EXPERIENCE 64 | Miles and Vallene Kailburn, Founders and Chief Executive Officer and Chief Creative Officer of Old Town Media

My guests on today's episode were Miles and Val Calburn, the founders and chief executive officer and chief creative officer of Old Town Media Inc. located in Fort Collins. An Old Town Media is the company that built my first website for my food trailer, Bear's Backyard Grill, way back at the beginning of Loco Think Tank, and they've come along ways. We didn't really get into it, but they've won so many awards, earning 5,000, top 200 private companies, top 100 women-owned companies, best of Colorado, and many more, as well as a lifetime of service through Rotary Club, volunteer boards, and things like that. Miles and Val have a young family, and we talk about their own families growing up, what some of their motivations came from, and their technical skills. We get into the full journey here and learn a lot about their style of marketing and who they really try to support, and how they do it. Just more than just a marketing agency, it's really becoming a consultancy about business practices, supply chain, revenue enhancements, product offerings, things like that. Old Town Media is one of our anchor media companies here in Fort Collins, and I was really honored to spend this time with Val and Miles. We've been Rotarians and even Exchange student hosts at the same time, and so it's nice to reconnect with these two, and you can hear that we're having fun. So, hope you'll join in, and listen and learn. Let's have some fun. Welcome to the LOCO Experience Podcast. I'm your host, Kirk 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 truth we can uncover, the better. You'll feel like you really know our guests after each episode, and if I'm doing my job well, listeners will find business principles and tips from their journey, and a greater appreciation for each of our guests. Woven into these long format experience episodes are occasional thoughtful episodes, topically focused snippets of five to fifteen minutes where our guests unfold important and timely business truths. And also, I'll read the LOCO perspective bug posts, because I'm lazy to infer to listen and read, and maybe you do too. Thanks for tuning in, and if you'd like to show a please subscribe, review, and share it with your favorite people. Welcome back to the LOCO experience podcast, this is your host, Kurt Bear, and I'm happy to be here today with Miles and Bell Kaleburn, and they are the founders, co-founders, and the CEO and chief creative officer, respectively, of an old town media here in Fort Collins. And so, Miles, why don't we start with you? Describe old town media to me in 90 seconds. Sure. We are a full service creative firm. We work with maybe four or five different industries, all of them are high lifetime value, so pretty much anywhere in any industry where a client is worth a significant amount of money to our customers. That allows us to really focus on customer journeys, and that's really what we're passionate about. Our journey storyteller to create kind of a brand attractability kind of thing, so LOCO think tanks sounds like that kind of a business in some respects, yeah? Absolutely. We have long time members and stuff. Val, what does a chief creative officer do? Great question, so my main responsibility is overseeing the brand management of all of our clients, so anything from how it's depicted in social, to the web, to print all mediums, I'm responsible for making sure that stays on brand and on point. Is there a PR element to that kind of media engagement? Do you want to go? Yes, it's PR is absolutely not our primary focus, but coming through storytelling and really the copy and things like that, it flows through, but by no means are we a full service team. If one of your clients, founders gets busted for DUI and child porn, they should contact a PR company, not you. Yes, probably we would not be there agency at that one. Well, let's talk about, I don't know exactly how we first met, but one thing I do know is that you guys built my first website for me in trade exchange for a party for your staff or something like that when I was food trucking. I do remember that. That was in the earliest days, I'm sure, otherwise you wouldn't have taken on a poor staff like myself as a client. So let's talk about where did old town media sprout out from? What were you guys doing immediately before founding the agency? I can take that one if you want, it's kind of funny. So I started this actually in college and it was the height of the recession, 2007-2008, and nobody was hiring, nobody, when I finished my internship in Denver, nobody could afford to take me on. Truthfully, nobody was hiring, so Miles and I had talked and he was doing IT at the time and we had just said, hey, let's give this a go. It was really just to pay the bills, it wasn't to make an actual business out of this. So one thing led to the other and here we are today. And you had like a marketing background that was what you were trained to do? So my degree is actually in interactive media, so it's a design, it's basically a fancy way of saying a web design and development degree. So that's what I went to school for, but it allowed me to have a pretty wide range in design to be able to work with a lot of different clients, not just quote-unquote build a logo and throw a shirt, but to be able to do a pretty broad spectrum of their brand creations. Yeah, a holistic industry type instead of being a specialist. Exactly, yeah. I find a lot of entrepreneurs are kind of more from that generalist school of thought than a specialist per se. Yeah, and I think by the time you get to that point as an entrepreneur, you have enough range in your career to be able to do that. So, and then you can get very specialized after having that range. Yeah, fair enough. And Miles, what did you bring to the equation, just IT smarts kind of? Yeah, I started, and did you drop your job or were you side hustle in there? Side hustle. So I started moon lighting for Val. She took on some clients, took on some projects, and she would do that during the day, and I'd write some code at night, and we did that for probably year and a half or so, and then started the transition to go full time. Yeah. Yeah, and just kind of kept growing. Yeah. I want to get back into the business journey, but I want to learn a little more about Miles and Val first. Let's jump in the way back machine. Third grade, Val, you go first, where were you? Third grade. Third grade. Oh, man, we were just talking about this the other day. I was homeschooled for third grade. I was in Miles and I are both from Rochester, New York, and so yeah, that's where I was, that's what I was doing. Little family, big family. So I'm an only child, single mother, and how did she create income? She was like a nurse's aide or something to that effect, a health care, something in there. So, yep, so it was, for us, it was a very, you got to work hard, and you know, we didn't come, I didn't come for much, and so I've always been of the philosophy of having a really good work ethic, and fair enough from that. Yeah. Was she a single mom most of your whole childhood? Yes. Well, yeah. Wow, that's a, it can be a challenging thing. Quite challenging, so it teaches you what you don't want when you grow up. Did you have grandparents for the family or things like that? Yeah, I mean, there was family around, and, but I mean, it was really pretty much just her and I, so, you know, probably the opposite of Miles' childhood. Yeah, let's talk about that Miles, where did you come from? I know it was Rochester, but what was your family environment? Mom and dad, they were together their whole life, my brother and sister, and then I'm the oldest of the three, and they're a great teacher, you remember? I can see her face, but I am drawn of blank, but I know she was pretty strict. Talk to me about young Miles, you're a pretty athletic guy, kind of, whatever, were you like an athlete in elementary school and high school and stuff like that? Yeah, starting out young, I played a fair amount of soccer, tried playing football, formally, realized that wasn't really for me, didn't really enjoy it, played a ton of flag football with friends and all that, but yeah, being a bigger, bigger guy going through school, I was definitely asked to join a lot of sports, but played golf and tennis, yeah, fair enough, not really the most athletic sports, but still playing today. Yeah, fair enough, and Val, what kind of a student, what kind of a young person were you, were you, like you said, you had that hard work ethic and stuff, were you an achiever, were you getting straight A's like all across, or did some of the, like, I mean, it's homeschool, right? So it's a little different. Well, in third grade, in particularly, I was home school, but then I actually moved to East Rochester, and that's how Miles and I met. We went to school together, so I moved there when I was 10, and we was small schools, so I really kind of knew each other, and yeah, but I was definitely, I was an over achiever, I was probably still am, and I danced as what I did as a sport, and yeah, I was, yes. Are you guys like elementary school sweethearts? No, I was 16, he was not. Going on 19, oh yeah, it's okay, you know, and so you guys, you're out of school, did you head off to college then, Miles? I did not. I actually went back and worked for the school district, and my last year of school, I went to a vocational school, for half the time, took IT there, realized that's what I loved. Most of my family's craftsmen, creator people, and I enjoy that, but wasn't my path, so IT kind of filled that same creative industry as well. Yeah, we get to build networks and do all sorts of fun stuff, so worked my way up through there, worked there for a few years, absolutely loved the experience, wouldn't trade it for anything, and then one day decided, I didn't see myself doing that for the next 23 years, for that state pension, and asked Val, I think I told Val is going to move out to Colorado, and then I asked her if she wanted to move with me. I don't really recall exactly how that went, but I don't, but I remember being 18, and I never been out here before. Just at a high school. Just at a high school, we packed up all our belongings, and we drove out here with our dog, and we never looked back. And when was this, what year? 2004. Okay, March of 2004, very good, very good, and then you must have found yourself going to school then, Val, is that right? Went to lots of schools. Lots of schools, got a little bit here. Are you guys both non-college graduates then? I actually, I did get my degree, it took me a while, but I ended up getting a mind at the art institute when it was there in Denver, and they were one of the few programs that did have a web design degree, because at the time it was a pretty new degree, and they didn't have a lot of different programs there, so. Interesting. And Miles, did you seek for the education? I seeked it out, I went to DeVry, and then kind of got bored, tested out of a bunch of classes, got about halfway through, and then decided, I'll just go back to work. I'm finding that, gosh, I don't know what, but 30 plus percent of the successful entrepreneurs I interview for this podcast, if not more, either go have no college or, you know, fragmented kind of thing like you guys. And so that should be an inspiration, especially to those folks that are out there thinking, do I want to drop $140,000 on a degree that doesn't seem to be worth that much anymore? It's tricky. It was long as you can get your student loans forgiven. It's a music. Well, it's tricky for what we do, and this is, I, everybody has a different philosophy on education right now, but we are knowledge workers by definition. That is what this type of industry is, and I really could have done the same thing without a degree. Maybe not at that exact time, but definitely right now, I could have gotten the exact same education, and quite frankly, actually, when I interview people for the roles that I hire in my team, and there's different teams on our, in OTM, but I, I don't, I wouldn't even, I couldn't tell you if my designers have a degree. Because that's the last thing I look at, I look at their portfolio, and if they can actually do the job. So it's a, it is just that's a, probably it's an old own podcast itself that could be talked about, but it's a, it's a fascinating topic. So. So you pack up the Volvo 260, or know what was it? Oh, no. It was a beautiful Chevy S10 low rider. No, they came out with an extreme version. I remember though. Yeah. So ClubCab. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hello. Had the little jump seat. Yeah. Oh, yes. I love it. Well, big a dog. English Bulldog. Oh, you guys have been Bulldoggers like this whole day long. Oh, my goodness. But they've all been rescues. That one came from the Lollipot Farm in Rochester, New York. Very cool. Oh, it was his name. It was a girl. It was Hattie. Hattie. Yeah. God. Well, Rest and Peace. Hattie. I assume I know. She had a good long life. Yeah. So, did you land in Fort Collins circa 2004 then? We did. I had a cousin out here. He did some health care and kind of large IT consulting. So it came out worked with him. And, uh, Bell came out and pursued the. That's a major vacation. Yeah. Yeah. Sampled all the schools. I did. Did they chase you? Or did you drop them? Well, it's all of each. Yeah. We don't need just one here. The finance department at CSU is pretty, pretty persistent. So, um, so let's just jump back into the business journey. So you're moonlighting for a year and a half. Were you the first like employee then miles or whatever? I don't know. Is this, do you guys own the business together now? 50, 50 year or whatever? I guess it doesn't really matter how you own it because it's community property state, right? So, well, we own it together and then we have two business partners. Oh, I remember carries one. I don't know you had a second. Yep. So Rachel Schlagel was just made partner. What was it last week? Two weeks ago, yeah. That suggests that you've been working really hard for a quite a while. And so we'll get more into that because I think that is a significant topic that small business owners want to know is what's that junior partnerships look like? How to, you know, make opportunities available, state of Colorado is certainly focused on that as well. So, um, so talk to me about like the kinds of clients that you had right away. And take us up to that first employee that wasn't one of you. I think there's that food truck company wasn't. Oh, man, I know. Not just going to know really on. Oh, man, I mean, it was basically me and I put my business card in every coffee shop. I had Craig's list ads. Oh, man. Okay, I'm going to tell this one because he's going to love it. One of our very first clients. I met at a coffee shop and I had a scooter because I was so broke I couldn't afford a car. And it was Jeremy Sharp with Rancho Serrita and they are one of our oldest clients to date and it was one of our very first. And since then, you know, we've become good friends and kids together and just all sorts of fun stuff. But I mean, when you first start out, you take with any business journey and I don't know if you don't care if it's this kind of whatever, but you take anybody and everyone that'll come in the door and some of them pay you and some of them don't. Right. Then you go from there. Right. Net 30 is never really net 30. No, it's like net 100,000 or those some of the early business lessons you learn, like get a deposit on the front end before you spend 27 hours working on a website. Oh, yeah. Big time. But lots of lessons learned over the years. Sure. And what, like, did you study business at all? Did you mention that you were for a family of entrepreneurs? Not for entrepreneurs, but crafts craftsmen. So no, I don't think business runs in either of our families, but it's just kind of stuff you start figuring out. And I think we're at 16, 17 years in and we're still figuring it out for sure. But that's where we spend all our time. Well, I hear you read like a book every month or something like that or more than that. It comes and goes. It comes and goes. But certainly, I think that's something our whole leadership team shares. And I mean, I'd rather read about something than figure it out the hard way. I like to say about our chapters, you know, it's better to learn from the mistakes of others once in a while instead of always making them yourself. Oh, my goodness. Yep. I don't want to write that book. So talk to me about that first employee. Like you guys are getting more and more clients. You come on to full time role, you're adding these assorted clients of still probably mostly figuring it out as far as what your target market is. But yeah, who, what did you need to to fill gaps? Or was it just an overflow of your existing skills? Or you wanted to provide new services? What did that first hire look on? Isn't Mike in a love that I tell this? So Mike was our very first employee. And we were going to do the CSU. I think the job fair or something. And we were too busy and we didn't go. And he was so pissed. He's like, I was looking for your booth. I was like, oh, sorry. And he came in and he interviewed in a full suit. Oh, just love him. And, you know, no, well, we're good friends now him and his wife. And, you know, he stayed with us for several years. And then obviously, you know, as they do, they grow and they move on to their next journey. And we have, we feel so fortunate that we've been a part of his life to help grow the next leaders truly. Yeah. And, but funny enough, he works remotely. And he still sits in our office with us. He just doesn't work with us. And he just loves me so much that he wants to be mine. We have. Is this caution you? This is okay. Well, this is why we have two suites in our office. I sit on the other side. So no, I think that's how we survive each other. We each have our own side of the office. I think Mike's an interesting example because we we had a few people interview us and we had no idea. Right. I don't think at that point, we understood that there was a business section of books to even go read. It was just how do we land clients? How do we, you know, get different for them? Yeah. How do we get them to pay? How do we do the work? How do we deliver results? All the business stuff came after once you have money, then you have to figure out what to do it that once you have employees figured out what to do with it. And Mike was kind of that early team member. But I remember going through the interview and we interviewed a few people and kind of to the earlier discussion on college. They all had college degrees. So they all checked effectively the same boxes took the same classes. So not really any differentiation there in terms of what they took. But what stood out with Mike was he is a big Audi Porsche guy or Porsche. Okay. And he had built some websites for local groups. He had done photography for them. He had played with Google Analytics and and right. Sounds like a self-starter. Yeah. He was curious. He was curious. And so while we have, you know, we didn't do anything in that industry, he could he could he could talk about what he what he enjoyed and how to build things. And that was just truly so different than everyone else. Yeah. Interesting. So this is Circa 2007 by now, or no, yeah, something like that 2009, I guess, even somewhere around there. Yeah. Yeah. What does that gross past look like? Because how many how many what's your team now? 18, 19 somewhere around there. Yeah. Some died out. It's hard to keep track. Yeah. Well, I mean, you got some new new ones starting. We're hiring the thing that you know, that everybody started with right now. Yeah. Yeah. The shiny objects in Rome, perhaps. So what does that gross trajectory look like? I mean, you spend about 10, I mean, it's called 12 years since you really started adding people for 13 years, something like that. You've kind of added almost one a year. Was there big segments of that where you had big growth spirits? Was it all organic? Did you acquire any other agencies or clients or things like that? Did it all organically? I think for us, you know, we kind of started accidentally and then just kept going. There wasn't, you know, we didn't sit down one day and write this all out and come up with a business plan. Because as I've been told, I'm unhierable. So what else am I going to do? But I think, I don't know if you're unhierable, you're unemployable perhaps. That's what I mean. Yeah. Symantex. Get out of here. But I think, yeah, we had to figure it out the first few years. And so the bulk of our hiring, I would say, is probably in the last five, six years. Once we really started to realize what we wanted to build, how we wanted to build it, how we wanted to scale or not scale. And I think in terms of growth, we've grown every single year. Last year, we really tried to peg kind of a minimal growth year and that was fine. We needed slow down, catch up on processes and things like that. But aside from that, we grow 20 to 33% every single year. We're much of the 20 mile mark, you know, just steady. We're in this for the marathon, not the sprint. Yeah. So just a little bit of time and it works for us. Talk to me about like actually adding value to some of those first dozen, 20, you know, probably you're starting to add people to the team as you get over a dozen, over 20 clients kind of thing. And at that time, they're probably like a lot of $1,000 a month clients and stuff, whereas now your target's probably 10 times that or something at least. But talk to me about like measuring the impact you're actually having for your clients and even what were the things that you were doing back then to help them gain visibility and stuff that you don't even do it all anymore or let's get into the vintage marketing, you know, really at the virtually the beginnings of Facebook was what like a 2007 kind of thing or something, right? And Instagram wasn't even an idea in somebody's brain yet at that time. Yeah. So I guess starting out, we started out as a web development shop. So, you know, everyone will build a website for you. Yep. This is how much time we think it will take and how much it will cost. Exactly. Yeah. And at that time, it was, you know, pretty laborious process, a lot of manual development, things like that. And not really a long-term engagement after that. Right. It was very project based. Probably in 0809, there's a few years before we brought on Kerry as a team member. The whole paid marketing, PPC, social started to kind of come up and we did some of that work for other agencies to help support them. And then we realized, you know, we couldn't really effectively support them in that scenario. So we pushed back their clients to them and let them know, you know, we're bringing it into the space. Yeah. And we did it for probably two and a half years. Just slowly building it up, just trying to understand what works, what doesn't work, how do we approach this type of work, very different engagements, long-term engagements, versus the project work, and probably spent, yeah, about that two-year mark. And then at that point, we brought on Kerry. So Kerry goes way back. She's like your longest. She's almost spent with us almost 10 years. Wow. And Kerry, line in Kugel, right? Logan Bill. Oh, I'm like, what? It is a challenging day by all. It is a challenge. They're German. Yeah. And so was she also fresh out of school or had she toolkit more than that to bring to the team? Now, she had a full toolkit. She worked at another agency left there and was kind of doing some freelance work. We had worked with her on some mutual clients in the past. And basically we had this expanding market inside of our little client base and we needed to fill. We sat down with her at the Almante Grill for a town and great restaurants. It just never caught the traction that it knew. I loved that place. While I was there financing Black bottle in those days, and I think it always irked Pat how immediately popular Black bottle was when he puts so much effort into making Almante cool. And it was cool Pat. It was cool. I agree. I liked that it deserve more love than it got. Yeah. It was fabulous. Depa was like struggles sometimes. Saturday. Yeah. Well, yeah. It'll have its day again. I agree. It's a cycle. I agree. But we're back. What were we talking about over talking about Almante and your partnership with Kerry? So she didn't start as a partner though. Was that right? No, we brought her on and she loves to tell the story that we maybe had two or three or four clients in that marketing space and kind of sat her down, gave her a laptop, said, here's our client list. Let's go build it. And I think then I went back to my office and just started writing code again. We said good luck. I'll see you writing this paper click. All this kind of stuff. That's kind of your bailihoo. Well, we were transitioning. That was probably our second. That was our first pivot into a new company basically. Okay. And it needed to be built. It was basically she joined a startup. We started over and she could you quit building websites? No, we didn't quit building websites, but we knew that the model had to change. The project-based website model wasn't sustainable. It's the industry industry changes so fast. Customer acquisition is too hard to and the prices are too low to like go out there and fish for websites and that's one and done. See you later. Exactly. And so so we said here you go. Here's a laptop. We got to start building this business. And so we did. One I think from day one, that's just how she was. She was is. She's a self-starter and she got to work. Yeah. Help this build it and she's been a fabulous partner ever since. Yeah, very cool. And so now by this point we're in 2010 or something. 