EXPERIENCE 50 | Sean Nook, Founder and Owner-Operator of Black Bottle Brewery

This is Kurt Bear, your host for the local experience podcast. My guest for this episode was Sean Knuck. Sean is the founder and owner-operator at Blackbottle Brewery, which recently celebrated its ninth anniversary. Blackbottle was the very last business startup loan that yours truly funded before leaving a 15-year career in banking. So it's got a special place in my heart. Sean has grown a passion for home brewing into one of the city's favorite brew pubs. We talked about the challenges of managing the brewery through the pandemic. We reflected on the exciting earliest days of the business. And we discussed changes to the industry and the challenges of hiring and managing in today's labor economy, as well as his love for cool sneakers. 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 truth we can uncover, the better. You'll feel like you really know our guests after each episode, and if I'm doing my job well, listeners will find business principles and tips 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 5 to 15 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'd like to show a please subscribe, review, and share it with your favorite people. Welcome back to the local experience podcast. This is your host, Kirk Bear, and I'm joined today by Sean Nook, and Sean is the founder and owner operator at Blackbottle Brewery, which was the last business loan that I did when I was in banking. And so Sean, great to have you here today. Let's just talk about how things are at Blackbottle Brewery today. Well, thanks for getting that loan then. Nine years ago. Well, we're nine years old in December first, so. Okay. So it was before that, it was like 10 years ago. Yeah. So thanks. What was your question, how we're doing? How was Blackbottle Brewery? Yeah, I tell you, we played land. How many locations are you distributing through now, and how is your staff? How was, you know, just tell me about your job there. Well, it's been, it's been a nightmare. Not the whole time, but it's been terrible. COVID nation has been telling. Oh, yeah, even before that, we were kind of struggling a little bit. We were, we were making it. This is before COVID, and then COVID hit and it was a game changer. I mean, it's kind of crazy. Everyone has their own COVID story, but getting up, I don't remember the exact date, but March 12th or something. 12th, and then our 11th, getting up, having full staff, even though it was all over the news, heard it was coming, and then the next day, you come in and it's announced, and we had to let, we had that time, we had 30 employees. Okay. And tell, we told everyone, but like four, yeah, to go and then included me. So technically, kept three people, and we didn't like, keep them. It was just, yeah, and everyone didn't know it's going on as a nightmare. So where are you at today? Like are you back up to 20 people or something? Yeah, we're like 20, 22 maybe. Are you running the same kind of hours and shifts and stuff? No, we are not. We are closed Monday still. During COVID, we were closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and then we opened Mondays, but hiring's been nightmare. Let's get into that more as we unfold the story. But you remember when we met, I think Rayna Cesar introduced us, and you were an aspiring entrepreneur and an auto mechanic at Tynons, right? And so, talk to me about like that, that season in your life, when you were like, okay, gonna start talking to some bankers and go for this brewery idea. What that was fun? It talked to me about like, what that was in your family and like, how that came about? How many years did that idea of germinate for, that things like that? Well, we founded the company when I say we, I mean me, and when I say founded, basically got an EIN number in 2010. Okay. And then June, and I did it myself with no lawyer, and you just, you can literally just do it yourself. It's kind of funny. It's kind of weird, but you can just start a business without starting a business. Right. And then you can use that as like some tax benefits, which we did before, but there wasn't a lot. Anyways, just being, all right, so so you're applying like some home brew supplies and things like that? Yeah, and then we ended up writing a bunch of it off to, which was probably questionable on taxes. And I think actually, I had one tax, tax guy that was like, I think you shouldn't do your own taxes anymore. This is when I got a guy, because a couple of years I did, well, you can go back to, so I founded the company in 10, but you can go back and do some taxes from stuff you've had. You know, there's like a, I don't remember the tax term, but you can like restate your past taxes. Well, but also you researching development, R&D. All right. It's huge, and a lot of people don't take advantage of it, and I didn't even know about it. So I kind of added some old stuff into some new stuff and got this tax guy who was highly recommended, I think from Reino. Yeah, it could be. And he's like, all right, you can either, we can either amend your tax return or just see what will happen. This was over a decade ago. Right. And I'm like, let's just see what happens. So because I did my own taxes, I turbo-taxed the shit out of it, and it apparently I didn't do it right. But we had some nice returns because this work-a-day guy and you're starting to write off expenses for your home brewing and stuff with an eye toward doing a real, for real brewery. Yes, like how's, you had two little kids at the time, is that whatever? Not only one, one at that time. Ella, she's 14 now. Oh, and you have just one? No, two. Yeah, I thought so. Yeah. Okay. She wasn't born yet. Yeah. Wow. I get it. She's nine now. She's actually old as the brewery. We had her in October of 12 in October 4th, and we opened December 1st. So she's technically why we had a kid before we opened a brewery? I don't know. It just kind of happened. Yeah. Well, your wife is the same, obviously. Although we were trying, but it was the mess, the whole thing's the mess. Life's funny. If I would have done it any different, I don't know what I would have done different. Yeah. Except a lot of people just don't try. Yeah. And you know, try to do something different, and I decided to just do something. I mean, I don't know. I wouldn't just, obviously I figured out I wanted to do a brewery, but a lot of people don't know this. I tried to start an online clothing company, but not not fashion. Just cool teacher. It's funny. Just a teacher company. Okay. And I kind of still do that through the brewery. Sure. But what's funny is, go west. I shot out to go west here in Fort Collins. Yeah. They do all of our teachers to do a lot of brewery teachers as you probably know, but I was back I don't even know 2003. Okay. Four maybe or even earlier. So did you have like an online store? Yeah, I built it myself. You're like designing T-shirts and have a printer. Yeah, I designed T-shirts, even though I'm not a graphic designer, I still design them and then give them, and then they can vectorize it and then make a T-shirt. Sure. They still have a bunch of my old screens they call them. Okay. The original screens, they kept them all. And what were you doing? Like just funny stuff. Well, some of it was cool. I don't even know. Just funny stuff. What was your big cellar? Do you remember? Yeah, I'm going to tell you this is where I was going. It was Is that my Google music thing plan? I'm going to go take care of that. Yeah. So the misfits, yeah, or something I think came on. Yeah, sorry about that. I'm not sorry, but he's sorry. Sorry, so anyways, the T-shirt, their best style you asked, and I also sold them eBay, but I also started my own website. It kind of got me into like the business field. We're not talking a lot of revenue. Right. Like a hundred T-shirts was your big cellar. Yeah, like is not a lot, but it's still with a full-time job and doing it all from scratch. I think I had like a Google website. Sure. Something that you actually was, I think it was Yahoo or something. It was you just put it was all, it was like one of the first template. Do you have any products put them in? Yeah, but it actually, it was not bad. Okay. And back then, like I didn't want to, you know, I didn't have a credit card, a real credit card press answer, which to this day, people still use like Google, or excuse me, PayPal, Sure, cart, but that was kind of like when it was getting underway. So I used that and then you'd like figure out shipping. It was like a lot of work to like figure out that end of it. It was like that was foreign territory, but eBay I was used to. I used to sell shit tennis stuff on eBay. It just random stuff. Like before, that was my first entrepreneurial, like selling old stuff. I'm a sneaker head. Okay. A lot of people don't know that about me. Yeah. I have like 400 sneakers. Did you trade them selling by? No, I'm not that bad. You just collect them. Although I was during my homebrew days, I'm going to get back to the t-shirt thing, but on my homebrew days, I was a part of this was during, right when Facebook came out. Sure. My space was still around. I think it still is around. It's for music now, I guess. I don't even know. But there was this sneaker head community kind of like Instagram for sneaker guys. Yeah. And it was called Sneaker City. Okay. So you'd show up pictures of your cool stuff. You had your own profile and then you would post your pictures of your sneakers so we get creative and you could do it like I had these wheat bands when I say wheat, I mean the wheat color. Okay. And I put a bunch of bolted wheat in the picture. Anyhow, it's super nerd alert. So a lot of people don't know that one, I am a sneaker head two that I collect sneakers. I'm not as bad as some people. I don't know if you know much about true sneaker heads. I saw like a date line special. Well, they'll buy what say it's like Nike or Jordan 3's retro. They'll buy like whatever they can find. Okay. Like 30 pairs or whatever. Yeah, but it doesn't even it's not their size. They'll just buy them and then hold on to and then flip them. Like I'm a different I'm a different version of a sneaker head. I buy my size and I actually wear them and I piss the pisses off a lot of sneaker heads. Like I'll buy Jordan ones in wear them and most people don't do that. You just put them in a box. Right. Right. And then they'll shrink wrap them and then they might display them but I'm a different version. I I'm obsessed. You'd appreciate your sneakers instead. I depreciate them. You use them as they're supposed to be used. Yeah, I depreciate them. I appreciate them, but I depreciate them. Right. The paradox of life, right? You can't really appreciate them without depreciating them. Yeah, that's funny. Most people