EXPERIENCE 81 | Tom Lucero on Politics

My guest on today's episode was Tom Lucero and Tom is a political consultant and he and Leah Johnson in Loveland have formed an organization that helps aspiring leaders of either stripe or any political persuasion I guess go through leadership journey to prepare them to be good in the field of politics and being I guess useful and effective and Tom talks a lot about his career journey he grew up in a longtime political family his grandfather was the head of the Democratic Party in New Mexico and really was one of the first conservative people to come out of his family and so we talk about that journey what that's like and a number of business startups as well so Tom has been a part of a number of businesses including a couple of startups that just about got to the finish line we'll say and so you learn as much from failure sometimes as you do from success so you'll learn a lot from this episode and about how politics in Northern Colorado especially works so tune in and enjoy let's have some fun welcome to the local experience podcast on this show you'll get to know business and community leaders from all around Northern Colorado and beyond our guest share their stories business stories life stories stories of triumph and of tragedy and through it all you'll be inspired and entertained these conversations are real and raw and no topics are off limits so pop in a breath mint and get ready to meet our latest guest they were bringing in a new vodka okay and they sent the folks into the studio the last hour of the radio yeah it was hilarious I gave the kitchen staff weed brownies the first time I made those in college and probably different but similar yeah what kitchen staff at the restaurant where I worked that's awesome one guy hadn't had been like 12 years or something like that he was a dad of four you know anyway and he was sleeping on the floor nearly yeah no he was he was more giggly he was giggling man so indica that's a team I guess I don't know I don't know so T.B. I think it's more the giggles isn't the indica the sleepy city yes in the couch indica yeah yeah okay so T.B. so what am I introducing you as actually what's what's your title it's the amazing Tom Lucero there you go well we'll get into a whole conversation about labels okay let's do that okay all right all I'll I'll ask the first question cool welcome back to the local experience podcast this is your host Kurt bear and I'm happy today be to be be be be and I'm happy today to be joined by Tom Lucero and Tom is a man of many talents and trades and I guess Tom why don't you just describe your life describe your day to set the stage for us today so starting by March 25th 1969 when I was born yeah not there yet we'll get there we'll get there although I did appreciate the loony tunes introduction because exactly because one of the tattoos I have is of bugs bunny in fact oh yeah so was bugs the one the speech impediment no that was pretty big but it you know it's also well you're a radio guy and so you'd want to be more like bugs because he's quick-witted and yeah speaking and he understands everything he's like a modern day Samuel Clemens or something you don't want to be the roadrunner or no widely yeah he's a tough guy yeah yeah oh yeah yeah never wins yeah so back to the question yeah yeah describe what you do like what do you do to make yourself useful to the world wow how do you define useful to the world and what you do that's not useful to the world so I like to think I am useful to the world and have been focused on that pretty much my entire adult life but we'll narrow it down so what does a typical day look like I've got my hands in politics and we'll get more in depth into the political stuff so a lot of consulting a lot of advising to people running for office ballot initiatives city councils put issues on the ballot in fact I've got a consultation tonight with my partner and there is a city council right now not to be named in northern Colorado politicians have a history of trying to keep themselves in power even at the local level give you a perfect example and this kind of fits that profile term limits went into effect years ago right so Larimer County commissioners had term limit okay for eight years but then they realize we like serving longer than eight years the pays pretty good we've got a car we've got staff we've got all of this and so they referred a measure to the ballot that said would you like term limits for Larimer County commissioners of 12 years oh shit yes I want term limits and unbeknownst to the voters who had already voted on eight year term limits they thought we're getting term limits for the very first time in its self-serving politicians I don't care what level of government you were in most politicians are self-serving what I was fascinating by the what do they call the big tool that they use in the in the national Congress the filibuster like when the Democrats wanted to get rid of the filibuster yes it was like well you know that probably you're gonna lose your majority next fall so could you beat any short term or more short-sighted yeah more short-sighted like you're gonna get rid of this device that you will necessarily need to frustrate the efforts of your opposition when they take the house back if not this fall next time or the time after that or the time after that it's silly it will happen and just clarify filibuster is for the Senate oh Senate yeah house does not have the filibuster that's why you're the political consultant and I'm just a no you so these people pay you right like I guess yeah yeah although we have been known to do some volunteer work I'll give you a perfect example so COVID hit two weeks leads to lockdowns start to open the stay back up in 2020 and then in November you could see the writing on the wall governor polis was getting implement the next level of lockdowns shut everything down we got the business owners together in Loveland well the business owners in Loveland reached out to us and said hey what can we do right and so we held that little rebellion in Loveland Colorado but because there were our friends our neighbors we wouldn't charge them for something like that yeah fair enough yeah so we do have the pro bono side to what we do and if it can make a significant difference in the community and we can help our friends and neighbors and family out we are happy to do that but in a traditional sense yes we charge for our services well let's go back to a more basic question even who are we so great question you when I had a wonderful conversation about candidate recruitment that side of the yeah political what's happening how do you get people one interested in running for office and then two the skills necessary to be able to run for office yeah and to maybe even be useful once you get there yes exactly so we'll go through this more in depth but Leah Johnson who is a former city counselor in the city in city of Loveland she and I struck up a friendship back in 2015 sidebar don't look let I will lose track of where I am I'm a world-class conversation derailleur and as such I have a lot of skill of bringing us back okay perfect I see you you've got your note paddo that's right yeah so March 5th 2014 our youngest son who was 14 years old at the time went into full cardiac arrest on the baseball field oh heart shut that stopped yeah frightening time the good news is Tommy's alive doing well open heart surgery about 10 days later but the reason for the preface of that story is we got very involved with the group at a Loveland in berthin called Loveland Heart Safe City okay and the reason Tommy survived for the ambulance to be able to the paramedics to be able to resuscitate him is because his baseball coaches new CPR so side plug if you don't know CPR it takes an hour to learn CPR yeah go out there learned because it's not a question of if somebody is gonna have a heart issue it's a question of when it happens and you're on scene yeah know what to do start chest compressions right yep so we get involved raise about seven hundred thousand dollars for CPR training and for placing AEDs yeah automated I remember when they were yeah they came to my rotary club and talked about yeah we had a conversation yeah exactly exactly so after all of that is speaking of government working for you we qualified as a national heart safe city okay all we wanted to do was put signs up that said Loveland Colorado National Heart Safe City city bureaucrats wouldn't let us do it really it seems like it kind of ties in with the branding and stuff already you would think so and so next time you're driving to Loveland there's one on 287 there's two on 34 287 coming into Loveland you'll see it just outside of city limits yep it's got the little logo on it I should be more gentle to city staff let's just say they weren't being responsive fair did they want to do it I don't know anyhow knowing what I've been busy yeah I'm sure we're busy with the stuff so knowing what I know about politics I'm like all right I'm gonna reach out to elected officials and see if we can make some progress on this issue okay put a little bit of pressure on the bureaucrats to get done what we want done first person I reached out to was Leah didn't know each other had a great conversation we got the signs up but one of the things that Leah and I realized in all of that Leah is a Democrat I'm a Republican we can actually sit down and have a conversation together we're not going to change each other's minds on certain core issues yeah but how do you solve problems it local government to start understanding each other exactly so one thing to let do another Leah ends up not running for city council in Loveland and we're like okay how can we help people in northern Colorado out of that came leveraging local leaders it's a mouthful so we call it L3 yeah L3 from a branding standpoint okay and what we do Leah went through the Democrat candidate training program okay about 15 years ago I think and I went through the Republican training program back in 95 96 okay that's how much older I am than you heard sure because you were in middle school I was in I just graduated high school I was in college I'm older than I look I did not age well I've got I definitely have the face for radio that's for sure so because we were talking about the videoing but so we create this program where individuals come in over the course of six months one day a month so six classes in the morning we talk about campaign politics 101 how do you get elected to office at a local level so city council candidates all up and down the I-25 quarter or more or less from Longmont North so we've had individuals in the class who want to run for city council and Greeley Johnstown four Collins loved one I'm missing a couple other cities in there but these are people who want to make a difference in their community but just even the idea of running for office for a lot of people is overwhelming well in like Fort Collins pays what like $14,000 a year or 20,000 or something like that oh they actually I guess yeah they do pay yeah a little bit but not much that's nothing so why do I want to spend 40 grand and 40 grand worth of my time yeah to get elected to city council so I can make 15 grand a year for four years or exactly and then actually it's funny you say that because Hank Brown former United States Senator when I ran for office the first time he said three priorities in life especially if you get involved in politics one of them's family the others business and the others politics and you can't serve all three masters so one of those balls is going to drop to a certain degree you're not going to be able to give a hundred percent to politics a hundred percent to your family and a hundred percent to your business most elected officials they compromise on the work side of things yeah we do see divorces in politics people compromise on their family and then we also see politicians elected officials who really suck their job so they're paying attention to their family they're paying attention to work but they're horrible representatives yeah so keep that in mind well that's a challenge yeah my wife is gonna have to be okay with that sacrifice because I don't really want to sacrifice my business to do a good job in politics was that your unofficial declaration announcement of running for office that's what it sounded like defending the local think Frank tank from lack of my attention and teasing my wife a little bit when she listens back to this show you know because I don't really want to sacrifice any of those three things no you don't and that's why a lot of people so let's talk a little bit more about L3 it's not specifically candidate training because we have had a number of individuals who've gone through the program who have no desire to run for office but they want to be more politically engaged yeah whether you want to sign on 287 if you didn't understand politics you wouldn't realize there's always a workaround solution and even just getting involved back to November 2020 with the businesses in Loveland for the majority of the businesses involved this was their first foray into politics right and without guidance and an understanding of the process and what you need to do it would it would not have been as successful as it was for sure well and even just your presence I imagine because it's pretty intimidating especially in the in the politics of that time you know there was at that time the vaccines weren't even out yet and so there was a lot of rampant fear a lot of anger over what could and should or would be done over lockdowns of mandates and you know to have some third-party organizing force be even involved in saying where is going to go from here I have to feel a lot more comforting than like raising your hand and saying this is kind of wrong here and I don't like it yeah and then being picked off by the government and being isolated so strengthen numbers as we know but yeah so if you are listening to this and you enjoyed civics in high school social studies history political science when you were in college and you're like your heart got racing because you wanted to talk politics and you're trying to