EXPERIENCE 52 | Aaron Everitt, Real Estate Expert and Entrepenuer

Welcome back to the local experience podcast. This is your host, Kurt Bear, and my guest today was Aaron Everett. Aaron is a realtor at resident realty. He's a partner in delivery services provider. And he's the owner of a startup local delivery business called Emotion. And Aaron was educated in Canada and married a girl from up there. And we spend a lot of time talking about the freedom convoy, the trucker strike, if you will, up there. And we talk a lot about real estate and especially about water and water availability here in Northern Colorado to support our continued growth. And we talked a lot about, I guess, just giving back to a community that's given so many blessings. And so Aaron's a good friend and a great realtor, and he knows more about real estate in Northern Colorado than probably anybody knows. So if you love Northern Colorado, listen in. 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 five to fifteen minutes where our guests unfold important and timely business truths. And also I'll read the local perspective bug 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. My guest today is Aaron Everett. Aaron was one of our first guests on this podcast, and for season two I wanted to have him back because he just knows a lot about a lot of things. So Aaron is a realtor at Resident Realty, and he is a partner in a delivery service provider, and he is an owner of in-motion local delivery service. And so Aaron, why don't you just start by kind of describing a week in the life or maybe a month in the life if that's necessary to get us your understanding of your scope of activities? Sure. Well I do a lot of different things. I've worn a lot of different hats in my life. We talked about that kind of the last time, but I really enjoy business. It's one of the things that I just think is such a wonderful relationship building thing between people, and I love the idea of business. And so my life is kind of always bouncing between things because I get easily bored. Not distracted bored. It's more bored than it is distracted. So I do a lot of real estate stuff. I tend to focus on transitions of use in real estate. I think that's kind of the thing that I'm probably best at, which is taking something and moving it from one use to another use. That could be remodeling the thing or looking at a project and recognizing that it could be better service. Which is a nice house, but it'd be a great air and bead meat. Yes, exactly. Or taking it and moving it from vacant land to making a neighborhood. Change of use has kind of been the thing that I probably have specialized in the most in my real estate career. Although I really have found over the last couple of years of doing this, that I enjoy education of people that don't know the real estate game. So I do a lot of first time home buyer seminars. I do a lot of things where I do every last Wednesday of every month. I do a first time home buyer seminar. And so I kind of walk through buying a house, call out a contract. What does it mean to, you know, how do you do this? And what's the process of getting a lender and all these different mortgage types? Yeah, exactly. I love to give people that information. I think it's one of the things that I recognize over the course of my real estate career, which is not been mostly in brokerage, but has been on the other side of this, where it's, you know, I'm either a builder or a developer or an interior designer or something like that. I realized, as I kind of watch that process happen, that there, there's a lack of understanding about it. We take for granted, we take it for granted a ton in the real estate business in relationship to, you know, we think we just, everyone knows what we know. Right. And so it's pretty easy to just sort of blow that off. So I love to give people education on that stuff. And so I spend a lot of time with first time home buyers, honestly. So I have this kind of really sophisticated end of my real estate business. Right. And then I have this other end of my business, which is just educating people and then, almost like your pro bono work, if you were a high for the lawyer, I do get paid for it. So I'm not. Right. I won't, I won't be quite as. And probably the work is almost easier in a lot of ways, because that sophisticated stuff takes a lot of modeling and discussions and research in years of time. Yeah. It takes a lot of time. So in the meantime, it's really fun to engage with people who are trying to get in to the real estate game. And especially here in Northern Colorado, it's a complicated one. It's complex. There's nuances with counties and lines and water and all sorts of different things. And so it's really fun to educate people about that. So I spend a lot of time doing that. I also love to look at the analytics of our delivery company. So the delivery company thing came about just uniquely. We were selected as a group of people here who could help be a subcontractor for a pretty large company. Yeah. Well, I remember you were exiting a small manufacturing business that you struggled to make work properly for years, too many years probably. Way too many years. And to try to keep some of your guys and jobs and stuff, you're like, oh, let's apply to be this delivery company. Yeah. And so by doing that, we just learned a ton about the logistics business and it's been pretty fun. The logistics business is when you get good at it, it becomes boredom 101 in the sense of it's the same thing every day. Right. You know what's coming? You know that you wake up in the morning and move the boxes off this big truck, put about these 16 small trucks. You got it. And then make sure everybody shows up for work. And that's the challenges that you have in that business. And so after you build the systems, which I love doing, I actually really enjoy problem solving kind of the startup portion of a business. It's really fun to do that. But once it becomes boredom 101, then that's not a recipe for me to be very satisfied or satiated as a person. So I tend to move away from that quickly. I want to, I didn't mention this before, but I want to gift you with a Hallows relational intelligence assessment. Okay. It's a certification that myself and my team got this fall and it's kind of like disc but better. Yeah. And I imagine you, your assistant's guy, you're a thinker, a visionary, and probably an entrepreneur. And but I want to see the report to see if it validates what I suspect about you. That'd be interesting to do. I love those kind of things because I do think they give you a lot of language around what you are. Yes. What you know yourself to be. And others. Yeah. I love the logistics business. It's really interesting when you're trying to get something going. How do I make something that was, you know, almost felt impossible when we started. Oh, right. Well, and you ramped up so fast. So quickly. And when was this? So we started in the fall of 2019. Okay. Right before Christmas. Right. So we ran into, in my business partner, who I just admired the heck out of, is brilliant at this stuff. You want to shot him out? Luke, yeah. He's Luke Shelling's incredible. And we've been, we've been, we're cousins. So we've been lifelong friends. He's always acted as if he's my older brother because truly he is. We were about six months apart. He's always looked out for me and a really good advocate for me and a lot of things. He's a great friend, but also just incredibly talented. Yeah. And he, where I fail at things, he is a great business partner to sort of match the other side of it. And I think I'm the same for him. We complement each other pretty well and have demonstrated that over the last 10 years together. Yeah. That we enjoy working together. We laugh a lot. The last night we were even on the, we were on the phone and he brought up an old memory from the wood business. And we just hung up laughing. Like there was no more, we couldn't even get the next sentence out because we were just laughing so hard about it. So I just love the man, a ton. He's a good friend and he's great at things that I'm not good at, which is awesome in a business to have somebody that can be that. 100%. Second side of things. So he's really great at financing. He's really great at tweaking things and making knickles, you know, rubbing two knickles together to get that penny out of it to you, you know, to make it 11 cents instead of 10. Perfect. So he's great at that. And so we kind of, we were awarded this contract. And were you the hiring guy then? Yeah. Because you went, like, talk to me about your, like, trajectory of how many employees. Yeah. So we went from, when we started, we knew we needed about 15 people. Okay. That's kind of what we were told. Right. And then we would, we were told that we'd be on this kind of longer term trajectory that by, you know, somewhere three or four months from now, we might need 30 people. Okay. And we might need 40 people after that, you know, sort of thing. Yeah, we'll see how things go. Yeah, things go. We went from needing 15 people day one to buy probably day 10 needing 50 people to pull off what we were being asked to be to pull off. And that just went crazy. I mean, we went into Christmas. The volume was just higher than they anticipated. Yeah. Well, you know, imagine you just send the trucks out and all of a sudden the brand is on the road. Right. And everybody goes, oh, they're here. Right. I guess I can order from them now. Oh, right. It's like advertising. It is. And when you go on this particular company's site, you see recognize that you can get it the next day or whatever. Right. Right. Right. So all of a sudden it just instant gratification magnified. So it escalated really quickly and that was into Christmas. Well, then Christmas kind of subsided and lo and behold, this crazy virus showed up. Right. And the only way to get any goods and services was through ordering online. Yeah. So all of a sudden we went from needing to do let's say a 20 truck day. Right. By the following Christmas, we were at 80 trucks. Wow. Which requires a three factor on that. So you need 240 employees to pull that off. Oh, my gosh. So we just had this crazy, you know, it just was this and it was always on an uphill rocket ship. Right. There was never a moment of relief in it. I remember when when the lockdowns initially happened, my wife and I were a couple of months in on like a hiking habit. So like always in the weekends, but even occasionally we bug out early and go on an afternoon hike up to the park or something. Yeah. And nobody was out and about we were as much as we could find things to do with. And sometimes there'd be like two Amazon trucks to every other vehicle out there. Yeah, well, it's clearly so delivery was a big deal. Yeah, the online stuff was nuts. I mean, you had UPS and FedEx and Amazon was on the road and other companies were on the road. And it was it was nuts. I mean, that's all the those were the only people on the road, right? And so we were in the part of that in a way. And so we were seeing all of these things kind of happen. And it was just it was on one level. It's flipped my thinking about it because all of a sudden I was providing jobs to people who otherwise wouldn't have been doing that. Yeah. And that was really meaningful to me. Was that hard? Like finding employees generally out. Like right now it's even harder almost in some respects. But I think early on it wasn't as quite as hard because people weren't letting off. We don't know what we're going to do. We're going to find something. I got to make this work. And none of the sort of COVID bonus programs or whatever. It wasn't there yet. So people were sort of panicked. And so we were able to fill that gap fairly easy easily. It got harder actually as time went on. Yeah. Because once on employment sort of kicked in. This is pretty sweet. I could play video games all day. Yeah, and I don't have to be in a hot truck doing anything. There was a piece of that I think. But some of it was just, I mean, the reality is it's like the workforce was already short in the first place. Before we even went into pandemic, the workplace was already stretched. So anyway, I do statistics on that particular business. I like to look at our numbers. I like to see how we're doing. I like to see our metrics of our performance more than I'm not necessarily watching the accounting. Although I do engage in that. Well, it looks like the road to panic. So I tend to like to watch, hey, how are we performing each day? How are we looking day over day? And then I like to communicate that back to our team and say, okay, well, here's some areas that we probably need to fix. And here's some things that we could get better at. And here's, here are the, here's the sort of inside baseball stuff about how to make this metric work better. Yeah. So that our profitability goes on. You're like those new GMs where they're like studying the stats and things more than just like the. Yeah, we, we like our combine number. We call our business moneyball. I mean, really, like we, we think that's really kind of the inside of our, our corporate culture, at least from the people that are in leadership. We recognize like we're here to assemble the best team. So statistics more and more important, necessarily than like personality. We're on trucks all day. Right. You know, it's great to meet somebody that might be nice, might add a little dynamic energy to something. But at the end of the day, it's really not, it's not about that. It's really about trying to get the best performer in the truck to do the job. And then reward that performer as we can, you know, so that's, that's really. So we do, we, we, we liken it to moneyball. I mean, that's really what it is. That's pretty interesting. I have a, I was smiling there because we have a, the weirdest cat of anybody's cats. His name is Barley. And he wanders all around the neighborhood and knows all the neighbors. And they, he hangs out with all the little kids and stuff. But if he sees a delivery person coming up to our house, he would like run toward that person. And I've got this video in my head of this delivery driver, like running away from this cat. That's just like trying to be the friendliest cat. Anyway, sorry. Sorry. It's all, well, it's so many. So, and so many stories had, had came out of that season, which I, I'm really honored to have been a part of honestly in our community. Yeah. I, you know this, but I've, I've lived here my whole life. And for Collins is a huge, I'm just a big advocate of it. I'm a big advocate of Northern Colorado and for Collins. And it's given me everything in my life that I could have ever wanted. Yeah. You know, I, I owe way more to this community than I could ever give back to it. And so to be a part of something where I could see employees out on the road actually helping a community that at the moment, certainly, especially at the beginning, I think there was a lot of fear around it. And I think there was a lot of, you know, there was a lot of unknown. And so to be able to say, hey, we'll, we'll take the risk. I know I can get this tomorrow. And I, yeah, and we can be on the, we can be on the road to help you with that. That was a big deal to me. And so I, I kind of dove into that. And, and I still remain connected to it, even though a lot of roles have changed over the last