don't know that. Like it's a good question to ask in these. Is it something that someone doesn't know something that nobody knows about you? Yeah, I mean, most people do. We spend a lot of time together. But it's not Nike's specifically. I'm a huge band fan. I've got all kinds, all kinds of different sneakers. It's not just a lot of sneaker, guys, or just because a lot of Nike's are valuable. Right. And I think it's interesting. There's like a whole culture. You can make living off that shit now. That's what I hear. Yeah. So out of these 400 pairs, have you worn most all of them then? And so I don't wear them all, but like you would think my wife would say, I don't wear them at all. Right. And she's probably right. But I still, I wear them more than like most sneaker heads. And I don't hang out in a sneaker head club. But someday when Grapashan is passed and gone, your daughter's kids will be like, hey, we could sell Grapashan's sneaker clothes. Yeah, especially if like take care of them. Right. But my thing is I wear them. I mean, I don't wear them like you think, but I, but I clean them too. Like I have cleaning kits and I just bought my daughter, my youngest daughter, another pair of Air Force ones, which are popular with females right now. I used to not be any how like an Ikea Air Force ones. Yes. Okay. But it's really popular like my 14-year-old has a pair, my nine-year-old is into them and I just bought her a new pair. If I had a boy, my wife so happy because I would be screwed just buying him all these awesome shoes. Right. I mean, I just bought some shoes today for you. Yes. And you'll wear some DCs. But anyhow, I got a little distracted, but that's an interesting fact. I want to circle back before I forget with the T-shirt company. It was called, I registered it with the IRS. Okay. I had my own EIN number because I was trying to buy bulk shirts, the blanks. Sure. Yep. And what's funny is nowadays, you can buy, you don't need that. By the way, I'm right here. You don't need to yell. Oh, it's, I'm yelling. No, not really, but this is hot talk. Yeah, I know. It's funny. Just sit back. It's cool. No, I'm teasing. You're good. I, well, it's my ears. We here, check this out. I'll turn down your volume. Oh, wait, turn up. No, you want to turn my turn it up. Yeah, turn your ears up so you don't. Well, it's like when you have headphones on your screen. Yeah. But that's just how I talk. Yeah. Your director. Where are we? Oh, you're disruptive. We were, we were talking about like homebrew season. No, no, I was on a roll. Okay. T-shirt company, EIN numbers, buying T-shirts and bulk. Yeah, you don't need that anymore. You back then, you could buy, right, you might find some stuff on eBay. You know, and you don't know where it's from. But now you can buy bulk. You don't need the wholesale. Yeah, whatever you want. You can get the same price as like go West could get. I mean, they could probably get a little bit of a better deal, but you could get, you can get a bulk. So anyways, I started. It was called the T-shirt company was called Irrational Development. Okay. And then we abbreviated it ID. And it was pretty cool. Like the logo I designed, it just a lower case I and a D. And I still have some of those shirts at home. Okay. Because I, you know, when you print them, you don't print one. And you can do that online, but not through the company. Yeah. What's really ironic, though, is they kept all the screens. And what I mean by screens is, you know, the stuff that they use, to make it they keep, like this, this they stole. Yeah. They'll stow this for later use. Oh, it's a block bottle. I thought that was like, uh, that's an interesting shirt you're wearing today. Yeah. What's, we don't need to go into detail because it might be some sensitivity there. But, um, why? Because it's a, it's a skull wearing a head dress. Yeah. As head dresses are bad for skulls to wear. Like the Indians. I don't know. I, I really think, um, oh, is it like Indian art is really cool. Yeah. Native American. Yeah. Cause if you say Indian, it could mean a ton of things. Native American art has always been really cool to me. And we actually sell not just this t-shirt, but we sell, you know, we do mix, you've been in, we do mix and match, uh, art from all over to the country in the world. The most we've ever sold is, you know, random artists, but it's, um, Native American themed in a lot of them are from Native American artists. Okay. Not all of it. But it's one of our top selling genres. Fair enough. Of wall art. So talk to me about your t-shirt. Like, what's that supposed to signify? This is cool. Is it like, I like skull art. Yeah. And then what's cooler than a head dress on a skull? It's not like mourning the death of the Washington Redskins or anything like that. No, and it's just the Washington football team. Yes. Yes. No. And the sensitivity in the world is, I get Native American since Davey. I get all of it, but I'm not after anybody. Right. I got. And we're not too inappropriate. I got asked to cancel myself recently on, uh, there was a Donald Trump Jr. got scolded for selling a new t-shirt. And you would, you would like this since we're on a t-shirt topic. And it was, uh, guns don't kill people. Alec Baldwin kills people. Oh, Jesus. That's funny. And I shared that I was like, this is kind of funny. All right. Wait, who came up with this? Well, it was Donald Trump Jr's website. And so they were like calling him, you know, a terrible person for like demonizing this scene. But all right. But it's funny. You know, it's funny. If you're a teenage kid and you wear a shirt that says guns don't kill people, Alec Baldwin kills people and you wear that to class, people are like, oh, that's funny. I think it's funny. I, I get the sensitivity now, but I think we are, we, I don't know who we is, but we are in a different world. And it's insane because I remember some of the shit from like late 80s, 90s that we used to wear. And I mean, what doesn't make sense is we're still in the t-shirt thing and humor. Don't have a cow man. Bart Simpson t-shirts were banned when I was in grade school. What the fuck is that? What just don't have a cow even me? Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's just Bart Simpson. It was his line from the show and it was banned in junior highs and high schools. Yeah. Cause back then it was junior high in, in, in Puder R1. Yeah. I mean, I remember I wore one anyways and got sent home or I did my mom had to come anyways or do you know what? I did it anyways. Because my mom didn't even know I put it underneath a shirt and took it off. You know, I've always, I've always, they said no. Yeah, right? Right. I've always put, been that way even back then though. I didn't really get it. I still don't get it. How that shirt was bad and then I, you know what I mean? Like what's, what's going on in this world? I mean, this was in the 80s. Right. And if you watch any 80s movie, like right now if you go back, I mean they talk about gays. Oh, yeah. There's in sexual like the womanizing women. It was totally fine. You know, like, right then I'm not saying it's fine. I'm saying all these movies. And then now, I mean, then you couldn't wear a Bart Simpson shirt that said don't have a cow. So how was it? Like, doesn't make sense. You and me are kind of, and this is kind of jumping ahead into the program. Yeah. Fair. 80 HD, I think. It's the same thing. Oh, okay. But, but we say things without necessarily thinking through the consequences of them. And it does that, is that like scary now? Like, you're a business owner. You stand to get canceled too, right? It is scary, but I, I think I've grown up and finally I'm 41. I don't know. I think, I think it still make really dumb decisions and say stupid things out of context where it's a more of a joke and people just don't get it. Yeah. And now I have to be extra careful about joking, I guess, but at the same time, stuff that we'd said and did, like we have a beer called flusy in the city. Yeah. Called us, well, they called it the city council. Oh, called or a member of the city council called. And I won't name any names, but it's not hard to figure out. Was it really? No, no. Okay. Ray M. Yeah. No. Someone else called this was, this is after we won. Sorry, I'm yelling, but I'm not after we won what you got canceled for that. Some bitches and stitches. Well, there's a lot. Bitches get stitches. Yes. That was amazing beer. It was sour. It was one of the first beers we opened with. And some people were offended by it, but by the time they drank it and understood the context, it didn't mean females. Right. Totally. I mean, and now you could never do that. Right. And we did it and we didn't get shut down that like we did no one team canceled, but you definitely caught some. Yeah, but we just stopped using it. But the city council threatened to shut us down because there's this rule. And it's actually complete bullshit. They're using a stiff arm technique. And they basically said PDA was a one of silver metal at the Great American Brewfest. We called it panty dropper ale. Yeah. At that time. And we abbreviated it. We always called it PDA. When I was in high school, even girls, we used to be like, Hey, did you get that PDA like when we wouldn't, you know, underage got alcohol. And what that meant was sweet, like a sweet beer or or sweet wine or something that you would drink and you drank more than you realized. And yeah, it was well, it wasn't a good idea. It was just it wasn't necessarily the best term for it, but it was easy drinking and no offense back then. A lot of the girls, you know, I'm still friends with they wanted something sweeter, right? That's what it meant. Totally. Plus its name, you know, panty dropper ale or panty dropper is what it's called, but panty dropper ale. So I named that that beer. And then it was too long. So we just abbreviated it. So when we entered it at the Great American Beer Fest, I think this was 2015. Probably. We just entered it as PDA. Not to hide it. It's just too long. Yeah. And then the description we put what it was. And then I'll never forget I was standing next to the head brewer of Brooklyn, brewing company and they entered their triple and they didn't even metal and we got silver. That was the to this day, getting a silver metal with our triple Belgian triple. Yeah. It's still the greatest achievement we've had. I mean, that's like the Olympics for people out there that don't really understand the Great American Beer Fest. It's the most competitive hardest competition there is for my world. Yeah. So that was huge. And there was a ton of entries. I mean, I don't remember, but there was at least 170 entries. And it's just judges, right? And then it's all judging base. It's just like the Olympics. It's all perception and personal judging. They don't like, it's