EXPERIENCE 63 | Wally and Miriam Veigel, Owners of Wally’s Speed Shop

My guests on today's podcast were Wally and Miriam Vigil and Wally and Miriam are the owners of Wally's speed shop in Loveland and Wally's speed shop is a hot rod shop restoration shop that kind of thing for kind of early six volt type things all the way up to late model vehicles and providing full customizations for a variety of clients and Wally started in 2016 in a 1600 square foot shop moved by about 2018 into a 7,000 square foot shop and now occupies a pair of buildings totaling 16,000 square feet in Loveland and so they've grown tremendously they've got over a hundred years of experience in their team. Wally got his start in cars for Lexus dealerships and eventually fell in with the hot rod crowd and either needed to get promoted and do things that he didn't want to do or to go back to school or take their savings and start a hot rod shop and so that's what they did. Miriam joined the business really formally in during COVID season when she gave up her existing work and has really become a right hand person to Wally and they have a great relationship both in the office and at home and it was really inspiring to hear of this story of passion and just a desire to build something and in their case build many some things which is shiny hot rods so if you love cars and you love people you'll love Wally and Miriam and I hope you'll tune in. Let's have some fun. Welcome to the LOCO Experience Podcast. I'm your host, Kurt Bear. This show is produced by me and my team and sponsored by my small business, LOCO Think Tank and sometimes others. Episodes feature a range of local and regional business and community leaders as guests in a conversational interview format. Our guests are interesting and successful people with unique business journeys and the more business education and unbarnished 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 and read and maybe you do too. Thanks for tuning in and if you'd like to show please subscribe, review and share it with your favorite people. Welcome back to the LOCO Experience Podcast. This is your host, Kurt Bear and I'm here today with Wally and Miriam Vigel and they are the owners of Wally's Speed Shop in Loveland which is a builder of custom cars and Wally's been a LOCO Think Tank member for gosh going on four years or something like that I reckon and he's just a really fun guy and Miriam is even better so let's start with you Wally since you got the name on the sign. Where did you come up with the name for Wally's Speed Shop? It was a difficult decision. I picked my name. Maybe one of the biggest mistakes I made naming my business myself but yeah that's where it came from. Wally's just a pretty cool name and yeah I was lucky enough to have it and not have to steal it. Was it Wally like right on your certificate? No it's Walter. So I'm Walter. Wally. Yeah. Waltina occasionally. That's a whole different story. Yeah. Why don't you describe Wally's to me like what do you guys do for who? Right so you said we build custom cars that's a big envelope so we build, modify, make people's dreams whatever it is try to become a reality. A lot of them are stock-ish muscle cars with more power, better gear boxes, better brakes, steering, fuel systems, a lot of upgrading but when it comes to like where do we fit it's from like the beginning of the automobile to like the mid-70s and mostly because of emission stuff that we don't have to deal with because of that timeline so it makes it easier to operate and give people performance they need. Gotcha. So if you're working on later stuff you got to put catalytic converters and stuff like that in there. Yeah. Regardless of if you take a fresh engine out of a new Camaro and put it in an old Camaro then that's okay. Yeah it's allowable by some rules if it had emissions components and stuff like that we have to comply but there's not a whole lot of that so Colorado makes it fairly easy from 75 and back. Very good. So basically you like that I mean what are some of the most popular things that you work on? Is it all American muscle mostly? Typically yeah most of it would be your Camaro, Chevelle, Mustang, old pickups. Yeah everyone loves trucks, everyone has a truck story, had a friend with a truck they borrowed or whatever lots of trucks but we work on everything so kind of the stuff from hot ride magazine when I was a kid. Yeah you're still doing it. Exactly. Yeah yeah a lot but guys our age now have the money that they can spend on ridiculous things like muscle cars. Right. So they do it. Well we're there to do. For some people they just have a whole bunch of money these days. Yeah. We're trying to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. The American dream. And Miriam what are you doing at Wally's? So I say that I do everything Wally doesn't do. It's a lot. It's a lot of work. Yeah we basically kind of just conquer and divide or divide and conquer. Sorry. Whatever order has to happen. I take care of the social media. I do the website maintaining. I do billing and I take care of payroll. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. I'm HR. Woman with many hands and brains. So wear different hats. I was teasing one of the guys the other day. I turned my hat backwards and I'm like okay let's do HR stuff. Right. So it's just kind of you know we we work together as best we can and I try to take on what I can so that frees Wally up for talking to customers and do an estimates and things like that. So I guess you could call me the office manager I guess. True. That's a pretty good use called a brief description of what you do valuation. Yeah. It's basically business owner. Yeah. But we get a split it in half. Yeah. Instead of getting the sole business owner that has to carry all that stuff. So when she came on board it was like what do you want to do? I don't know. So she was really going to take a photo so we started with that. So she did photos and yeah social media and website and then she was like well I guess I'm going to work here all the time. So when we made her a W2 employee and now she has way more stuff to do than you could ever pay someone for the amount of money she makes. Right. So but it's not always going to be that way. No. No. So you've had a really pretty tremendous growth curve since we first met I think had you moved into the 7,000 square foot space? You were in the little space when we were first introduced I know that. When we first met we were at the Barbary place location so that was that back of that warehouse district. Yeah where it was like driving through a gravel driveway sometimes wasn't very conducive to hot rods but it made do. So yeah we were there. What was the question? I forgot where we were going. But were you in a smaller space right before that? We were. We were on West 5th Street in Loveland which is the whole city power plant I guess used to have like a old diesel engine that ran the power for the city in that building. Okay. So it was a little shop and me and one other guy. So so let's let's talk about that founding because they don't sprout up all that often and so like did you like tell your boss off and like rented a space or like talk to me about like a little bit of just that founding moments and and Miriam I'll let you chime in too about whether you were an encourager or discourager during that season. Maybe think about how I tell the story now. So I've been a we'll just go back a little bit so I got education in automotive maintenance and repair. It's a typical tech school education was as good as you wanted to. You got as much out of it as you were willing to put into it. So I did the best I could and then I started working on cars just every day cars and on the side I would always mess around with old cars. I didn't have a bunch of them but there was always one you know or a friend or circle track racing or something like that to take your time so it slowly developed into me wanting to do hot rods and custom cars for a living and then I worked for a guy in loveland that gave me a chance and like every entrepreneur was like oh I can do this better. So it was me trying to decide if I was going to build custom cars or if I was going to start a shop just as a repair for so interesting and because of the people that I had met and my experiences that I had had to that point I decided that I felt like that market was underserved the custom yeah in this area and there's a lot of opportunity whereas you might just blend in to a city with a repair shop I think either would have been successful yeah a repair shop is probably more profitable than while I speak shop but we have a lot of fun it's a passion thing yeah so her and I had talked about it and I was like I just I'm going to go I'm going to go see us you and I'm going to get a degree in mechanical engineering and I'm going to start over or I'm going to start a business and so I guess without even knowing what the words meant we kind of did a pro form on that figured out what that looked like yeah and we decided that the investment was about the same yeah but the results could be better if we owned our own business yeah and interesting and were you either of you from entrepreneurial families or did you have a template or an example to follow in that decision no that's why we've done so well no one told us what to do yeah no right what you couldn't do yeah just growing up with parents that had a very strong work ethic so it didn't matter what you did it just you'd be the best at it so you know I think that that was kind of what drove us yeah we had all of our three boys at that point and we just and you were were you full-time stay at home mom you were a teacher too I was I taught um so Wally and I actually met in high school okay of our senior year in high school so we met in a economics class Billy Jean Cornelius's economics class yes I believe you if you're listening yes yes yes she hates that song she yeah but we met in that class and I always thought he was really funny and seriously said to myself he's he's funny I hope that we could be friends and um I asked him to prom nice and we had a blast it was awesome and he ended up going off to Iowa for college and I stayed home for college and you know we came back together and he ended up like he said go into technical school and I was still working through graduating and so then when after we got married and had our first son Henry um he was about six months old and um Walter's uncle called him was like hey they're building a new dealership out here Lexus on 25 and I think he should come out and um check it out there's there's more to that story there is more to that it's more to that story go ahead I wanted to go skiing really bad because I hadn't been in like a year and I love the mountains so Maryam called my boss at the Lexus dealership I was working at his name was cam and he gave me paid time off that I had not earned because my wife called and he loved skiing too so she surprised me and I came up to Colorado and I kind of fell in love with Colorado as an adult oh wow and so my uncle was we're in the beer industry so we went skiing that whole week and he's like you know you should live here right I was like yeah I just I'm doing this Lexus things being really good to me right now if they build Lexus still learn Northern Colorado maybe but I really don't want to live in Denver Metro excuse me and I bet it was a month later he's like I guess what I just drove by an I-25 and I said what he's like a giant trailer that says Steven some Lexus coming soon in Northern Colorado and so that day without even saying anything to Maryam at work at Park Place Lexus I sent an email you know the contact us link on every website that goes into a black hole no one checks I sent that and three other people received the up as a sales up and sent it to the service manager and then I met Kent Steven sent any flew us out and that's how that's how we ended up here dang you were even working before they finished the facility you were working in Lakewood oh that's cool yeah so we had come up we looked at probably 12 houses and one weekend what do you think about Lexus is and they're great vehicles yeah yeah it was a big change for a while since I've had experience to what's new but the ones we worked on were pretty darn nice vehicles so well like he said just working on everyday repairs and then coming to Lexus he'd come home and he's like man I feel so much cleaner like the space is just you know different that you know these newer cars and you know all of the the new technology at that time and so I think it was a good fit for us to all be able to come up here to have that opportunity the first Lexus dealership I worked on in grapevine Texas had a tiled floor in the shop nice yeah so it's like tiger boards style yeah so we're getting deep already but like a lot of the way I run my business is like the same kaisen mentality that Lexus uses because that was my first job that I ever had where I was treated like an equal hmm and their process and the way that they treat their customers like as they're a guest in your own home and stuff like that yeah it's the same way that I do business now so you talk about that it just brings up those memories and I think about that all the time are we going to treat our audience better if we like go back to third grade yeah I don't know I don't know we could go it feels like we might it feels like it might be good so therapy here we go let's go to third grade third grade third grade Mrs. Miner's homeroom class yeah is that here in no it was in Texas so okay I grew up in Arlington Texas and we can go back even further my dad was in the Navy got out of the Navy his brother lived in Dallas for worth and that was my dad's and having a job when he got out so I grew up in Arlington Texas okay um and yeah I don't know well you moved out here to be a senior in high school in leveling no I didn't no we met in at Arlington high school oh I'm sorry now I get to get done and so you're Texan too as well okay I'm not a Texan I'm a man with that at home the families from Arizona I was born in California and then college here and there and then now I'm getting it I'm pulling it together I hope our listeners are taking on they'll be just as lost as we are so Arlington is where Dallas what were there yeah okay right in the middle that's why I thought yeah so same thing parents my mom was from Illinois and my dad's from Mexico okay um and of his bad accord yes so you're a very pale skin obviously look a lot like my mom but um but yeah my parents people would you know tease them about being like Ricky and Lucy right um but like in a bad way or no in a good way yeah okay good like in a good way just I guess I could go either way yeah um but we did we like I said we we grew up both Wally was about five when you guys moved to Texas and um so yeah that was young yeah yeah we had met there and um and so what kind of kids for you guys like high achievers it sounds like her at least you had parents that instilled those kind of values let me go first mine's easier than hers I think I've just um I was very much and I and I still am a tomboy yeah I think it's I love being a mom to boys um I always wanted to do what my brothers were doing I always wanted I wanted to be like my dad would you feel kind of lost if you had daughters in some way do you think I do but then I think they would just they would just be wild and then you could be tomboy girls yeah exactly and um I'm just having this conversation with a friend of mine about just remembering what it was like to be that age I think it's it's easy when you have kids and then you can think about you know as they're coming up you you do get to live vicariously through them again you said third grade well our our youngest is third grader right now and um so to relate to them I really do draw back and and think about what it was like to be that age and what they must be going through yes it's different you know they tell me all the time they're like mom it's not like when you were kids