EXPERIENCE 54 | Brad Piepenbrink, Owner of Recycled Cycles

My guest on this episode was Brad Piper Brink, the owner of recycled cycles in Fort Collins. And Brad purchased the business in July of 2021 after 43 years of being owned by Dave Hudson, longtime local think tank member, and Dave referred Brad to local think tank after he purchased the business, and he remains as a mentor for Brad in the business. Brad's had an interesting journey. He grew up in Illinois, went to college in Florida, and then really fell into politics, and kind of moved into ever increasing roles of responsibility, culminating in becoming the chief of staff of the governor, Rick Scott at that time of Florida. And Rick is of course a national senator for the state of Florida now, and Brad worked in a little bit of politics since then, but mostly was looking for a good business to buy, ideally near the mountains, and ideally in his passion project of bicycling. And so he found recycled cycles in early 2021 and is now a transplant with his young family to Fort Collins. So welcome Brad, get to know Brad in his story a little bit, and get to know recycled cycles all over again. I hope you'll join us. Let's have some fun. Welcome to the local experience podcast. I'm your host, Kirk Bear. This show is produced by me and my team, and sponsored by my small business, local think tank, and sometimes others. Episodes feature a range of local and regional business and community leaders as guests in a conversational interview format. Our guests are interesting and successful people with unique business journeys, and the more business education and unbarnished truths we can uncover, the better. You'll feel like you really know our guests after each episode, and if I'm doing my job well, listeners will find business principles and tips from their journey, and a greater appreciation for each of our guests. Woven into these long format experience episodes are occasional thoughtful episodes, topically focused snippets of five to fifteen minutes where our guests unfold important and timely business truths, and also I'll read the local perspective bug posts because I'm lazy to infer to listen than to read, and maybe you do too. Thanks for tuning in, and if you'd like to show a please subscribe, review, and share it with your favorite people. Welcome back to the local experience podcast. This is your host, Kirk Bear, and I'm here today with Brad Piper Brick. Right? Yep, that's it. Now, it's sweet. Brad's the owner of recycled cycles in Fort Collins, recycled cycles in fitness, and bought the business from Dave Hudson after 49 years last summer, and Brad came out of an interesting life with a background in politics, and I thought it would be fun to tell his story, but Brad ultimately, what led you to Fort Collins? Yeah, thank you, and thanks for having me. It's great to be here. My wife and I moved up here to Fort Collins, which I referred to as the Promised Land back in July, previously worked in government and politics, you know, kind of in and out of the campaign world and on the official side, and knew that that wasn't going to be a long-term career path that I wanted to move into the business world in some way, and that's not necessarily the normal or unique, the common path. Yeah, right. So my wife and I, we looked at a lot of different small businesses all over the map, all over the country, a lot of different industries, and we eventually kind of got to this point that, you know, I'm a pretty big cycling nut, and you know, just as time went on, got into it more and more over the years, and you know, my wife was actually the kind of the one who, you know, basically put it very candidly that, you know, if you like this stuff so much, why don't we just look for a business in that field? And so we kind of made a pretty big diversion from what we were previously looking at to do, and kind of narrow down six or seven cities that we'd want to live in, okay? And most tended to be out west, and we have young kids and thought it was a room. Yeah, I thought it was a good time to try out living out in the mountains at a young age before they got kind of locked in to school and everything else, and so ironically out of that list of six or seven cities, four Collins was on it, but it was the only one that we've never visited. Oh, and so started talking with a lot of people, just finding out what type of businesses and the cycling, fitness world were available and came across recycled cycles and came out here in April, I think it was, and met with Dave and kind of did the pretty quick turn. Yeah, and jumped in, kind of headfirst, and so, you know, you come from an entrepreneurial family or like far from it, my dad was a, did ROTC and was an officer in the Air Force for 20 years, okay? After that, he worked for IBM and my mom's an art teacher and spent quite a few years in junior high and high school art, and so had very honorable, but very traditional kind of upbringing, and so, you know, from political world and into the small business world, you know, very different path and what my parents did. It's funny when you talk about politics, all I really think about a lot of times is just this like the campaigns, but it strikes me that there's actually work to do after you get elected and stuff. Yeah, and it's, it tends in general in a snapshot, it tends to be people tend to be better at one or the other on the governing side or on the political side. I tried my best to do, you know, a little bit of both, I think I fitted in better on the government side. Yeah, but, you know, it's, it's a pretty, you know, once you get elected, you got a lot of things that you committed to and promised in a campaign that you got to figure out how to get done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what, let's, let's go back to young Brad, actually, before college even, where did you grow up and things like that? Yeah, I'm a military Brad at heart. I think we lived in six states or so growing up, and then my dad retired at the end of his 20 years right before my sister went to high school, and so they moved back to their hometown. My parents are high school sweethearts in a town about an hour south of Chicago. Okay. And my grandparents were there and, you know, it's a really, really neat, special town, very small town. You want to give a shout out? Yeah, I mean, Tino, Illinois. It's Tino. Yeah, Man Tino. We were, we're an hour south of Chicago, an hour north of University of Illinois. Okay. Just a little east to Joliet. Full fledged farm town. Yeah, so I was going to ask, is it like fully separate from those bigger metro areas? Holy separate. It's easy to drive to Chicago, but boy, it's the middle of, you know, the middle of cornfields. Really neat place, though. I like to describe it my best friend lived next door. His dad was the mayor, and then three doors down on the other side was my principal. Principal's mayor to the super attendant. It was a small town, but a really, really neat place to go for junior high in high school. Yeah. It's really fun to visit. Yeah. Is it like a couple thousand people, four thousand people? Yeah, I think when I moved there, there sort of been in maybe 96 or so. I think it was about 5,000 people. And I think now it's up to about 10,000. It's really booming. You know, Chicago keeps moving out further and further. And a lot of people from the suburbs and a lot of people from all parts of Chicago are starting to move further away from downtown. And it's really boomed quite a bit. No, I'm very familiar with Minnesota because I'm from North Dakota. And North Dakota is pretty homogenous, whatever that word is. But Minnesota is like the Minneapolis St. Paul region is pretty liberal and pretty urbanized. And then everything else is not that. Yeah, this is the exact same. Cook County, which is Chicago. So Chicago, because the whole state makes the entire state completely, completely blue, just population wise. Yeah, yeah. So I think it was a pretty purple town. But it definitely was because of some blues that move out of the city to get a little. Yeah, I think just a lot of those areas, you know, just kind of small union town type type atmospheres. But it's a really special place. It's been really interesting to see the divide become more of a rural urban divide instead of a philosophical divide anymore. If I had to guess now, it's probably a little bit more right. Just given some of the Illinois politics. I've gotten worse and worse since I left. But you know, it's a prime example. The mayor there is one of my best friend's dad and he's been the mayor for quite a long time. And I feel like I have a unique vantage point because I go back about once a year or so. And so you get a snapshot every year, every other year. And it's really neat to see kind of the small town, the way it's developed and it's a really special place. Cool. Well, that's nice. And your folks are still there. My parents are snowbirds between Fort Myers, Florida, which is where my grandma used to be a snowbird. And my sister lives outside Indianapolis. So they kind of go between Illinois where my grandma's at Indianapolis from his sister's at and then down in Florida in the winter time. Okay. They're very proud that they they have made it. So they never really have to wear a close-toed shoes anymore. They're standing there like that. They're snowbirds. That's a pretty good philosophy of life, actually. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So you go off to college somewhere, I guess. Yeah. And tell me about, I guess that high school, you athlete. I was big into sports. You know, it's easy in a small town to be big into sports. And so soccer was kind of what I focused on. And I intended to, you know, try to play Division 3 soccer somewhere around Illinois. It was kind of what I was aiming for. And, you know, hit this realization that sitting in the bench in college soccer for a couple of years probably wasn't what I wanted to spend my time doing. And so I went to a really neat university called Florida Gulf Coast University down in Fort Myers. And that was the only out of state school that I applied to. So kind of on a win, you know, it was February maybe. And Illinois decided Fort Myers sounded great. Yeah. And went down there like a lot of people that went to that school. My grandma was a snow bird down there. That's kind of how I discovered it. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was a great experience. Cool. No soccer there though. They had it, I think, by the time I left. But when I got down there, I was there during the 10 year anniversary of the school. Oh, wow. New university. Yeah. And it was kind of neat to be part of a university that's building traditions and kind of everything you did was kind of the first time that that was done. And got very involved in student government and campus there. And, and, you know, I obviously met my wife there. So it was, I have no regrets going down to FGCO. It's a neat place. We, our claim defame was trying to the comedy years after I left. Our basketball team made the sweet 16 and the NCAA. Oh, we were kind of that. That I remember that school. Yeah. After, after being all 10 years of existence, that's a big deal. And I think that by that time, I think the university was probably 15 years old. And I think it was the first or second year where you've been eligible for the NCAA tournament. We switched from division two to division one when I was an undergrad. I gotcha. So that's most people that know of FGCU. Just know that as though the Cinderella school down and down in Florida. My alma mater North Dakota State made it into the tournament in their first year of eligibility. And they had Kansas. By like, they, Kansas had them by like three going into the fourth or something. Yeah. We, being Georgetown, that was the big upset. And then we beat San Diego State. And then we lost to University of Florida ironically in the sweet 16. It was a neat, it was neat to see a university that nobody really knew a whole lot about all of a sudden realize, hey, this is a pretty neat place. I love the Cinderella story. Yeah, I'm so cool. So were you already paired up with your wife? Were you married before you left college? No, we met about halfway through college. Okay. My roommate was on the men's tennis team. And she played on the women's tennis team. And my freshman year, I went to see one of his matches. I've never been to a tennis match. Yeah. Realized that watching the women's team was a lot better of a deal than watching my friend play. And he was actually the one that, that tipped me off. He was like, you know, this, this is the, this is the one you should take a look at. And so I had to chase her down for a good year or so, year and a half before she agreed to go on and date. And yeah, it paid off dramatically. But so she can probably beat you in ping pong then? You know, I think she could we played racquetball once. And I had the upper hand and we agreed that we should never play that together again. And so I don't know about ping pong. It did. We'll see. Okay. We'll have to over sometime. Yeah. So I'm remembering that like right out of college, you had no real interest in getting into the medical realm, but it just kind of fell on your lap and you're like, I guess I'll do this. Yeah. It was, you know, so I was not involved in politics, you know, with the caveat that I ran for student government president and won that. And but that was kind of a little bit different of an environment. And then why why did you do that? It was it's really neat. I don't know if other states are like this, but in Florida, you know, you pay your tuition, you pay your athletic fee, you pay a health fee, and then you pay an activity and service fee. Okay. And that activity and service fee goes to the student government council and the president. And that's what pays for intermierals, you know, tutoring programs, all the fun out of school, you know, the concert that comes through every year. And that is voted on completely by the student senate. And so that was about a, I think 1.8 million dollar budget. Right. 