13 or 14. So she's approaching 10 years I think you just mentioned. So that's pivot one. And you mentioned there's been one since. Do we want to go there already or were there other like formative years? You're adding people to her team. You're adding people to your team on the webdev side. And now even though your background is an IT, do you do you don't do any IT services for people? No. Not extensively. Not at all. Don't even put that into the ether. Yeah. There's a special place that haven't for those people. Yes, there are. No, I think from transitioning from that development piece, we brought in the, you know, started off kind of supporting the marketing side, brought Kerry in to run that. And really at that point we had two companies. You know, we were known as a web company and all of our clients knew us as a web company and we're doing 130 projects a year. So we had good recognition in that arena. But we really were unknown in that marketing space. So who were the players at that time in the marketing space? Do you remember who you were trying to get a slice of market share from? Yeah, I think I would say it's all just all the same with the same local companies that there are now, all the same local agencies. And yeah. Well, there was a big, like, I remember from a banking base because we're getting kind of towards the end of my banking career here. And Burns was like a big shop at that time at 30, 40 people in the IT department and that. I think they're a shell of their former selves if they're still around. I think so too. I think the, I'm not sure. No, not too sure. The owners maybe were tired. I'm not too sure. Yeah. Yeah, they always did really good work. Yeah. Well, I think it's a, it's kind of like being a coffee shop, being a marketing agency in Fort Collins, either do a good job or die. Yeah. And I think it, I firmly at the, I'm at the, the, the belief, let's say, that there's enough work for everybody. And everybody has a niche, a niche or what have you that fits them and suits them. And we have our own. And we've done a really, what's a good job figuring out who we want to be in our next iteration of this company. And you know, I'll let Miles kind of take it from there, but I think our next pivot, I'm really excited about it. And it finally feels like after 16 years of what we're doing that I finally know what I want to be when I grow up, which is so fascinating. And it goes back to what I said when we first started is that and there is a book that is literally called range. You have to build range in order to figure out to specialize. And I feel like that's what we've done in our career and our business. We have spent the last 15 years building range of, okay, I like this. I don't like this. Let's, let's take this and take what we love. And okay, this is who we want to specialize. This is what we found that we're really good at. Yeah. And it's actually a lot of its business and its market positioning. Yeah. And yeah, I think we love it. Yeah. So as we transitioned out of marketing, kind of towards the tail end of maybe that shift or that S curve out of marketing, not out of marketing. Yeah, not out of marketing, but as we started to build out our marketing team in those systems and in processes and delivery structures, we started to look and see why, why do some projects work more than others? How come some of our discovery work and competitive analysis disproved a model? How come things commercial elements were selling for prices that we understood seemingly better than our clients? And we had no foundation in that market other than just looking at competitive analysis. And so it kind of started a curiosity kind of a markets bucket and red thread of what, you know, how come these things work? And could we do something on the front end? Sorry. Oh, you're good. Could we do something on the front end to make this work easier? So if you're bringing to market a new service, are you talking about with the customer, customer discovery, or more about discovering? They're true market positioning. Yeah. And all of the facets that go into it. Yeah. So it goes back to what Miles said with the customer journey and all of the curiosity he's talking about of it's not just marketing. And because what people traditionally think of marketing is I'm going to build you a website and I'm going to do a logo and I'm going to manage your social. We they our clients come to us and the ones that stay with us and the ones that really work are the ones that we solve their business problem. And we work with them through their business problem. When we were going into and throughout COVID, we helped them solve business problems. Things Miles would sit down and talk with owners about things that weren't even on their forefront of supply chain issues to be aware of. And all of these different avenues that marketing is now a bigger, bigger complex problem. Well, marketing is simply a tool to solve the upstream C suite growth. Exactly. Exactly. And you know, I think the pandemic supply chain is interesting. We have a lot of automotive clients and you know, fair amount of them have American made brands. And they all thought, Oh, no, we're great. You know, we don't need to worry about this. And then you dig into it a little bit more and you look, OK, what about the chips? What about, you know, some of these other more technical, technical pieces. There's risk. And so sitting down with some of our clients and saying, Hey, in a year, year and a half, will you have product for us to market? Yeah. And that's really not as there a different revenue stream that we can try to start to develop. And so what I'm reading into this a little bit or thinking ahead on is miles, you're kind of passion for consuming knowledge about business for business sake. And I know that you became part of a peer advisory chapter that's not local think tank. But long time ago, now that was, I was been back in the 2010 time or 12, maybe I guess not that long ago, 15, 16, 2015 somewhere around there. Maybe a little later. It was that part of like your growth as a business leader, not just a marketing consultant, but a business consultant almost. Initially, no, it was, we joined because, you know, in the agency world, there's really not a lot of things to benchmark against. We could look at accounting firms and there's proven models for 20 person, 30 person, 40 person. And then there's different variations of those. You can kind of, you know, oversimplifying, but you can probably look and understand how to scale. Well, just because there's a benchmark, doesn't mean correct. There's a toolkit. Yeah. And, you know, we met with some accountants and different ones. And they all said, oh, yeah, we can benchmark you and they'd come back and say, okay, you're, you guys should be doing this much purchase product, which in our case would be like paid media buying ads and that's big stuff like that. Upcharge it a little bit and sell it. Yeah. The numbers that are coming back, it was like, wow, I feel like I could buy a small newspaper company for the amount of money that, and that's not our model at all. Right. So we never figured that out. And really, we just kind of gave up on that and said, well, we'll just be a little bit better than we were yesterday and just benchmark against ourselves. That was a, I got into a, I think Instagram conversation maybe with Kerry some time ago, when you guys announced you're 1% better than yesterday, think I was like, you know, it sounds really inspiring, but it's unsustainable because like 1% better every day is like, you know, 300% better after a year, which is like, I think it's 34, 37%. But don't tell her that because technically it's tattooed on her arm. That's where I was. I saw her at an event and noticed the tattoo. Yeah. But I think, you know, that, that all came from, you know, always, you know, there's enough work in most industries, certainly now. And you just really need to, you'll never have a clear play at the end of the day. And if you were, you'd be scared shitless as an entrepreneur. You just go find more to fill it or not sleep the next night. So you kind of have to come to terms with that. And then, yeah, that kind of continuous growth notion. Yeah. Yeah. Businesses, no place for complacency, even if you're like making awesome margins and don't see any problems right now. Well, that means there's a disruption coming. Oh, absolutely. For sure. But also too, I think the 1% better is a nice say motto for our team because we are in a generation that is afraid to fail. And so what we like to remind our team is that we expect failure. So to speak, we expect to, because you learn from failure and you get better from failure. And you don't get better unless you're doing that. So that's, I think that's another nod to that as well. Yeah. It's not just constant improvement. It's what are you learning to get better too? So something that I take from that statement as well. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I do, when I think of 1% better, I, a little bit better every day. Yeah, exactly. That's really, that is the whole model of it. I was a banker. So one percent interest every day is like, well, we can't pay that. So talk to me about that, like onboarding. So what I think I'm hearing is that you're spending a significant amount of time understanding a client's business all the way down to org chart supply chain. All the different ways that you get new customers in addition to marketing, do you have a sales process, a hiring process, etc. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So our, our, our first project, it's the only project we go to market with. Every one of our clients goes to the process, whether you're a city and orthopedic group, a dealership, every single one of our clients goes through it. All right, you won't just build me a website. Nope. Because we wouldn't know what to build. Right. And we wouldn't know what we're solving. We're solving it for all of us. You poor saps. What are we building the Bears Backyard website? And you're like waiting for me to provide content. And I'm like making it up as I go because I didn't even have a business. I felt terrible for you kind of, but I was busy grilling burgers and stuff. I didn't go e-mails and whatever. But all those little things helped us figure all this out. Right. So yeah, our first project takes six to eight weeks. Wow. And really it's, it's, it's like a $10,000 engagement. Well, it's our trade, we're in the trademark process of it. It's our OTM path to growth. Okay. So we're actually, it is our, we have spent all these years developing what, what works in it. And so I mean, month, what six of the trademark process, if not longer, and holy moly, talk about another thing to learn is going through. Are you going to write a book or something then? Who knows? Maybe when I'm, who knows? Maybe someday. Well, if you're going to, you know, be a guru, you might as well. I don't know that I'm, where are gurus? I mean, you've developed something this little special, at least in this marketplace as far as I can tell anyway. So we think so. And I like that, that barrier to entry. Like, you know, you have to know that marketing is important for you and that doing it right is important to us before we spend the first dollar. Right. Yeah. For sure. And then it's a partnership as a relationship. Sorry. Yeah, no, we, we turned down a lot of work. And, and that's a lot of it is on that basis. And for us, it's, it's comfortable. Because we wouldn't know, honestly, we wouldn't know what to build if we didn't do our process. And that's okay. And you mentioned when we just got started that you have like four or five industries that are really your specialties, do you want to talk to that notion and how did that come about that you decided to kind of start narrowing focus? Yeah, definitely. So we, you know, most agencies, you know, they typically niche into a certain area. So maybe seems like everybody wants to do like HVAC companies and plumbers and things like that. A lot of money in their ads. Right. There's some reasons. But I think the, yeah, most agencies are kind of pushed to niche into something it has to do around your positioning statements and how you differentiate in the market and absolutely all those things. And honestly, we struggled. You know, we took on a lot of projects. We took on a lot of different industries. We were still trying to feed the funnel at that time. And as we started to look at how do we narrow this down? How do we create more value for our clients, whether it's through internal systems, things like that? We would go through it and we just could not figure out how to niche into an industry. I shouldn't say figure out, but it just didn't feel right. It didn't spark joy in us. Yeah. And so I don't, we basically just opened up quick books and said, okay, where are our clients that do well? Reinvestment with us over a long periods of time could be construed as a vote of confidence. Right. And then, you know, we have all the data and things like that to look at. And it really kind of at that time came down to kind of housing, housing, master plan communities, cities, municipalities, home builders, would be one segment medical, would be another, and then automotive power sports would be the third. And what was interesting for us is looking at those, we internally didn't look at them differently. Whether you're choosing a surgeon or buying an RV, they're both considered purchase. There's a lot at risk. You go through a long process, you evaluate options. So we started to realize that that was actually our process internally. And so and then ultimately that was how we