individually judged too. It's like real judging. You know, it's yeah. We didn't pay them or something like that. It's like a real thing. Anyhow, that one and then we meddled before that too. My dad's beer. Oh, yeah. Prior Chuck, but I don't want to, I want to finish this thought. You and I together can just go on and on and on. It's true for people out there. It's been more entertaining and less annoying when I wasn't on a microphone with you, but yeah, we definitely chase gravitrails and we can do that. I'll grasp my man to live keeping the story on track because I'm the host. All right. I feel like I'm helping you. So you won PDA? Yeah. And then it was big news because that year, I think only like, was that like me too? Basically PDA? No, it was before me too. Oh, lucky you. No, shit. But it was kind of the beginning. And then I think only other three other breweries and forecalls meddled that year, us being one of them. I don't remember exactly, but it wasn't a big weekly forecalls has not stepped up. Right. You know, because I know you you kind of pay attention to that. Anyways, so that was kind of cool. And then I was sober. Like I was on cloud nine. And like a couple weeks later. And of course, the paper, the Colorado and my favorite. They are the best paper. Right. They put it on there. Like they put everyone that won even other, like, leveling hats on and shit like that. And then I get a call from a particular member of the board of the city council. Okay. And nothing to the paper. This is the city. And they're like, we're calling to give you a heads up. And he kept using we, even though it was right. Why don't you say this person? I don't feel comfortable. Okay. It's cool. I can tell you on a break. Okay. No, I wouldn't care. Anyhow. Do you think this personal listen? No. Okay. But somebody that knows him might squeal. So it's cool. That's not even that. It's Kelly. No. You know, you know, you don't know. I'm sure I don't. So they call and said what? So it calls me and he's being all nice. Just talking to me about like how things are going. And I'm like, this is weird. And I haven't talked to this guy in a while because he was trying to get me to rent some of his properties him and his family's properties. Yeah. He was a hint. I think I just haven't figured out. And then, um, I'm like, you know, this is strange and new. There was more. And I didn't even realize he was on the city council that he told me. And he's like, um, you know, trying to get down to business. Um, we, you know, kept saying we don't want you using this name. And I'm like, what name? And then he's like, PDA. And I'm like, well, it's abbreviation. What's the problem? And he's like, it stands for panty dropper ale. And I'm like, it does. But, you know, we don't really use that anymore. Yeah. We, even on our beer list, because it's too long. No, on our menu. Yeah. Just PDA. I mean, it still means what it means. And it's like, it's just not appropriate anymore. And actually, the city council can shut you down based off of morals. It's some rule. The horn. I'm going to, yeah, this is the exciting part. Fluzzy is the same. Yeah. So he asked me to shut down Fluzzy too. And we did. And we brought it back because to me, that's like, if you call a beer and asshole, like, what's the difference? Right. If you look up the word Fluzzy, that means promiscuous. Yeah. Fear doesn't make people Fluzzy sometimes. They just are well in town pump. But I was talking to my dad a few, gosh, probably six or 12 months ago. And he was telling a story about somebody that he grew up with, the daughter of this person over it. He's like, oh, she's kind of the town pump. Town pump totally means that. Right. It's the same as a Fluzzy. It's the worst, probably. It's worse. It's like the town bicycle. People don't, I know. And they've had that forever. No one says shit because I think people are ignorant too. Probably. But I didn't know I didn't have any idea. Oh, I knew that's what I meant. Anyways, the City Councilman at that time, I think he's still on the board, but he tells me you can't we can, if you don't change it, he was threatening me straight up. If you don't change it, we can shut you down this law. Like this, it's a moral law because poor Collins is kind of hold on you way wrong. Oh, really? You can't, they don't have the authority to do that. First of all, I'm pretty sure the City Council can't just do something. Period because they want to. It has to go through approval, but he was saying there's some law where they can shut you down on moral ethics. And in Colorado, you're protected by a state, even though we're governed by the city. Yeah, home real charter. We are. First of all, freedom of speech. I mean, that's not even the point of this, but that's one of it. That's our amendment rights. For sure. We have the right to refuse service to anyone in the state of Colorado. And we can be biased. I mean, I am not a racist. And I know when people say that, that means that they usually are. I mean, I'm being serious. I'm just, this is explaining the story. Hold on. You could have a sign saying no, like no Jews, no white people allowed. No end words, whatever. Yeah. No, no, no people allowed in my business. And I could plaster signs on the outside of my business. And that is my legal right in Colorado. You're says hippies use the back door. Yeah, but they can still come in. Yeah, I go. It's kind of a joke. Yeah, it is a joke. Um, hippie just means hips is a short term name for hipsters. You think? It is. I think of hipsters and hippies being way different. Back then hippies were hipsters. Right. Back then they were. But now hipsters are all like they play. Oh, and they have little hats. They invented short skinning jeans. Right. All that. Like those are the hipsters. Yeah. But that's hip hippies short for hipster. Huh. Interesting. From back in the days, 60s, 70s, whatever we'll have started in the 50s. But anyways. So they tried to threaten me, but in Colorado, you can literally refuse service to anyone. And it's actually a really good law. And I don't mean that you have to post a sign in your business. And then you also can protest in Colorado. You, you and 500 people could go in front of our business. I mean, I could call the cops because it's private property. Right. But if the legal right to protest, and then you have a legal right to freedom of speech, you also can. So in Colorado too, you can fire anybody without any kind of warrant. Sure. Yeah. It's, it's kind of a lot of people right to work state. Yeah. People. Yeah. Thank you. People talk shit about Colorado. Laws and stuff like that. And far as I'm concerned, it's it's cool. But I actually ended up bringing this up to, so we did. We changed the name. We just call it Belgian triple now. Really? Yeah. I buckled. Oh, makes me sad. It does. I also didn't know as much then. And when a city councilman calls, plus when you have a, you know, a business that's kind of pushing the limits. Yeah. Sometimes. And you know, I'm not asking for it. It's a lot easier to push back when you have a saving account full of money. That's true. And we're also trying to get our name out. I mean, it wasn't that long ago. But still, I just didn't, you know, I didn't know as much either. And by ended up talking to the people that matter, the liquor, the liquor authority and for cons, the worst, the person that approves our liquor license, basically. Yeah. And she was so pissed. Oh, really? And this member actually ended up calling. But before he talked to me, right, calling her and being like, are you aware of this? Yeah, has. Are you aware of these names? Interesting. This brewery has. And she's like, yeah, there's no problem. And then, well, I don't know what she said exactly. She told me, like, you're wasting my time, not me that he was wasting her time, basically. Yeah. And then he still reached out to me. And then I told her that he reached out to me. And she was so mad. And she's like, next time, if that happens again, get a hold of me. She's like, you could have got a hold of your lawyer and made this go away. Well, not even just go away. I could have pushed other shit against this. I was being pushed into a corner when I didn't deserve it. That's one of the interesting things about being like a public figure, right? Is you kind of get pushed around a little bit? Or your public figure that gets, oh, yeah, your public figure that abuses that power too. Right. Oh, yeah. And this family is very well known and wealthy, really wealthy. And one of them happens to be on the board. I mean, I still have not forgotten this that experience. Yeah. But I'm a family man. We're a kid friendly place. You know, kids aren't buying beer. I can say whatever. I mean, we don't have, right? Fuck you, mother fucker on the window. And you're not selling panty dropper ale as a date ripe drug. No, it's a beer. It's a beer that you will like. And then we need to just call it PDA. And then there's other breweries all over the country, even right in loveland, that this time, I don't know, open but big beaver. Oh, yes. It's terrible. Whiskey dick, partner. Her stage name was Amber. That's terrible. So I'm going to bring us back. That's fine. I'm just telling you, I'm going to bring us all the way back to when you were like launching Blackbottle Brewery. This episode is sponsored by Loco Think Tank. Loco Think Tank provides peer collaboration for business owners. We build smart, safe places to help business leaders navigate every stage with a business journey. And we love what we do and who we do it with. Our model features gift back minded business veterans and the role of Loco facilitators. We're always looking for abundance minded individuals to add to our membership facilitator team, local community, or to feature on this podcast listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of Loco Think Tank get their sixth month of membership for free. Just mention the Loco Experience Podcast on your application. To learn more, visit our website at locothinktank.com. That's l-o-c-o-thinktank.com. Ever, including JVF, we have a video of it. If you go to our YouTube page, Blackbottle's YouTube, pages a video of it. I mean, it was miles long. I mean, not even kidding. I mean, miles is big, but yes, but hundreds and hundreds of people long. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to exaggerate a little bit, but it was so far, it was from one side to the all the way to the other. And it was awesome. That's a really good feeling when you're starting out, especially being next to big breweries too. I get when breweries are new. Right. That kind of popular. But we just crushed it. We killed it. And then that was a voting. And what did you have? Did you have bitches? Wait, a p-d-a? Okay. Just a minor threat. Oh, yeah. Blackbuckets, which we have done before. Oh, yeah. I liked that one. It's a half-pointer, half-pino-no-war, barrel-aged sour. That was delicious, especially. Wait, one more. I can't remember. Which is funny. Actually met our head brewer there. Oh, really? At the time. And he wasn't the head brewer. Then, obviously, he just moved here and was trying to get a job. And he stood in our ridiculous line. And he thought it was pretty cool and we ended up hiring him later. But anyhow, so people voted. There's no way in hell anyone was even remotely close. So we went, so they had like a paint buckets. We had so many votes like a paint bucket with a slit. Okay, yep. And you... It was like overflowing all these buckets. Or did they give us multiple buckets? And then there's a brewery at people now in Loveland called... Loveland aleworks? Oh, probably. Oh, okay. And so they had won the last two years. Okay. Before and there's no way in hell anyone was going to beat us. Oh, so they raised hell because they were like... Well, they didn't raise hell. They were helping the counting of these chips. And I wasn't watching it. I was like having a good time. I was a little tipsy hanging out with everybody. I mean, we're like, I mean, it was cool to win. They gave you like a trophy and stuff. It was cool to win. I'm like, we got that shit in the bag. There's no way. Right. They had like 50 people in their line and we had like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people over the time. Right. Well, we ended up getting second. Okay. And I'm like, okay, whatever. Like I'm like, this that was obviously rigged. I mean, it was so obvious. I mean, I'm not just saying that like to you because I'm just better. If you were there, there's no... It had been like, this is bullshit. Yeah. So what happened? I come to find out. You know, I know it's in Loveland, but I grew up here. I know people everywhere. And my really good friend's wife, who was a firefighter, wife was involved and Graham was so pissed they grabbed. They took ours and dumped them in their pile in front of these people and they're like, these were ours. This is bullshit. Encanted. And then they won. It was so stupid. Lost a lot of respect that day. Yeah. And there's no cameras. There's no proof. The only proof I have is somebody that absolutely trust said they took our votes. So anyhow, we got second. It didn't matter. People remembered us. It was great. Yeah. Honestly, it was one of the coolest experiences and we weren't even open. Yeah. Yeah. And the state was had no clue. And there was even the brew fest later, you were like one of the handles at choice city jellies place or something like that. I think I remember. Oh, we also did the brew fest illegal. Yeah. That what you mean? Yeah. Yeah. Now again, the city did the four that's that was Loveland. This one was four columns. We were we had our own via we were we had our own beers in the VIP tent and we were involved with choice city. Right. And we that we packed that whole place and people were just the line was like all the way out the VIP down the street. It was awesome. And we weren't even supposed to be there. They just are like zero on voice. It was great to get known before you open for sure. Like you couldn't pay for that. So let me shift a little bit to like you had all this pre-open publicity and really a lot of action and things and but like you've only got a relatively small production house right. Like we're tiny if you really think about it. Right. And so you can only deliver to so many handles. You can only you know, you can only stay relevant for so long and stuff. And like oh yeah, we had to work at that. Yeah. So it's still tough. Right. Is your location like like what we just say about it seems like the pandemic has changed so many things. It has we it changed our model. We backed. We actually quit doing liquor stores. Really? We don't we haven't quit. You don't can anymore, Bob? No. No, we do just for home. Really? Bob, when you almost lose your business. Yeah. If you look at your numbers, people that are doing that, it's a form of advertising unless you're huge. And even when you're big, you're still you're making pennies on the dollars per case like really? So selling selling cases of bottle beer to liquor stores. It's not a way to make any money. No, you make money, but it's more of you don't make very much. Okay, so I don't even want to like get too nerdy, but you have you have A, B and C. You make money at home. However, B, you you know, bottles cans draft at home. You're not you're not selling. Let's say that's a B. You sell draft out. Self or through a distributor. And then C, you're selling bottles or cans, you know, packaged or bombers, whatever. Not draft. See that's liquor stores. Or through your distributor. Right. And they put it in liquor stores. It literally goes A, most money, B, way lower, but more money. And then C, way low. So if you sell a six pack of good beer at A, you liquor is down the street from my house, which I'm not even sure if they carry your thing, but they don't know, but they use you. But they might sell it for $9.99. They pay you six bucks for it, maybe, or they pay their distributor six bucks for it, maybe, and your distributor pays you four bucks for it. So the six packs we're talking, that's a case of beer. $9.99 or a case of beer. Yep. We sell it. Our distributor pays us 20 depending on the beer, like 28 bucks. Okay. For a case. All right. And then the distributor sells it to the liquor. So that's like seven bucks. No, no, no, no, we you get seven bucks a piece, 28 bucks for a case. We bear, but then that doesn't even cover, but barely covers, but you're delivering. Yeah, that's what we make, but that's not what we're making, because then you're going to get what it costs, right, because you're delivering the box. If you forget about labor and all that stuff, yeah, we will make like six, seven bucks to the distributor buys it for six or seven and then sell it. The business to be is a distributor, not a liquor store and not the supplier. The distributor doesn't do anything except store it and deliver it. Right. I mean, they would kill me if I said that, but that's what they do. I don't think it would kill you. No, they would get mad. Yeah, I don't. That's just part of that's probably nobody will listen to this. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't matter, though, but they don't, but still you get six bucks. That's the business. Yeah. The liquor store gets eight bucks and the distributor gets the middle. No, no, no, no, no, we get 28 bucks. Well, for a case, that's not bad. That's seven bucks to six pack, right? It's terrible. Well, compared to so I can tell you, oh yeah, because a six pack is basically the same as a growler, right? And so, yeah, so if you sell it through the handle, well, even a growler sucks for us, but we still make money because it's at home. There's no middleman. The business to be in is a distributor. They don't make it liquor stores literally because they sell, I didn't tell you that part. They sell, okay, we buy it for, they give us 28, 27 bucks or whatever, right? Okay. For four six packs. Yep. And then it goes to the distributor and they can sell it for whatever we all, you know, it's basically 40 bucks because $9.99, right? Sure. We'll just simplify it. So, so 28 to 40. The liquor store is only making like 50 cents. So they buy six pack. Are those six packs owned by the distributorship then? No, no, they sell it to liquor store, but but they sell it for the liquor store, but they sell it for 35 bucks. Yeah. And the liquor store sells it for 40. Yeah, like they're making interesting. Oh, that's why liquor stores have so much volume. It's all volume. The business to be in and everyone's like, well, no, it costs so much to be a distributor. Okay. You have trucks, you have storage, and then you have, you know, people, people, people cost more. Every business has people. So I'm not counting that. It's, they don't, they're not making anything. Yeah. No, no, like they don't make the product. Right. They make money, hands over fists, and a lot of time they get a ton of kickback too. So like we'll work with high country on some stuff, and if they sell a bunch of it, we like pay their employees more. On top of what they get paid, we'll, we'll do like a, uh, uh, like kicker rubes on some kind of thing. Like a spiff. Yeah. And then like, coolers, if they sell a bunch of money, coars will be like, you guys were the top two in the nation. Here's $500,000 bonus, like ridiculous. Right. So they can compete with that. No, like this makes so much money. You can make money though with a distributor. We were stupid and we got a distributor because we thought it would be better and easier in state or in our town or in Larimer County. Sure. To have a distributor and it's, it was a dumbest idea I ever had. Really? Except getting your feet in the door. It was good at first. So would you like to self distribute if you could? Yeah, but we can't because I have to pay to get out. Right. Um, and who knows, but that's gonna cost. But um, you, it wasn't all bad though because you have to think about it in this way. You spend money on advertising, especially when you're first opening, you should, it was really good advertising because we were a lot of places really quickly. Right. Like more than most people that just started. Yeah, you had a lot of handles. So that helped bring business in quickly. And then now we've been around where we're officially when I say nine December 1st is nine, but you know, as you know, we were already, we were rolling the summer before that. Sure. And I was doing marketing like we did that blacklisted. I was selling blacklisted memberships, which we're going to go and sell a couple weeks. Fair enough. You can get them online or at the pub. Um, I don't know if you remember I was doing promotions and had people film videos of why they should win. And I did a thousand dollar gift card and people filmed funny ass videos of like why they should be blacklisted. It was a genius marketing plus the paper bought on to it. When we opened, we had a line all the way at prospect from where we're at. The day we opened really. I mean, that was cool. I wasn't around. It wasn't. I'm not that cool. That was the only time though. Yeah. Well, but you had, oh no, we've been busy before. We're still comparatively speaking from my friends in the industry. We're, we still do all right, but you know, it's, it's been a lot of work to get to where we're at. And to be honest, it never stops. You got to keep us in your ass. So talk to me about like, do you want to be something different than you are right now? No, I want to do what we're doing now. And then I want to open another place, but not distribute. Just have our own beers. Um, I'll always do guest taps. I love that. Yeah. You