and it's never going to be the same and you know because we we miss that you know we miss this simplicity we miss the you know being able to just watch a cartoon and turn the tb off and go outside and play and you know it's just a very different yeah I was a free range kid basically like we you know from the age of I don't know whenever I could ride a bike or walk I could kind of just wander the town the little town that I lived in and come back when it was lunchtime or dinner yeah that meant freedom you were a farm kid though right kind of but I lived in a village of like a hundred people or something so there was a post office in a bar an elevator and that was about it okay so awesome you know 10 block square or something yeah so um but I I mean climb entries and doing stuff like I said I used to get in trouble because my dad would tell me to put my shirt back on and I was running around with my brothers and you know they had their shirts off and I didn't you age right at this point I know 26 while he teases me that that that was what it was beach volleyball something completely different when mariums around yeah I did whether whether my brothers wanted me there or not I I was there one what they were doing my sisters I'm one of eight so oh wow so my sisters were older three sisters first and then three brothers and then myself and my younger brother and while you what's your family size that's me and my brother okay yeah the older brother younger younger brother okay so we can we can flash forward a little bit I'm kind of just getting anchored there myself so you come out here is there any like major highlights that we need to talk about from the college years any creating stories you guys met and were you you were buddies and then you went off to college several ways before you were really dating and then you came back together yeah we dated at the end of high school we were both in love for sure yeah and like legit for the first time in my life I knew what that felt like sort of thing yeah and even when you were chasing other girls in college you were still thinking more about marium so yeah you were validating your choice to come back so it's like yeah so I was there and I you know it's just boys right I was 18 19 years old and I came back and I broke up with her because you felt guilty because you want to take girl you know I wanted to do other things and make sure it was right and it kind of scared me honestly that I was like mmm she's it and I'm like okay well I haven't gone that's foreign life yet so let's figure it out right so you know back and forth often you can do that you know well as an extent that's true I remember feeling so confident that I was like whatever you feel like you need to do fine whatever that's exactly how one except for she was going I know I was I was but in your heart you were like okay I knew I knew you recognize that we're going to be together forever yes and I and I really felt like that and I I was so sure of it so I wasn't I wasn't really worried my mom knew I was fucked when she made me a quilt in a good way like before you went to college yeah yeah yeah she threw like an anchor in the water instantly here's a handmade quilt from your girlfriend that you love make up decisions yeah think about me um but I did I went out and visited him and and uh got to see what it was like it was a private college so it was smaller and you know I was going to uh I don't know what you would call like a sister type school to a bigger universe and where where was your school so I was at the University of Texas at Arlington so it was like part of like the whole town kind of like see as you Pueblo or something like yeah it's a commuter school in that area and offers has a really good engineering program and access to the campus yeah campus yeah and what was your school again well I went to co-college and Cedar Rapids Iowa but what's that just small liberal art school and Cedar Rapids and I wanted to play baseball and oh really the recruiter for that school was just really good and he was like yeah you could play baseball well I didn't realize that at D3 school it doesn't matter you just show up right so yeah it's just it's like select or traveling baseball for 18 to 22 years I was your position I played third base right on yeah my mom actually founded our little league baseball team in my little town of like two little towns and so I played baseball through my 12th grade year and then farming in the summer became more important than baseball yeah baseball was it for me when I was a kid that was it I was pitcher or shortstop third generally because I was my mom taught me how to like not be scared of the ball yeah can't be if you're third base third caught and played wherever really yeah yeah so it's like your mom yeah getting hit in the face and you don't call you don't go out there and do anything until the place called my mom would come on the field until the play was called dead and I was bleeding from the face yeah I actually was pitching one time when the third base been took a shot and lost his two front teeth into the sand I was like oh I was so glad I wasn't playing third base there was a kid we went to high school with they got cracked and I was catching it was probably 12 years old yeah and Austin was the batter and Matt was the pitcher and we actually talked about this at our class reunion we went to last last summer last fall and uh yeah he smoked that kid's nose there was nothing left to me in the umpire and everybody were covered in blood oh god so yeah that's crazy stories right so youth baseball sign your kids up right yeah I just shared a story a couple weeks ago from my beer league softball years when I first moved to Fort Collins and in that we were we were getting crushed by this backhanded underhand thrower guy and I knocked him out of the game with a line drive to the forehead and we caught back up and then he comes back in with this unicorn horn and like crushes us we couldn't get another hit off the guy and they came back and beat us and anyway it was this third eye something I know he was he was so um we can we can kind of we'll get him to the romance a little bit the the reromance a little bit later yeah it's uh but you guys were back together you you come out to Colorado uh do you surprise Miriam was hey guess what I got a job yeah hey guess what this is what I did the day and then she came out for the interview and then the rest is kind of history when it comes to that we came out and stayed with family and found a house and then worked until you were working in industry for Stevenson's for a while and then you mentioned you had another opportunity a couple of opportunities come along um any major milestones or some things that as aside from the kaisen and yeah that kind of philosophy of business with a big things that you felt like you learned in those earliest years as your career yeah I was lucky enough to work at part-place Lexus and the part-place dealer network was going through the Malcolm Baldurge Award for excellence I forget I think it's the presidential award um and you're familiar with it yeah and I ran into a few people that are um but I was part of like a couple think groups inside of that well like hey how can we make this process better how can we do that um so that was a fun experience and we actually were awarded the Malcolm Baldurge Award for excellence yeah um they will they will the cart full of dawn perignon or however you say that yeah into the shop and then we all had wine glasses full of champagne and um that's pretty good champagne glasses full of champagne wine glass to be silly your first thing think experience kind of really yeah yeah yeah I was told I was what did the woman say to me she said that you speak very well for a mechanic for a hick yeah I was like what the hell does that mean so was that like in your school experience too were you like reading all the time and just like it just kind of came naturally no we're going back in time again school was easy I didn't even try yeah um if I would have I would have done better we would have got scholarships yeah I would have been better but it was it was easy enough to coast that was I had a teacher tell my mom that she was like if your son would crack a book he would be one of the best students I've ever taught yeah yeah I didn't have to because I just was absorbed what I needed to in class it was fine um where are we going with that milestones so for that was obviously one right for early years yeah excellence that quest for excellence kind of yeah it's a pretty remarkable thing to be a part of even if you're very very small cog in that wheel but I was still in the groups and doing the interviews and talking to the people interviewing for that yeah and you're what experience in your second or third year out of college by this point or five yeah no it's not like 25 probably yeah yeah 24 25 years old and going through this thing and I was kind of loose cannon back then so it was a good thing to like have something to focus on it work yeah yeah Mary and what were you doing in these early years so before we moved out I was um I got my degree in Spanish well okay so in my minor and art so um are you fluent I wish I was as much as I was when I graduated right you know it's definitely one if you don't yeah if you don't use it then you lose it um I actually found this app called duo lingo so I I heard of that yeah it's a lot of fun um so I just get on there it's it's a kind of a silly thing but it just kind of helps well you need more chips some Mexico in Spain in Spain exactly yeah I agree yeah um so I was teaching right out of high school uh or I'm sorry right out of college um I taught at the high school that we graduated for that year and then um he got the job offer and we were gone that that summer that after my first year of teaching so came here um living the Texas dream right like don't most Texans dream of moving to Colorado someday uh I didn't know that was the thing yeah I just wanted to live here yeah yeah I don't think it's actually true that most of them most of them are like you see how much house is cost up there that's stupid you know I think it's stupid about how things even out I mean some things cost more there and here and so I think you're just you're spending the same amount of money whether it's more for your house or more for your car or what you know yeah um but it's always easy to spend all of your income yes super easy if you want it to be right but came out here and uh just transitioned to being a full-time mom yeah did think little things here and there um I remember after our second son was born working nights at the hospital um I was just looking for a safe place to work in the evening and so we were like passing shifts that was during the recession too so my paycheck got cut in like half right yeah so I was an environmental services technician she was a cool janitor yeah could walk around at night and you know do my thing and um come home so I'd work seven to midnight wow um so yeah we were we we just basically I see each other at the door and she'd go to work and I'd come home yeah so we kind of shared the the parental responsibilities uh kind of half and half and um we just kind of did that for for a while a few years and then um while he's like you know I miss you being at home and you know how about I work a little bit more yeah I'll work a little bit more and the economy's getting a little better now you can get more hours yeah it was coming back people hit the brakes really hard on any kind of big spending you know you're all too familiar I'm sure very so so we transition back to me staying at home full time and then um I think that's really honorable actually because it is a sacrifice and it's somewhat unusual in today's world right I missed it I mean even when I was still does I do I miss it I I like being there I like seeing them I like being with them hanging out with them I told them I'm like if I if I didn't want to hang out with you or be with you I wouldn't have made you yeah so I I like it I like um just yeah being present well and I suspect strongly that you're there for a lot of sporting events and spelling b's and yeah kind of whatever reading to the class yes I like doing that her boss is pretty cool I like him so yeah this whole time that he's working I'm just I'm at home and and I'm working there um and doing that and um when our youngest started school then um you know that it made sense for me to transition to working somewhere that had hours that were the same as them yeah so I started working as a health aid okay at the elementary school they closed to that school the year after I started so then I moved over to the middle school and worked as a health aid for the middle school there and then COVID so yeah and so that kind of really changed and had me transition over to working at the shop oh really okay I didn't realize that was we have a son who has a pretty rare autoimmune disorder yeah and so COVID at the beginning of it there's more whiskey by the way yeah we can hit that in a minute let me let me get a break we should slow down yeah yeah we got a ways to go um so Henry has neuro sarcoidosis sarcoidosis take it easy on the mic yeah um so we were kind of scared we didn't know you know we did everything that the team at children souls to do and her going to see sick kids during COVID was probably a bad idea so she gave her she gave her notice right because she's exposed to all these kids in the health office right she's the one that sees the kid with the running nose and the cough and right you know and people with kids just generally are more exposed to but sure you heard like that times extra yeah sure right and so we're super aware of what's going on and trying to be proactive yeah so that our immune compromised son who's on immune suppressed drugs right doesn't die I mean for lack of a better term right we don't want to go through that we don't want him in the cell by himself with COVID so she quit working probably was an irrational fear and hindsight but still you know he had to get in COVID and he was asymptomatic and he tested positive for antibodies and you're like oh yeah I mean that was very reassuring yeah so that was the main reason that she quit working at the school because she loved having a really bad nose yeah for sure because yeah you've got four more hands or whatever well she came on and she was like I just want to be hourly for now and I was like okay because she didn't feel like she had the time to give yeah so that gave her the time to be confident yeah but she's still working on because she has a lot of new things just like every entrepreneur she got baptized by fire was my choice right she just kind of came along with me which is her choice too but it's just yeah yeah it's tough because he had already been established for four years right before I even came on so for me to come in and and kind of let that be his his thing right he did we talked about the business and we would do the you know have discussions and stuff but you know my thing was taking care of the kids and being at the school and doing that as a job and so for him to be like come work with me let's do this together let's you know let's figure it out and it it allowed me to be to have the flexibility to be at home because I was basically becoming a teacher again because we had three boys at home and they're all expected to be doing school and so we have this table at our house and in our dining area a huge chalkboard wall and you know when COVID first happened it's the old school one room school house seriously they didn't they at first didn't have anything for the kids and so we sat down with the boys and I was like well I don't know if they're gonna have you been learning about right we could take up pick up there and we did and I said what do you want to learn about and so that's where we started making up our own lessons and you know learning things that they were interested about until we started getting more formal stuff from the school I do