EXPERIENCE 47 | Jeff Jensen, Multi-Journey Business Veteran

On this episode of the local experience, my guest was Jeff Jensen, multi-journey business veteran and among the newest of the local facilitators. I would characterize Jeff as an engineer type whose passion is making businesses work better through a focus on individual growth and team cohesion. This episode is chock full of business tips and tricks and deep nuggets. We discussed Jeff's journey into and out of the military, his love for business sparked while he was with caterpillar corporation, and the foundations of his passion for mentorship and the many twists and turns that led to his own entrepreneur journey. Tune in and love it. Let's have some fun. Welcome to the local experience podcast. I'm your host, Kurt Bear. This show is produced by me and my team and sponsored by my small business, local 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 truths 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 from 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 local perspective blog posts because I'm lazy to infer to listen and 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. Welcome back to the local experience podcast. My guest today is Jeff Jensen, and Jeff is the newest local facilitator, and we hadn't told his business journey story yet. So Jeff, if you would, why don't we just get started with, like, tell us about Jeff on the basics. What are you up to? Yeah, no, thanks. I appreciate being here, appreciate being part of the family now, so just kind of a quick rewind. I grew up in Southern California by the beach, loved it, was there till I was early teenager, then my family moved to Utah, and spent kind of teenage years there, went and did a stint in the military, US Air Force, so I did that for six years. I started going to college, kind of met my wife at towards the end of college, then we got married, had two kids, we stayed in Ogden, Utah for about 10 years. I worked in aerospace after I got out of college, so in aerospace thing, and I'll kind of dive in to kind of what I did a little bit. But at the beginning of the aerospace thing, I was working on cruise missile engines, I was a reliability engineer. Okay. And then I was coerced to go to work for a company called Morton Thai Call, who was the, they were very infamous for the challenger. Oh, yeah, yeah. So was that your first kind of outside of engineering experience? Yeah, it really was, and it wasn't something I was expecting. I knew a guy that worked there, he was kind of high up in the company, and it was really weird, we ran into him over a weekend, he invited my wife and I out for lunch and said, hey, let's go talk. I was kind of working on an advanced degree at that point, and so he said, hey, we could maybe put that to work, and anyhow, the way he crafted the message was, this would be the most unique opportunity. It's the first time I've had Tucker here for the podcast. Yeah, I believe that dog alone. Okay. So anyhow, so he said, it'll be the most unique experience of your life, and it turned out it really was. So I took the job, and I worked in, they rotated me through every part of the business, every single part, administration, finance, engineering. And the reason for that was, the whole challenger incident really caused him to pause, and look at not just their manufacturing, but their business, their culture, everything. So over about four to five years, we reshaped the business, I worked in all the various departments, and so that was really a great thing, I learned a lot. That sounds a lot like I was a banker at my earliest career, and they had us like working all the different departments of the bank in the same kind of fashion, not that they were fixing a thing, but just for the leadership of the bank to understand all of its different functions. Yeah, I think it helps to understand a lot, right? So the guy that I worked for, his name was Bob Liles, and he turned out to be a mentoring coach for me for about 20 years. And Bob was a, was big back then, there was a lot of structured mentoring and coaching that went on, so Bob had two students, myself, and a good friend of mine, Steve. And so we met with him every other week, and we would go through formal coaching and mentoring, and so that was, that was a great thing. And that's really where I got the appreciation for coaching and mentoring, because he would take time out of his personal schedule, you know, on the weekends or whatever, and we'd get together, and we'd have, he called him, learning moments. Yeah, so anyhow, so that was, that was a great experience. I learned a lot from him. There was a lot of things that he had me do that I didn't understand until I got much further down my career, but Bob was obviously a lot wiser than I was. Yeah, actually, let's, before we get too much further, let's, let's go ahead and take, so you, what part of California? So I was in the Los Angeles area, I actually grew up in La Marotta, in Norwalk, not too far from Disney land, and not very farmed. Interesting. So I grew up there, I was a surfer, I had a surf board on the back of my bike, I could go out on the weekends and do that. Good student. I was, I was okay student, I say, you know, probably a mid to high B. I was, I don't know, I was kind of typical. The grades I left to my sister, she was the foro. Yeah, yeah, I always had a theme where if, if I could not work and get an A, that's great. If I could not work and get a B, but if I had to work hard to get an A, I usually didn't. Yeah, my, yeah, I was kind of like that way. It was just, I think it's where your interest is, right? It's where you spend your time. So I knew if I did okay, I could get through, right? And I could take different classes. And even back there, I think I was a typical guy, right? I liked surfing, I liked bikes, I was interested in cars, but I was too young. So I didn't take the hardest classes, right? I took the required classes that I, that I had to do. But retrospect, I probably should have taken a few harder, right? Right. Why engineering then? It was really a personal challenge. When I, when I graduated high school, we were back in Utah. And I wasn't really sure, wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. And kind of on a personal side, my sister and I were placed with my grandparents. Oh, well. And so that's really what brought us back to Utah. And so my grandparents were very much old school, right? So work hard, do all that. And neither one of them had, none of my family had formal education. They were, you know, farmers or postal carriers or things like that. So do you talk about like, why are you replaced with your grandparents? Sure. So my mom and stepdad at that time, my dad had actually, my dad, dad, had left when I was about a year old. Well, and so never knew him. And so my mom remarried this guy. And then it was at that time we moved to California. He was an architect or draft or something like that. And so we went out there and they had, they, they had alcohol problems. They had a whole bunch of those kind of problems, right? It was kind of an abusive environment. And so the local authorities were made aware of that. And so they kind of intervened and they took us out of that environment and how old were you guys? So I was about 11 in your sister, 12. Wow. So it's a bonding time. Are you still really close with your sister? Oh, we're super close. Yeah. We were all super close. And we still are super close, right? I mean, so really from, from that whole thing, what I learned and we obviously you go through anybody's been through those experiences. You go through a lot of counseling, a lot of coaching. And during that time, I remember going through a counseling session. And it was about you can take that event in your life and you can do something with it, right? So you can do, I call it the world was me. Yeah. And you can play on that and you can become a drug addict or you can do this or you can do that. Or you can take that and turn it into something red. And so my wife likes to say that she's like, you know, if you take twins that were separated at birth, you know, or whatever and abusive relationship or situation like that. And one's a drug addict and just problems and one's a multi-millionaire that employees dozens of people and is well loved by his church and family. And they can both say because my dad was a drug addict. Or whatever is what it is. So both my mom and my step, yeah, we're horrible alcoholics. And so there was a, anybody's been in that it's a, it's a very caustic environment. And so it was a blessing that somebody intervened. And so we ended up in hell over your grandparents. They would have been mid fifties. Well, yeah, so big challenge than they were expecting. Yeah. And just super great people, right? But I'm sorry to flash it back like that, but I just think there's some value, especially when people are facing challenge of their own and they know that things have been hard. Well, people go through hard times. It really, I think for both my sister and I really became a springboard on how we approached life, right? Because I really believe Kurt, whether it's business or family, everyone has a story. And I think sometimes it's harder embarrassing to tell your story. Yeah. And it was for me for a long time because there's a lot behind the abuse, right? That I don't need to go into. But it helped me to think, well, I don't, if that's the model of a dad, right? That's not the model I want. Yeah. That's that model. So what's a different model? And really through the counseling and all that, they helped us to see what a different model could be. So I kind of sprung that way, if you will. And then just you try to hide or cover up like you want to be seen as normal, right? So you didn't share a lot of our background, which most people don't, right? They just want to be seen as normal. So you go to school and I, you know, I was told, hey, you got to kick your grades up a little bit, right? That's not good enough. And you need to do this and, you know, you need to work and you need to do all that. So it, you know, it's really for me. It's, it's taking something that's maybe not great and, and playing it to an advantage for yourself. Yeah. So that's really, and again, it was the beginning of my play it forward even before going to Airspace because my grandparents, it turned out I found out they had been looked after when they were kids. Oh, well, because they were, you know, way old. Yeah, yeah. It's just thing. So I think, you know, so I'm really kind of, and I've done this with my own kids. It's like you try to provide a foundation for them, you know, to grow on. And you try to prepare them, you know, to leave. And my grandparents worked really hard on that because they were in recovery mode, right? We're trying to put that foundation in place so you can, so you can go that way. Talk about the decision to go to the Air Force then after college or after high school. Yeah, so that was very interesting. So I was super into cars, right? I was rebuilding engines. I was rebuilding transmissions. I was, I just love putting that stuff together. So, you know, I had, so there was school with school and I, I did that and I did okay. Actually, my grades were a little bit better and I took some harder courses. But I was really fascinated by cars and engines and transmissions. Was that like old mobars and stuff of the day? Oh, yeah. Chevelle's Camaro's, my first car was a 65 Chevelle Malibu 327. Nice. I completely stripped it down and rebuilt