couple of years because it is bored on 101 and that's not the best suit for me. Yeah. But. And then you started in motion. Yeah. Yeah. So in motion is, it's a local delivery service company. We saw something where we had extra trucks, extra drivers because of this whole thing that had happened. And we saw local companies that wanted to try to compete with online retailers, whether that was Walmart or Amazon or other things, they were trying to compete with that. Okay. And saying, well, you know, we don't have the same access at some of these things that these other companies do. And so we'd like to figure out, can we, can we participate in this so that this online thing that has become really a part of people's lives? I don't, and I don't see that changing. I don't necessarily see. It's pretty easy button. It's a lot easy. It's a lot easy. Yeah. For the reason that 711's on a lot of corners convenience gets a lot of customers. It does. And so does local. It does. And what I've been finding as we've been going through this is that the local piece of it is, there's a sense of pride inside of each of us that live here that say that this community, like we want to see these businesses that here survive. Right. If you're in Su City, Iowa, and you're like the main thing I want to do is move away from Su City, Iowa. It's not going to work the same way. Right. I want to be here. Yeah. I know my friends want to be here. But we also know that our friends all work at these places. Right. You know, I was in a band with the owner of the cupboard. Right. Like that's like how far back this all goes. Right. Right. So I want to see them be successful and I want to see them thrive because we were in band together. Right. Right. That's like kind of the, yeah. Well, my cupboard can probably do a lot of business online. Yeah. It's great products. They have great products. And so, and you know, there's other, there's companies like that everywhere, I've told my staff and team of people that were doing this within motion, I've said, there's in the business that doesn't need us. Yeah. Right. An architect needs a plan run somewhere. Right. That's what I was going to ask is it's not just about selling stuff. It's about moving real estate signs over to here or contracts or things or anything. We picked up a stake company. Right. Like a local guy that wants to do Omaha style stakes. Yeah. Right. That system for them locally. Wow. Do you have like coolers in the, yeah. Rigs. Yeah. So, I mean, we, that's part of what we're doing. So, there's an olive oil company. Yeah. A company that prints signs that needs it run around. Yeah. We'll do that. Yeah. And we're really kind of, we've built this whole system based on our logistics knowledge. Right. We've been able to do that. And like all of that information now, it's supporting people that we, we really believe in. And you own all the rigs and you don't have any contractual obligation with the DSP that shall not be named. Yeah. And they don't care. Like they can't stop you. I can't imagine they would like necessarily. It's not necessarily. I mean, we are an independent contractor. Right. So, it's really just none of your down business boss. Yeah. I mean, that's really what it is. And ultimately, at the end of the day, I understand where our bread is buttered now. But that changes too. So my thought was, hey, if we can use the information and knowledge that we have, why not utilize that to build something that actually helps our community. Right. And I think that's something that I'm, I'm most fascinated by in currently. Well, and is there like the feat courier was around for a long time. One of my former local facilitators shout out to Larry Dolgan. Yeah. You know, he sold that, but it became involved to be hospital courier services. And largely kind of disappeared from a lot of the courier space, or at least that's my impression. Yes. It did. So there wasn't somebody doing that anymore, really. No. And really, I mean, let's be honest, running blood around to help somebody survive on the table is going to be a lot more profitable. Right. Then, which sounds super crass. But that's going to be a lot more profitable than running papers around town. Right. But the way we've set this up, we can do this at a really inexpensive price for people. And we can do it where we can do it for beer companies. We can do it for, it's so kind of small volume. Yeah. Kind of stuff like almost similar to a package delivery, if it would be similar to that, that's kind of the scale that we can operate on. And is that like, is it in the same truck? Yeah. It's all in the same truck, right? So your job is to get it from point A to point B. We don't care what it is. Yeah. Right. So peculiar, just opened a new brewery here on Mulberry. Yeah. But they've had one in Windsor for two years now. Right. And so we will run their kegs back and forth between the breweries. Right. Because they don't brew every brewery, every location, and whatever. Or they need cans or they need this. And so, right. And so then the boulder fire happened, right? And peculiar ran this whole, let's do a coat drive and figure it all out. Right. Well, they said, well, now I'm my garage. My garage is full of stuff. What do we do? And so we said, well, we can get that to where it needs to go. Yeah. And so it's, I love that. It's a lot of custom pricing. Or you set up kind of flat rate. What? Yeah. It's a flat rate. So we'll do anything in town. We'll drive anything, anywhere, overnight. Guaranteed by 5 pm the next day for 10 bucks. What? Yeah. It's the way our business is set up. Yeah. We can drive in all over the place. We're driving anyway, right? And you know what the maps are and your logistics can be like, oh, this one needs to go with Bobby. This one needs to go with Tony. This one needs to go to Sarah. Totally. So we'll do that all the way from the parker in cholera and like south of Denver. Wow. All the way to Wyoming border. All the way out to curzy. All the way up to SS Park. What? And we'll do that for 10 bucks. Like, I want to have a business that creates the need for your services more. Well, there is hardly a business that I know that wouldn't use it. Right. Actually, I was just thinking I've got, uh, we've got chapters that meet all over the place. And sometimes the chapter facilitators, they get new members. And so they need the new member gift set up thing and the fate and the name plate so that they everybody knows who they are and stuff. And it's like, oh, I guess I got to run down to Windsor. I would gladly give you $10 to drive an envelope full of placards down to Windsor for me. Yes. So as long as I know by 2 p.m. the day before, I know that I can pick it up before the end of the day. Yeah. And I know that I can get it delivered before 5 p.m. the next day. Is there like a wet platform? It just takes care of this whole thing and there's like a dispatcher almost. It's like. Yeah. Well, it's actually all automated. What's fascinating too is that we because of the logistics experience we've got, we've had the chance to now figure out this, like the simple ways to make this happen. Right. So we built a back end that allows people to just basically log in. And, you know, we, we talked to individuals because there are some things up front we have to talk to. So it's not like a, hey, go to www and get this done. It's really like, hey, we want you to contact us. And then once we have that contact, we tell you how to use a system. Yeah. It prints a label automatically. It goes right on the thing. Is it just business people can use it or anybody else could, too? Like if you're at your house today and you go, man, I just don't want to run it in for tomorrow. Right. And I got to get, I got to get Sally, my friend, this thing that I'm trying to get them. Can you get Sally? Probably not. Probably not. Okay. But it's been fun because once you start to crack that. Because there's no layer of cost associated hardly. No. And so once it sort of cracks the code for people that, hey, like I can be competitive as a local business with these online platforms. Right. And yeah, maybe it's a little more expensive, right? Maybe it's a little bit more expensive. It's not free. But it's sure. Maybe it's a little bit more expensive. But I can then support Jimmy, he would have the cupboard. Right. Then I think I want to do that. Yeah. You know, I might spend a little bit more. I might spend a premium on that. It's not quite grub hub, right? It's not quite that quick. Right. Right. But it is still an overnight delivery. Well, yeah, you don't have to have that, you know, that super duper convenience all the time. Yeah. And you don't get it anyway if you're ordering from an online platform. So that's all sort of, and it's all sort of dumb down for people in the sense that we used to be able to say to ourselves, I need this, I'm just going to run to target. Right. I'm just going to run to Walmart. I guess I just have to drive to Denver tomorrow afternoon. Yeah. Now we've sort of re-conditioned ourselves through the pandemic to say, well, I can live with tomorrow. And so because of that, we felt like this was a space we could occupy. I just want a personal drone where I can just send it wherever it can just be like strap package here. Pigeon. We're back to Paris. Right. So I truck seems easier. We've been having a blast. How long? When did you start that? How year ago? And like, do you have a team or yeah, I've got a great, I've got a great dispatcher manager. She's awesome. Jan is her name and she's just like, she's so personable and just, she drove for me at the other company and became a manager at the other company. And then I just was like, I really need your help. Yeah. Because you actually helped me set up the other one on like as a foot on the ground type of thing. Like reconnaissance on the ground about how to do this better. Yeah. And so well, and there's so much more within your control like, oh, absolutely. How many, how many clients do you regularly serve? No. I've been building it all the time, you know, we build it up every day. So, you know, currently we have about 10 to 15 clients we serve consistently. Every? Yeah. Yeah, every day. We have, and one that's every day, you know, we serve a client every day, right? But then those other, those other clients are just starting to hear about it. Yeah. We've been trying to push out. Well, I could see how you could have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds daily. And we'd love to, we'd love to build it where every truck we have has, you know, one of the, one third of the cargo is. Yeah. Exactly. If I could, if I could build a truck that had an extra 50 stops on it, which sounds like a lot, I know, but we, you know, we're used to doing 300 stops. Right. So, to be in a position where we could do 100 stops, it's a great day for our drivers. Right. But it's also, you know, it's profitable too to make it so that kind of everybody wins in the bill. Yeah. So, that, that's been a ton of fun. And that's a long answer to what my month might look like. But I'm messing around with each of those things and trying to make it so that I understand how each of those businesses operate. Yeah. And I, you know, I have, I've always considered myself somebody who has a little high capacity at being able to do multiple things at a time. Yeah. And so, I just love having my hands in a lot of different things at any one time. And you're also a musician that's been playing more lately, if I remember. Yeah. I do like to play too. And I've always, I've always played music. And I love to play. And so, I've been a buddy of mine and I are playing a little bit more. And we decided that would be something that we would really enjoy doing is just getting out for a little creativity and doing something, stuff like that. I'm, you know, I've got kids and a wife and still, so it's like, there's a lot. Right. But my, my month is, I never know what I, I wake up most mornings. My wonderful assistant fills the calendar with things that I need to be doing that day, based on the conversations that we've had the day before and, or the week before or whatever. And I know that I'm, you've got an Aaron manager. I do. I want a Kurt manager. Jill has decided that she does not need that job. Well, my wife early on Anna said, no, I'm not doing that. So, which is good for our, for sure, for sure, for sure. So we are today drinking Canadian rye whiskey and you've got a special attachment to Canada and we're like, just coming, I don't, we're not coming out of anything yet, we're going into you. Watching and observing something wild. Yeah, talk to me about that because you mentioned that how meaningful it is to you even, even personally and family, but let's talk about the freedom convoy. It's wild. It's wild to watch. It's wild to watch something even, you know, agree with it or don't. It is something to watch. It is an amazing thing to watch history happen. Right. And it's fascinating how little of it, like I only didn't know enough, like most people still don't even know about it hardly. And it's really been kind of a beautiful thing to watch, like I just, so my, my wife's Canadian and actually just yesterday got her US citizenship after 12 years here. Wow. So congratulations. Yeah. So really cool. But my wife's Canadian and we have spent, I and I have tons of connections to Canada. I went to school in Canada, I have dear, wonderful friends in Canada. And so when this all happened with COVID, we all kind of felt like, well, we ever have the chance to see these people again. Yeah. Especially as it got progressively more sort of, we call it the maple, well, they opened the border back up. We just got to get vaccinated. It's true. It is true. And, but, you know, based on different things and choices and things that people make, we sort of felt like we may not see people that we love again, because they showed word making choices or we were make choices or whatever it was, it's very, very, very personal, right? It's a very, it's a very personal thing that people are doing. And, and for me, as a, just as a human, I tend to like to leave people to their decisions. That's philosophically where I land, which is, hey, you, I'd say I don't like to make anybody do anything. I don't enjoy that conversation, right? I'm not about to be the person that wants to do that. I have my persuasions, I have my thoughts and ideologies, and I live by those, and I sort of let those things, I let those chips fall where they fall for other people too. Yeah. And, I'm willing to talk to anyone, and discuss anything with anyone any time. Yeah. Unless you've got like a habit of stepping on my cat or behaviors. There's cruelty. Right. And that's a different thing, but I, I enjoy all sorts of people and I have friends all over the spectrum on this deal. But I am really totally amazed by what's happening there, because it is, it is, to some degree, whether you agree with it or not, you're watching history happen. And, and if you don't know about it, you ought to look it up, because it's really a crazy thing, you know? I mean, I think for those that don't aren't following this. Do you want to give the cliff notes version for the, so, so basically there was a mandate that happened at the border that said that anybody that's coming across the border needed to be vaccinated, to even use their truck to deliver across the border or quarantine