30 of us kind of had control over. So it wasn't your doing the concert you want. Yeah. And that was the last person you'd ever think that around for student government, you know, I barely made it through college to begin with much less get involved in, but being able at a young age to kind of have some real cash that we were able to invest in what the students wanted was just a pretty neat program. And so that kind of exposed me a little bit more of the political world. But my goal at the time coming from a military family was to work for, you know, a Lockheed Martin, a bone in one of those companies. Yeah. I was really lucky to be in the interview process and was waiting for the second interview. And a fraternity brother of mine worked for vice president, Jamie at the time and just called me out of the blue the day I graduated and said, John McCain's coming to Fort Myers, you know, the following Thursday. Do you want to help out? And I helped him do some advanced work on, you know, in the past. And so I kind of knew a little bit about how to help. You were basically as a grunt team for helping things out. So I kind of knew, you know, how to do and some of those dignitaries came through kind of knew what the deal was and helped out, you know, the Monday after I graduated, you know, and was with his team for a couple days and McCain came through town for a fundraiser and some media interviews and basically at the end of the trip, it was right after McCain won the primary. Okay. It was at the beginning of the prolonged primary with Obama and Hillary Clinton. Right. Right. And so the campaign didn't have a lot of money and I was a almost free campaign staffer to pick up. Right. So I packed my bags and for the next six months, traveled across the country. And so is that pre Sarah Palin there? Yeah, pre Sarah Palin. Okay. You know, pretty probably two months or so. Because you win the nomination first and then you tell them who your vice president is. Yeah. And there's a pretty big gap especially when the opponent's primary is still going on. That kind of made that process even get kicked back a little bit. All right. Because you're kind of waiting to see if they'll tip their hand a little bit or whatever. Yeah. And so it was some of the best six months of my life. I was I was paired with a really neat guy out of Ohio, a friend, a close friend of this day named Matt Borgis. And he was a little older than I was. So he took me under his wing. But because I was with one of the most experienced fan guys, advanced guys, not only did I learn a lot, we got assigned to do a lot of the best events. Yeah. And so you learn from the best and do the best to do some really neat rallies. I got to go to the Sturgis bike rally. Okay. Cool. We didn't even in Canada. You know, now it's 22, so green. Yeah. So what's that job look like? Like you're going up there? Are you trying to get like people to come to these events? No, that stuff like that. Or mostly you're like securing a premises. Yeah. Making sure security can be. You're picking out the locations. You're working with the secret service of, you know, what what when they get there, what they're going to do. And a lot of it is setting up the, yeah, a lot of it's setting up the backdrops with the, you know, and if there's going to be also getting the local knowledge of, you know, if if if if a candidate was coming to Fort Collins, you know, maybe he'd stop by Cheetah Hut. Right. The local place that everybody goes to and likes. It's finding out all that information and kind of planning it out. And right. So the John McCain can be like, and I had a Cheetah Hut sub. Yeah. Damn. Was that good? Exactly. Just like that. And you would, so it's like a rock band, but different. Yeah. Like because you got speakers and soundboards and all that kind of jazz too, right? And curtains and whatnot. The normal rally budget, $100,000 of production equipment and stages and everything else. And you plan all of that out. And it's, you know, and it's you're typically there about four or five days ahead of time. You do all the hotel arrangements and all that. Yeah. And then when they're there, the candidate and his traveling team, when all the press and everybody else, it's, you know, you're kind of walking them through the hole. I got to figure that out. No, you're a rowdy. Yeah. Basically, but your politicians. Yeah. It's the best job on the planet. Right. There's no better job. Well, except for it didn't pay very well. Sounds like it did not pay very well. At least not at first. But boy, was it fun? Yeah. It was a long, you know, six months. I probably came back 25 pounds heavier. It was not a example of health and fitness by any means. But it was, it was the time I light. But to show you how green I was, you know, when you'd go to these events, you know, a lot of times you would do local media interviews. Sure. Set up, you know, you'd find a cool backdrop, cool location. You'd set up all the, you know, whether it's flags or whatever it is in the back. And motorcycles, if you're in Sturgis. Yeah. Exactly. You know, making sure the motorcycles are American made, you know, motorcycles, you know, and, but we would do these interviews. And so I'd set up all these briefings. And I never paid a whole lot of attention. And I remember we were in Hershey, Pennsylvania. And we did an interview after the rally at kind of the top of the little arena we were in. Okay. And all these people kept staying. And I just remember asking my, one of my co-workers, like, why are these people like not leaving? Why are they staying? It's like, oh, they want to see the Hannity interview. What do you mean the Hannity interview? This is Sean Hannity. It's like, well, who's Sean Hannity? Right. No earthly idea. Who, you know, at the time, you know, still is one of the biggest Fox News guys. I was so blue to all of that. Right. They're so, so green. Yeah. But, um, it was neat. So there's a lot of those, you know, I knew who Katie Kerr was. I did a couple of those interviews with, with Pailin that were pretty memorable. So you were, like, you were on the camera? Not on the camera, but just setting it up. Right. You're behind the scenes. Whenever that happens. And so I knew some of the main people, but right. There were a lot of George Zeppinapolis, all those guys. I thought they were just local reporters. Right. You had no idea they were on CNN or whatever. This and that. Yeah. Just kind of funny. Yeah. That is pretty funny. I think it actually helped because I didn't. People in politics get star shark a lot of people. They see on the news and that was one of the, this wasn't a big deal to me in my banking career. Like, there's a lot of bankers that try to get business by having the best brown nose for these awesome business owners and stuff. And I'm kind of a janitor's the same as the CEO kind of guy. And like, the fact that I would just talk to them straight and, you know, tell them what I thought and stuff that earned a lot of respect. I imagine that's the same. Even though you're green and you don't know what the hell you're doing, but at least you're straight. Yeah. You're candid, you know, you're being honest with people. But it was, it was in the, I met a lot of good lifelong friends and it's fun to see what all of them have kind of went on to do since then. So McCain gets crushed pretty much, right? Yeah. I thought he was going to win. I was so naive. But yeah, we got, we lost pretty badly. Yeah. Um, when that was that Obama's second term? First term, first term, first term. Okay. Yeah. And it was like by the second term, it was a little more obvious that he had a pretty strong charisma and pull and things like that. The first term, what we were assuming and holding out on was that the polling of how many people, how many new voters Obama bring in was not accurate because their numbers and projections were just so over the top. Right. Turns out they were pretty much right. Well, that's probably the last time the presidential polling that's actually been really dead on. Yeah. It's went off the deep and since then. Well, and to a some extent, like Obama benefited from the same thing that Trump was negative by, which was, you know, kind of a turnout of this urban black vote. Yeah. Generally, although Trump got more of the second time around than he did the first time. And it's really hard for, and I think this is a good part of our system. I think it's really hard for any presidential candidate to win in the same party after your party's been in the presidency for eight years. People want something new. And so I mean, it's very rare. HW Bush was probably the only one I can think of where it was an easy election after eight years. Right. Right. Previous person was there for eight years. Yeah. So, so McCain's out your free agent, I guess, or whatever. Yeah. So I got very lucky. When I was, there's this program called Leadership Florida. And I went, there's a college version of it where it's just kind of similar to what you're doing, kind of connects business leaders throughout the state. And I went to the college version and the big appeal of the college version to get selected for it is they give you a mentor from the statewide program your last year at college. And so I didn't know what I wanted to do long term, whatever else. And so I just, you know, everybody wanted to kind of line it up with their profession. And I just said, line me the coolest guy you know. And turns out they nailed it. There's a guy named Garrett, Garrett Richter who's from Naples, Florida. And he was a banker. And he, his bank sold before the crisis and was in a non-compete. And kind of instead of golfing non-stop, decided to run for a state house seat. Okay. Was so well respected in the community, was ran unopposed. He ended up running in multiple elections, never had an opponent. You know, that's how solid a guy he is. So I called him just saying, you know, I didn't think I'd like politics. I'm really kind of enjoying this. If you know of anything in town last year, or anything like that, just let me know. And it was, he, at the end of that cycle, he went from his first two-year house term into a state senate term. And he got an ad and additional staffer. And so he just said, when you come join my staff, and you know, I have a new opening. And so he hired somebody that had zero legislative experience at any level and worked with him for two legislative sessions. And okay, still to this day is a close friend and almost like a second set of parents, you know, him and his wife, Diane, or the nicest people. They just started another bank and a couple years ago and just sold their second bank. Oh wow. It's just a very neat guy to be connected with. And I was very thankful that he kind of picked somebody up right out of college. You just got off a world one of a campaign and gave him a landing spot. But also it was very, very strict that your time here is going to be limited. Like I want to push you out of the nest and make sure you go on to do bigger and better things too. And so it was neat to have somebody that kind of had that attitude. Yeah, yeah. It was a long-term mentorship. And that was probably a very rapid learning kind of season for you as well, eh? Yeah, because it's unique. I'm very, I don't know what the Colorado legislature plan is, but in Florida, it's a 60-day legislative session. Okay. And so you have a couple committee weeks. But otherwise, it's 60 days. Oh wow. And so you have to get the entire state budget and every bill that you want passed has to be done in 60 days. So these are almost part-timers kind of, right? Like they're they make 20 or 40 grand a year to do this thing, but they also have businesses or jobs. Exactly. I think it's a $28,000 salary based state legislature. So it's not too lucrative. And so most people obviously have other jobs designed. It tends to be a lot of lawyers, but they're still the way it's designed. It's based on the old farming schedules and when session is. So farmers in back in the day could be legislators. And so it was really neat kind of baptism by fire, but it kind of got me hooked. And then next chapter. Yeah. So let's see. I worked on, I left his office and I worked on a governor's campaign. And what's your wife's name again? Krista. Krista. And what did Krista think about all this? Like, I guess she, yeah, married a guy that she didn't he didn't know what he was going to be. And so she couldn't be too upset. I'm very lucky. I over achieved in every way possible. But you know, every step of the way she kind of just, I think she probably knew going into this that I kind of have a lot of wild ideas and just chase after different things. And we, so we got married when I was working for, I guess at the end of Senator Richter, after a campaign, I then worked on a different bus tour throughout the country, kind of an issue campaign about government spending. And then when that ended, I moved from Fort Myers to Tallahassee, where the state capital is and worked in the majority office in the state senate. And that's when we got engaged and got married quickly after. So she moved up there kind of once we got settled in Tallahassee. Sorry for the quick deviation there. Yeah. No. And like, talk to me about you mentioned the bus tour campaign government spending. Like, did you like grow up in a family that was concerned about government largesse and things like that? Or did you like, because McCain was kind of a, whatever, a democracy. My parents, they're, they lean conservative, but they're