know, and other people's and then liquor and wine, but do like black bottle burger. Yeah, to brew on site to be able to do that. Is that right? Yeah, but I can brew at this location in salad. You can move back and forth. Yeah. So black bottle burger. Right. It's one of my ideas. And then like, and then one other. And then I don't know where, but, you know, not too far away, but you know, mix it up. My, my youngest wants to do black bottle balls. Do you know what? No, just everything you can do meatballs. This was her idea. That's not balls. But well, right? I'm not sure. I know. I'm really nine. So I'm not. I thought I was funny because you're trying to rhyme black bottle balls. But that's not the idea. The idea, you know, it could, it could be a bone. So it doesn't have to bounce out some brewery. We're not going to do black bottle balls. But, but black bottle burger. I've put a lot of thought into it. Yeah. Yeah. And make a pretty good burger. And we don't do it at the brewery. And then you do like, it doesn't have to rhyme, but like black bottle pizza. I think it'd be cool to do niche places. Not do all in one. I think niching is better. And I'm usually on top of the curve when it comes to like ideas of like trend, you know, like music cities right by us. They do really well. We're just doing chicken. Right. Just stick to what you're good at. You know, I would like to switch what we're doing at the brewery now or get a hood. We're working on that. We don't have a lot of people even know that. I know you do, but it'll improve ticket times when we're really busy. No. Which would help. Oh my god. You're just waiting for this unhooded cooking device to actually do his job. Yeah. Like when we're really busy, we could take on so much more volume. And we're tiny, but we could do it. And we're lucky and busy in that. I mean, it's tiny. It's like big. It's a little bit bigger in your office. Right. You've been there. The kitchen's about the size of my office. Yeah. Like the room. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Um, it's just amazing. We were really, we're really blessed and I need to be able to expand on that. But I'm also I'm content. If COVID ever happened and I stopped distributing out, I would be pretty happy with what we have, except, you know, eventually upgrading the kitchen, but COVID, which we haven't, we talked about, but um, we're about $1,500 a Friday and a 1,500 a Saturday and then like a thousand on a Sunday a weekend. That's down down your phone. And we don't have any regulations right now, except now we have masks, but we don't have that. But basically what you said down, you can take your mask off. Well, even, but you're just not popular. Our people are changed. Now it's COVID. Yeah. No, it's not the same. You're right. Although we have, what's really cool is I've noticed we have the same, we have a following, but it's not always the same people all the time. It kind of goes like we'll go through regulars, but then they come back. Yeah. I kind of, it's kind of cool because it's not always the same people. Sometimes it's been the same people for a long time. Your anchors kept you together? No, I wouldn't say that. I just, there's the same people that are, there's some people that have like always came, which is cool that you can say that because dude, even I like get sick of shit. Right. I mean, good beer is good beer, but luckily that's the other thing we have a variety. COVID has was hard though. We're still not back to what we our variety was before. I mean, we have guest taps, but I'm talking about our own. Yeah. We're still not back. Yeah, for a long time, you were like the most imaginative, brilliant town. Yeah, when we also have the most variety. Right. Odell started to get way more, Odell only had like 15 or 16 taps. They have upgraded that. Right. And I like to take credit for some of that stuff. And I mean, even New Belgium, it looks like they have a shit ton, but if you look, it's like the same stuff spread out. Yeah, they've got like eight new things spread over four taps. Yeah, it's not as big as people think just because the tap rooms are massive. Yeah, yeah. But it's tough to be remain relevant like you brought that up. The best way for me to do that is just through the beer. And it's tough doing that when you're almost closing. Yeah, fair enough. Mike, worst time ever. And so let's talk about that. Like we started talking about the COVID early on and like the challenges for that in your business. Like, talking about that worst time ever. Well, a lot of people heard through, you know, like the news, the Colorado and picked it up. Your favorite friends. I don't know. Let me tell you like some other time. They picked it up. Denver Business Journal, like Denver Post, like all kinds of outlets. Which was cool about this time. Most of them reached out, but anyhow, we COVID hit and we had to file chapter 11. And if anyone knows what that is, it's technically it's for large businesses, but the legislation changed before COVID. And they designed a chapter. I'm not trying to bore everybody, but they designed a chapter 11 sub five, which is really cool. It's basically a chapter 11 for small businesses. So like a reorganization of debts rather than a discharge? Yeah, or or there's a discharge involved, but it's not a lot of people will file bankruptcy to protect their personal assets. And it's a protection thing. We didn't do it for protection. We forced reorganization of debt. Right. Well, basically, if I would, like, you were leveraged up because you had a young brewery, you were growing, you were scaling, and you had a lot of debt. You buy your partners out too early, too early, probably saved the family, but COVID made it impossible for you to even potentially pay your debts. Yeah, it was the nail in the coffin. Things were kind of getting sticky. We were making it. And then one day, like we talked about, I think we talked about earlier, we were at work and then the next day, you're close. Everybody was gone, and we were close. Right. So what are you supposed to do with that? Right. And then guess what happens? The government doesn't call all of your, your phone bill, your internet bill, your, your mortgage fee, your lease, keg lease fee. We don't call all of them and say, hey, we're pausing everything. Right. All those bills are due. So what the fuck are people supposed to do? So what's funny? Nobody at first, everybody was freaking out. I'm talking about all these other companies that we just mentioned, including my landlord, shit like that. No one wanted to believe it. They thought it would be done in a month. Do you remember that? Totally. Yeah, six weeks to I heard a month to six weeks. Wow, that didn't happen. What's funny though, the only people that worked with us, besides my landlord, my landlord basically put three months on the end of our lease. So that was cool, but it's, it's that wasn't free. Right. He just extended it. So what's saying ended in such and such time he added three months to that was Comcast. The fucking worst company was ever the hero, like the stickler or the most stickler company. Everyone knows the most anal retentive company. Everyone loves or hates Comcast, but they have to use it. Like if unless you have something powerful, which we don't like, we have no internet service at the brewery that can handle what we need. They gave us like two, three months. Nice. I mean, what? Even Verizon, our business account, they're like, oh, we're gonna work with you. I'm like, okay, what are you gonna do? And they're like, nothing really. We're just not gonna shut you off. Right, you could owe us. Yeah, for a long time. I'm like fucking things. So talk about the bankruptcy. So anyhow, you were kind of over your tips a little bit, maybe. Yeah, we were, well, we we we we always tried to grow fast and and be bigger than we were. I'll admit that. Yeah. And from the outside, it always looked good unless people knew. Some of the moves we made actually worked. When you were still at the bank, you mentioned this. You guys actually did an equipment loan. Yeah. After our loan and that loan actually made sense. Yeah. And we paid it off. And that was never an issue. The biggest thing that I did that was the issue is buying out our part, our original partners. And that wasn't an issue to the family. Well, but it created cash flow. That was good for you. Over $500,000. Right. At one time. Right. And it was a huge cash flow issue after that. And it saved the family. And I'm not going to lie. It was my wife's dad and her, his best friend kind of best friend. And shit got weird. And at that point, I'm like, I'm not living with this. And they feel okay. No. Everything's fine. I saved the day. Right. But almost lost the business. Right. Because besides the growth that we already had in the bills we had from that, I just literally added like $600,000 bill. That's right. That had it wasn't it didn't do anything. It didn't generate revenue. Right. It was just another bill, huge bill a month. So and we got a loan for that. This is like a list with a ton of it too much leverage. Yeah, we were way over fucked. We were fucked. And we were still making it and doing it and your cash flow was okay. Well, no, it was at first. And then it started cash flows started to go to shit because if you we weren't increasing because you got to remember that was 2016. What was going on in the industry? Brewers weren't weren't slowing down. Brewers were growing. Right. Brewers were multiplying. Competition was increasing. Increasing like 10 fold. Right. I mean tons. And we were we were the 10th brewery 8th craft brewery. There's some shit like that. I don't know. We weren't we weren't even near. You were early stage relatively. We were after funk works. Yeah. So if you're from here, you know, like, you know, we're still in that top 10 OG. Yeah, we're OGs. And we are. And and I'll be honest too. I'm not trying to avoid the bankruptcy. We made a bunch of mistakes too that got us not just buying partner party. Buying partners always sounds like the best idea. I already told you guys are you we weren't financially ready for that. Yeah. Physically and emotionally. Yes. It needed to happen. It needed to happen. And I took the risk because no matter what, I wasn't going to destroy families. Right. They wouldn't just been my wife and I in relationship. They would have got screwed. It would have been her and her dads and all that. So there was the bankruptcy or excuse me, the buying out. And then we were kind of over leverage like any growing young company. And then all of a sudden, overnight, 10 of the breweries opened in four cons. Yeah, in 12 months anyway. Like seriously. Yeah. And 2016 was the largest month or year for brewery growth in United States. I mean, it was almost doubled in in 12 months. Like not just for Collins, the United States. Right. It was insane. So prices went up, supply and demand, everything went up. Right. Just like how it has. Right. Like all of a sudden, nobody could like, I remember you used a dairy company to like plumb your place. Yeah. Even because demand was in excess of supply. There weren't really companies that did brewery specific stuff at that time. Also, dairy, a lot of the dairy is controlled like breweries. Well, not just that. They they have to be as as clean as we do. Right. A lot of people, that's like kind of a tip for any breweries out there. Dairy people can do some shit. One of my favorite uh, slight memories stirred by this conversation is a, uh, what are they called? Like a raw milk dairy that I was at a kind of a learning session with and the the prider, the farmer lady, said, well, the thing about that is you just have to keep the poop out of the milk. It's like to separate it. Right. Not separate it. You just have to like make sure the others don't have any poop on them when you put the little thing on them. You know, you grew up in a farm, didn't you? I'm a farmer. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So you know all about that. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't know nothing about that. At least when you came into this world. No. I just know the control of milk after it's out of the cow. Yeah. It's almost the same process. So let's talk about the creativity. Like I feel the bankruptcy that I'm sure that was hard like emotionally. Yeah. And also people don't get it. It was also the public part of it. Right. When you're a business that's successful, you get plastered. But it just sucked that people think of bankruptcy. They think it's the end. It wasn't. It saved us. So and we didn't screw anyone over small. We literally negotiated that with people that we're charging too much. Yeah. Fair enough. So I mean, that's it. In a nutshell, but it costs 40 plus grand to do it. Just the legal fees and different things. Yeah. Like lawyer fees and stuff. Yeah. And then we've negotiated amount of money to pay over three years. But let's remote over. What's crazy is we're well, no, they yeah, it keeps going down. But it's a it's a three year plan. Right. What's crazy is we're over. We have less than a year and a half left. That's how long this shit's been going on. Right. Like COVID and all that. And then that's it is. Yes. It really is. Do you want to jump into? Yeah. Well, the creativity part. Yeah. Tell me what I'm struggling with that right? Like it feels like maybe a little bit that was your greatest strength when you came into black bottle and came into the scene here or open black bottle. When you open black bottle. Yeah. Not when you came into of course. But it's been a little bit more stagnant. Yeah. And it's I don't have an answer for that except it's kind of been humbled a little, you know. Yeah. It's easy to be kind of talking shit and you know, having fun and making fun of people or stuff. I am sarcastic and my humor is to tease. Yeah. And we were kind of doing that. And it worked, you know, doing it tastefully, I guess, but intentionally. It's kind of hard when you get whipped real hard. Yeah. Like a dog. You know, the dogs jumping around and playing. But if you whip it or I don't whip dogs, but you don't. Yeah. The color instead of. Yeah. And then you kind of you humbled, you know, and that's what happened. And that's kind of cool. You've mentioned that because I'm struggling with that now to kind of like we're okay now. You know, whatever that means, I mean, if we get shut down again. Right. I mean, COVID. Right. Like true, like COVID 21 or 22, whatever. I mean, I watched a movie and it's like, they had all these versions of COVID. It keeps coming. Yeah. It's terrifying. I think there's already a new string, but I don't want to get into that. But anyhow, it's kind of, you know, it I think it's good for everyone in their life to be humbled. Totally. To be grounded or to eat some mobile pie. Yeah. It is actually really useful. Or I always like to say, everyone has to eat. And whatever they're doing life, you know, if it's this business or that business or trying to do this, everyone eats a giant plate of shit. I ate my plate of shit. And now I'm just trying to get back into it. I mean, I'm still me, but I definitely feel like I matured too over this process, which I am 41 years old and I still like to consider myself young in my personality. But it's, I've slowed down and I think I think things through more. I think some of that before was funny. You know, like I need to get back to myself and it takes time. You know, we also our GM of eight years moved on. No bad blood. And I know people say that, but for real. His name's Dustin. And he he went on. He couldn't really grow anymore. And he was worried about what was going to happen with COVID. Like if he had a job or not, right. I told him to be fine. But he didn't move on for, I mean, he might have deep down inside. Maybe that was a reason too. But he also got an opportunity to go to hotel and why wouldn't you? Right. And it was the wine project, like the next step up from General Manager is what is owner. Yeah. And that could have maybe happened down the road. Well, let's talk about that. Like how long do you want to own black bottle brewery for? Like do you want to do another five years, ten years? Well, like you want to turn into something different than it is today. Well, you don't just change. No, it's hard. I want to keep what we have and then expand on that is the idea. But I can also tell you, someone else might be able to do a better job. Yeah. Of that. I need to pay. Let this is the coolest part about the, you know, we have been touching on it. The bankruptcy is I, you know, not just me, like the company owns all of its assets, everything except that we don't own the building. Yeah. In less than a year and a half. And this is ten years ahead of schedule of the SBA schedule. Okay. And we have some money in the bank. Like this is a good time, but the same time I'm terrified and I'm not spending money in the same way. We slowed down distribution. You're kind of pumping the brakes. Yeah. And I normally haven't really done that. And it's worked for a long time. But now it's, when you get slapped on the face that hard, you start to I mean, not everybody wakes up, but I kind of like, there's a wake-up call. Yeah. Not that we were out of control, but still. Well, you were over the tips of your skis. Yeah. Right. Are too far on the edge of the snow? You were extended. Yeah, too far on the edge, whatever. And you're cool to back up, but like keep back up too much. Right. You'll shrink. You'll die. Or you lose your momentum. And you know, I'm not bragging, but a lot of places like other my peers in the industry are always like, you guys are always busy. You guys are awesome. You know, like you guys do a good job. You know, the bankruptcy came out and slowed everything down. Bankruptcy, though, again, was a really good business move. That's happened. It was a good move. We got lucky. Good timing. Yeah. You know, and we didn't, you know, a lot of people got PPP. We didn't get that. We got a really awesome fund that was designed for restaurants called the Rehabilization Fund. And that really helped us. And that wasn't for every business. And a lot of people didn't get it. And we were so lucky. We got it. It was billions of dollars. And it was more organized than those PPP lens. I don't know if you heard about it. It was a mess. Yeah. But it wasn't billions necessarily. But we got a chunk. Oh, no, no, we didn't. I'm telling the fund was billions. We got some and not everyone got it. And that's the helps. And what some people let tell that story to and they're like, Oh, you're fine. You got all kinds of money. Like, blah, blah, blah. Like, I know people that got it, like, go buy new cars. Like, I haven't changed anything. I just paid shit that I owed already. And this is like the first time in my life that I've been like extremely mature. When you get a chunk of money, like, it's hard not to. You got some new sneaks? Well, I still get paid. Yeah. And we went to Disneyland. It was a hard. We just got back a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. Um, that was a business trip. Well, yeah, research and development. Yeah. I mean, Disney's got all the shit. Yeah. They got beers. You got to like taste. It was fun, dude. Um, but we want to capitalize or go back to the creativity. And it's not just the bankruptcy and getting whipped. Remember how we're talking? Yeah. It's not just that it's getting older. You don't want to keep repeating yourself. Right. Some businesses do that. I'm, I'm cognitive. I'm aware. You're only 41. I know, but I'm aware of like some people don't do a good job. But I'm not naming any names. And it's not just breweries of reinventing themselves. Odels has done a great job with that, frankly. Yeah. And you Belgium, I mean, but they paid for it. They got over their skis. More than you did. New Belgium also. And I love those guys. But they, you know, you can't go the whole voodoo thing is cool. But you can't go that far out of your room. I mean, think about who they were originally. Yeah. Yeah. They're really cool. They were granola and they did a bunch of voodoo. Now they're like, now they're like black bottle. Right. Like, we've done skulls since we've opened. You know what I mean? Like, skull art and t-shirts. And it's like, you can't, don't be something you're not. And Odels never really gone that, that's what I'm trying to tell you is that like slow it. There's a turtle slowing steady when it's a race. Coca-Cola has the same logo logo. Right. I mean, no, they've done like Coke too and Coke. Right. That Coke. Whatever. We have different emblems too, but you Coca-Cola, they're original. It's still like, it's the same thing. You know how long that's been there? And guess what? It works. And that's, that's like Odels with me in, in the beer world. Yeah. No offense. Budweiser too. They've kept the same. I like a bud heavy horse. And of course. Yeah. You know, like, you can't just be something you're not. You can do side projects, but you can't make that your number one thing, you know, like, I don't know. So let's jump into the closing segment. So are you ready? Faith's family politics. Faith's family football. What? No, faith's family politics. What do you want to talk about? You got to talk about all of them for at least a minute. I don't care. You start telling me. So I think I remember I went to your dad's funeral because he was a pretty cool guy and I did the U of G. I felt just appropriate and you did a very good job. Like, he was a Catholic, yes. Yeah, I was raised Catholic. Are you Irish Catholic? Is it right? I don't fucking know. Whatever. It doesn't