better with routine and I do better with schedule and I do better with like having a plan yeah and that makes well he's more about wicking it and but he's very good at it so I think that's what makes us a good team you know because he can and and I function better with with having that structure of like okay these are the expectations and you know and I feel like that helps me to be a you know better version of myself so we did that for months we and I worked from home most of everything I did was on the computer a lot of still of what I do is on the computer so that you know if they're sick they have to stay home or whatever but you know we're talking about willy was first grade so you've got a first grader with the expectation of doing online school right you know well and that's the huge blessing that like you guys were in a position to to make that happen you know and that's the the thing that's tragic one of the things that's tragic about the COVID response thing is like for most of us business owners and upper middle class or middle class people we could manage through it but for parents that both had like in-person obligation jobs that was a nightmare and their kids had a struggle yeah we were conscious of that yeah I was very thankful that we could do what we can do I just had some Matthews house folks on and they like opened up their building to this trailer court next door and it was like you know a huge flood of people that didn't even have internet at home the different it's perspective for sure it's close it's a thing close to your heart I want to reel it back yeah I want to reel it back to a pencil it out and I mean they're going to go back to school to become a mechanical engineer or we're going to start a business yeah let's let's like did you was it close you said it was kind of a stack ranking and the upside was higher with a business was the risk is higher too right right so I would yeah the risk is either way I mean honestly yeah do you can you follow through with it can you pull off being the dad that you want to be providing an income that you have to and getting an education that puts you in a position to show your work ethic in a different way in a white color way for lack of a better term and be an earner that can climb a ladder yeah or do I go make it for myself yeah so it came down to literally saying this is how much it's going to cost to start my business okay and this is how much it's going to cost to go to college and I'm going to have to work I'm going to have to quit doing what I'm doing I'm going to have to work a different type of job yeah whether it's factory or whatever right I'm going to remake myself one way or the other right so for four years which we all know it would have taken longer than that working full time so five years which would be probably about right now I would have been going to school yeah and then I started looking at you know the starting salary for those positions and it was way less than I was making now yeah like as a mechanic just a line mechanic right and so I'm sure that changes and then based on how well you do you know averages or averages right so it just didn't make sense and that age to start over to me so you were somebody that was getting recognized as a 24 year old punk ass that should be on this think tank team for a Malcolm Baldwin Ridge award study you know to have that perspective at that time understood yeah but retroactively thinking back now like to some extent you know there wouldn't be a walley speed shop if you were a mechanical engineering student right now sure and that doesn't mean that that's what you were faded to do or whatever but there's I think an authenticity about you that caters to an enterprise that doesn't always maybe an authenticity and a and a rebel-ness-ish like climbing the corporate ladder and fitting checking the boxes to get to the next point might not have been your strong suit because yeah I'm you're bullheaded yeah I'm like a human diode stuff and go through me one way and that's it and it's out of my mouth and I don't like it coming back the other way yeah right yeah I feel yeah yeah I feel yeah so a little bit of resistance and what did you think like after you pencil this all out you're like all right let's do it I'm in I I felt like he I felt like he would not have been happy working for someone else for the rest of his life yeah I think just the leadership that he has and that you know that type of personality to go out there and do I don't think that he would have been as happy would we have made more money maybe you know yeah well and you can still go get your mechanical engineering degree if you want to I'm gonna go get a pilot's license instead that's way more fun yeah but yeah I mean we had we had this kind of transition when after William was born he's our youngest that we're out here and all of our families in Texas I mean our parents live about 20 minutes away from each other so we were like what are we doing what are we really doing way out here we had already been out there for you know what was it 10 years almost 10 years we'd been out there or out here and so we were like yeah are we staying here forever yeah are you gonna import them say that again because the most people I meet are people that move here to be with their grandchildren oh I see what you mean oh yeah we'll get there in a second yeah so um so we were like maybe we need to be there Walter's like I'd never had grandparent I never had a grandfather growing up and they have two they have two grand they you know so we moved Willie spent his first birthday party in Texas and we lived with Walter's mom and dad for a year and trying to figure out what the hell we were gonna do yeah oh this is in this season yeah so it was uh 2013 2014 2015 we we uh we're in Texas for a year and tried to figure it out he had found another shop um that was hot runs and customer runs yeah okay and worked to there and um you know we I think sadly it was like two weeks living there and we were like we both looked at each other we were like we made a terrible mistake not very much trying not to curse she was gonna say what the fuck do we do that's what we said to each other we so my aunt said this to me one time she's like I love the idea of being from Texas yeah and I think that's what it was is like we loved the idea of being there and and living there and being close to our family but it just we really felt like it wasn't our place anymore we missed it here we missed the we became adults and in loveland yeah yeah and what did you miss like what did Texas not feed you that loved one it was nostalgia driven I think hmm we um we love if that's an answer anyway well in low humidity I have to think is yeah something we love um what we're able to do out here we love being outdoors and this is more conducive to our lifestyle yeah like there in Texas um you know the boys would be like are we there yet and it just felt like we were driving such long distances just to get anywhere in the car so we spent a lot of time in the car driving around and um and here it feels like everything is so close um and you really feel like you have this town has space I don't know what it is yeah Lynn just you actually can feel the about you know where your town ends and the next town begins because there's just still so much space out there yeah and we did we missed it um we came back to the same neighborhood all right yeah um we found a house about six blocks away from where we were originally and um we're more on the west side of town and we do we we're so happy to be back and then when we came back um he had the opportunity to to do some work just so that we could get back here right and then figure out what to do and um and I it just seemed like the right thing just to to start so how did you are you guys savers like it had to have been like no you're a single income family right blue collar and yeah very um like how did you lever into enough cash to get this I remember I remember we used to have ombalopes I remember and we've tried that we did the cast budgeting like the Dave Ramsey style thing yeah yeah yeah we had ombalopes tangible you can see it yeah it's easier this is for this this is for that I used to equate things to you know do you know you know do you know how many diapers this could buy like that was how I would you know compare some people trade commodities we were pricing things and how many diapers they cost yeah yeah I mean that was that was real for us right it was you know um we made us keep the kids in the backyard with no diapers and you save a lot of money yeah he's in the shovel perfect yeah but we did we we made it work we always made it work and I always did enough work that we had enough money to do the things that we had to do and hopefully enough left over to go do something fun and I think you probably were doing some side jobs and a lot of that a lot of side work yeah yeah yeah but here though I mean there there's so much that you can do that you don't have to pay for you know and I mean just getting outside and going to the park yeah yeah you know just spending a lot of time doing things like that what we could do say you go hiking a whole bunch of times for the cost of the 10 hockey games yeah we weren't we weren't savers because there wasn't anything to save yeah right so we knew we could save money to do things yeah but it wasn't like we had this growing savings account that just wasn't in the cards and I I had a really good job and I worked really hard and I did everything I could we still had like I had a saltwater fish tank hobby at one point so we had a little bit extra money but that's $5,000 it could have been the same right it was all just a distraction to keep my mind busy on something other than work right so it was just a side thing and we couldn't afford to do anything else so so let's talk about that that launch because it takes capital capital you know you have machines that you need grinding wheels and lifts and you know a whole bunch of stuff I reckon and some of which you probably acquired over the years of being a hobby mechanic kind of guy and some of it and some of it you have to have your own tools right to be a mechanic absolutely yeah so as a as a flat rate mechanic you buy your tools you buy your toolbox you buy everything that you use every day is is provided by you and you're paid on a flat rate commission base you know that's piecework there's a lot a lot of people call it piecework and construction yep you get paid a certain amount whether it takes you five days or five minutes yep um so there's a lot to be pad there so you buy tools to make it easier so I had a significant amount of tools um but that's just enough for one guy to repair cars right so so it all starts on paper right right then it goes to a spreadsheet and then it goes to poor decision making so so those who failed a plan plan to fail right so I start with a plan there you go so we had a basic idea um I was gonna kind of do hot rods and I would fix whatever I had to in the meantime to make make ends meet because when it comes to my thought process I can probably fix anything right if I have the right spares or replacement parts to fix it or the ability to fix those things the rest of the mentality yeah it's like a I might to be conquered right I guess is the yeah mentality yeah my brother's a mechanic yeah I'm a kind of guy that like after two hours of frustration I'm like fuck this throwing wrenches and yeah I'll call somebody fix it pay twice as much as I would originally there's times in my life I wish I would do that but so I had a significant amount of hand tools and stuff that would be in your toolbox but and a big-ass bench in my garage from and I had a welder and a plasma cutter for my garage so I had a more than the average guy but yeah not really more for the guys in the circle that I would hang out in right right so it's pretty hard to do an actual project right so we needed a couple lifts and we needed some ideas so I actually got handed it up by my the guy I was working for kind of back to this yeah yeah so I got handed this up and he wanted to build this Mustang and so he's like okay so I started working on that and I was like okay this is our first inflow of cash flow right how do we do this a lot of shops fail because they do what I call the hot rod Ponzi scheme and they ask for they say oh your car is going to be 75 grand we need 35 thousand up front right and then that 35 thousand goes to fix the cars that have been in there from before they did the same thing too but they spent the money they bought an RV they were poor with budgeting you know all those things and I hadn't personally witnessed it happen but I knew a lot of guys that worked at shops that operated that way and it was always a scramble it was always like hey go do this make the customer think we're doing something and that's just not fair and that's a terrible way to operate so employees and your customers yeah it's too stressful you're like looking over your shoulder all day long because you're lying to everybody so so I wanted to figure out a way to do it so I was like I think we could build every two weeks right so you have bi-monthly payments basically progress payments basically here's how many hours I spent working on your thing and everything would be time and materials yeah because it's unfair to estimate because you're gonna screw yourself or you're gonna screw the customer all right I'm screw myself to get the work is it really worth having if I'm screwing the customer why am I doing this yeah so I figured there was some transparency um a lot of communication but transparency in doing that billing where it's very specific right so I went through and I figured it out okay if we if you work 40 hours a week and I work 40 hours a week and we can build for 35 of that right because there's other stuff that happens totally you know you have to do 35 right and that's kind of what I realized you know it's more like 50 to get 35 sure because there's all kinds of BS time there's stuff that has to happen there isn't billable um and those are things I did not know I ran out of grinding wheels right I had to run all over town for three hours and I can't build for that right um so anyway so I made the basic pro forma right and I said hey if I can do this and I can bring in this much repair work a week 10 hours of repair work a week is nothing really for a mechanic that has a network of friends sure like I could have easily been a repair shop right um I say easily like it's there's ego there but yeah I had you repair shops you're not nearly no no no there's I'm teasing running repair shop is I think more challenging than what I do but I think so I think the profit margins are better but it's just harder to maintain them for a long period of time yeah so um because of employees and blah blah blah it's all another story right um so it look good so I said hey we have this guy using that microphone function the microphone with my watch um added another employee at the time um who was really involved in the business and um yeah really almost a partner like not on paper but yeah at least in terms of the burden carried early on yeah I would say so it was uh shared too much probably with him and hindsight but um I told him everything I mean he was taking a risk on me too yeah so um but there was plenty of times I didn't pay myself right when when he still got paid he got that he's not really a partner sure so um committed is one thing and that's something I've always been in a business I'm sure you're the same way it's the way Maryam is over committed works too much doesn't get paid for the time that's invested yeah um anyway so I said okay you and I can do this yep we can do this yeah the rent is this much so then I went with those for buildings yeah right and I'm like why is this building five thousand dollars a month right you know how much I could probably do I could start this business in twenty five hundred square feet and so then I like drew out twenty five hundred square feet because