LoCo Experience EP 281 | A Legacy of Family, Team & Community - with Fort Collins Heating and Air

Today I was honored to sit down with longtime Loco Think Tank member and CEO of Fort Collins Heating and Air, Glenn Frank, along with his key leadership team, Anthony Taylor and Jesse Frank. Anthony serves as president and COO and Jesse as quality assurance supervisor. We spent some time on the evolution of the business in recent years, the addition of plumbing and then electrical to Fort Collins heating and air, and the relatively recent launch of Origin Plumbing, Heating, Cooling and Electrical, and their efforts to grow market share outside of the immediate Fort Collins area. We talked about technology and trends in the industry, roles and responsibilities now and in the future, and especially the significance of saying yes to being part of a multi-generational family business. HVAC and veterinary services and many other industries have been bought up like crazy in recent years by private equity to the point where very few remain privately held today. It's clear, however, that Glenn and his boys are proud to continue the quality of service and care for team and community that family businesses are known for. We chased some squirrels, we had some laughs, and I learned a lot about business and family today. So please tune in and enjoy my conversation with Glenn and Jesse Frank and Anthony Taylor. Welcome to the Loco Experience Podcast. On this show, you'll get to know business and community leaders from all around northern Colorado and beyond. Our guests share their stories. 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. Welcome back to the Loco Experience Podcast. My guest today is the crew from Fort Collins Heating and Air and Origin Plumbing, Heating, Cooling, Electrical. I have Chairman and CEO Glenn Frank. I have President Anthony Taylor. And what was it? It is. Q&A, or Quality Assurance Supervisor plus Multi-Tool Fixer, Jesse Frank. Welcome, guys. Thank you. Glenn, let's start off with Origin as a new brand to market. Good job, Anthony, mixing it up, having the Fort Collins heating and air in the room also. Yeah. Tell us about that. What's the timeline? I know you caught everybody's attention with the new building branding over there at the fairgrounds. Yeah, yeah. I can speak to that a little bit. So, you know, obviously, Fort Collins heating and air conditioning has been around a very long time. Our focus has always been Fort Collins and the immediate surrounding area. About eight years ago, we added plumbing and two years ago we added electrical. So, we've been trying to figure out how to introduce those names of the services that we do within our existing business. Was the plumbing, like, asterisk for a while or something, too? Or how did you get that word out on that? On our website, it just literally said, and plumbing. And so we didn't change the name or anything. So, yeah, as time went on and we started to hit a point in Fort Collins where we felt like we had a lot of market share. We had talked, and it was really the idea of the boys to maybe have another brand. Something that they can grow more. Something that could reach out further. It's kind of lame if you inherit the business from dad, and you're like, huh, we can't really do any better than dad did because dad got 47% market share, and how are we going to do more than that? It'll probably do way more than I ever did, but we'll see. But having a new place to grow into new services is pretty cool. Way to introduce the other services and to be better branded to go into other markets. But it all rolls under the same company. It's a doing business as it's another brand. I compare it to, like, Chevrolet, GMC. Sure, yeah. No difference, really. Running the same business, operations mostly. Don't have separate teams, separate paychecks, none of that kind of stuff. No, it's all run through the same, supported by the same staff and everything. It's a little confusing sometimes. Yeah, it probably will settle out, you know, in a while, I would imagine. Yeah, the idea is, you know, someday the Origin brand could be likely bigger than... Even beyond what it's doing now. Yeah, bigger than the Fort Collins Heating and Air brand, potentially. Sure, sure. That's what... Dig it. Yeah. Talk to me, Anthony, about... what the president does. You're the chairman and CEO, does that mean not very much anymore? Well, you can answer that, Anthony. Yeah, well, the hope is he continues to do less and less, not just from us, that is his desire as well, we're not forcing him out, but continuing to take over more and more, so my title is president COO, so trying to oversee most of the daily operations. Gotcha. I missed the COO part when we were talking earlier. Yeah. Yeah. So just... So it's President Plus, kind of. Yeah. So that's really what I've been focused on is just the overall operations. Glenn's still heavily involved in the sales and marketing side with my hope is to continue to learn more about that side and ultimately take that over as well from him. But... Um, yeah, he's got a wealth of knowledge, so just trying to pull as much knowledge and information out of him as I can over the next year and as he slowly starts taking more time off and enjoying a little bit more freedom and let us take over running. Yeah, I dig it. Oh, and Glenn, I have to compliment, you've been a member of LOCO for at least four years now, maybe six? Yeah, I mean, there was a little break in between, I think, but yes. But you always brought a great marketing mind to that. And as a relative old guy, I have to compliment the relative old guys that stay active and kind of leading edge in what it takes to build good brands and systems and attract customers. Yeah. Kudos to you on that because it's not always – a lot of business owners try to – outsource that to an employee and then are constantly frustrated when they don't really know what's one of those things that's tough to keep up with. And I feel like I haven't kept up. It's hard to keep up lately with AI and all the different means of advertising. But that is probably one of the things that helped throttle us forward. in the years past is my laser focus in the marketing side of things and always wanting to be on the leading edge of whatever was happening. So your role has become, Anthony, kind of managing a lot of the things that are happening but not really influencing revenues too much or getting into that space as far as outreaches and whatever else. Yeah, so Glenn, with the sales and marketing team really is still focused on revenue coming into the business. And then right now with me overseeing the sales are the installation and service teams. Yeah, focusing on the execution of that revenue that's brought in sense. Yeah, since describe the quality assurance fixer role for me, Jesse. And, and how, before we go there, Anthony, how long have you been on the team for Collins heating and air? Yeah, so summer in high school, and then if you don't include that, then back since 2019. So coming up on eight years, so early 2019. Gotcha. And Jesse, back to you, sorry. No, you're good. I'm a rabbit chaser a little bit. I love it. Yeah. So, I mean, quality assurance is, I'm pretty specifically, you know, focused in on the installation department. I can be consulted from the service department, but I have a specific focus to lead my four-man team of guys that are basically installers that have... Kind of risen the ranks and we... So they're like your leads as far as install? Yeah. Yeah, and we have two supervisors as well, which is a separate thing as far as job management and supervision. But these guys are dedicated to, you know, customer service. Delivering the goods? Yeah, customer service, ensuring that the equipment's performing and then handling any... Concerns that may pop up, I mean, the installation side of our business on the HVAC side is like kind of our bread and butter. So that's like our largest, probably our largest department. That pays the rent. Exactly. The plumbing and electrical are growing to feed themselves. So we've got a lot of business runs through that, and it's really, really important to us that we continue to provide a high level of service as we grow. So you're kind of studying their systems of installations and stuff and doing some trainings along, like, how can we do it bigger? Yep, help with technical training, help with technical support. A lot of guys call me for technical support and then working with customers on the backside and stuff when there's any issues that arise. Are you kind of a computer's nerd kind of guy? No, no. Not that way? No, I'm pretty good with the equipment, though. In the hard tech. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, mechanical equipment, electrical, that sort of thing. I'm starting to learn from these two about how to work on the business instead of in the business. But I mean, honestly, most of my career has been working in the business and just honing the craft of the trade. Tell me about how long you've been doing this. You've been doing summers also since teenager, or what was your path to... Yeah, honestly, really right out of school. I did a brief stint in, like, an automotive trade school and then just decided it was not as good as what I had grown up with as far as a career path, and then just decided. I mean, I knew I wanted to work with my hands of some sort. So I spent, you know. five plus years in the field um installing equipment so i want to come back to you glenn uh chairman uh suggests that there's a board uh is there is now is this the board right here there's a board impromptu board meeting here yep yeah i dig it yep used to make all the decisions myself but uh as of this year um jesse and anthony are our owners so So we're getting used to making decisions together, and it hasn't been hard so far. It's really, you know, it's been pretty smooth. A bit of a formalizing of what was already in process, kind of? Yeah, yeah. And we've been working together anyway for a long – it's not a new thing. Right, right, right. But it is a little different, you know, to – And it's just like, okay, we want to, you know, even when we're gifting money or, you know, because we do a bit of philanthropy in the community. And I was like, you know, I used to just make those decisions off the cuff myself. And Anthony's like, I don't even like that nonprofit. Why are you doing that with partly my money? That's right. Yeah. I mean, there was some over the years, there has been some back and forth would probably be political would be the only thing we were ever really, you know, disagree on, I'd say so. Yeah, we do. Yeah. Yeah, there's we and that's pretty on the business. We're all pretty aligned. Yeah, which is great. Makes it makes it easy. Fair enough. Thanksgiving dinners are interesting. Well, I know you've been tempted at times, Glenn, and this will be a small squirrel chase, but you're a relatively conservative guy and kind of have thoughts of public service at some point or whatever. And it's kind of scary as a business leader to... to even be visible in that space sometimes because you're like oh you know a lot of my customers might cancel me if i'm wear a mega hat or whatever yeah yeah i don't you know it's interesting and uh we uh yeah i i thought about running for different things in the past but it's really not my calling i've realized it's not you know um so you know i i do support local um candidates sometimes and stuff and that's where we sometimes get some negative press a little bit For anybody that's listening that cares, we're pretty diverse. You're a nonpolitical guy in general. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know people. You've known people for 30 years. So if somebody you know is trying to make a difference and you believe in them, when you were the one decider, I'd do what I want. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I do believe in everything we do is impacted by policy and legislation. For sure. And so it's an important thing that we should all care about. But we... In the end, I think most of us have the same end desire. We have different ways of thinking of how to get there sometimes. But I think that's true. Yeah, we don't we don't we try not to to bring politics into the workplace at all, really. So let's talk a little bit about business structure. We hinted toward it a bit with the kind of you've got kind of the revenue side, there's There's sales people that I imagine are going out both kind of following up on leads and stuff like that to the marketing department brings them but then I mean do door knock do you send out mailers how do you find those customers and then what's the customer experience look like when they first meet you and I'll whoever wants I guess whoever's best to answer. I just, I guess, speak to the marketing side of things since that's kind of my wheelhouse. But, you know, we do all kinds of marketing from grassroots. A lot of wrap trucks. Wrap trucks. You know, I think we have 75 trucks. Anthony just told me the other day. I didn't know we had that many. That's a lot of depreciation every month. That's a lot of trucks driving around. We've become a fleet business, really. I mean, you know, right? Right. Just maintaining that many trucks is a real big boy job. Yeah, that's a whole business within itself. But, you know, we do, you know, yard signs, email. Obviously, you're forced to do Google and, you know, the digital ads. Yeah. Um, but you know, really what we focus on the most and we run a really small, uh, compared to other companies in our, in our market, in our industry, uh, our marketing, uh, budget is very small, uh, believe it or not, um, under 5%, usually sometimes as low as 3% of our revenue is in marketing. Um, where the biggest part we spend money on in marketing really is just What Jesse ensures is that quality assurance piece. Customer surveys and follow-ups and how we're doing the right thing. And sometimes we have to make difficult decisions with taking care of the customer. And there's situations where... We'll have, you know, we have to do something to make it right and it costs money, you know, or we'll do something for free. And I've always just looked at that as almost a piece of marketing as well. Yeah, that's fair. Just knowing how much it costs to get a new customer and the price associated with making them happy if you need to, you know. Well, occasionally those problem customers become some of your raving fans. Absolutely. You know, send you two customers a year. Yeah, and Anthony can probably speak to that more because he does handle, he's involved, him and his team are involved with, you know, dealing with what we call those customer care calls. Okay. Because you can't do the volume that we do without having something come up. Sure, I'm sure. So we got a lead, and the salesperson goes out, does an estimate, I need to replace my furnace. Let's use that as an example. And I want actually an air conditioning system now. This probably could be a true story. I've got a window air conditioner now, but Jill and I have lived in a bungalow in Old Town without air conditioning for 16 years of our marriage prior to this year. This year made that impossible. Like, in reality, I probably could replace my furnace and put a new full cooling system in. And, Jill, if you're listening, not next year either. We'll be fine. But that's the lead I responded to. I saw a Facebook ad. I'm like, okay, let's get an estimate. So what happens from there, Anthony? Yeah, so the way we kind of see two main ways that people come into our business is the way that you just explained, like, maybe they're proactively wanting to replace or their system is down, but they know it's old. So they're just going to call and go direct to, let's get what we call a comfort consultant out. Let's get a comfort consultant out, which is a sales person that helps design a system that's right for them. Um, that I would say, well, we do get a good amount of those type of leads coming in. Uh, but I'd say the, the, maybe the more common way that a customer comes in first is they want to have a service tech come out when it breaks. Oh, sure. So usually they hope it'll just, it's a cheaper pair, $250 and it just works. Not $5,000 and have a new one. Yeah, and so sometimes it'll be on a 15-, 20-year-old system that we'll get called out on. And one of our values is we will always present a repair option. And then if it has passed that 15-year replacement lifespan, we just always recommend for them to get a replacement option as well. And we just let them make what the best decision is for them. Yeah, yeah. And that a lot of times will lead to maybe just replacing, but also a lot of times it just might be a repair. But our goal is always to make that a customer for life. Well, and set up the repair such that when old Betsy gives out next time, we're probably replacing and maybe adding the air conditioner. And we'll always gladly do the repair if that's a better option for the customer at the point. Yeah, interesting. And maybe it'll get them another five to ten years, depending on the system. But, yeah, then it's just on us for the next five to ten years. Maybe we can get them on membership plan and just do routine maintenance on the system, which we always recommend. It can help extend the life of the system, and it is just recommended for the manufacturer. Sure. Service is really a lot like to me, the complexity of the organization, because now you've got a whole bunch of training for all these different people that are explaining these different options and things. And I'm imagining a lot of explaining the last few years about, hey. While we were giving you an estimate to change out your furnace to add air conditioning, we noticed that your electrical panel is actually far too small to support that. Here's what we recommend on the electrical side, too, or here's getting those different departments to understand the comprehensive solution process. It can be a natural conversation starter without being too pushy, but just letting them know, hey, we do have a full-service plumbing or electrical department, which can reduce marketing costs if we have guys and gals that are good at having that conversation. Oh, yeah. And electrical is kind of different in some ways. Like air conditioning, you can put up a sign that says, is your wife complaining about how hot it is in the house or things like that where you're kind of addressing it. I want to add a hot tub and maybe I'm going to have to call an electrician or whatever. It's less about the pain of my heater doesn't work and stuff like that. Plumbing, there's obvious pain there. Electrical, unless there's like a circuit board smoking, it's a little different thing. I assume anyway. Is that true, Mr. Marketing Guru? Yeah. It's interesting. If you want to know the truth, how we got into electrical was putting in new AC units requires an electrician a lot. And so we got to a point where we could easily keep an electrician busy. And so it just made sense. Because that one electrician wants to go on vacation once in a while, so we might as well have two electricians. We were keeping several subcontractors busy. And then, you know, there's a big demand for EV chargers and backup power and, you know, and quite honestly, even how we got into plumbing, a lot of our customers were just asking, hey, do you do this? Can you do this for me? And so, you know, when we didn't have a department for those, other services right to turn them away or recommend them to someone else yeah and then you're crossing your fingers that the recommendation is still good yeah so when the time was right we just added it because our customers were really asking for all of those things yeah and so it's just a natural addition Jesse, I want to shift into your role a little bit. These guys credited you with kind of a fixer mentality, but make it better kind of mentality as well. Talk to me about what does that look like on a day-to-day or week-to-week scenario for you? How much of your time is like... With the team, specifically jumping into challenges, thinking. Sure. I noticed sort of the progression was we were going, do you want to just continue the customer journey? If you want, maybe. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. Yeah, I like it. So, yeah, if you... So I got the estimate or whatever, right? Yeah. Yeah, so you sign the estimate. You work with our sales professional, and you like what we had to offer. You liked what he was telling you about our company and our family-owned business and all the values that we have. And then we turn it over to the install department, comes in, And they've got all the specs. It's, you know, this unit, and here's the timeline. Is there a custom software for your industry that does a lot of that stuff? Yep. Yeah, pretty industry-specific software. Fair. Okay, sorry to— No, it's FindMe's service titan, it's called, and it houses all the customer data and all the stuff that's important to do our jobs together. But we have a team of, you know, the install manager as well as two supervisors. They all take part in reviewing the jobs. Our salesmen have a pretty specific process to turn things in so that things happen quickly and we're not back and forth asking questions. Yep, yep. And then we have technical people look at it, right, because we want to know is this job, does everything look right, and is this the best setup for success that it can be. Cool. And then we reach out to the customer. And does your software, like, automatically order the parts and the pieces and stuff? No, somebody needs to service Titan if you're listening. You can add that. Yeah, those are real people. And then, you know, the... You know, game day comes around, our installers, we we have pretty good inventory management and we we stage equipment for them. We, you know, set them up with all of the parts that they need for the job in the morning so that they can go out and be as effective as possible and get the job done in a timely manner. Like I said, we've got a couple of supervisors that are there to support those installers, and then they go out and do their job one, two days, typically for for most jobs. And then the quality assurance aspect is – I call you back. It doesn't work like it's supposed to. Not even. We actually – Proactive. Yeah, proactive quality assurance. So any full system job is going to get a separate visit from our quality assurance technician. We try to combine that. Like the team leaves. I enjoy my house for a couple hours, and then somebody shows up. They're like, hey, I just want to make sure everything is working like it's supposed to. Yeah, it usually can happen several days or in the busy season, you know, unfortunately a little bit, maybe a week or so. But there's somebody actually there making sure it, because the customer might not always know if it's really working like it's supposed to be working. It gives, yeah, it gives time to see if there's any bugs with the system, if the customer has any. questions on how to operate the system it it's a good opportunity to capture those all the retired folk will meet you at the door with the list you know that they came up with and yeah how do i do this to the thermostat yeah if i go on vacation what what do i do then yeah yeah i'd just like to comment on this this is a unique uh service that we offer i don't know that a lot of other companies do this and it's all stemmed from as we grew the business um I, you know, as I grew the business from say, you know, a few people, um, it was important to me to go out and look at every job that we'd installed to ensure that it was getting done the way that I wanted it. So you, you had Jesse's job for quite a while. Oh yeah. I'd go out and look at every job. And then we grew to the point where I couldn't do it anymore. So then I had, uh, another person do that, that I trusted and he's not with us anymore. He's He's got his own business now. Which is good. That's a testimony to his skill set, right? I've lost count of how many people have started their own business that used to work for us. We've got one leaving next week. To start his own? To start his own. Yeah, I think it's really cool, too, by the way. But anyway, yeah, it's a very highly trusted part of our business, and it's expensive. I'm sure. And we do it and still stay competitive. Yeah. And it's not just we go out and look and, oh, yeah, the unit's level and we're out there with a clipboard and check off a few things and make it like – it's not a dog and pony show. This is – they're spending four hours typically on a system bringing in as many tools as it took to do the job almost with test equipment and meters and – Fully commissioning the system, making sure that they got what we promised, that what we sold them, that it's running at the efficiency that we sold it at, not just what's stamped on the box. Sure. And so we can verify all of those things and then make sure that – Expensive up front probably heads off a lot of problems. It does. It heads off a lot of problems and callbacks. It doesn't eliminate them all, but it does. And it ensures that our quality stays high. Yeah. So our person comes out, he walks me through, answers my questions about the vacation and stuff. Yeah. Also a big part of what's going on right now with electrification and the push with that is navigating the rebate process, right? That's a big key role that our quality assurance technicians and our coordinator help with is helping our customers navigate through that. We submit most of that for them, although there's some involvement, sign here, that sort of thing. Just walking them through, showing them what that looks like, and to Glenn's point, our QA techs use a lot of very expensive, precise measurement tools to ensure that that system is operating as intended. Well, from my understanding with the super tight houses that we have to build now, it changes the game in terms of how the air machines and stuff work and flow. Or maybe it's the same but different. I mean, you might be talking about air quality, right? That's a big piece of what we do as well. Same with water filtration, right? Yeah, air quality is important. Having a really good filter helps with that. There's also things you can put in your home to help with that, like introducing fresh air in a really balanced way with an ERV or adding air purification with a ionizers or UV lights. And you guys do those kind of add-ons and stuff as well. What's up with the... What about heat pumps? Who's the expert on heat pumps? You do a lot of that stuff too? Oh, heat pumps are amazing. So... Yeah, I'll try to use as best language as I can for this. But so energy, I would like to just define the terms like energy input versus output, right? Yeah. We take electricity, and then we convert it to heat. Or we take gas, and then we burn it and convert it to heat. When I turn on the air conditioner in my car, it burns more gas. So I know that the air conditioner takes a lot of electricity. So a furnace, you would put in one unit of gas, and you would get, say, on the highest, most efficient, 97% of that one unit of gas turned into heat. Same with electric resistive heat, like your baseboard or your… 30% or something there, right? It's one-to-one, actually. So you get 100% of the electricity energy. It's just expensive compared to gas, comparatively. That's another point I want to touch on. Yeah, exactly. Not every cube of energy is created equal as far as cost. But the heat pump, what's super special about the heat pump is you could take one unit of energy electrically and get getting close nowadays up to almost four units of heat energy out of that same one unit of electric energy that you would get. Like a 4X. Because you're empowering basically the stealing of the heat from the soil almost, right, or something? Are they outside air? So we're using evaporation and condensation of the refrigerant. We're using boiling. We're boiling the refrigerant to extract heat energy from outside, and then we're going to transfer that through a refrigerant, which is like a coolant. It's transferring the heat energy through piping, and then we're going to release it inside. So the boiling, when a— And it works the same whether you're heating or—because it can both heat and cool, right? Right. Yeah, when you boil and condense a liquid, it absorbs and releases way more. It's more effective at transferring that heat energy. So that's the technology. When the phase changes is the really most important thing. Yeah, you might have learned that in school. Like getting water down to ice temperature doesn't take that much, but pushing it through the ice stage actually takes a lot of energy. Yeah, exactly. Same concept. So – and then when we blow air across that coil and we put that heat energy into the air, it's just – you use a lot less electricity to do that. So it's really awesome. However, what we're finding out with this push for electrification is we're finding out that most customers, especially as groceries are getting more expensive and all that, it's – Cost is still a really big concern, so we're finding that there's a balance. It's a balancing act, right? We want to have this heat pump, but then as the temperature outside goes down, we want to switch over to that gas because gas is just so dirt cheap. Oh, I see, I see. Even though it's more efficient at converting electrical energy into heat, because the gas is so cheap. Comparably cheaper. But over a baseboard heater, for sure, it's way more efficient. Customers will save hundreds. But obviously, the cost to put it in, like baseboard heaters, it's like put a strip on the wall and you've got heat. If you have electric heat and you're going to be at your house for five-plus years, you need a mini-split at your house. 