the whole thing in high school. Wow. So anyhow, so it was, I was doing all that and I was getting pressure by one of my teachers to put in for a scholarship. And I was like, well, my grades are only like, I don't know what they were, three, five, three, six or something like that. No, no, putting for it anyhow, very long story short. I got a, I got a scholarship. And I really had to do some soul searching in that to say, am I really ready, right? And so I would sit with my grandpa in the morning and talk while he spoke this pipe and contemplated the day. And so about a week before I either had to accept or decline the scholarship, I was sitting with my granddad, it was about 6 a.m. And he was talking to me and he's like, so what do you really think? He's like, you know, because the deal was when I graduated high school, I was, I had to be out of the house. So my accident, my graduation gift was a suitcase. But it was a, it was a, it was a great discussion with him. And so it really caused me to think like, was I prepared? Was this something that I wanted to do? And I just wasn't sure, right? And I think we all go through that in the decision making. And I actually had a really good friend that I had worked with that went in the air force as a jet engine mechanic. And I was staying in contact. His name was Tim Gavin. And I was staying in contact with him for, he was over in Germany. He was telling me all about Germany and all that. And I was like, well, that's pretty cool. I could probably do that. So anyhow, I went, one day I went down and I just thought, you know, I'll go, I went and I talked, you go to recruiter row. So I went down and I sat through the marine thing and I went, nope, not that that Army know. So it was kind of between Navy and Air Force. But I really wanted to work on airplanes. And I really wanted to work on the whole airplane, not just a piece of it. I didn't want to be a specialist. And so the Air Force really had that program. So anyhow, I just spent a lot of time in prayer and talking with people and I turned down the scholarship and I went in the Air Force. Talk to me about, well, actually, we'll come back around to the faith conversation because I'm sure that's a story of its own. Yep. If by time you're 18, you were spending time in prayer before making the decisions. Yeah. So with that, so growing, being with my grandparents and so backing up a little bit every summer, they would come and get us, right? They would come and get my sister and I and they would take us. Well, part of the deal is they went to, they were a Catholic background. So they would take us to mass every Sunday. So I got some exposure to that. I didn't understand everything as you do with a lot of different things. Yeah. Sure. Well, let's, let's leave that for later in the podcast, actually. But let's get into the Air Force experience talking about that. How did that go? So actually, it was, it was a great experience for me. I needed a little more discipline. Yeah. Basic training definitely gives you the discipline. Yeah. Tim, my, my buddy had coached me on what basic training was going to be like, so do this. Don't do that. Go in. You don't know anything, right? You don't know how to do laundry. You don't know how to cut grass, right? You just don't know anything. You don't volunteer for anything and you keep your mouth shut. And so I was like, okay. So basic training, I decided when I went in, like I was going to go for it, right? I had been an okay student in school, but I decided I really want to crush this. And so I got in there and I connected, I looked for people who I saw who I thought had good study habits. So I connected with this one guy who was super, just super smart. And I just shirt-tailed him all the way through basic training. And he really, he taught me the fundamentals of studying, how to take notes. And so anyhow, long story short, I ended up graduating with honors, which is a really cool thing to get a ribbon, you know, out of your first places is a really big deal. Yeah, yeah. So it also helped me with my, with the next thing, which was training replacement, yeah. Yeah. So it helped me with my placement. So I wanted fighters and I wanted to work on them. So I got that. And so, so I went, went to my next station for training. And the field that I was in was in super high demand. And so they did what they called fast-track training, which was two days in one. So you do two days of training at once, you're doing classroom and you're doing practical. And it was a crusher. And so I, and I made the decision to, I'm going to, I'm going to do it again, right? I'm going to just, so I didn't go out and party with everybody on the weekends and stuff like that. I just did all that. So I got all the way through graduating with honors, which then helps with your next station. Sure. Right. So this was ironic. So my grandparents are in Ogden, Utah. Yep. And I put in what you call your dream sheet. I put in for Germany, Spain, Italy. And I got sent back to Hill Air Force Base in Utah, about five miles, which turned out to be five miles away from Ogden. Oh gosh. So it turned out to be a blessing. My grandpa got cancer. So I was able to be there and really returned the favor or pay it back. But I got on station and I, I love my job. I, I love working on airplanes. I love doing all of that. You know, I wiped my jet downs. It was clean. I knew all the systems. I got a lot of ridicule from a lot of people. But I just, I love that I thought it was a great opportunity. I got schooling. I got my GI bill, which later paid for my education. And I just poured myself into it and decided I was just going to do the best I could. I enjoyed working the jets and doing that. And you know, like I said, I took a lot of ridicule because it's squeaky clean. Yes, squeaky clean. But while I was there, so I got recognized because my jet that you're based on flight hours. So my jet had really high hours, which meant it was good. It was a good jet. It was maintenance. It wasn't grounded. So when you're not flying, you're working on them. And so because of that, I won some awards. I got to fly back seat in my jet, which is kind of cool. And then later on, I was asked to work on the commander's jet, which is the best job because he only flies. He flies once in a month, but that was a really good thing. And then I won a few more awards, got promoted below the zone and just some stuff like that. And it was just, you know, hard work and just dedication. So I kind of like, you don't always get rewarded for what you do. And that wasn't really my goal to do that. It just kind of happened. I mean, it was my passion. I just love my job. And probably about two years after I was there, I was selected to work on F-16s. So we were the first F-16 squadron in the Air Force. So they sent me down to Dallas Fort Worth for many, many months to train and then came back up and did that. And I did that. I love that. So I was training, mentoring, coaching, how to take the jet apart, put it back together. So that was really special. But I started getting the itch to go to school. Oh, okay. Yeah, I was just getting ready to ask. Like it seems like you were on a path for Air Force lifer almost. Yeah, at least a full career. Yeah. So I had taken my officer tests. I had taken the pilot tests and actually did decent. And so the change came one night. I was working in the hangar with a civilian from general dynamics. And we were troubleshooting the flight control system. And I've been troubleshooting it all day. And we were up on the wing. And I kind of said, hey, I think I know what this is. And I kind of described him the problem. And you know, said, hey, I think this is the remedy for that. So I see him writing on this piece of paper. And I'm like, well, what's that? And he said, well, these kind of ideas that it's worth, you know, anywhere from 250 to $1,000. And I was like, what? He said, yeah, I turn this in. And if they accept it, then I get a cash bonus. And I was like, I got super irritated. Right. You're going to take my idea. You go split that with me. Yeah. And that was my next thing. He's like, no, no, no, this is for me. And I was younger than I was a bit more animated. I stood up on the wing. And I was talking about being unfair and everything. And he was a, he was a good old boy. You know, he stood up on the wing. And he said, he said, Jeff, he's looked at me said, you know, one of the big differences between you and I. And he said, other than age, he said, I have a piece of paper and you don't. So I was like, OK, I guess I don't really have a lot of options here. No. So that was really, that was the point. I went and saw a counselor the next week within the military and then up at the local university and started taking a few courses. And then I was probably a semester or two into that and got a tap on the shoulder to go work with the Thunderbirds because they were going to go to f16s. And so it really became decision time again about what I was going to do. So I kind of rolled back to the faith family friends thing when doing that later. But I just, I spent a lot of time and I mean, that's like the quintessential thing for aircraft mechanic right to be on the Thunderbirds and fly around the world. But I really, I really felt my education was more long lasting than that. So anyhow, so I turned that down. I ended up getting out of the military. I went full time to school, got a job, worked full time at a company as a welder because the GI bill doesn't pay you enough to. So I did that for about a year and a half and then a friend of mine got a job out on the base as a civilian as a German aircraft mechanic and any how we lured me out on the base to do that. The money was definitely better and it really allowed me to finish school because I could work either swing shift or graveyard. I was originally paid for your school as you were going. So anyhow, so got through and we can kind of we move through the career pace a little bit there and we'll come back to the love story and whatnot. So talk to me about that experience. What was the company, the challenger company again and of like what did you learn especially as you started taking a comprehensive look at organizations instead of you were a systems guy already I guess from building airplanes that actually fly and whatnot and education then and engineering afterwards. How did you integrate that with this kind of view point? So the company was Morton thigh call and so really what what I did is I just applied a lot of what I experienced in the Air Force. So the Air Force is really an elementary branch I think about team building and covering you know the other guys back and stuff. But it was really there was a saying that we always used to use is kind of remember where you came from or we all put our pants on the same way. And so going through that experience with Morton thigh call and looking at every process so my responsibility was to look at every process from the time the booster separated from the orbiter till it fell into the ocean. So every business process financial IT whatever so what that what that really allowed me to do and and what I did and focused on as I went and I sat with those people that did those jobs and just ask them you know what do you do why do you do it kind of five wise yeah. And so and then if you had to do it different what would you do so one of the things I found out was really in some regards challenger incident was a lack of communication or access to information. And so a lot what I learned is is the it's