matter if you're Irish Catholic or not. My wife and I and her, we raised our family Christian, but Catholics are Christians, so. Okay. So do you go to church? Yeah, but not as much as I should and I don't know. What's church? Sounds like Timberline, but that sounds like something a Catholic would say. Kind of like a... The guilt. So my... I'm not as racist. Our mutual friend Michael probably, he's a from Jewish heritage and he's like Jewish. And you know, there's a certain amount of there's a ton of Catholic or of Christian ish, kind of people in the world today. So I guess I would just like ask you to shoot me straight. Like, where are you at on faith? I believe in God and we more importantly, we raise our children to have faith because even if I didn't and even if my wife didn't believe, I think everyone that has children should raise their kids with faith. And even if you're like this total anti, which that's a little extreme, you know, you're married and you have kids and you're just anti, you're anti God. I think it's... Look what's going on in the world. You got to raise people with morals and there's no better place to learn that in the church. I'm saying for us, it's more than that. It's not just morals, it's values. That's what I mean. Well, moral values. People are shooting up schools and churches even. I mean, I'm just telling you and the people out there that listen to this. Like, don't be an idiot. Like, get your kids involved. Like, my daughter who's older does a youth group on Wednesday nights and she's all about it. You know, my wife and I believe. You and Aaron, tell me about you and Aaron. What do you mean? How are we doing? Like to go to church, really? We do, but we haven't have us. Well, COVID really destroyed that. I know this is a cop out, but we do temper line online. Yeah. And now you can go. To be honest, this is my whole fucking problem with COVID. This is like the same reason why I don't have as many customers. We, if we taught people how to stay home. Right. And now you can get anything you want. You can doordash. Oh, Amazon can give you everything you need. Well, Amazon can do it over time, but you can doordash now or Uber Eats. Anything from 7-11. Like, what say you're out of a paper towel roll or contact? Did you know that? You can do toiletries now? Yes. And they even go to Target and shit. And it's there in an hour, though. It's not. So Amazon, you order it, it takes days. Right. And I'm very into Amazon. And I want it. I'm going to like, real you back. Like, talk about faith. Like, talk about with Jesus. Like for real. Like, I talk to him about the tank mammoths. I don't have. I don't know. You don't know where to go with that. Yeah. You're just going to leave it there. Like, you see all this happening and you see, I think value is problem for people have not you, but everybody else. No, me too. I think it's important for everybody to have their own values. And if it's religious based or not, you know, that's up to them. And it's kind of like, have something. What's that Chinese guy? I don't know. Art of War guy. He's like, you know, a poorly executed plan is better than not executing a plan. No plan at all. Yeah. I don't. I have not sure. But for me, you know, it's a, you know, it's a personal relationship. And my wife and I, where's Aaron? We both believe Jesus. Oh, um, so Christians. Yeah. You mean where she believes Christ is good and positive. So talk to me more about that. You like, if you, if you're willing, I don't know what else to say. Like is Jesus a crazy person or is he a good person? Jesus is probably a good person. Probably. Yeah. Not a crazy person. Yeah. All right. Jesus is good. God is great. God is good. So what, what's your responsibility with your kids? Like, just give them options and you mean for religion? Yeah. Faith. I don't want to say religion because frankly, I don't like religion. Like, frankly, anti-COVID vaccination stuff is a religion. Yeah, religion. Like they're getting over the top with that. Religion can be like, I got a gathering of people that don't like turtles. Right. Exactly. I don't like that word. Yeah. I think it feels better. Don't know if faith feels like something that you can't quite define. I have faith in God and, you know, I, I was baptized really young. Okay. And I don't know if I am cool with that. And I think you didn't make that a system. No, it's Catholic. I would baptize you if you're, if you want to. I'm just saying I need to get to that point. Yeah. And my wife hasn't been because she didn't, she wasn't raised Catholic. Yeah. Hey, she been baptized, doesn't it all? No. My daughter wants to be baptized more than we do. She's actually leading this train. I love it. I've kind of struggled with everything right now. It's hard to be like fully invested, right? Especially when you get punched in the face constantly. Yeah. With stuff. But I'm not a negative person. I'm usually pretty positive. I mean, no, I mean, spatchin happens and you can complain about it. Like that's when you go home. Well, and you talk to your wife. But for what it's worth, my, my church meets 10 AM Sundays, starting this week. And it's the crossing. It's a, is that a riverside? No, it's on shields and horses tooth. And what's, what is all about? It's all about not about much. Like it's kind of like not much structure. It's all about sound like me right now. Whether Bible does says and stuff. But come. We won't have you baptized right away. But Jesus. No, I'm serious. This is an interesting little conversation for me because I lived well, because like even your kids, your daughters are saying, no, no, we go to church. Yeah, but being like a barely church person from Timberlain isn't really like having the same thing as a personal faith in God. Sure. Jesus is what he is to me. All right, faith family. So let's describe your girls. Let's go one of my favorite things is to do a one word description of your daughters. Yeah, that's cool. Um, the sounds like the brewery. It's the train. I know. It's not sound like. Oh, yeah, right. Because your brewery is right there by the train. The train blasts. Yeah. Um, this is fun. All right. So let's start with Alice 14. Ella Grace Duck. She's 14 years old. All right. And then Ruby Lee. My Ella Grace. Ruby Lee. Nook is nine years old. She just turned nine in October. I would say Ruby is one words hard. Is it a firecracker? I love it because I was born on the 4th July and I love firecrackers. You're a 4th July baby. Yeah. And I love firecrackers so they make me happy, especially the big ones. Yeah. Ella. Ella is, this is a tough one because she's 14 and is a pain in the ass. Right. She's intentionally showing you four different perspectives. She's a lady now. All right. So, you know, things are changing for her and for us at the same time. She was my first, too. So, but I want to describe her, not my feeling, no, I'm telling you, my feeling for her different than her description. I would say crazy. That's your description. Yes. Okay. And if you know me, I'm wild. Yeah. She's all love because of that. She's spinning image of me. She's hyper as fuck and all over the place. They both have ADHD and dyslexia, like I do. Like I heard it because your wife is different than you. She doesn't have any of that. Yeah. She's smart and she's organized and well-spoken and educated and can speak. Well, I can speak to a large group of people. I'm not, I don't get nervous, but while everyone gets nervous, but you know what I mean? I don't give a fuck. But she's well spoken in like when she writes things, like if there's a shitty comment on, you know, a review, my response will delete and then she'll write one and it makes sense. Like, yes. She's me and you are impulsive. Yeah. I'm impulsive. Aaron and my wife are, yeah, I've known your wife. Not that way. Sometimes impulsive, not sure. Being impulsive isn't a bad thing, though. Yeah. Sometimes being impulsive is, I don't know, I think it's exhilarating. Like, sometimes it's the right thing and then a lot of times it's not. As I've gotten older, I've toned it back. Yeah. Please be way worse. But back to Aaron. You are, you've honored your wife in this, I would say. Well, well, she's honestly, she's the only reason I'm talking to you. I would probably not just the business, I mean, like, yeah, I don't necessarily mean dead, but probably. Maybe. Well, we've been together almost 17 years married. We've been married 16 years. We were together since she was a senior in high school. Yeah. I dated, I was out of high school, but we had off and on and then we got married. We literally been like, how long is that? I was, she was 18, I'm 41, 20 years. 20 years? Yeah. That's impressive. And we haven't killed each other yet. Right. She gets super irritated with me. Why? But she can tolerate me better than most, because she knows where my heart is. Talk to me about two things right now. And I live my dogs. It's a family. Why? Yeah, we're staying on that. Why does she love you so much? I don't know. And what? I'm a pain in the ass. Yeah, right. I feel you. Like, like, why does he tolerate you? She's, I told you, I was touching on it. I think she sees me differently than other people. If you don't know me, you might consider me arrogant or too forthcoming or over the top. She knows I care more than most people. Yeah. About other people, you know, as long as I care about them. I think we sure that. But, you know, like, one thing I do, I tease people that I love, and a lot of people don't like that. But she knows I care. But she's always told me that I have a huge heart, and not everyone knows that. I think if you know me a little bit, you could probably figure it out. But she knows, like, I would take a bullet for certain people, even if I'm not calling you every day or, and I'm not good at that stuff. I'm not good at consistency with friendships. I have a lot of friends, but I care about a lot of people, but I'm not, it's not fake. I don't call everybody out every time just to make sure it's, I'm following some formula. You never called me just for the record. Yeah, but every time we see each other, we don't stop it. For sure. That's me. So that's my personality. It feels like birth through faith family. There's also lucky. Well, she's smoking hot. I'm lucky, but I'm lucky to have all these girls in my life, which is kind of ironic. All right. Then I have, it's all women in my, our new dogs female, too. It's like, I'm over a fucking wound. And my other dog's gay, which is nothing wrong. You have a gay dog. Yes. Let's talk about the guy. Right. I have to talk about it because people are like, how do you know? It's so real. It's so obvious. He, there's a, there's a dog named Finnegan in our neighborhood. And he's 17, our dog's 17. And this dog's older. And whenever they're like, see each other, he tries to mount