100%. You need a heat pump mini-split. Before we jump into the time machine, let's talk about the future of Origin, Fort Collins, plumbing and heating, but also... Are you one year, five years, ten years? How long are you going to be the chair? How long the CEO, Glenn? Do you have an imagination of that? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's... I would like to be, and I'm already moving pretty quickly through this, but the boys and the managers are doing an amazing job of running the company. You move around quite a bit already. Yeah, I'm not required to be there every day. Okay. I still am most days. Sure. And I assume you're still the majority owner because it would cost way too much to sell too much fast and whatever, I reckon. Yeah. So, you know, I'm looking forward to, you know, retiring more, but I also like to work. So as long as they put up with me, I'll probably hang around. I guess as long as you keep pulling in the revenues, right? Until Anthony learns more. Yeah. No, well, I'm just I'm enjoying this. It takes time to learn things, right? And so they're picking up things every day. For sure. Every year they're all taking over more and more and allowing me to do less. I dig it. Yeah. It won't be long. After five years in banking, I was like, God dang, I'm pretty smart at this banking thing. And then after 10 years, I was like... Huh, I didn't know that much after five years like I thought I did. I've learned so much since then. And it is. It's a process, which is, you know, I think why sometimes businesses that sell, the operator struggles. Because, yes, there's a lot of processes and systems, but that new owner who's tasked with making a lot of decisions doesn't know anything. Hardly. They know some things. Maybe it's a six-month transition or something. And that's what's different with us. It's such a smooth, seamless transition. Right. Consumer and even employees. You can just start taking more and more vacations and nobody's going to know. Nobody's going to know. And right now we're in kind of a sweet spot because I feel like I bring some... wisdom you know there's some principles that i could bring to the table and experiences that i've already messed up on and and can keep them from making but there's a whole bunch of things that they know and that they're doing that I don't... Right. I have no interest in learning either. Oh, yeah. It's just... Yeah, they're doing things on a scale beyond anything I've ever done. So we talked a little bit about the future of heating, I think, with some of the heat pumps and stuff. Is there other new tech on the radar that will change? Is there going to be... You know, will Origin five years from now have one more letter on the end of it or anything like that that you're going to have to add or... I don't – Anthony is the big visionary. Solar? Maybe a little solar? You know, I think – That seems like an easy add-on there. Electrical and plumbing are just so complementary to HVAC. There are companies in our space, you know, around the country that, you know, will dabble in other verticals, you know, but – I think I feel really good about this is the big three in our trade, that let's master these. I think we're pretty far from mastery on even the HVAC side. I think I would say we're far from mastery. There's still things we can do better and learn and grow. And certainly then on the plumbing and electrical side, we've got a lot of opportunity. I think beyond those three trades, I think we just start to grow our footprint a little bit, which we're already starting to do, which was a big piece of Origin. Sure. And how's that going? Like, have you been sending more trucks into Weld County? Are you traveling down to Longmont, up to Cheyenne? Like, what's your service area changed from and to what over this season? Yeah. When you look at our service site and the software we use gives us a kind of a cool map of by zip code, how much revenue we're doing by zip code. And still, by and large, the five main zip codes in Fort Collins are a huge piece of our revenue. But we are starting to see a little bit bigger presence now in Windsor and Timnath and Greeley, Loveland, you know, all those places. one of our values right now that we have for our technicians and installers why a lot of them come to us is because we don't drive all the way up and down the front range we will work in longmont here and there but for the most part we're kind of loveland berthed and north and we will go up into estes because that's a little bit of an underserved market they don't have much up there in terms of Yeah, and they've got a bunch of old houses that need their heaters replaced. So Estes is about as far away from our office as we'll go, but just because mostly they need a contractor up there. But, yeah, we feel that we've got a really big runway just inside our 30-mile radius. We don't need to go to Denver, really even make a strong presence in Longmont for the time being. We've got so much room to grow here still. Do you do any home builders installs and things like that, or that's just not really part of your business consumer marketplace? Yeah, we used to have a big footprint on new construction, working with national builders and such, but it's just such a different business model than the residential service and replacement business. And that's really where we found our niche. And so for the last, what, three, four or five years, maybe we've really started to taper down to the point where now we do zero new construction. And it's been a lot better, honestly, for our business. I was just thinking to myself that before you kind of started expanding into the, say, Greeley, Windsor service areas more, I bet you had employees coming from there. right they're coming to you to work there and now in some cases they can probably just have their truck take it home and work on the project in Greeley that you sold or whatever too I don't I don't know if it saves you money like geographically or driving around or how do you how do you do that with trucks or do people come to you and then get their truck and then roll out or how how do you guys manage that? Yeah, all of our technicians and installers, one benefit of working here is you get to drive your vehicle to and from work. Gotcha. Now, we do, to your point, we do try, at least on the service side, to schedule them strategically, especially so their last call of the day can be closest to their home as possible. Love it. That's always a consideration because, one, it's just more efficient for us, and they appreciate it. So the guys or gals that live in Greeley, we're trying to have them end, you know, east of I-25 at least, you know, get them over there to end the day if at all possible. And that's been really helpful. Cool. Yeah. What do you see coming in the future, Jesse, as far as other tech that's changing? Is there anything significant? It seems like you're a little more on the nerdier side of that future-looking stuff. Is that true? Yeah, more EV chargers. I think EVs are going to take off. Yeah, I think that people... It kind of slowed after the subsidies ended. Then EV sales, everybody was like, eh, I don't know. Do you think that'll turn rack around the other way? They're pretty awesome cars. I think so. And you don't have to maintain them hardly. Yeah, I think. You just plug them in. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of corporate interest back in gasoline and oil. But I think that it'll definitely, over time, it'll come around for sure. And on the consumer side, like personal cars. And then heat pumps will continue to be, you know, I think solar and energy storage is going to be a critical piece for the electrification, right? I mean, solar, you can only get that in the day. Right, well, and even like the battery storage, distributed battery storage is probably almost an essential to increase. solar usage, right? Yeah, right. Because otherwise, it will just have to unbalance of a system. And you're always like, running the coal machine when large scale storage is rolling out. I mean, on the consumer side, it's panel upgrades to handle increased electrical load, it's heat pumps to heat with electricity instead of gas, or just more than gas than you normally would. And then it's, you know, solar panels, which could also be on the, on the distribution side, right? Yeah. Solar farms is probably more, you're going to get more energy from that than like rooftop solar. But, um, I think solar is, it just keeps getting cheaper. But for the consumer, the benefit of rooftop solar is I can get rid of my bill. Yeah. Like I don't really care if the, if the Excel has a abundant solar to sell me at a cheaper price. I just want to get rid of my bill. Totally. More. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Agreed. Uh, or you can invest in, I think some, some electric providers have a partnership thing where you can like invest in their solar farm and yeah, whatever, but no, that's good. But on the consumer side, I think the, I think the, the, the EV and the panel upgrades will definitely be a good boon to the electrical department for sure for the electrification. My, uh, actually my, my very first invention in my head that I haven't brought to market yet, but maybe you can fix it if, if we can. was a battery storage system. Imagine, like, a top, you know, the old tops where you'd spin it and it would spin for a long time? Okay, now imagine one of those that's, like, a mile wide and super-duper heavy and floating on a, like, a semiconductor-like magnet thing so it's levitating, and now there's a lightning rod that somehow, when lightning strikes it, it transfers power... to the big spinning flywheel, and it just makes it go faster and faster every time lightning strikes it. And then all you got to do is just bleed power off of that whenever, because there's kind of... I mean, it's super dangerous, like if it comes off of the holders, there's going to be some yeah just inertia so much it's an inertia battery basically but but but sitting on plane like that and on uh you know a little levitating platform if you want to nerd out on that stuff you can go on youtube they make the same sort of thing but with really really heavy weights that they pull you up with power And then in the peak, when they need the peak power, then they let them fall. That makes sense. And it drives a generator. Yeah, or pumping water up a hill during the day, right, and let it run down later. Except for the efficiency transfer isn't very good. I feel like the gigantic lightning-powered top is... It's got to be it. It's got to be the solution. It's either that or windmills. I'm going to call a break. Sounds good. But we'll be right back. This episode is sponsored by Loco Think Tank. Loco Think Tank provides peer collaboration for business owners. We build smart, safe places to help business leaders navigate every stage of the business journey, and we love what we do and who we do it with. Our model features gift-back-minded business veterans who are willing to help you. in the role of loco facilitators and we're always looking for abundance minded individuals to add to our membership facilitator team local community or to feature on this podcast listeners of this podcast who go on to become members of loco think tank get their sixth month of membership for free just mention the loco experience podcast on your application to learn more visit our website at locothinktank.com that's l-o-c-o thinktank.com And we're back. Thanks. That was a good break. I'm excited for the rest of our conversation here. You know, when we were breaking, we were starting to talk some about the future, but also what has stayed the same, and how do you, like, have one culture, one community among how many? You said 75 trucks, 100 employees or something then? About 115. 115? Yeah. How do you communicate? How do you transfer? You're talking quality assurance, right? That's kind of the cultural core. It is part of it, for sure. Another part is just the way we treat our employees. I mean, I think, you know, I really do resonate with the original motto of the four columns sitting in there, the big enough to serve, small enough to care. I think that also carries over into the way we treat our employees, right? Even with 115 employees, everybody knows the board, somebody on the board closely probably. Yeah, and obviously with that many people, there's going to be some groups that have almost like microcultures, right? The service department and stuff, but if all of those groups are receiving the same vision and message from the VP level and the management level down, it's still... You know carries that same feel unified and we have it's kind of as in a little side story I mean we have a lot of technicians who came from a Really hard-driving Commission base, you know, you worked all the jobs done and that could be till 10 11 p.m That left jobs to other companies other companies from that model to come work for us for less money and But we set them up for success before the job comes around. We give them the tools that they need. We give them the support they need to get the job done. And we don't make them work until, you know, 12 p.m. So we have, like, many installers that have had jobs. But it's not all about money, you know. Yeah, yeah. So I think that just shows you. So if you want to make less money, come to Fort Collins. You want to make less money but have a great culture. But actually stay married and have your kids know your name. Exactly. Probably not so much less money per hour, but just pushing them so hard to get it. Well, it was commission-based, right? Yeah, commission-based. It's a different pay structure. So, of course, you're going to make more money if you're going to work until, you know. 14-hour days. 14-hour days. People can't do that for very long, really. You burn them out. Right. Yeah. That's the point. I want to jump into Purpose Driven Questions sponsored by Purpose Driven Wealth. Thank you to Purpose Driven Wealth of Thriven for sponsoring our Purpose Driven Questions segment. At Purpose Driven Wealth, they believe financial clarity leads to a life of contentment and purpose. Their mission is to help guide clients using a values-driven, stewardship-based approach focused on provision, contentment, and enjoyment. With more than a century of experience, Thriven helps individuals and families navigate life and business transitions and prepare for the future while creating space to live generously and give back in meaningful ways. To learn more about Purpose Driven Wealth, please call 970-330-7411 for a complimentary initial consultation. And now, on to the questions. What I think I'd like to do is give one question for each of you guys at a different place and juncture. And it really is about legacy to start. Like to you, you were talking about more and more time off, more trips, more leisure, but also remaining involved because you love business. What does that look like to you, maybe even like looking down the road from 10 years from now? Yeah, I have a passion for for entrepreneurism, capitalism, you know, just to just help other other people if they have a dream of starting a business, whether it's in this industry or the trades or something. Yeah, I see myself future local facilitator, potentially, you know, possibly. But yeah, I like I like helping. Yeah. young folks uh get into business and and and chase their dream you know so they get something you want to spend more time on yeah and i've and was that really comforting for you in this space too how how honoring was it that your boys wanted to be a part of it i can't even tell you how honoring it i mean yeah it's it's the dream come your favorite thing yeah it's my favorite thing Yeah, I'm really proud that they're taking the next, you know, to continue the legacy because, you know, it did cross my mind earlier on. Like, what do I do, you know, at some point? I mean, there's a private equity company out there that would give you a few money to go away and you could just live in Hawaii if you want to. You don't even have to live in Florida. Every day there's an offer. Really? I can tell you, yeah. I mean, well, not... Not literally, but they're contacting me every day. Wow. Yeah, I mean, your industry, we could maybe talk about that, the future of business a little bit and family business briefly. But let's talk about that. What does the legacy of being a multi-generational family business mean to both of you and continuing a legacy, if you will? Is that something you carry heavily, or is that a light carry? No, I think... Jesse's like, I just didn't want to be an auto tech, man. It was a plan. Yeah, I mean, we're... It is a little bit of a weight, you know, just to continue on the legacy and honor. 115 paychecks every month, right? Yeah. Well, and honored the, you know, everything Glenn set us up for and the generations even before him that were in this trade supporting Northern Colorado. So there is a big piece of that. But yeah, like you said, there's 115 families that rely on the business. And so there's some weight to what we're doing and where we're going. So Jesse, any thoughts in that same kind of space? Yeah, I mean, there's a huge, yeah, there's big shoes to fill, right, I guess. And, yeah, this company impacts a lot of people, not just the customers, but the employees. And I genuinely think there's no other place to get a quality installer, quality service that matches our company. You legitimately think you're doing as good as you can and better than many most, yeah. A hundred percent, especially with the private equity buyouts. Right. Well, and that's like those companies they suck to work for, they suck to be customers of soon. Are you getting market share because of people fleeing that when they discover it? Yeah, to some degree. And how much has happened here in town already? Do you know if you share? Sure. I think we're the only company of any size that's left that's not private equity owned, I think. And I'll just say, you know, not all private equity is bad. Well, for sure. You know, and I certainly would have probably entertained it if I didn't have my case. Sure, yeah, yeah. Because, you know, you need to have an access strategy. And some are certainly better than others, right? Absolutely. Some do amazing things. Yeah, and so lumping them all together would be unfair. But the incentives are different, right? I mean, for a private equity company? For sure. We can outperform them. All of them, I can tell you that. In the long run, yeah. Yeah, but we do have an advantage over that. I had Jamie and Dr. Bobby from Aspen Grove vet on after they exited soon after, and the vet industry has been almost completely taken over. And prices have gone up for being a consumer by almost double. It's happening in our space, for sure. Right, and they try to sell you everything that you don't need every time they have a contact with you. Well, I was on another podcast, and I talked about it's the difference between long-term vision and short-term vision. And for us, it's long-term. We have a long-term vision. If Jesse's kid wants to work at Fort Collins Heating and Air someday, you want to have a good job in a sound integrity company. And we'll sometimes sacrifice profit in the short term because of long-term... gain and what's right