the old adage sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and I saw that a lot in the manufacturing I saw that in finance and so what we tried to do we created what was called the as is right this is how we do it now. And then you have the to be state how you would like it to be so I started meeting with teams of people and we would go through that very simple and there wasn't really an objective like well what are we trying to get to like in a lot of troubleshooting and stuff sure it was more I just took from that and so out of that what I really started looking forward themes not pinpoint ideas but was your common theme. And so for me the common theme in areas that I looked at was process right lack of process or if the process was there were the people trained on the process but communication was huge so you have two separate buildings right making the same part not really talking to each other so they would find something over here that affected these people but it didn't necessarily get transmitted to the so hard organizations are so complex sometimes the right hand doesn't know. I actually just listened to a podcast that was maybe not celebrating but recognizing the 20th year anniversary of the Patriot Act and you know they concluded that are at least shared that their perception was that the intelligence agencies had all the information they needed to prevent that attack without having these expanded powers of the Patriot Act they just right handed know what the left hand was doing and vice versa. And so here we are but anyway that's neither here nor there but it but it does speak to the complications of like and maybe the benefit of AI but also the risk of AI is AI I can know what the left hand and right hand are doing as long as we keep enough cameras on them. Well and I think too it's always knowing where the information is right and how to get to it yeah and it's I mean still kind of common today but back then they were looking for technical information and they couldn't readily access it and so that was that was part of the problem and then like with a lot of things politics rolled in you know to to the equation and all of that and huge lessons learned lots of families destroyed I mean. But I really threw that the we call it return to launch was probably a five six year thing for me people worked hard I mean teamwork was super great I mean we turned it around and we and we did all that and so there were a lot of great changes that came out of that and I so I think communication was one right having not just good communication but excellent communication but probably paramount was the leadership right the people giving vision. To how it could be or should be right so not forgetting what do we care yeah so and so when you're when you're in the weeds like it's hard to sometimes be positive so as we were going through looking at all the systems and we're and you're finding good things and bad things and you'd go to these meetings and these guys like cheerleaders right so remember where we're trying to go what's the to be state we want good communication we want all this so. So I learned a lot from from those guys Bob was my mentor there were other guys and that's really they always set the stage for being positive not cover up integrity was everything yeah and so so though I think those were some of the things that were we're big takeaways for me yeah during that whole so what's the next chapter after that so I was there so I did what was called program management for about seven eight years and then I was giving a presentation to to the board at that time so one of the things was lack of communication right so in one of my presentations I just said look we need to find something we need to find a system that accounting talks to finance and HR we call it these days ERP right so so I gave that presentation I walked out and I went back to my cubicle and Bob comes in about an hour later he said great job and you have a new job so I said what is it and he said well Charlie Locke who was the CEO and chairman of the board really liked your presentation and said he wants you to lead that effort and I was like Bob I don't know anything about I was the yeah I don't think and he said that's why he wants you to lead it so so I did that and that was that was about another two years and you know that went really well are you what they would call an integrator in today's business no one creature yeah I think so yeah yeah so it's so that was like the first beginnings of it right pulling things together people together processes and the great part is great I think where you go it's great aha moments when you watch two people click when they do it's like unbelievable yeah so I got a lot of that and then then I was at another meeting and I was finishing up on this project after about two years and I was giving so you create something from scratch or was there products that you could buy off the shelf to provide that kind of there were there were products off the shelf but it was it's not like a hand and glove fit right right so we you know you write a scope of work I wrote a scope of work with a lot of people's help and I sent that out and we we went through the down select and picked we ended up picking a large large consulting company okay and we came in and and really what we did is we we kind of took a package that was existing but what I learned is all the industries are a little bit different right aerospace is different than medical and construction so we we found a package it was fairly close and then they just said well we're just have to integrate yeah yeah and so too little bit for you yeah yeah yeah so so we did that and it went like a lot of packages it doesn't go perfect but we did things different there actually weren't a lot of IT people involved it was mostly user community so the users wrote what they wanted and then I just made sure they got what they wanted yeah so we did that and then integrated brought it together yeah it's one thing I've noticed is IT people can build whatever you want but a lot of times they don't take the time to understand what you need yeah what you want yeah so we wrote I think we even called them need documents or something like they were something corny but but they would write down they would bulletize here's what I would like my system and finance to do and then we would say well who do you need to talk to so we'd have them do like spaghetti diagrams and stuff like that and so we got that system done we launched it and then they said now time to time to move on okay so they put me in what was called business development marketing yeah and I didn't really want that I didn't like that was like a sales position to me right right and I was like it's yucky yeah I don't want to do sales and sorry oh he says yeah so Bob says yes you do selling is helping yeah so anyhow he said you know you know the product you know the company it'll be it'll take he said engineers have sharp edges and so we need to get those sharp edges off right so that's the one of the the selling engineer role has really become a thing you know you got to have enough smarts to be able to sell it but not too much yep that you'll make everybody annoyed with you when you try to go wine and item yeah so that was more coaching about how you know how to have dinner like there's little things to look for when you're having dinner you know all those things Bob would take me through and so anyhow I I talked to my wife and she was like okay it's a lot of travel yeah and so he gave me three really large accounts that we had no business with at all okay so that was Boeing Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics we had zero business with them okay all our business was with NASA and I remember telling us like Bob it would be good if you'd like at least give me an easy one or any something yeah don't you say that would be an elephant land with with a machete yeah so more more coaching and so I would go out and I would shadow him and so he would go he was very good right he was a great relationship builder he made people feel comfortable you know of course we did the winding and dining and and honestly that was the easy part we started going to Washington DC going to staff me staff for meeting right going to the hill and all that and that was just like so far out of my comfort zone yeah but that was that was all part of the part of the deal but anyhow so I I shadowed him for probably about three or four months okay and then it's kind of like out of the nest right right so I went out you start to he got some connections now in these companies and stuff he got some some threads to keep pulling it yeah go get us so you just keep working at and then I remember I was like how how do you how do you establish relationships like well anyhow I stumbled upon a book called everything they don't teach you at the Harvard Business School by Harvey McCay okay and Harvey McCay at one time he had McCay envelopes which was the largest envelope producer and I loved his book because it was just super common sense it was like how to keep out of email wars how to you know how to carry on a conversation but he had a thing in there in there about knowing your customer and it was more on the personal side and and it was not just knowing your customer right no he or she likes dislikes and all that because in businesses you know you want to have some neutral ground with some rapport yeah so no their wife no their kids no their hobbies and all that and I was at first I was like yeah I ain't gonna work it did work and so after a while I established good rapport with all three of the companies and the hardest one so two of them were easier than the other ones general dynamics was super hard because we did solid propellant and they did what we called liquid they were a liquid house so and so we did all kinds of stuff but I was at a conference when I met a guy by name a Bob Ford and he was super engineer right I mean he was really stoic and everything else so we met and we got talking we actually purposely sat next to him at one of the rubber chicken dinners right okay yeah I sat next to him we started talking he just kind of blew me off and stuff and anyhow I kept working on him he was kind of my challenge now so fast forward I start meeting with him a lot I fly to San Diego they've got a big program coming up and I'm proposing it and anyhow so I was at one of the conferences now we're talking when you're trying to get them switched from liquid to solids basically yeah and you were able to sell these solid propellants to Boeing and and Lockheed as well so yeah so they would only do test programs it's it's a long complicated program to do that so what we were trying to do is like with every product you need to figure out where your niche is yeah and for us it was like when the rocket first ticks off that's called stage zero which the heaviest part of everything so what we were really good at so solid propellants typically cheaper and more reliable let's let's volatile let's volatile so you run reliability says you do all that because you're dealing with engineers you deal with engineering data so with Boeing I think you with some like with any customer you have to figure out when to walk away like you just it's not going to happen so Boeing we were able to do some study contracts with that was about it but I had good relationship with them and you just you just keep nurturing that Lockheed Martin I sold a study program to you that was would have been nice I would