pretty moderate. Yeah. Like a lot of military families, they lean conservative. But they never were that politically, they never lived in breathe. You know, I've never paid attention to the budget earlier things. Yeah. Fox News or MSNBC on, you know, they're very, you know, they're not dialed into it all the time. But it was a neat, we, you know, we traveled kind of a neat bus doing a lot of surrogate stuff about the impacts of government spending, pretty neutral nonpartisan. They're doing some construction. We'll power through. Yeah, that was about a couple months. I did that. And then another friend was the head of advance for Meg Whitman's campaign, the one who used to work for Cheney out in California. And he asked me to come out and help the last month in California. So I went out there and joined his advanced team. And, you know, I joked that, you know, I was on one of the only governor races that lost, you know, in that cycle on the on the R side. And, but then came back to working at legislature. So, so goes, so goes Florida. And what's the next chapter, I guess? Yeah. So then, you know, after I realized, maybe, maybe I'm just bad luck on campaigns, because that was two or three in a row that all lost. I worked in the state legislature. Just not opposed to how you did good there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the unopposed. I'm really good with unopposed candidates. But I worked in the majority office and in the Senate. And that was a really neat, you know, there was a lot of people were on the same age range. I think half of our office got married within the same six months. Just a really neat special place. A few of those people are still, you know, very close friends will be lifelong friends. And if you're in that realm, the majority office, is it your job to kind of like you're kind of helping to build the platform that you want everybody else to kind of toe the line on a little bit? You're kind of managing the issues at the Senate president. The timing of the bills being presented and stuff and you're kind of helping with the talking points and you're kind of just helping the members in your caucus be successful. So that's helping them with whatever bills coming through or speeches. If it's a holiday coming up, you know, just everything you can think of, you know, it's kind of a central place. Yeah. Also kind of build camaraderie between the members. And so I did that for a session. And then I got very lucky right place, right time. The governor Rick Scott, who's now a US Senator, he got elected in 2010. Okay. And I, his second chief of staff he hired was the president of the chief, sorry, the chief of staff to the president of the Senate. Okay. So he went over there along with his deputy who was one of my close friends who worked in the Senate. And so they were working on his team. And I don't know, two, two or three months later, kind of called me out of the blue saying that the travel aid that the governor had from the campaign until, you know, until that point, which is about the end of his first year, wanted to go back to DC. And so they were somebody for some with some advanced planning skills. I knew that I knew how to travel with candidates and had, you know, was somewhat trustworthy. And that was kind of enough to get my foot in the door. And so I joined him, I think almost to the day at the end of his first year in office. Okay. You know, pretty funny, because I didn't know him previously. And I got introduced to him in his office. And, you know, on a, you know, whatever day on Wednesday for five minutes. And then I had to report to his office the next morning to go to the governor's mansion to travel with him at 415 in the morning. You know, I've never been to the governor's mansion, showed up, didn't know how to get in, didn't know how to get where I'm supposed to go. You know, the security security team didn't know he had any travel aid. Right. It was a pretty, you know, baptisms by fire, a role. But it's almost like an executive assistant in all capacities while they're traveling. Correct. Yeah. You're everywhere he goes in Tallahassee out of the state. You're just with them around the clock. You have to take his luggage from the airport and everything. You know, you do. Now he carried a lot of his own luggage. He's that type of a guy, but you're, you know, briefing papers, everything you think of. You're kind of keeping everything on schedule. But we traveled. I mean, it was insane. It was about two years. I was on the road with him. We traveled 26 days or so a month. We were on the road. We typically did three cities a day, if not four cities a day. Wow. You know, we would get up 415 almost every morning. That's what him as the governor of Florida. Yeah, you'd be at his door typically 5 a.m. or so to go do morning TV interviews. And then you'd do two or three cities. And then you would typically fly to the next city for the next day. And we just did that around the clock. I mean, I just remember the only thing to get count on for your schedule was cabinet meetings, because they couldn't be moved to clemency, which is kind of our version of parole. Yeah, yeah. And the executions, those are the three things on their monthly calendar that you knew I was going to be in town actually for. Yeah, yeah. That window, you know, this was six months after I got me on my wife kind of, she was a saint, because I was just gone. Now is that normal? Or was was he was just a governor of the people that he wanted to really connect? Yeah, I mean this in the kindest way possible. He is a workaholic at every level. I mean, he just doesn't stop, you know, even on the plane. He'd probably would write 500 handwritten thinking notes every day. Oh, gosh. He was constantly on the phone constantly going, you know, from event to event. I've never seen anything like it. And I don't think ever will ever again. Who tells him what 500 people need thinking? You know, it's a result in his not getting most of it. It's just how, you know, he knows how meaningful it is when people have a personal connection, especially to it helps when if you have a neat title like a governor. I mean, how many people get notes, handwritten notes from governors, not many. And so he knew how impactful that was to people. And you know, he's, he's a very caring person in that sense. Yeah. So he just, if he wasn't at an event, he was either making phone calls, writing notes, like, make coming up with new ideas to do. I mean, his, he, he just never stopped around the clock. And I will need to be a part of that. Well, thank you, cards. It says, local think tank thinks you're swell. Yeah. And I'm intentional about sending them out and stuff. I probably send 15 or 20 a month. Yeah. And I've gotten notes from people like, hey, that's really nice. But I'm not the governor, you know, I can imagine it would be more meaningful if I was. Yeah. Exactly. It's, you know, and he, he did it in a genuine appreciation for the people that he came across. Yeah. People that helped him. Yeah. You know, if an agency had did something good or they're legislative, you know, you name the person. Right. Right. They'd get a handwritten note and you knew it was authentic. Yeah. Yeah. It was neat to be part of. I'm sure. You know, and he was a neat guy to work for because running for governor was the first office he ever ran for. He was a career in business. Oh, right. And so medical. Yeah. He started. So he was a, was in the Navy. And then he bought a donut shop and then eventually went to law school in the GI bill. Okay. So total silver spoon guy. Yeah. Exactly. I grew up extremely poor. You know, car, family car repossessed the whole nine yards, you know, and, and very, very humble beginnings. Has an adopted dad. Well, and he, when he ran for, sorry, after he got out of the Navy, he went to law school and became a deal lawyer. And basically in nine or so eight years became the biggest deal lawyer at the largest firm in Dallas. And was doing very well and decided to completely go down a different path and bought a hospital in Dallas and turned that, it bought it all on credit. And then he turned that into the largest hospital chain in the country. Well, and that was over maybe 15 years or so. I'm just guessing. And then, then he got into private equity, ran a family office and did business deals of every industry you can think of. Yeah. And then did that for about 10, 10, 12 years. And then decided, you know, didn't like where the direction the country was going. And I'm going to run for governor. No one knows who I am. I have zero name ID. And I'm going to invest in myself. And he's spent obscene amounts of his own personal capital to, you know, to run and give it to get his message out. And, you know, he was, you know, I'm sure there's other people in history. But I, in my opinion, he's kind of the first person in the modern politics to self finance race his first race and win. Yeah. And so it was pretty neat. What an interesting thing. When you traveled with him, you know, me and there's a kid, a couple travel aides over his eight years in office. We always joke that you get the traveling MBA. Because when you're with them, all he did was talk about business lessons. Right. He would have done, you know, he would meet with, you know, you sometimes you do a donor meeting. And these name the company, you know, say utility companies. We're meeting with them. And I think they're kind of just expecting a casual, fun, nice dinner. Yeah. Yeah. And so it, like, they would sometimes leave the meeting with six new ideas of how they can make their business better. And so I was a very neat person to kind of, I wouldn't agree to the hip too. Would you have felt totally unprepared to buy this bicycle shop without that time with Rick? I think so. I think I would have been much more gun shy about changing career paths. Yeah. Well, because you saw him do that. Yeah. Kind of right. Or you knew it in his history. Yeah. Every 10 or 12 years, he did something completely different. And everybody told him he was nuts. I have a lot of respect for people that do that. And it was very inspiring. And that's kind of a lot of people have told me I'm nuts recently. They're not a political world and moving across the country where I know zero people to buy a business. And so, but when you're around him, not only all the lessons you learn, you just have this. He gives you the sense of confidence that you can just do whatever you want. Just put your head down and go do it. And you know, it's pretty powerful to be successful. Yeah. I sometimes struggle to believe in myself, but Rick believes in me. Exactly. Yeah. Like if he believes in you better just go figure it out. Right. Well, and it really, I think that's good example for those of us that are business owners and leaders in various ways. How powerful your little word of encouragement or a little bit of time spent with some of your staff and things like that can be as well. You know, he would say this to our team tons multiple times, you know, over many years that his biggest and you can tell he believed in his core. It wasn't just encouraging us. You know, he constantly said that his biggest legacy as a governor besides the digital appointments is what all of his team members go on and do. And you can tell he believed that and you know, a lot of our team, a lot of them are still with them in the US Senate. But you know, there's a lot of us that are just going out and doing some wild stuff, you know, a good friend who was one of his travel aids is running an ag business that he's starting from scratch in Florida and another one of our guys. I was this communication director is working for Bass Pro Shop now in Missouri, you know, just not the impact players. Not go be a lobbyist or run for office path, which is the normal path. And he really inspired a lot of us to take a lot of risk and go try something fun. Yeah, very cool. So he goes off or he does a governor thing for a while and then runs for Senate, which kind of, well, I guess during that time with Rick, you went from being an aide all the way up to chief of staff. I left as, yeah, I was his travel aid. I did a couple months at the Department of Education and then got brought back to be his external fair structure, which manages all of his events and and all of those type of things. And then I was his political director on the 2014 re-election campaign. So back in the campaign world. Yeah proud to say we won. Oh, that was my first one and three. I never mentioned it to my my my my counterparts. But I in the back of my mind, I'm like, I hope these people realize I got a bad track record of elections and sold under a bad side. Yeah, we won that race, which is a very tough race. And then became his deputy chief of staff after that and kind of focused a lot with health care and law enforcement and a lot of those kind of across the board issues, the environment, and then became his chief of staff at the end, which was neat, because it was when his Senate campaign was up and running. And it's hard to, you know, it's a tricky time when, you know, quote lame duck and tallassie. Right. There's to be to manage the ship when you're an outgoing governor's administration. Right. When things matter a lot, because he's running for US Senate. And so very proud of how our team did and and what he accomplished all the way to the end. And you know, we had Hurricane Michael hit the pain handle, trying to think maybe six weeks before the election. Oh, wow. That was the fourth most powerful storm to ever hit the US. Right. Knocked out power and everything you can else think of. Well, how do you both express sensitivity and concern and things like that? But then also elections have to happen. Right. And we've got to go to the other part of the state. Yeah. And by the