long term. Whereas private equity is majoritively focused on the short term. They've got to bring a positive bottom line every month. Well, and not only that, they have to actually increase the value of a company fairly quick because they're going to satisfy their investors. They're going to sell it to somebody else after some X margin of return. That comes with cost-cutting or revenue maximization, selling everything but the kitchen sink to all your existing customers or whatever, and then move along. And hopefully – There will be a phase some years down the road because I think the last three years, five years, ten years even, maybe seven years have been probably the biggest season of my career where private equity has been involved in the normal business marketplace, the 30, 50, 100 employee companies and stuff. Do you agree? Yeah, well, and specifically in our industry, a lot of bad things came out of COVID, of course. But one of the things that happened is our industry, especially the HVAC, any home home service trade really boomed because people were home more using their equipment more. They had more disposable income through money from the government, whatever. So like our industry boomed and because it was a I think. Private equity took notice of that. It's a very stable business. It's not getting replaced by AI. So it was from that COVID boom. Yeah, they're like, oh, look at all these guys making all this money. That they flooded the industry. That was really the catalyst. And not that it hadn't been before, but that was really the catalyst to get the... Maybe veterinary is the same way. People are spending more time at home with their pets. Let's get another pet. Yeah. A second dog. That's actually, that could be true. Might be something. Instead of having kids, they're having more puppies and fur babies. Yeah. Who wants to try the Crazy Ginger Hot Sauce? What's this heat level? What's the Scovilles on that? The Scovilles? I don't know what the Scovilles are. I would give it about an 8 out of 10. but that's like out of like I could still eat a 9 but of the stuff that you will get on restaurant tables around Fort Collins this is ooh that one's juicy this one is that one's juicier still shake it off yeah it's a good thing it's good there's one out here that's only got a couple drops the rest are well seasoned Glenn do you want to have I'll take one of the ones I'm the one that has no drink now so I'll just die real quick here we'll get you a water we'll do the tasting notes and Jesse go ahead and pass that plate back because I'll have one with you guys too good I like it. Is this your own recipe? It's Paul's recipe at Matador Mexican Grill. Get your crazy ginger hot sauce at Matador Mexican Grill. This is quite good. But it was kind of according to my instructions. I wanted it orange, kind of a ginger color. I wanted a lot of local ingredients, habanero heavy. It's good. That is really tasty, actually. It's got an afterbite to it It creeps for a while Jesse's enjoying it as well Any tasting notes? Um I like it It's very savory It's good Sweet and savory That's kind of a Lay's potato chip flavor I just went and picked up most of the market. That's good. I thought it would be more gingery, but the ginger is pretty modest. Yeah, there is a lot of ginger in there, but it's modest compared to the habanero and the peach base. Yeah, that's good. I want to now jump in the time machine because this is a multi-generational family business. It's going to be a flyover because I think we've got like 20 minutes, 30 minutes left of our blocked time here today. but we always do and so we are wherever you are Glenn yeah at 10 years old describe the scene um Yeah, so my relationship with my dad was really good, and I always wanted to be around him. And so I would go with him to work whenever a chance I get, whenever he'd let me go. Even already as a 10-, 12-year-old? Yeah, I'd ride along with him on after-hours service calls or summertime job sites, things like that. I was exposed to the industry very early on and watched a lot of his, uh, you know, how he, you know, service did service calls, fixed, we talked to his customers when he was at the dinner table at night at eight o'clock sometimes he modeled it, but I also witnessed him with a high level of stress and, and taking service calls at the dinner table some nights. It's a, it's not an easy industry really. Uh, there's a lot of work. These guys work in these. I'm not working the hours that I used to work, thankfully, but these guys are. So it's a demanding trade. So I actually thought about going somewhere and doing something else. Okay. But ultimately, I'll spare you that story for now. What was your relationship with school and sports? Or were you like a business nerd already in your teens almost? I played sports when I was younger, but I was very small, so I didn't – do my do very good outside of wrestling yeah because i could match up my own weight size but yeah yeah um yeah so growing up i i was into i always knew that i wanted to be i had an entrepreneur spirit so i was the kid that I was going up and down the street, getting lawns to mow, shoveling sidewalks. Yeah, delivering newspapers. I didn't deliver newspapers, but, yeah, collected cans, sold candy bars at school, you know, that kind of thing. Always had a mind for – you know, earning money, being in business. So it was a natural thing for me to own my own business. It was early on, both my parents had small businesses. So my- Oh, what was your mom doing? My mom had a salon later on out of the house. So she worked for another salon when I was younger. For the bulk of my childhood, I remember her working out of the house. She'd come home from school, and she'd have somebody underneath the... Oh, yeah. Her curler thingy and whatever. ...sawn built onto the side of the house. So she did hair for years, and then my dad had a business. He grew to about 15 employees or so before he ultimately sold it. Oh, so he sold it before you had the chance? Yeah, while I was in high school, he sold it. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. during the 80s when he kind of fell on hard times there were some events that happened that were very challenging and he opted to sell rather than fight through it just to grit your teeth through it all there were some pretty big things that would be a whole other podcast but he ultimately sold and got out of it and then Went to work for some other places, and then ultimately I hired him back after I started the business in 96. And how many years, like, were you, did you go to college? Did you work for other companies? Like, when did you, talk about the origin story of Fort Collins. Well, let me just touch on the first question you asked. So I did not go to college. I read books. You know, I spent some time in a network marketing company that helped me, I think, with sales a lot with a sales mindset and learned a lot of things about organizational structure really through that. And for anybody that's read the book E-Myth, that's like, that was me. I was good at it. And then I figured things out as I went along, luckily. And what did that, not to dwell too much, but like how long before you turned into a real business and started hiring people and stuff like that? Pretty early on, I hired my first employee, you know, months in the first year. Hired my father and my best friend, John, who's still working with me within three years. And then, yeah, just added from there. Fair enough. Let's jump over to you, Anthony. Ten years old, what's your scene? The year is 2001. So I had just been welcomed into the family, I guess at that point, the Frank family. So I've kept my last name, so Glenn, obviously, just my stepdad and Jesse, my stepbrother. Uh, he and my mom had met and got married recently at that point. Um, so you were new in the household and you were the, like came in as a big brother to you. Is there another brother to younger brother, younger brother, Mitch. Okay. Yeah. So my mom and Glenn, when they got married in a few years later, they had our younger brother. So both of our half brothers. Sure. He also works in the business, which we haven't spoken about, but not an owner at this point. He's only 22. So there. Yeah. So so so you're you're the new arrival, but you got a little brother to pick on. So that's nice. Well, you don't really seem like the pick on kind of type. I don't know, like at all. I only can think of one – I'm sure there were more, but I can really only think of one incident with some sock and boppers at a young age that we really got after each other. But really we had – That's those big fist things. Like the blow up where they start to deflate and then you actually take a fist to the face. There's fist contact. Yeah, yeah. I've actually experienced that too. No, but honestly, we got along, I feel like, great our whole childhood growing up. And I don't know, I feel like we got along great. So and we've always had a school sports business. You mentioned early on that you were doing summers at Fort Collins Heating and Air early on. That probably started us tinkering around before we were even legal to work. And then once we once it became legal, it's nice. You can't even have them on the payroll. Sorry. Yeah. Once it became, you know, legal age, which was like 14 or 15, you know, we were starting to actually help around there. But before then, I think Glenn's entrepreneurial spirit kind of wore off on us. So I remember the house we lived in when we were around that age. it was a whole new development right next door to us. And so construction workers are just there all the time. So our business for the summers was just had a cooler on a wagon filled with soda and we would just go sell and walk down the streets, HVAC guys that can frame a case of Coke for at that time, like $4 or something