him. He has no interest in female dogs, little because he's little, no interest. He likes, and there's another couple guy dogs. He only mounts. First of all, he doesn't mount dogs at all. And that's, it's in dog nature. Right. But he mounts guy dogs. And if you knew him, if you could talk, he would have a really big list. I have totally loved that boy dog. Yep. And then Molly is a sweetheart. She's my one-year-old golden. And she's a girl. And girls like me. That's one of my special talents actually is. And I shouldn't even say it, but beautiful women love me. I can't help it because I treat dogs. Including dogs. Yes. Including dogs. Including people. Are you a dog person? I'm very much a dog person. Do you have dogs? Yeah. Tucker is. Yeah, I think I've heard. Yes, he's a stud. All right, what's the last one? I think we're politics. Oh my god. Face them. So. Oh, it's five or 15. I'm good with it. Politics. So how has Jared Polis done as governor of Colorado in the last? He's done fine by my eyes. Okay. I also don't dig into a lot of it. I know you're more political than me. And what I mean by that is I think you look into issues more. I only get involved in issues if it affects me. And I don't know if that's appropriate or not. But I feel like he handled COVID. Okay. A lot of people thought he didn't. The people that are anti-maskers. I hate masks too. My wife's a nurse. My both mother-laws are nurses and my father-in-law is a doctor. I believe in masks and I don't think anybody's perfect. I'm a fan of Biden because he gave me a bunch of money. Okay. I'm telling you. So you're glad he won? Yeah. I am. I voted for Trump though. Okay. Being honest. But you're glad Biden won. Both times. I never voted for Trump either time. I voted both times. Interesting. Because even the second time I just didn't think Biden was it? He sucks. I feel like Trump was more exciting. I mean politics, right? So I am not a feminist. But Hillary would have been a nightmare. Right. I wanted a really first woman president for- Did you vote for Obama? No. I voted for Kanye. No, no. That was before. Did you vote for- Oh, Gary Johnson. I've never voted for a mainstream candidate. I didn't vote for him. And I hated him at first. And then I liked- I kind of like him. I liked- No, I liked him by the end of his- There is. Yeah. No, I did. He did something that I thought was really stupid though. And this is not like huge impact or our economy and the debt level or the ceiling or whatever. But he did this program called cash for clunkers. Yeah. And people- You fixed a lot of cars. Well, he got shitty cars off the road. And he did do a lot for the environment. And climate change is super real. And if anyone denies that, they're fucking stupid. I'm sorry. Yeah. It's real. I don't even know how much time I- I'm passionate about climate change. And let's talk about that. But hold on. He got rid of all the cars if they were at that time, if they were over- Shit, what was it? 10 years old or something? Right. Basically. But there was car- People were trading in cars. There's nothing wrong. Yeah, there's 1500 bucks for- Well, no, it was up to 6,500. Yeah. Yeah. He, you- they couldn't resell them. So the coolest part of the job was mechanic then. We put this special formula that the government sent us. We poured it into the engine and it killed the engine. Oh, shit. And then they come and grabbed it and put them into- Right. Salvatore. It's like broken. How cool of that is to blow an engine up? I guess. Oh, no, that's fun. Kind of like pouring salt on your neighbor's tree that grows apples. But- But a bunch of cars were condemned that didn't need to be. Okay. No, that's fucked up. Like, yes, they should have refined the policy better. Yes, it seems like- And the law people don't know about it. So anyhow, let's go back to what we're saying. Oh, climate change. Do you realize that we are going to be- if we do not go back to COVID emissions by- and when I say COVID emissions, the lack of emissions- Right. We need to be there. Like we have to- All the time. Friendly, otherwise we're- By 2030. Right. Or we're going- we're going up like- I mean, this is speculation, but if you read your shit and believe in science, which they've proven a lot, we're going up what- what was it? Two degrees. Yeah, in the next 10 years or so. Two degrees. Are you fucking- it's already hot enough. It's hot, man. So what are you going to do with it? So guess what happens with hot weather? That means cold weather. Whenever there's really hot weather, there's really cold weather. So it goes back and forth. And if go watch the- you know, the Arctic and the Antarctica. All that shit chip off. Have you seen like the videos of like what Florida and Louisiana is going to look like? Not yet. By like 50? All that shit's going to be underwater and they're not going to take the buildings down. So it's going to be like not on purpose, business. Purpose. Well, people don't get their attention. Here's the thing we're not going to be able to change it. Um, did you just read about- Wow. There's a bunch of money passed to save a bunch of the rainforests. Okay. And not all the rainforests are destroyed by man. It's also climate change. Right. Like everything's catching on fire. Right. Which is man, you know, it's not started with a match. Ish. Yeah, right? That's a huge problem. And it's not just the rainforests. It's forests. So how should we live? I don't know. How much emissions do you use? Here's the brush. I don't know. My office is close. No, I sold it. But my office is close to my- Do you know that to make that battery? Yeah. Costs are the emissions to make that battery? Right. Are years into you driving the electric? Right. It's just as bad as it gets. Like, there's nothing we can do, basically, except for sit by ourselves. In the waste of the batteries. And carve- No, carve it. I'm thinking like um- Cove it. Yeah? We need to get back to COVID emissions. Pre-COVID. No. Cote, Darian, COVID. We didn't do anything. Our emissions, everything went way right. Interesting. So we should just like I said, just like chill out. Do you know that this is God's will? Carve. Like, we should just stay apart. I don't know about that because technology, but well, we can do things. I mean, to make all of this cost so much emissions. Right. People are fucking stupid. So if we just stay apart, I don't think we should stay up where it should be. I think we get rid of a lot of coal power, but I'll help. Yeah? To manufacture coal, we don't really need it. Well, we need more is politicians, you know, this is all back to your FFF, maybe not the FFP, whatever. Um, is, um, we need, we have to figure out a way. We have to figure out a way to minimize, you know, emissions as much as we can. And there's so many different ways to do it, but I don't have the answers, but I forgot I was going with the politic part, but politics, oh, there we go. Gas. That's gas. We just just no, no, no, a fossil fuel. This, this is one avenue. Okay. We could have electric curves everywhere, but that's not the answer either. Mass transit is because yes, to make all these cars for individuals, and yes, we live in Colorado where you have to have something. Right. Um, you know, and it's easy to say, go to Europe and then I have trains everywhere. Well, there's low emissions trains, like the Japanese have been doing it for a long time, but it costs, or there's a lot of emissions to make all that, but you're making one giant train system one time. Yes, you have repairs and stuff. It's nothing like cars. And then I go to Denver all the time. You know, like, I don't have to drive. I'm not the only one. It's not just Denver. Like, there should be massive train. We need better mass transit. Do you think that's actually going to help though? I think that's one answer. One small answer. We'll think about all the money of construction to like just to make the roads bigger. Right. So think about the, I think about the mission. Money of all the things, right? Well, money is one of the biggest problems. Let's just sit around and whittle. Whittle wood. Let's just whittle wood. Plant trees and whittle wood. That's what our economy should be based on. Do you know there's a lot of people that don't know that trees exhale oxygen? Right. No. I mean, that's so stupid. Yes. Many people don't know that. So, like, it seems to me that we just sit around under trees under the shade of trees and whittle wood like put fish hooks into them or something and sell them and just sit around and like COVID, like we don't actually have to do anything. We should just sit around and sit around. Yeah, except, you know, like streaming is way up the demand. Well, we got to ship that shit down. I know. We need to just talk to each other. Well, but are recognized that all of us value different things at different levels. And that's kind of the big thing that I'm thinking like we went through faith, family and politics, but like we don't recognize that different people value different things. And that's kind of where the verb meets road. Yeah, I don't, I don't really have the answers to all this except look at the numbers during COVID for worldwide emissions. Yeah. And no offense, China, Brazil, all that shit was like almost job getting your numbers down. It almost stopped. Right. And we'll stop the mission. They shut shit down. I know. And that's the answer. And guess what? Like I said, the world, the world, the world, the world, Mother Nature is going to fight back. Yeah. She is. This is why this is around. COVID is her first attempt to see how we're going to react. And then guess what? We're not doing a good job. So there's going to be something else. Have you seen that movie, the Mark Wahlberg, no, M night sh, sh, sh, sh, sh, sh, Shama on, yeah. Where Mother Nature attacks people, it let like releases a gas and kills people. And it stops, but it was a warning. Right. No, I haven't. That's, that's a good movie. And I'm pretty sure like if you look at COVID, something like that. And then this is the first, I know this is out there, but this is like the first attempt. And I think some disease, not cancer, I think cancer is a product of our own creation. Yes. But young people get cancer. It's terrible. Now we're used to have. I don't think that was the goal. But cancers are our own byproduct. Right. But I think stuff like COVID is literally how the world, when I say the world, the world's too broad. Mother Nature is a better way is fighting back. You can't fuck with Mother Nature. She will win. Yeah. Why not, buddy? Um, so let's wrap this up. So basically whittle would, would, would what she said under trees. What about in the winter? I don't know about the winter. That was the year. So Godspeed cheers. Um, over and out, over and out. Everybody. All right. Later. Until next time, stay local.