got into customer journey management, service design, things like that. Because that's that's what we found works. So you're even getting in there, like I know that Fort Collins Motorsports has been a client for a long time. They were a banking client of mine forever ago. And I just ran into Jeff the other day. But like you're getting into like their sales process and the customer experience. And what can you guys do so that every customer that actually walks with a door or at least signs in the dotted line has the experience that they're looking for so that we can promote those experiences and help people understand what your brand stands for in terms of customer experience. And that that goes into the brand. So what is the brand? Right. So I have made people completely redo their office because what they portray online does not match when you come into the office. Yeah. And you cannot say your brand translates from online to what you put out there to what someone comes in and walks in and experiences. Yeah. And if you do not, that is your brand. Your brand is not your logo. How did we do when you walked into the look? I love it. I love it. I love it. I love the drinks with the sticker, you know, everything. That is the brand though. It's the atmosphere that you're trying to convey. Yeah. So, but sorry, I cut you off. No, I think you hit it. I have no idea where I left not a clue, but I can pick up on any journey any time. But you hit it on the head. I think, you know, any client of ours, if they're looking to grow, it's, you know, from awareness all the way through, you know, how do we make customers aware of us or of the need or the desire to want a motorcycle to choosing a brand, a dealership all the way down to a model. And then it, you know, you go through the sales process and then you get to go do the whole thing in reverse, which is basically creating ambassadors. And how do we create recurring revenue opportunities for our clients in terms of service and how do we, you know, create more value in that sense? Yeah. And you can kind of become eventually like a centralized idea hub where you're like, hey, this other RV center does, you know, every January they do a free service day for all of their existing buyers where you can come down and get your air filled up and your propane tanks or whatever. I don't know. That's your ideas. But you can take those ideas and pass them along to other people as if you came up with them. Well, that is marketing. Yeah, you just stole a good idea. Right. But I think, you know, you look at it, but you look at them in, where does that fit in the journey? And there, there's a dealership in their journey. Yeah, there's a dealership in the area that's sold. And they would do demo days for, you know, a unit that you drive and units that I like. And on Sundays, because they can't sell on Sundays, but they had to get mileage up before they sell them. Yeah, they just take you for four hour rides. And I went on one, I rode one that I should have not been on. And I was crashed this motorcycle. Oh, you were fine. I was not. I was crying behind my helmet. But, you know, that's a clever way to get people in and they can't sell. They can't talk about sales. So it's a great experience in the units I thought I would love. I didn't love. Right. But there is another one that, honestly, if it wasn't a Sunday, probably would have walked there. Right. Well, but that means you're coming back under Wednesday or whatever. Yeah, those kind of innovative ideas. And then that same kind of idea can transmit to other people to have maybe a different, but similar kind of thing. Do you guys work almost strictly in Northern Colorado? Probably majority for sure. The rest is going to be in kind of the sunbelt down south. And then we've got national clients. Got you. But majority appear to you. And, but like, for example, because you're a Fort Collins Motorsports client, you may probably not take on Tri-City Cycle as a client because it would be kind of a conflict with just kind of thing. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So we had that early engagement with the food truck. And then for a while, you guys were part of the Fort Collins Rotary Club. That's probably when we got more acquainted. Yep. And I would just like, on behalf of the club, to say sorry for riding you so hard for so many tech things for so long. You guys were, you put on our brave face, but we totally abused your skills and capabilities. It's true. No, I'm sorry we chased you out with so much. You didn't chase us out. You know what, chase us out having children. When you have young children, there is no more time in your time. Yeah, no, no. We would. Oh, we will be back. Don't do not worry. I hope we miss those people dearly. And I was telling Kurt before we got on here that we are visiting our foreign exchange student that we had through Rotary. And we are so excited to see her in Germany in a couple of weeks. So we absolutely love Rotary, support Rotary. And we will be back. Do not worry. We just need our kids to get a little older. How old are your kids now? Two and five. So it's, we're still in the thick of it. We'll talk more about family here. But if you ever want to visit, we'll buy a breakfast. It's Thursday mornings at Ginger and Baker. Love it. We'll be there. Once a month, we get like bacon, like super thick, which should be bacon. Yeah, it's a good stuff. I'll try to let you know if you had a ting us on that day. I'll just, yeah, exactly. Let us know when bacon day. So and that's actually partly how we bonded as well, because we both kind of, did you guys just host one student or did you have a couple of them? Just one. But we, but you made an impression on others because I remember Latisha was our student and she wanted when she came to visit or something, us to look you guys up and stuff. Yeah, it was great. I would love to do a foreign exchange student again when our kids are a little bit older, it's like, and how that experience do. Yeah, it was awesome. And it was, and that what I expected, it was the first time I had visited Rotary. I met Jay Fable. Jay Fable's like, hey, you know what I hope? I was like, okay, nice to meet you too, Jay. It's the, it's the greatest story of Jay, though, for those that may know him. You can meet Jay at the start of a buffet. And by the end of the buffet, you've committed to housing. I know, that's the later story that happened. And he is just, I love Jay, I want to be him and Val when I grow up. And yeah, love them, but I appreciate them a lot. Jill and I are getting an exchange in this fall, actually in Rico from Italy. And I got a note from his, we've been talking a little about an Instagram. And I got a notice from his note from his father on Instagram the other day mentioning, hey, if you ever want to visit, we have a home on the coast of Italy that you guys could come and visit. Okay, I'm going to rejoin Rotary. Are you visiting this child first? I don't know, maybe we should go there before we come. I don't know. It's a, wow, that's amazing. It's actually not through Rotary this time because Rotary kind of, we had an exchange student like moved in like a week before the pandemic started. And that was interesting. We took her on a 4,700 mile RV trip to replace the bus tour that was canceled. Sad. And that was fun. But and then the Rotary exchange is back on now, but it hasn't been like nobody's picked up the torch because Jay's on hiatus from Rotary and whatever. And I don't want to do it. Like I love it. So we went through another exchange. It is a lot of work. Yeah. So if you're listening to this and you're in my Rotary Club, I'd love to have you pick up that program again. We'll do it next year or at least every other. Yeah. Anyway, oh, tell me about that experience of hosting. That's great. Oh, we were really young. And I was like, am I, am I too young to do this? We were young. We was seven years ago. Early 30s, late 20s. I was 30, I think. Right. And it was, it was great. I loved it. But it was a lot of work having a teenager. But I call you host mom, you're like, I'm not your mother. I got your mother. Yeah. I had no, because I didn't have any children at this time. So I had no idea how much work a teenager was in the sense of you got to take him everywhere. You got to drive him everywhere. You got to do this. They need that. They need this. But she was truthfully an exceptional exchange. And she was, I mean, literally not one. I couldn't, I do not have one complaint about her. She was phenomenal. And just, it was fun getting to learn a different language. And, and she's since been back to visit, which I'm pretty sure you've met her or seen her since she came back. And you know, we just have now a forever relationship with somebody in other countries that I would have never known. And we get to go visit her. And how cool is that? And when she gets married, we'll be there. And when she, you know, I don't know, it's kind of like, I won't say I'm her mother. It's like I'm her aunt. Right. They're cool aunt. Cool aunt. Yeah. That's what it that way. What do you think? I thought it was awesome. I mean, it was just us two at the house. We had it was like first practice that adulting. Yes. Yes. Yeah. She was kind of good to go self-motivated. And, you know, she needs to ride once a while. Right. Yeah. Pretty good. But incredibly responsible. And, yeah, it was just, it was just interesting to have someone live with you from another country that's curious about your culture and things like that. And we were curious about hers. I remember the first time she was talking to her parents in German, which they say English is Germanic. I don't, I don't necessarily understand that. I was like, wow, I don't understand a word, but she hasn't sound that happy. Discreaming. Yeah. Turns out she's very happy. That's just the Germanic sounds. She's just so fun. Yes. That's great. Yes. Romantic German poetry doesn't work for English. It's an unlearnable language. I've tried. I can't do it. Yeah. Babble will not advance valve. She babbles. Yeah. That's about it. So, um, I guess let's kind of go back to that three pivots thing. So the first one, the first pivot was really adding the digital marketing to marketing as a whole. Marketing as yeah. Yeah. Not just websites, but marketing. What was it? Second pivot. This episode is sponsored by Loco Think Tank. Loco Think Tank provides pre-collaboration for business owners. We build smart, safe places to help business leaders navigate every stage of the business journey, and we love what we do and who we do it with. Our model features gift-back minded business veterans and the role of Loco facilitators. We're always looking for abundance minded individuals to add to our membership, facilitator team, local community, or to feature on this podcast. Listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of Loco Think Tank get their sixth month of membership for free. Just mention the Loco Experience Podcast on your application. To learn more, visit our website at locothinktank.com. That's L-O-C-O thinktank.com. So the second is the market positioning. So two pivots create really more defining your brand kind of and whatever. But we do a lot of upstream work. How, you know, how to reposition companies, how we're to find market opportunity, how to create effective cross-selling between divisions, all the way down to looking at full customer journeys all the way through the sales cycle, through nurture. Yeah, true in-depth strategy work. Think about how fast industry has shifted of anybody can go get Canva and do social, do a poster, do anything. That is not marketing anymore. And Adobe Illustrator is 20 bucks a month. Right. Anybody can open and or go make a website tomorrow. Really. If you really want to. The commoditization curve. Marketing has become exactly extremely commoditized. So then what is the value of providing? The value is that strategy, the business problem. What are what are the true problems that people are keeping that are keeping people up at night? Yeah. That's what we love to help solve. Yeah. And so that's yeah, that's why if you're an RV seller, how do I sell more of these warranties and help communicate to the people that it's a better to have it than not to? Right. Whatever. I don't know. Or this a re-losing X million because of this problem. How do we solve this problem? Right. You know, or our retention is only 72% when really it should be thought it should be 90 right now. Exactly. Or our employment brand is this. We want it to be to this. Yeah. There's numerous problems that every business is facing right now. And so that's where we like the curiosity and to solve those problems. Yeah. So I lied earlier like local think tank isn't necessarily your kind of brand because I'm not in the automotive or housing or medical space. I am high lifetime value. But not necessarily a space where you'd have experience. For us, no, but I think if you looked at the customer journey, you're going to take people through the awareness, right? We all all business owners stay up at night trying. I mean, fortunately for for me, I get to work with my wife every day. So I'm not. That is right. It is fortunate. Yeah, you