figure out how to make a difference in the world yeah take a look at L3 so so you have a class basically the offer virtually is that when not virtually it's in virtually but you like you have it on a regular basis like once a year once a year once a year so we'll be opening applications up here sometimes September October first class of kickoff in January and next year and we'll go January well you can count six months out from there exactly so and then the second half of the class in the afternoon reason it's full day we do the political stuff in the morning and then in the afternoon we're doing public policy major public policy that impacts all of Northern Colorado yeah water for example every community in Northern Colorado is affected by housing how affordable housing metro districts yeah every way yep transportation energy all of those big policy issues bring experts in to help people understand how they can make a difference it sounds a lot like like leadership Northern Colorado or leadership for Collins those programs at the chamber yes puts together is this a competitor with them or is it supplemental to that kind of an experience supplemental so great question Kurt which programs have you been through neither I got rejected for leadership for Collins back in like 2008 and then I you know was either poor or bitter or both for a while yeah I've been meaning to do leadership Northern Colorado I think I I've got enough connections in the city to just jump over the four Collins level one uh-oh you don't think that's that that sounds like a challenge I think they already close it off for leadership for Collins well perfect then you can take L3 next year so the Fort Collins Chamber and the Lovelin Chambers are both sponsors of L3 because we serve a unique niche and that is really that political activism but the chamber doesn't want to be seen as that political necessarily it's about general leadership exactly and business leadership in the community you got to know what's going on perfect yeah all these different things work but we're not actually going to give you the tools and tactics to be successful perfect description of it Kurt couldn't have done it better myself so in that sense we you can't well I guess you can because we see it all the time on social media and we see it out there you can be politically active and not understand the issues we're trying also the people argue with or that exactly so we're trying to send educated people into the community who really have an understanding of the public policy facing Northern Colorado and then equip them with the skills to be better for a lack of a better word better community activist yeah yeah I was thinking about just that relationship with you and Leah and would it be close to accurate to say that you're a Republican leaning libertarian and she's a democratic leaning libertarian I won't speak for Leah learn my lesson there you're gonna have to bring her on and talk about talk about that yes the older I get the more libertarian I tend to get just leave me alone get the government out of everything for the most part yeah fair enough so but where's the common ground you must have like aside from just your love of Northern Colorado or their other like things that keep because it's a you're not supposed to like Leah like I like Leah as well right but but you're in partnership with her in business you know and and toward the notion of a more unified community a more understanding dialogue right and that seems kind of countercultural they're young men well it comes yeah it comes back to we've got big problems in Northern Colorado that aren't the big problems at the state legislature and they're not the big problems in Washington DC and the two of us aren't going to change Washington DC and we're not going to change Denver so how do we have an impact in Northern Colorado and just one point of clarification on this one because L3 is a 501c3 not for profit oh okay so you've got aborted directors and stuff yes and a big fat salary I suppose it's over compensated non-profit managers what what are those tax the tax filings for 501c3s it's like it's not a 1099 599 what it is yeah you'll see I think it's this year whenever those reports come out yeah it's not that big of fat salary it's not I think last year we brought in ballpark it was between ten and twelve thousand dollars on your top line top light that's what you had some expenses and then you and Leo's got paychecks but not very much if you want to call it a paycheck I don't know what you make her but yeah it's so this is a passion project this is definitely a passion project for us like do you want it to be more than that or you yeah 100% 100% you're building something that you want to be you know you'd like to have employees in the future helping to activate people and little little L3 spawns around another parts of this date or whatever 100% 100% so part of that model is and Leo did the research with the Democrat Party I did the research with the Republican Party not just here in Colorado because we already knew the lay of the land in Colorado we tapped into our national connections and we said who is specifically out there training candidates for local office for city council without a partisan agenda oh this isn't gonna say George Soros so do we really know what Soros has his hands in we kind of do I'm fairly sure it has a partisan agenda oh it's a hundred percent of partisan or something I don't know if it's partisan so much evil yes and any respect so having been in the franchise world myself a number of years ago you look at things and you're like how do we replicate this so back to your point little L3s and Colorado around the country yes the vision is big cool um like how what's the bridge from here to there is that funny yeah well and so you want you want to make a donation Kurt? no I want to know what the what the sustainable model is for little L3s everywhere well first it has to be this one sustainable right this one has to definitely be sustainable so we do have the support of the four Collins chamber loveland chamber it comes with some dollars the Elpamar foundation has given us a limited grant and continuing to network in the business community because the reality of it is the old saying um I'm gonna drop a link on his name Athenian general leader Marco no polo come on guys help help me out not mark is a really is but he said over two thousand years ago you may not have an interest in politics politics as an interest in you yeah and it doesn't matter what your business is even if you're an employee the government is always looking yeah over your shoulder and wants to be involved with your life so what we're trying to do is educate the business community every time you go down whether it's to pull a permit to build a house a subdivision the slow wheels of government are costing you money wait you mentioned affordable housing four years from the time you purchase a dirt to be able to put homes into the ground right and we're wondering why we don't have enough homes in northern Colorado that's just city of love right between three and four years I have no idea what it is for college and and every new like efficiency regulation and different handicap access thing and like every one of them adds like five grand to the cost of your new house 100% and we're worried about affordable housing in the state of Colorado but we have elected officials who make the cost more expensive and then we have bureaucrats who can't figure out a way to streamline a process to get homes on the market more quickly yeah yeah there's lots of lots of local problems like you say and we're becoming a metropolis and that's a growing pains kind of a season for a region for sure so back to the like sustainability for for L3 like does that I guess just includes also just building a name for yourself because there's not that many city councils right like there's oh there's hundreds all right well I'm just exaggerating I'm thinking about the northern front range like in your scope here there's maybe a dozen or so kind of small to medium sized cities oh no it's significantly more than that I just thought let's go off top of our head as this park city of four Collins Wellington Timneth severance on I'm talking the I-20 no meat and meat firestone Frederick Plattville Millican Millican Bertha yeah Bertha yeah there's a lot yeah there's 40 easy just within our like regular travels oh in each of them has a five to nine person chamber mostly five to seven I don't know okay is it even what is four Collins I don't know this I don't know you live here nine is it nine I think it's nine oh wow wait nevermind I do know this loveland is seven yeah seven or nine it's always an odd number because you need to be able to break it better about a tie and it's fascinating too because the election cycle never ends this past April for example in 2022 we had off year on year April elections in towns like Erie Frederick Firestone Plattville Millican Johnstown and then we roll into this November I'm not sure at any of the municipalities have elections this November but then we roll into April next year off year elections and then you have a whole another cycle of elections small local elections and it's city of four counts right now is talking about moving their election from April to November of next year yeah what do you think about that you're gonna increase for more likely you're gonna increase voter turnout right because so I guess voting for their congressman the president whatever but that's an off year off year November election but only off year yeah oh I see city city of four Collins is always off year gotcha yeah okay what you would hope because statewide ballot initiatives next year in November will help bring voter turnout right so school board elections off year that you would hope you would get better participation your city council races yeah so you could have if there's a couple hundred people in local offices maybe four hundred people in local offices like that you know if a fourth of them return it over every four years or that kind of thing so there's a hundred potential clients either just in those those little spaces just right in our region well and the other thing we like to talk to people about is like let's take you for example yeah yeah maybe the idea of running for city council is intriguing to you mm-hmm you don't have to take L3 the year you want to run for office maybe it's a two or four year horizon sure but taking the class now and getting better engaged with the system with the process with with what's going on yeah in your local government and laying that foundation in that groundwork to be able to run into or three or four or five six years down the road yeah and then coming back doing a little bit of a refresher with L3 that would be ideally where we would like to be okay people people ahead of the curve by two to four years maybe even a little bit longer but it's hard to build that pipeline if we had been at this 20 years now yeah yeah yeah we would have you know 50 or 60 alums who have served been elected officials and or are currently serving right right yeah wrote your testimonial all that kind of stuff exactly um and so two things one how much like thousand bucks or something like that 13 hundred we say twelve ninety five I don't know why we don't just round up to 13 hundred dollars 13 is kind of unlucky in 1200 two cheap and two grand I don't know who knows pricing right yeah but there's a big time commitment and obviously yes to put a lot of work into creating a great program I'm sure and so yes keep me you know I'm pretty interested okay perfect and and anybody else that wants me to connect you to Tom you can write me and I'll drop a note or you can just look him up on on LinkedIn he's easy to find LinkedIn is the only one I broke the social media cord a couple of years ago for you yeah and I'm so much happy I was off for a couple times I've got back on Facebook to promote the podcast actually but I just I just post and dump basically and I host and goes post and ghost yes that sounds nice isn't post and dump um if I remembering properly from our our prior conversation that that that that class that that course if you will yes isn't the only thing you do though right like you do active campaign engagements of various sorts or different things like that you do like you said consulting and advising I guess just kind of a per diem kind of a thing as well absolutely so Lee and I when projects come up that we can both work on we work on oh okay so we're doing some affordable housing work right now right how how do we get affordable housing moving forward how are we looking for creative solutions but let's just say for example this were 2020 and Donald Trump which I work for the campaign yeah I wouldn't be like hey Leah come work on Donald Trump's campaign we're gonna you run that through your other LLC exactly so we find projects every once in a while where we can agree in we work on and it's a beautiful thing and sometimes it just doesn't make any sense right right yeah yeah no that makes a lot of sense yes because that it yeah so the this is really the common bond where L3 really has its main offerings this unified approach to candidate recruitment good government's good government's how to be a good politician all the all those things and part of that how to be a good person right so let's have civil conversation and discourse and if we disagree we agree to disagree at the end of the day first nothing wrong with that can you believe and this is a little bit off topic but it doesn't it speaks to integrity like how the hell are we locking up Julian Maxwell without like publishing the client list virtually or something like it seems like there's it's a mystery no it's not a mystery it's it's like they're covering their ass right corruption at the highest level that whether it's the businessman who were on the island whether it's a politician's whether it's the royalty yes somebody is it's the kind of like too many data points like that lead to things like the French Revolution unfortunately so our the governing class needs to clean up its stuff a little bit well or maybe it's just always been that