and sell it for 50 cents a can. And then that morphed into buying our first vending machine that we put at the shop and, So it was always kind of whether it was natural for us or whether kind of just instilled from Glenn a little bit, too, of that entrepreneurial spirit. So that definitely was starting at that age. Fair enough. Yeah. Totally. Jesse, you want to jump into – you can go to 10. You can go to 7 when this guy showed up or 8 or whatever. Yeah, I might even go all the way back. If you want to. Sure. I mean, yeah, I think Glenn – seven other people like six months old or in the womb or there's a huge range i've had some crazies on here i don't know that must have been a trip experience that they're remembering differently perhaps um no but uh yeah definitely he kind of tried to get us to have that mindset you know he tried to help us mow other people's lawns and in the in the Your allowance is low intentionally. You're going to have to go get yourself some more money. It was an allowance. We did get paid to mow our lawn, but you had to work for it. Yeah, there was an allowance. It was an earn it number, and we don't have that big a lawn, so sorry. I do remember a funny story that might just dovetail into me being more work with my hands. But I'll do my best not to butcher it, but Glenn obviously tells the story the best. But he always tells a story about when I was really young and he was all... You know, being a good dad, and he got me the play school tool belt with the hammer. And then he gave it to me, and I was like, I looked at it, and I was like, this isn't a real hammer. And I was all pissed. What the heck am I going to do with this? I could not pull a nail with this. He, like, gave it back to me. These aren't real tools. He wanted the tools in my tool cabinet. What kind of screws am I going to do with this? I can't even fit this thing in there. Couldn't fool him. Yeah. I think some of the best stories you have are doing service calls and, like, riding along a little bit here and there early on. Yeah, definitely rode along and stuff. And became the fix-it guy sometimes. Right. That's how you started. Yeah, exactly. But no, I just, yeah, I'd always like to work with my hands, and that's why I just kind of wanted to do what I liked, and it was a natural way for me to do what I liked and carry on the family tradition. Really add value here, too, yeah. And to be honest, I think I did internalize some of that growing up, like kind of what Glenn said, like... looking at how much he worked the hard times when he went through troubles and I would say that if it wasn't for Anthony being willing and wanting to join and be partners in this I don't think I would have wanted to do it because I see what the toll that it took on Glenn and I'm like i'm not doing that by myself like that's crazy i think there was a i mean it's yeah it's worth bringing up there was a phase where um i mean the reason that glenn was maybe entertaining us a sale at some point uh is because there was a period of time where we were both not interested in that again that's that could be another story for another day but um it was just yeah it was really cool and what were the last few years Give me that phase a little bit for you guys. You were doing like auto tech ed or something like that or whatever. Well, I mean, for Jesse, it was just like he said. I mean, he's always been in the business, but, man, I don't want to – I don't know if I want to own this. I don't want that responsibility. The responsibility. And for me, I left after – so I went to college and then joined the Marine Corps. And after I was getting out – when I was getting out of the Marine Corps – And that was like four years, eight years? Yeah, I did just a little over four-year commitment. So I got left active duty in 2019 and reached out to Glenn. So you didn't hit the heavy stuff, really? Or did you get heavy action in that space? Yeah, no, I joined the Marine Corps wanting to. Just at the right time. Well, I mean, wrong time if you look at it, yeah. It would have been the right time for me because I don't need to get shot at. Yeah, well, you certainly don't join the Marine Corps to go hang out at a desk all day. So that part was – Less fulfilling than you hoped. Yeah, a lot of stories that I could have there. I got to do some cool stuff, but, yeah, it was a lot. I was at a Huey and Cobra squadron, and we were – it was after the time that we had pulled out all of our helicopter assets for the most part out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Fair enough. But I came back and – Hey, Marines isn't nearly as much gun shooting and exciting stuff as I thought. Can I come back and be part of the business? Or did you guys talk? Yeah. Were you talking with us? It was supposed to be a temporary thing. Oh, really? Yeah. So I left the Marine Corps. We wanted to move back here. My family's obviously here. You and your wife. My wife's family. I saw your cover photo on the magazine. Yeah. Is that the Timnath neighbors upcoming? But my wife grew up here as well So we knew we wanted to be back here We started having kids in the Marine Corps And wanted to raise them with family So I reached out to Glenn And just told him I was pretty up front from the beginning Just looking for something temporary While we kind of settle back here In Fort Collins Do you have anything you need help with Brought me on to help with the inventory Getting inventory implemented Inventory tracking Right, right. Make some of that setting up teams for success kind of thing better and whatnot. And to be honest, probably for the first, I don't know, year and a half, I was kind of looking for what the next thing would be. I got my real estate license. I was applying at Otterbox. I was kind of all over the place with what I wanted to do. I got my MBA thinking that I could use that somewhere. Smart young men that want to make good careers, good MBAs. Sure. Yeah. And that was the typical Marine Corps officer thing to do is just go get your MBA. And anyway, so, and then I think probably a couple of years in it finally just, and that was that phase where I'm saying that I was like, I don't want to buy this business or I don't want to take on this business. The heavy yoke to carry, right? Um, and then something, uh, a flip just switch in my head, I guess, uh, about two, maybe two years back. And I was like, there's, we, you know, that was probably through COVID and seeing that, seeing what private equity saw, right. There's, there's so much potential in this business. I love what we do. I love the people we do it with. We've got an awesome team. Um, we're an essential business and it just, yeah. And I was like, this is what I want to do. This is where I want to be. So then, you know, we started having conversations and I think it took three, four years of talking and building up to this point in January us buying a portion of the business. Okay, so this is eight months, seven months in of being partners properly. Yeah. That's very cool. You were – we had for a season a local think tank for a key employee demographic, and you were with Allison Seebeck and her group. That was awesome. Yeah, I wanted to maybe dip into that and ask, like, Was that experience related or instrumental in your interest or desire to be part of this in the long run? Because it sounds like you maybe weren't all the way in at the beginning of that and maybe not even by the end of it, but you upskilled anyway. Yeah, I think by the time I had joined that next level chapter, I was pretty much bought into the business. And that group was awesome. I can't tell you how many things, how many lessons and ideas I pulled out of that group of people that are in, obviously, completely different industries. The amount of things I pulled from Talia, who's the president at Dutch Bros or whatever. She's a banger. It's just super cool to, like, see, like, how their ideas and businesses. And you'll probably stay connected to her for years after she's running their company, right? So it's just cool how coffee can apply to our business, you know, the principles. Yeah, whole different things. Yeah. Totally different business model. No estimates required to sell a cup of coffee. Yeah. No service calls. You know, none of that stuff. But so many principles the same. We better wrap this up. The Loco Experience is the final segment. It is preceded by, for the willing, a taste or a sipper of our spirit sponsor, Whiz-Cal, in the Seed and Spirit Distillery. So this is a mezcal and whiskey hybrid spirit. It's nice. I'm going to pour like a... You're going to have to try it, Jesse. You'll know me a baby. Everybody's trying it. Even Anthony. This is... He's like... This is pure pressure. Nearly a teetotaler. A teetotaler. That might be my serving size there. Yeah, that one's... That one's Jesse's. And we're going to do tasting notes on this, and then... In the... The effort is going to be tell a two-minute story that's the craziest experience of your lifetime that you're willing to have your children hear someday on air. So bad stories. I think there's a business story in there, Glenn, about you managing through a season of really hard times. I heard a little bit of critique of your dad for it. giving up and selling kind of when it got tough? Oh, I want to be clear. I don't critique my dad. No, he made the right decision for him. Oh, at the time, yeah. Like interest rates at the time were like through the roof. That was the best way out at the time for that. Yeah, so I would never throw my dad in. That wasn't what you meant to apply. No, no, not at all. But it sounds like my impression is somewhere along the line that you went through some... Oh, that's what business is. As a banker, we knew that maybe once every five years a company would lose money. We're dealing with issues every day, you