would have done. Forget it either. I looked at her in the eye before saying that. But I think I've always had someone and she's always had someone to kind of bounce things off of. And so I think, you know, we have those same set of issues that every business owner has in finding that peer group to have those conversations, even if it's with, you know, companies of different services. A lot of it's going to be foundations are still going to be the same. And honestly, I found it kind of helps more to have them not in your industry. So you don't have that group think. But then you kind of bring them through that, you know, consideration or do they want to join at what level at what size and, you know, whatever those those things are. But ultimately, you're then getting into kind of a client engagement model, which is how do what are their fields when they're here? And that's probably part of I've like outsourced most of those fields to the various awesome chapter facilitators. But I'm not there much anymore. So I have to trust that those guys are doing it right and cows. Let's talk about before we go into the closing segments and we'll maybe take a potty break before we do. But let's talk about that peer advisory thing and getting acquainted with. Do you call yours your group of something? I call it the bros club. The bros club. We call it the forum club. I think that stems from two or three of their parents were in a forum group and that sounds forums back in the day. Yep. And so it's okay. This is what I call like a homebrew group. It was part of my data set when I started to look with Think Tank. I was familiar with Vistage and some of the other high paid things. And then a number of homebrew groups that are self-managed and then somebody's got to manage the damn thing, which is the downfall of that. And so ours is like, well, the least touch that you have to have and still have a well-managed group. But I think that's the value. I mean, we looked at, we wanted, we knew they existed, but it's also, you know, the private groups, most people have no idea they exist. Right. And so it might only kind of. Yeah. And once they're built. That's it. It's the same. Well, it's a sentence. 10 people in our group that's been there for the last six years or every two, three years, you add one person because we haven't added or lost. So there's no no opportunity. And I was the 10th person. And so man, I was lucky, but I think there's no, we looked for probably four years. And so now, you've got a lot of business owners that are like, who could I talk to? Where can I get the sounding board, personal board of advisors, all those things? But unless you want to put together, you can go through the work of nine other people. And then hope it's the right people and then figure out how to run them. It's a lot of work. I never got there. Yeah. Value or a member of, I think maybe the original thing. The original. And then I had kids. And was that before, was that before miles was a member of a group? So that was before miles was a member. And I had children. So I got pregnant and started having children. And then that sort of responsibility went to miles. Yeah. When you become a working mother, and especially if you are an owner of a business, and do the, it is different when you own a business with employees, and you are a young mother, it is substantially different. And so I could not, I couldn't take on anymore. So it had to go to somebody else. And that was miles. Well, incorrect me if I'm wrong, but like you are super creative. And you understand a lot about business and things. But to some extent, miles may have been the more logical member in those days. Yep. It was, we, and that's, I think, why we work so well together because our roles are pretty damn, like separated. Yeah. And very complimentary. Yes. And so he has his, I have mine, Carrie has hers, Rachel has hers. All four of us are very, we try not to step on each other's toes. Yeah. Obviously that. Yeah. Exactly. And you really kind of have to do that when you are running a small business. Yeah, you got to own this space. Exactly. And there were some people need help. And there's times where, you know, we'll over cross and we're like, oh shit, we shouldn't have done that. Sorry about that. You know, I won't do that again. And, you know, but that's, that's kind of how that happened and that separation. Yeah. And it was, it was a, I think it was that next sort of growth period in our company, too, of who we're going to be, how are we going to change this? What are we going to do? Well, I think one other key thing, you know, in terms of having kids it pulls from your available time. What available time? Exactly. But I think, you know, it's to the stages of life. Right. I mean, there's times where you could go 150% and then there's times where you could go 95. I think there was times and maybe we'll get into it. I started next segment here because we're going into family, faith, politics. Anyway, but there was times when my impression of you, Val, would have been like, I don't know if I want to have kids. And now you're like pivoted 180 degrees from there and you, it's the biggest joy that you have. Is it? I'm just kidding. I'm teasing. Look at our line of fool me. I'm just kidding. I mean, I always wanted, are we pivoting? Are you ready to go? Let's just take a break. No. This is going to be edited. I hate it. We have to edit. Oh, I'm sorry. We're not going to edit. I'm just kidding. Just do it. So I mean, I always thought I'd have children. I wasn't sure when. And I didn't want to have children. If you go back to the earlier part of the segment, I wanted to be very mindful of how I had children because of my upbringing. You want to be very ready. Right. When you have, you know, it's that quote unquote statement, you're never really ready. And I agree with that. But I wanted to be as ready as I possibly could because I didn't want to be a single mother who was struggling from paycheck to paycheck, who is going to do, you know, it's very different. I don't even be married to miles and feel like your bootstrapped and now losing me from the creative team means old-time media is struggling and has to pay somebody that can't do a job as good as me. And is it going to wreck the company? Yeah. I didn't start having children until the business was ready. I literally did not start until it was ready. And so I, yeah. And so what we have two boys and they I love them dearly. They are so much energy. And it's insane. But, you know, and I wouldn't change it for anything. And it makes you play again. That's the part I under estimate of being a parent of that you get to play and you get to experience all that stuff. That's why you have new discovery and curiosity, which is fun. Truly unique and unknown things. Right. Yeah. All right. It's time for Rick. Okay. Val just declared that she's going to drink the whole bottle of water. I'm not going to drink the whole bottle of water. You might, you can't, you put the castles group caps so you don't have to. We're classy over here. I will not judge you. So one of the things I was thinking while I was tinkling is like, what are your special sauces? And I want to start with your your newest partner, Nicole. Rachel. Rachel. Same name basically. We do have a fantastic employee named Nicole Ryan. And she's amazing. So. Hi, Nicole. Hi, Rachel. Sorry. I don't forget your name. But like, like, what is it about Rachel that was like, okay, you've, it isn't just about how long you've been here. Oh, yeah. Or is that kind of thing? She's always treated it like she was part, she would, the difference between Carrie and Rachel is that they have always treated it like they were owners every single day. It's not sometimes. It's not they haven't come in and be like, tell me what to do. Tell me how to do this. Tell me how to be a leader. Tell me how to do this. It was from day one. They treated OTM like it was their business. And that is a distinct differentiator. And that is why they are now partners. That's cool. And I think you touched on maybe the partnership piece at the beginning. And when we looked at partnerships early on, we reached out to a bunch of people and you know, there's phantom partnerships or phantom equity and all sorts of different things. And ultimately, when we brought Carrie on as a partner, which was when, by the way, and how long it was, she'd been like, you're always telling me, I don't know, I have to look. Right on Avery. So it's got to be five. Six years ago? Five years ago. Six years ago? Something like that. Yeah. We just, you know, we, we in our operating agreement, we have a valuation calculation so we know, you know, what it's worth. And basically, we just started bonicing her out money and buying shares. So it's what equity. It's what equity. That's what they've earned it. Exactly. And for us, and you can choose to get the cash if you don't want to be a partner, or they can be a partner. No, no, we, we have some cash too. Yeah. But, but I think, you know, but the point is there has to be a sacrifice, a commitment, you know, if you just, right, give somebody stuff, you know, it's, they've done the work and they should be rewarded to that work. And we are going to go on a cool journey and we want people on that journey with us who want to be on it, who want to be on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, the partnership was on the talent. I mean, they, they created the values they already established their partners before you went up. 100% and I think for us, I don't, I, I couldn't see it any other way. Yeah. Because I think, you know, you, you have to act a partner before you are a partner. And I think the worst thing we could do is make somebody a partner and then hope they act like a partner. Right. And so that's the model we've done. That's the model we've done with our latest partner opportunity with Rachel. And we'll, we'll continue down that path for sure. So if you were going to describe the like old town media culture and like the ideal employee, not necessarily partner people, but people that might want to be a part of your team, what would be some of the characteristics that might either want you to choose them or them to choose you? Love that question. We get that a lot in interviews too. I always say it is truthfully our core values. It is curiosity. If you're not curious about what we do, if you're not curious about the clients, it's, you know, curious about being better, just genuinely curious. It goes back to what Miles said about Mike. And that's his, that is his personal core value. Easiest way to offend me. Don't be curious. But at the end of the day, we're here to solve a problem for a client. We have to be curious to help them identify what that problem is. Self-diagnosis doesn't really work from a client's perspective. And then we need to be curious about the solutions and where we can create and add more value. So to me, it's, it's just critical. That's like, if you're curious, then you can go to step two. Yes, yes. Carries, main one is our next, one of our next one is care. And it says on the wall, we genuinely give a shit about others, our teammates and the work we do. And we mean that. We genuinely give a shit if somebody's kid is sick, if a client, you know, has somebody pass away or they have a baby or, you know, we genuinely care and we have those relationships. And if you do not care about the work that you're doing, you are not going to be a good fit OTM. Or if you do care, you're going to be a perfect fit. And if you have that same passion, earn it is another one. And that's my personal core value. And if you go all the way back to the beginning of the conversation of my upbringing, if you come in with any form of entitlement, I think you're a dumbass already. I, I, I only see red. It doesn't work for me. So, you know, you have to, and Rachel and Karen, they've done the work. Yeah. You know, you have to do the work. There is no substitution for time and doing the work and learning and failing and becoming better. Perseverance, that goes along with it. If it were easy, everybody would do it. Yeah. And those two together are my favorite word, which is perspavirance. Love it. Maybe I'll just cross that out from the camera. Yeah, you can just get rid of those nerd and persevere. Yeah, exactly. And integrity. You know, we do the right thing when nobody's looking. So, you know, we will fix something. We see something wrong. We'll fix it and we'll tell, you know, we'll tell the client. Or if we see something, you know, you have to have integrity of what we do, not just in the work, but as a human. And so those, if, if people do not fit those or if they do fit those, it is either it goes up or it goes down. It is, that's what we found over the past, you know, 16 years and up or out. Yeah. And so that's, I say that over and over again, that is what we hire, promote and fire by are those core values. Talk to me about the first person that you fired. Oh, man. Do you remember? I mean, I do. Did you do the dirty work? I did. I was a lot of tears. Both sides. I hate firing people. If you enjoy firing people, there is something psychologically wrong with you. I think even today when we have to let somebody go, it is, I don't sleep. It is, it is, I don't like it. Even if there is, you know, countless of documentation and it's completely, you know, in our favor, quote, unquote, no, we don't ever like that. That's not, that's not ever how we want to part ways. Well, I think early on, I mean, you know, you have to figure out the whole HR or how to do reviews, what structure, like all these things. And so exiting a team member is just hard. It's emotional. It's obviously we care for our team. And, you know, we want to try and, yeah, it's clearly not maybe the right environment with us, but we need to help them find their environment. But I think, you know, over the years, we, well, people want to be successful. Yeah. Yeah. They're failing the view they should clearly go somewhere else. Right. Yeah. Exactly. And I think that's where we've been able to get to is sometimes you can coach them up or whatever. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And I think it shouldn't be a surprise to that person. And, you know, we've been able to build systems and in process around reviews and coaching and things like that, where, you know, in the scenarios where we've had to do that in the past, it's not a surprise. And I think that's, it's at least a win-win in both scenarios where this individual knows that this is not the environment for them. Yeah. Agency work is not for most people. It's a grinder. Yeah. It is. Yeah. You can really have to love it. It's a high-stress environment. And I personally love working in that. Yeah. But that is not forever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I've actually blessed in that in my banking career, um, my boss got let go. I was made the acting president. And like my first official act as a manager of people was to let go a teller who was actually capable in smart and funny, but she hated the fact that she was a banker. And it was just kind of a toxic. And she ended up going to work at Walmart at the photo studio. She was an artist. Yeah. But did she ride there probably? Well, she tagged me like years later. Yeah. Uh, tagging, uh, today is fun. Five year anniversary of being having my own business. And kudos to the to the best and the shortest duration boss I ever had that pushed me out of the bank so I could do me. Yeah. And that was literally the message I gave her is like, you just don't want to be a banker. Right. Honestly, like, I don't think it's the right thing for you. Yeah. So I think with ticket numbers, I mean, they're not ever bad people. Right. I mean, you want to put them on a team from bad people. Right. Yeah. It's just, yeah. And sometimes they don't realize it at that moment. But, yeah. You know, you only have, you have this long, you have this duration of your career and you only have certain. And a lifespan. Exactly. And it's like just, it's not worth anybody's time. Yeah. To just time spent not being successful. Exactly. Well, yeah. Not to say that you don't have to bump your head a few times and give grace as an employer when people make mistakes. 100%. Yeah. And we do one, one of the cool things, it was Miles's idea, actually, that we do is, no, no, no. No, it's just, it's a really cool idea. And we're in our year two of it. And so we're re, we're, you know, refining it, so to speak, it's performance coaching. So we pay for all of our team. Not just the managers are entire team goes through performance coaching. And so we pay somebody every month who's worked with us for smart weaver for those of you don't know. And no, he's not taking any clients. You can't get him. I'm just kidding. He probably is, but you can't get him. Anyways, he, um, he, we worked on probably a decade down. He's just amazing. And he coaches our team every single month. Everybody gets one session with him every month. And it's a confidential session between the team member and Mark, you know, where you're sticking points, where you're not succeeding like you'd like to do your role. And that has really worked well for us. What can you read to understand this better, whatever that was like. And so that's like, that's one of the things we want people who want to be better at what they want to do. And so this is, that's such a cool thing that we do that I, I don't know, I'm, I love it. We launched a catalyst chapter a few years ago for key employees. Oh, I was sitting on Kerry for a, for a while. You're still welcome, Kerry, if you're listening to this. We have a new facilitator is going to be great. But like in the span of that three years that we've been offering that a couple three times this key employee, like through the local process and things like that, like determined that I don't really want to be in this industry or this position anymore. Right. And I'm like, like, shit, my group kind of helps them figure that out. But ultimately it's better for them. But yeah. But that's, but that's what it's supposed to do. Right. Yeah. Because then what happens? Then they, then you just keep somebody who doesn't want this and you keep right if they don't want to be in that seat. We have the exact same area. Yeah. We have the exact same thing happened when we were doing, when we first started introducing performance coaching. And there, there is no right or wrong. Like, oh my God, Mark's chasing off all our people. Oh, wait, there's actually making people either happy or gone. Right. No, and there was a point where, and that's what we want. We want people who are on our bus to be on the bus in the right seat. And we want, I'm going to switch to a boat now. We want them all rowing together. Yeah. It's an amphibious bus. No, I think that was, there was a specific time starting out. I mean, it's, you're having a lot of very direct. Mark knows our culture. Mark knows how we think. Mark knows what we're trying to do, what we struggled with. And so when he sits down with our team members, he's as qualified as I am to sit down with him, but he's external. Right. He's safer. And he's exactly. Yes. And, but he's also very direct and accountability is huge form. And so, you know, you're, the sessions created a lot of, it turned up a lot of things. And I remember, you could fix about, well, yeah, like, things that we can all have. It accelerated change. Well, and that's what I was getting as, I remember Kerry coming back and saying, what are we doing here? Because this is a broken part of our business. Well, is this experiment going correct? And I was like, we're just accelerating change. And, you know, it was a bumpy, you know, first couple of months. But in all honesty, that everything that was an issue was there the month before. Yeah. And all we truly did was accelerate it. And it was probably one of the better things that we did. I actually think it's one of the best things we've ever introduced in this company. And I wish I had it a decade ago. Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, I mean, we always joke at the office, but it's, you know, performance coaching, self-improvement, all that. There's a lot of low hanging fruit for sure. And then once you get through the low hanging fruit, all that's left is me. And now I have to change. Right. And that's that's kind of where we're at with our performance coaches. Realizing great. That was almost on the laptop. Yeah. I see on the laptop. Very catch. But that's where we're at is, you know, how do we make better people? Yeah. And what could be better than for their own sake, even. Yeah. Right. Right. So one last question about OTM, like what's next? Is there any big pivots or changes? Or is it just kind of organic growth from here? Anything of significance on your like three-year radar? You know, continued expansion, probably trying to bring on, you know, another six people in the next few years. That'll kind of round out our growth plans and then start to expand out into some other geographic areas that we've got on our radar. Yeah. Yeah. We're excited. But one of the big things, too, is that we want to develop the next generation of leaders. So we want to develop people. You want to sit around eating bonbons and floating around on your boat? Get out of here. Well, obviously. We would do that for a weekend. Yeah. And then my god, you look so bored. We get so bored. I know. We get so bored. But no, I mean, we want to we want to not just have employees. So to speak, we want to develop these people into leaders. So that's super something that we've really figured out. Even if they lead other organizations someday, or lead in other organizations someday, whatever. If that's their path, that's a way. Yeah. And lead themselves. I think that's the biggest thing about leadership development is leading yourself. Exactly. So let's jump into the closing segments, Val. Do you want to start with family, faith, or politics? Family. Okay. I like to request a one word description of your children. Chaos. No, individually. Tell me their names. They're five and two. We have Avery and Henley. And yep. And one word description for Avery. Curious. Well, it could be a future old town media employee. And how about Henley? And you get to go to miles by the way. Henley. I'm going to go with chaos. He's too young to listen back to this and judge you. But someday maybe he'd be like, Mom, I'm just saying I was chaos. Yes. Yeah. Miles. I think for Avery, I would say engineer. He's always thinker. Kind of. Can I tell you funny? Can I pause for two seconds? Sure. So when I named, so miles is the third miles. And Avery's middle name is miles. So his grandpa was a miles, his dad was a miles miles miles than Avery miles, Calburn. When you spell out Avery miles, Calburn, it spells a very miles, Calburn. So I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that until after. And my mother and I was like, did you realize that's how you named him? And it could not be more accurate. He's a tip off the old line. He is exactly miles. So I always thought we'd just nickname him Kilo. Almost half a mile. He's a pint-sized nine. Many of me. Yeah. And Henley, I think you know, at two and a half, we're still figuring out his personality. But it's not one word. But in my mind, it's one word. It's boom smash. He is. He is a lot like chaos. He's feisty. Oh yes. Yes. So he's got more of his mother in him. Oh, yes. Yes. So like when you decided to have a family, was it just like, pull the goalie and about a big but a boom? Here we are. It's just that easy. Was it like, she emailed me on a Friday. Get out of here. Get out of here. Guess what I'm knocked up. No, it's funny is that I was like, I'm getting bored. You know, we've done a lot of things. We've traveled. We've done this. We've done that. It's like I'm ready to start a new adventure. But no, I mean, for us, you know, fertility wasn't a huge problem, but it's not like we got pregnant right away. And so I think that's an important thing too for people to realize that they infertility and all of that is a real issue. And because we have that in our family and, you know, we have an adopted nephew and because of all that. But no, I mean, it wasn't super easy, but it wasn't also like the struggle that a lot of people go through. So yeah, we feel very fortunate. That way. Fair enough. Yeah. What else do you want to talk to me about in family? Miles, you've got a couple of siblings. Do you get a chance to spend time with them? And is your mom still with us and around? And do you see her a lot? So let's start with his siblings. Okay. So I moved out in 04 with Val and progressively, my family has moved out. So my brother came out in 0809. We get a lot of imports that people drive their families behind them. Yeah. The whole family has come out. And so my mom and dad moved out a couple of years ago, lost my dad two years ago. But the whole family is out there and absolutely. Talk to me about your mom and dad. He said they were together their whole lives and until he passed your mom still with you. Yep. Yep. So yeah, my mom was a banker. My dad was a steel treating facilities manager and always watched him, you know, be on call, go to work, do all that stuff, got to go to Americana. Yep. Very much so. And kind of idolize that aspect of him. Um, just, you know, he was the one that always was there to fix things. And you knew, you know, truly the plant couldn't work without him. Right. Um, and if you had a problem at home, the furnace wouldn't work. So then it was easy, easy for him. Yeah. Yeah. No. And, and, you know, when you got around to doing something, it was done right. And that's very much how I look at it. It's interesting dichotomy I'm sensing with you guys is that like to some extent you've had so much security in your life miles. And I'm sure value like relish that security in some ways. Probably in different ways that I would ever understand. Yeah. That's very true. Yeah. Yeah, I thought you were going to ask the one word for family. And honestly, it's always just been idealic. Yeah. I look back at my, you know, we never had a ton or anything like that. But you know, typical Eastern rust belt family, um, spent my childhood playing sports with all the friends on the street and just trying to do everything. Like there's nothing I would change. Yeah. It was truly perfect. Yeah. That