I'm a dork and then the amount of space the lift would take up right and how much it would be open doors you have two cars parked here that aren't right lifted right now and that kind of thing yep you have a flat stall and you have this and you have room for equipment we just got a paint booth right and we yeah well we didn't have a paint booth at the time oh so you had outsourced we were borrowing a paint booth from somebody uh-huh the uh the office was also the place where you eat where you ate this is office break room hey at least we had a separate room a lot of shops don't yeah we had a bathroom right now that's good sometimes around the corner is best yeah yeah we don't have to go to seven eleven um so anyway so we figured that out so I figured that out and I said hey I think this is this is what it's going to take to start this business this chunk of money right so and it was naive to think it was that little um it's common and we had a little bit right um but my parents said hey we paid for your brother's master's degree right paid for this other stuff if this is your master's degree or this is your bachelor's degree excited for this college yeah I just want to take school just like it was meaningless but it put me where I am now um we can help you out yeah so I said okay so I said what's the repayment so we we basically figured this thing out and I'm gonna restore my mom's Mustang as she grew up you know I grew up riding in that's because that's part of it and they helped me along the way too um right they gave me when you realized that you were a short 20 grand for really making it work they're like they helped us out later on um bought some equipment some stuff like that for us helped us out um well what would parents really want more than the success of their children right yeah we are the succession of our parents right yeah so I mean do you want to see that proliferate through generations and that's always my goal too yeah so they helped me with some capital it wasn't nearly enough um we didn't pay ourselves it was it was hard yeah right so the beginning of this is when 2016 2016 2016 so I started talking about it in fall of 2015 been thinking about it for years right yeah the on-screen year old like draw yeah was there because everyone thinks they can do it better right it's like your e-mess like playing in your head but you don't know what you're reading yet yeah it's that thing so um yeah so we go for it and we find a space finally and it was between a data center and an IT company that oh I know I know our cork cat that's cork cat so cork cat and then the data center right next to there's a garage door yeah yeah yeah and that was my shot and so we went in there and we painted it and I made the floor look nice if you're listening to this mister cork cat guy I think it'd be a great local think tank member yeah yeah get in there so landlord was awesome there was months that I didn't have it there's months I did and he just let me pay it yeah and then I think it was such a minuscule amount was twenty two hundred dollars a month okay to rent that space and I think about that now which is no it's nothing to sneeze at it's nothing to sneeze at but good luck finding industrial space for less than that right right so it wasn't ideal but it was cool right it was an old brick building in Loveland yeah right downtown the ton of personality L works is right behind there and see grab a beer afterwards nice right but that didn't happen often it's been an extra money but we made it work and there was times and when did you realize you're all growing that space about four weeks after we moved in yeah talking about where you were at were you so let's see all the boys were yeah all the boys were with us and you know we would we would do our thing was this like a family occasion I mean most of the time because you know they're they're with me all the time right so they go with me everywhere especially at that time because they're they were much younger and so we would we'd go up there and he would give them small little things to do and keep them busy and yeah and we did we we hung out there a lot and and we spent a lot of time there so I'm from a farm family and really from the time you're able to walk you're kind of part of the farm you know and if you got to go haul a bucket that's only so full so that you can actually carry it down to the pigs or whatever you know you do that they were you know playing baseball and I remember I took some pictures of them they're emptying the trash and they're wearing their baseball uniforms just tracking the you know dragging the trash bin down and just helping do in the the little things just showing them that you know that it's important and and to try to instill that work ethic of family oriented and we're all we're all together we're all doing it together yeah but she was she wasn't working no I was so like I started a business with no income yeah no spousal income support and that's not a negative thing that was a choice we made yeah so we had some and we were naive to think that we had enough right right and so then I would pay myself and I was I was paying myself like less than fifty thousand dollars a year sure right so and you had been making at times probably close to a hundred years hundred almost yeah yeah right with some side hustles and this and that side hustles it was a six figure income and less tax responsibility if you're if you're listening don't audit me right no um but um so at that time we knew what it was like because 0708 we didn't I sold right everything we could and I would do every side job I could so in some ways that 0708 period was like a training ground for the for the even leaner times ahead it is and we didn't have it that bad it's not like I was in construction right it was just a loss of income with no savings yeah so that was it was challenging but it was preparation I guess yeah you know so so four weeks after you move in you're like we should run it a bigger space yeah that was probably a exaggeration on the short short timeline but it was a few months in because we got busy fast yeah which was a good thing I had a yes problem um so we would I would I don't know how many times I worked till midnight or one o'clock or two o'clock in the morning but just getting work done repairing vehicles because that was the cash for the time yeah right so well and you know the amount of people that we we would meet and then you know come into our circle of either friends or acquaintances was just more the older the boys got the more friends we made because we were meeting their friends because we're badass and yeah and uh and it's actually local people that like your friends is yeah parents and stuff like you know for repair and stuff at that time right because it was just whatever right so then our circle of people that we knew started to grow so then it was hey I took my car over here and you know and he's my friend and I trust him and yeah and that was a lot of that early early model repair stuff but there's a lot of hustle there right like if you're just timing materials and it's a lot of small things yeah things are coming in and out you got no room for it all oh yeah it was a hustle for sure because there was no there's no parking over there for extra vehicles no we had the barter parking from core cat yeah so it was a lot of it's always thanks mark it's always car shuffling yeah a lot of the day was spent car shuffling and moving things around and um working outside at one point I hired another guy and a scissor lift and when the weather was nice he was outside working so I didn't even ask I just put a scissor lift outside had a guy seen a body filler outside get ready yeah so make do with what you got yeah um so I started looking for buildings and at that time you just you get on whatever right the NMLS search.com yeah just commercial buildings available and I I found one listed in south loveland off 14th street um just uh just east of the rubber tracks there right in the old um um Collins cashway building in the back gotcha um and I talked to the owner and it was nice I remember calling you to find out where I was lost because I did oh yeah I find you the first yeah I didn't really and I'm having to find people yeah I didn't know how to move that the little spot on google maps at that point I was super naive I was fixing cars so um people get lost I'm by the church and I was like go up the road there's a gate it's never closed right so um so I found that space and then then we bought a paint booth uh right so or like this space is huge we're never going to fill this space it was twice as big as the one that we were in before it was more than twice the size and it had storage and it had a high ceiling and it had AC which was amazing a lot of things I ever have a shop but they see again that was luck and parking yeah and there was a significant amount of parking in comparison but it wasn't perfect um so yeah so we moved and then I sub leased to a guy to get out of my lease and yeah so then we moved again that worked out you didn't get stung by that deal no it was great yeah the guy did well and um Mark was cool about it and he just dealt with him directly so I didn't have to like be the intermediary so he he was really understanding of starting a business and that's cool he was a customer of ours too we fixed a few jeeps of his and nice nice this is so much relationship built so like so you know golden rule applies even in business yeah yeah yeah all especially in business yeah people think it's all cutthroat it's not sometimes it's about how much you care for people yeah totally 100% that social capital goes a long ways even when very valuable cash is necessary yeah when times are linked especially cash is necessary yeah so same thing making that space work for us and um I think at one point it was a gym like a gym for a gymnastics it was it was like athletics gym at one point so we just kind of went in there and and made the space work and same thing painted and had the paint booth on one side and the mechanics on the other and the body guys on the other as well and um and then I came in kind of towards the end of having that building yeah so then we we shared the office space and she bought a desk at target that was like two feet by three feet because that was what would fit yeah yeah something else would have fit it just was insignificant and size when I had a laptop on it there's nothing left you know so it was pretty it was a pretty poor choice but she is frugal that's why we made it all these years but yeah yeah so yeah so then so that's really about the time that we met sure because I think Kelly Peters actually told me about you didn't know no that she's like leveling economic development kind of department or whatever I was like who's the smart kids that you're seeing she's like you know there's this Wally guy that has a hot rod shop that just moved downtown and that's why I came calling word of mouth is so weird yeah like it's the most unique marketing ever right it's yeah you did weird web no I don't she just gave me a warm lead yeah somebody that she heard yeah from somebody that heard from somebody that Wally was a pretty cool guy yeah that's that's good word of mouth right there's some shitty ones whether you want them or not yeah fair enough um so I want to go to this kind of the modern day so you we already talked kind of about your role Miriam and coming in kind of dipping your toe in with some of the social media and computer stuff um but you made a big move gosh I guess probably right before covid that was the plan and then it got delayed oh yeah so talk to me about that conversation because you've upgraded twice in like whatever six short years no this episode is sponsored by logo think tank logo think tank provides pure collaboration for business owners we build smart safe places to help business leaders navigate every stage with a business journey and we love what we do and who we do it with our model features gift back minded business veterans and the role of logo facilitators and we're always looking for abundance minded individuals to add to our membership facilitator team local community or to feature on this podcast listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of logo think tank get their sixth month of membership for free just mention the local experience podcast on your application to learn more visit our website at logo think tank dot com that's l o c o think tank dot com three spaces and five and a half years yeah yeah we're on our third space and we actually looked at another building already since we moved to add on but we're gonna pump the brakes on that okay um so so let's start with that so I started with me and one other person we have then I hired a third guy and then when I started to move I showed up to anybody along this way no okay yeah there's some people that were influential in my decision making on hiring and how much I trust people so we'll leave it at that so the we started with two and then we had three and then I hired a fourth okay fourth was Todd Todd was a great employee okay very driven energetic enthusiastic at a 12 Todd if you're listening I love you so he he was a hustler and so I hired him to move to the new building because I needed I need more employees for the space right so we moved from downtown lovelin to a barberry place yep and so then it was the four of us and then shortly after that we hired another I had to like a 1099 employee which I learned the rules of that pretty quickly yeah an 1099 employee perhaps right it was naive to the process right new business understood the choices cdla got their money I got audited so yeah so it's all right yeah so there's no risk in saying it now then it was yeah it was a learning experience yeah um so so to get to the point we went from two to four when we moved yeah two six and then we moved yeah and then we went to eight and then Todd went on to run a pizza truck so he's following his passion doing that okay so I hired a guy to replace him when you realize that sucks Todd you can come back to Wally's speech shop just so you know yeah that the offer might be on the table I was a food trucker so yeah I know you were I tried to get you guys weekends Todd just do the pizza thing on weekends and have a day that for the week well he won't give up but that doesn't mean you can sell pizza during the weekdays yeah I don't know I think it's gonna hey I love your Todd hit his choice I'm just playing my own that's what my own my own trauma that I'm expressing if you don't follow if you don't follow what you feel they're always gonna regret it fair so auto mechanics will always be there fair so then we grew to eight employees I hired two more guys for the body shop so I have four guys in the body shop four guys in the mechanic shop and then Mary and I on the payroll when he moved to this new space gotcha so you're kind of the headquarters team basically yeah sure now things are getting a little out of control and we're trying to figure out how to manage people instead of work yeah in the business right where we had to work on the business and pull the levers and be the widget of us right and that's the hard thing to do because I just want to work on cars right like I find a lot of passion in that and solace and peace of mind or whatever you want to call it when I'm at my hands on the cars yeah so I meet someone through local think tank Brandon with Brandon Avery introduced me to Dan Berth from Doherty Lambert yep and then they walked me through the process of being a partner in a building that I lease back from this partnership correct so so then I really learned that most small businesses make more money yeah when the property that they own like a restaurant is a way to buy real estate sure sure right yeah like you got to go through the misery of owning a restaurant so that you have a cash flow engine that you can buy a piece of real estate with right and all speed shop all franchises are real estate companies right so so Christian Brothers totally