for 14 days. Well, that would put a trucker out of business. Right. I'm in the logistics business. You have to run your trucks every day. Yeah. They can't park for 14 days. They can't. They can't. They can't. They can't. No, and wait in a hotel that they pay for. Right. This isn't work, right? So, there were a number of people that didn't want to be vaccinated. Whether that was from the U.S., or whether that was from Canada. And the truckers kind of rallied around this idea of, look, this is kind of over. Yeah. We've been running the whole time. Right. And I will say this is somebody who is... Well, and they're not around people. They're in their truck. They're in their truck. And I will say this is somebody who ran the entire time through the entire pandemic as essential services. Right. Yes. This is a dangerous, I have an uncle in the hospital. He's sick. He's, you know, it's hard. It's hard to watch. I'm sorry. Um, so it is a real thing. So I don't, I don't, I don't fall into the camp if this doesn't... Yeah. This isn't, this isn't... It's a real thing. And it hurt people. And there were people I knew that, that, that didn't make it. Right. Um, at the same time, we were on the road every day, and we did our best to keep our driver safe, which are best to do the what we could. And when you're in a truck isolated by yourself, it's probably a very different thing than if you're in, you know, the music business and the music concert venue business. Right. They're just different things. And unfortunately, I've told people this the last while, like, I just wish somebody would have, at the beginning of this damn thing, sorry. Just said, I don't know. And I don't know what's going to happen. Right. And I just like to be honest about that. Totally. I wish I wish that would have happened because that's my sentiment in this is like, I didn't know. Yeah. And I don't know. I'm not a virologist, and I'm not a doctor, and I'm not in, I don't, I don't pretend to play when I went in my research. Yeah. None of that. It's, it's an unknown virus. Nobody knew what was going to happen. Yeah. Just be honest about that. Well, and that's my, I shared a lot like the perspective of government field of prevailing need to do something. They didn't know what to do, but they had to do something. Yeah. And so they pulled a few things out of the hat of what to do and here's your thing. And you know, make it, make it, but that became so evident along the way. So the lockdown ensured that there would be far fewer infections by the time the vaccines rolled out so they could sell more vaccines. Just say it. I will, I'll let you comment on that. Okay. Yeah. But anyway, the Canadian trucker thing is crazy. So they all kind of started, which the wild part is they all did this on C.B.s. Is that right? Yes. This is organized on C.B. Organized on C.B. Radio, which no one monitors. Right. No one's tracking. They came out of nowhere so much. Totally. So they organized this thing with they were going to drive trucks from Vancouver all the way to the capital of Ottawa and park their huge trucks in the road in this out the hill of Parliament. Right. And it just built this momentum in Canada where every overpass had people on it as a sense were coming by. I saw a news article that was like the convoy which departed British Columbia on the way to Ottawa had hundreds of supporters at local communities along the way. It was like at each overpass. Yes. Yes. And then trucks started joining from Edmonton and Calgary and and they all just kind of like there's one highway in Canada, highway number one. And highway number one goes pretty much all the way to Ottawa. Right. Changes numbers along the way. But it's highway one is kind of what everybody calls. Yeah. Next one north of highway two in the US. Yes. Yes. And so these truckers are driving and they've parked in front of Parliament and there's was a protest all weekend and the trucks are still there and they're just blowing their horns. Like the whole time. Yeah. The whole time. So downtown in Ottawa they're just blowing horns. No shit. So loud. And so all these like fancy pants, bankers and lawyers and stuff are like I can't work at my office right now. Correct. Fix this. Yes. And so and the trucks are so big that there's very few tow trucks that can tow them. Right. And they've been called. But like sending in the military is like what's going to happen if we do that kind of doesn't exactly have an overwhelming military force. Or do they want to use it against their own citizens that keep their store shelves stocked and 100% and so and now the tow truck companies are saying they all have COVID. So sorry. So we can't come tow. So it's just this really interesting thing that's happening. Interesting. Geopolitically that I find like just side take whatever side you want on the thing. It is an interesting thing to watch that happen. I mean, I'm sure there were people that didn't like the idea of the Berlin wall coming down. Sure. But history happened and it happens in front of your eyes and I think that's so fun. And so my toast to the Canadian truckers is not to be anything other than to history. Right. Here we are. We're watching something happen in front of our eyes that after almost three years into this, people are finally saying, okay, we need to change directions. Yeah. We need to do something different. Where we were doing clearly is just what we were doing and it doesn't seem to it doesn't seem to have made a difference. Well, it's the same week that Joe is trying to get canceled. Yeah. Roge. Yeah. So all of this is going on, right? Well, this is all and it's just so the irony, my the humor aside to me finds it ironic that the author of Keep on Rocking in the Free World is interested in shutting everyone off. So. So how do you think which is his right and prerogative to do it? Sure. I guess. Go for it. I guess. But you know what? No, it's not. Frankly, like it's not his right to say to Spotify, you need to cancel this person or I'm taking my stuff. I guess it is. Technically. Right. But it isn't in my oppression really his right to say you need to cancel this person. You know, I had somebody to try to ask me to cancel myself. Yeah. One of my podcast guests didn't like, yeah, I put the Donald Trump junior post as a thing. Guns don't kill people. Alex. What's his name? Kills people. Yeah. And it was a pretty bad joke. You know, what is that guy's dad? Alec Baldwin. And, but it's real, you know, and I'm sorry, I, you know, I'm sorry for the feathers I ruffled, but you can't cancel me. Like you can't just ask me to cancel myself and, and I don't have the right to cancel you. Like nobody really has that right. And that's a fair way to say that. I do think if Neil Young wants to pull this stuff off as Spotify. Sure. That's his prerogative. But piss off quietly. Yeah. Go do your deal. Yeah. Instead of making it part of my language. Well, but it's, I mean, there is this sense of, hey, no one's obligated to listen to Spotify. Right. Now, single person on the planet is listed is obligated. You have to pay to walk, listen to Spotify. Right. So there's not. Or listen to commercials, which I do. Yeah. Not a single person is obligated to do that. Use that platform. Use any platform you want. But here we are in the world with live-in, which is just full of. I heard Bruce Springsteen jumped on board now with Johnny Mitchell and, oh, yeah, there's a bunch of them, right? Is there? Yeah. There's now you've got Steven Stills decided he would pull it off. Oh, really? He said I would, but I don't own it because he was such a... Well, it's all that Steven Stills was trying to figure it out. Well, yeah, he's so stupid, man. I had such a crazy life that I sold all of my rights to my music, so I don't have it any longer. Anyway, I do think it's really fascinating to watch this thing kind of shimmy apart in a way that I don't, you know, I will have friends that will disagree with me on this deal, but I do think that the end of the day, this isn't... If anybody had just been honest at the beginning, and I just said, I don't know what is going to happen, and I don't know why this is happening the way it is, and we don't know what this is. I think we're going to work together to try to get through it and try to understand what is happening, but there will be consequences from this that are... We don't know, but the cure to this has been way worse than what we could have done. 100%. Yeah. We can get more into that later if you want to. So one of the things that I wanted to make sure we talked about today was local business more because we're both kind of local focused and the water moratorium. You mentioned the water moratorium to me like 10 days before, I think it was when we were arranging this podcast, like 10 days before it was public, at least to my level of radar. So talk to me about water and Northern Colorado, about a real estate a little bit, and there's anything else you want to do to wrap up the Canadian spirit. No. It's fun to watch. It was a good thing to watch, and I'm glad to watch it, and I'm hopeful for my wife that she'll get to see her mother. Oh, and I was going to ask you, how is it going to play out? Both. Right. The freedom, the freedom convoy, but also the freedom of speech problem we have in this country. Well, the convoy's raised enough money to stay on Parliament Hill for four years. Right. So I don't think they're going away, and they're pretty resolved to stay. Right. So I think something will give. Yeah. Now, if I had to guess about my Canadian brotherhood, they will do it peacefully, and they will do it in a way that is it will be as face saving as possible as face saving as possible. And I think at the end of the day, most people will come away with what they want out of the deal other than people that are just dead set on the mandate. But I think they'll be a compromise here. The polls have changed. Everything has changed. Canadian has come and changed the game of that, too, right? Thankfully, Omicron actually came. Omicron is the great vaccinator. It is. It really is. And I think I think my, you know, I had, I had COVID, and my doctor said you now have the Cadillac of immune systems, because you had it. And, you know, well, my doctor would probably be kicked off a social media, but, right. But I just, my doctor, because I've known him 30 years. Right. And I think the data supports that as well, like they're obviously the vaccines efficacy is falling off rapidly after five, six months for every age group, and not so much for the body's natural immune system, which was what I took all the hell about it anyway. I was like, I just rather would have the natural stuff, you know, I just don't want the Jews. Well, I and we, you know, we had chickenpox and we were a kid, and that's how you did it. So there's something to that. I think there is something to say about, look, this is with us, it's going to be living with us. You know, not pandemic, it's endemic, right? It becomes a part of our life, just like the flu, just like other things that come along that it sucked. Oh, it's brutal. I didn't like. I did not enjoy it. It was something I don't want to do again, but it also, I knew all the entire time that I wasn't. I'm a healthy guy, and I was probably going to make it. So where's the, so let's go to the freedom of speech thing. We'll just hit the heavy topics right after that, right? This episode is sponsored by LocoThinkTank. LocoThinkTank provides peer collaboration for business owners. We build smart, safe places to help business leaders navigate every stage of the business journey, and we love what we do and who we do it with. Our model features gift-back minded business veterans and the role of Loco facilitators. And we're always looking for abundance minded individuals to add to our membership, facilitator team, local community, or to feature on this podcast listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of LocoThinkTank, get their sixth month of membership for free. Just mention the Loco Experience Podcast on your application. To learn more, visit our website at localthinktank.com, that's L-O-C-O-ThinkTank.com. Yeah, freedom of speech stuff. It's really interesting to think about what will come of it, but I do think it's such an incredible moment for all of us to decide what this ends up being. I believe firmly that I believe firmly that it's the best thing we can do as a society is to continue to talk and to continue to have diverging opinions. It's okay to do that. I think we get better because we talk, because we say something out loud. I'm a religious studies guy, and I theology background in college, and the trends of what are happening are much more theologically associated than people want to make them. In the sense that everything we're watching becomes orthodoxy. So to have people actually say, look, you have to think a certain way, it's a very religious experience, that's a very, there's an orthodoxy behind that, in which I watch this as somebody who's studied theology and co. These are the same things the church did. That's one of the things I've really observed is even non-religious people, Rogan being one, but also other podcasters I listen to in things that they're like, it's like this thing has become kind of a ideology, and it's like religious, and it's fervor, whether you're talking about wokeism, I guess, as a term, or whether you're talking about mandatism or whatever, it's the same kind of. There is a sense that because of whether it's social media or anything else that's happened or just media in general, there is a sense that things are orthodox, that if you have to have, you have to have, there's somebody says something, and that becomes an narrative that we all have to embrace, and if we don't embrace that, then we're outside of orthodoxy and there's an apostasy to that. It's like you tacked the thing, what's the Martin Luther thing, you know, the Catholic church was like, we're not doing that, right? And so I think there's some of that, that I resonate with a bit of rebellion in the way that I think about things, I'm counterintuitive, I definitely am like, we just did my kids and I are doing a course with a wonderful friend of mine that is a PhD in American literature, and we did e-commings last night, and so we're going through breaking apart language, right? And there's this, here's an orthodoxy about language, and here's a guy that's stepping outside of it, and he can't even get published, right? The most famous poet of the 20th century in many regards can't get published because he doesn't use orthodoxy, he doesn't use orthodox language in order to make something happen, and I really resonate with people who step outside of that, even though I'm a person of faith and I'm a believer and I'm all these things, I do, I think that that sort of regimented top-down stuff that says, this is how you shall think, is not, it doesn't resonate with me. Well, and that leads into, I think, did we have a short discussion on Greek orthodoxy? And that notion, the difference that my friend Adam described to me was, whereas kind of the Western Christians would say, God is infinite, the Eastern orthodox church would say, God is not finite. And I think that same kind of flexibility, like Jesus wasn't somebody that would make people behave a specific way either, like he would be like, here, do it kind of like me, but you do you in the