way and now of social media and different things like this we never would have even heard of of Jolaine Maxwell before it's interesting because I think at the end of the day there is so much money now in politics that it doesn't matter if you're a Republican or Democrat my opinion yeah you're corrupt right Nancy Pelosi goes into office whatever it was 30 some years ago and now she's worth a hundred million dollars and her husband picks stocks better than Warren Buffett does well yeah well I mean he's smart enough to marry Nancy Pelosi so yeah so I mean you look at it and don't get me wrong Nancy Pelosi is an easy target we've got politicians on the Republican side who do exactly the same thing it's both sides of it I loved what it would uh Clinton was in office or leaving office especially when people would like talk about that especially Republican critics I'm like you know you're only mad because he does it better than the Republican like he's yes he's slicker you know he gets away with more things easier than other people do but that's just because he's good at it not because he's not the same amount of cricket as you are there yeah so my cynicism meter is just through the roof with Washington DC politics but to answer your question is it always been like that I don't think so I think there has always been an element of it in politics yeah it'd be good if it was more like a rotary club where all the really positive good abundance-minded members would just like chase some asshole out if he was in there doing bad things but they don't instead they just take turns looking the other way basically so how do we fix it I don't know term limits balance budget amendment but those would help DC doesn't want term limits those two things would be amazing actually and they don't want a balanced budget amendment so how do you fix this system right now constitutional convention probably yep convention of the states and yeah I've that has been an idea floated my first campaign was 92 my second campaign was 1994 okay Republicans have been talking about a constitutional convention for as long as I have been active in 30 years yes yeah and probably before that yeah who who knows what'll happen but just the amount of money in politics nowadays well I don't think a constitutional convention could actually accomplish much like I feel like there's so much animosity and division between the states you know what I would you know I save us all some trouble and just break the country up into like six regions and that might be good you know the first through the civil war yeah the first time I heard that proposed that that's just an incredibly stupid idea in this I don't even know maybe it was it was before Trump maybe it was under Obama and then Trump gets elected and then we just continue to see the polarization in the country and now we see what I think they're referring it referring to it as is the great migration blue states getting bluer red states getting redder and people beginning to leave their state to find a state that looks more like them yeah yeah yeah so now you mention that idea and I think to myself really how would we figure out a way to do it but if California and Colorado let me ask you this question did you know there are two EPA environmental protection agency standards in the country well California and then all the people that follow California the federal government California yeah so it now means Colorado is going to have to sell by 2035 think about this right in less than 13 years yeah you were going to be forced to buy an electric car you will not have the choice there are a couple of I by use so yeah exactly but any new car sold right in Colorado or California in 2035 is going to be an electric car yeah and Virginia Virginia there I think it's 12 13 states some like that of Colombia yeah yeah people but people aren't aware of that right well and the unintended consequences of heavy-handed regulation like that like it takes people a long time but some people will buy electric cars a whole bunch of people will and they'll over tax the power grid that California has got that's already overtaxed and they're unwilling to build new nuclear and they want to shut down the wonderful right and so I don't know how they're going to power you know there isn't enough space for enough windmills and solar plants in California unless they just get Nevada to hold all their windmills and solar but all that to say that even with all that different cars there's going to be other consequences like people not replacing their old gas powered cars yeah just leaving their old gas powered cars on the road for longer and longer and longer and and some of the hybrid things are not really favored with this legislation which is silly to me because hybrids get phenomenal mileage and they're not tied to a 220 mile range you know and so we still have that maximize liberty of go where you want when you want to anyway I put it this way if I could find the hybrid that worked great for my lifestyle with all of the outdoor stuff I do yeah like this weekend for example I couldn't make it to where I'm going to camp and fish in an electric vehicle without stopping and doing the rapid charge and all of that but on a full tank of gas I can make it up to Wyoming where I'm going to go get camp set yeah be on the river fishing and not have to worry about getting gas until I'm headed back home yeah well and I had a electric car for a while I love this not out of it actually yeah but to go back to the big point we were just talking about the problem with the states kind of clumping into regions is that it's not really a states thing like even though the states fought one way or the other it's a rural versus urban divide oh yes you know and where all the rural is is where all the food is grown where all the water is where all the energy comes from and they're also the ones that use the most energy because they halt cows to market places and they you know drive a hundred miles to go see their daughter for the afternoon lunch because that's what you do that's how far away she is right and so as that complex of climate cast astrophysers like it's the fan of politics yep like now okay now we actually so we're gonna try to somehow divide the rural and urban parts of Colorado and then we got Nebraska you know Omaha can be with Denver or something you know and Larmy's like the one little blue spot in Wyoming you like can build a hyperlink between Omaha and Denver right well all these cities can just starve to death and be without energy well if there's a fight like that's kind of the challenge of what a an actual conflict between the the poles would look like in our nation is because it is such a rural versus urban divide that like the the urban half all the people but the rural have all the food and all the energy in politics we have a phrase especially as we're going into election season what's the underlying issue that nobody is talking about right so right now in Colorado Michael Bennett is trying to define the race for the US Senate about abortion because of row versus weight right and because he hasn't really done anything he hasn't done anything in the time he has been in Washington DC Joe Day on the other hand wants to talk about Biden inflation the economist or so those are the big picture issues but then you go start knocking on doors and I don't know what the issue is but people then say well this whole college dead forgiveness that Biden put through there's always an issue or two out there that is not getting the media attention and if you can figure out how to tap into that vein with voters you give your candidate a good head start so or help them especially in a close race how do you get them over the finish line right well and you help it be there something that authentically jives with them exactly right so what are the undertow threads right now that I am watching and I'm saying this isn't election specific but it ties to your point about urban urban and rural and that is I'm seeing a lot more movement particularly in the urban areas perfect example unions people trying to unionize amazon people trying Starbucks and to unionize Starbucks and I'm like there is that rural element to that blue collar side mentality in the urban areas how do you figure out how to tap that vein of urban and rural working class because I think they have a lot more in common even though that amazon or Starbucks barista let's just use a label and say they're more liberal they're more democrat right yeah but we're talking about from the government exactly more similar yeah we're talking about mainly on the social issue side of things but what do these guys want they want more equity in the side of I think we can all agree I hope we can agree that amazon facebook they're all bad actors right yeah and if we could figure out how to break them up particularly I'd look at facebook and google and twitter is more public utilities than anything yeah and what did amazon do they tried to crush mom and pop during the pandemic yeah that while ripping people off yes I bought a stole that man wireless hardware during the pandemic okay for $199 a blackstone griddle grill combo stove griddle love my griddle and I looked it up on amazon $299 and it wasn't even on sale at manwilers so so meanwhile you know manwilers is buying that thing for 120 bucks selling it for 200 bucks paying their employees joining to the local high school football team all that amazon's probably bending those guys over and buying it for $65 a piece because they're gonna sell a bajillion owe him and then selling it for 300 a hundred dollars more and pocketing 230 bucks instead of 80 on a gross margin exactly and that's you know it sounds great sounds nice if you're a business owner that's some fat gross margins but all that is at the expense of local communities that have hardware stores and would like to still have a hardware store in the future 100% so I think I'm not sure I'm not smart enough to predict the future but if somebody were smart enough to figure out how to get rural folks were back to this dialogue all right so you're an anti gun pro choice democrat and you're a pro life pro gun republican how do we get each other to focus on the enemy is the elected officials who were in the pocket right of big corporations big government big corporations and how do we you how do we present a united front to say let's put some of these issues aside long enough to get our free and actual enemy yeah yeah instead of being I don't even know what the number is now 27 trillion dollars in debt did you read my blog last month by chance did I put you on my list you did not put me on that really not sorry it's it was liberty from liberty I like the title and it was about well I started talking about the Dutch farmers of course but also liberty in general you know when when the world needs more food in Europe is risking starving to death how they can possibly shut down farmers and ranchers and stewards is like how many people actually really know what's going on if you really want to start people of death like just say it don't like do all these shiny tricks about oh your greenhouse gas emissions from your cowfarts are too much we can't afford to have all those cowfarts it's bullshit no pun intended but it is yeah no and so and like none of us are good on an island and we need community and we need to understand from other people's perspectives and things like that that was where the liberty from liberty was so both we have a world that's facing a dependence upon dependence and I don't like it and recognize that you are not an island of like capability all yourself it takes a lot of people gathered together to do big things that's that's what the human race is about you know at 100 percent could not agree more with you and it's unfortunate that Hillary Clinton wrote the book that it said it takes a village if but it really does take a village yeah to you need that community side of things well it takes a village to function well what she was trying to imply was it takes a village to raise a child because we got all these families without husbands and different things like that going on and that was all good stuff you know I'm in a big advocate for everything for partners to the Matthews house and things like that but this episode is sponsored by logo think tank logo think tank provides pure collaboration for business owners we build smart safe places to help business leaders navigate every stage with a business journey and we love what we do and who we do it with our model features gift back minded business veterans and the role of logo facilitators we're always looking for abundance minded individuals to add to our membership facilitator team local community or to feature on this podcast listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of logo think tank get their sixth month of membership for free just mention the local experience podcast on your application to learn more visit our website at logo think tank dot com that's l o c o think tank dot com she turned that phrase into a pejorative right well yeah you know it is a valuable phrase we need the faith community to solve problems we need the nonprofit community and we really do need government to help solve problems yeah in the business community and it all needs to work together fair enough fair enough um should we talk about like what got you to be interested in this kind of part of the world is taking through your journey just a little bit in politics no the whole the whole journey like you seem like a little league baseball player when you were about ten is that true i played baseball and i played football okay yes yes from time i was six years old so let uh... let's go back to my great-grandfather on my dad's side okay northern new mexico he ran the nor or ran the democrat party in northern new mexico so if you think about it and the tens the 20s and the 30s back in the day still very rural not easily accessible just what you were talking about a little while ago that back then if you had to go a hundred miles it was a couple day trip right so with all of those small towns up just north of singing a fan all the way up to the colorado