is sure sure there's other all of that the corporation owns all the real estate and they get operators to operate yeah kind of yeah it's amazing you know it's a great business model right apparently it works really well if you can execute right theoretically so they showed me that path could be serious who knows right tears and robot long they had a long run yeah yeah yeah but that's my first job by the way so they kind of showed you the path to what owning a piece of real estate could be for you in a lot of what's it look like and how can we help you get there and yeah what is your P&L look like what's your balance sheet look like and really go under scrutiny for the first time and like am I viable yeah you know and because it's been times you're Robin Peter to pay Paul a little sure sure right checks at the right time we've all if you own a business and you didn't have that path then you had it easy so managing cash flow is super difficult and I'd never like don't Owing people money right so that was a really hard thing to get around like in business it's net 15 or net there I don't have right you don't have to pay instantly right they're taking money and for $30,000 for my paint booth doesn't mean I have to stroke that check today right because payrolls right tomorrow there's a duty and it's not you're right like what order do we do these things in so we're getting way off topic for some reason but all business topics right so I'm a tangent king so they showed me what that look like yeah and we bought a building because we had worked on his vehicles and he had previously owned the business that operated in there that was a hot rod shop called the Forge oh so the Forge was bought from custom auto custom auto was 30s fords and hot rods like legit hot rods yeah cool like yeah the creme de la creme of yeah of hot rods right by the way the culture that I grew up in like they were all about like building Dodge starts race cars and circle track and things like that and like the hot rod magazine cars like these little towns on the outskirts of Jamestown North Dakota that was my culture like you came into it 20 years later or whatever than I did but that was the kids that I grew up with I wasn't necessarily into it but sure the coolest kids were I just wasn't pretty cool yeah no that's fine I wasn't that cool either I just the dork that did his own thing yeah but so we're back to the custom shop yeah so custom auto was the Forge the guy bought custom auto rebranded it was doing something with it and then just decided that he was done yeah that's fine you know he knew when to cut bait so yeah he cut bait and sold the business that business moved to another location with a couple employees and then it left the building vacant so he leased it to a oil filled like valve rest restoring company like I don't know anything about that so I'm gonna sound like an idiot if somebody does but they were using the paint booth to repaint these rebuilt valves and pressure testing and stuff like that okay well then I found out he wanted to sell the building through the network right one of my employees had worked for him so on and so forth so I heard about it and I sent it to Dan I said is that this building has the soul of a hot rod shop yeah and it's already known as a location for cars yeah in cool cars and it has it's right off 34 yeah it's right off 34 just used to Walmart on Des Moines Avenue by the big air towers for cars here so I was like people know this space as a car shop I think this is the building it already has a paint booth it has a huge mezzanine for storage it has there's two separate buildings there's a retail space in the front because that's something I wanted to do and so Dan looked at it and he's like you're right this building's perfect it's a block building it's a really nice building you need some stuff obviously yeah you're right only has to go up 196% right yeah sorry so rent went from like what we had at the time like seven thousand dollars a month uh we were yeah when we first started 12 12 thousand a month yeah and so there I am with the piece of paper again and the spreadsheet and looking at my quick books and cashier projections and how many guys on time of materials yeah what's a dollar per square foot right what's the dollar per square foot and how we're going to make this work and affirmations a good thing with the person giving you affirmation you have to trust so I was my that was local think tank for me honestly to throw it back like going through it and running through the numbers and having a group of people I could do that with because Merriam wasn't that person like she didn't understand it like I could have told her and Dan had been like yeah that's great and and Dan's awesome he's got a great reputation and stuff but he's also going to make a commission and put together a deal and so you can honestly trust him you have to right at least have a second set eyes on a question like that and I do trust you Dan and you let me down the path the correct path I need to be on but um Merriam wasn't the person for that so I was like doing it my own head and talking to my local group and made the decision that you know if growth is the goal then this is the move well if demand is so strong that you can't keep up why not growing up and is this space more conducive to being a shop that people want to drive their car to right you we were at the old space oh yeah it worked yeah but it was fine that's the only word you can use to describe it was fine there's the adjective yeah it was fine it was better than the previous space yeah but it was used a ton you could have a car show why don't you have a car show it's coming it's coming it's coming it's coming you have a retail you have a retail space in case it's it's just going right now all right got a guy trained up to be on the front desk I'm going to come down I think yeah I think with every move that we've made it was always are we going to go bigger are we going to go smaller I mean all right yeah more bigger more problems for real so so it was always a thought on the week we have two new guys starting yeah yeah so it's always been a thought you know are we going to go bigger are we going to go smaller and what does that look like and then what does that mean and is that what we want is that what's going to make us happy in the end yeah um to take the risk or you know do something that we we know would be kind of more safe right so so now we're here um what would make you happy in the end like you just talked about you in toward that you thought about expanding even further again there's opportunity yeah in the marketplace but there's still access to man to what you can supply there is and I was talking no don't do it there's a recession coming like that shit that's exactly where I'm at starting the free cocaine for too long in the economy and we're going to have to get on the methadone or whatever way too much free cocaine so that's what maybe pump the brakes yeah there's only one service well there's two services I want to offer we don't right now but that's just going to have to wait yeah so we have to maximize for where we're at um and by maximize I mean efficiency dollar per square foot just that top line number right well what are those services so I just want to offer full detail too as well I've had a lot of calls for paint correction and stuff and um people are all hooked on ceramic coating right now whether I uh fully believe in it or not right I think there's some good products out there that are like long term waxes but there's a decent profit margin there right so we're talking business yeah like that's a silly thing not to offer but I don't have the clean space to do it in so I really can't offer that and the other is alignment like actual steering alignments right for old cars they're bear alignment in loveland um I don't know what happened with them um but they they close you've been a staple for a lot of years and sold the building to Amco so there's an Amco carcar center right now they don't do alignments they do alignments but bear was kind of known for like the place that would do old cars because a lot of people are scared of them right so I got a lot of calls about that but alignment rack takes up a ton of space right and it's not really on our right service it's not like you can just like put an ad in the paper and like alignments on old cars $299 and just get a bunch of things right and the problem was bear was so cheap it was 89 bucks but you can't operate like that anymore and old cars and old cars are junk and they eat a lot of work to get an alignment right and you can't you can't do 99 dollar alignments in cars so there's some market opportunity out there yeah for somebody yeah it may be me but it's not going to be tomorrow yeah so I think that's okay build some powder you know yeah we're going to refill the powder horn to use that same analogy and then what so so those are a couple of new like accessory products for your existing clientele in some respects sure because we sub that out now right right so we can do paint correction and stuff but it's only on stuff that we've painted yeah or the really good customer that just needs it done I don't know we'll handle it for yeah but full details a whole nother thing you'd have to like open up to like hard lots and other things that need the services just to fill the void got you because there's a ton of voids out there so you got yeah yeah let me get to keep the pipeline full yeah the funnel's not full then you probably need to do some marketing like sense but what have you learned everything I'm learning every day there's always new things new ways of doing things I'm very easily amused so I always that's why she loves me I always find you know just I don't even know how to explain it you know the way that we run things and then to find that there's products out there that will help us run even better right that we didn't know that was even a thing software yeah well you don't bump into it until you until you start looking it's always too late when you realize it too yeah right well you know you that's what things are for you solve the need right like you you have a problem and then you try to figure it out yeah we don't have problems we only have solutions at wallets to be chopped yeah right that's what you have to say we do we talk about yeah we do right yeah we're we solve the problem you want to tell him about the sign that you have on your office store oh I wrote that in a bit of anger I think so I'll have to look it up again I don't remember exactly what it says you know what it says I don't remember everything on there but it's it's a good starting point but it is it's about okay what are our problems and we're gonna find the solutions for those and move forward and grow and so for me to be happy I think it's just to continue to grow I I feel like what we provide makes us different just with the transparency of of what we do yeah the customers can actually see what we've been doing on their car and you know they don't just see a line item for labor and then it's right you know so many hours they actually get to see on their invoice what front and their sanding whatever yeah yeah I mean all those little things I think make a big deal and same thing with parts they can see everything and I think that hopefully gives them peace of mind and confidence in knowing that we know we we've laid everything out for them and we've tried to be as honest as we can and so you pushed a pencil to this new location and stuff like what I like to say is that like with a business when you can have it like 80 percent full it makes a bunch of money and nobody's freaking out when you're like 110 percent full it maybe makes more money still but it isn't sustainable you know when you're 60 percent full then it doesn't make any money a lot of times so like what's the magic sauce for you guys to have a nice $200,000 a year household income and free time and like is it a matter of keeping the business nice and full and busy as far as all your workers and stuff like that not having big overruns where you eat it because you didn't think it was going to take this long you said what or like what are the what are the things to really from your perspective yeah to making the business really profitable so I have a yes problem I've talked about before yeah and I said yes to a few projects that were much harder than you imagine they would be they cost me money at this point right so but I have to follow through with those things yeah and so right now we don't make $200,000 a year but the opportunities more than there yeah but when you have to correct things and your process is off the special sauce for us are vessels full at work our funnel is so full that I'm scheduling in November December or January wow for bigger projects I'm scheduling in June, July, August and September for inspections and wow my close rate is between 80 and 90 percent right so you got a lot of business in the pipeline yeah and I think that comes from transparency and honesty and willing to talk to people and have an honest conversation yeah but the special sauce is to get rid of all the shit that you said yes to that's costing you money yeah they're all going to be good products in the end and they're all going to be a good business card for walletspeed shop yep and for myself personally in Miriam to be proud of and the guys that work at the shop but we have to get rid of those things because there's a huge draw on the top line because of those items yep and once those things are done I did the math and I've done it and I've seen the cash flow analysis I've done it myself and I've had other people looked at it yeah and when I get rid of these vehicles that are costing me money I'm done doing that kind of stuff like we've established ourselves we have too much work yep so saying no becomes easy and I've said know a lot in the last six months awesome good for you so the sauce that we need is we need to maintain I think six to eight months of appointments so we have a foundation yeah to move forward they can hire into that sure you could easily hire into that and grow with time but you brought up the R word and I really feel like that's gonna affect an industry that is not necessary yeah it's a luxury so we get rid of those things that are costing us money that our promises that I made that I refuse to break yep and we quit skating we're paying ourselves an income right yeah I'm sure business owners but and we're not struggling our kids don't want for things like right like they did five years ago we're not printing money at wallets speech shop right or in our personal checking account but we're at times enjoying the pathway right you see the you see the the the route to that place there's a light at the end of the tunnel it's a little bit it's a little off right now and it's I remember when I first hired Rory I was like my hope is that within 18 months we're both underworked and overpaid and after like 24 months I was like sorry I was way off yeah but we're all streamers right you're right and I'm super risking different and you were the first person to label me that Kurt risking different I was like that is the basis of entrepreneurial spirit I think is being able to say you know what I got enough backbone that we're gonna get through this yeah people give up every day on easy shit we haven't given up on each other Miriam and I we haven't given up on our family we haven't given up on our business we haven't given up on our employees like yeah I don't know that there's any other way it's like team never quit right there's a shout out but and and it's more than just uh you know being financially successful um having the business allows us to be flexible with um you know all of our extracurricular stuff that we do and to keep that out we're going back back in this weekend and boy scouts and you know climbing and marching band and you guys are climbers parkour and remember you told me under the windmountain actually yeah they're amazing I love Adamo