have got a sales commission on that one but so I did that one and then General Dynamics was running a booster program on a new missile system and so I was working I got to work I started working with Bob a lot and then we were that excuse me it's called a bidders conference and so I was at the bidders conference with Bob and he was sitting over on the cut you know they separate you you know customers on one side and suppliers on the other but I hooked up with him later when we went and had dinner together and he said so were you coming down for this meeting in two weeks and I said yeah and he said you know any chance you could come down over the weekend and I was like yeah I think so and I said what do you got mine he said well my wife and I are going sailing and you know maybe good and you know I can maybe give you some pointers for the meeting or something like that so I was like okay so anyhow we won the study contract and did all that not he didn't give me anything right right we just we just talked and he can't have gave me pointers and where I thought where he thought my shortcomings were yeah so anyhow so that was that was fun and so I did that and I was enjoying it but I was traveling a lot and we were starting our family yeah and one morning I remember I woke up and my my oldest boy was sitting at the side of my bed and I was like his name is Jeff I said what are you doing son he said I just want to make sure you were here I was like okay that he's been in too much time at the office yeah so anyhow traveling yeah so maybe we're getting close to finding a way to Fort Collins in Northern Colorado then is that right yep so I'll kind of fast forward through that so um again I started praying a little bit more and relying on friends and kind of guys that I entrusted with kind of you know giving me wisdom and stuff and I decided I would decide I would give more time on the opportunity to try to find me a place and more stable place stable place less travel but I when you kind of have a reputation you know so it's like hey you're a decent sales guy this at so I connected up with a company actually out of Canada and they actually we're going to be a potential vendor we didn't actually go with them but anyhow I got to know them pretty well and it was ironic I got a call from the CEO one day said hey you know yada yada yada like you you know ever thought about living in Canada and I was like no and so anyhow we kind of went through that and um one day I get a call from and he said hey why don't you fly up next week you know take some takes a vacation fly up and see Toronto so it's like okay so I did and show me around and then I met the parent company and all that and they said hey look we've got this robot automation division and it's not doing really well and you know you you seem to know some of this stuff so anyhow so they made me a job offer and we sold our house we sold a lot of our stuff we moved up there um we ripped there about a year and a half we did the turnaround so it was my first turnaround okay a huge learning experience um but um so we did that and then part of that was to consolidate a bunch of operations right we had a whole bunch that were doing the same thing and so my plan was to consolidate and they just decided to consolidate someplace else other than Toronto and so I was like nah I can't do that so that's what really uh so then um so they were like well okay we're gonna have to part ways if you're not willing to move to Ottawa and I said I'm not moving my family to Ottawa so uh I did a little networking we ended up in Minneapolis uh worked for uh automation company there um for year two when you say automation that's like robots of different sorts and yeah sorry uh yeah so they did everything so they did they'd mostly robots uh you know palatizing equipment we did a lot of work for general mills lot for Kellogg stuff like that packaging everything that where they didn't want people touching it right it's right automated so uh serial in the box yeah put serial in the box blue on the top of the box before you squeeze it down yep load the train car with a robot I mean everything so so I did that and then I got a call one day from recruiter catapillar was looking for a guy catapillar was there in Brooklyn park uh I was like yeah I'm good you know and then uh about a week later Dave Rambler who owned the company said hey Jeff UK to me said I think I'm gonna sell the company oh I was like okay so I called the recruiter back I said I think I'm interested in that catapillar job actually as I reflect yeah so I anyhow went through that whole process went to work there uh loved great company yep yeah loved it and uh so um went to work for them uh was on their management training program all that built a factory did a whole bunch of good stuff had great people had a great staff yeah we just crushed it I just loved them um how is your relationship with Dunjer it was great I was used to say uh John Deere always runs best when it's being chased by a cat right so I like it yeah it's been good that that rivalry frankly uh it's right now there's a two giants and they they seem to like each other kind of but yeah it's a friendly competition yeah so you learn a lot I mean you share a little bit but so that was a great experience I did some executive programs through catapillar it's kind of mandatory when you're on they call it the leadership development program LDP so I did that well part of that is you're gonna go work different places and so I've been there about four years and I worked for a guy by name a dick who was super just love working for him he was super good guy and he called me one day and said okay Jeff it's time to move well and I said okay well where are we moving to and he said Puril I know and I went now give me a second choice right um so we talked about it for a while and I was pretty upfront with dick and I said I don't really want to embrace my kids where they're at in school so I did some networking I had bought a lot of robots from ABB robotics here in Fort Collins okay which is now Lincoln automation or something I think yeah so I called Dave Prasser he was the the head guy there and said hey Dave I'm doing some networking and he said well you know it's really kind of strange you said I'll be probably retiring next year whatever would you be interested in coming to Fort Collins it's like okay so flew out interview got the job was was with them for two and a half years great ride great product and then they decided they the corporate office decided they were gonna start shutting down planets most people don't know this so Fort Collins was gonna be shut down okay so myself and Dave and another guy decided to do a management buyout so we got to the eleventh hour got outbid by a bunch of equity guys in that eleventh hour oh and uh yeah that hurts that hurt a lot so uh so then just again faith walk yeah yeah I was just gonna ask was that like was it a development of the circumstance or was that part of like scratching an itch like you've been working on businesses done turn around had all this leadership training and executive training and you know I want to play with my chips yeah that that's a really a point that that was really it like I've kind of done it for everybody else as I've worked hard and helped grow the thing it's not a selfish thing but I was like could I do this myself right and the thing I learned along the way was it's really your partners it's your partners your team that really make it this episode is sponsored by loco think tank loco think tank provides pure collaboration for business owners we build smart safe places to help business leaders navigate every stage of the business journey and we love what we do and who we do it with our model features gift back minded business veterans and the role of loco facilitators we're always looking for abundance minded individuals to add to our membership facilitator team local community or to feature on this podcast listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of loco think tank get their sixth month of membership for free just mention the loco experience podcast on your application to learn more visit our website at locothink tank dot com that's l o c o think tank dot com and so I had a lot of trust in the guys that I was working with and all of that so that really helped a lot so we we did the thing we built a business plan we all went out and got second mortgages on our house I mean that whole deal and then one day I was about probably about three weeks before we were supposed to close on the deal we got a call from one of the finance guys over in europe said hey you need to be in chicago on this date and we're like okay so we go to chicago we meet at the airport and we walk into this big room and there's three guys in suits and so ABB management said hey these guys approach just they'd like to buy the business and they're offering x and you're offering y and you kind of got dives but dives couples with the cost yeah it wasn't and we really did know that you don't have a contract or how did that well we hadn't agreed but it's not a finalized right you have a term sheet right I think within the term sheet everything's done and the asses are yeah and total everything signed in the money it crossed his hands so they gave us an opportunity but we kind of the three of us huddled together and unlike it's not worth that right I mean it's just too high risk so we got on the plane and flew home and got back and told Susan I said you know we'll just stick it out but for me Kurt it was about integrity yeah and so when I went back to work I kind of find out a few people on the inside knew what was going on and so I was kind of disappointed with that and so one day this was really weird I was driving down the street across from Fort Collins high school and I saw this little company called value plastics sure and for some reason I don't know what it was I just drove in there and I walked upstairs to the reception desk and the gal says her name Sandy she said can I help you I said yeah are you guys hiring was it Sandy cars was it no oh no that was value plastics I was the SCBW automation yeah yeah anyway yeah so anyhow she said actually we are we're looking for an operations manager and blah blah blah so anyhow so I was like okay so anyhow so and it was privately held company I hadn't worked for privately held company for a while but I would honestly I was done with the big boys yeah you know yeah so I interviewed the company was owned by Mike and Vicki Reinsberger I absolutely love them they were great people of integrity so we we did the ride there and I was there for about about seven years so we grew that business we sold it twice yeah talk about that ride a little bit because you and I got acquainted you were just a regular old customer of the bank where I worked just down the street there and working out value plastics I think when we first met yeah but you went through a couple of acquisitions you were part of the kind of next phase of management you want to tell that journey a little bit or as much as you can comfortably yeah so some some things obviously can't share but so Mike and Vicki had a vision to grow the business right and they weren't sure 100% what that looked like so it was kind of funny so they they had we had we had team meetings about every other week and we'd go in there and then and so we go into it this one team meeting and Mike says hey we're all going to Jackson Hole in two weeks and we're like sweet so and I like do I bring my skis