way, it's not a secret. The pain handle likes us a lot. So right. We've already got them in the bag. That's a tough area. Like you got to make sure it's up and running. And so it was just, it was a very neat way to kind of cap off my time working for him in that, in that world. And it was obviously, it was fun to see us win and kind of all of the hard work and hours kind of get validated by the voters at the end. And so it was kind of a very special time. And did you, I think I remember you had maybe the option to go up to DC kind of land and be a Senate stuff or, and you kind of said, nah, I like Florida. Yeah. I kind of told him earlier on so he could plan that, you know, I will stay and turn out the lights. I don't care. You know, I'm not going to jump ship to get the next job ahead of time. You know, I'm going to be here to the very end, but I'm going to go, you know, I eventually want to transition to the business world, you know, when I was working for him, I got my MBA from the University of Florida. Okay. And so it kind of started to set myself up. You already knew kind of. Yeah. And I joking, joke with him and others, you can only spend so much time with him before you get motivated. Right. Somehow start or buy a business or do something in the business world. So I told him, you know, I can only talk about private sector initiatives in our administration without actually going to live in the private sector for so long. Yeah. So, you know, there was, you know, the logical path was to go be a lobbyist or run for office. And neither of those were appealing in any way. And so told him that, you know, I'll turn off the lights and then I'm going to, you know, get out and try to eventually buy a business and get in the business world. And he was extremely supportive and that transition and still keep in touch with his team constantly. You know, there's some really good lifelong friends. But yeah, it's just going from the executive branch where you can do whatever you want to do for the most part to go be working a US Senate office, one out of a hundred and the minority party was not that appealing. Yeah. And it's not, you know, DC's a fun place. Wasn't where we wanted to have our kids be raised. And it's just a culture there that I love to visit, but don't want to be immersed in on the clock. Yeah. So, we're really happy. It's hard. I mean, we've both seen people that we respect go to DC and a few years later, we don't respect him as much. Yeah. Exactly. It's a yucky sticky kind of place. Yeah. It's a, so it's fun to see him adapt, you know, because he will figure out how to win and no matter what he touches. But I just, I just knew, you know, not that I was burnt out, but I wanted to have had the energy that I should have had for his DC team, just from being in the political process for so long. And so he kept a lot of his team or a lot of our core team are still there with him. And there's a lot of great people and it's fun to see them all adapt to also not being in charge, you know, to a certain degree. Right. Yeah. So then, so this is 2014. No, this is 2016. No, 2018. 2018. Okay. Yeah. And what's next for you and how is that unfold? Yeah. So like, is, did he leave the governor's office vacant then? No, he, how's the timeline on that? The governor's transition was, so the election is November of 2018. So the transition, I guess maybe I'm getting my year's mixed up, would have been that following January. Okay. And so he left, but there was already an election to decide who the next one was going to be. So he left that morning, like he was at the governor's, the next incoming governor's transition, and then left that morning to go be sworn in that afternoon. Yeah. And so it was a pretty neat day to kind of do all of that in the day. But yeah, so that was trying to, I guess that would have been 2018. Yeah, I guess January 19, I suppose, right? Yeah. So then we moved back to Fort Myers, which is where my family's at in the winter time, in my wife's family's about an hour away, and started the business search of, you know, what we wanted to do, where we wanted to move, what we wanted, what industry we were looking at, and kind of jumped in that head first, and kind of worked, was down there, it was neat. Can you share what were these other towns, other than Fort Collins? Oh, the, also Rans. All the fun towns that we, that we, it was Boseman, Salt Lake at a couple of them. Okay. Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins, maybe Boise, Idaho, there were, No, Austin, Flagstaff, everybody's doing Austin. Right, getting crowded. Yeah, and we really wanted to live in an area that valued the outdoors. Obviously we did a lot of that in Florida, but also felt like we, you know, accomplished a lot of those type of things in Florida and wanted to, you know, my wife and I would try to do ski trips whenever we could sneak away, and would just wanted to live in an area that kind of valued the, obviously we're bicycle nuts, you know, that valued that, and, you know, hiking and all of those type of things, and our kids are at an age where we wanted them to be outdoors, and going in. Yeah, yeah. Well, aside from maybe Boulder, I can't think there's hardly any cities in the US that have more of an outdoor culture than here. Exactly. We did a lot of research on all of these, especially when we were moving here, and if you like bicycles and you like a beer to every now and then, I don't think there's a better place in the country to do this, you know, and I don't think people realize how close the mountains are. Yeah. You know, it's a mile from my house. I can be climbing up a mountain on a bicycle. It's pretty, pretty wild. Pitch myself every time. So this is early 2019, but your chapter didn't move you out here until later. Yeah. What's next? We looked at every business you could think of across the board, every industry, every different size. You know, we're very lucky that we had a lot of, we had some investors that kind of believed in us. Oh, interesting. And they, you know, we looked at HVAC companies and, you know, everything you can think of, some a break manufacturing company, you know, just it was everything imaginable. And we got really close to the finish line on a couple of those, and they didn't work out for a couple different reasons. And some of that being, it's pretty tough, you know, I was very fearful that I loved every second that I worked in the governor's office for seven straight years. There wasn't a day that I did, it wasn't excited to go to work. Yeah. That's a tough thing to follow. I'd like to follow. Yeah. And so some of these companies, although, you know, they may have been more traditional private equity deals or maybe they would have been more bigger dollars or whatever else, I think I would have been pretty bored. And well, in place, you're kind of looking for potentially a lifestyle business, right? And so you have to have the willingness of kind of slower money there. You don't have investors that you're like, okay, in three years, I'm going to triple it and then I'm going to get your money back. And so this was just like, once we, you know, ironically, my wife was the actually the one that kind of stumbled across this through a friend in Boulder or actually in Breckenridge who knew about this business being for sale. And once we came out here in April, she was able to come with me. And we're like, this is it. The environment of the business, the town, everything about it, like this is the story we want to be. And so, you know, for we kind of burned the ships behind us and said, this is this is what we're going to do. And we're going to make this deal work. And so, but in the meantime, you ended up working for the current governor as well. Nope. No, you didn't. Nope. Yeah. I left. I was you were searching for two and a half years. Yeah, it was a long, okay. Yeah, it was a long in, you know, COVID had a pretty big impact on that, because it was hard to travel and come across some of these deals. And I think a lot of people would have assumed that the COVID would have opened up a lot of opportunities. Yeah. But at the same time, there was so much government money being injected in every part of the economy. Right. It actually kind of did not make it more easier to come across things. Right. And so, it was a good long process, took a lot longer than I expected. Okay. And for some reason, I had misfiled you into having worked for Scots and then distanced itself. But no, no, my last day in public service was inauguration day. So, did you make any money in the meantime, or you lived on savings, but rode your bike a lot more than you drove your car, because that's what you did anyway. Yeah, we figured it out. Yeah. And we're very lucky to be in a neat position, and we're able to survive that window and had a lot of fun at the same time. And you know, it all worked out really well at the end. Okay. But we got, you know, we were down at the, we were down to the wire. Yeah, you needed to figure something out, kind of. Yeah. Well, and I know, like, I know Dave was, you know, looking for all the money. Like, he wasn't, he knew he had a really great business there, and he wasn't going to sell it on the cheap to anybody. And he wasn't going to sell it to anybody that would mess it up either. Yeah. So he had a high bar to, to that acquisition. Did you face competition in that? We did. We did face competition. And I think, you know, I think our focus on wanting to be very big in the community here, you know, be very active in the community. And to have a lot of, kind of just personal beliefs in that this is a, you know, this business is going to do really well. It can help a lot of people. I think, you know, put us ahead a lot. It wasn't just a simple dollar equation. Yeah. Yeah. And so I that probably, you know, made, made us inch ahead a little bit. But he's, he's a really, you know, it starts in the beginning just as a simple introduction. And then, you know, eventually, obviously was a transaction. But by, you know, it, it just kept evolving into a mentorship and a friendship. And he's still very involved. And has a lot of ideas and is, you know, it's just been a really, you know, it's, you could not pick a better person to, you know, to purchase a business from. Because at, you know, at the end of the day, he had this for 44 years. So baby, yeah, this is his baby. And so, and he still cares a lot about it. And obviously so do I. And he has a lot of long-term employees that he wanted to make sure we're going to be set up for success. And so it's been fun kind of working through the transition. So like, talk to me about those first three, four, six weeks on the ground. I mean, you're here. You brought your family along. You rented a house. I imagine we, my wife wish, probably wishes we rented a house. We rented a very small apartment about the size of this. Maybe one little room with two kids. So we all spend a lot of time together. Right. It was great. So we came up here, had a really fun trip to kind of get settled. And I came up with a buddy of mine from Tallahassee and she flew up with the kids a couple days later. And what was neat, you know, we still had about two weeks or so before the deal closed. And, you know, you know, how confidential this is. Sure. So we just literally biked every path in town, just explored every, you know, restaurant and brewery and shop that you can think of. And then the column before the storm. That's exactly what it was. And, you know, and I think what in the transition went really well. I think the thing that, you know, looking back, you kind of, you know, you want to hit yourself in the forehead is for us or for, you know, for my family, personally, you know, this is a long journey to finally get the deal closed. Right. Even the deal itself, but especially all the previous things we looked at and got close to. Sure. And when that gets finally gets done, you're so relieved that it was successful and it worked. You kind of forget that all of the employees, this is day one of their journey that the business just got sold. All you want to do is just like take a breath and deflate almost, but now you got to go in there and be the cheerleader. Exactly. And so that was, you know, just, I guess it probably sounds really obvious, but you don't think about it at the time that this is the culture shock for everybody else. Right. You know, for somebody who's owned the business that long and obviously not everybody's in the loop. Or employees that have been there for 10 years, a lot of long time employees that, you know, were pretty, pretty shocked at it. But, you know, it just, it takes time to get to know everybody and for them to realize that, hopefully they realize that I'm not a terrible person and kind of an enthusiast of this type of stuff, but also they're really good at what they do. And I'm brand new to not only owning a business, but also to owning this type of a business. Right. So, you know, imagine like being humble. I remember when I first started my food trailer business and I started hiring employees and stuff to help me food prep and stuff. And they're just all teaching me things that I needed to know that I probably should have enabled to teach them. Was your experience kind of like that? A hundred percent. And I'm still to this day, there's a lot of things that they know how to do that. You know, that I lean on them very heavily to make sure we're going down the right path. Yeah. Yeah. That's a hundred percent kind of what is a routine experience in the office. Yeah. You know, they, you know, we've had, we're very lucky. We have many, many long-term employees and they really get what they do. Yeah. So, I'm, of course, some very cognizant to let them do what they're really good at doing. Yeah. And just trying to kind of pick up