down there we had the best like almost two hour like introductory conversation so Adam if you're listening let's get back in touch yeah it's it's the financial you know obviously would be great but but I think the freedom to to to run it how we see fit whether that's to try to get some time away for a small trip and and do those things I mean that is just as valuable as being financially successful as well you know having the balance of you know family and and Walter and I and then you know the other things that we do that we're involved in yeah um that makes me feel that we're successful I love how aligned you guys are together the piano look better when our kids are older right for sure yeah yeah the balance sheet at the house will be better hopefully when they're off the payroll and so like what is the dream for you guys like do you want to run this thing and tell your 55 and then sell it to the employees do you want to like build it to be like a 50 employee five location custom hot rod building retail offerings kind of thing like what's the big dream there isn't one yeah I just want to work and be happy when I'm doing and yeah we'll see what the path that looks like and we'll bake that bread when we get there I guess but I don't believe you because you guys are looking at each other like this I have a whole new business like I think because that supports this significantly but it's it's far off right now especially with the recession stuff and the price of commercial real estate and the the amount that money costs to borrow right now is going up yeah so right now we're holding I think there's something to be said about just also just being present I think that's totally you can always look forward right and you can always look back and I think we do that a lot but to just be present too I think so hard dude of the it's the that Ireland or England movie or whatever the hold hold hold it's the brave heart brave heart yeah yeah right like that's living in the present yeah like don't be thinking about the future of this onslaught of people don't be freaking out just like hold hold okay now not everyone can be William Wallace no not anyone probably yeah he's a he's a one-in-a-lifetime or what you were thinking about there like like when the time is right we'll know what the next right steps are and we'll evaluate it's not now our dream is to love the house we live in to make sure our kids are supported and to maybe have enough even just equity in our home which is easy to do around here right now right to buy a piece of property that we can then have somewhere to go to you know should it's been well I'm a shit it's a fan kind of guy but that's a whole nother conversation well we're gonna get into that because we're moving into the faith family politics in the next segment but all right so it's time for the closing segments faith family politics we've started on family a bit already but I'm kind of can we can we have the love story properly like when you guys got back together and like figured while he figured it out that he wasn't ever gonna find a better woman than Miriam yeah I'd like to hear this yeah better woman than Miriam not a better better for him right that's not possible I don't think but came back from school hung out reconciled my differences I guess you didn't really have that many concerns mostly just no we didn't fear yeah it was a addicting type of love yeah still is congratulations how many years now of like we met in May of 2000 so I guess it's we're on close to 22 years with some minor breakups in between yeah but we've been married for 17 years so and I'm 40 so we've been married for a very significant portion of our lives so so you come back from college and it's just kind of like what could we reconcile we're back dating again or was it like I was when I said go she was ready yeah I remember studying a broad couple of times oh and so one of the times that I I spent a good part of the summer in Mexico in wahaka and did studying literature and things like that there just to kind of finish off the semester I didn't had much left and came back and he proposed that summer and then we got married another year and so we was like a year and a half of being engaged yeah got married in January yeah actually we actually came out here oh really yeah for our honeymoon oh do you want to tell them where I was planning to go for honeymoon and you thought I was joking and I did because when you're young like that you think oh you know he I was gonna take her to Fiji he was gonna take me to Fiji and I really thought he was just joking because I'm like where are we gonna get the money to go to Fiji and so so yeah I didn't really believe him and when you get married in January you don't know that there's other places that might be just as warm I wanted to go to the beach I wanted to do something like that but but I knew how much she loved skiing and I thought maybe I could come out and so we did we came out to Breckenridge and spent our honeymoon in Breckenridge she had never skied before and convinced me that she wanted to go skiing because that's what I like this is a good life and she wiped out so hard that she broke her goggles and still went forward so I love it the testament of love for some reason yeah I still want to go to Fiji yeah yeah she screwed that up but uh so yeah I proposed and then you asked when the littles came along and she told me when we celebrated my 23rd birthday at the flying saucer in Fort Worth that she was pregnant so that was March of the year we got married so we got married in January yeah we got married in January in November huh no well sorry I'm thinking Henry was born in November yeah married in January and we had Henry in November nice we moved to Colorado and June of the following year nice so the rest is kind of history as I say whatever he is the active season for you guys yeah her dad was like counting the days okay I'm happy now yeah yeah yeah it was he he really did get on his fingers because it just seemed to happen so quickly but we knew we wanted to be young because we wanted to have the energy to be with them and do what they want and you know I tell people I'm still waiting for them to not want to do stuff with us and I'm thankful that they do they still want to they still want us around they still want us to be there and be involved and and that makes me feel really good um makes me feel happy I'm happy to be a young parent younger apparent it's not against anyone that's older when they have kids but I don't think there's ever a right time um you're just gonna have to make do you know it's always you know a burden is the wrong word but it's always a financial constraint you know to have kids and obligation I don't think yeah that you're ever gonna be ready for it some people have more money but that just means they're not as involved in their kids' lives I think so yeah so one of the things I enjoy doing is asking for one word descriptions of the kids would you care to start I think we should go individually yeah why not okay uh so you want one word to describe Henry one word to describe Henry and then each of the others we always call him um our old man oh old soul kind of he is an old soul um James Henry 16 okay James gosh I don't know um these are always hard I always say like they're I think he's funny um he's he's a lot of fun um and then William that's so hard it you feel like you're doing them to disservice by putting them in a box of one thing understood right um that's why it's fun that's why it wouldn't be so hard no um William is um he is emotional oh um in all the positive and all the bad I mean everything yeah for most of us that I would describe myself as relatively emotional and it's the blessing in occurs as to most of our yeah strengths um how old are James is 14 okay and William is eight okay so yeah big kind of a larger gap we did we thought we had the two we thought we were done we thought we we're family four and this is what we're doing and um so William was a pleasant surprise and you know it's hard to think about life without him being included in everything um but the boys really feel uh it's hard we have to remind them that they're not his parents the older boys that they're not his parents and uh and we appreciate the help and um but yeah so they do they really uh for instance I I convinced them that it that it's important to be able to know how to take care of someone else so I told them they were gonna change William's diaper so I came in to check on them and they both had clothes pins on their noses yeah right the cartoon yeah and they had decided who was gonna do the dirty work and who was gonna do the clean work at the end and um Henry was definitely doing the clean work yeah he was yeah all right while you're turned Henry I love you boss man James hard worker William wild man those are quite a bit different um perspective is always different yeah we we really feel like they're all three of them are a good mix mix of both of us and you know when you have two kids especially when they're you know same sex you're in there they're almost always completely opposite so then when the third one comes along you're you're like what are they gonna be like because we have two kids that are just so different yeah and William is just like both of them mixed together so even in their choice of color like Henry's favorite color is red james is blue and William is purple and it's perfect because red and blue mixed together that's buddy makes perfect my uh my parents my dad has black hair blue eyes which is fairly unusual my mom blonde hair green eyes and all four of us kids brown hair blue green eyes yeah i love how all of that works Henry's red head in james's blonde and William is brunette yeah so it's like one of each yeah willy tans henry burns and james's standard white guy and um it's funny you know you i love hearing other people comment on on you know they look like you or they look like Walter they you know and when William was born we're like he does not look like either of us and until we started seeing younger pictures um i showed him a picture of myself at the same age and he's like why am i wearing a pink jacket and i was like actually that's me buddy and so it's funny when you do look back um that yeah there are other similarities i love genetics all that type of stuff what makes us us and you're a student of the world yes i like i like to learn i i could probably be a student forever yeah in some ways like walley is okay with learning but it's so that he can do and he i i admire that he remembers everything he's ever learned and everything is uh he's good at everything and he really is and that's not like a like a jab to to him at all but it's comforting right like not afraid to go out there and learn something um even though you don't know and um it's it's just part of part of his personality and so it does it makes it comforting and and it makes a good partner to have that um you know stability and confidence do you know that the rest of the phrase um the jack of all trades and master of none yes you know the rest of it yes i do i've heard that before and is always better than the master of one yes uh which is like even though you're becoming a master at custom car building walley uh it's comforting to know that if if that all fell apart you'd figure something out and that's always been my risk and difference yeah because i told her as like if it all if it all comes down to nothing we have nothing i'll shoot elk with my bow and arrow i couldn't build us a treehouse yeah it was an adult yeah yeah um but i can do something always what's your family heritage walley i've been watching the Vikings on yeah um that was on primal lately and it seems like at least if not in culture or if not in genetics at least in culture you're kind of a Viking and i don't know i'll take that as a compliment i you should but uh the my heritage is mostly german okay so german irish scottish so is born to drink and fight apparently yeah i don't know but um times 57 you know a lot of strong german lineage like a lot of us in this country right so vigal is obviously not yeah that's definitely a very german accent type name so i um i thought bear my name was a german name because i am like at least 40 percent german mm-hmm most people in north coder are way more than that but it's old english okay i thought it was like a misspelled german sure b-h-r b-a-e-r german sir but sure so much sure is old english yeah and my family actually goes back to the 1750s in new york somewhere stuff's amazing yeah yeah fun and it's so interesting like marie meh said your was it your father's Hispanic yes yes yes and your mother um so my mom said of the family is Polish okay the Polish we have a lot of Polish uh there's a lot of in north coda there's a lot of pollock jokes yes i'm sure there are yeah we're not gonna let those fly today we're gonna keep them but but uh i think that's you know from being other places and then i mean people are surprised to find out that we're from texas because we don't really have an accent i'll say y'all uh we say y'all and that's a little bit barely but um yeah that is pretty unusual and i think i wonder if that's like was your dad a native Spanish speaker yes originally so he came to the united states when he was 14 okay so to think about my boys making a journey like that right it's just crazy we'll end that quest for to talk like the man on the six o'clock news or whatever like that mix of things and you just kind of it like in the end we're what's the uh like Colorado mutt like there's the or the new mexico mutt right like it's a red dog reddish dog that's about 45 pounds you know when when dogs all get together that it turns into that but it's beautiful and amazing that we have both sameness and differentness all at the same time yeah and culturally as well like that kaizan principles and things that when you pack a whole bunch of people into a little small space sometimes you got to figure it out a little different my dad will tell you that um that our boys look just like him they he would always say that all of his grandkids look just like him because they have two eyes the nose amount two years you know i love it so so yeah he's an expert dad joke teller so yeah is there any other ones that you'd like to share you don't know he's got lots of them you want to you want to call out your folks uh by name just to say hi mom yeah carry and carry on vital grand prairie texas will love you yeah my mom and pop judy and lee galobies they're still with you both yes oh we said there was another story there about like importing them at one point oh yeah so my parents one they want to move up here yeah yeah so i don't know what that looks like and neither do they right now with some issues that have come up but they want to move here so yeah see her family will be there in texas that's what i'll because there's eight more it doesn't get from somewhere to visit that's what they say anytime that any of us move somewhere else it's just one more place thing go visit i like that yeah you know you guys are both the social capital that you got from your parents was probably much more significant than the financial capital it seems sure sure yeah so um politics or religion politics um you know it it i'm excited to talk about it but but i don't um i always say that i don't really have very strong opinions about much of anything i feel like i'm pretty easy going um you hold loosely i think that politics wise that wasn't something that i grew up learning a lot about or talking a lot about around the dinner table um we didn't really talk politics so it was something that i didn't learn enough about or much about until while he and i got together and got married and um his parents too and learning you know about politics from his parents and so not in a negative way at all just having that um influence i guess there i i would say that i don't really have an affiliation i i just want to be a libertarian i just want to live my life yeah how i would how i would like um i