spirit of God and in truth and whatever. Well, and I think fully recognize that he wasn't capable, like that humanity isn't capable of being God. Right. So, if I really, the tenants of Christianity, which I do, which is the Jesus was God, he recognized fully that we weren't going to have the ability to do what he was doing. And so, I think there's some really, it's like Jimmy Hendrix teaching how to play a guitar. Yeah. You know, do it kind of like me, but you're never going to be able to do it like me. I'm not calling Jimmy Hendrix Jesus. No, no, no, no, I didn't hear that. But I do think that this free speech thing is really, with something that the enlightenment historically was so wonderful at, which is to say, you know, when you look at the declaration and they say, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There's so much in that little sentence that you can't hardly believe it, but we hold these truths to be self-evident, which is that I can recognize that we're all created equal. There's no kings. Right. We're associated with humanity and we're sort of weirdly back to that place, which is that there are people who are divinely inspired with their orthodoxy. Yeah. And when they say it, it's yes, then it becomes the, that's the way we do it. And it's like for the believer, we already know we're ants, kind of, right? But for the person that doesn't like have an imagery of God in their life and the state is their God, or the massive humanity is their God, then these people like rockin' in the free world guy and Neil Young and whatever they become like demigods almost. And so they have this group of following or whatever because we already know we're ants and we're equally ant-like. Yeah. Well, philosophically, I think we all look for something to be God. Yeah. We're kind of wired for that generally anyway. And so when culture says, here is God, which my name is Anthony Fauci. Yeah, or Anthony Fauci, or anybody of these, right? When we put these people in front, and there can be politicians on either side of this, right? Sure. The right had a high veneration of Donald Trump. So there's, there's, right, which is equally as misplaced. Yes. And so when, when you see that and you see that that stuff is out there, you recognize like, well, we're just replacing something that we really craved internally as a person. Yeah. We're replacing that with something else that, um, so how do you see that play out? I was just thinking to myself, you know, we've already got some alternative platforms forming and rumble and, you know, the different sub-stacks and things like that. Is it just going to create like an increasingly, uh, fractured, yeah, marketplace of ideas? I think so. But then tribes within that, right? Right. Yeah. So I think tribalism is a big deal. I think it's going to be, it's going to be hard to hold a nation state together. Yeah. I think so too. That for me is probably the outcome of this is that I, we're probably going to end up associating with in areas and locations that are more attuned to who we are. I said I was thinking, I'm starting to formulate thoughts from my blog in February. Mm-hmm. Uh, I just released the January blog, which was, uh, inflation for dummies. Yes. And, uh, but February, I don't know the title yet, but it's going to be something about love, local kind of notions and whatever. And locals different than it used to be, like, local could well be me and my neighborhood and my little brewery I like to go to in restaurants, but also it could be the peanut butter factory in Africa that we support and we get a case of peanut butter once a year from them. Yeah. Maybe this person in Italy that we met one time on a tour and he makes this good or service, you know, and we buy that from him. So local is our people, our tribes and the national borders kind of element is not irrelevant to local because we also don't want to be flying our jets all over the world all the time, but we have the system there already. Yeah. I think that I, I resonate with that fully. I mean, I think, you know, there's, there are people that make maple syrup in Vermont that I actually resonate with. Even though Vermont is nothing like, I don't probably have much to say that's in common with Vermont. Right. But I would like to support that person. Yeah. Because I, you know, we sort of philosophically are aligned. Yeah. I do think that will be the interesting piece of what's happening. So the revolution in the United States is a philosophical revolution. It starts at philosophy, which is that the king, we're, we're disordering things from kings and monarchs, which is that the God has given these people the right to speak into my life at the level in which they can do everything, including take my life. We, that disorder comes in all people are created equal, right. And now we have, yeah, we, so that there's no, so we get to, we get to choose our destiny. Which that works really well when you have to sail across an ocean. Sure. Right. And there's no telephone. And there's no internet. And there's none. It works really, really well to do that. But you could say, well, I'm going to isolate, I'm going to self isolate from you, because we don't agree. Check you. But we actually have the chance in the world we're going to, that is being created, whether that's through cryptocurrency, whether that's through internet stuff. Yeah. There's going to be like financial refugees, right? Yes. As Christians, oftentimes we imagine this armageddon where you have to get the mark of the beast or you can't do commerce or things like that. But yeah, it, yeah. So I do think that we will be able to start to build three-dimensional networks. Yeah. So they will, it will no longer be a two-dimensional map. Yeah. It will be a three-dimensional network of things that we connect with each other on, on our ideologies. There was a speaker, I went to the Rotary Club, foothills Rotary Club today, and the program was a couple out of a broomfield, one, the gal is a city council person, but they rescued a man and his wife and four kids from Afghanistan, like literally as the airport was surrounded by a club of blah, and 31 of the provinces had fallen. And their connection was, the husband had served in the military for a few years, ending in 2007, and he gets a WhatsApp message like, we're screwed here. And this guy had served, served really the American Armed Forces, he's like a program coordinator, you probably want to hire him for your logistics company actually. Right. I mean, that was part of what he was, therefore, was networking for what's my new life look like, because I left my five-bedroom home with a backpack. Which I think, it's disrupting. This world is really disruptive in a way that I don't think any of us have lived through. COVID is probably just one first little chunk in the armor of disruption, but I think those signs have been there for a while. Yeah, Europe's going to have a whole different map 20 years from now, probably. Yeah, and I think the United States does, too. Oh, yeah, for sure. If there's a United States. Yeah. I think it'll be several provinces, more regionals. I think it'll be a regional, and again, maybe we all decide at some level that there is value to do commerce. Right. And maybe there's some level in which we, but we have to loosen the bonds. I do think that. I do think that happens. And I do think it's. Or breaks. Yeah. And I think the irreconcilable differences amongst the orthodox, right, back to freedom. Yeah, those orthodox people have to decide that they're going to tolerate the free thinkers and the free speakers. Yeah. And if they can't. Or not, if they can't, then. And maybe I'm okay with it not. I might be too. I'm actually okay with it. As long as you don't kill me. Yeah. As long as it turned to force. Right. Have your orthodox thinking. Yeah. And I get that that's complicated in a society to try to live next to somebody that doesn't agree with you. Yeah. But I'm also okay with, like, how do we resolve this tension? But it does. Like, one of the things I like to say about economies and economics, especially, is that trust is the great lubricant of commerce, and of wealth creation and things like that. And so if all of a sudden you can't really trust who your friends are, you know, and is local think tank a libertarian think tank? Is it a progressive think tank? Is it a collaborative think tank? Is it a right wing left wing? Well, yes, it's all of those things, frankly, because I've got all those elements within the group, and I welcome those views and opinions, but it might make it hard for me to do that. Well, it may, but I think it's okay to, like, I think it's too think, too fold on free speech. One, I think it's okay for those of us that think that that's really important and valuable. It's okay for us to let other folks have a disdiffering opinion than ours. As long as that opinion doesn't become something that becomes through force that we have to adopt. Well, that's already force, like Neil Young pulling his mute, like he used force against Joe Rogan. That's a line too far. I would disagree. I think we can't, you can't even really allow that differing opinion that free speech isn't okay. Yeah, well, I think if you don't, if you're listening to this and you don't think free speech is good and positive, yeah, shut it off and unsubscribe. Yeah. Well, and that's fair. Absolutely. I do think that those of us that have been impacted by free speech in a negative way probably feel more strongly about this than others, right? I think we, I think those of us that feel canceled in this moment, which I have definitely over the last year felt canceled in many ways. I know you have to. And when that happens to us, then we have a very different perspective than if we had just kind of went along and they're like, well, I don't know, what's a big deal, right? Yeah, fair enough. I'm going to call it quick break and then we're going to come back and talk about local real estate. So let's jump into real estate and water a little bit. Before we go too far, I want to say you just made a move to a resident realty from the group, which is kind of the 500 pound gorilla in this marketplace in some ways. What would you like to say about that transition? Any number, nothing disparaging, of course. I actually love everybody at the group, but it's been a wonderful place for me to hang my license. I've got a lot of different things going on this year in terms of doing some developments. I've got this in motion stuff I'm trying to focus on. And then I really like to work with sort of a group of people that I've already, you know, I've already have a business with. And so going to resident was a really good choice in many numbers, in any number of ways, but one of which is just the chance to sort of be able to be in a little more nimble, rather than just focusing on real estate. I can have a lot of other things going on. It doesn't mean that I won't do the real estate job well when I'm doing it. It just means that I have the chance to be a little bit more flexible and not have, I just, I get bored easily. It cuts over ahead. Well, it's not bored easy. I mean, like, I hear I'll just shoot it straight like the group is like the luxury. It is. It's setting for a broker that give you all the services, all the support you've got. A huge network, a great office to work in blah, blah, blah. But it costs you. It does. And resident is kind of in comparison, kind of the other end of the spectrum, like the no frills, no services to speak of. But if you've already got a great network, you've got projects, you've got things to keep you busy. Your overhead's 70% less. At least. Or 85. Yeah. And I would say this, if people, you know, were coming to be brokers in town and didn't have 25 years of real estate experience in all these other things. If you're a newbie, would a Keller or go to the group or something like that? Totally. Great people. I mean, it's just a wonderful place. It was a wonderful experience. And, you know, there may be a day that I go back to that at some point because that's what I would want to do. But on the other hand of it, right now, for the moment in which I'm in, resident really is a good fit. So it kind of helps me do some things that I accomplished some things without the overhead and without the fear of the overhead that I knew that I was, you know, sort of obligated to if I was going to sign up for another year. Yeah. Fair enough. So it's any props to a visit craig? Yeah. Craig plants. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful system. I mean, honestly, I have nothing but positive things to see what he's built is really, it's nimble and it's really cool because of, you know, and everything has, like some people love BMWs and they'll never do anything else, right? Right. And some people, you know, they just want the cheapest thing that they do. Sometimes you want to drive a Shoraka, you know. And you go, right? Yeah. Classic. But that doesn't really change the cost like the, if you're a, I guess if you're a listing, if you got a fancy pants listing and whatever you might go with another agency because they're not going to have the same ability, maybe to do the drone videos and this and that and share it amongst their huge network as much and stuff. But well, and weirdly, my business is built off of buyers, right? So, you know, the wonderful Larry Kendall line is list to last, which is kind of the ninja philosophy on how to survive real estate, which is that you keep we're going to get those listings. If you list properties, then you're, you're building your brand. Your name goes out in front of people. The sign is in the yard and there's just like, which I totally, I totally get, sure. But, you know, I had a friend the other night is like, you know, everyone, right, when I, you've got a guy for that, it's like this kind of funny little phrase, like, do you know a carpet guy? Oh, yeah, I know a carpet guy. Do you need a floor? Oh, yeah, I got a floor guy. I'll call, I'll call Jared and see if I can, you know, that stuff is, I think that's just a life lot. That's a life lived here. And that's a life lived in real estate here with a family who's been in real estate here for eternity. It feels like. Right. 