border he ran the democrat party yeah and as the democrats always run new mexico or is that yeah that's why it's just amazing that's why it's an amazing place yes democrats of controlled new mexico for as long as i can remember and even in the family except for when gary johnson was in there apparently huh the libertarian yes and johnson they have a wacky term limit for the governor in new mexico okay they get one four year term oh wow and then what these guys do is they go on the sideline for four years and then they run again in four years and yeah i got four years is not long enough eights a perfect amount i don't know why they don't change there's wacky stuff in politics all across the country so but anyway great great great great yep so my my dad's mom my grandmother when she moved from northern new mexico in the 1950s all of the kids very politically engaged and were raised to be politically engaged and i came up with a family that my dad's older sister so my aunt was in washington dc for martin luther kings i have a dream speech and the reason she was there is because back in the 1950s and 60s when they moved up here from new mexico it wasn't like the south where it was black and white the racial yeah the racial divide was brown and white right and so they got very involved in the civil right Hispanic and indigenous and white or are there different layers like what's that well where i come from in north Dakota there's the native tribes and that's the racism that's there the whites just respecting the the natives if you will and but in new mexico like you've got the Hispanic populations that are kind of Spanish and indigenous mix yes right but then they're up from mexico for the most part and then you've got the indigenous native populations are they mostly on the reservations and stuff across i get i am not smart enough to answer that question well versed enough to answer that question about new mexico but if i had to guess based on my experience in going to the casinos on the reservations in new mexico that the majority of the native americans are on the reservations so it's not as much of a mix anyway exactly and and on the social hierarchy the the Hispanics from mexico are a notch above the indigenous from new mexico correct yes i i think that would be a hundred percent yeah accurate to say so they went from my aunt and my grandmother and her sister went from being in control politically in new mexico with their father to coming to Colorado to Denver specifically downtown Denver and being treated as second-class citizens yeah so in addition to my aunt being involved or then making the trip to dc when my grandmother passed away interestingly enough in jeez i was in caught in 1991 the mayor of denver at the time i think it was still penia the city council issued a proclamation recognizing her as a leading community activist denver's denver is huge now but it was still a big city for those of us that grew up in the 80s and 90s and there was a community award named after her that recognizes an outstanding volunteer and community activist from their neighborhood and so the conversations around my household always involve politics growing up yeah in fact i remember in elementary school and it was revered as something of value yes and utility and not something to kind of be despised as frankly probably the average american household kind of grew up in it wasn't despised so much as disregarded as irrelevant or obvious that the republican was the one you should vote for exactly exactly i grew up anyway well but it was also interesting in the standpoint so the phrase around my household my dad's side of the family was you have a responsibility to leave your community a better place than you found it yeah so whether you run for office or you just civically engage politically engage you have to be engaged in the process but interestingly enough because they're all democrats yeah i'm not a democrat and there's a reason why did you get an education just kidding i apologize we're trying to build bridges here i can't just be hard as uh that's what he should uh so my mother was a single mother because my dad passed away okay and well i saw i i will not for you i wasn't born yet oh yeah oh wow your dad passed away before you while you're in the womb yes in utera oh wow yeah okay yeah so pretty intense stuff um maybe another time i'll tell that story but my mom sends me to catholic schools i go to Notre Dame in Denver so grew up southwest Denver working class blue collar neighborhood um went to the catholic school my neighborhood went to mullin high school i'm assuming you've heard of mullin high school but yeah back in the day it was an all boy school okay and now it's co-ed but um in 1974 or 72 i can look it up later but it is the keys versus the school board decision out of the city of Denver okay goes to the Colorado Supreme Court okay Colorado Supreme Court says mandatory busing okay so so mean you can go to school wherever you want to no it depends on where you live if kids from the inner city you're going to be bus to your school or if you're going to be bused from the suburbs to an inner city school oh yes it shook everything up with Denver public schools wow my mom who was a hairstylist still cutting hair not one of her Denver public school teacher clients was gonna send their kids to the Denver public schools after keys versus the board of education and my mom said well if it's not good enough for you you teach in the Denver public schools right i'm gonna work my ass off i remember my mom working two jobs back in the day just to be able to get enough for tuition to pay bills so that i could have that education wow yeah and so i heard from my one side of the family about government programs about these programs in this program but then i watched my mom not go on those government programs right didn't go on welfare didn't go on housing didn't didn't didn't didn't and i'm like huh mom's a pretty it was her birthday this past weekend she is like my example she yeah rock in the family do you want to shout her out by name Sally hi Sally yeah proud of you oh yeah tech not she'll never listen to this podcast like mom do you want my youtube access you can have youtube tv she's like no she's just why would i want that she's got an antenna mom amazon i can have one more person on my account no she still gets the books with uh what are they CDs oh that's how she listens to her books i'm like mom i can't you up on uh uh what do i have notable audible yeah i do have audible anyhow so but so you see you really had a different example than what your previous family was and exactly school experience to just different philosophy going to a private school and then getting to mullen high school and interacting with kids whose dads or doctors and executives and etc etc and i'm like huh this isn't adding up for me but when i turned 18 in my family you registered to vote you start voting which of course i did yeah but of course some of my dad's out of the family they all wanted the answer to the question you registered as a democrat didn't you and i'm like no but i didn't register as a republican so the first two years i was registered to vote i was an unaffiliated but voted republican yeah so yeah in fact uh my first vote i cast was for George w-bush or h-w-bush back in 1988 for president well that's cool yeah i've uh and i probably have to just keep my streak running now but my first vote was for because i turned 18 in 92 and so just a few months later Ross Perot got my first vote there you go and i've always voted a non mainstream candidate for president interesting would you vote for a salasco run uh Kanye that's right don't be that that's funny i stand by it i think he would have do a better did a better job i didn't he couldn't do a worst job could he i mean seriously let's go back to the Ross Perot thing for an in for a second yeah because right now in north carolina have you track this Matthew ho h-o-h is running for the us senate is a green party candidate really yeah former united states marine combat deployed multiple times interesting and very articulate Matthew was a great guy disagree with him on quite a bit right but the one thing i appreciate is his position on you crane right now and breaking up the big companies so oh the bit the fangs yeah twitter uh google yeah the ones we were talking about a little while ago so Matthew the green party knows the standard to get on the ballot north carolina i think it's 13,000 signatures secretary of state says you turned in 15,000 ballot signatures okay what does the democrat party do contested every signature and they sued to keep him off of the ballot the election board did oversaw that voted three to two to kick him off of the ballot he had to go to a federal judge a federal judge finally force him to put him back on the ballot democrats will say he will cost us the election right what a republicans say about Ross Perot really cost the bush the election you know who cost bush the election bush bush and he done what he said he was going to do Ross Perot wouldn't have run yeah frankly yeah third party candidates and i argue with people in my own party they're like we have a libertarian on the ballot in whatever competitive district well maybe had the republican behaved more like a republican and a libertarian in fought for limited government yeah he wouldn't have a libertarian running against well that's my problem with the republicans is it's like kind of a farce to say that they believe in limited government they don't the last 50 years well says Reagan really they really don't Republicans had control of the house the senate and the white house for Trump's first two years yeah did the budget decrease no the budget went up right i mean they cut taxes okay well he had a he had a vision i think like and i'm not a like a vote of a Kanye for a reason but he felt like if he could kind of reduce that tax burden and make it less complicated that the economy would respond and it was it was kind of heading that way with the notion of it being you know less spending later but who knows if he was a charlatan or or i think i don't know who knows but yeah so back to they're all bad people right i'm like an end Democrat yeah um so oh so anyway Ross yeah Ross Perot did not cost Bush the election i just had to get that out there and democrats do it just like republicans do it trying to get people off of the ballot so that we can go head to head and figure it out right yeah it's uh what preceded that whole conversation we were talking about your family history oh high school and why you're a republican when your whole family has been democrats for generations yeah and just so the listeners know Kurt whipped out a bottle of single malt scotch and so i'm going to forget where i was in conversation with it out i poured it nicely you did pour it nicely uh and we're drinking it neat true back to 1998 so i vote for Bush you vote for Ross Perot in 92 i'm still supporting Bush and that was the change i was down in Durango for two years went down there to play football ended up breaking my wrist didn't play it down a college football spent a lot of time hunting fishing skiing but also then beginning to dip my toes into politics oh really already yeah so again why did you go to college uh uh Durango for two okay and then transfer to see you Denver okay graduated from the University of Colorado Denver and so the three and a half years roughly that i was down in Denver that's where i really got politically engaged i assume you're familiar with the independent institute a little bit yes libertarian free market they tank back in the day it wasn't so much libertarian think tank it was more conservative think tank and it was funny because i read an article in the Rocky Mountain news i read the paper every single day Rocky Mountain news and the Denver Post always staying up speed on current events and there's an article they were doing something at the capital okay and then i see a quote from a guy named John Andrews at the independence institute conservative think tank okay so i'm on campus i still remembered this vividly go over to a pay phone look in the white pages where they had the businesses in the back it was all the names in the front and then i get independence to and i call golden colorado the receptionist answers and i said do you guys offer internships huh and that's how it started oh wow went from driving out meeting john andrews who eventually became senate president ran for governor okay and just a great leader in the republican party for the multiple decades he has been involved in fact just to give you a insight into john andrews his character and who he is as a man he was a speech writer in nixon's white house okay and the minute watergate broke he resigned well he's like there are enough signs pointing to we did this i can't work for this man so cut my teeth with john understanding the political process in the state of colorado state and campaign politics for a number of years got into real estate then went from real estate to software development then from there back into or not back into into the restaurant business and then got back into campaign politics in 2008 you flew us through your career pretty so we we can dissect as much of that as you want tell me about this like coming out of politics and into business right like that that was kind of a you were kind of got into politics right out of college virtually and we're pretty engaged in independence institute internship and things like that and then then got more into business and software and things was that related was it a need that you identified during your political time or tell me up tell me about that yeah it was interesting and i like to tell people there is no more entrepreneur entrepreneur you got you back to learning to end endeavor then campaign politics so think about it you start on day one with zero like you do with the business you've got an idea i'm going to run for office what do i need in order to run for office what do i need in order to start a business i need capital i need a vision i need people to be able to execute whether it's employees or volunteers running for office is like a small