and absorb as much as I can along the way. Yeah. Tell me like a lesson or two from your days and politics that really was significant toward making progress with the staff, with the business, with this new normal. I think probably the biggest piece is in politics. You deal with everybody. Yeah. And you deal with every different part of the state, you know, all the different culture, especially. So you got to be able to talk to the 85 year old. Yeah. Greyhired lady, as well as the tattooed up 22 year old and whatever. Exactly. Across the board. And you just kind of get used to dealing with every human being you can think of to come across. Yeah. And especially in politics, a lot of those people are adversarial at the same time too. Most people don't call the governor's office. Hopefully less adversarial in the second cycle. Most people don't call governor's offices to praise them. Right. So it's a lot of putting out fires and things like that. And so I think being used to dealing with such a wide variety of personalities is helpful. And that like associate Jesus staff or deputy chief of staff, chief of staff, like that position is basically the put out fires. That's all. Yeah. And keep the crap off of the governor. Yeah. You know, like you got enough of a title that you can deflect it from. And if you're really good, you make the people you make mad, think that it's your fault, not the governor's fault. Yeah. That's the key. So I think just some of those experiences, you know, probably to their benefit and probably to my disadvantage is you deal with a lot of terrible situations in the governor's office too, where there has been nothing that's going to cross my desk and that recycled cycles that has rattled me in any way because nobody died. Nobody there's not something terrible that just happened. Right. And so probably to a fault, you have a world view that doesn't view like your level of what's a crisis. Yeah. And so, but it's been a people are freaking out because they forgot to put this order in or something like that. And you're like, well, it's fine. Yeah. Nobody died. Exactly. Nobody's house just burnt down. You know, you see, you know, you say all of those analogies like that, but that stuff happens all the time when you're in the governor's office. Yeah. There's mass shootings that happen. Bridges collapse. People's houses get burnt down. Right. People's, you know, hurricanes come through and wipe out neighborhoods. You know, you just, you just, you come across terrible things. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting to think through. I had a really good experience with a young man at your shop just recently when I my mountain bike in. Oh, good. Well, everybody was nice, but particularly kind of funny name starts with an A or M or something. Milan. Maybe there's a Milan. There's a Kalani. Kalani is who it was. Yeah. From Hawaii. He's our sales manager. He's a guy. Yeah. Very proud that he's from Hawaii. He's been with the company for for quite a while now. And yeah. And he's he's a really nice person. Is there any other key folks you want to give a shout out to your transition easier? Of course. You know, Charlie. He's also a member of one of your groups. Charlie's are general manager and has been there for quite a while. And then Milan is our head of service. It does a fantastic job. Really tall. Yeah. I interact with him. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really smart. Kalani is our head of sales. You know, those are kind of our three main. That's your kind of leadership team. If you will team. And then we have Genie is head of marketing and Vicki is our bookkeeper. Vicki probably had the the hardest of all because all right. Every, you know, when a business has been up and running for 44 years, things just constantly run. Right. And you have a new guy that starts a new I'll say to take it over. Well, and single thing has to be changed. That and Dave trusted her intuitively with everything just about as my recollection. And so like you're like what's what's how do these natural reports come together? I wanted to look at this number. I know what number I want to look at. I know why I want to look at it. I know I want to compare it to you just have to walk me through how to figure all of it out. Right. Right. So she's been she's been great. Pulling your hand through that. But it's a great team. You know, we have Rico and Pat as are two of our main mechanics. They've been there for quite a few years. Yeah. It's it's a it's a really it's a full fledged kind of family business. Well, for those that don't know recycled cycles. Why don't you talk through the the bicycle industry just a little bit. Yeah. Because it occupies a really unique space in that. And I'd love to hear of course, you know, also about where you're going. Yeah. And you know, the main reason why we we're very interested in and getting this to the finish line and being the new owners is it's very unique compared to I think any other bike shop I've ever been in. So half of our bikes are new and half are used, which is the used part alone is very rare. And so we kind of gear toward that. Most bike shops you're like, can I trade my bike in? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And most of it laughs you out the door. And a lot of bike shops, if you're not buying a three, four, five thousand other bikes. They don't really want to talk to you. Go away. And so, you know, this is a we do a lot of kind of entry-level mid-tier bicycles. New bikes for like 500, 800. Yeah. I bet our our lowest price are most affordable. New bike is probably 450. Okay. I think our average new bike price is around 850 or so. Yeah. Most bike shops that's their average bike price is probably 3,000. Right. Right. You're most expensive one. It might be 3,000. Yeah. Yeah. One or two barely or so bikes. Yeah. Mostly 1500, 200. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we like to joke that if you're spending over $3,000 for bicycle, it should come with an engine. And so, you know, the technology in the bike world is getting more and more elaborate. They're getting lighter and lighter and more and more fancy. And which is great. It's fun. Those are great bikes to ride. But that's not that's not not everybody wants to. Well, and the technology from four years ago is now available for 850 dollars. Exactly. And so, you know, the other half of our bikes are used. This is a neat town where it's easy to come. Well, not easy, but it's we found ways to come across a lot of used bikes, whether that's trade-ins, whether that's donations, whether that's finding them at all these different spots. Correct. Rod sales. Rod sales. You name it. I got 15 bikes available at my garage sale. They're $10 each. If it's a working bike, we want it. And we will, you know, all of the used bikes get a full fledged kind of full tune up. And everything that needs to be replaced is replaced or fixed. That's the beauty of bicycles is the technology for the most part. Yeah. 40-year-old bike works just fine. Yeah. So a 10-year-old bike is really good. And so, how big a pile would all of your used parts make if you just piled up in my parking lot right now? It'd be above the ceiling. So we have a really neat used parts room too. So when we do have bikes that it's not justified to make them work again for whatever reason. We've part out the strip of the pieces that work. And, you know, we have any weird accessory or bike part two, we have it because we just come across everything you can think of. And so, you know, we like to joke that although some of us are serious cyclists, some are not, you don't have to show up in spandex at our bike shop to fit in and to blend in and I'm getting a bike. We want people that just want to get out there. You can try to create new bicyclists more than you're trying to get the spending dollar of a very serious bicyclist. And we have great relationships with other shops in town. A lot of them tend to be a lot higher end that, you know, if for someone to eventually buy a $6,000 bike or a $10,000 bike, they're probably going to start with one of our bikes first and they may go down that pathway. And so, and we do a lot of fitness equipment mainly in the winter time. Just to kind of help the seasonality of the business. But, you know, I- You're talking about like treadmills, step machines, all that kind of tools, all of that type of stuff. You know, we do a lot of that and, you know, it's a neat place. We do a lot of kids bikes. That's kind of, you know, we have a lot of families. We do a pretty neat trade-up program where if they buy a bike, they can come back and get some of their money back for, you know, when their kids kids outgrow the bike. Well, I don't know if you still do this, but pretty much every non-profit cause that asked Dave for a bike donation for a special event. He got it. He's like, We do a lot. And we just did 200 bikes for the toys, the tots for Christmas. Wow. We did, when the boulder fires happen, we reached out to some contacts we had in boulder and delivered about 25 bikes to people's houses were burnt down. You know, we do a lot of donations. You know, we're lucky too. A lot of people in the community know that. So, they bring us our used bikes and some we fix up and... Because they know that you'll kind of pay it forward. Yeah, and some we tell them, you know, hey, we don't need this style of, say, road bike, but if you give it to us, we'll sell it and we'll, you know, we'll take that revenue and put these five kids bikes out of them. Right. So, we do a lot of that in the community here. It's very supportive, but it's a neat business because everybody can be a customer, especially in this town where everybody has a bike. You know, we don't have a lot of customers. We do have really high in bikes that come for us for their brewery bike that if you get stolen, it may be a $200 used bike, not a $2,000 bike. Right. Totally. But, well, and I'm thinking about my friend Andrea who's got a couple of small boys and she didn't even know Dave was a customer of mine or anything, but she's bragged up recycled cycles before and she's been... She just, when her boys get too big, she trades those bikes in and she gets another one and then she trades them in again later. You know, and it's just like what she does with her bicycle maintenance program. Yeah, and that's what we want people that will buy bicycles to ride them and use them, and if they outgrow them, they just will continue out riding bicycles. You know, I joke with people and I'm sure a lot of my friends will give me a hard time, but you know, I don't believe that I own a bicycle company. I think it's a healthcare company because, you know, in my opinion, if you look at physical health and mental health, spiritual health, I think, you know, bicycles are the best way to accomplish all three of those and we have a lot of people that come in that, you know, they need an affordable bike just to be able to start working again. You know, we have a lot of people that come in that had hip surgery, so they're looking for a tricycle or an e-bike that... There are people that get DUIs. We get a lot of DUI bike people. But that bike is the difference between them staying unemployed sometimes, right? It's a big deal. Yeah. We have a lot of customers that come in that, you know, sometimes when you get to talk to them a lot, they just, they want to get outside more and, you know, they need to get outside more for whatever they have going on in their own lives. Yeah. Where they're reasonable, affordable way to do it. And, you know, we are probably our biggest competition as big box stores. Sure. When they come with us, not only are we going to take care of them, but we'll do the warranty work, if things go wrong, we'll fix things, you know, it's a much better, in my opinion, much better business proposition. I think really people probably trust... Yeah. Recycle cycles much more than they trust Walmart. Exactly. We're going to be over a long time. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's a neat, and I've, you would be surprised how many people come out and test ride bikes and are parking, you know, are kind of big thing as any bike you see. Yeah. You can... Every time I go there, I see people riding... Take it for a spin. It's a big parking lot, go around back, whatever you need, and there are a fair amount of customers that this is their first time riding a bike in 20 years. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of teaching how people ride bikes again. Yeah. It's a very neat, it's a special place. So, what would you like to see the evolution of recycled cycles become from here? Yeah. Again, I know, no hard plans necessarily, but what are you dreaming about? Still all over the map, but, you know, I think it's a business model that works. I think it's a very underserved market. Are there recycled cycles type businesses in Denver, in... No. Loveland in Grand Junction. No, you'll get some nonprofits bike shops here. All right. Like the bike co-op here for Collins. Yeah. You'll get versions of those, but that's about it. Yeah. And so, I think there's a lot of opportunity for us in Colorado, but even outside Colorado too, you know, just seeing how this goes long-term, but right now I'm still kind of in that. Yeah. Just learn every ounce of business. Get your feet wet. Well, I've always thought it had that opportunity to be a brand. Yeah. You know, and I'm kind of a bike... I'm not strong in my knowledge. Yeah. You know, and so if I look at bikes on Craigslist, yes, that might be a good deal or no, it might not. It might be stolen. It might be stolen. The whole cartridge could be messed up or whatever, you know, and so having a second set of eyes on my second-hand bike purchase. That's a big thing for us is you don't have to go to someone's garage that you've never met. Right. And if somebody wants to pay for credit card, they can. It's not a cash deal and it's a... To me, you know, I love the model. I like it where if you don't know everything about bikes, you can come in and feel comfortable. You know, my wife, when I was riding a lot down in Florida, you know, she used to tell me sometimes I'd have her when she was doing errands. Stop by and get this tire, pick up this handlebar tape, you know, name what it is. And at one point, she basically just said, I don't want to go into any of these bike shops. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. Right. They look at me like, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I just don't like it. And like, that to me is the worst thing in the world. Right. I want everybody that comes into our store. Doesn't matter how quick you are, what size you are, we'll find you a bike, we'll fix whatever you need to be fixed. Yes, we'll teach you and be understanding about your fears about jumping on this bike in our parking lot. Nice people. Yeah, that's that's all I can ask. Very cool. Very cool. Anything else like from the business journey side, we'll jump into some of our other segments here to close out. But no, I, you know, just for, you know, if anybody's listened to this that is looking to potentially make a big career change, I can't recommend it enough. You know, this is I can, there are so many neat opportunities that didn't work out over the last two or so years that boy, I'm glad they didn't work out. Yeah. This, you know, this couldn't be better. So I think it's just an example of stay focused and keep your head down. Persevere kind of it will work out. Yeah. And it has. Would you recommend that to almost anybody across the board? Really? I think people are so risk-adversed. You know, and I kind of viewed, and I think some of this is from my parents and some of this is from mentors I've had, you know, I viewed my time in government that, you know, I think 10 years or so is a great window of public service. Yeah. I don't think, you know, I you did it early in your career instead of yeah, not to bash people that spend their whole lives in government. But I think that's where a lot of things in our system go south. And I wish more people and former co-workers and friends would take some risks. But, you know, people are pretty risk-adversed. Well, and I think like like with this with the recent lockdowns and all that kind of stuff, like it feels like there's a lot of pressure on the American small business. And I think part of the reason for that and maybe I'm a 10-foil hat guy or whatever, but I don't think the government largest likes having all these independent thinking, independent voice, independent income. Yeah. People, they like people who work for big companies that do what they say or they do what the big companies say and just kind of be part of the big machine, not this kind of freelancers that can have a voice. And to me, like, you know, when I was in business school, I enjoyed it, but I also felt like I was being trained to work in a big corporation, you know, and not as much encouragement to go try some, go try some, you know, things. And, you know, and for a lot of people that, you know, don't take risk if you're not going to take a risk or bet on yourself and your thirties or whatever the age is. Yeah. Are you ever going to do it again? Right. To me, so. Yeah, I mean, to a certain extent, you got kids at four or six or whatever. And so the like the timeline was growing short a little bit. If you had teenagers and you got to start saving for their college fund, it's a little scarier time, right? Yeah, but at the same time, I can always go back. Right. At the same with anybody else that doesn't take like, you can always go back to what you're in for if you have to. Your kids pay for their own damn college. Exactly. Cool. Exactly. Well, so let's transition into, uh, which would you like to go for? We've talked about politics the whole time, but not really your why necessarily. Yeah. But the faith family politics, which one of those would you like to choose to talk about first? You know, I, first of all, I like how you phrased it because I, it makes me chuckle because I chat with my friends. I feel like most people have turned their religion into politics, right? I like how you cut it as to separate things as it should be. Um, you know, on the faith side, you know, I'm still kind of in there, even though I'm in my mid thirties, still in the beginning of kind of my faith journey. I don't know if you ever get out of it completely the journey, but um, you know, now that we have young kids, uh, you know, we're, we're kind of just my wife and I decided we're going to go try out quite a few different churches in town and kind of find the right one that kind of has the right flavor for us. Did you grow up in a church bath? Yeah, uh, grew up as a Methodist, uh, her parents went to Methodist church in, in my hometown and, um, when I went to college, uh, you know, didn't do as much. Right. Right. It seemed kind of hypocritical when I was drinking in part and chasing girls as much as I was. Exactly. And so, um, uh, and then when we were back down in Fort Myers, um, our daughter went to a local preschool. That was part of a Lutheran church and it was a pretty big wake-up call when, you know, she's sitting in the backseat and asking you questions that she learned about during school of, I don't know for sure. Really to get back focused, but I've always kind of viewed, you know, for me personally, um, uh, you know, when I, uh, sitting in a church on a Sunday, isn't quite it. Yeah. Maybe I just haven't found the right one, but to me, when I'm exercising, whether that's running or bike riding or hiking, you know, that's kind of my time alone, we're gonna kind of try to focus on what type of person I want to be and all of those type of things and some trying to bridge that with the local church that will kind of, uh, hit that, that same motivation. Um, my wife grew up going to Catholic school or, uh, Catholic high school, and um, she's kind of in the similar boat that we're just trying to kind of explore a couple of different churches in town. Yeah. Try to get more involved, um, you know, when I was in the governor's office, uh, traveling, uh, I went to every church service you can think of. Right. Uh, and so I've been, I've sat through a career service. I've, I've sat through Hispanic services, not in English, you know, everything you can think of. Yeah. Uh, so we're just trying to kind of, I haven't balanced out what I went out of a church yet. I'm still trying to tile that in. Uh, funny story, though, um, you know, I feel like a lot of people, um, sometimes give, uh, the Mormon church and the Southern Baptist a hard wrap. Right. Um, when you get to a hurricane, after a hurricane comes through, right. Who's always a running bat with a couple of us on the team who shows up first, the Mormons or the Southern Baptist. Right. Because they show up before anybody else. Well, and they're, especially talking about Mormons, there ain't that many Mormons along the Gulf Coast. Yeah. Places. They show up every time in emergency what happened. Yeah. And I always really admired that with those groups. And so I don't know what the right balance is. I'm what we're looking for. But yeah, especially now that our kids are kind of at that age where we want them to curl up in some sort of a church family. What have you seen, like from a bird's eye view, kind of a non-participant view in regards to that, you know, like 50 years ago, if you didn't say you were a part of the church, you had to, you couldn't be in politics hardly. Right. Yeah. Like it was an assumed kind of face background. Now it's almost, yeah, I would vote for that guy, but he's a little too churchy for me. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, tell me about that evolution and where we go from here. I think that's changed. I think the, there's a really neat book called sweat equity. Okay. And it's about the fitness world. Okay. But it talks about how the younger generations are getting their sense of community. That, um, you know, my parents, my grandparents would have got in their Sunday church groups and events that they did. Right. They're getting those, that sense of community through whether it's yoga classes or, you know, you name it those type of tribes. Right. And, um, I think there's a missing gap in our society right now of, younger churches that can connect through different ways besides come on Sunday. Yeah. You can fakes thing for a while or listen to a message and go home. Right. Right. So I think there's a big opportunity there that, um, I think we'll evolve as our generation kind of gets older. Yeah. I was listening to a podcast recently with Jordan Peterson. I think it was. And he was talking about how churches in their quest to grow and add membership made it kind of too easy. Like they wanted to be opened to everybody and they, like, people want actually kind of hard things in their life. I think that goes both ways. Because I think people want some course that are principles, but I think at the same time, and grace and grace, yes. And I think at the same time, um, they're not also the right ones to be the ultimate judges that I think sometimes they go down that pathway. Right. I think it's a very delicate balance. For sure. For sure. Yeah. That's an interesting observation. And certainly a lot of people will never go to church because of judgment they've felt from, and that is a shame that they ever felt that way. Yeah. You know, this is a, you know, everybody only has one life. Right. Just to see, you know, people should be welcome at any church. Um, but well, we can, uh, we can come on that offline. So, uh, there's faith, uh, family or politics, do you want to delve into next? Um, you pick. You're the host. Well, let's go politics. Like I haven't really discovered necessarily, um, um, what got you on fire for limited governance, governance and, and conservativeism. And, you know, I wouldn't, I, I barely, like if I think about you in the few conversations we've had, I'd probably think of you more as a libertarian than a Republican, but yeah, you got good census. I lean on the libertarian side. Why? Um, there's just so many things that I think because it's my bridge to justify some of my very liberal social positions. Mm hmm. You know, there's a lot of social conditions that I'm pretty liberal on. Yeah. And my view on it is, like is can get married. Yeah. Like why is the government having a role on this? Totally. You know, and so there's a lot of issues like that, um, that I just think the government needs to be out of the conversation completely. Yeah. You know, this is between people or, you know, in name, whatever the issue is. Right. Um, and so I lean on the libertarian side. I, I think I've got more conservative on the fiscal side. Just Florida is a very conservative, fiscally responsible state. Yeah. I've seen how much money Florida can waste. Right. I can only imagine right like in other places. Like think about Illinois where you came from. Yeah. There are so far underwater on their pension fund that it's basically cannibalizing every other thing they would want to do as a state. I think our pension was when we left, I think it was funded at about 87%, um, which is unheard of for a big state. Right. And now, and here's like the tricky part with that is people don't care. That's the thing. Right. We cut 10 billion from state debt. Nobody cares. Right. You know, and like this is what the country needs and what other states need. Yeah. It's a hard thing to campaign on. Yeah. How do we get like, I mean, that's Tokville, right? Like said that basically democracy is always prone to fail because when people realize they can vote themselves goodies from the private debt. I mean, I just had my, I had a cough and you guys have heard it on the pot and I had my free COVID test. I got from Uncle Joe here. And, um, you know, so I knew I didn't have COVID, even though I had a cough. But like, once you got the door to the goodies open, like how do you get people to be okay with not with closing that pantry door? I don't know. It's tough because like I'll give you an example when the COVID relief bill first came out. Yeah. I wasn't obviously not a part of any aspect of it or what the Senator did or didn't do. And I remember he came out publicly and talked about how the unemployment supplements is going to be terrible for businesses because it's going to make people get paid more or sick in at home. Right. Yeah. Next 300 dollars a week. Yeah. And he was ridiculed in the press. Right. And not one other conservative that I can solve ever backed him up. Nobody, no business group said, Hey, you're probably right on this. Right. And look a couple of months down the road. It's a lot of people can't hire anybody because everybody's living off unemployment. Right. Now, you know, those systems should be there to help people back up. But, um, you know, I don't, it's hard to see when some of those solutions are so simple, but the politics to get them are pretty tough. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. The unintended consequences of some of these decisions is, did you, um, actually, of course you did. You sent me the, uh, link to the Levi Strauss gal. I'd never in a million years would have thought that free speech would in today's environment become the right issue. Yeah. You know, and right now, you know, this lady, I don't know anything about her. I just read this neat article of her view. I'm sure on track to become the CEO of Levi Strauss. I'm sure there's a counterpoint. Sure. But maybe people are being shouted down, canceled, left and right. I just don't understand how this movement of people should be able to speak freely, how that's becoming controversial now. Oh, anybody is opposed to that. Yeah. Like, I just thought that was the most agreeable concept. And our whole political spectrum is free speech. Yeah. And we are going down a scary path lately. Yeah. For sure. I've, you know, our first conversation, I talked about that a little bit of taking some consequences for, for speaking liberal notions or whatever. How, I mean, it's a hard problem, but how do we turn that tide? Like, is it just take courage from everybody? It's going to take business leaders to not be whips. Yeah. I think they're pretty good at being whips. Yeah. Now in their defense, a lot of business leaders are focused on running their business. Right. Well, and some of the ones like my pillow guy, he's been hurt pretty bad by a lot of boycats and things like that. I think the pendulum will swing back from the cancel culture to where we celebrate those people that have courage. I think that will balance out more. I'm very glass half full in this in the sense of I think because of the last two and a half years, no matter what side of these issues or the aisle you're on, I think people have had the biggest wake up call that who their mayor is and who their governor is and who their president is matter dramatically. Now people always voted in presidential races. Not many people voted in school board races. Right. Not many people voted for the mayor's. And I think this is a wake up call. And either side doesn't matter what your issue is. Yeah. That who your mayor is matters a lot. You know, they have a whole lot of power that they just assumed. Yeah. Are you ready, council? Name a government power that gets given back. I can't think of one. And so that's a scary proposition for people going forward. But I think people will realize that who they elect matters. Yeah. I don't know how involved you've gotten or interested in the local city politics, but we've got to just for the first time really since I've moved here, we've got a highly liberal city council. Yeah. It's been pretty much four, three, three, four the whole time and the whole time lived here. But now it's six one. Oh wow. And they just released a document recently. And it's the 31 priorities for the city council. 31. Wow. Right. I got along. I don't know if you know this, but a little piece of trivia that priority used to be a singular word. Like it used to be there was no such thing as priorities because it's the one thing. Name a business that's good at doing 31 things. There is no such thing. Yeah. It's a joke. GE back in the day, maybe. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. I have purposely went really far out of my way to be pretty disconnected with the local politics. And I get it. You know, I think if people meet me, they'll realize I'm a nice person. And I'm probably a lot more moderate than they probably assume. Yeah. But it's a, you know, moving into a blue town is, you know, when you worked for a red governor, is a little intimidating that you're going to get caught up in some of that. And so, you know, I'm going to do my best with just kind of focused on the business and and be as nice to everybody as possible. And I think they'll realize that that's shouldn't be controversial. But well, you don't want to kill their grandma. Yeah. Exactly. I guess I can't leave without talking because Florida was such a, I guess a dichotomy as compared to many states with regards to closures and mandates and kids and all that kind of thing. Not as much as we think. The Florida was shut down pretty heavily. Yeah. Now, it wasn't necessarily statewide mandated. But most of the regionals and towns and regionals, it was pretty shut down. I think Florida has two really strong benefits that people didn't realize in the COVID. Yeah. Number one, it is designed, pre-designed to be really good at outdoor events, seating, everything you'd think of. There was no new permits that needed to be pulled in Florida for outside seating. That's Florida. That's what you do. And two, I think as some of the best emergency management officials in the country because every fall, when hurricane season comes around, every county, your county emergency director isn't the mayor's brother's cousin. It's a top level position as state government because when hurricanes come through, it's all county-based. It's very organized. The sheriffs are very organized. And so for them to stand up, testing centers and things like that, that's no different than the all of the hurricane services. They are more prepared than some other places. I think places that get tested constantly were a much better position. Yeah, stronger that way. Fair enough. What would you have done different if you were the governor? Oh boy, I don't want to get in trouble. You don't have to answer if you don't want. I'll say governor is a whole not governor for a specific state. I think the thing that bothered me the most was the places that did mass mandates, whether your career disagree, I think the way they went about it was such a loss in the message. For example, Collins just ended a mass mandate after a couple of months. No, go back to September. Just got out of it a couple of days ago, even though the numbers are the same. So when they institute this mass mandate, I just wish somebody would tell us, we think that if everybody wears masks and indoors, it may reduce transmission by 2%. Whatever it is. And in that, we think 3% reduction means ex many people will be out of the hospital. Yes, many people may not pass away. Yeah, and then so then we can kind of decide, is this worth X amount of people that we statistically make this happen? There's a method to not just everybody needs to wear a mask. Don't say it worked. Right. Like that's to me, it's just such a disappointing way to go about. And it's okay to say, we don't know. This is a new pandemic, doesn't feel new, but it's still, we don't know feels better than just do it. That's the problem. Yeah, if they would have just said, we don't know if this is going to help at all. Yeah. But we don't have many other options we can think of. Let's give this a shot. I think they'd have a lot different reaction there. Yeah. Where this everywhere you go. I mean, we had somebody call in, somebody called in to complain that one of our employees, I'm not sure who could have been myself, wasn't wearing a mask at some point when someone walked through. We have a 10,000 square foot. Right. With 12 people there this time of year. And so I'm sure we made a mistake somewhere. It happens. It's a lot of people that come in and out. And so then all of a sudden the government officials calls us complaining that somebody complained to them. Right. It's like there has to be better use of everyone's time than to call businesses that they don't think are complying. Yeah. It's just, I don't know. It's just silly. Yeah. Fair enough. You know, but especially with the kids and schools. Yeah. And the mass mandates and it's just bonkers. You know, if somebody can provide evidence that this is going to have vaccination mandates. I mean, people should be able to do whatever they want. You know, so I don't know. My wife and I got vaccinated. Yeah. But I have no business telling anybody else if they should get vaccinated or not. You know, we didn't. I didn't have done a booster shot. Our kids haven't been vaccinated. I haven't seen the science that proves it. But I don't know why. I don't know why anybody would think that my opinion is stronger than there. What do you think Mr. Tudot should do? He just declared emergency powers act in Canada. It seems like it'd be a lot easier to be like, you know, that 14 day thing that we talked about. We're going to go ahead and sweep that under the rug. If you guys can go back to work sitting in your trucks by your damn cells most of the time. Killing their economy, hurting our economy. I think it's crazy. There's just so many reasonable solutions out of this. Right. But people are talking past each other. Yeah. You know, it's disappointing. Yeah. Yeah, the amount of listening is pretty low. Yeah. It's pretty wild. Let's talk about your family. Yeah. I like to, I like to get one word descriptions of the children. Thank you. You're up for that. Yeah. Anna is, she's about six and a half. Hers would be sweetheart. Owen who's four and a half. It could be adventure. You can tell he's going to be wild when he grows up. He's ready to go wherever, whenever. Yeah. Anna is more a little more bold, but Owen is, you can tell he's sly. He's going to figure out how to get around the rules. It's sometimes you sometimes it's disappointing when he does it and sometimes you're like, wow, he's kind of proud of him. Good skills. Yeah. I know where he got some of them. Yeah. Very cool. Tell me the love story. You mentioned that you chased, gosh, I forgot your wife. Yeah, Christa. Yeah. Christa. Chase Christa for, that was my first girlfriend in college, actually. Yeah. She was a little crazy. Blotched out. Tell me about that journey of falling in love and what it was maybe about her that really drew you in vice versa. She, so trying to think it was probably the halfway through my freshman year when I came across her at a tennis match and then in my roommate, that was on the men's tennis team, lived with me and I don't know for a year. Every time we did host people over to our house that you do in college, but invite the women's tennis team. Bring them over. Bring the whole team over. So did he have a girlfriend on that team or he had a crush on Christa or something? No, he had a different girlfriend and I've said the story before, but there was another girl on the team that I saw. I can't remember the cafeteria somewhere and I remember telling my roommate, I was like, man, I gotta start going to this and he was the one who's like, yeah, she's pretty, but this is the one you really need to follow. So I give him a lot of credit for steering me in the right direction, but yeah, so I would come across her here and there and I can't remember how we got introduced at some point, but I figured out my in was I went backpacking through college or sorry, through Europe at the end of my freshman year in college. So an exchange student lived with me from Denmark. Oh, fun. And so my buddy and I were going to go visit him and backpack for a month or so and we just had a blast. And so I found out, I don't remember how, but her dad at that time worked for Siemens and would do trainings in Germany. Okay. That's one of my favorite countries and that was my end. So as soon as I would see her, I'll just start trying to talk about traveling in Europe and all that place and she traveled him a lot. It took quite a bit to eventually convince her to hang out. But the irony is and my parents here, they're probably going to be pretty upset. Our fraternity got kicked off campus for a whole bunch of reasons. And we had this social plan at this local bar and I came in with I think it was called Revenge in the Nerds was the theme. Oh gosh. And we at some point, the university called the place and said, Hey, this is like a non-sanction group. Yeah, this fraternity is basically cancelled. So like the night before the morning of they called us and said, you guys can't come. Oh, and so not saying we had good ideas at the time, but everybody was like, well, it's just had a Brad's house. Perfect. I went and we had this long list of demands that I said. And so we took out all the furniture. We we put up all the hurricane shutters so you couldn't see in the house. Right. Like we had bouncers out front. It was a pretty elaborate deal for a college party. And you didn't notify the landlord, though. We did not, which is my parents. Oh gosh. So they were not notified. And we even, you know, all the windows are blocked out. And we put, we went and went to Costco and bought all of this beer, put it all in every sink and tub in the house was filled with ice and air overflowing. And so anyway, so we have this big party. And I'm so lucky that nothing terrible happened because the liability and risk that I took on and parents took on, you know, they would they're going to be horrified when they listen to this. But was that when okay, she didn't come. That went okay. The next morning, we my roommate and I wake up and clean up the house, put all the furniture back in. And we're like, hey, we still have like three bathtubs worth a beer. And so we ended up taking down the women's tennis team. That's what I told him is like, let's only don't tell you guys because otherwise it's going to be all guys over here. Let's only invite girls and see how many we can bring over. And that's finally when the women's tennis team showed up. Nice. And so that was, I guess you could probably say our official first date. And so my moral of the story to my parents are going to be horrified was if I didn't take that crazy risk the night before. Right. I don't know if the women's tennis team will ever come over who knows what goes on after that. There is no profit without risk. Exactly. Well, unless you're making vaccines. Exactly. It worked out well. We started dating halfway through college. And I really outkicked my coverage. She's a really nice person. She was a school teacher for quite a while. We're to the Department of Education for a little bit. And she focused on the littles now? Yeah. When we had our second one, she stayed home. When Owen was born and spent a full time at home. Will she do something then? Are you guys going to knock another one out while you're still? No, two is great. Two and done. So it's been like a year. She's going to be kind of under-employed. We wanted one of each. And so if we had two girls or two boys, maybe we would have had another, but two is just fine. And so I think once Owen's in