three or four months from now, or sooner or even. Yeah. So, um, you know, I just heard this in this lunch and passing and I just, you know, I said, you know, could you, could you weigh to have an idea brought that back and, you know, Josh, like you always done, it does did a phenomenal job of planning of putting an entire blueprint in place of how we were going to pull that off and so we could make a very professional presentation, right, and they had a really good case for that. So, you know, that acquisition allowed us to kick off property management in a really big way. Yeah. You know, then, you know, of course, Tom has done an amazing job growing that and then we had the acquisition more recently of investor property. So, you know, being open to that opportunity and even though it was a little scary, right, like many opportunities are, right? Well, there's no profit without risk, usually, you know, and what I think that's kind of neat is that that property management to a certain extent has become kind of the, the data, their power of your brokerage services. Right. Yeah. As you said earlier, I think that is, you know, that's, but that's accurate. All right. Well, it's interesting, too, because you look at little do they know and the fine print of that deal structuring. So that company has Valve and Morgan, so Mitch Morgan, Dave Dahlman, and I worked with those guys back in 99, 2000, 2001. Yeah. Absolutely. And the fine print, we put, they'd be lifetime advisors and friends and, you know, deal structuring partners. So they, yeah, they've been committed, but I mean, just in terms of people that have been influential on our company, you look at people that have done it right, we talked about a couple of those people. You know, I think those guys have really painted a great model for us on how to run a company, been great advisors and friends. So that was in the fine print of the deal structuring. That's also, yeah. I like that. I actually literally just mentioned Dave Elblins' name today when I was working at Bank of Colorado in Windsor in 2001 or so. Dave wrote his bike down to Boulder, ran in the Boulder Boulder, and then wrote his bike back home. And it was 11 a.m. Yeah, probably. And it was the first, one of the first times I really saw that, that high achieving business people oftentimes also push themselves physically and athletically, intentionally. And so we'll get into some of that faith and family and hobbies and whatnot in the next segment, but I got to go potty. So thanks for sharing so far. I think it's been really impressive what you've built and I didn't even know frankly about the community impact element of Waypoint. And so I want to just compliment you on that and maybe if it encouraged you to publicize that a little bit more, I think that can only help your trajectory over the future. So I want to jump into our faith family politics segment and that's really just kind of my rebuttal to the fact that we can't talk about some things. I think we could be able to talk about anything. So I've taken it any order and who wants to start Greg, why don't we put you on the spot? You said faith family politics, one of the time. Family? Sure. We'll start with family. Yeah, my wife's there, works at Odell's, she's in HR there, she's hiring people so she's very popular on LinkedIn. Right. I have a four year old boy, Nolan, and a three year old daughter Ada. I'd like to do one word descriptions of the children if you're if you're feeling froggy. You know, I would say, you know, one word for Nolan is curious, and one word for Ada is sassy. Nice. That'll serve Nolan well, probably Ada too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. How long have you and Sarah been married? We got married in June of 2015. Okay. So, you know, recently celebrated our six year anniversary in Italy. Oh. We renewed our vows. So yeah, I mean, you know, family's huge for me. Yeah. I have, and I moved here, you know, as I mentioned earlier, late late 2005, and since then I've had cousins, aunts, uncles, my parents, my brother, so many people have moved here. So I'm really, really lucky to have you. Your family kind of transplanted parts of it here. Yeah. And my parents lived next door. Oh, is that right? Right next door. My brother lives two minutes away. My uncle, Paul, pants, saliv, three minutes away. My uncle, Mark, man, Chris lived five minutes away. My cousin, Ella, and her husband, Mike, lived, you know, maybe three minutes away. So everyone lives really close to each other, and you know, the younger people in our family. Are you guys Italians or something? No. No. No. It's just we all ended up here, you know, from Iowa, Minnesota. And so, you know, family is huge. You know, every, every weekend, and a lot of times you're in the week, it's, you know, so family, and extended family is a very, very big part of my life. Yeah. That's really interesting. And one of the things I have observed recently is about more than half of the people I meet are, like, grandparents, relatively recently, and they're moving here because their kids are never going to move back to Iowa or Texas or whatever. And so, one of the huge blessings to that is we've got, you know, where we didn't have that for a long time in Northern Colorado because there was so many immigrant young people. But now we've got multi-generational families again. And in your case, even cousins and uncles and whatnot. And what a blessing, huh? Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, this past Sunday was my uncle Paul's 70th birthday. And we had everybody. Everybody was together for dinner. Yeah. The kids, we had a couple, a higher, a couple of babysitters to watch the kids. That's awesome. So we could chat and drink wine and eat great food. And the kids get to know their cousins and whatnot. Well, the kids' best friends are their other cousins. I mean, it really is. It's amazing. Yeah. So it's the best. You know, and you mentioned people coming here from Iowa, anybody that comes here from, you know, most places and sees, you know, they experience 300 days of sunshine a year. Right. They experience old town, you know, all the fun things that Colorado has to offer, horse to the reservoir, lower state park, the hiking trails. It's an easy sell. Yeah, yeah. How about you, Josh? Tell me about family from your perspective. What's the... Yeah, from my perspective, I mean, families, everything. That's why I made the flying decision I did. Right. You know, just being home. You were already married back then or no? Dating my now wife, Jen. Okay. Yeah. So family life, Jen. And I think it's interesting coming Greg and Sarah, you know, everything we've done has been in kind of partnership with the risk we've taken, everything we've done has been because our spouses have allowed us to do that. Right. You know, even starting with Brankman, they went to Jen and said, hey, I have this great gig, real estate investment trust. My trajectory looks here. I'm going to be here in two years, going to be climbing the corporate ladder. I have this gig in Northern Colorado. It has zero salary, zero benefits, a coat closet as an office. I don't think they have a phone and it's Kevin Brankman. And she knew Kevin from high school. Right. She's like, yeah, it's a great idea. So you look at our spouses that have allowed us to take the risks that we took. Or even encouraged. Encouraged. Yeah. And honestly, pun it on her, Jen pun it on her career with children's hospital. To be up here. And so, yeah, you look at some of those things and what she's allowed me to do. And Sarah with Greg. And I think it's one thing we've acknowledged with our whole team is we realize that everyone's taking the risk to be there and their spouses have let them do that. Yeah. And so I think it's kind of a cool deal. But yeah, Jen is a pediatric nurse practitioner. She's at home with the boys right now. But we have three boys. Okay. Everything's broken and there's P everywhere. So that's what you got. Watch where you sit. That's what I got to say. Fair enough. Yeah. But no, it's all of your boys now. We got 12, 9 and 6. And you want to give them names and one word descriptions while we're here. Yeah. Yeah, I got a lot of descriptions for them. So calls are our oldest. I'd just say layers. He's a very complicated dude. And we're Jen and I are lucky enough to get to know all the layers. Right. But yeah, just first born. Right. So he kind of follows the profile. Graham's our middle and he's just talented. He's one of those kids that. He's left handed, blonde and fast, which is none of which I have. So you might look a lot like the milkman. Right. Yeah. I don't know where he got his genetics. But he is just talented. Everything he picks up. He's just going to be the quarterback or the baseball player or something like that. Yeah, everything. He's just kind of that profile. And then our youngest Reed just happy. He's just talked about Jake Arnold earlier. Just guys just happy about life. That's Reed. He's just happy to be there. He'll be a life of the party and probably a huge problem for us in high school. Right. Yeah. The girl will be flocking around him. Yeah. Okay. It's going to be. He'll be the interesting one. But yeah, he's exposed a way more than he ever should be. Right. His brother's 12 and wait until his brother's 16 and he's whatever nine or something. Yeah. Yeah, he's got no problem right now running with the bigger boys, which is, it's a problem. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But no, it's, it's awesome. It's our passion, too. And so we're, you know, most of what we do is focused around them. And it's been great. And extended family. We're lucky. We have my brother, brother and law, and sister that live about a mile from us. Nice. Yeah, my sister is two years younger and they have three boys that are all the exact same age. Oh, gosh. So it's absolutely just the circus when we get together. And then Joe, my brother and law won the lottery for brother and law. He's works at New Belgium. He's just great. Obviously, no bills in New Belgium. You guys never have to buy beer at your house. Ever. We got it covered. Yeah. It's great. It pays huge dividends. But yeah, Joe is chief operating officer at New Belgium. So he's, yeah, super talented. And we're just lucky to have their, their boys as close as they are in the destruction that ensues. That's awesome. It's really big blessing. And you mentioned your dad just retired. They're still around here as well. Yep. Jen's parents are a couple blocks away. My parents are North loved one. Okay. So yeah, we have both sets of grandparents here, which I think is you get into the kid's stage of life. You realize what a massive life. Oh, yeah. Life advantage that is. Gents and emergency babysitter for one thing. I mean, that's just one thing. Yeah. Yeah. Weekends and whatnot as well. It's just huge blessing. Yeah. That's cool. Family, or if so, we covered family, face politics, which of those do you prefer to start with? And Josh, you can go first this time. To choose to be faith in politics. Yeah. You're supposed to never talk about either one, right? I know. That's why we do it. All right. Let's go, let's go