business start up on steroids not quite as hard as starting a church but just about exactly so and you think about it in terms of even if you were successful when you run for office the campaign shuts down right so unlike a business that goes on and ideally goes on and on on right November this year the elections November 8 November 8 everything shuts down right but 18 months ago when somebody started running for office they had nothing and now they're in full mature cycle right if they've done it correctly and the one thing i love politics about politics everybody knows did you win or did you lose a real easy scorecard exactly that's one thing that's different about business you know i like i can look at my week that just passed and did i win or did i lose i don't know i won some and i lost some more you know i were a little better than they were when we were at the beginning of the week but it's but you're also playing the long game right so you're keeping track but come November 8 it's not all going to disappear right right hope not or keep going on so it will be shocked yeah i don't want to be around for that conversation we'll come talk about you running for office after yeah yeah we did another one so i'm always just ahead how do i say this ahead in the clouds kind of guy yeah i look at things yeah and i'm like there's an opportunity there i wish i would have been the guy with the pet rock because i would have been a hell of a lot easier right that guy made millions selling people rocks in a box but i've always been fascinated by business so i always look at my passions in life and how can i improve them so back in 1997 ish right around then 1997 98 so we're at the peak of the dot com right right okay so i'm studying the internet fascinated by the internet fascinated by businesses was fascinated by amazon back in the day right and what bezos was doing because i buy books online exactly i asked my kids how did amazon get their start they've got no idea it was an online bookstore right exactly totally so at that point in time i saw somebody's meme one day it was like it's like such and such but for books i kind of remember what the other such and such was just ebay or something i don't know exactly so back in that time i was so take a step back went to college play football broke my wrist didn't want to put the time in the weight room anymore didn't want to train now graduate college i'm married and i'm two hundred and about twenty twenty twenty five pounds at that point in time really yeah wow so because current can see me and he's seen me you're looking like a book seventy now or six hundred percent yeah hundred and seventy pounds yeah run ultra's run long distance still work out in the gym all the time do triathlons headed down to florida do triathlon in December but at that point time i'm two hundred and twenty two hundred and twenty five pounds wow consuming somewhere between eight and ten mountain dooza day eating just crap just shit sugar and everything processed food and everything and i'm like there's got to be a better way to do this so i get into exercise and nutrition okay and it's did you play sports when you were little um i did i i played baseball through like thirteen year old and then uh basketball most of my high school okay so you remember back in the day it's like what meal should we eat before a game right pasta getty how stupid was that we didn't know but we didn't know what we didn't know and nutrition started to go through that cycle at that point right it was like it was really changing about that time it was changing about that time and it transformed me i went from i went from that to 190 pounds in about sixty not sixty days in about six months yeah and i felt better had more energy i'm always refining my diet as i move forward now and i'm like there's got to be a way to help people who want to help themselves with the information i have gained so reach out to a couple of docs research docs at the university of Colorado one of them's an exercise guy exercise science guy and the other was a noted nutritionist over at the health sciences center so we get together and i'm like can we i know from a back-end standpoint i went out i'm one of the things i like do is solve problems i'm like i can't code too hard i can't write right but i know you need a coder and i know you need a data guy on the back end and i'm like how do we build an interface where people can keep track of their exercise and their nutrition right and simple you know how many minutes did you do of this whatever yeah yeah but and give them little reports or whatever reminders so now we're going from 97 into 98 into 99 and back then i don't know how much computer design you did but back then to build a back end data oh yeah face and the front end user face would run you one one point five million dollars in today's world like that be like 30 grand exactly if you know or came to you today and said i want to build this data face with this user interface and i need a million dollars you'd be like dude you need like 40 grand you're an idiot i'm not investing 100 grand to build it and you need 100 grand to market it and then you're done exactly so back then it wouldn't be groundbreaking exactly at that time it was it was groundbreaking at that time but we needed we were in the angel world for three to five million to get us beyond prototype to beta to then we knew if we could get out get launched that the rest of money it's good as well exactly you know you get ten bucks a month from a hundred thousand people yep it pays the investors back pretty good exactly so that was the vision now all of a sudden you remember back 97 98 when it was the peak of the dot com boom sure yeah there were some investors who could see the writing on the wall yep yep i remember net library we recruited that guy uh we almost got him on our board we didn't quite get there 300 million dollars is what those guys burned through in like 36 48 months but he had a proven track record is an entrepreneur right he had built some big companies and he sold this vision all books were going to be online right which again he was a visionary ahead of us yeah we in banking we used to say the the scouts get the arrows yes yes you were a scout i was he was a scout because look what kind of watch do you have you don't have a watch so i've got a guard watch in my pocket i got on i've got the garment and it tracks tracks all of my exercise and activity related stuff i've got all of the diet stuff internal but for years i kept a notebook of how did i feel after eight this how did i feel the next day how did and so i really got it down in my head now but yeah so whether it's the watch or the food apps i know there are a whole bunch of them out there we got noom you know all those things but we were trying to do that we ended up raising the little bit we got was $250,000 so for $250,000 we built out our prototype okay so we had some interaction right to do an interactive presentation let people play around with it all we need now is a million and a half more exactly than 2001 kind of man or the dot com man it didn't burst in 2000 more like 99 i was about ready to say now we're into 99 so we've done this and had we started on the front end like our good governor did with blue mountain dot com right and sold for a billion dollars right we could have sold easily but so miss the market on that and then a couple of us partners in the company licking our wounds and the user interface guy is like i'm tired of technology why don't we get into the restaurant business oh and you guys are all friends there's something like that kind of yeah we're still friends and uh well we were friends and still friends now and Matt says why don't we get into the restaurant business and i'm like well it's got to be easier than online what are the software development thing exactly i mean you make food do self food how hard can it be super easy yeah restaurants never go exactly so we gave it a run and i actually sold the my partners in 2007 i like to joke we were in the franchise business nicken willies which i remember nicken willies exactly so we had for them right there she ain't no wonder everybody else exactly but for anybody out there listening who's thinking i want to go into the restaurant business when people ask me and i'm so far removed from the restaurant industry but back in the day get calls from people what do you think the smartest decision we made was to go with the franchise because they teach you step by step how do you order food how do you deal with vendors how do you margins need to be exactly they literally have a blueprint if you follow the blueprint then it whatever time like uh why am i drawn a blank on his name the owner of Matador oh gosh i can see his face Paul Paul Paul Paul was in the franchise business and Paul is a creative genius and as soon as he learned the restaurant business and could get out of his franchise right he started a he started yeah started his own brain if you're looking at it like a kudoba guy or something something no it was another mech it wasn't kudoba i'm not going to remember what every doesn't matter but yeah Paul send us a text after the fact yeah let us know what you had before that but if you're thinking about the restaurant business go the franchise route learn how to do it so 2007 just life circumstances things going on i want to add an amendment to that if you're thinking about the restaurant business um go get your head examined just kidding or just go grab a hundred thousand dollars out of your bank account put it in a brown bag put gasoline on it set it on fire yeah it'll go much more quickly that way you could send it to me here at the local experience podcast care of local think tank or if you want to make a difference in your community out three you could fund them for like seven years there you go exactly so eighty seven i sell to my partners and i always use the phrase ninety seven what i say eighty seven oh now you said like my kids it's actually two thousand seven two thousand yes my kids are like you said that wrong i'm like no i didn't but we actually have a recording of it go back and listen but we won't do it we won't do that but uh so that in two thousand seven i sell to my partners and i always use a phrase i'd rather be lucky than good in business because if you remember going out of two thousand and seven into two thousand and eight what did we have happen yeah big recession again another recession market crash those guys god bless them they gave it a run for a while in the middle of that recession and they finally had to close the doors on the restaurant so i just got lucky in that situation yeah i was no why did you exit did you want to do some other things or you weren't enjoying the restaurant they were annoyed with you and wanted to buy you out you remember back in the beginning when we were talking about Hank Brown when you're an elected official or in politics family business or politics politics one of them's going to suffer my family suffer to end up getting divorced at that point in time so i was like i'm tired of working sixty hours a week in the restaurant being an elected official and plus you probably needed cash because you were trying to store out of course exactly so i sold to them at a very opportune time and then remind me because you weren't elected official already yeah we hadn't even talked about that yeah well where was that we got sidetracked on business so in the in the middle of trying to build this software data company god add up campaign politics in 96 97 i was a realtor 98 i was a realtor so i had the realtor thing going on trying this fine thing on the sideline but yeah only needed a million dollars yeah more like three but yeah only three million and during all of that i decided to run for the Board of Regents at the University of Colorado and speaking of my favorite Colorado governor candidate is Heidi I know she was on my podcast there you go i love Heidi a door high yeah phenomenal story and but since you've had her on you know what i know now what the Board of Regents do nobody knows what the Board of Regents do well i know a little bit i knew nothing before it's funny because when you're a Republican and you go to have you been to a Lincoln day dinner do you know what a Lincoln day i know what it is yeah okay so it's much a one years and years ago okay it's where political republican political activists come together once a year to celebrate Abraham Lincoln's birthday first Republican these are what you would consider the most educated activists in the party okay and i would walk into a room and say i'm running for the Board of Regents and they would look at me and be like what's a Regent all right okay well i don't feel dumb now exactly i mean i do but so when you talk into that when you're talking to the general public and you say Regent they're like yeah i got nothing yeah yeah if you put a gun to their head and said you have to tell me what a Regent is they couldn't do it it is the most obscure elected official position in the state of Colorado and they basically oversee the entire CU system they do oversee college but also the medical entrepreneur or medical enterprises things like that all of the various campuses of CU CU Boulder Colorado Springs yep yep health sciences center and they continue to expand and grow but it gets back to how is i going to feel that void of no longer working day-to-day impolitics and one of my passions were back to growing up the value of the education that i received going to Catholic schools made all the difference in the world for me and education is just fundamental in our family it's one of the things democrat republican alike we all fight for yeah and i didn't want to run for school board i had graduated from the University of Colorado i thought i'm going to go be a Regent and fight indoctrination and at that point in time you could see Heidi was kind of on your team there a little bit too she got like some of her most visible public things i'm amazed by the way sidebar on Heidi like when you look up Heidi Gennall and try to find like media coverage of her and news channel appearances or stories or like it's almost