100 years old. Well, yeah. It's close enough, right? So you, you really do, I, I'm at a, and I recognize this that I'm at a distinct advantage having lived here this long, not all these people, that when I send out something in an email that says, hey, this is what's going on in real estate, I can get some people to respond to me. Right. That doesn't happen for everybody. And I recognize that. And if you're trying to build a business, you know, you got to work out at it. It's a, it's a harder business than people think it is. Yeah. I think a lot of people think, I went, God, these guys just get these huge checks at the end of the day. Right. They just made $22,000. $22,000. Right. And there's reality to some of that that, that, that because the inflation dollars have hit real estate, realtor's didn't change their commission pricing. Right. So there's a lot of, there is some dollars in there, but it is a hard job. Yeah. Well, and they'll, their suffering will come. And I, in some level, like, I'm, to some degree, I've spent 25 years doing this at a different wage in order to now finally have the ability to help step in and say something to somebody to say, well, this is, yeah. This is my time. It's done well. It can really be a consultative kind of approach, and rather than a service. And that's how I see it. I see it as an education issue on any number of levels, like real estate's complicated, and it's, and it's, it's so multifaceted in ways that I don't think most people recognize when they're just buying their house in Fort Collins. Right. There's so many layers to that that are just whether it's politics or water. What are you actually getting? Like, what, how do I, how do I even reconcile any of this? So I love to tell people about that. I love to teach people about that. And so resident gives me a chance to kind of do that casually. Yeah. It gives me the chance to say, I want to work with buyers or sellers or people with farms or go buy this thing and turn into development. Yeah. And you mentioned you have a development coming around too? Yeah. I'm working on one of the severance. Okay. It's not in severance. It's actually in Weld County the way it all's worked out, but it's complicated right now. So we did the whole thing. Yeah. Let's shift back there. I could introduce that topic. Yeah. That I pulled yanked you back into the freedom pathway. Yeah. So, if I, if I, I could try to break down water the simplest way possible, which is 85% of the water in Colorado is in the Colorado River watershed. Okay. So that means it goes. Wow. It goes the other way. Yeah. It goes to California, Arizona. But the puter and a few others take it. Yeah. Yeah. Puter flows into the South Platt, right? Yeah. So you, you've got basically the South Platt and the Arkansas are the two that come from the other side of the mountains. Okay. Lots of little tributaries of that, big Thompson and all the rest of it. Right. Right. None of those are substantial rivers at all. Right. There are most people called those creeks. Right. So 85% of the water is on the other side of the mountains, 85% of the populations on this side of the mountains. Right. There's tons of projects that have happened that have helped sustain this side of the mountains. But it's been unrealistic to have this many people live on this side of the mountains with that much water on the other side of the mountains. We all need water to live. Right. So now what happened is what's 50 years ago, maybe it's more now, I suppose, 80 years ago, CBT project, which is basically takes water from the other side of the mountains through a giant straw up and over the mountains and into a bunch of different reservoir systems and then moves it over to this side of the mountains. Yep. Well, that was a Northern Colorado project. That serves everything from boulder all the way up to the Wyoming border and out to let's call it curzy. Okay. So that, because these from plains just have to kind of live in their own water, but they got aquifer. They got aquifers out there and stuff. Yeah. So let's just see what it wants to live out there so it doesn't really matter who lives in Sterling. So all of that stuff is happening and the system got built. Well, the other piece of it is that Denver water, which is the like Dylan at the top of the mountains when you come to that side of things. Lake Dylan flows out to Green Mountain through the river, but also is Siphon to Denver. But then there's all these little weird things in between like Thornton and Arvada and Aurora. Yeah. And I remember like Thornton was running around up here buying a bunch of water and stuff and have consistently. There's a pipeline now. So what those guys all did is said, well, look, we can't necessarily continue to rely on Denver because Denver is growing. Right. So Dylan reservoir is not enough. They're going to tell us to go away eventually. Eventually. So let's find a way to get some different water. So they all started putting drinking straws up here to a system that was. At one point. Robust. Yeah. Yeah. Plenty robust. Plenty robust. Everybody starts making claims on these waters and there's an interesting thing in Colorado real estate on the, certainly on this side of the mountains. It's changing on the other side of the mountains. But on this side of the mountains, water is its own asset just like minerals. Right. So waterland and minerals can all be sold separately from each other. Right. Which means that you can take water off of one farm and put it on another farm. Right. Well, because it's all moving from somewhere anyway, generally. Yes. Because it's all coming from the other side of the mountain anyway. Right. So all that to say, water on this side of the mountain is incredibly complex. It's a huge system of reservoirs and pipelines and. Oh. And just assets. Right. So whatever. And water's gotten more pressure on it because we have way more people here than we ever expected would live here. The system in the 1930s or 40s when it was built was expecting that maybe this entire region would be a quarter of a million people. We're talking about getting close to 750,000 people when you put them together and you don't have an end of millions. Sortly. And now you talk Thornton and Arvada. Right. We definitely talk a million people, millions of people, depending on this system. And that puts an X is just to create and the North flat isn't up to the task of kicking in. No. South flat. South flat is not up to the task. It's too small. The Arkansas is not up to the task. It's going to a different location. So it's already obligated. Do you mean it's already obligated? Okay. Because it's a big river. It's a big river. It's a big river. But it's obligated to other places. Yeah. It's a hard-down stream. Basically all the farmland and holly and Lamar and then move it all the way down, right? I mean, you talk about Arkansas and Kansas and Oklahoma and all these places that that does already obligations for that water. We have those same obligations to California on the west slope and we have deals rearing their heads in Nebraska that are old handshake deals that are like UOS water for the South flat that we're not getting. So all of this pressure is happening. We're the only state besides Hawaii that doesn't have a river that flows in. So every drop of water, except for the corner up by Utah where the green covers and covers because that's what Aaron Million wanted to sip out of that straw. Yeah. But other than that, there isn't a single river that flows into our state. It all flows out. So if we don't capture it, then we don't can't use it. And especially in the spring, that's what the farmers were so brilliant about a hundred years ago. Gosh, every spring, we have plenty of water. And then by fall, where it dries the bone, putter used to dry up in Windsor. There wasn't the putter didn't run through Windsor really when my great grandparents moved here. The river was a dry river bed by August. So that that's been a thing all along, but they started to recognize it if they could store it. Right. Then there was something valuable. Oh, that changes the ecology so much and we don't have time for that, but like that's something that people like the putter river protector club or whatever should recognize is that a hundred years ago, the putter used to dry up and there weren't fishers down over there and whatever. But with the reservoirs and stuff, they can just keep the steady releases going the whole time and keep those canals, whatever. That's right. And they make a great calendar, but maybe not a lot of great logic. So I like the save the putter stored in Glade. That's one of my favorite bummer stickers ever. Well, and Glade is a really fascinating thing that's happening right now, which is, you know, even if they started the day, we're talking about this thing finishing ten years from now. All right. So it's just, it's so far behind us. And so for our listeners that might not know what Glade means, Glade is a large reservoir project north of Fort Collins that would move the highway and kind of put a new reservoir between some ridges up there and pipe water over from. So it really still comes out of green? Yeah. It really still comes out of green mountains. So it's really not putter water, although the putter is impacted by it. I don't want to dismiss that fully, but it really is shipped through the north putter system and isn't necessarily going to impact the lower putter in the sense of we're not sucking water out of the lower putter to fill Glade. Right. We're pulling it over from the other side of the mountain. No, interesting. But, but the narrative certainly is, right, we're going to steal this water from the putter. It's going to come from the putter, which on one level, it is the north putter. So I'm not going to say it isn't that there isn't something they're going to put more water in to. Yeah, there's a supplement, right, because because 85% of the water's on the other side of the mountain. Right. So we've got to like figure out how to get it over here. Right. So, yeah. So those are the kinds of situations that make me think that the United States of America won't be the same like when I think about Arizona. I think about like Phoenix and California generally, you know, California has some such abundant resources, but, you know, they've got claims on a bunch of water that flows over from the Colorado River, you know, and we could be like, if you guys were keeping all of it, right, and grow our population, grow our prosperity, and then they would like send their fighter jets over and, or their drones or whatever, you know, their, their saboteurs. They're already sending their voters over here, the fuckers, excuse my French. What's true? I mean, I think that, but I think the water thing is like this canary in the coal mine about what's happening in Colorado. Yeah. That I don't think people, I've been screaming about this for too long. And if you ask any of my friends, they're like, a guy always talks about water and it's ridiculous. Right. But I've been saying this for a while, that water is the most important piece of this because it's detached from land. Right. Now, on the Western slope, they're, they're moving back. So palisades years ago, which is palisades is the fruit valley. They grow the vineyards. They have all this. So palisades water is attached to land and it's inseparable. So you cannot remove the water rights from the land in palisade in that deal. Yeah. And so other counties over there are starting to move in that direction. Now that pot is a huge deal on the eastern slope, they're like, we want the water. So they are now doing the same thing and they're revisiting their. It's warm enough to grow wheat over there, wherever there's plenty of water there. If you haven't driven through the fruit valleys in a while, it smells a lot like skunk. Is that right? Yeah. So over on that side of the deal, there's a ton of that going on. And now the water becomes more valuable because now we have a cash crop that actually works. Right. So that's an apricot tree. Right. So now we're attaching back. We're putting the water back to the land and it runs simultaneously with itself. They are not too independent assets. Okay. That's happening on the western slope. On the eastern slope, we're still moving water around from farms and doing all these different things and we're saying, and you know, agriculture, we want to say as part of our life here in Northern Colorado. Yeah. But we're a growing place. So there's this really weird, irreconcilable difference. So what kind of going to lose its agriculture over the next 50 years? Well, it will have to because the water will be so short. So one of the things that's happening right now is north-welled water. So north-welled is a district. Yep. It was decided years ago that they would provide domestic water to people in the outlying communities. So this was for like, eaten and severance and these little... Hell cowater district. Yeah. Hell co is one of them. South Forkons love the water district. Yeah. Where cities couldn't serve, serve. These guys could fill in the gaps. Yeah. And so north-welled is one of them and they're probably the first canary in the coal mine in the deal and they're the ones that are probably saying showing us that the water is an issue. Right. So we put a moratorium on until the end of May. So May 31st is when they're having their next board meeting. This has been going on since September. So until next September at least. We won't have it. There hasn't been a single building permit pulled and released since September of last year in severance, eaten, pretty much everything. Basically all those places where the fastest construction of the last three years has gone on. The relief valve from the pricing in Fort Collins has all moved east. Right. 10 years of our life. Right. I drive my motorcycle over there now and I'm like, what happened here? What happened in severance, you know, and especially like that area like between Windsor and Eaton, if you had the crow flies. Yes, wild. There used to be nothing there and now there's 10,000 homes. Yes. And so north-welled service is that and they have said we've got to put a moratorium on this. There's a bunch of politics involved with it with Fort Collins and Larger County, which is its own animal that was just the city of Fort Collins trying to sort of flex their muscle. You the big bully. Yeah. Yeah. And whatever. That's their prerogative. Who's the new city manager now, by the way? I don't know. I don't even know, Jared. I've seen a Darren forever. Right. And yeah, Darren said I have some dude. Yeah, we're not out of here. Check it. Yeah. See you later. So there's a bunch of things happening in politics that make this very possible and I've always said this along, you know, along the way. Coloradans are the weirdest people in the world as it relates to the environment where they've only placed it ever turned down the Olympics and it was all over environmentalism. And so we don't we don't like to see dirty things in front of us. So we put our airports in Kansas and we do, you know, it's just what we are. So water is this thing where we don't want reservoirs because it has these issues. But we actually need reservoirs in order to survive and do what we need to be doing as a community. And they're so fun to drive both on. Well, and just the numbers, like just the numbers themselves, Glade will only replace what's already been oversold in my opinion. Wow. So we're 10 years behind on Glade and we're 10 years away from Glade. Right. And we still continue to grow. Right. Because you still see all this development and things that are happening and, you know, I'm not anti-development. What, whatsoever. Yeah, yeah. It can't be. It's for lifeblood. Yeah. I'm going to just start drinking my own pee. And yeah, well, it might be what we're doing. Maybe we already are. We already are. It's really, so this deal is really fast. So Northwell is kind of the first deal in the thing and I don't, I don't want to speculate. What's the cure? I don't know. Like, I mean, when we think about not enough supply of things, we usually think about well, raise the price until more supply comes online. I mean, do we just, do I cancel some more farms from over there in World County? Yeah. Basically, well, and fracking, fracking's got to be competing for it too. That was one of my most recent episodes to be released was with elevate energy and they find farms that are close enough to drilling rigs that have water rights and then they move it with big