faith. Okay. Yeah. And I think that both are interesting topics. But faith, I think for us, is important. I grew up Catholic. Okay. So I'm a Catholic boy. And so grew up Catholic. Is it St. John's downtown or is it? St. Elizabeth and Seaton. It's outside of town. Yeah. And so grew up Catholic, Irish Catholic boy. Jen is Methodist. So we're raising our boys Methodist. It's super welcoming. It's cool for them. And I think from a spiritual perspective, I don't know. It's kind of a blend of my personal thought is just, I mean, we do a lot of like, you know, the yoga, the meditation, the Eastern, those kinds of things. Yeah. There's a spiritual element to that. And I think it's less about what the nomination you're from, less about what church you go to, and just more about how you treat people. And I think having kids, it's an interesting stage of life because you have to figure out how to articulate that spirituality to them. And you want to raise them with some level of spirituality. But you also realize you want to let them make their own decisions. Yeah. And so I think we're trying to raise ideals more so than an ideology. Yeah. And so I think how do you treat other people? How do you be a really great human being? Yeah. We're trying to raise, and I think if you're a believer in yoga and meditation and a lot of the Eastern religious elements, how do you intertwine those into Christianity? And you know, I've one of my best friends in the world, you know, Jewish. It's just I think that there's elements from each religion that you can take and boil down. Yeah. It's all about really being a good human being and how you treat other people. One of the things I share with people, especially people that haven't much experience in matters of that conversation. I came to faith late in life. I was in my late 20s before I really. And I stayed away because of that division between the Irish Catholics and the Protestants throwing fire bombs at each other and Ireland back in those days. And I was like, well, if Christians do this to each other, I want no part of it, you know. But where I've come from is to say that everybody's got kind of a blurry lens. And to my perspective, you know, Jesus and his writings and whatever are the least blurry, but everybody's looking at the same sense. And if you're in the flow, if you're in the zone, if you're in the path that God's wanting you to walk, it's all means the same thing. And so that's kind of the take that I think I'm hearing from you as well. Yeah, absolutely. And that's one thing I've always thought about associated with you is I've always thought that religion was pretty important to you. I mean, just our interaction. It is. But it's also I have Jewish friends that I love. And Buddhist and atheist friends that I love. And I also do yoga and meditation. And so I'm not beholden to hating people that don't think the same as me. And I never would. I actually love people more sometimes because they think differently than me than they challenge me and whatnot. So when it's interesting to you look at like prayer, and prayer is really a kind of a form of meditation, right? Totally. I mean, it's just yeah, you start thinking about the basics of it. Same stuff, different language, just kind of, in a way. But that doesn't mean I don't still believe that people should learn more about who Christ was instead of dismissing him. Sure. Greg, what would you say to that same question? Yeah, the way I, my family and I have kind of approached faith is very similar to the way Josh approaches it actually. I mean, I think for us, you know, my experience is in my life. And I think, you know, my wife's also, what we've seen, you know, with formal religion is we have seen that a lot of exclusion, a lot of judgment involved in that. Yeah. That's that's out there. Sure. That certainly doesn't make formal religion bad. It's probably just pushed us away from it a little bit. Yeah. And, you know, I think we just, our focus is, you know, really simple. It's what I say to my kids every single morning, and they finish my sentence now, not before they go to daycare, which is just be humble and kind. Like be humble and kind. And, you know, you might be wondering, did I get that from a Tim McGraw song and the answer is yes. But that's that really did that just kind of summarized. Yeah. For me, just be humble, be kind, be open, don't judge, don't exclude. Yeah. Everybody's coming from a different place, listen to them, hear them out, accept them. Just, you know, approach life with open arms. Yeah. And so that's how we approach faith. That's a young couple at our church just this last weekend. And the wife is wearing just a white t-shirt with black print on it that said, love thy neighbor. Yeah. And that's kind of controversial. Oh, I know, right? Yeah. Coding Jesus. Oh, it's stirring the pot. Right. But when I hear be humble and kind, that's kind of what I think about. You know, is that's how you do that in a lot of ways. So thanks for sharing. How do you feel about politics, Greg? I'd love to hear you. Yeah. Yeah. I'll start there. You know, I think I'm there. I think it's, you know, it's interesting. I have a friend from college that, you know, he's very much involved in Washington DC with a lobbyist group. And then, you know, my best friend growing up in high school is a state senator. He's actually president of the house of the Senate in Iowa. Oh, wow. Okay. I'm really interesting insights. And, you know, I think. And is he, I was an interesting place, too, because the Democrats and Republicans have been pretty tight for like 100 years in