can do be free to make my own choices um but not your closet libertarian yeah you just don't like you moved here from england yeah be able to do what i would like and and you can do what you would like um but you don't have to force what you want to do onto me and this person yeah so and and even if we don't agree on the same things we can still be friends yeah and because i can learn from you and hopefully you can learn from me yeah totally well and depending on where we came from and how we like in north Dakota like you kind of got to be able to fend for yourself and take care of yourself and things like that and it's cold and hard and miserable and sometimes people need help and so then you help them yeah and so we've got this really strange mix of like my mom would never get on a social program unless like i had a power return and it was necessary sure right but at the same time we've got the bank of north Dakota which is the closest thing to a statewide federal reserve in the country where the bank of north Dakota could actually create new currency if it needs to then know that yeah it's weird um and so i've got this kind of like set up for the same kind of philosophy but is that that wasn't something your folks talked about but that's like it was resonant it was that part of your resonance with wallay and you want to talk about it even when you were young i think so um just the influence not not so much as more by example yeah right for sure um and i think we like we've spent more of our life together than we have a part for sure what like what did you say it's uh 22 years we've been hanging out yeah out of 40 yeah we're both 40 now damn i finally cut up yours it's awesome he always tells me age before beauty he opens the door i'm only five months older i say that phrase all the time but usually for little ladies you know pearls before swan i will be i will be a uh a little lady um but yeah so what about you politics yeah politics wasn't something we super discussed in our house growing up but somehow i ended up as a pretty hardcore conservative at one point and then realized that there was more to the world than those things that had driven those thoughts without elaborating for hours um but i found i'll elaborate for minutes yeah just realizing that there's being open-minded is a important aspect in life and if you shut yourself off to things because of ideals that you've learned in some form or fashion wherever they came from that if you don't vet those things for yourself then you don't really know what you believe you believe what other people tell you to believe so a lot of my a lot of my beliefs and thought process process is full right of center for those reasons but when it comes to pure politics i don't care i'm a mixed ticket kind of guy so if it fits the needs of my family and supports the ideals that i have then i support it and i fall in the same boat if you have to put it in a name them more libertarian than anything right i tell people if you want to drink bleach great good but don't ask me for help when you do right right so those are your choices and i hope you're not on my hmo yeah yeah exactly so for me it's politics can divide people in a in a unique way um it used to be a little more fiery when i was younger but now i don't get upset when other people have other opinions yeah and so that's allowed me to hear those opinions and make my decisions one of the time rather than try to be all one thing or all of another yeah well i think that's one of the danger of this republican democrat system is as you're supposed to be all of one or all of the other two polarizing yeah well and and i heard i shared actually a quote and i'm not sure who it is but like politics is the system that we developed as humans so that we didn't actually hack each other up with sorts sure uh over our disagreements hack that guy up instead of all of us right well and or just let's talk about it and fight about it with words instead of with with actual weapons you know and so politics as miserable as it is sometimes at least we don't hack each other up with sorts and if if we could just hack each other up with sorts that would be okay but big guns and tanks and all that stuff is less good yeah yeah it's all financially good so what do you think about global organizations like the u-n that you know try to be like the kind of the political organization that allows for conversation discourse among because it's one thing on local politics right because we can have an election it's another thing when russian fades you crane right so what does what is the responsibility of these nation states to one another i don't know we were getting deep into politics well i don't know why not you know i can give you 10 reasons no um is the u-n out of a beneficial organization for the world right now depends what perspective you look at the United Nations from okay you're right i can i loved debate and speech in high school although i didn't participate i really enjoyed those classes and i can argue both sides of every story so yeah we share that attribute actually as a humanitarian and someone that doesn't want to see people hurt or injured or displaced anyway is the u-n doing the right thing sure but they excluded someone for years and years and years we're going to aid the people that they're fighting against right it doesn't seem as united as they want to be so from both sides it's difficult yeah i think it's necessary though so do you want to talk about um abortion or climate change we can do abortion okay yeah yeah that's always fun i don't have a vagina i don't have an opinion um my opinion is i don't have to live with that stuff yeah you want to get deep into politics what if you were having an affair and the other woman got pregnant did it still hurt decision 100 percent yeah because i'm not in that situation to make that decision at that time okay all right and that's honestly how i feel all right that's fair um it used to be hardcore it's kind of a cop out the other way it is a cop out but so i have an opinion that it's a woman's right to choose and that is pro choice right fair so love me or hate me for that that's how i feel but i'm not talking to you i'm just to ever yeah but i don't care it's not it's not my choice to make okay i would not make that decision personally but i wouldn't hold against someone that had to even if it was your child that was being aborted um okay that's why he was asking different conversation right so if you were having an affair yeah or if you decided to it's hard to talk about if you got one past the gig if you got one past the gig keeper right now and Miriam chose a pregnant and she comes to you and says Wally i was pregnant but i had an abortion because i made that decision i would feel disappointed she'd include me in the conversation he would be more than disappointed we have a relationship where i i wouldn't feel like that that i couldn't talk to him before and make a decision we it's hard to wrap my brain around it well so i think that's one prod is like being relationships where if that happens you can talk about it at least yeah so i think we do we we make a lot of decision we make pretty much every decision together um and i don't think that makes me weak or weaker i don't think the same for him i just think that's a part of being you know respect yeah having respect for the other person to include them in that decision um abortion i agree with Wally um not just because i agree with Wally but but that's how i feel it's not a choice that i would make for myself but who might as say that based on that situation for that person that that you know one choice for them is better than another you have to make the choice that's best for you and what are you willing to to be okay with for the rest of your life it's a question i struggle with so i'm not asking because i'm like hardcore yeah i mean as economist i'm like yeah yeah yeah anyway so no i always think it's a great question um if you agree with me great if you don't that's totally no better way to polarize the room right yeah i just thought i would touch a third round i don't know how about trans how about uh how about leot Thomas i talked about it in the last of my last podcast i don't know if i want to touch that it's understandable we do have two two nephews that have changed their alignment so we've dealt with that future swimming champions um are we talking about oh they're now nephews or yes no they're nieces no they're nephews okay nephews but uh the sports thing is so different i mean it doesn't matter if you want to talk about care no listen to this and judge how you were actually running away late already and it's a awkward subject it's super awkward sorry yeah well we drank a lot of whiskey it is kind of fun to i'm comfortable being uncomfortable that's right where i'm at now so it's fine well you want to talk more yeah okay you want to do another talk about these nephews if you want no i think it's best to let them find themselves and the adults how they want to be so i think that's yeah a principle yeah all right um so we did family politics we didn't do faith yet Maryam gets to start that one okay faith um i grew up uh catholic so um from your dads kind of yes and my mom kind of perspective yeah um my and polis catholic my grainy my grainy said she was catholic despite fallicism and and nuns and nuns yes yes or thing do you know this joke you probably do do you the only me to priest eat some Fridays none terrible joke sorry to all your catholics that are going to cancel the after that and cancel culture can eat it oh my gosh so yeah i mean grew up every sunday church uh religious education every Wednesday um you know grew up with all of that and we got married in the catholic church um that was something at that time that i felt was really important and um and while i was okay with it well he i censored i wanted him to decide for himself he grew up Methodist so um to be married in the catholic church at least just one of you yeah had to be catholic over them okay and then we had to do marriage counseling um as part of to make sure you're gonna raise your children catholic i don't even care the people that counseled it he was banging his secretary right okay there's a little hypocrisy going on there's that that that pretty one of the only mean if he was doing so right like that's a sore subject yeah but we remember we were sitting at the end it wasn't a priest he was just whatever a prisoner yeah they they made us take a compatibility test okay before we started the counseling and then that way to to match us up with the with a good and what did it say it was just about everything oh so how we would raise our kids how we would you know just oh so you like discuss your answer oh the results oh so we were not compatible at all okay yeah um and so when we got our our counselors um the priest that was gonna marry us with um he was like just make sure that they're really ready because their tests say that they're not compatible at all did you flirt with you at all no sorry no it's too awful um so maybe it was really interesting but I think I think that's what I did rail that no you're fine I think that's what makes us work that we are opposites we don't have to think the same on everything I think that makes us work really well together yeah matter respect for the partner and whatever they want to think I I learned so much I learned so much from Wally and you know hopefully he feels the same for me and um but Jill's not gonna think like I think like it doesn't matter how hard I beat her I don't think it goes that way no not at all so but it doesn't matter how persuasive I try to be because I am the more assertive and persuasive and whatever person I ain't really gonna change the ways you think the the way I act is gonna be that what might change the way she thinks that's kind of universal that's a perception thing too I think growing up um becoming an adult out here without our I mean we we could obviously call our parents anytime you know in our early stages of marriage but we just really worked on on making it work right um holding it in until we explode and then solving the problem afterwards we've been through all of that but as but as far as religion goes just growing together and just learning that for me uh I don't need to put a label on it I don't need to say I'm this or I'm that I so you do not say your Catholic you do say your Catholic I I don't I don't say that I'm that I'm affiliated with do you go to church ever we we used to when we first moved up here we don't anymore um but I just try to live my life being the best person that I can so what do you think of Jesus then so I think that in the end if there is heaven and when I die and I get the opportunity to go there check it out see what it's like um if I I feel like if I've done everything that I can in my life to be a good person to help others when they needed it um and to just be my best self every day that that I'll be let in so you get the good person waver but the Jesus man isn't really qualified I mean I don't know I mean have you been there no no I'm sure people don't leave if they get there you know what I've never heard of anybody but but I mean faith yeah and that's true um you know my dad you don't have the Jesus question answered honestly I think you can choose not to fully answer that but it is a choice yeah so I think that's where I said okay it's just fair I just do the best that I can and yeah cool that was a great answer thank you while you're up faith yeah I'm curious there's a method can I don't really can I don't really talk about it very much between the two of us so to some extent you guys are both kind of former Christian not former Christians I'm not going to see you rejected but you're not actively engaging with Christianity we're not hailing as religion but but you haven't rejected either neither no and I feel the pull so I grew up Methodist I was super involved in the church okay I was in Boy Scouts church-based organization um you know it's a large organization right and even though their inner faith does that feed you a little bit in terms of the faith and scouting yeah not necessarily okay um um what made me turn away from going to the church was the people that were there yeah um righteous attitudes hiding behind the cross um do you know some things that putting up pictures of aborted fetuses during mass oh it's just it's not good see antithesis of what I want on a Sunday yeah and I felt like they were polarizing people to a level that it wasn't about it wasn't about what you believe anymore it's about who you want to get behind well as people that Jesus loved were some of the 30 fuckers of the day kind of right like yeah it wasn't about the story isn't not that's a whole new testament it's like bringing people back right you know the the actually you probably appreciate hearing this but the church that houses the Matthews house uh their admin offices and their community life center is called the Genesis project and it is built on what was the Hooters strip club location who does that strip club no not Hooters um the Hunt Club oh the Hunt Club the Hunt Club perfect great place for a religious establishment right but but what's cool about it is like maybe two thirds of the congregation is like tattooed up bikers and former strippers I was gonna say former strippers great and things like that and then a third or maybe half or whatever is like Fort Collins fondue they're probably the right most religious fanatics ever because they've been there and that is what they've found well and I the reason I choose faith over religion in this conversation is because I think religion is like that dogmatic thing that you always do because that's the thing that you're supposed to do because that's what your grandpa's grandpa did and this and faith is like what do you believe and why do you believe it and how does it make you act yeah it's super hard to put a name on that for me because like we love the outdoors so being being in the middle of nowhere