pumps. Yeah. So it will be some of that for sure that there's going to have to be a, like, the water value is going to have to get so high that farmers say, I'm not going to grow my crop anymore. Yeah. Because the water is so valuable, which is what happened with water supply and storage. So, you know, and before Thornton started coming up here and putting their straw in here, water supply and storage is... I remember someone about that. They're just black hollow reservoirs and it's in the north of, like, Wellington in that area. Those, that, this is first water rights. So water supply and storage is the first ditch off of the line, off the CBT system, comes through Rocky Mountain National Park and comes down and fills all the northern reservoirs. Gotcha. When Thornton started buying all of that up, they were probably buying those shares at $8,500 a piece, but soon as it got converted at the state to go from agricultural use, which is, this is important, agricultural use cannot just automatically go into domestic use. It has to go through a state process. Okay. It has to be converted by court and judicial decree to go from... From since we actually do need this. From agricultural to domestic. And then it triples in value or something? Well, so water supply and storage went from about $8,500 when it was ag use, which was good use. So that's expensive ditch right back in the day. Right. So it went from that to $750,000 a share. Oh. So like... Holy shit. I've been on a banking for a little while, it was like $32,000 or something like that. Yeah. So it went nuts. Right. So water supply and storage... So, and you need like an eighth of a share to do a permit or something, right? Yeah. I'm for water supply and storage. Right. You need it into the share. So it was like a hundred grand for your water permit. Correct. Uh huh. Which is what we're at. We're about $85,000 a share at CBT. Which you see... Which increases the value of, it basically makes it most of a house in Texas. Yes. To get your water permit. Yes. So if, and that's just the share of water, that doesn't include all of the things you'd have to do with it. Yeah. No pipes, no bullshit. Yeah. And also the fees that come from the district. So, in, so like, north-weld water district, you're well in excess of $100,000 to even, before you've done anything. You just have to pay that fee. Wow. And that's going to include their plant investment fees, all the other things, which they just quadrupled at their last. Right. So, all of that stuff is starting to add up. So, most people come here and go like, why is housing so expensive? Well, the first part of it is, is because water is now over $100,000, three to even start the party. You haven't dug a hole. You haven't done anything. You've said, here's a hundred grand. Right. Just so I can get a domestic tap, which is three quarters of an inch, so I can shower, drink water. Right. Water my yard. It's a hundred thousand bucks. That's a big deal. And that's very different. When I was building houses back in the early part of the 2000s, when you and I met, yeah, we just threw the water in. Yeah, it was like 10 grand, whatever. Yeah. I mean, if you own CBT shares back then, you're talking about $3,500 bucks, which is part of the deal. You should have bought a bunch of CBT shares instead of all a Bitcoin you bought. Well, I may have done both. Okay. Good. Yeah, so I think water is the big issue here. And I think from a real estate perspective, water is going to be, let's just imagine, I'm not going to name any names here about any district that's done this wrong way or anything like that's not what this is. Oh, come on. This is the local experience. But this is not what I'm doing. Okay. Because I still have business to do, but let's just plan on the fact that if you had a system that was designed for a hundred thousand people, and now you have a system that is relying on 250,000 people in that same system, and you're off by one tenth of one percent in your calculations about what water actually is, whether it's through refinement, shrink, pipeline, shrink, any of it, be off by, or your farmer usage, or any of it, be off by one tenth of one percent, and then tell me that you're not, that you don't, you're not short on water. Right. You can't, you can't tell me that honestly. So I think that's really what's happened is that the system's over stress, it's overdone. They committed to most of these districts have over committed to what they can actually do. So they really need to do some water education stuff with their consumers to try to free up some margin on that supply. Yes. A hundred percent. I think that's the, and we do. The first thing, the most important first thing they can do. We have to recognize as people that live on this side of the mountains, we live in a high plane's desert. Yeah. We get seven inches of rain a year, or whatever it is, or 14 inches, or whatever it is. It's very low. Right. Sterling rainfall looks great compared to what we get. Absolutely. And so we have to recognize that here that, you know, it's always been the case that one acre foot of water, which is an acre wide of water, one foot deep. We've always said that that's what one house takes up as one acre foot of water. If that's one acre plus something else, and you triple the population you ever thought you were going to be, then we have a responsibility on one side of it to say, well, we might need to think about this. So, like, all the water districts, whether or not they're, they're in pressure right now, should probably do their math and do an intentional campaign about, like, that's what, frankly, the, save the puter folks always say is, like, we just need to conserve more water. We don't need to create more. Yeah. And it's both. It's both. You can't do this without, like, this is the irreconcilable difference of, sort of environmental ism. It's hard. We're growing. We are a community that grows and we love, but we'd love it here because it's beautiful. Right. So, it's really challenging to say that it's a one or the other, which, I mean, here it comes back to the free speech conversation, right, which is that the problem is, is that there's always somebody with an answer that says one size fits everything. Right. And that's not the truth. Totally. Like, not here particularly, especially when it relates to growth and water. We've all benefited from growth. You can't tell me a single person in this community that hasn't benefited from growth. We have better entertainment, better restaurants, better transportation networks, buses. More traffic. More traffic. I mean, yeah. We have all these things. Right. Whole foods. We have crazy things that you wouldn't get any other place, right, because we have growth. If you live in sterling, there's not a whole foods. Well, and that brings me back to, like, global politics. Like Europe is kind of the leader on, this is a whole big shift, but Europe's kind of leader on this whole green movement and largely, Malthusianism in my perspective. Sure. They can't grow anymore. They're built out. Like, economically, they've extrapolated most of their resources. They can sell stuff to more places and Germany is an economic powerhouse. They manufacture a ton of stuff there, but they're not going to manufacture stuff there with energy that costs four times as much as every place else in the world. They're not going to negotiate with Vladimir Putin when he supplies them with 70% of their gas. Well, and it's the same. We don't recognize these economic issues. They're an imbi. Europe is an imbi. It is. And we don't recognize these economic issues, which is that you can't have a control on population and also have a welfare state. You can't do it because you depend on the growth of your system in order for you to support the welfare of the people that are, like, you're taking tomorrow's generation using their growth as your leverage that the bank would look at and say, oh, well, there's more people in this demographic than there are in this demographic, and so, yes, we can loan against that. Right. That's not the case. Whether that's environmental or whether that's demographic, it's pretty tough to say that we can reconcile. We can have it all. Right. Well, and that's what, like, this block I just got done. I think we might as well transition to global politics a little bit. Like this notion that you can have everlasting growth, but also, like, have a declining carbon footprint and stuff, right? And yeah, it doesn't greenflation and monetary policy and, yeah, anyway, I do think that is there. Yeah, I do. I think that's one of the things. And that's whether that's global or even just locally, they're, they're illustrated. It's the same principle. It's vibrantly in the sense that you can't ask for everything, you can't ask for everything that you want in terms of beauty, luxury, you know, convenience, all of it. You can't ask for all of that without compromising on one sense that something is going to have to take. Just law of thermodynamics, right? Nothing, nothing can be created or destroyed. It's just you have to use them to make something happen. You can't have an equilibrium of Eden and I want to go have, like, Frogwa downstown, like it doesn't work. Right. Right. There's just not a thing that lets you do that because it takes energy to do those things and it takes, it takes consumption to make one of those other things happen. Yes. And so you either have to go to the, yeah, we talked about that stewardship or consumption and a notion from that old poem last time we were on the phone. Yes. Yeah. Like we, so this is Epic of Gilgamesh, right? Yes. Which is like this wonderful illustration of even back in the four, five thousand years ago, we were still having a discussion about. Using our resources or preserving the forest, right? These guys go into the, I mean, for those that don't know the Epic of Gilgamesh, you go into, these two guys go into the forest. They kill Humbaba, which is the monster of the forest. They cut down everything and they build a door and the God comes and says, why did you do this to the forest? But man, that door is pretty cool. Right. So here's like the tension five thousand years ago as humans were always wrestling with this. This is something we have to like reconcile with ourselves that we're always going to be consuming our, you know, in one level, the, the thing that was like the humans are the virus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In one sense, that's true. We are the people that are consuming the resources around us. But we're also the only one smart enough to try to figure out how to make it. It's also sustainable. You got it, right? So there's like, we got to have this conversation about like you can't have purist notions in either sense. I can't be purely irresponsible to the, just I'm only going to consume and destroy everything in order for me to be as wealthy and as rich as I can possibly be. Yeah. But I can't also be over here in like Eden. Yeah. Doesn't exist. And because I, because I Eden to me also includes for a gra. Right. Well, and the notion that I've been thinking about just lately and maybe give me a moment to process it, but it's that at least in the time that we've been using machines, you know, and so it was one thing when like land was in like Old Testament times land was the asset. That was money. Cow was in land. Basically, you know, you could have gold coins and stuff and that was a medium of exchange. But you kept your wealth in critters in land because that was what produced, right? And since then, like ever since maybe the industrial revolution, basically energy is money. Yes. Like we might denominated in US dollars or euros or whatever, but basically energy is money. Whether you're a, you know, a poor person that wants to keep your house at 69 degrees instead of 58 degrees or whatever, or whether you're a manufacturer that wants to outcompete another manufacturer on the price of your product or whatever, right? And so the reason oil is attached to the dollar, right? It's a, yeah. So I guess talk to me about that notion like we've created, thankfully we've created so much more supply of energy over the last 10, 20 years that we've generally prevented energy from going up prior to recently, but at the same time, we've, you know, brought on all these green energy options and stuff and, and their price per kilowatt is just way higher. Yes. It doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue those things. I, I do generally think that, look, find solutions. But the idea that you drive a Tesla and think that you're doing anything is silly. Right. Like, you may feel good about it because you plug your car into your wall, but I just call them cold powered cars. I mean, it's mostly also most of the components that are manufactured. Yeah. I mean, I would love to oil components too. Well, I'd love to invest in like lithium ion, right? Which is crazy. You know, it's, oh, cobalt and the rare earth stuff and China owns all that shit right now. And it's crazy itself in, it's just, I just think it's so this is an American thing. And I don't, I, well, maybe it's a Western mindset. I think we love to think about the ability to sort of control the earth as God. And so we, we think that by our own manipulation and our own choices and our own chain, chance to deal with this stuff, we can sort of, you know, manipulate it enough so that it isn't a consequence to us. Yeah. And I don't think that's true. Right. I don't think there's a chance for us nature just isn't really easily trifled with. No, it doesn't. We want to see it will, it will long outlast any of us. And so I'm, I'm very comfortable with the tension. And I think that's one thing that humans aren't very comfortable with. If, if COVID illustrated anything geopolitically, it's that curiosity and just an uncomfortable tension of the unknown is too hard. We'd rather have someone say what the known, yes, I'd rather know what the known is and live out of that. Even if the knowledge, eat my bread from the bakery, even if the known is a hundred percent effing wrong. Right. I'd rather live there than the unknown. And I think that's a, that's a tension that we don't like to, yeah, to be a part of. There's a few of us that really kind of enjoy stepping into the unknown much and I don't, you know, I do it sometimes. I don't like it that much. Scary. Yeah, it is really scary. And it doesn't, it doesn't add stability to an economic system. Totally. So what I trust, yeah, the trust and the confidence and all those things is what really keeps the economic thing moving forward in the right way. And if I, if you don't have that, then you get what you, what we have, yeah, which is just kind of everyone doesn't trust each other. No one has any sense of everyone's freaking out. Just a little bit here, you know, you, everyone has to have suspicion of each other and, and this will probably be censored from Facebook, right, because we talked about COVID. Maybe. Which is crazy to me. So it feels like we've, we've covered our faith and politics segments sufficiently for this episode. But how's your family? We're good. So four boys and just right in the thick of doing boy things, right? So they're 16, 16, 14 and 13. Okay. We love skiing. We love fishing. And then they all have their own individual things that they love to do too. So we, some of them like bird hunting, some