you know what us we never stepped outside the hotel oh it was a strategy session got you so we did about two and a half days of strategy we came out with a plan right and so we we said this is a direction we want to go and did they like hire somebody to come and do a strategic retreat with them and their key leaders or we had one guy Steve Vanderheaver okay bending even I think he's still in the area and Steve came in and and he facilitated that through the week so out of that we walked away with a straw man and so part of it I've been on long enough I so the part of things coming around so having done sales and marketing right I went out and started visiting customers from the operation standpoint I mean what are you looking for what's important yeah well we do better about our existing project what what other new products adjacent to these ones so that really brought out so my my part of the plan was to take the injection molding business from an industrial molder you know things just connected to general tube and stuff to get into the medical market so that was the yeah instead of a hoses for gasoline you're doing little tiny hoses yeah then it's tools and stuff like that whatever and and all the so what we did were the fit a small fitting so we grew up from that but so we look at that and we committed to it and so we started taking the facility in that way so we did a lot of team development so and everything's always culture right people think changing organizations about you know the new buildings it's always about the people that's always about it how do you get buy-in from the culture your ERP is changing your ERP isn't going to change your culture yeah so so one of the guys that I hired Ray we we worked one weekend and we set up one of the injection molding cells into what what we call the cellular manufacturing concept okay where one guy would run multiple machines and do everything but we would also give him all the information like we put a big screen in there so he could see all the orders coming at it tools and everything and so then we worked all weekend he and I set that up and then Monday morning we brought all the team members in and said okay we're going at the medical industry here's why so all of you now need to start dressing like this and you need to do this and you need to do this and here's the benefit right right I was doing that so we started with that one cell and then we took it from there and then we migrated to the other cells and we had every all the IT everybody wow just started doing new things for new people and then eventually slowly giving up some of the old things because imagine it's still got to eat because I got to make revenues cash flow yep yep so you have to have a migration plan right so we migrated from this to that and then Ray and I we were looking at all the financials and I'm like we we need to be here right we need to have really great gross margins right there's okay gross margins good and great I said I'm right I want great gross margins and I want great net profit and so we started looking at it and Ray and I were like what if we could run our second third shift without anybody here lights out it's called right it's an old term yeah and nobody was doing it and we said we don't know that we can get there all the way but we think we can get there most of the way right so we put another plan together and then we met with Mike and Vicki and said hey we think with this level of investment and doing these things we think we can get your financials from here to here which means the value your company goes from here to here interesting and so we just started with proof of concept we started with one machine then we went to two machines and then we started working with our partners you know the software people and all that and it took multiple years but we got so we ran second shift basically people loading the tools and stuff so minimal second shift and nobody third shift so the machines were run third shift and when you set it up in such a way like that first shift would kind of make sure all the supplies were stocked sufficiently and things like that and then you know the second shift I don't know quite no understanding how all this works but but that was part of the first shift job was to prepare the second and third shifts for their skills and crews so everybody had a part everybody had a role from material coming in the door so material came automatic to the machines we could change the type of material that it was in the ceiling so it was all kind of production run levels kind of stuff and so we got the machines so they were so smart that they would know maybe if they were making a bad part so we would reject the part at the press so most times people would you know they'd inspect it afterwards right that's really done so we did it it was all state of the art stuff to us because we'd been to automotive manufacturers we'd been all over the country trying to benchmark yeah yeah got a little sensors looking at these outgoing parts and no that one might have some abnormalities at least have somebody look at it before you sell it yep so we would do that so we developed a little thing underneath the machine that would flip parts one way or the other and I mean it was all good it was it was a great ride and so Mike and Vicki decided to sell that business in oh six okay and then so we sold an old six to an equity firm and then and then it got sold and we went through a couple of different acquisitions and stuff like that and then it finally sold in Nordsson in 2011 I see so and you were kind of in that operations manager capacity most of that time and a small slice of the pie that you could earn by staying there or whatever during sports and stuff yep so one of the things we we talked about with Mike and Vicki so there was another guy there by the name of Jim Pasula and Jim and I Jim was in marketing I was operations so we were kind of joined at the hip and so he and I really grew the organization we created a new product development department because we went on and made other products after that and so um anyhow so Jim and I kind of put that whole thing together along with another fellow been named Chuck Phillip who did sales so it was kind of interesting because we had a sales guy a marketing guy and an operations guy right where normally a lot of companies have sales and marketing together um so we just we just worked with them and they would say this is a good market so it was like let's develop a product so we had we we put a lot of that's a not to stop you but for making Vicki pretty fascinating to make that dramatic uh conversion of of market segments and to do these many changes uh to the organization kind of somewhat from the prodding of from some of the key employees and things like that uh what a thoughtful approach from them I guess that I was also say yeah so they were they were again very generous people great people I love working for them I'd move them out and for them yeah um but the team it's our team itself we were so coalesce with each other I mean we we didn't always agree right we didn't a lot of times run by consensus building um but anyhow so it was great we we did I think what a lot of companies wish they could do we were small we were agile we were customer friendly we had audits all the time we invited customers in so can you talk about that revenue trend I mean did you double and then double again and then double again the double again they're serious it did really well you're fair enough yeah and and the margins were like what people would die for right right so but think about it for at least yeah but think about it when there's no one there and the machines just making parts right your cost of good souls fairly low yeah yeah so and when people came to look at us to buy us they didn't believe us right I remember one night we were at dinner downtown and the company that actually ended up buying us it wasn't in order and it was an equity company first so we were downtown and they're winding and dining and this one guy he's an ops guy sits sitting across from me and he's like Jeff I know you say this is all automated and that's all great stuff and all that he says I don't really believe you and and so I said okay I said what machine do you want to see and he said what do you mean he said what machine I said what machine do you want to look at right now and I said like I'll pull them all up you can look at them I'll tell you the status cameras on his phone yeah so I I pulled my phone up and I pulled up the app and I said okay well here's this machine and right now it's made this many parts and it's got this many to go here's how many rejects it's had oh you want to see that machine oh you want to see the cell itself so I'd go to a different app and I pull up a camera well here's the cell running here's the robot running so so what kind of an app was this it was when we developed internally okay yeah so we we worked with the company that made the moldy machine it was their software that was proprietary yeah so we gave them rights to look at certain things and we would use there so we partnered with them yeah and but they couldn't use it with anybody else yeah but they could use it as a backdrop is like see this is how we partner with our customers yeah yeah so we really played on the partnering a lot with our materials so it sounds like that app it could have been like sold to other people and stuff like that if you had chosen to chase that or maybe you did yeah super nice well we decided that wasn't that wasn't our real house yeah the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing yep so we did that and we expanded it was and it was good and the company sold and then after it sold um a couple guys I was like trying to figure out what I wanted to do and so I just you know I started my consulting business um back then and I I feel like this is like 2011 yeah twenty yeah twenty eleven twenty yeah right in there twenty eleven okay and so um you know and I worked for a couple of different companies along the way they were really turn around operations I was believe you should call it like it is so when I would interview with people they say this and go so I knew this would be a two or three year thing um so I did that and then I I consulted for a while I one of my best consulting things was for goodwill industries oh interesting I worked with them on really if they seem like they work a lot better now they were kind of like that's where we drop off our stuff yeah the processing in the back room is kind of interesting so I worked with them for quite a while and just just great people I probably had more man hugs and you know that time for yourself so did that um for a while and then got a call one day and went to work uh and has another kind of turnaround thing Spartan medical uh down in uh Frederick they're they've just been bought now the facilities closed so I was there a couple of years and then um the place I'm at now uh Noble Inc is really a it's a privately health company uh Noble case and drilling and trucking and I had worked for them before in 2013 to 2015 that was kind of a I went in put the quality system in and all that yeah and they asked me to come back and so I did and so I've been there about two and a half years now and so I'm responsible for all the legal health safety environmental supply chain management all of the upfront stuff of the business yeah so different kind of operations than you've had before yeah it really takes a different kind of hat