social capital that you lived first 20 years with was great. Yep. That's a good example and whatever. You have to come back to me. Well, we said good. What do you want to know? Sorry. Yeah. Well, I ask about your mom. Well, you know, that's a tricky subject, isn't it? You have to talk about it. Let's not talk about it today. Okay. Well, God bless you, mom. If you listen to this. Um, so obviously that was a challenge and do you have connections to the rest of your family? Do you have uncles and grandparents and stuff that has been involved with you? Well, you know, my family is probably the opposite of my closest. You know, for good or for worse, but you know, my, one of my closest cousins, um, so her and her wife, so they are in Portland and she was like a sister growing up to me. And so we are really close and we have daughter, er, daughters, Henley, my son and their daughter is the same age. And so I feel super fortunate that we, you know, we get together at least once a year and we have that relationship. So, yeah, feel fortunate for that. But yeah, you're starting a new family history in some respects from your perspective. I feel very lucky that I have the life that I have. Right. And I truly, I mean, I live in the house in the neighborhood. I have the childhood that I always want to know. Yeah. And there's no reason not to have a big face. Love it. Yeah, we feel very, very, very lucky. And then there is a bit of luck to it. You know, we just made this decision on a whim to move out here and, you know, we, we moved here at the right time, so to speak. And, you know, we just, we have a little bit of luck, but a lot of hard work with it too. Yeah. I wouldn't change anything. That quote, the harder I work, the luckier I get. Yeah, true, true. I know there is a lot of hard work. There's a lot of battle wounds. I always akin entrepreneurship to how many times going to get punched in the face and get back. So true. Yeah. It's, I broke two phones when I was like food trucking. And both of the times it was like pulling it out of my pocket and it like fell flat. I remember one time specifically in the Home Depot parking lot. And I was so broke. No. No. And I could not afford a hundred dollars, much less to have to replace my stupid phone. And like all those things, yep, that hurt the most, mostly we do to ourselves. Yeah. And at least for me and for miles and probably in your case, it's like, I've hurt myself, but I've also had hurts from others and, and just lack of support from others and things like that. And so God bless you for carrying through hard times. Family politics, or faith or politics, do you want to talk about next? Oh, you go next miles. We can go politics. Okay. Let's hear it. Val's going to be a future. Val's going to run for office. Yeah, I think I'm not sure which office. Yeah. I'm going to counsel at least, I think. No, I think more like governor. You didn't see my eye roll at 28. Yeah. All right, Miles. I think growing up on the Eastern rust spell, I mean, it's a city that's more like decline for 50 years. I think it's roughly just kind of coming out of that scenario. But we grew up in a hard environment where, I mean, how six months ago are the mayor of Rochester's boyfriend got caught with cocaine and drugs and money in the back of his car. And they live together. So I mean, it's, yeah, she did not know. Yeah, somehow unaware of large amounts of cash and guns. Right. But I think watching an area just struggle for so long in our whole life, you know, when we look at the politics, I think that was one thing that we appreciated. And I know this isn't your question, but it's what we appreciate of the region is there's some intentionality, there's some thought, there's business focused. They have an attention of business and we have to remember that. Yeah, some regions definitely looked at business as a cow to be milked. Yes. And others as a as a greenhouse to be planted. They're right. Exactly. Yeah. And I think that's led to some of the success in this area. And I think, you know, it has hit a certain stage of growth. And there are some hard conversations around how to keep the area vibrant and growing and things like that. Yeah. So what are you asking your dodging? Well, like, what I'm sensing is that we did a lot of right things to get here. But some of the some of the things that have been changing lately are not as business friendly or something like that. Well, I think, yeah, I think you've said the words that Val and I have talked about internally or together, it's it's actually her perspective is. Well, I'll say it then. Yeah. I from a when you come from somewhere that is struggling, that is in a decline, that banked on only two places, Baush and Lam and Kodak. Right. And they didn't fill the bucket. Right. And I sometimes worry that we are taking for granted all the work that people put in to building this place. And the fourth thought of bringing new business here because it is like, I don't know if it was David Mayer. What have you? Josh Burke's economic health director. You have a bucket with holes. Yeah. And it is constantly looking out. You have to constantly fill that bucket. And from a place that didn't never fill the bucket. I am fortunate that perspective of what that means. And we cannot forget all of the people who put all of that hard work into building this place to make it so great. And that it does rely on small business, especially to make this place great. And we cannot forget that as a community. And so for us, faith, so much of it is community. It is. We firmly and have brought thought that from day one that we always will give back and support this community that we have been so fortunate to has taken us in. And so I just want to encourage everybody who is a small business owner, who was an employee, who is whoever, if you are in this Northern Colorado community, whether it's weld or a Laram or I do not care, support this community if you want it to stay great. And don't take it for granted because it can change so rapidly. And we lost a lot of small businesses in Colorado. Right. Like we're one of the least successful states in getting those small businesses back that were shut down for too long and things like that. You want to talk about COVID policy and things like that. That's nice and political day. COVID, the real dangerous dangerous. I'm right down the middle. What do you mean? What do you want to know? Well, I mean, that's a lot of the reason that some of the businesses failed, right? It was just fair being. Yeah. And some of the studies are coming out now that are like, Oh, the John Hopkins was like, Oh, the whole lockdown stuff made 0.04 percent difference on the on the virus. But I think I wrecked a lot of businesses. And it's so hard to get businesses back launched again once they're broken. I don't know. Even talking about like some of the startup weeks and things like that, you know, long running events that no longer are long running. Yeah. Well, I think COVID is an interesting scenario in that. You know, my worry in this region, kind of given current politics is you've got effectively an exodus of some scale coming out of California's first time in the state's history that they've lost population. Where is that? Where are they going? They're going to the to the sunbelt. Yeah, Texas, Arizona, Colorado. Yep. In more so Arizona and Texas, where it's open, but they're also moving their headquarters there. And I think that's I don't know of another I've not researched it, but I don't know another time in history where the headquarters had moved, right? And I think that's interesting looking at a fairly restrictive government like California, in a fairly open environment like Arizona and Texas. And it feels a lot like what it is here. Yeah. There's a reason they're not choosing Colorado when they're moving from California, even though there's been millions of dollars promoting Colorado as the place to move from California. But I think you look at some of the pro, you know, harsh, strict COVID, policy areas, cities, counties, whatever. And the population growth has either stalled or shrunk. You know, Boulder County, Larimer County, and it's obviously boomed in weld. And I think yeah, that micro example is also playing out at the macro example. And I think realizing that it will have an impact on taxes, revenue, growth, you know, all sorts of things. Yeah, reception. Where would you, I mean, if you were in OBGYN, where would you build a location? You would build it in weld county. It's where all the young people are buying homes. It's the hottest growing market. So what does that do to Larimer County for colon, things like that? Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic. And, you know, at least to some extent, it can take some of the pressure off of our housing here and stuff like that. If people don't want to live here so much, anyway, that's another topic. That is another topic. Well, for affordable housing is a big topic, though, right? Like I just went to a two plus or me plus two or whatever. Conversation in a day and it's like it was fascinating to me to hear that to a large extent, that kind of policy. What is it called? It's a, it's not me plus three plus two. Yeah, and so we have these restrictions on what same family properties can be without becoming a boarding house and facing really a lot of extra things. And it's one of the things I challenged the city council members that were here was, you know, it was basically the timing of which and the language, it was basically a racist policy to keep the Hispanic side of four Collins. So they can move it really instead. And it continues to be and it's anti diversity. And so what's the good of it? Well, I think, you know, I think, and by no means an expert, so just dabbling in conversation and curiosity with it, but I think you know, we need to look at land use code. All right, because land use code does not seem to be in line and support the expectations of the political environment. To a point where, you know, I know the city of four Collins has a certain threshold on housing size. Right. Well, yes, but all that's doing is keeping families in 600 square foot apartments by not living in 1100 square foot homes or whatever that threshold might be. Right. It warrants a discussion around a change in land use code that ultimately is, yes, not everyone may, you know, may have a three-bed two-bath 2000 square foot home. So do you guys identify as a donkey elephant or libertarian, but closeted? G's Louise. At this point, I'm going to unregister everything and be an independent at this point. I think both sides are ass and iron and I'm disappointed to how polarizer country is. You're a blazer libertarian too. I mean, so many people. Yeah, it's really disappointing. How do you think Biden's doing so far? I mean, what is it? The only thing that we got past is what the daylight savings time. It's, yeah, that was the conversation this morning. Yeah, we got real problems in Northern Colorado, though, people. If we, my big passionate thing is and I'm going to put my money where I'm out this and I'm going to actually do something, but we have a place where it's unaffordable for young people to live. The rent is so high that they can't save up to afford a house, which is astronomic. The number started business because they won't start a business. It's the, so just that, okay? So you have dual incomes that can barely afford just a house here. Yeah. Let alone. Okay. So we have somebody who is going to have a start a family and we have one of a very young population here. Very young people move up here to have babies. Okay. So they have one kid. You can probably keep the woman in the workforce. Two kids probably not. Right. Have you seen the daycare cost? Yeah, unless she's highly skilled. They are the daycare costs are equal to her income. They are astronomically. It is. You guys women give members? We have been. You should be. We are. So that's one of the main things, but we need to, that is, that's fixing. I love women gift. They do amazing things. That's right here. But we need to go upstream and figure out who's throwing the babies in the water. Right. And, you know, not literally. Yeah. That's my. So the metaphor. If you don't know the metaphor, look it up. What do you mean up to? What do you mean up to? I like to answer kiss and hands and shaking babies. Yes. You got to look at the metaphor. It's pretty, pretty straightforward. But yeah, we got it. We have to fix that. If you talk about politics, like that is what I believe in. We have to keep women in the workforce. We are losing women by the tens of thousands just in a state alone. And if we do not keep women in the workforce, we are, that is a, that's not a man, a woman, a whatever problem. This is a, a economic problem. Totally. That we are, we are facing as a state, a county, city, country. And if we do not do something, we are going to have a big problem. And I mean, it's insane. And so I don't know. And I was at a breakfast about this. Okay. There was a talent 2.0 thing or something. This was a, this was about how child care in the cost of it. And there was, and I'm going to, I'm going to say it, there was only one