of them, one of them's really into fencing right now. Oh, which is like, it seems actually really interesting to me, too. Yeah. Sort of a lost art that is fascinating to my oldest son. It's like a fascinating combination of intellectual challenge and athletic prowess. Yeah. So I jumped in with him last week and did it just because they needed a fourth in order to make their little tournament work. And so I jumped in and it was like, I was two days of being as sore as I'd been in time. I was just so wiped out from his really, it takes a ton of athleticism, but also like after an hour of that, you're mentally exhausted because you're, you're trying to, it's like playing chess for boxing or with consequences. Right. It pokes you. Right. Let's see. And it could hurt. Right. So my, my oldest son is, I just love him to death. He's very, he doesn't fit any mold of anyone that I've ever met. He's just so unique and sees the world very differently than most. I have twins that, so two, 16 year olds are twins or no, the fraternal twins. And there is different as nine days. So one has dark curly hair, one has blonde toe head type of straight hair, one six foot toe and, you know, couldn't weigh as much as this whiskey bottle in front of us. The other one is, you know, bulky and just, just, yeah, just like, is the curly hair blonde. He's the fencer. Okay. And he's also the six foot two guy. No. So he's the, he's the muscular guy that's just very, and he's just so unique. He's seen, he sees the world very, you know, systematically and loves chess and loves robots and loves, now he loves fencing. So it's been really fun to see him kind of thrive in that, which is this, like, you want to do fencing? I, okay. Right. Very embedded. But it did. That's too fencing. I guess we're going to do, you know. So my family's good. My wife just became an immigrant. I just said that. She just became an United States citizen. Congratulations, Adam. Which is really cool. Yeah. I'm very happy for her and really a cool thing, although I didn't get to see the swearing in because of COVID. So that's a little odd on isolation or something or where I couldn't go. So the new rules are that only my lawyer, who's a really good friend of mine. Oh, you, not that you actually had active COVID, you just, no, because the rules position, my wife got sworn in without me being able to see her, say her oath to the States. And, you know, I want to hit my lawyer, but he didn't take a picture. So I'd say that. I was, when I was signing like my mortgage refinance papers in May of 2020, 2020, I guess, or whatever, I was like, like, really do we have to be out of this parking lot? Like parked in our car, signing this 260 page document when you've got this like gigantic conference. Anyway, we'll get away. So why didn't we see it? I thought we were over that. I thought you could. Anyway, my wife became an immigrant or a land of an immigrant or a naturalized citizen. She's still a Canadian, too. She wants to be a dual citizen, too. Okay. She used to seem like it was worth a lot to be a Canadian in America, maybe less now. I don't know. Maybe now. Maybe it's climbing. It's climbing. The stock is climbing. The stock is climbing with the truckers. Yeah. Yeah. So my family's good. My kids are awesome. I'm one of my kids. So my youngest son loves swimming. He's swimming with my old high school coach from my high school when I swam. Oh, wow. Which is really fun and a good way to reconnect with him and just, yeah. So great. I'm just having a great time as a dad. It's like this great season as a dad. Get a prime time. It kind of is. It's like step up time. I love it. And it's really fun. We're skiing a bunch. We're fishing a bunch. Where do you ski? We, so we bought a house in Glenwood years about a year and a half ago. We kind of consolidated some real estate and then located in that value because we fell in love with Glenwood as just a place. So we love to ski at sunlight. We love to ski at snow mass and buttermilk. I like it. Wherever we can. We've been big fans. My wife and I have carbon-dale and Glenwood and that general region down over there. It's just wonderful. I mean. Have you been to Avalanche Ranch yet? No, but I've heard this. Oh, you've got to go. Yeah. Take the family there. They'll like it. We just, yeah. We just love the whole valley. So, like, I love fishing up there all summer. It's just wonderful and skiing is amazing. So, yeah. Family is really good. We are in a really good spot. It's been really fun to maybe funds the wrong word, but it's been really good to engage my children with this conversation around the world that we're in. The freedom convoy and the freedom of speech and whatever. My kids, so I would say any parent that has a teenager over the last two years, has probably recognized the suffrage that those kids have gone through in a way that is absolutely unfair. And it's my one lament against the boomers, which is like, I have a lot to say about boomers. But give them hell. I just, I'm so frustrated. It's such a, we are Gen X people who have watched the boomers basically say that they're the most important people that ever existed. And COVID is a classic example of this, that they're the most important people that ever existed. It's like the cherry on top. It is. It's kind of like the kiss my ass as we go out of here. Right. And really, it's just so frustrating because my kids who were 16, 14, 13 who should be doing all the kid things that they should be doing. Right. With every one of their friends, the other one I hang out with. Yes. Whenever they want, go to whatever movie, do whatever you want to do when you're 16 years old. Right. You should be able to do that. But you're not. We haven't been able to do that. Right. Because some, you know, a bunch of boomers have said that you don't get to do this. And, and I just, it's my one little animated area of frustration is like, it's, well, I think it's the crux of the moral dilemma involved with the mandatory vaccine kind of campaign. For sure. It's like, you know, here, you've got a roughly five times higher chance of developing myocarditis than you do of having a hospitalization requiring COVID episode. Here you go. Make sure you take it. Make sure you take it. Otherwise, you can't go to school and you can't go to the movies and you can't. Yep. And I just, it's just like it couldn't just stay home, like get sick and stay home. And literally medicine is just never a one size fits all thing. It just can't be. It just, it isn't. That's why we have doctors. Physicians, why use, it's why you have counsel and in this instance, we have just said, no, this, this is it because because I, you know, again, we go back to the boomers who are all pulling so many people who invested too heavily in this project. Yeah. And watch all the boomers pull out themselves off a Spotify. I don't see a single relevant person pulling themselves off a Spotify, but only boomers. So it's just, they're more important than everybody else in their own minds. So yeah, now maybe it's two glasses of whiskey and it's too much, but I've said too much, but I just, I really do think that that's probably the hard part for me as a dad is to wash my children. Are they doing okay, though? They are. They're adapting. But they, but there is, there is depression in it. There is like loss. There's a sense of loss in trauma that trauma that I think that came for them that I'm disappointed in. Suffered through that myself. And you feel like, well, this isn't how this goes. This isn't how 16 year old boys are supposed to be doing things, right? They're probably two years and I've seen you in a while. Is it the freedom comp, boy? Yes. Yeah. It is. Oh, there's hope. Right. There's hope that this damn things crumbling apart. And I'm really hopeful for that. Yeah. Like, I, you know, I try to, I don't try to be very political in anything that I approach with people. And, you know, yeah, I'm on this vehicle here, which people might be listening to and don't know me. Hey, I want to talk to me about being in a real estate. And I hope that they're talking to me because they hear some philosophical and underpinnings of what I do and whatever. But I also think like, man, I, I'm so dis, I'm like, I'm so, I'm done. I'm totally done with this. This is nonsense at this point. Like we have done, we've done this to the nonsense degree more than enough. Everybody's participated. Everybody said what they needed to do. If you're not vaccinated at this point, that's your choice. I actually admire Jeropolis for saying like, if you're not done, if you haven't done it yet, yeah, you're not doing it. We get it. Yeah. Right. We're not going to spend $100,000 a month trying to convince you. No. And good for him. Yeah. Right. I know he's trying to win reelection. Right. I don't think it's enough to persuade me to vote. But it is something that is devoted all. Yeah. I don't know. We can talk about voting in it. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I am, my family's good. We are, we enjoy life. I am, there's a, there's a sense of disappointment that my kids are missing out on some things that they don't need to miss out on. No. And that's hard as a dad. So other than that, though, 20 years of marriage, I'm super happy with my- 20 years anniversary. June 2nd. That'll be 20. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We're under the right hand. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be behind you. And I just, yeah, love my wife. She's amazing. I'm super proud of her for passing the immigration test and doing all the stuff she did to get, get it done and- Did you nail it? Well, so this is, here's a classic government example, right? Right. The website says that you're supposed to study this test, which is the 2020 test. Right. She gets to the thing and they're like, oh no, you applied it this month, which means that you take the 2008 test. Oh. Which, you know, how would you know? Right. Other than it's- Well, it's like going back and doing trivial pursuit from like 20 years ago, you're like, I don't remember this shit. Exactly. So she passed and she did fine on the test, but it is funny that she was like, I didn't study the 2008 test. I studied the 2020 test because that's what the website said I should be testing on. But here we are. Here she goes. Classic, classic bureaucracy. So we didn't have this segment when we recorded our first episode, but the local experience is the final segment. It's when you share the story or the moment or the week or the month or whatever. That's the craziest experience that you're willing to share to a public audience. You might have changed you somehow or this or that. Okay. Let me think about this. I think- Well, I could tell- I could tell the painter-pass story of when I was like in the first grade, but that probably is too much. And I'm always willing to share that story and I've shared it before in other places, so I think I'll skip that. But I do think that the craziest thing that I think people don't know about me is that I failed tremendously in business, and I'm willing to share that, right? The wood wall is, I guess, what you're talking about. That I just kept throwing bad money after bad money after bad money at something that I believed in so much and got to the point at which I remember vividly one afternoon just sort of walking out of the office and walking around for two hours because I didn't- I was lost, right? I was totally- I don't know what to do for me. I don't know what to do. There's no puzzle pieces left. There's no money left. There's no nothing left, right? And so, which is funny for me to say out loud because most people who, if they know me, have this perception of me that I don't have to work a day in my life, and that's- Well, you didn't ever. Right. Like, we're just- That was something I was thinking about when you were talking about Luke earlier, is that, like, yes, he was six months older or whatever, and maybe he was a little tougher, probably he was based on his physicality and stuff. But you were like this philosophical, smart mouth, probably very values and principles minded kind of guy, and you were a little rich kid, you know, and you were an Everett, which for those from far away that might be listening, the Everett family built 30% of Hort Collins or something, starting with Aaron's granddad and his dad and his uncle. And it's a lot of pressure, it's a lot of weird pressure to be that kid. Yeah, it's weird. And everybody makes a bunch of assumptions, right, which is like, yeah, we've seen your financials, you're fine, right? We don't- you know, why are you working? What are you doing to do, right? Right. Well, and if you just do developments in real estate and things like that, it's not so bad, but when you- like, that's one of the things I differentiate between a- like a practice of real estate practice, like a lot of times realtors will apply for a local thing tank and they're like, I'm a business and it's like, well, kind of, but a business is something that will eat your lunch if you don't pay attention to it. That's right. And- and woodwall, eight-year lunch for like five years or whatever. Oh yeah, I mean- It's still your lunch, it beat you up. Yeah, so weirdly, it's- maybe it's- we've- I've used this sort of analogy before with Luke, like it's like the drunk girlfriend that you just keep going back to. Totally. It's kind of work, we've got to make it- she's sobered up and when she's sober, she's the life of the party and- Right. Every loves her. Yeah, and then when she gets alcohol and it's a tough deal. So did you screw that up? Or was it just kind of the industry and the business, because it was a brilliant product in my mind, like- for those that aren't- don't know, it's like a- almost like a one-foot-by-one-foot square flexible- aged wood kind of wall- It's real wood on a backer that you could install like tile. Yeah. Yeah, it was really cool. Yeah, I screwed it up. I mean, I- Okay. I own the whole thing. I mean, I don't- I think- so I had a really good friend, like, they became really good friends. They were- and I still- like, we've reconciled and it's a good thing, and I like- on a level that I think is really beautiful, I've trusted these guys to get this- to be our sales team. And- and I trusted them, and I told Luke we're doing this, and I kept trusting them. And I really did believe in them, and for many, many years, like, they did a good job. They got the thing done, but we got to a place where we were at an impasse, like, we needed to grow, and- and wood was getting scarce, and there was all these, like, challenges on the backside that I wasn't honest about to them as a sales team. Yeah. And I- and I didn't, um, was too prideful. Yeah. Right? I didn't- I didn't tell them that, uh, we were failing, right? I didn't tell them we were broke. I just, uh, I didn't want to- I didn't want to fail, right? I didn't want- I didn't want to- I- I'm living in a town full of people that look at me and say, well, you- It's a succeeder. He's a succeeder. He's brilliant. He's doing all these things. I didn't want to- I didn't want to fail. Yeah. So it's too prideful to tell him that it wasn't working. And I'd sat at a dinner with him. He's a- he's a friend, and I will- I'll- to the- to my dying day, I'll tell you, he's a friend, even though we had terrible moments in our relationship. I sat with him in New Jersey, and I- and