know, solving problems, new problems all the time. That's just what it is. I wish we had another hour, but we don't. So, tasting notes, whizzed out to origin in this future. Glenn? Wow. that warms you up that's good to take out on the side of the mountain when you're hunting it's basically made for that the whiskey definitely cuts the mezcal what I should do is have a mezcal old fashioned a wizcal old fashioned is what I should really offer Jesse would love that I think that would be a really nice you're not sure on the wizcal you don't like the smoky texture tequila mezcal I'm sorry Well, good job tying it up. But this is pretty good compared to a normal Mezcal. It's an interesting combination, for sure. I think it's yummy. Yeah, it definitely has a smokiness to it. Anthony? I don't sip alcohol ever, so that's a straight list. Whatever you gave me, it was going to be a... Vicks 44 style of experience, kind of. Tastes like your wife's nail polish remover or something. Yeah, last time I tasted that, yeah. Well, thanks. No, it is good. It is good. Thanks, Seed and Spirit, just to like, we don't have a new marketplace for you here, too much volume on the whiz scale, guys. Give me some straight bourbon. We love you. And we both, Jesse and myself and Glenn all enjoyed. the uh high rye bourbon from seed and spirit as well that was really good i will put my name behind all right who wants to go first quick uh crazy experience story could be no generally not generally something some kind of crazy story if there's if you're a marine you should have at least one crazy marine story i suppose or maybe it's a crazy business story maybe it's a I'll go first. Sure. So on the topic of having whiskey. Okay. I like the way this is starting. I was in my, I think, early 20s, and we were all partying down in Denver. and we were doing these shots. I think they were called Flaming Hookers or something. I don't even know what the heck was in them. It must have been strong. It was strong. Bacardi 151. Oh, sure. Something like that. Anyway... You light it on fire and you take a shot really stupid stuff right because you might just burn your face off I almost did I pretty much did yeah, so really it caught on fire. Yeah, luckily you like dumped it on your face I bet yeah, not on my face I'm on fire My buddy John whose work it works works with me still and yeah and best friend best friend Yeah, you're employee number four or something. I yeah two or three um he if it wasn't for him i probably wouldn't be sitting here this way yeah yeah but he he tackled me we were in a hotel room um he tackled me basically suffocated you yes with a pillow yeah i was thrashing around dang it was crazy oh dang so you're young and dumb you're like okay cheers and then you're like And he, like, tackled you and smothered the flames, and then you didn't get burned very bad. Some. I mean, you were not easy to corral, is what I heard here, right? No. Well, yeah, I mean, 6'2", a couple hundred pounds, you're, like, thrashing around and yelling. Interesting. Yeah. By the way, we've never bonded over. I was Kurt the Squirt. And I was 4'11 until after my 10th grade year. Like at the end of my 10th grade year, I was still only 4'11. You know, that's interesting. Yeah, I was kind of a late bloomer too. But I was tall and skinny. I think I graduated from high school probably weighing under 130 pounds. Yeah, I was at college. 6'2 though. College arrival, I was 6'2, 132. Yeah, something like that. So didn't make the football team. Anthony? Anthony? Oh, man, I sound a lot – this is the only thing that came to my mind was just the – in the Marine Corps, lots of – maybe lots of crazy stories, I guess, you know, from the Marine Corps. But one of the cooler ones was – so I oversaw the maintenance program for our Huey and Cobra department. Okay, cool. And getting to – usually, unless you are a qualified pilot, you can't front seat a Cobra. So the Cobra is the one where you have the pilots front and back. okay each other yep yep um and we're on the top of it almost underneath the thingies yep yep those are cool and uh yeah i got the opportunity to go we were testing an aircraft that had been uh had some pretty major repairs and one of the pilots was like hey you want to come front seat and i was like yep and uh kind of one of those things were not really supposed to do it and uh had our commanding officer found out might have gotten into some trouble but He was like, yeah, I'm leaving. Statute of limitations is over now. But he was leaving the squadron, I think, a few weeks later. And that's because you weren't qualified to be a backup pilot in case the pilot had an aneurysm or something like that or whatever. Yeah. And so, yeah, I got the opportunity to go front-seated. Cool. And, yeah, he let me do the controls, which, not easy. But, yeah, it was a cool opportunity that most don't get the chance to do. I don't think most people can even really imagine that. helicopter ride barely like I don't think 1% of people have had a helicopter ride in the country really and Yeah, I'd like to think about like a performance helicopter, right? Like this is a race helicopter in comparison yeah, and then getting we got I got to ride a few times in the kind of the door gunner position on a Huey going from 29 Palms out to Miramar, California and cool pretty cool experiences. Yeah. Yeah any temptation to use the guns or they're probably not I Not armed when we're traveling like that. When we're traveling like that, but, yeah. It's a safety issue. Yeah. All right, Jesse. It's tough to follow that, right? Oh, no. Gosh, I guess my head was just... I'm thinking a rave party is going to be your story or something. How do you know? I love going to raves. I've got a couple of rave party stories in my background. Yeah. I do enjoy the beat-boop-bops, as we might call them. Yes, going to shows. That's funny. No, I mean, all that's pretty tame, honestly. I don't do anything that ridiculous. But I don't know. We were just talking about growing up, and I guess maybe the one story that initially came to mind that hasn't been replaced by a yet better story yet in my mind is just that one time we went camping, and we had like a... bear experience where we were in the tent sleeping and i don't know just you hear the like sniffles i mean it was pretty close clearly a big creature out there yeah there's like creaking and cracking or something and i think we were able to spot it with at least 20 or 30 feet in between us and noticed that it was like a mom and cubs and we're like oh that's how old were you probably the thing you don't want to mess with you remember were you like a teenager at this time no no Yeah, I don't know. It was probably that 10, 8, 10. Very young. Not too far after we linked up. Early stage. Yeah, yeah. And I just remember, you're like, well, the truck is metal, and this is canvas, so let's go sleep in the truck. So, you know, sleep in the truck, and then. Just remember waking up, learning a lot about, like, camping etiquette, and, like, that's why there's, like, bear bags, and you, like, you know, store your food properly and stuff because the bear was, like, tearing through the tent and getting stuff in there, and then it was, of course, we were in the truck trying to sleep, and it's, like, lifting up our... Oh, so you actually did transfer. Yeah, it's, like, lifting up our cooler. The bear was interested in your stuff. Oh, yeah. We had all kinds of good stuff for it there. Yeah. I've been there it's funny like like even up at Red Feather Lakes and stuff and we go up there quite a bit my wife and I and some friends it's kind of like you better be bear aware yeah but not really like you could probably just leave your cooler there in the middle of the campsite all weekend long and there's not really going to be a bear but sometimes there is as it turns out yeah other places like Yellowstone or you know places where there's scary eat you bears yeah I'm a little more serious about it. Yeah. Yeah, this year I live up in the foothills a little bit. And this year, I think when it's more of a drought year. Sure. They come down lower sooner. Yeah. They're pretty desperate. They're more stressed. So we've seen a lot of them. I wonder what, I'd like to know what people can do about that. Like, is there something that you can do to take their stress off, or does that just make them dependent, potentially? Yeah, they'll just figure it out. They get skinny for a while, and then next year will be better. They might have to increase the tags that they give away. Or decrease. Control the population at some point, but, you know. One final question? Yeah. Who had fun today? Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, this was great. Good. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, I had fun too. Yeah, thank you. We've been talking about it for how long? Yeah, a long time. Yeah. I assume there's like an origin, P-H-A-E... Face? Face.com? In your face? You should actually, Anthony, Jesse, I want you to see if the inyourface.com website is available. We can start that for a future marketing campaign. With that exact spelling. P-H-A-C-E. Plumbing, heating, air conditioning, and electrical. In your face. There you go. Actually, it could be like a... like a little icon like uh what do they call those things uh avatar yeah could be your new um like with that shield it could be like a little uh tasmanian devil type character with carrying that shield a little bit captain america in your face i don't know thanks everybody for listening sorry we ended on such a curfewing weird note Hi, this is Kurt Baer, host of the Loco Experience podcast and founder of Loco Think Tank. Every week, I explore intimate conversations with business founders and leaders. And so I hope you'll join us this week and every week for a new episode of the Loco Experience.