Iowa, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And my friend, my friend Jack's Republican. Okay. You know, I would classify myself as is in the middle. And I'm not saying that to hedge or to, you know, come across, you know, is on the fence is, you know, might be the politically correct thing to do when you're in our business. Right. You know, what I would say is, you know, I think my wife and I stopped watching TV three years ago, a little over three years ago. Oh, wow. Good for you. We haven't seen a second, not one second of network news since that time. Because what I've come to believe is that, you know, very highly paid, very, very smart people are. Really, they're, they're main job on whatever network name it name the network. Their job is to kind of kind of kind of, you know, get people to get people riled up, you know, get people to be on one side or the other. You know, pick a side, get them riled up. You know, you'll notice in the news, there's never a call to action. There's never a hey, go to this website to, you know, connect with your, your local representative to actually make some change, right? Give some feedback, do something. No, it's just, you know, they get people riled up so that they can then, you know, take their gripes to the dinner table and, you know, form divisiveness with their friends and family members. And it's, it's, it's, it's really just silly. And I think if people would really sit down, they'd probably move and talk. They would find that they agree on a lot more than they disagree on. For sure. But I think that in this 24 hour news cycle where everybody's getting their news on their, on their iPhones, online, everybody, everybody's, you know, in it for the clicks. Totally. You click on a news story, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a really, you know, juicy topic. You click on it and then you read the story and it's like, hey, that, that, that isn't actually what was. The headline doesn't even really the same. But it is all designed for divisiveness. It is all designed to get people riled up and it works on very smart people. So we've decided it's not going to work on us. We're not going to play that game. You know, when it comes time to vote for whoever we're going to look at all the issues. We are not going to see Republican. We are not going to see Democrat. We are just simply going to vote on, you know, where they, where they stand to the best weekend decide. And so I guess from that perspective in terms of, because there's, you know, there's, there's reproductive rights. There's, and I don't mean to put you on a spot or whatever. But in that independent minded person, like what do you think would be better for either our state or our nation in terms of things that we could, what levers we could pull to make it a stronger community? You know, I mean, I, I think if people, you know, how were Schultz the former, you know, leader of, of Starbucks. You know, this seems like a random random path to go down. No, he explored a run at president recently. You know, you might have read and he got a little ways down the path decided not to run. But he was really interested in exploring. Does it make sense for an independent to run? Right. Now, can we get rid of the Democrat Republican? I mean, if you're a Republican, there's all these assumptions. Regardless of what your real beliefs are. Totally. There's all these assumptions about you. If you are a Democrat, regardless of what your beliefs are, there are all of these assumptions about you. Well, these days, the parties make you tow the line. Right. Otherwise, you get not supported for your next election and you get tossed out. Right. Right. So, you know, big picture, I think what we're for is, is somebody that just, you know, can, can authentically share where they stand on issues. And, you know, not have that be-along party lines. Yeah. You know, not have, personally. Free thinkers. Yeah, free thinkers. I would love to see free thinkers. I would love to see somebody who is, you know, conscious of the environment. You know, conscious of the struggle that people have that, you know, may not have been born into the situation that maybe Josh and I were born in. Sure. You know, I mean, hey, there's, you know, going back. Look at your families. Right. The value of the family circumstance that all of us came from with intact parents and aunts and cousins and whatnot. Yeah. That's compared to where a lot of people start their lives. That's like a million dollars in the bank. Yeah. A billion. A trillion. I mean, think about it. You know, we didn't do anything to be born, you know, into amazing families, to have great parents, to have great siblings. Many people, many people aren't so lucky. So, you know, can we have a leader who is empathetic to that? And can we also have a leader who's maybe, you know, empathetic to the environmental struggles? Can we also have a leader who is, you know, I don't know, maybe started a business, maybe had a business, maybe been in the business world. Yeah. I mean, it seems like Donald Trump. Well, maybe Donald Trump, maybe somebody who, like Howard Schultz or whatever. And not ostracize them because, you know, somebody does some research and found out that they actually, you know, fired somebody. You know, by the way, to fire somebody, you actually have to hire them first. Right, right. They've hired somebody different. They've run a business. They've been in the private sector. I think that is key. I was Biden doing so far. You know, I mean, in my opinion, you know, Biden is somebody who's, you know, I'm sure