than what you have been wearing I think yeah yeah yeah and it's you know sometimes I think it is about challenging yourself right so little scary yeah um but you know when I was going through my career occurred like a lot of people it's like oh I should have just like my grandad worked for the post office for 35 years right my other grandpa he was you know and I was like okay well I'm supposed to work for this guy for my whole career but I figured that I wasn't wired that way right so yeah so I decided so that's that's kind of where I am you know you and I've been friends acquaintances for quite a while and I've always been part of the give it back right that's always been the thing and so I've done a lot of coaching and mentoring on the side you know I really did like this program I like the idea of bringing people together you know kind of peer advisory and kind of helping with that and and you learn a lot too right if you're not learning totally yeah so no you're not expected to have all the answers in the chapter for sure you'll learn something every time if you're lucky yeah so that's that's that's kind of my business journey yeah so actually let's take a short break and then we'll come right back is kind of a repeated theme of turnarounds you know even that that first real business effort on the challenger company and and since then it's really something you've gravitated to and seeing excellence in many organizations I think caterpillar is probably you know one of those phases where you saw a lot of great stuff and how to use it and whatever but talk to me about that and why I'm seeing that theme in your life and maybe about what you you mentioned people already but what are the things that you do to to fix cultures to turn things around to make things work yeah I think the biggest thing I learned it took me a while to get there was is really I'll just wrap it into legacy right what is your legacy and and you know when you're in your 30s 40s whatever and not to pick on an age group but you you kind of think it's defined by your title and your money and you know all other stuff and I think everybody's to themselves sometimes that's important hey my legacy is I'm a millionaire or you know I'm the CEO of a company or whatever but again through Bob I think it really came to roost for me when I went to his funeral and I heard all these people talk about Bob right not about where he worked not about what he did but what he gave back and what he did and Bob was always about people right and it's for me I will say businesses are kind of straightforward they're about people in processes right right people in the right place doing the right thing with the right amount of process yes so I that was really the people part and I learned the challenger experience was when you're out there and you're in a you know a big blasting cell right next to a guy in your holding an eight inch diameter hose right with him and he's telling you all about it or when you're you know talking to an accountant about the things that you know make their job hard or whatever yeah so it's really and again it's not an equal thing it's just like my grandpa on my other side with farmers obviously did you leave things in a better place than what you found them yeah and so in distressed operations or turnaround it is always about the culture right and there's a lot of common themes people don't feel appreciated people don't feel respected they weren't given the right tools they weren't trained properly and it doesn't mean that people are you know the management was horrible or whatever it's just sometimes you get on that that pace yeah we do it the way we've always done it which is sometimes insufficient yeah I call it throttle forward hey we'll just throttle forward and get through it and and so what I really got a lot of not ego just personal self satisfaction as I'm sure Bob and other people that minister in coast like you know that that was part of the legacy so you'd see people who started maybe with this skill set or whatever and then a year or two down the road they're over here and they're they feel more more fulfilled in their job they feel like they're having more of an impact and the other thing was is I always wanted I was to people you know you're it's all about value add right value add to the company value add to yourself so in business and this is the part I didn't appreciate when I was going through all those things was I called it my personal tool kit and what Bob was really doing was just putting more tools in there for me yeah right so I became more valuable to the company I became more valuable to myself and then when I started consulting you just you inadvertently you take those tools out and and you kind of use them so I really that's what I wanted to do and I found that people really did care that you cared about them yeah and but it wasn't that you were always trying to please them but I always talked about integrity and honesty and then having full transparency and and I made some some very bad mistakes along the way with people that I had to reflect on and go that was that was horrible reminds me a little phrase people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care exactly and and for me the other thing I picked up along the way is I say it's about winning right and that's not like some people think winning is you know straight frontal approach and I'm trying to get the other side winning for me could be a relationship right it could be winning a game it has different things but you you kind of go about different way there's different ways to win or get there and so that was the thing if I wanted my team to really be a performing team right I had to recognize them as individuals and as a group because we all motivate and demotivate differently and so I just I got a lot of self satisfaction through my career just seeing people grow and develop and really getting to that where they had the aha moment right where they would go oh wow I guess I can do that or and and letting them free free fall right don't let them hit the ground and totally fail but let them free fall and learn on the way down yeah and then you know throw them a throw them a lifeline before they hit well and you had so many aha moments you know like that family transition that you're describing and and you know some of the air force kind of opportunities and things like that really like aha yeah so I think that was and again I think everybody's different and they have to you have to gauge yourself on you know if you're successful or not so and again everybody has to find that own definition of success but I just got a lot in when you're doing distressed operations it doesn't mean they're totally failing it made me they could just run a little bit better yeah goodwill wasn't totally failing but when you go in there the first two days are about establishing your rapport yeah because you're this I call myself a virus yeah yeah that you're a virus you're going by I gauge my success in a lot of them on Wednesday or Thursday if they were bringing food in for me in the morning I like it I like it one of the things I tell people when they're like sometimes people assume that like a local think tank kind of an engagement is for broken businesses to fix them I'm like no we that's too hard we like to take good businesses and make them great yep and that yeah and that's really what it is and I think when when I went to Canada that was that was a truly distressed business man we were losing money but we were we were doing the wrong thing right and so so I think along the way when you get that um like I'm helping my oldest son he's got to start up business and stuff and now it's kind of getting to the point where it's got value and a creature revenue and all that right his hardest thing has been managing and leading yeah because he's so technical and you know and it's mechanics so I think having the people and again for me the the people in my opinion for me Jeff Jensen it's the legacy it's the people that I positively touched along the way yeah right and you can watch me there there's lots of people I've coached over the years and there's no credit to me they mean they've they've they've they're great dads right they're great business people they're they're great business women or whatever and so for me that's a bit of self enjoyment yeah and then of course seeing the fine that's okay to be proud about that yeah yeah well I'm kind of a humble guy right I know yeah um one more question and then we'll move into the faith family politics segment um what was it about the the loco think tank itself and the facilitation role um you know you mentioned already was kind of a way to give back and stuff but there's a lot of ways to do that and what was it about loco and and perhaps the role itself that was really appealing so I I like how the program was set up I like how the people come together I like that it's a diverse group of people I like that there's structure and yet some freedom right and so I I've been part of other groups like this right and so I think where people can come because sometimes in the work environment you can't really share yeah you know I'm really having a bad day or this is going on it's a for me it's a neutral environment where people can collaborate with each other and they're they're not necessarily sharing trade secrets right but they're but there's a purpose and we talk about it and they go through and then just the the the relationship and and and I wanted to learn as well I mean part of the journey for me is the learning that I've got to do working in different business with different people so you get six eight ten different companies in a room and you just start talking about stuff I mean so there's a learning aspect for me and then the other part is if if I can give them something right that helps them go hey that was worth it right I want them to leave the meeting that it's not going to happen every week where they go out of there going oh well I had a great but if they walked out there and say that was a good use of my time right and that's what I've shared you know with my team it's just I've just with the thinkers I've just said look I just I want you to feel fulfilled I want you to feel like you're getting value add here we have to have some structure right yep but I want you to feel like your time and effort is worth something and that we're making you know an impact on the business and because local think it brings the structure together yet gets that other part there's some freedom in there as well but then bring in the people and and it's kind of a safe haven in most work environments you can't talk freely yeah especially these last little while yeah it's super hard so I think that was there and I looked at the program a long time right you and I've been talking yeah you're in a half or a couple years and probably a couple of coffee ones to have every and it's timing for me like where am I at in my professional career and how does that all fit in and then making sure you can commit and making sure you know that you can really give to the team and and all of that and the other thing is is you you want the team to interact with you but then you have to respect that they have their own lives right so like we talked about earlier it's like you know you make the calls you try to meet with them but you can't force yeah you know it to come so I just it's one of those things I thought it it would be great to do I could learn a lot hopefully I could pass on something