like a blackout of her and her amazing story and camp bawa like you can you can find her she sees another fine but there's nothing recent like she's running trying to be our governor of our state and she's running against kind of a dipshit and none of the major news stations of denver have done basically anything well it's interesting because the only thing i have seen so we're back to i'm no longer on social media no fair i don't consume denver metro major market television i'm totally offline in that sense that i'm either major league baseball netflix amazon i see nothing and i consume all of the political journals in the state of colorado whether it's colorado sun axios complete colorado left right all of them so that's where i get my political information from just trying to keep my finger on the polls the only thing i have seen about that is where she declined i don't know if it's declined or wouldn't go on with Kyle Clark oh really and so i'm wondering if there is well there's no doubt the local media is in bed with sir with Jared and they're going to do everything they can to protect him right but i don't know what the strategy is for the campaign why that might be or if they're intentionally ignoring those media outlets which i would not advise her to do she's just go yes i would agree you're going to be set up you got to be skilled at dealing with being set up yeah you're running for governor she's a mom on a mission and i hope she's successful but yeah you can't i would tend to agree that that even if you're facing a combative audience you got to face the dragon exactly and and show your willingness to face the dragon and on their turf and we'll get to my radio days here in a minute uh yeah Jared used to come on the radio with us he would come into the lines then once a month with us and have that conversation who was it that uh that Jared faced in the Colorado governor election um that i guess it was is it four years six years four like governor every four year but a b was prominent in his name i think that's a good question now you know country club looking guy anyway i watched the the debate between Jared pull us and his opponent back then and i was like oh my god Jared's gonna mop the floor with this dummy um anyway it just it was obvious how much smarter he was opponent so speaking of blanks that i just filled one in it was pericles who said oh yeah of course it was pericles you said you may not have an interest in politics but politics has an interest in you so now we can put pull us in the governor's race four years ago into the subconscious and i'll come up with who the candidate was tall darker guy you know i think you're confusing you know with you anyway just screw you anyway so let's so regent so 12 years regent is the next the u.s senate a six year term the only six year term in the state of Colorado yeah everything else is forward to pay as i guess to zero oh no literally unless you're dirty zero there must be some influence pedaling you can do or something no zero oh okay zero and the joke always used to be will you get football tickets there are six home football games a year so freaking what that's it we get nothing and their team sucks lately so it's hard to sell those tickets even exactly well i would anyway you're just trying to give me the i just like figure out how i got a couple of dollars um so you literally get paid nothing and just to put this in perspective especially when we're talking about local government for example like county commissioners i love to bash county commissioners i'm making this number up i don't think it's much more if at all lamer county commissioners oversee a budget of about three hundred and twenty million dollars a year okay ish right so somebody can fact check that but it's not extraordinary not a billion dollars yeah it's not much more than that they make by the time you factor in their salary their car their phone their benefits they're making over a hundred thousand dollars a year okay when i left the university at Colorado how much do they work every week i don't know i would if i i would venture to gas what's your guess on average how many hours does it twenty maybe thirty okay and they're keeping themselves busy with public appearances in this and that a lot of it's not real work anymore yeah define work like the same kind of work i do when i meet new people and have a coffee with them exactly exactly so when i left the board in 2010 got elected in ninety no i left in january twenty eleven it was a one point nine billion dollar institution okay with twenty eight thousand ft e yeah and i volunteered to oversee that institution so i meant being involved in the audit committee it meant being involved in the other committees i served on served on the real estate foundation board um it was very very time consuming i'd spend fifteen hours a week volunteering as an elected official to make a difference so the center for western civilization i assume hidey talked about center for western civilization barely we blew past it really okay i only got forty five minutes with her i'm already at ninety with you and so perfect so the center for western civilization started while i was on the board and i was the champion on the border region so i started like i see kind of there six years okay six years there uh that kind of that marriage between judo joe christian and greek velocities exactly like that they're supposed to underpin our values in this nation western civilization the study of it how do we you know get rid of that crap yeah just kidding so i thought that was what see you was working on it they are trying to work on a john esmond that helped things by the way so bring me we're gonna bring me into the like the radio season and then we're gonna jump into our closing segments all right so last time i went over things very quickly you made me go back and we had the balance okay so 2008 out and an old friend reaches out to me and says hey we have a statewide ballot initiative so i said all right what do you need we need you to run the campaign perfect so i get back in the campaign politics now remember which initiative uh amendment 54 which was successful it was to remove influence campaign contributions out of politics from unions and direct family members and we ended up actually winning it we lost in the supreme court long story but of course the unions in colorado namely in teachers union mm-hmm we took their teeth out of campaign politics so the day we won they filed lawsuit and we lost in the supreme court but we did win yeah the initiative itself so but is there anything worse than public employees unions yeah no not really i mean like uh what's uh the word i'm looking for like uh when you're like a petty pedophile yes like that's worse now there are i thought you were talking about rape as well yeah impolitics though yeah the way they funnel that's what i'm looking for yeah the way they bundle money is unprecedented well and it's just like using people's tax derived dollars to negotiate against themselves it's just it's just not right really you're not gonna get an argument there so oops kick the table so two quick stories out of that so 98 i get back into the office or political office right and they're barely utilizing email the good news is my time with the software startup and the time at the franchise how technology had begun to integrate into business another light bulb moment we need to build a platform for politics that accesses voter data that we can use that would be generationally profound in the sense that how do we apply technology started another software database company uh this time the build outside of it was significantly less than it was 10 years before that we raised two million dollars in our first round well and we had that company for about four years ended up selling it long story won't get into that with you it didn't make you rich did not make me make you broke either no but there were nine partners in the company and we sold for pennies on the dollar but i'm still consulting on campaign politics trying to build this company and then in 2012 got approached by the folks over at 1310 kfka and Greeley and said hey we need a new morning team for our drive time program took that three years on the radio from the lowest ratings program in this region to the highest rated warning show program yes it was awesome had a lot of fun the one thing i did not like about the radio is this you get an eight to a ten minute segment right to be able to interview somebody who's got a lot to say well that's why we could do two hours exactly so you gotta you gotta be quick to the point yeah without being rude exactly and it gave us a voice gave me a voice to continue to talk about politics for three years even though I was doing the consulting stuff still working on campaigns and the only reason I am at left campaign politics is go around or working in politics is because I haven't had that light bulb moment back in 97 when it was the exercise and nutrition yeah it married two passions of mine back in 2010 coming out of that election it married two passion or 2008 married two passions of mine software data and politics yeah so well there's a there's actually a peer advisory organization like local think tank that you have to have failed at three businesses before you're allowed to even be a member oh so i've got two you've got one more failure in that you know i'm kidding well and and and for what it's worth like these projects that you've taken on like they were hard projects really complicated hard projects and kind of the one out of ten make it kind of a realm exactly and so i'm sure part of you sometimes is like man i should have made that work or i should have made this work but you know you're just you just played the odds you hit these are the best you could i imagine and here you are a hundred percent and one of the things i try and live by in life is no regrets i learned something in every no meaning in every interaction that i have and yeah could we have done some things differently yeah but it's a lesson learned it's like campaign politics okay you lost i lost a race for the state house in 2016 2016 best thing never happened to me at the time it didn't feel good to lose by 300 votes oh but a smart political person will go back and do the honest audit sure why did we lose wasn't because the volunteers didn't do what they were supposed to do exactly it always comes back to the candidate what could i have done different now don't get me wrong every once in a while there's a dynamic so strong that it's out of your control trumps on the ballot in Colorado Cory Gardner has no shot of winning yeah it was out of his control yeah but at a local level every once in a while that happens but more often than not it's on the candidate i know what i did wrong yeah i know what i should have done it's about legability is about approaches about issues it's about stances whatever yep and it probably hustle hustle is a big thing yeah hundred percent that you seem like a a high energy kind of a guy Tom i'm gonna go take a nap as soon as we well yeah but ever since you were 10 years old and playing baseball in this yeah i can tell you just like can't sit still for very long whatever what gives you a lot of energy eating right uh eating eating nutrition is like 80 percent of what i focus on nice no no crap no mindfulness no oh 100 percent mindfulness spiritual side of meditation action yeah get rid of the Facebook yeah right 100 percent all of it it mind body all of that connection is important but the energy having the ability to get up 536 in the morning be on the trail still get a workout in most days at the gym on top of it if you're not fueling the body properly you just can't perform fair enough fair enough um what else about your business journey is worthy of sharing or should we uh take a potty break and then go to the closing segments let's do the potty break i'm ready to go to the look here we are and we're back so Tom uh we're gonna jump into our faith family politics segment right now perfect and i had a question that's been noodling on my mind it's been been bothering me since you said i had to let like one of either business family or politics drop if i wanted to a city council i'm i'm willing to be a kind of a shitty city councilor yes uh which i think would be better than most of our existing city councilors but you have a pretty low bar in for a little bit i could i can make that comment i'm gonna make it one of my 31 priorities to be a better politician than most of the existing um although there's a couple of that but i respect in there very much but anyway let me digress i want to know if i just do like 70 percent can i like to okay on the family the business and the politics thing would that be so you're doing seven instead of seven instead of dropping one of three i just want to do 70 percent on each of the three wow can can you can you live with yourself if you did that well i can use it i like good bees that was worth a bee in high school yes so do you aspire to be a bee student now that you're an adult well no i'm just kidding no but i want actually idiot well even in even high school if i could put zero effort in and get a bee or a fairly you know modest effort in and get an a i was like well the multiplier on zero effort is phenomenal i'll take the bee but 70 percent so here's an interesting thing at mullen high school the grading system was 94 to 100 was an eight 87 to 93 if mullen high school you would be failing well but i think my 70 percent effort can still get a 94 percent on the city council utility that you scale you're actually not going to get an argument for me on that but you don't want to do 70 percent business now figured out i might just uh i might take your course this uh this next spring but i'm probably not going to run for council yet i might do another turn you've got time all right you know what there's an emulator on notice just so you know there's an old saying in politics a door always opens people get my opic and they think if i don't run this time i'm never going to be able to run again yeah doors always open i've been at this for 30 plus years there is always an opportunity yeah