experiencing creation for what it is yeah and then filling that pole emotionally to you're vulnerable right you'll allow yourself to be vulnerable in those situations so you can experience the experience and yeah I don't know if that's God I don't know if that's mother nature I don't know if that is just the way that everything is made in this universe and yeah who knows why yeah but it feels really good and I refuse to put a label on any more because I don't need to fair so I know it's kind of a cop out but what do you do with Jesus? Yeah like do you think it's cool do you think it's crazy? I think Jesus is a person that existed and I think that things happen to him that were are exclusively documented for a reason right but I think if we took every single religious book and we got rid of them and we took every single science book and got rid of them the only thing that's going to come back with the same story is science the physics is never going to change all those are everything that science based is never going to change but if we got rid of every single thing we know about religion and every single thing we know about science and we said everyone's brain to zero yeah the story that people tell to make themselves feel good and to find faith because they need direction is going to be a different story with the same path yeah science many paths to the top of the bone yes exactly that's kind of the way I see religion too every bit of science will come back identical because people haven't gotten any dumber we're going to find stuff out yeah but follow the science is bullshit it a little bit we did well we're talking about COVID well oh is that me sir that no that's Anthony Fauci yeah so but I think actual science the physics of everything that makes everything is universe work like there were really dinosaurs way before the Bible was written and God created the heavens and the earth well there's some kind of giant animal that lived here and we found their bones right right whatever that story is right I don't know and what makes you feel good what do you embrace there's a who are we to say it's right or wrong have you listened to Jordan Peterson at all a lot so he's kind of dodgy like you guys in this regard but he's got that notion that like there are some myths that are more true than a true nonfiction book you know and that's kind of the way his Old Testament series kind of describes the Bible like yes no not really God didn't separate the heavens and the earthes but this is how we understood that and and can enable and the Tower of Babel and all these stories well here's the deep psychological truth that have been distilled by 50,000 years or 20,000 years of being in humans that we can write down and trust sure yeah so that's kind of like I wouldn't say I'd go that far but that's kind of what I'm feeling from you guys is that you have this like appreciation for the values that have been distilled yes sure in many respects but yeah I appreciate I've actually that's an interesting approach that and I forget where I hear the heard the science thing in the religion thing and when he said Jordan Peterson I want to say maybe it was one of his little shorts that you see on Instagram and stuff but I heard that somewhere else and they just resonated with me so yeah yeah it's I like it yeah I think that's pretty good so the local experience is the craziest experience that you would be willing to share with our listening audience have you figured it out you don't have a crazy experience yeah sure we do we had a willing to share we had a we have a son that came out of his room that couldn't speak and he couldn't move side of his face well and it was very frightening and he thought he was fine he did not like one side of his face just like frozen yeah almost like bells palsy and he thought that everything that he was saying and communicating was exactly what was what was coming out his brain made him think that everything was but you was like a slur of yes it was like he was night like like I might try to say um sleepwalking yes but he came out and he said he felt funny but I didn't understand what he was saying yeah and the whole left side of his face is totally just true it's a medical word um they're palsy yeah yeah it's palsy on the whole left side of his face and so Maryam looks at me and Henry yes Henry so freaks out a little bit and then I'm like okay buddy like what is her name and he said it but it wasn't those words it was a sound what's my name what's the dog's name can you grab your tongue no he couldn't put that together well so I looked at Maryam and I just said yep and then we drove into the hospital so I called a friend and it was about 11 30 at night so the other two boys were asleep yeah and a friend showed up um stayed with the boys and we took him straight to the emergency room over at uh uh MCR yeah well by the time we got there he had been about 45 minutes um total of time and he was kind of back to what we what we've learned is called your baseline so back to where you are feeling like you're yourself again okay um which wasn't really like his full self it was yeah okay physically he was Henry the whole time he had no control over the things he was saying wow where his ability to be tactile yeah um it's like a stroke like yeah it was that exactly like a stroke um in some fashions right yeah so he was confused not sure why we were going why we all freaked out right because I've been told you it's fine yeah and you hear exactly that's it yeah much mouth like type thing so we take him the great doctors at MCR and a bunch of tests and did a cat scan and they found bright spots on his brain cat scan okay which are inflammation yeah lesions on his brain yeah so they call them lesions inflammation so they're like you need to be at children's hospital so we're gonna take them down there on ambulance so he's doesn't lose an airway or anything crazy so Miriam wrote with him I went to take care of the other boys make sure they got to school make sure we're there when they woke up in the morning all right and then I went down to join them so yeah yeah it was a crazy day it was it was uh it was snowing so that was a very long snowy tedious drive yeah and uh you know and Henry being his and his Henry fashion he's just before eighth grade okay so he was 13 or so yeah about 13 and um he when we get there he he was like could you guys turn the lights on because that would be awesome so as them turn on the ambulance lights and you know because at this point he's fully recovered from this thing we called a relapse at the beginning right yeah so we went on the journey of it being MS if it being of embracing that it was multiple sclerosis and going to a meeting with people a lot though that right it didn't seem right and then him having what's called relapses and people people telling us that there's no way your son has MS and I'm like call this number at children hospital and talk to Dr. Schreiner and right they have your answers and so they finally figured out that it was Neurosarcoidosis and they did a brain biopsy on them to test his brain matter around Christmas a couple years ago and so now he's on an immune suppressant drug and he takes method of treksy and so his immune system intervenes through his brain yeah some ways so you know one of the things when we first I mean it I think what was hard was to see your child go through all of these testing and things but know that in the end it was hopefully for good right to find out what was wrong and you know they put you in a bucket of what they know it's not but they don't know what it is so for months we were we were in a place where we we don't really know what it is so now we're just managing the symptoms and I remember actually we I was at a chapter meeting or something during that time when there was just I don't know what it is yeah and that's that's hard that's hard for him and it's terrible you know I was at the middle school and fortunate to work at the same school where they were so he would come in and he was like it's happening again and he could tell when he was going to have a relapse and how frequently were these they were at first months yeah at first it was months and then it started to get closer together where it would be like one every couple of weeks and just getting closer together and so they were like you know we we're kind of at that point where the next step is to do a biopsy right and you know that's how we're going to get the best information that we can so they took they took a core sample from one of the core sample from one of the the lesions yeah yeah so that they could then study it and yeah what there's some enzyme that's attacking this part of the brain what is it actually made of yeah and we even went through genetic testing to see if it was something that you know was from Walter I right right and that and I don't know have we talked about Leigh Framini in my family no probably not no so Jill's brother married a woman who has Leigh Framini disease and she's one of a few hundred people in the world virtually or at least in the US and it's a you're like 98% likely to get soft tissue cancer by the time you're 30 cheese and so she's had several bouts her four kids two of them have the gene and so they get every six months those two kids go down for their full body MRI and listen that and you know for a libertarian it's like well let's spend a lot of money screenings and stuff but for Kurt the brother and love Greg and Noel and these amazing nephews one the one of which is first chair for color our college band in his freshman year in the flute after he was piano player for most of his life yeah I don't want him to die either you know and so that's where on that politics kind of stage yeah especially when you've got I think you have to make all of your decisions one of the time yeah whether it's faith family or politics yeah it has to be what's best for you and it doesn't have to be selfish yeah but it does have to be about what makes you feel the best and you know from the beginning we wanted him to be able to speak for himself yeah we told him we're like we aren't going through this you are so oh we're going through it just like you know what he's like yeah kind of advocate for himself yeah and so the doctors would come in and and want to talk to us right away but I would look at Henry and I think that was something that the doctors weren't you know didn't find that very typical that oh okay I'm gonna I'm gonna have this conversation with this kid who's 13 and we're gonna we're gonna come up with a you know plan and so you know from the beginning we told him we're like we'll support you we'll make you know you have to trust us to make the decisions that we feel like that we need to make but if there's a choice that you can have then we want you to have the choice because it's your treatment you're gonna be the one doing the treatment so we went from a kid that you know had never swallowed pills before learning how to swallow pills and you know doing IVs all the time and having all these tests run spinal spinal tap and you know all these things that you don't want him to want your kid to have to experience but now it's just like it's nothing and and so it's made him very interested in all of those things and he it is a very rare thing for him to have and so they've written he's been published a medical journal yeah he got sideline because of COVID in 2020 and 21 but so it's not over by any means yet this is continuing the challenge for your family yeah right now I guess I guess the word to be remission so his scans are clear he's healthy well no no relapses they've there's a doctor at Duke I don't know that person's name but they figured this out and so they shared that with children's and so for the time being they just keep spreading out his treatments yeah and seeing what that threshold looks like yeah and that might look like him not doing those and then just doing like maintenance MRIs yeah watch for it just looking for it right yeah because who knows it's so rare maybe it's like your nephew or whatever and then it went away with the body scan or maybe it's gonna like be a persistent thing one of the things I asked us at the beginning was do you remember him ever being sick and we're like um we looked each other like how do we have a 13-year-old that's never been sick but for real we we couldn't remember a time that he was like three he was sick in a fever but it wasn't anything crazy yeah and so we're like his immune system's been on 11 right yeah since the beginning and it's just the the manifestation of that right right the greatest strength that turns into a weakness right he's a superhero yeah right he's Wolverine he needs to turn that shit down yeah yeah can't say enough good things about we call it his entourage because he's like oh you know I have another doctor that I'm going to meet and I'm like it's another doctor that is going to be part of your group that's going to help you and well and continue your care think what a baseline for an amazing life he has built at this point respect for what he has yeah just like the rest of us the appreciation work hard for it one way or another yeah he's very interested in medicine now he at when he was kind of in the middle of all of it and go into a lot of appointments and stuff one of his projects at school was to create something that hadn't really been invented before and you know can you create something and be original yes and so he was going through having a lot of IVs and things put in and he thought when he gets an IV put in a he tastes saline in his mouth really and not everybody tastes that and sometimes the taste is severe to where kids or people will throw up because well it's just too much yeah it's like a mouthful of salt water yeah and so he was like what if I created an IV that had a taste that you could flavor a flavor and that way it wouldn't be so horrible and so I mean it's gotten his brain thinking about different things and so he's very interested in that pathway to move forward to this is funny thing about life how sometimes curses turn into blessings and opportunities yeah and so if somebody wanted to like donate to a cause or anything is there anybody children's hospital I guess is probably the right place and reality is for children and reality is for children yeah okay um that's the end of our show we're way over time thank you so much not really way over time it's fine it's fine it's fine keep listening yeah um myriad of my think you're awesome oh thank you and Wally you're nearly as cool as Mary edging getting very close you're getting close but just out of your reach I just remember she chose me so that was her choice well that's actually one of my theories and I didn't actually mention it before because I didn't know if it's pertinent but is that generally speaking the woman is the decider as to if she's gonna marry this guy or not sure like guys are they might like they might know that a woman is not their girl or whatever and they'll break up or whatever but the woman is the one that fight that decides and Mary decided with you before you decided sure are you saying that I make poor life choices no I don't think so but what do you think about that theory do you think that's generally true or generally this true I don't know that's another polarizing thing nowadays because you know how to put people in any category or the cancel I think it's a feminist kind of supportive comment like the girl is the decider how dare you tell me what my role is supposed to be do you want to hear the most terrible is leotamas choke go ahead he has been dying to turn all of that cut it off before we publish this we'll see so now be a good time to cut probably if you don't think if you don't think leotamas is the women's NCAA swimming champion and you can suck her dick yeah yeah I saw a meme like that it was really cool bye see you 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 belogexperience.com to learn more and find our library of episodes until next time stay local