I remember him- I remember him bat- like, I was begging him to get this distributor to write us a check for a pallet of this tile. And I was on the phone with Luke, and I was like, how much are we short? All right, we gotta get a pallet full. And, uh, and I was hoping this guy would try to figure out how to get this guy to stroke a five or six thousand dollar check. Right. Right. And on the phone on the other side, Luke's like, I'm like, please just tell me it's not six figures. And Luke's like, oh, no, but it's 80,000, and I need it by tomorrow, and we need to wire the money. And now, again, I'm in position to be able to do that, so I do it, but I got to go inside and talk to this guy, and he's like wrestling with trying to figure out how to ask these people to write a six thousand dollar check. Right. And I just- I think I remember that vividly because it was just one of those moments where I wasn't honest. Yeah. I didn't tell that guy that, hey, like, I just told my business partner that I'll wire you money in the morning for 80,000 bucks to figure out how to solve this problem. Basically, to cover payroll to make enough more production so we can deliver this thing. I'm selling it. But I would do the deal. Yeah. Whatever it was. Right. Pay the rent, do the stuff, everything. Right. The business that'll eat your lunch if they do not feed in enough revenues. Yeah. So we weren't feeding in enough revenue, and I didn't have the courage to go in and tell this guy, whose friend of mine, I didn't have courage to go in and tell him that we were that short. Yeah. And his six thousand dollar thing that he was wrestling with to try to figure out how to type the email and say, get it done. You know, get it done. And he's like, this is asking a lot of these guys, you know, and I'm thinking, yeah, maybe grand short. It's going to be a chip in my needs anyway. Yeah, well, it wants to solve it. And so I went on. So are you a piece with that? Yeah. Like sometimes you wonder, like even though, like you've built this delivery business rapidly, like you need to take some pride in that. Like not everybody can ramp from 15 to 250 employees in a 12 months period and be, is that 12 months to 20 years? Yeah. It's probably about 12 months. Right. Yeah. Like I don't care how easy the business is. No, I take pride in what I do. I think the one gap that I find myself lamenting is that I loved, I loved Woodwall. Yeah. Like any NS tile, they were the same, they were the same thing. Yeah. I loved it. I loved what it was and I loved the creativity of it. I'm disappointed in myself that I wasn't honest enough to tell people the truth along the way to say that I'm not what I, like I'm failing. And this is failing. And I didn't say it out loud enough, maybe, maybe the, maybe not telling the truth is the wrong way to say it, but I didn't say it loud enough often enough to the people that needed to hear it the most. And so I might have hinted at it, I might have even said that we, this voice of rough notes and like working, but I didn't say it long enough with enough consistency for them to understand and register that they're like their input to this was critical for us to be successful. We were co-dependent with you all the time. We were in, we were in like partners. We were in bed together. We were partners. Yeah, yeah. Whether we wanted them to call them partners or not. I can't see. Yeah, that's fair. But we were not, we weren't disclosing our books. They weren't disclosing their books. They were kind of struggling. We were kind of struggling. It was like. So what did you do? Like what could have been done different retrospectively? Was it margin? Like it was it just sales? Was it, was margin? margin cost? Like you needed to charge more from the beginning, probably, but you didn't believe that you could, even though your product was really special. We had two issues. One was we were able easily at the beginning to find wood, right? So we could drive around a bunch of places and just find rusted old fences and barns and whatever. We would go out and take it down and it was an inconsequential cost. Right. It was negative. As you scaled. As we needed to do more and we needed to develop a consistent product, which was the other piece of it. It had to be the same. So when they saw a sample in New Jersey two years later when that project came to fruition and needed to look like the sample. And the wood from Northern Wyoming doesn't look the same as the wood from Western Nebraska and whatever. Yeah, you got it. So we had to figure out that system and that cost money. And so we all along the way we kept saying like, she's just 3D printed that shit. I, well, now, all right, that's what we would have done. So the guys that ended up buying us out was called Stickwood, which is a great company. They're like a fantastic company. They had to figure it out. They cut the core out of that silly snow fence from Wyoming and got two sides of it where I was only getting one. And they put it on stickers and put it on the wall, nobody cared, right? We were trying to sell this luxury product of like goods, three quarters of an inch thick and whatever. Nobody gave us. Right. They just wanted it to look right, right? And so there was, and they, they had, the guy was in wood 20 years ahead of us. So he understood all of the issues and he could understand that like there were double sides. Yeah, just like you know all the things about real estate, you knew all the things about wood. Totally. And you didn't know shit. I didn't. No, I didn't at all. I didn't know any of it when we just, we just took it on as because like, but this is really cool. And we had a lot of traction and people loved it and there was like response. And so we thought, well, we had this really cool thing. My cousin owns a company, this is a different cousin. He owns a company that does like gum, right? It's called Project Seven. You can see it at Target. Yeah. He's got it, he's got his stuff everywhere. Yeah. And he told me a story once where he was like, man, you can go broke just as fast, selling to the wrong, selling at the wrong margin, like you'll go broke faster, selling at the wrong margin that you will bleeding out of the wrong margin at the right margin. Yeah. And that's really true. Like, that's what happened to us. You needed more right from the start. We needed it right from the start. We needed to recognize. You should be right from the start, recognize the cost of R&D, the cost of delivery, the cost of sales. Wood. Wood. Basically wood. Yeah. We didn't count, we didn't account for the cost of wood because it wasn't necessarily original. Originally it didn't cost anything. Yeah. Yeah. And so when we, when we kind of finally came to the terms like, and by the end we were we were so busy. This is weird. Busy as hell, making no money. We were so busy that every stick of tile that went out of our door was losing money because we were buying wood from Idaho to keep up. Oh gosh. But this my fault. Like I, I realize that now, like in retrospect, this is me who said I believe so much and was so prideful and wouldn't tell the truth about what was going on that I had to, I had to muscle my way across it. I, as somebody that's known you for cash, almost $15, $20, almost $20, yeah, a long time. I have to say that as painful as it was, I think it was really good for you. Yeah, great. Like you were humble before relative to most rich kids, frankly, but, but getting a three, four, five year dose of humble pie. It's something else. It changes it. Yeah. Well, and really, so I mean, this is inside baseball stuff, but basically our company split up and each of the grandkids sort of landed with a bit, right? Sort of before my grand, yeah, before my grand, and you're not a wealthy guy, just for clarity from whatever, though, maybe you are probably more than me, I'm sure, but, but you, like there's a, there's a big company that kind of split up into a bunch of smaller pieces. And there's a bunch of us. So we all kind of ended up with a bucket and it was, it was a really good bucket for my, for the, for the time I was living, it was like a really good bucket, right? And I spent all that bucket on this deal, right? And I'm whole from it because of some of the things that have happened and the way that my, the, the credibility to Luke is that in that ridiculous era when most business people get to fisticuffs, yeah, my, he rode all the way down into the winter with you and then, and then did the right thing, right? Like came out of the other side and said, let's fix this. And so I, I mean, I'll never do anything but have the highest regards for that man because of that, right? Like he, he didn't know me that. Yeah. He did. I, I rode that. I rode those checks going down, right? He didn't, he didn't, he wasn't obligated to do that, but he did the right thing coming out of it. And so that's one of those things where you like, well, you're, you're in, you're more endeared to me now than ever. Yeah. Not because you, not because of the money, but because you saw this as we were partners. Totally. And I just, you know, I saw, well, and I have to think that, meanwhile, while I'm the one writing us the checks into the whole, and you're the one that's feeling like the loser and whatever. And one of the, and I assume probably correctly that your relationship with Anna is kind of similarly galvanized by that kind of experience, you know, when, when Jill marched boldly into poverty with me as I left banking and got into my various entrepreneurial efforts. Like yeah, there wasn't, it wasn't all just ice cream and peaches, you know, with a nice honey syrup, but coming through that kind of thing, like the partnership is galvanized. Like it's a certainty now, almost that there's a confidence you can approach in both with, right? Like I, I distrust Luke implicitly because of it, but I don't, and I always did, and I would never really feel like I watched his character through the thing go through and go, man, this is like, nobody does it. Everybody else would be like screw you, man. See you later. I'm going to go get a job for like twice as much. Right. And I'm super talented. And you wrote all these stupid checks. You'd done shit. Right. Like that's your problem. But the character of the man, yes, stood through it, Anna and I like wildly, I think I, my loss in that was, or her loss in that was, I was gone all the time. I was traveling. Right. I'm in San Francisco this week and LA next week and New Jersey next week and Philadelphia the following week. Right. You know, so I'm just constantly on the road. And my wife goes like, really, we just all just like, you missed all this. Right. You missed all the kids. You missed all this stuff. And then what's over? Two, three years. But my wife didn't do that. She didn't. She never kept school. She could have rubbed your nose in that for a long time. And she never kept school. She just like, I'm with you. Yeah. Whatever you want to do. And now your season is allowing you to spend that time that maybe you missed back when they were eight, nine, 12 or whatever. Yep. Now they're 13, 14, 16. Yep. And I'm as grateful as I've ever been in my life for my wife, for my kids, for my friends, for my business partner, for this community. But really, this community, I mean, we'll finish, I mean, to some degree, can finish on this. But my, the community, I just, I don't know that I could ever say thanks enough to the people of this place that just continue to believe in the things I put in front of them. Yeah. Whether that's, well, I think emotions are really good idea. I do too. I don't think any buyer of a home would be like, oh, I can get him or her for the same price. Yeah. And he knows all the things. And she doesn't really know much. Well, I hope. So I think you can continue to add value to lives. And I hope that that's what I'm doing here, which is adding a value to the town and the community and the place I love that's given me more than I can ever give, right? And yeah, I'll make money doing that stuff. I'm not going to be, there's no illusion about that. But I, but I also, I just don't think I could ever in my life replace the people. Yeah. I mean, our friendship or the people that I know that I love in this town, I don't know that I could ever replace what they did backwards to me and continue to do backwards to me and say, well, yeah, I believe in that guy. Yeah. I like that guy. Right. That's good stuff. He does good stuff. And I, whatever he's like, whatever he's a part of, you're here in Northern Colorado. Well, and to a greater or lesser degree, and we both got kind of like blurry eyes going on here. But like Fort Collins welcomed me right from the first time I got here. And to a certain extent, that's what this podcast is about. Like, I'm not making any money on this podcast. I just don't tell anybody. But hopefully people will learn some things about water in the world from these conversations and stuff. And I've been blessed like a beyond what I should ever have imagined. Well, and I think this is probably a little bit narcissistic, but I do believe that this town welcomed you because of the spirit of people like my granddad who said that everybody belongs here. We want everybody here. And that spirit has been here from the beginning. And even weirdly, as politically weird as it is right now, I still think that when people come here, they feel as welcome as you did the day you got here. I hope so. And I think that's a spirit that has been here for a long time. And I think that that's, there were good people who instilled that in others that said, like, no, we can't hold this to ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. We owe this. This is a neat place. And we owe other people the chance to be here. Yeah. And so one of the greatest melting pots, I like to say it's like a white cheese fondue pot. And there's probably more white in it than too much white really. We could use some black and brown cheeses or whatever else. We used to call it the vanilla valley. Right. Totally. But I do think that honestly, like I just, but it's a spirit and it isn't about race. It's about people and it's about loving on people that you don't know. Like that, welcome a stranger notion from the Old Testament. Totally. The stranger is a huge part of the Western civilization. Yeah. We honor the stranger and whether that's in the Iliad or Odyssey or yoga master, whatever else, right? Yeah. We honor the stranger. And I think this town embodies that. Yes. And has. And I think that's, to a certain extent, maybe like the freedom convoy is trying to help honor the stranger again, because that's where the fear of the last couple of years is, is like this person from another tribe, they're coming in, they're going to get me sick or whatever. But honor the stranger. It's a great way to say goodbye because it's what we hope for as people, right? We just, we want to, we want to believe, especially when you're the stranger. That somebody somewhere is going to be kind and Canada did that for you about 30 years ago or whatever. Yeah, it absolutely did. And this place has done it for others. And I love being a part of it and I, and I, yeah, if there was ever a chance to help people become a part of this, like that's what I want to be a part of. Bring it. We'll find some water for you as all. Yeah. There you go. God bless the local experience. And you. You too. You