yeah be patient all right take the class well but be patient fair enough what else would you like do you want to start with politics generally or do you want to save that for let's just we've been in politics we may as well talk politics take that right away the one thing we didn't talk about was the upcoming election we haven't no how did we let that go well we haven't gotten to the politics segment okay politics um who you're voting for in the upcoming election well let's see i'll be but still like an economic and let's do a little analysis of the which races do you want to let's start well you're kind of a of a Colorado expert and definitely a northern Colorado expert so let's start with the Colorado scene like does have Heidi have a flaming chance because Jared Polis Trafalgar you saw the other day Trafalgar released a poll said Heidi's with him five she's with them five Trafalgar is not some fly-by-night shop yeah these guys are legit pollsters i have no reason to doubt their data but we're kind of back to what you had said earlier you go google Heidi and it's like a media blackout right and I don't see political commercials advertising anywhere because I cut the cord I don't know you're closer to Heidi's campaign than I am but because I know you interact in that sense how and why she is within five points I don't understand well so here's here's a I have 1.6 thousand friends on Facebook and those were all acquired previous to the social upheaval in 2020 and frankly for the most part before 2018 even when I post my podcast conversation with Heidi the candidate for the governor of Colorado and you know posted to the world to see you with a nice picture and stuff like that I've done it like three or four times it usually gets like 16 likes and two comments you think that's Facebook throttling it now fucking hey yeah uh my whole all the kids that I grew up with like they would love to see the fact that Kurt bear that little dorky kid from high school was able to interview the candidate for the governor of Colorado on his podcast 100% would support that because and 250 people at least should click I like that yes 100% agree with you it is still going on in fact shadow banning I think they call that yeah Facebook back in the day was the gold standard for political advertising right now Facebook we are having to try and figure out other platforms to get our digital ads out there because Facebook were on this side of the table is definitely definitely doing something funny right 100% because I deal with Facebook every election cycle and like I said it's gone from the gold standard especially if you're a conservative to right yeah well and you know Zuckerberg was just on Rogan the other day he was just kind of likeable yeah um buddy dump you know four hundred million or something into the election last cycle so most people don't know that oh maybe that's not something I was supposed to share Mark Zuckerberg dumped four hundred million dollars into the democratic coffers to help the mules get all the ballots to the places yep so did George Rose very strategically how they spent that money oh yeah yeah so it's a community activation yep so I don't know the answer to the question Kurt I am glad that it's a legitimate pollster and Heidi is at close yeah but I haven't seen the latest and Jared polls spent 20 would he spend last go around 26 million dollars yeah I figured 30 million is what he's gonna spend this time yeah so I find it although you shouldn't have to spend 30 million as an incumbent but he will he will he'll spend Jared Polis first gotta like the state board of education spend a million dollars of his own money to get a light so nobody knows who the board of regions are right even fewer people know right there is a state board of education you didn't spend a million dollars to get on the region's board did you know I think six thousand dollars and then he spent six million in that Democrat primary four Congress and CD to he spends whatever it takes to win because that guy is not done after if he gets real he wants to be the president hundred percent do you think he should be the president no no the problem with president is all of the people who want it shouldn't be right and the ones who don't want it should be right that's problem with politics in a nutshell that's why L3 exists find those good people and say we will equip you you will have the skills be a public servant not a politician yeah not a leech on the society exactly be a statesman yeah yeah it's kind of like it reminds me of the the certification for appraisers you know this from your real estate days MIA and we said made as instructed yes and may I rather right yeah and and politicians are kind of like that too I actually I Martin Lin turned me down for being on the podcast recently I was at an event where he was speaking and and he made a joke before I asked the question even he was like somebody asking him when he was going to run for politics yeah and help to fix our our state or region whatever he's like you know people ask me that a lot but I would say why would I become a politician when I can buy one for so cheap oh Martin which I probably shouldn't repeat that even but yeah but it you know there is like why what's the benefit him really yes you know and until it gets to a point where you're like you know they're gonna break Colorado so it's gonna be hard for me to sell houses yes that I want to build well and convention centers and whatever else he's got up his sleeve so perfect example of that landmark homes yeah Jason Cheryl Jason is the president of the L3 board or chairman of the board for oh he is for our five to ten C3 and then there's Kim and their chemically Sharon and Barbara Colzer okay so we cover the whole spectrum of left right and but Jason we've we've gotten to know Jason over the years very articulate very sharp business man during the shutdowns when we were helping our folks in Loveland we had a couple of issues that came up where we had to deal with state of Colorado and it wasn't just restaurants it was a lot of other businesses and we just asked Jason will you meet with the governor I think this the first one was the governor's people right he's like yeah I got this and we went through a little messaging with him and you know you don't know until you know you take somebody and put them in front of very important people like that and they have to deliver a message yeah as soon as that meeting ended we were like you have to run for governor you have to run for the U.S. Senate and again why would somebody who is successful in business he's got so much to lose exactly yeah I was actually was with governor polis last summer he came to visit one of my members are former members now actually and friends Mike and it was fun I was more of a fly in the wall and invited guests but Mike hit him up with you know I don't know why Colorado is like following the Colorado airs the California air standards and requiring these $1,500 catalytic converters on people's two thousand other cars which basically means those cars go into trash heap and people become riders of buses and so instead of like you're not fixing a problem like one out of a thousand cars is actually one of these old cars but you throw poor people into worse poverty when you require this and I've been to California California sucks for business I don't know why you're trying to turn us into California and polis and this people were all there it was a photo opportunity I loved it and how do you respond Jared's really good he's sifty he's like oh man he's like he will deflect I asked him why I have now a number of oil field services businesses in my local think tank membership and I he visited our rotary club he was 20 minutes late and whatever but I asked the question you know why have my my business members that are in the oil field services industry why have they increased the revenue so much in every other state but they're stable and level in Colorado when there's an energy crisis in Europe and the one or decreasing in Colorado decreasing in Colorado like it's a good good evidence right there of the kinds of policies and regulations that polis has encouraged within the bureaucracy like the world is starving for energy is too high price but but polices put up enough hurdles here yes yes mostly through his own individual actions not through the the congress or this and that it's his axe to grind so that you can show the democratic overlords how loyal he is to the cause what was his answer it's all about economics and he didn't he didn't answer the question at all yeah of course right he doesn't like people like me asking him questions yeah and he hasn't Jared if you're listening you can still be on the podcast I would be happy to have you on here well back to enjoy it I'll have you and Heidi on at the same time if you'd like oh you want to get the debate I that should be it it should be on the local experience you should get the debate there you go it seems unlikely but I could dream you could dream I could dream well you already know you've got 50% right Heidi's going to come right so get reach out to Jared's people and say Heidi has committed date time flexibility yeah next time he's in northern Colorado coming soon I'll do anywhere up to two to four hours yep donate my time donate my effort and we'll have a list of questions so you like to get paid too huh I do well I don't know not to opt for the podcast but but I do have to make a living ultimately exactly no I think that's brilliant I love it yeah we'll see you know Heidi you'll agree oh for sure okay so there you go well if I get Jared to agree for sure yeah I'm pretty sure I could probably just use her name in the front end um Heidi I'm just you think um so Tom talk to me I don't feel like there's too much more in the politics side is there anything more that needs to be said oh you wanted to handicap races so we got stuck on Heidi oh yeah Joe days got a chance okay in the game all right uh republicans quick analysis we're not getting the house back no too many deficit too many seat deficit the state Senate got a little bit tricky just now with Kevin Priola okay leaving the republican party registering as a them oh wow you miss that news I swear it was the big news wow so Priola switches the democrat party they're already starting a recall of him oh wow so republicans why did he switch because Kevin always doesn't always my pot Kevin and I have known each other very cordial he tends to be a spy list with he votes with democrats on a lot of major public policy issue whether it's overriding table with fees whether it's clean energy green you just go through the list we've all known Kevin would be more comfortable in the democrat party sure but it just made our job as republicans in the state of Colorado that much more difficult to win enough seats to get the state Senate and block the governor and block democrats in the state house but if we hold our two key seats SD 15 then the El Paso County seats a Rob Woodward up here in Lovelin Rob is running a great campaign looking good high Z just ran into the bus saw last week democrats hired a PR or PR PI firm and he was redistricted out of his Senate seat got an apartment the other senate seat they have been following them for months okay almost never steps foot in his senate district oh that he's running for and so now they're trying to say you don't live there so that just got a little tricky for high Z and then we need three pickups which in this political climate we should be able to do so we're still cautiously optimistic we'll get the state senate and one party control in Denver will stop at least for two years what's the ballot initiative seen I forget there's a locally we've got the local minimum wage thing you got yeah I have paid attention to Fort Collins state of Colorado I have not paid attention the ballot initiative okay well let's let's check in on your family and your face before we let you head off from here I understand to another political event yes another political event gots before that no yes I do but I still have to drive so and I am well under the limit it's not like anybody's not listening live right it's all right yeah you'll be safe way before I'll be about they could use this as evidence in your due I trial if you could cut but wow no you've had like a fairly like two fingers this whole time I know I've just been sipping it definitely a scotch guy so I can hold it um let's start with family and let's go full circle to where we started a long time ago with your comment about splitting the states up right yeah so we got red states we got blue states middle sun um goes the Marine Corps what one of the things I always told my kids is you don't have to go to college if you know what you want to do and if you don't know what you want to do maybe the military just go figure it out so Joseph goes into the Marine Corps does it is four and a half years medically discharged um yeah I think he has had 12 or 13 surgeries so from the time he was in the time he was in it was in training so he was a reconnaissance Marine you know what a recon Marine is it's so on the army scouts get the arrows kind of thing it is 100% on the army side of it think of it army Ranger yeah it is the lead lead advance team kind of exactly so he was an operator and just his body gave out broke both his femurs well yeah it uh unfortunate but came back to Colorado and he got a great job at ball aerospace working as a tech he was making whatever what I called twenty twenty two dollars an hour saved up a bunch of money and he was going to buy a house then COVID hits then you fast forward and all of a sudden when he goes to buy a home it is now the spring of twenty twenty one he had been looking sixty thousand dollars more than when he had looked four months earlier yeah so he said what what do you think I should do I said well you love California but you're not going back there for politics you hate the snow you got two choices you want to be by the water and you want to be warm and you want to live in a Florida state and he said well in Florida or Texas that's it those were his two choices he packed up moved to Florida and he is thriving down there his