so yeah that I've done over the years so I'm excited for the impact you're gonna have with with this group and then you know even on the local think tank itself so let's move into what do you want to talk about first faith family politics friends we can talk about but yeah I have a feeling and I hope it's 30 or 40 or 50 years probably 40 or 50 60 years for now that when you have a funeral there's going to be a whole bunch of people there talking about you nice things as well yeah so my thing my you know everybody kind of has what I call their bar stool or whatever you know they they kind of sit on and mine has always been faith family friends kind of in that order and again without getting religious and all of that stuff I believe that faith is a personal thing right that people have to embrace or not embrace right for me it was a very important part of my life it helped shape me who I was with my grandparents and even after that it was and are you still Catholic no I never actually I was I actually never I never went into the Catholicism right yeah I did that I went to the mass with them yeah I did go to mass that there was just so much I didn't understand like I didn't understand all the mechanics and and my grandma at that time is like she would it's just this way you genuinely feel like when you get in and you do this and you know as a kid you're going well why do I do that you know and so I went I went to all the classes and stuff like that I think for me I just I had to find my way I had to understand was it real is it not real and again I don't wear your folks faithful people at all yeah no no yeah if this were faithfulness we'd go 360 and they'd be at 359 right right okay uh so my sister and I we used to walk to church together and stuff like that and I'd maybe more mechanics or anything or that but it was a safe haven for us yeah and so when I was in the military I met a guy who who kind of really strengthened my faith kind of sit some people say you know really led you to Christ or whatever you know yeah and so I really start exploring and doing all that so I just I call it my because I always say it's easy to have faith it's hard to trust I like that um so and that's really the that's really the journey for me right is to have faith I mean we get in an airplane we have faith that the pilot's gonna you know not crash the jet so so for me I've always tried to have you know people in my life to help give me wisdom and discernment and all of that and uh and then you know I kind of stumbled upon the the way to serve a phrase called servant leadership Tony Jen Dengie has a great book about it yeah yeah um I've got that book but I haven't read it yet yes it's it's a good book so I think too and again I know sometimes it you can isolate young people feel uncomfortable whatever that's never what I want to do I'm not the guy that sits at on the corner with my white sign and says hey turn a burn yeah John 316 or else right so um anyhow it's just been a very important part of my life my wife's life my kids life it's just been one of those things that I've tried to ground myself in and then next was my family yeah um let's talk about the love story yeah because we kind of flash forward through that whole life and Air Force and college and this and that but it's a more long way to fell in love yeah so I met Susan uh my wife in Utah okay uh we we ended up going to the same church and um I was uh back then you you took Fortran right now they have C++ and all that back in and I had been interviewing like crazy and uh my next door neighbor just happened to be our minister right okay so he and I were sitting on the back porch one night and I was freaking out I'm going oh my gosh I'm doing horrible in this class he said oh yeah I talked this guy named Susan I think she does programming or something like that so so that Sunday at church I went up and said hey you don't know me uh but I'm kind of in a pickle and so that was kind of the beginning and I was working a full-time job swing shift now out at the base going to school full-time during the day yeah yeah and so she was like yeah I could probably give you a little help and she said well what time and I said well labs opened from 11 at night till three in the morning so I was like it's kind of gonna be then anyhow so she's like this sounds more like a date yeah so anyhow I just I was honestly cured I was squirm and because I was not I was not doing well in the class I'd been interviewing like crazy I'd been gone all the rest of my classes I was doing fine to pay her it was a volunteer basis well that one I thought was gonna be volunteer so I so we did that she saved me right she looked at my program and she shook her head and she's like no that thing will never compile and so anyhow we stayed there and rewrote the program I have to say honestly she probably rewrote the program right right and I did really well in the class but anyhow so I was working on a project at time it was my senior project and it was called news at Northern Utah satellite it was a first satellite ever launched into space from from a shuttle and it was my senior project I was a program manager project manager for that and that was a great experience but yeah so anyhow so TRW supplied solar panels and stuff like that for our satellites so they had this showing down in the planetarium down Salt Lake that was kind of kind of corny but I didn't have any money I was a poor college student so I said hey can I repay you for what you've done so she was like sure so I took her down butter dinner and then we just kind of started hanging out after that yeah and just we're just really good friends me we went on picnics together you know we were we had this added recording or were you actually more just like friends with no expectations that even though you're mid-20s by now yep yep yep mid-20s yep so yeah so I would say it was more like the friends right because we both had bad experiences you know with the opposite sex and all that stuff so we were like yeah you know she was like hey I'll just be friends I'm like sure I'll just be friends so so we did that and we probably for about six months and then I was coming up on graduation she was ahead of me she's about a year and a half older than I am so she'd been out of school and she's working in her job and I'm getting ready to graduate and because of my background and airplanes I had lots of good job offers yeah so one night we went on I have a full-fledged date okay and we were just sitting there and how did you ask her on that full first full-fledged date and how did you cross that awkward friend zone right like that's usually a trap yeah so it kind of was a little bit so I like I had really good feelings for her right kind of from the get-go yeah but I couldn't really say that I mean she was very nice looking right she she had a good job you know she was educated you know it was like the perfect package for me and so I didn't want to screw anything up so so we were and we were talking we were talking a lot like we didn't have cell phones that much back there you know they were the big bricks and stuff right but we were talking a lot we were you know she'd she'd invite me over after I got off swing shift and make a couple hot chocolate for me at night you know and so we just sit and and just chat and so I had all these job offers coming in so we sat through that night and I said hey I need to you know I'm kind of getting in a tough spot here and said you know I got all these offers what am I gonna you know I gotta do something and she said well you need to know I just got a really good offer out of state with and she was working for the government at the time and we so we just kind of looked at each other and we were just kind of we paused for a moment and I said you know I think there's really something here and she said I think there is two so we were willing to risk another six months or a year to see so we did yeah so I took a job in state she decided not to go about probably eight nine months later we got married yeah cool yeah I like it what you've already talked a little bit about why you loved her but was there anything in particular that set her apart from the girls that you'd maybe built friendships with before or had interactions um you know there was just a lot like she was just a complete package for me and I know that's hard to say I mean she was very level headed she was very practical um she was a great listener she was she was just a great friend because I was going through some personal stuff during that time too and she was just a great listener right and she wouldn't advise or anything like she'd just say hey if you thought about this she was just really consoling and I just felt really comfortable with her yeah and uh and I just we just loved hanging out together yeah going you know going the mountains going skiing we just loved each other's company and I just felt really you know like I didn't feel threatened or like you know and yeah that stuff you know sometimes you can you can date and feel kind of threatened for sure what uh what would she say about you I think she would say um that I was trustworthy right she'd had some relationships where the guy turned out wasn't very trustworthy she'd just come out of a really long relationship and there was a lot of non trustworthy stuff there yeah so but it took a while to convince right because she's like oh I've heard that line before right you know I heard that and I was like oh no go talk to my friends do I really like this so I think it was uh you know I'm a pretty gentle spirit um you know I was going to school I was doing she like she had her list of things like that was important to her and I think that was a lot of it and we just you know she just said she loved hanging out with me and you know she just love spending time with me yeah it was like we could you know we could we could it's not like we had to do anything we could just hang out and talk you know there wasn't a pretense of where we always had to do something is this date perfect or is that yeah yeah yeah you can just kind of hang out and uh we could just be real with each other we didn't sugarcoat a lot of stuff we talked about you know when we were like she was getting ready to go on her career and I was getting ready to do mine and we those were hard conversations yeah it's big important things yeah I think the the biggest thing was I respected her I had tremendous respect for her yeah she's extremely bright uh she's she's achieved in her job by me and she's just just really great and she's probably one of the most giving people I've ever been around love yeah talk to me a little bit about your uh your children so you have two right yep so um so Jeff uh is our oldest and uh don't give his company a plug here yeah so he uh so obviously grew up here in Fort Collins um and uh he went to Texas A&M uh electrical engineering degree he got masters all that went to work for Siemens worked for another company and then had an idea that he had a better idea than somebody else and that was about two and a half three years ago and so uh we were down visiting he talked to me about it and you know he kind of started putting a business plan together and he decided to take the plunge and um so um I've just been working with him and it's it's like with most startups it's hard yeah there's not enough cash and there's not enough time yeah not enough people because you don't have enough cash yeah so he just a lot of it but it's it's been a great experience I mean not many