he's doing his best, right? And he's, but he's an example of someone to me who's, he's just never been. I would love to see somebody who has had some experience in the private sector. He has a grand total of zero days. Actually, working for a real business. Working for Rivers in the private sector. And I would certainly understand the argument that, hey, that, you know, that doesn't matter. He's empathetic. He's done his research. He's done this. And maybe that's true to a degree. Were I stand personally? I would love to see somebody who has hired people, who has fired people, who has been in the trenches, who has been in the private sector. I think it's very hard to understand the small, medium, business person. They're, they're plight. Yeah. And if we all agree, they drive the economy on a local regional and a national level. Yeah. We would like to have somebody who has had some experience in that world. Fair enough. It's interesting to me that, I mean, as a business owner, you mentioned you have to believe you've got a total line, right? From, you know, Republicans believe this. Yeah. And Democrats believe this. There's a firm line in between. And it's an interesting spot to be in. I mean, I think this conversation is, you know, start with business and kind of as dovetailing more to the kind of personal and kind of belief, you know, side of things. And it's weird to me to be a business owner and have all the insights into employing individuals, you know, taxes on every level, all those things. And all right. So I have, you know, from that perspective being, you know, owning a business, you're like, okay, so I believe this in terms of fiscal policy. Low taxes, please. Yeah. But why do beliefs there also need to mean that I believe this from a, you know, a personal perspective or from, you know, life choices or, you know, I don't know. It's weird to me that you can't blend the two. Yeah. So, you know, Jen and I, as we've really looked at it, raising three young kids, we've gotten to the spot where you have to vote character first. And I think just a good role model has become very important to us as we are raising three boys. And a good role model that shows up well and treats people well, you know, here and abroad. I think it's become very important to us. You know, we're really careful about what role models we put in front of our kids from coaches to teachers to, you know, all the way to politicians. So, you know, that character piece is really important. And I think that it's, it's really important for the country. Just, you know, that somebody is a free thinker. They're open-minded and that they do have an employee, some level of character and control and restraint and treating people well. So I think that's, you know, that's really important. But it is, you know, as a small business person, it's always been an interesting thing to me that you have to believe this and that. And I don't know why those two are tied together or why they should be other than you have to toe the line of the political party. And that just seems very strange to me. That was an interesting thing. I started this podcast right when the election was happening about this time last year. And, you know, the whole stolen election things and stuff like that on the national stage. But I was like, is not anybody concerned that all of our major media except Fox are like solidly and obviously in one camp and that it's just in the, in the Facebooks and the Googles and the Twitter's and it was just fascinating to me that everybody could be okay with that level of venom and animosity toward one person. Yeah, even though he wasn't very easy to hate son of a bitch. Right. Well, absolutely. And I mean, there's some great documentaries out there that show this, but I mean, it's just the information that is out there. And we're all not getting the same information. It's very much less about news and reporting the news and very much about viewership and driving clicks. What are clicks dollars? And so you start equating those things and I think we are less, we have less and less options to actually get real information. And we're not all being provided with the same information. So now that just sets a stage for if we're all working off of different. Right. If I'm looking at, we talked about Excel. If I'm looking at one spreadsheet or looking at the other spreadsheet, we're going to believe very different things about that investment. You apply that towards really complicated social dilemmas. I mean, now you got, it's a complicated conversation to begin with. But now if we're working off of different facts, you know, that's all no problem. I think we got to boil it down. I mean, there's a concept in a book, you know, one thing. Oh yeah. And it's like, how do you boil things down? What's the most important thing? And I think we've got to find a way where we're dealing with good information. And I think that solves a lot of problems. And so I think if we can get, you know, get things down to what, you know, what's the one thing that changed a lot of other things? Well, a lot of it is, you know, get, there's an entertainment industry. And there's a news industry. And how do you kind of separate those two? Interesting. I have no, no reasonable ways to solve that. Right. But I think it's identified the problem at least. Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like that's a fundamental one. I think if you read the Google News headlines right now, like in the last week or so. You know, the three most hated people by the CNN and MSNBC and stuff in the world. There's still Donald Trump. He'll hold that for a while. And now Joe Manchin and whoever this Arizona Congress lady is that's holding up the infrastructure bill thing. And, you know, they're evil. They're terrible. They obviously cut the legs off of frogs in their spare time or something. I don't know. And it's just fascinating to me that that kind of venom can just be applied liberally with a paintbrush. Through our media and it's all cool. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know. I'm a huge believer in the. There's a couple of people who are actually in the arena and fighting and doing things that are. I think it's very easy to sit back and throw, you know, comments on a blog, comments on. I mean, it's just it's anonymous. It takes no energy, no output, no risk to put it out there. I think there are people that actually get in the arena and are actually trying to make a change. Yeah. And I think more people need to get there and you're not protesting if you're just throwing a comment on to Facebook. When you need to actually get out there and implement change. And so, you know, is that tie it back to our company? How do we, how do we, you talked about marketing kind of what we, that community piece. And I think that there's an important element. So that is, we make a, that a, you know, people aware of that in the community that we're doing those things. But I think we want to judge us by our actions, not so much by what we say, but what you see us doing. And so I think we're trying to build that very organically. And that people look back and say, man, that that group is having a major impact locally. And that's a tight line to walk because you also, I mean, it's, you know, we're a company. There's a marketing piece to that. For sure. We're trying to attract talent. But I think we want to make an impact by what we do and, and build in that way. But I think if more people at the kind of macro political level we're doing that, and actually get involved, implementing change, actually getting out there and, and being in the arena, you know, I think if we're not saying the information, and people are actually dedicated to actually making a positive impact. Yeah. We end up in a much better spot. So are you both pretty successfully evaded my political question? But wait, give it to me. No, I'm just teasing you. I'm just teasing you a little bit. But I want to ask about it. Paul Texan, our future. I want to see a topic, actually, because one of the things big in the news right now is, is energy prices. And policies toward gas, oil, and, and I've got a couple of things to say. If I have a core belief, it's that power concentrations are terrible and we should do whatever we can to avoid it. Therefore, a global carbon energy managing agency would probably be the worst thing for the future of humanity. And, and I'd rather see humans try to adapt to climate change then. And then also the second thing is, is, is that oil and coal have just these massive stores of dependable energy. And there's like two billion people in the developed world and six billion people in the non-developed world. By saying we can't use that anymore, it's basically like saying, screw you guys. Sorry, you're too late to the party. Do you have any, but while at the same time, I drove an electric car for a year and a half until recently. And I compost, I do my best to minimize my environmental footprint. I consider myself a steward as best I can of the world and its pieces. Is there, like, things that you would talk to that topic right now? Because it's obvious that some of the challenges that are going to face the world this next six months or so are going to be pretty significant to that conversation. So, Kirstie, you drove an electric car and you went back to... I bought a camper van. I live eight blocks from my office and I don't hardly drive. And so having a hyper efficient 100 mile per gallon BMW electric car was really just so I could rip around on an incognito basis. And it didn't really make sense. And my wife and I love camping and traveling. And so I just swapped out a more useful vehicle for us. But it doesn't mean I wouldn't love to have another electric car. It can't really justify. And I wouldn't have room to park my camper van then. But yeah, any thoughts on that Greg? You seem like you're kind of in that thinking process a lot of times. Yeah, I'm excited about renewable energy and probably like a lot of people. Yeah. I want my next car to be a Tesla. I would love that. And I think that's, you know, things are coming along there. Yeah. I also, I'm super interested in Uranium. You know, my uncle, it's got to be interesting. Totally. And Uranium. You're clear as the way, man. It's always better. And how green that is. So useful. The first administration in the US in a long time that's been on board with that. Oh, really? Yeah. So I think there's, I think there's a real future there. I mean, I think it's just, yeah, it's, it's, it's not going to happen overnight. Yeah. You know, having patients, having patients in, in, in letting that play out and, in making continuous investment. That knowing that, you know, there is a future there. We don't know exactly what it looks like. Yeah. But there is a future there. It's not going to happen overnight. It's probably going to happen gradually. You know, people being, people being on board with that and supportive of that is, is, I think, very important. I just met a young, I'm not a young middle-aged guy. A kinetic core is a company in Loveland. And he has developed a four foot by four foot square battery that uses kinetic. It