sister who is it ball aerospace as well she had a college degree um what's her name Victoria okay and she's older younger older the oldest she couldn't make it work financially ball aerospace right in the state of Colorado so she applied to defense contractors given her specialty in what she does at ball did at ball she ended up in Florida last week started her job yesterday with a new defense contractor making twenty thousand dollars more a year than she was making it ball that's good for her and in a community that in an affordability level yeah would be like half as much as living not quite half as much it'd be the difference between four Collins and say Greeley yeah so Greeley still get it up there expense wise but you can afford to live in Greeley yeah yeah if you're starting out at that age and the youngest is a Tommy he is an aspiring chef he's here in Colorado and at some point he his intent is when he gets for far enough a long to be down in Florida so are you like I mean not to signal anything about are you thinking you might want to move to Florida here before too long you know what I've got the best of both worlds I love if you win Thompson a stay kidding I've got the best of both worlds I grew up a native of Colorado I hunt I fish I love the outdoors take advantage of it there's no more beautiful state in the union than here plus I get to go to Florida four or five times a year and so we'll see how it plays out but make no mistake politics played a major role in my kids yeah leaving the state oh yeah I met a restaurant tour from New York City in Winter Park in the winter of 2021 and he had um he decided to shut down his restaurant and move it to Florida St. Petersburg I think if I remember Tampa one of those two and he was he was had his family out at Winter Park he was like I had the most successful year of restaurant I've had in my whole life you know and all my friends with restaurants in New York City are broke yes and so yes open closed not free so I'm proud of all of the kids and the decisions that they are making and yeah a little bit proud that they're making decisions and they can see the writing on the wall in Colorado which is terrifying for states like Illinois yes Colorado California you know I but everybody's been calling for California's demise for 50 years so it's hard to argue against it but at this point it's kind of like Europe like what does Europe actually do well well they manufacture some stuff but not really anymore because energy costs are too high they've got some educational things but most of the universities are like super woke and cause the policies that have their manufacturing industry have strung by stupid decisions and dependent on Russia for energy right because France shut down Germany Germany shut down all the nuclear France at least is a little bit oh dude I had that revenge just half nuclear Germany shut down all but maybe they shut them all down now are at least one or two or three is all that's got left out of 20 yeah yeah I wrote months and months ago that the seeds of Europe's destruction were seeded by Fukushima yes and Ukraine's challenge was basically leveraged into being by Europe's decision making yeah it's a horrible decision making up and down but yeah the kids are making kids are making their own decisions we have a thing we do one word descriptions okay of your three children each one word of each so you want to start with Victoria one word description of your kids okay it'll be sufficient yeah let's let's go with let's start with Victoria and I would say compassionate hmm that's a nice word how about Joseph entrepreneurial and Tommy creative nice do you want to talk about your ex-wife their mom or anything oh she's been great we actually just we get along better after we got divorced I mean so many couples that are that way like it's just easier less yes and you seem like a kind of a guy that would be easier and small doses really oh smart as remark right when you turn the microphone off last we talked about politics we talked about family you want to talk about faith now you talked about your Catholic high school but we haven't touched too much on it yeah no born and raised Catholic as all not all most Hispanics are although to interject politics into the political dynamic of the Catholic Church you know who is bleeding more what numbers in the Catholic Church have you seen this hmm Hispanics in the Mexican community oh they are leaving the Catholic Church and they're going to the evangelical community well because the the Catholics no longer represent the values frankly that most of them have about family and life and yeah trans stuff you go down the list LGBTQ plus yeah whatever you go down the list so it's not necessarily political in that sense but it is so everything's political you know people criticize me they're like I don't know why you got to get political in your blogs and things like that you know you're in business and and I'm always like you know what politics is the tip of the spear for business and if we ignore that part the the spear will kill us all before we even know we've been killed exactly hundred percent so we're back to you may not have an interest in politics but it's paying attention to everything you do yeah so born and raised Catholic so in or not y'all and then and are you you mentioned your Hispanic background are you full Hispanic yeah some weighty in there somewhere no no no lucero mom's main name is Rivera okay and then it goes to Salazar and Gutiérrez and we can keep going down the list yeah yeah I you have a very you could pass for a Caucasian not that that matters in the slightest and it depends on where I am in the country so people here lucero and I've got my big nose and stringy hair and they think Italian but if I'm in New York they know if I'm in Florida they know but if I'm in the Midwest they hear Lucero because of how light-complexed I am but my mom is Spanish my dad's side Mexican right so that Mediterranean Spanish light-complexed green eyes yeah that's my mom yeah yeah so I got her complexion so talk about having it rough growing up all of my Hispanic friends yeah you were too white for them I was too white for them and my white friends are like yeah your Mexican is like whatever fuck y'all yeah well it don't matter that's kind of my philosophy exactly exactly so what was the question it's about religion oh religion we're back to religion so then I went to college and I got super enlightened because I was a polycyan a philosophy major sure so then I'm like oh I'm so much smarter than all of you people searching now so now um agnostic I was never an atheist it was like yeah the church is smart to be an atheist yeah the church is antiquated blah blah blah and then in my adult years came back to the Catholic church and it's interesting I have my love-hate relationship with the church in fact pre-COVID before the priest and I get whatever it freaked out and it was vaccine it was mask I was going to church two to four times a week right because Catholics we have church seven days a week yeah right and it has been an interesting spiritual journey since then I love my church and but I'm trying to find that pathway to God that I don't necessarily have to go through the Catholic church yeah well you but I still go occasionally you're you're you're so people who either born like a libertarian or an authoritarian it's like boys and girls it's almost that yes and the Catholics are a little too authoritarian generally speaking like the church power structure and even just how much control they want to have you know I'm thinking like Presbyterians they're a little bit more like Lucy Goosey anyway check out our church sometime if you want to say it 10 I I have been to a Lutheran Mass before uh been to you so one of the things on the Trump campaign when I worked for Trump in 2016 was I had two coalitions not to get into the weeds I worked on oil and gas energy and the Hispanic coalition okay yeah and that was kind of so when I saw the number back to the reference point about the Catholic Catholic church bleeding Hispanics right so in 2016 we're like all right we need to go to Hispanics where Hispanics are and I said the Catholic church and one of the guys on the campaign said no we're going to the evangelical churches I could not believe in 2016 how many Hispanic Spanish language evangelical churches there were and are in the state of Colorado so I went to a number of their masses and it's yeah that different yeah well and something I'm actually I'm close friends with a handful of Catholics and and a couple of them in particular come to mind when I when I think about this topic of religion but they were very you know and not that that's it's righteous or what but with the lockdowns with the mask mandates with the vaccine mandates and things some of the Catholics that I've known were some of the stronger like no God's the boss you're not the boss F you yeah um and frankly the the new Catholic church doesn't really have they're kind of more the little subservient little bit it's not uh with the social movement kind of stuff well but the Catholic people some of the friends that I have are actually fairly strict with their adherence to know God's the boss not yes and you know the Pope is the boss but God's the boss really yeah yeah well and you you look at the political side of the Catholic church with what the Pope is doing related to climate change with what the Pope did related to vaccines with what the Pope and it's just like the hypocrisy of making the box too small for me to want to be in exactly exactly so I still love the mass I still I don't go regularly but occasionally I pop in and it's nice yeah and but you've got no doubt about God's existence or the Jesus was his son and died for his our sins and all that no doubt about any of that believe 100% still pray for miracles know that miracles happen know that God's intervention is involved in it and yeah it's just the church it what's the interface like what's our interface with God's supposed to be isn't yeah the Catholicism is of evangelicals exactly just get Bill Gates could you just build us a nice computer that lets us just talk to God please well Bill Gates will let you think he can right and he will have you talking to somebody as long as he can control as long as he's got yeah 100% in control yeah so by the way do you like JP Sears oh you don't know JP Sears why do I not know JP Sears oh he did a bunch of old videos are used to be about all about entrepreneurism and stuff but now he's become like a freedom fighter oh JP Sears I'll turn you on to JP Sears you're gonna like JP Sears yeah anyway I don't remember what the joke I was going to share about him was but we can just move on that's the beautiful thing about a podcast there you go the local experience is the craziest experience that you would be willing to share to our listeners create yeah I've been thinking about that I have just lived such a straight lace oh yeah right I really got nothing in fact actually so funny story because I think I said it earlier that it was my mom's birthday as well Sunday so we're hanging out and Dean Yell the woman that I've been with for years we're talking she asked my mom a question oh about life and about yeah you know staying busy right now and my mom's answer was I live a boring life and it's a perfect life I leave I live a boring life and it's perfect I don't do anything stupid although I don't know I did a lot of stupid shit when I was young well we don't need to cover it now did your mom was your mom kind of that Republican then in your whole chapter of the family or is she well it was interesting for example that kind of changed your heart and your mind here's a funny thing about that so it was my mom and it was her mom my grandmother and my aunt her little sister so I grew up in a house in the 1970s with three women so my mom's working example laid the foundation my grandmother worked as well because she ended up divorced and that was still taboo in the 60s and 70s my parents were divorced too and that was yeah and she went to work she was cleaning office buildings and but you're not old enough to remember but in the 1970s we had this thing called the ERA movement equal rights amendment speaking of amendments to the Constitution the women should be equal well part of that conversation was always abortions good so I grew up in a household with conflicting signals right in that everybody worked everybody worked hard everybody carried their weight but at the end of the day they supported abortion they supported this they supported that and so mom was over the all over the board politically she she's probably more conservative than I am now and so those values began to take shape is I got older at Molen High School in the Catholic School and so but yeah given where we are today and my mom given her position in life and looking it back to the dead and everything else and working hard and being penalized for it and then on the value side of things yeah she is incredibly conservative but I think we all go through that journey right we all figure it out I don't know yeah yeah I remember when I told my mom that you know I'm sure I would want to at least live with a girl for a couple years before I would consider marrying her stuff like that you know and so there's those things that don't make sense to you necessarily I'm telling you know later how much better the art for you sometimes exactly exactly so my evolution still going on politically still trying to figure it out still trying to solve this problem how do we get urban and rural folks who were on the same page of our political and big corporate or overlords how do we at least figure out how to work together yeah to overthrow these institutions and replace those people yeah well this has been a lot of fun I've learned a lot we drank we not too much I drank one more sketch than you did I had a sip a sip see you next time Kurt thank you thanks appreciate the time got speed thank you for listening to this episode this is Alma Ferrer producer of the Loco Experience podcast if you enjoyed this program and would like to support the show 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