did I do swimming pool maintenance stuff so uh yeah so they had this the quick the quick story behind that is his wife one night they have a small pool and they live in Houston and they were getting ready to have company over and she said hey can you go out and check the pool water make sure it's okay to swim in and being the engineer he said well this is really stupid there's got to be a better way so that was kind of the beginning of that so he came up and there's devices that float in the pool but he's a couple other guys came up with an idea to uh check the water through the skimmer plate which is where all the water goes to the pump and so there are other devices that float it so they came up with that it's a solar power device the company name is Keto and Keto is kind of for clean water like clean living Keto is about that healthy so um so we we created a device that sits in there solar power that uses AI to monitor like here's the levels of oxygen here's the levels of chlorine whatever and then of course it all comes on an app well yeah so so the first two years were brutal right because you're like everything you're trying to find their way and so like with a lot of businesses this past year the software turned in to be quite um quite the phenomenon right it just it had so much capability I called it the V8 engine right because a V8 engine can sit in a whole bunch of different chassis so we kind of splintered off the company a little bit and uh so we still have Keto the pool side and then we found that there was another use for the software so that was engineering services so the engineering services and the use of that strap on some more tools to this big swig and then we can use it for this industry or that whatever yep so right now he's sitting at there's a company that wants to javey with him joint venture with him that's been in the pool industry a very long time there's another company that I think has uh would like to buy the whole company so I'm kind of working with him on that so they live in here what's it worth yeah and that's what we're going through now yeah we've already jumped off of that story we'll have have him appear in a couple years when he has that big exit right away um or something and uh your is it a daughter or other son Greg so Greg is here okay and he's in the area here we see him uh fairly frequently he went to school came back here loves Fort Collins just kind of hangs out here not married yet not married yet nope he's dating a gather pretty serious all right so he we want to advertise uh to look Greg up for nothing yeah yeah and Jeff has a has a wife and a kid or two two two kids now so you got a couple grandkids yes yep so they're all doing great I mean I'd like to do one word description for the grandkids if you're if you're up for it fun and uh for both of them uh the three-year-old is fun the word for the second one would be probably challenging right now because she's not sleeping oh yeah fair enough yeah it'll be a lot of seasons there but fun for grandpa always because you can just leave yep yeah you just hand him back right right so what else would you have me know about family uh like like it's my everything my family's my everything I mean we we say we do what we do for family but and again it's seasons right in in the early stages you're trying to provide for your family take care of your kids and the the biggest thing is um that's always been important to me as a father is having an open door or an open relationship which means you have to take the good and the bad right right it's it really is unconditional love and so anybody's had kids knows that you go through those hard times so I I mean I want to say I appreciate I have a great relationship with my kids you don't always like the conversations um but at the end of the day and I would just I would just say you know you know I've lost my job along the way you know that happens and so when you're going through hard times that's where the faith family friends come in right but when you go home if you've lost your job yeah you go home to your spouse you go home to your kids right and there's no it's just it's just a loving environment you know and it's like it's a safe haven and it's what I learned too in layoffs and so I mean you can have your business associates but truly truly for me it's your family right that you go home to when when things are bad or things are good and it doesn't mean you don't have great friends at work but it's just it in hard times you really understand you know the true meaning and the true importance of your family yeah very good um we've talked about friends along the way quite a bit usually ask politics question but you can say as much or as little about that topic as you've yeah so yeah the politics is an interesting interesting one you know I'm always I've always been for you need to take care of yourself so I'm not a big like social program guy so I've lived in Canada where they had social medicine it ain't free yeah and all of that and I think you know I'm a big one on personal choice yeah you know people should be allowed to make personal choices um you know and and and I spent a lot of time in Washington DC in the in the early years right so I saw politics at its finest and why do you think politics is if it was at its finest then it must be super fine now like tell me what's broken if if you have any theories on that or or how can we get it to be you know right now it feels like one side clubs the other with whatever tools they can when they yeah I think I don't know for me Kurt I think it's been that way so when I was there before honestly again back then it was each senator or congressman looking out for their district right and where I saw the horse trading come in it's like well if you do something for me that helped me with my district my back also got your tools put an airbase over there get a factory there yeah exactly and so you you see a lot of that and I think you know I I don't know if they genuinely believe you know that they're helping out but it's it's like you know how did we get you know our forefathers right people don't want to go back and look at that and stuff like that and and all that that that was built on like I just I'm not a big just hand out stuff I'm not a big one I just hand out money I'm not a big one for just to hand out I think you should have to work for what you have right and so and right now and again it's just one man's opinion is I mean we talk about this in local think tank about people not coming back to work all of the companies that aren't be able to hire so I don't think giving away free money and it's not free right I've been around long enough it's going to get paid for and and uh or defaulted on yep inflation has to come yeah you know because it's all borrowed money and so I just it it would be good if the kids could play nicely together but I've just never seen it and I think when you come off the past presidency and you have you know the flip flop to the current for me it's it's like it's a little bit in your face and you know it it happened I think with Obama you know when that changed over yeah and and I think it's happening again well I'll show you all yeah I'll sign a thousand executive orders right to do that yeah one of the things I thought lately was if we don't get more comfortable with a federalism a federalistic country you know if we if we're not comfortable with a loose collection of diverse states we're going to end up with a large collection of diverse nations instead or something yeah it's I think that the troubling part I mean I've been around a little bit longer than you it's just the the unification right I think heart like think 9-11 right right that everybody becomes unified right you kind of have one purpose you kind of go that way and um it's just it it it is it feels a little bit like taffy you know one one arm on each one and kind of people getting caught in the middle but you know for me for my kids and my grandkids I mean all this money that's going out there does it give people incentive to work yeah does it give people incentive you know to do different things right I mean my youngest son would love to buy a house yeah I'd love to and if you could get his student loans loans all forgive any probably good yeah yeah actually his student loans are done yeah but I mean the the point is I mean we live here in Fort Collins right try to buy house right now my right my son continues to save and it's like he so it gets close to catch up can't catch up and I think you know just the cost of living and you know just everything in the area and I just have to wonder do the politicians really understand what what the person on the street you know is is really going through they don't yeah is the answer to that question yeah um so let's just go ahead and move on unless there's anything else I'd like to share on that um your local experience uh what's the the craziest experience of your life or maybe even a series of experiences or something that's been really impactful that you'd like to share um gosh that's a really good question um honestly I think the the the most I don't know if it's the kind of a dark moment yet a good moment um so obviously a great moment when I got married right great moments when you have your children right great moments is when you see them get married great moments is when you see them do different things but probably uh I called it a defining moment um for me was going to Bob's funeral um at this particular time I was I was up in North Dakota it was snowing yeah I got a call from his son that he passed away but going to that service everything that he had said like came together like because I heard other people say it you know and just um I mean just just that was probably everything came together because sometimes you wonder well as you just telling me this or how's that going but when you hear the guy say next door yeah Bob came out in his wheelchair and held the wooden planks up against my fence so that I could screw him in or would come over and sweep my driveway or he gave away money to people in the church so he went to to families that didn't have money so his kids went without Christmas or got less of a Christmas I think that was that was really the the you know kind of the the focal point of you know really the give back and and helping other people out because Bob spent a lot of time and again I talk a lot about Bob but it really came together at his funeral well I heard people from all over the country come and talk about right and it wasn't three it was 30 yeah yeah and everybody had a great short story and it was like oh my gosh you know and I thought that is truly a legacy for his kids mean his kids are hearing this his grandkids and I was like that's the best legacy yeah you know so what do you think thanks for sharing that and uh you know I guess thanks for coming on board as a local facilitator uh the thinking nearest chapter is happy to have you on the team and and we've got a few seats open so if you're listening to this out there and uh turn in your application and we'll see if we can get you an introduction to Jeff Jensen yeah look forward to it thanks for appreciating so much Jeff and uh ta ta for now yeah thanks for listening to this episode of the LogExperience Podcast if you enjoyed this program share 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 belogueexperience.com to learn more and find our library of episodes until next time stay 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