school full time, whether she helps out more at the bike shop or she's getting involved in the preschool that owns that. And she's joining their board. And so the grass won't grow too long. Yeah. Yeah. I suspect she's got a strong motivation to make impact like you do. Yeah. She's, yeah. She's a sweetheart. And I'm probably not an easy person to be married with. I got a lot of ideas of ventures to chase down. And right after we got married, you know, on the McKin campaign, I traveled straight for six months. Right after we got married, I was basically gone for two years. And when I was in the governor's office, it was eight days a week around the clock. And she put up with all of that. How did you guys manage through you being somewhat of an absentee husband? Yeah, I think I think the biggest thing that helped was it wasn't like I was a traveling sales guy taking out clients late at night traveling around different cities. It was when in that era, it was every time a crisis happens, you get called. She knew something important that that was either with the governor or, you know, with the team solving a real problem. Yeah. So I think that helped. It wasn't just doing doing reports or core really numbers or, you know, some of the traditional things that I think steeped people's lives dramatically. It was always late in the evenings and on the weekends. It was always something there was a reason there was a logical reason. And she knew that this was a time of our lives where that was going to happen. It was very, very understanding. I was also going to be you know, I'm blessed to be able to spend almost every night with my wife. She just was in Florida this last weekend. But there's going to be times when, you know, there's just ladies at these political engagements and stuff. And they're flirting with you and things like that. And like, there's a lot of distractions when you're on the road. Yeah, when you're on the road of the governor, it wasn't a there wasn't a lot of time. You better not get caught photo. No, yeah, no, it was some girl at the back of the day. It was more of you were at an event. You were back in the motorcade. You're making calls. You were flying an exploit. There was no free time to be very little free time. Not that you're like chasing girls or whatever. But it's going to be hard, like, especially in a fresh marriage. You got to trust that this person is behaving themselves. Yeah. And you had to trust her. Yeah, I'm sure. And, you know, and to her credit, the amount of birthday parties and holiday events and kids get together and school events that she went to. It's making this happen in the beginning was pretty dramatic. You know, there's I've made 10% of the social things like that that she went to. I mean, the amount of dinner dates that we had scheduled that an hour beforehand, I got to leave and go do whatever else. You know, so is she loving this new life that you've created? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's it's pretty amazing. No regrets at all. Yeah, no, I mean, I think she's probably even more thrilled than I am. And I'm just the lifestyle and the location and, you know, when we lived in four miles, I was about a five mile drive from our neighborhood. Our neighborhood had 27 homes in it, about 5,000 people just in one neighborhood. It was five miles to drive to like the grocery store, where everything else was and all the restaurants and stuff. Here are five miles. You're on the far other side of town. Right. So the lifestyle here is not shuttling the kids in a car everywhere. Everything's close. We live a mile, 1.2 miles from the bike shop or so. Right. It's it's a pretty incredible. There's three grocery stores within three miles and all that. Yeah. We both had no idea that there were cold weather places that were so sunny. Right. I was just assume the Midwest where if it's below 40, it means it's cloudy and jury and cold and here it's sunny every single day. We had 60 degrees today and tomorrow we're supposed to get six or eight inches of snow. Yeah. Yeah. It's 58 degrees when I was heading my heading here today and tomorrow it's going to be in the low 30s. You're going to ride your bike tomorrow anyway? So far I'm proud that we went down to one car when we moved here thinking we'd buy another four-wheel drive car and we got here. Haven't needed it yet. Yeah. So I've rode my bike to the shop every day. I've went so far. So I'm going to try to see if I can do it for a full year without driving to the shop. I believe you can. Yeah. Do you you were reflecting on a local experience, that crazy experience that you're willing to share? Who? The the big house party was probably the most dangerous one of the most risky things that I already share. Well, I'm blessed already got you. It worked out really well. Yeah. It was a high-risk I reward. You know, I think the the next probably craziest was I went back back in through Europe and I did most of that by myself and those are some of the best memories that I had of you know I got kicked out of my fair share of European bars and and because you were weren't all enough or because you were too drunk. A little bit of everything. But you know that 30 days or so in Europe was probably probably had the biggest impact. Yeah. Just kind of my world view and that look and a lot of fun. It was kind of that chicken leg and whatever explore the world. Yeah. Well, and you grew up in a relatively not fully informed kind of sphere. Yeah, like when I grew up and again this isn't an insult by any means in my hometown. It's a really neat town with very, very sweet people. But it was very I think there was one or two African American kids from my high school. It was public high school. I graduated with 100 kids. I was how big this town was. My first big at college was my first time I ever met a Jewish person. You know, like it was a very uh sheltered actor. White Red, I like to say. Yeah, it was a midwest. Like four Collins is funny because it's a melting pot. Because it's people from Florida and Texas and Minnesota and Nebraska. But it's like a I'd like to say it's like a white cheese fondue. Yeah. Yeah. It's not terribly diverse. It's a diverse ideas. Yeah, diversity of ideas, but it's not a diversity of colors really. But I love the arts here. The way that when you go downtown and you see all of the the boxes painted up the utility boxes and all the festivals they have. Like this is a really neat place and coming from a son of an art teacher and all of my family basically is a lot of teachers. I just need to see how big of a focus that is in this town. Yeah, it's really neat. No, and I think like as Fort Collins star continues to grow, I suspect it'll get more and more diverse, more urbanized, you know, and uh, and certainly we're blessed to have CSU because that's probably the main diversity magnet, you know, as athletes and and and overseas. Like they've had a really great agent, uh, you know, exchange and different things like that where they get a lot of students and then they're just like everybody else that comes here to Fort Collins are like, I don't want to move away. Yeah. And so that's part of why we have great restaurant experiences and stuff is because we've got all these college educated smart, capable young people that are like, well, I guess I'll stay here for now. Living by the universities just brings us energy to the town. It's very similar. Tallahassee had Florida State and uh, a family was also right there and um, it's very similar in that sense of just a neat energy and environment. Yeah. You know, when you live in a college town, you know, it's going to be great. Yeah. Pete's uh, great Mexican food, right? You know, all that good stuff. Awesome. Well, I sure thank you. How would people find recycled cycles if they're looking? Yeah. So we're on, for the locals, uh, we're on South Mason, kind of right behind target. Um, and uh, it's a really, that's kind of our flagship location. We have another location in the Student Union on uh, right. It's a student center. Student center. I was confused. It's not called a student union here, but uh, we're on the north side of the student center. Okay. Um, and uh, and then I mean, obviously our, our website, recycled cycles and, you know, just uh, recycled cycles.com. I gather social media, same thing, Instagram, Facebook. Do you guys do like sales online? Can I buy a bike from you? That's uh, we do not yet. Right now. We list our new bikes and our fitness equipment online. We are in the process of, of kind of bringing up to speed to making that kind of a seamless process. Um, you know, during COVID, one of the things we found out was we had a really nice, uh, little booth kind of set up out front where people didn't want to go in the store. I could just come in and have a little card reader and be in and out whether it's dropping off a bike for maintenance or whatever else. And so we're going to get back to that kind of almost like a chicken, a digital chicken. Yeah. And so we're going to kind of eventually get us back online here pretty soon. But um, it, uh, it's neat. If you, if you're in the area or anywhere around, just step on in it. It's a really neat bike shop and more important than anything. It's like a lot of really neat people that work there. Yeah. For sure. Well, any last words of wisdom? No, I just thank you for having me. Um, this is my first time speaking to the media on any level after being in politics for 10 years. So a lot of my old friends will be shocked when they see that this comes out because, you know, I always, we had a culture that, um, the only person that to be speaking outside is, is, is the principal. Exactly. And that's pretty unique in a lot of political environments. Yeah. The story is not about the staff. So this is kind of fun to keep behind a microphone for the first time. I hope it didn't blabber too much. No, it was, it was a lot of fun. And I've learned a lot. And, uh, you know, I guess for those. Yeah. Oh, here's one last political tinged question. Shoot it. Like, why wouldn't libertarianism just like result in the powerful people just wrecking the whole world and taking it for their, their own advantage? Oh, boy. Um, to me, I, you know, and real libertarians will, will disagree with this completely. To me, I think being a libertarian is a flavor of being a conservative. Okay. And so I think, um, you know, the, the more stronger and better candidates that are have libertarian views that decide to run for office and the more competitive they are, will veer in that direction. Okay. Um, you know, that's the same as flavors on the other side. Sure. Um, but, uh, and so to me, it's more of, um, you know, getting candidates that have libertarian views that it can also be successful. And being successful is a key part of that that I think a lot of people like to skip over. You know, it's, you can have all the great ideas in the world. If you can't communicate to people and convince people and debate your points and arguments, I don't know where I come from is I think people are better than that. Like, like, I hate to even, I'm scared to delve into this a little bit, but like with regards to the racism thing, like if there's like real racists with small businesses or big businesses or things like that, I think that people are smart enough these days to shun that person. Like, I don't think that there's room for bad behavior in such an open information economy. I think you're completely right. And I think we need to be as a society of much more careful on when we label people and groups of being a little bit more of a scalpel than, uh, than the, uh, the wide pan that's currently happening. Yeah. Fair enough. You know, it's, it's pretty wild. What's going on right now? Everybody's a racist. Well, Joe Rogan, like he said, the end word 200 times. Mm-hmm. Have you listened to his podcast before? I have listened to his podcast. Have you ever felt like he was a racist? Never once thought that he was a racist. Right. And I think everybody that's listened to his podcast has never once felt that. Yeah. And it's just, um, and I think the people that are calling him racist or whatever else, missing, you know, all of those things, I don't think they've listened to his podcast. Basically, it means we're jealous of you because your ratings are better than ours. And people are allowed to make mistakes. Yeah. You know, that doesn't mean that something has to be acknowledged. That he shouldn't use that on a context. Apparently, you know, only if you're black, can you use that word or whatever, which also seems like weird to me, like different rights for different people. But we're living in a wild time right now. It'll be interesting. Buckle up, letter cup. Yeah. We'll see how it goes from here. Well, thank you for spending time. Proud, proud to be a local Fort Collins resident. And you know, for anybody listening, if you see a white cargo bike ride in the trails with, with, with the blonde girl and two little kids behind, it's probably us. And he's passing you especially. Not always on the cargo bike. That's a heavy bike. But, you know, stop on into the shop, you know, just trying to meet as many people as I can. And it's a special place. Well, keep putting those miles on. I'm pretty confident you can make that one year thing because we're almost out of the woods. Good. We plan to be here for a long time. So we look forward to diving deep into the community. Awesome. Thanks, Brad. Cool. Thanks. Thanks for listening to this episode of the LogExperience Podcast. If you enjoyed this program, share with your favorite people. And please leave us a review on your favorite listening platform. Subscribe to never miss a latest interview and check out the LogExperience.com to learn more and find our library of episodes. Until next time, stay local.