man in the room. And I was livid. This is not a woman problem. This is an economic problem. And I'm super passionate about it. And so stay tuned. Okay. I'll stay tuned. But um, faith is the last category. I feel like I've already said something about faith. Do you say faith is community? That's me. Okay. Yeah. I think, um, you know, I, I never grew up in a religious house. My, my parents, have you been in church? Yes. A good friend of ours was a pastor across the street. Literally, if you walked out of our front door, you walked into the front door of the church. And that's where we played roller hockey. Um, great people. But we just never grew up religious. So I think where we've kind of found our, you know, our identity and faith is really in just civic responsibility. Yeah. Um, it's the, the act of community rotary things like that. I think it's still in the being a responsible person that wants to help other people succeed and be kind for the love of God and so we've been able to go that route and certainly use our, our business. We donated a tremendous amount of money and time to, it's possibly dozens of organizations every year. And that's what we take pride in. What are some of your, do you want to shout out some of those organizations that you have been part of or really? What, I mean, the big one for us is Project Self-Sufficiency. So Carrie was the board president and she is a current board member. Super passionate for us and specifically for me, you know, helps single parents, not just mothers, who are struggling and give some grants and helps them fulfill a car loan, you know, whatever. So PSS is a big, big one for us. Um, you know, we have supported lots of different things. We do ducks and limited, which is, doesn't exist in like it. You guys are big supporters of the Matthews house when we were still the Matthews house. Yeah. Appreciate our supporters. Exactly. By the way, would you like to come to Cultivate Hope? Let's do it. June 8th. I've got a table. We'll be in Germany. We'll be visiting our kids. But, yeah, we, I mean, ducks and limited. They do water comfort. Right. Well, if you keep the ducks alive, like it's good for all the frogs and the snakes. Exactly. So you, whatever else to. We do a whole bunch of different things. But, um, yeah, we love it. Foster Care is a big one for Carrie too. Her mother was in foster care. And so we try to do a lot of different things with that too. So I mean, whenever the team has a particular cause that they want to support, we try to take that in and see if we can have the funds or time to support that. And so we take that in as it comes. So. Do you guys support like volunteerism and community engagement within your team at OTM? We do. So we used to do a lot more before COVID when it was a little bit easier to do things. Right. We used to do a lot of food bank things. We used to do a lot of hands-on activities. Like a traditional team building. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So we're hoping to bring the more of those back as things start to open up. But, um, yeah, something we always encourage. I do, uh, one hour per month. I pay almost a volunteer in whatever capacity she would like to. I love that. Yeah. She could just tack one hour onto her actually local time and I can love it. Yeah. It gives back to the community that supports you. Yeah. And it lets her be the decider on what that looks like each month. Exactly. The local experience. Um, I think I want to have, uh, actually because you guys have been like together for 20. How long have you been together? 20 years. And how long have you been married? I don't know. Yeah. 14. 13. I don't know. It's the last of nine. Okay. Whatever. You might not even been married when I first met you. Maybe not. Yeah. We started. We did everything backwards. We started a business then bought a house. Oh yeah. Then got married. Then yeah. We did everything backwards. So when I, when I mentioned that, like the craziest thing that you've done and experienced moment, week, life, you know, your time, what, what does that bring up to you? I mean, I'm going to play off the politics thing. One of my favorite stories ever. This was pre-kids and I was a lot more fun. Uh, those of you who don't know Joe Nugent, he is hilarious. Do you know Joe Nugent? Yes. Joe Nugent is just, he is just, I've met him. I didn't know he was politics related. No, he's not. Okay. But you'll get this. Okay. He's gonna love this. So before kids, I went to Denver and I was networking. I heard his stupid voice out of the corner of my ear. And he's recognizable. Yeah, he's very recognizable. He's a, he's a Texan. And anyways, cut too long story short, secret service frisked him. And we were a little bit tipsy and we met Obama outside of the Fogo de Cho. And it was hilarious. I have it all in film. And then we, Secret Service shuts down an entire city when the president is in town. Who knew? And we ended up drinking heavily, ended up in a gay bar and probably stole some shit and we ended up at home on like three in the morning on Tuesday. And it was one of the best nights in my life. There was an auto amount of traffic safety counts in the car the next day. But you know what? It was one of my top moments just because it was just so many things so many things in one night. You know, it was great. All right. How, how was Obama? What did you say? He shook my hand. Not crazy. Yeah. He was, I don't know what he's in town for about. And you weren't even as like well, I was in rich and stuff as you are now. I don't think I'm either of those, but thanks. It was interesting because it was a less polarized country then. For sure. And so everybody was respectful, whether you were right or left or in the middle and people were respectful. Nobody was screaming and whether it was, you know, Secret Service was intense and I had no idea. But it was respectful and you were still meeting the president and it was something to be respected. And I appreciated that and he came right up to me and Joe ironically and shook our hands and you know, it was, it was awesome. It was a cool moment to what it should be. You should be, you know, meeting the president and be respectful and you should, you know, that should be a moment to remember. I don't know. Barack Obama, if you're ever listening to this podcast, I would gladly have you on. You just need to come to Fort Collins, Colorado. I will put you up at the Edwards House. Love it. And we'll have a good time. We can, we can smoke cigarettes if you want to. Love it. He was great. He was very respectful. He was awesome. I like him as much as anybody. Like I would definitely way rather leave Barack Obama in a room with my sister than I would Donald Trump. There you go. Anyways, hi guys. Joe Biden, just my sister would have to like wipe his butt or something probably. Anyway, moving on. It's, it's changed a lot since then. Let's put it that way. Yeah. Miles, your local experience. You were not with Val in this experience here. She. No, I don't know where he was, but staying at home probably working. Right. I'm probably a lot more boring than that. Val's the loud and obnoxious. Well, Val and I are a kind of experience. I like to say don't do anything. I wouldn't do it if you're like, what would that be? That's true. That's true. That's why I could ever run for office. That's why we'll see. Give it a shot. Yeah. No, I think it's nothing that follows up that story, but I think just having the the blind faith to move out here. Yeah. I mean, we literally googled images of it. I'd say Google was like in its first. Oh yeah. Google four calls was like seven pictures. We already learned about it. Like your cousin had a business out here in Fort Collins? Yeah. And I came out in 99. There's maybe him and two other cousins out here. And it kind of did a little trip around Colorado. And at that point, we were like, you know, it was just yeah. I remember sitting in the school district and, you know, at 25 years, you get a state pension. And I was like, I can't do this for another 21 or whatever years it was. Like that. It just didn't seem that that was an appropriate use of. And yet for your peers, you had like a great job with very good security and stability and all that kind of stuff. Right. Yeah. It was great. I was very counter characteristic of you. Maybe I should at that time. But makes you think of what an innate entrepreneur is though. Well, right. Do you know, like if you think of it, why would you give that up? I don't know. Oh, yeah. No, I think he was always an entrepreneur. Yeah, I think that's true. For sure. Yeah, he's like a senator or a basket. Right. Well, cultural background. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. And I'd built what I got what I wanted out of it. I could have grown for sure. But, you know, we were a role model school for a lot of national models in technology. But, you know, and so we packed up the car and drove here. And honestly, we took three days to get out here. And we came in on Mulberry. And, you know, that sector, although it's going through a revitalization process, but from I-25 to the Walmart. I was quite concerned. I was like, where did you go? It was the quietest two or three mile drive of my life because we had, you know, is we're moving to Colorado. There's this hop and downtown old town area. It's beautiful. It's vibrant. Look at these six pictures on Google. And then you come down Mulberry quarter after driving. Yes. Yes. Only a few people. You're like, this feels like what did I do in my head. I'm just like, oh, my God. Was it long on? And then you get to the lume and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah. But we have went to dinner. And the first place we ever went to here was the Crown Pub. Oh, nice. And so that place better than I ever got a business. Right. And so I love the Crown Pub. And so, yeah, I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. So my first night in town was 1999. And I stayed at the Kiva Inn. I had a job starting on Monday. I got here on a Friday at like five o'clock. Met a bunch of people at old Chicago's that invited me to go on a bar crawl. Love it. With them for somebody's birthday. So we went to a bunch of places. I went to a house priority until like 3 a.m. And then the next day I found a place to live and the next day I moved in and the next day I started work. So wasn't that but long before us? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And did you guys feel the same thing? Like right when you got here, even though you were from far away and even east coasters and whatever they're like, welcome. Yeah, it was great. It was and it's so much. Holy moly. I think about that. I'm like, I can be that person. I was like, I remember initials for you. Right. Right. Yeah. And in Rochester, it was like that was the most recent building that was built on this site at town. It was six years ago. Yeah. Oh, yeah. 470. Oh, yeah. Probably the most recent building in, well, outside of the recent revitalization would qualify as a historic building. Well, I mean, it's, and I am very proud of Rochester for all their incubator and new business. Yeah, efforts to actually be intentional to do stuff. And it's really awesome to see. Well, one of my favorite quotes and it's still hanging on my Facebook page is Henry Ford, whether you think you can or think you cannot. You're right. You're right. Exactly. And you know, Rochester decided at some point that they needed to think that they could if they weren't just going to skip swirling, you know, love it. And a lot of other cities up there to try to try with the richest city in the country in the 50s. Yep. That's what that's what I don't want northern Colorado to forget. Right. It could change so fast. Yeah. And we cannot forget about the community, all the work that was put into it. Yeah. So true. Well, I guess tell people how they can learn more about old town media if they want to. If they are a automotive or a medical or high lifetime value prospect that needs your thing. Hit us up on the web, oldtownmedia.com or any social. Yeah. Any of our social channels are just come on by the office. We've got bourbon wine, all sorts of at any time. You have a drink. It's one of the first I financed an old town actually before you got there. And I believe a Rotarian built it. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. Isn't it so. Oh, that's wild. And she planned our trip to go see Lena. Oh, good. It's like full. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. We love it. We're yeah, we're downtown. It's rocks. We love it. It's great. Well, oh, and actually this podcast was even set up because I like parked in your parking lot when I had a appointment nearby. You didn't even know this valve. I love it. Hey, Miles, I parked in your parking lot because the parking was it's a courtesy for the parking. Yeah, exactly. We have a great parking lot. You do nobody else could park there though. You have to have a local think tank sticker on your van or similar or an oldtown media sticker. So funny. I think you guys are awesome. I think you're awesome. Thanks for being here. Congrats on everything. Thank you for having us. God speed and God bless. Love you. you