spins a carbon fiber flywheel. Oh, wow. So fast because it's energy equals mass times velocity. But the carbon fiber technology is so good you could spin that thing just like a million RPM. Which, it's like 50 kilowatt hour battery. Wow. That can power like a dozen, or a couple of few dozen houses and do little micro grids. So that these, especially Guatemala, Africa, things like that, can use wind and, and solar energy. And actually have a battery that can be recharged a hundred thousand times or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, two thoughts. I think, we talked about the one thing, right? Right. I think if there's one thing that impacts everything, it's environment. Right. You look at like destabilization of third world countries. Right. A lot of it is top soil. Totally. Yeah. So you look at that. You look at our kids, our air, our fires. I mean, Northern Colorado. Right. We have a new normal. And those fires changed us. Yeah. Gorgeous here till about mid July. And then we're in a blanket of smoke till September. So I think there's a new normal. And it's the one thing that affects everything. So I think we're all like, who, who doesn't say we want a good environment? So how do you get there? Yeah. So I think, hopefully that's politically something everyone could align to. We want to get it. Just have to kill a bunch of people. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. You look at the one thing that impacts everything. I think it's environment. But I think if you legislate around it, get California. There's a couple of communities. Maybe even wider than that that have put a prohibition. Or you cannot create new gas stations. You cannot build a new gas station. Wow. Yeah. So there is a way that is being legislated and enforced. I think there is an alternative approach where the open market makes a Tesla. It's an incredible product, right? Right. So if you go the route of great design, something that the world can go to, get there quickly and make it profitable. I think you remove all the barriers to some of those things. Yeah. That it's a more earth-friendly product, right? But how do we start removing those barriers? And it's through those things like the carbon fiber. You know, you're creating energy off of something that wasn't there. It's a clean energy. How do you do that? How do you do it economically? And I get, you go to every homeowner and you say, Hey, your utilities are X. Use this. That could be Y. Yeah, yeah. Everybody's behind it. And instead of forcing it on people, now you've got a... You're building a better mouse trap kind of thing. Totally. So if we focus our efforts there, let's get there. I think everyone's aligned of that outcome. Let's go that approach with it. We get the minds, the brilliant minds, to do it. It's not me who just sling real estate. Right, right. But I think if you get the brilliant minds to do it, and the invisible hand will take it there. One of the things I've been... I've always worried about windmills. I didn't think there was a free lunch. You can't just pull energy out of the wind and expect it not to mess something up somewhere. And just like with water, you change the fish habitat when you have all these hydroelectric plants and cool water off and stuff. And the more I read, the more frankly very concerned I am is that those upper air currents and stuff that are in these, like, the fires and the... Some of the climate change stuff in the Midwest is shadows from some of these wind farms and things. And they're messing up the system. Yeah. I think I've been read about that, you should. I think 100% of birds agree with you. Right, that too. Yeah. So, anyway, it's complicated, I guess, it's obviously that we've come across here. So... Yeah. Let's jump in. I know it's approaching five here. So, a local experience. The craziest experience that you've had in your lifetime. It can be a quick thing, a long thing. You mentioned Guatemala earlier when you were on break, Greg. But what's that for you? That experience that was really either a great story or impactful to the future trajectory of your life or whatever? Yeah, you know, I think Guatemala was impactful. Guatemala... The first four months of 2010, I went to Guatemala. I studied Spanish. I didn't speak any language but Spanish for almost that entire time. I did have a friend that came to visit from Arizona. And what were you doing right before and after? Well, before and after was real estate. Okay. So, you interrupted your real estate kind of progression, whatever? Yeah, I just got down with my master's degree at DU. You know, and I thought it was a good time. You know, we were still in kind of recession times. And I thought, hey, let's... Probably not going to sell anything anyway, so whatever. Well, let's go there. I referred a few deals out and I just wanted to have an experience. And being able to speak a second language was important to me. So that was the primary purpose of the trip. Being able to go there, learn the language. And now I can carry on a conversation to a pretty decent degree. That was someone who speaks Spanish, which is great. Which is really, really valuable to me. But yeah, phenomenal culturally. I mean, it was incredible. But seeing people who just live in a way who are happy, who, you know, just family is important. You know, and environment is important. And yeah, it was, you know, was that crazy? You know, I mean, there were some fun things that happened. You know, a friend of mine got attacked by a pack of wild dogs. I thought you were going to a different direction with that story. Yeah, he... Some other stuff happened with him too. I think you've probably got a lot to share his story, I suppose. Yeah, I probably shouldn't share his full story. But, you know, he was a starting tight end at Fordham University, luckily, you know, 64 athletic guy can run strong. He was able to evade the pack of wild dogs, you know, and was able to escape with, you know, what kind of 27 stitches on, you know, at the local hospital. But yeah, just... Could have been death if it was me. Yeah, death might have even been probable for many of us. Right. So, but yeah, incredible experience. So were you, like, in a little village, where you were just studying Spanish? Did you go down there for that? Or were you also doing projects or this or that? Specifically for that, I volunteered at a school, you know, that kids from, you know, the country, you know, who were performers, basically, they were not in formal school for four hours a day. You know, there were at these schools that were, you know, volunteer teachers would come in and I was a volunteer teacher and I taught English. Yeah. I taught some math. And then the second half of the day, we played soccer all day. Nice. And it was amazing. We played soccer on the hillside. Talk about different than every chapter of your life before and after that. That was incredible. It's just, you know, a really great experience, a really great, you know, reminder of something that stays with me of, you know, hey, we're to put value, you know, family experiences, these types of things. So it was incredible. Yeah. Very cool. Josh, same question. I don't know this is most like life and packed full, but it's top of mine because I was just, we were having some wine with some friends of ours over the weekend and we were reminiscing. They moved into a house in Illinois that was haunted. And so literally moved out of this house, left the house early because that was haunted. So we're coming up on Halloween. So yeah, good ghost story. Okay. So they moved out of this house. So it's haunted. Like what? They saw ghosts. Stuff moved around. Like picture frames kept flipping off the shelf, right? Oh, okay. Yeah. And then they have a friend that come stays there and they're like, yeah, this place is haunted. Middle of the night. Picture frames kept flipping off. Like the shelf, right? So it's on the story. I mean, it was crazy. I was like, I know what you're talking about. So Kaya Omega Public Service announcement. Kaya Omega House and Boulder haunted. Yeah. Yeah. So coming up on Halloween. So I was a hasher. If you know what that is. So you're washing dishes at a sorority. Okay. So working my way through college. Working FedEx for little money. They pay my tuition and then food. I was a hasher. So I washed dishes at a sorority. So you get free food. Best deal ever. And to meet girls. Yeah. Nice tertiary benefit. Yeah. So I'm washing dishes. And all the girls are going on a retreat. The entire house empties after a breakfast one morning. The only person in the house. And lock all the doors behind me in the kitchen. Go out to the dining room. Clean up, shut down lights there. Come back in the kitchen. All the lights refrigerator doors open. Everything's open. Totally unlocked. Crazy. So all the girls talk about it being haunted. I've experienced it. There's an energy. I've never turned lights off quicker. And gotten out of a place. And had more of an experience. I think about like more often than I should. Right. Than that. So yeah. Go success. Going into Halloween. I haven't really had a ghost for a impactful conversation. Nothing interesting. No, I'm not that I don't wear off. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. Just like you're hearing the back. Your neck stands up when you think about that even. Oh, there's an energy. Every girl that lived there was like this house. It was flat haunted. And I confirmed it. I don't know. On that day. Anything that you guys would like to share with the audience. How do people find Waypoint real estate other than the Google? Or maybe that's the way they should do. We pay people well actually so they can't find us. Right. Hopefully. Yeah. WaypointRE.com. And is it Waypoint with an E on the end of the point? Is that right? No. No E there. I'm glad to hear that you're so community focused. I didn't know that. I like you even more than when you came in here. And I liked you both before that. So I'm really thankful. And I hope that God continues to bless your pursuits. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. We appreciate what you're doing too. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate you having us here. And what you're doing. Yeah. Highlight and local businesses. Yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate you having us here. And what you're doing. Yeah. Highlight and local businesses. I think that is fantastic. And I mean a huge thing you're doing locally. You've been involved in the community for a long time. So yeah. Thank you for what you're doing. Yeah. Opportunity to be here with you today. Yeah. We should more time to turn the tables and hear your whole story. Oh yeah. Nobody wants to hear that. They've heard too many times. We'll go have a glass of wine soon. Talk about it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the LogExperience Podcast. If you enjoyed this program, share it with your favorite people, and please leave us a review on your favorite listening platform. Subscribe to never miss a latest interview, and check out blogexperience.com to learn more and find our library of episodes. Until next time, stay local.