How We Money: Faith in Finances

Craig Snyder is the CEO of VIKOR Telecommunications and founder of Pomegranate Market in Sioux Falls. Kristin Snyder is a stay-at-home mom and CFO — chief family officer. Together, they've tackled challenges in family, business, and finances through one guiding force: faith. Here's how they money.

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Transcript

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- Having faith and finding success in business and in life.(dramatic music) Welcome to Common Cents on the Prairie™, a podcast dedicated to helping you demystify the sometimes complex topic of money. I'm Adam Cox, head of Wealth Management for The First National Bank in Sioux Falls. We're a community bank based out of South Dakota. In this podcast, we share expert insights from around the country and stories from our local community to arm you with the tools you need to make better financial decisions. Because the truth is, the more we talk about this stuff, the better off we're all going to be.(dramatic music fades) On today's episode, I'm joined by Craig and Kristin Snyder. Craig and Kristin met in the spring of 1989, fell in love immediately, were married after a whirlwind romance that fall. They consider themselves soulmates because of their natural bond and enduring love for each other. Kristin grew up on a farm in southwestern Minnesota and then attended Augustana University where she graduated in 1988 with degrees in psychology and sociology. Craig grew up in Sioux Falls, graduated from Lincoln High School, and later attended Utah Valley University where he studied business management. They have started many businesses over the years, including VIKOR Teleconstruction and Pomegranate Market, just to name a couple. They also have raised four children and now have five grandchildren. They enjoy travel, spending time with family, and visits to their cabin in the Black Hills. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Craig and Kristin. Well, welcome to the show guys. Thank you so much for joining me.- Thank you.- It is great to be here.- Oh, this is awesome. I'm looking forward to this, but before we get started, let's start with the toughest question first. If you're starting on a road trip today, who's controlling the music and what are you playing?(Craig chuckles)- Well-- Well, we have a couple of playlists. We share our Apple Music account. So our two favorite playlists are a country list and a seventies list.(Adam laughing)- That's an interesting mix.- Kind of different, but.- Depending on the mood.- Depending on the mood, right?- Mm-hm, wut we also, we travel out to the Black Hills quite a lot across the state. And we can spend the entire time talking. And the five and a half, six hours just goes by in a blink.- So sometimes the playlist doesn't get played, but maybe only an hour during that six hour trip.- Well, it's nice to be able to catch up too. Like life's busy and you get to finally get a chance to chat when you're stuck there together.(Adam laughing)- But when I have the radio on in the car, it's probably country, but I love to listen to the seventies classics. Not really the rock, but more the popular music of the seventies. And we both enjoy that, whether it's, well, Boston's a little rocky, but Peter Frampton or Super Tramp or those old classics.- I love it, I love it. All right, well, so the both of you grew up in the Midwest. And tell us a little bit about your background. And if you can remember, what's your earliest money memory? Kristin, you want to start?- Sure, I grew up in southwestern Minnesota near Marshall on a farm there. I didn't move to that farm until I was 10. My mother and stepdad were married when I was 10. He was 50 at that time. And he had been single his entire life. He became an automatic father of three children and husband. And so we moved to his farm and it was a lovely place, very humble, so, very humble.- Smaller farm.- Yeah, small farm, about 200 acres. And we had wonderful days there and spent a lot of time outside and had lots of pets. So in contrast to that, I also had, my other part of my family, my dad and his family lived in Oklahoma. And so I spent some time there in the summer and Christmases, and that was kind of the opposite situation. So they were quite wealthy. My father's family, he was a pharmacist and owned his own pharmacy. And they had ranches and some oil wells there that they owned. So interesting in that I went from opposites of quite humble really to wealthy. So my experiences with money, I don't have a specific instance, but I grew up with those circumstances.- Quite a juxtaposition, wow, okay, cool. Craig, how about you?- Well, I grew up on the east side of town. I always think about the east side of Sioux Falls. It's changed over the last 30 or 40 years, but as sort of the humble side of town. And my family didn't have a lot of money. So we were humble, we were, I would say poor. I remember one of my earliest, well, this wasn't really an early memory of money, but my mother and father divorced when I was a young teen. And Mom was a single parent. And it was in the days before child support was like a mandatory thing. So mom was a single-income mom. And so she would make $30 stretch for the food budget for the whole week, I remember this. And one time, my brother came home later in the early evening, night, whatever, and had a can of tuna fish. And Mom next day noticed that the tuna fish had been eaten. That was one of the main courses for one of our meals for the week. And she was a loving mother, so she wasn't really upset, but she was kind of like panicky almost, because now what was she going to do with the fried rice without that can of tuna fish that was going to go into it? So that gives you some early memories of our finances in our family. But we grew up poor, we never had a lot.- And you said $30 for groceries for a week?- It's hard to imagine even back in the seventies.- Isn't that what eggs cost now for like a dozen eggs? Yeah, I know, you get like a gallon of milk and a carton of eggs and a couple other things, and that 30 bucks is gone. But somehow she made that stretch, and so it was a lot of staples, rice, and she made her own bread, for example. We'd literally grind our own wheat to make the bread.- Yeah, yeah, my mom did that, too. Yep, my mom did that too.- But those were great memories too, because even though I knew we didn't have a lot of wealth, there was a lot of love and a lot of connectivity in the family. And sometimes that setting can make for a better home in certain ways.- Yeah, absolutely. So the two of you met when you were in your twenties? Is that right?- Yeah.- Right.- Okay, twenties. So you started dating, you got married. And like with a lot of couples, that can be a challenge when you merge two people with maybe different backgrounds with money. Kristin, you almost had two yourself!(Adam laughs) And Craig, it sounds like your background was pretty humble. So what was that like when the two of you got together and merged your finances? How did that go?- Merging our finances. Well, we like to call ourselves soulmates because when we met, we dated just for actually quite a short time. And were married within three months.- Wow, that is a short amount of time!(group laughs)- We didn't even let our parents get involved. We just eloped.- Oh, wow.- We loved each other so much. Why waste time and money on a wedding? Just let's get this going.- It was fun. And so,(Kristin laughs) so merging our finances. We actually, when we look back at our first year of marriage we don't remember any challenges. Certainly not in our marriage or relationship. Financially, Craig had just started his business VIKOR. So a few months before we met, before we were started dating. And so it was not even, it was like six months old or so the time we got married. And so the finance part, well, oh no, I forgot. I worked in Sioux Falls at Turning Point at that time. And which is now, or Turnabout which is now Turning Point in a social work type setting. And I made $20,000 or $8 an hour. And so I thought I was doing really well. And he made, was making or giving himself, allowing himself.- I'd set my salary at 24,000 per year.- There we go.- And so I'd been offered a job at Citibank for about that. So I thought, "Well, if Citibank can pay me 24,000, I'm going to pay myself $24,000."(Adam laughing)- So together we thought we were wealthy.- Like over 40,000 a year in 1989. That was acceptable, especially from our background where we came from. But something happened pretty quickly. She got pregnant. We had the baby about 10 or 11 months later.- 10.- 10 months later. And although she had a great job, she decided to be a stay-at-home mom from that point going forward which basically cut our income income in half.- Oh, sure.- And when you get your income cut in half, it's not easy. You have to make all kinds of different adjustments and sacrifices but somehow we did that, and I don't remember it being horrible. And the good thing is, if you do that early, you can't do that once you're 10 or 15 years in.- No, no.- But if you do that one year in, you don't really notice it as much. And so from that point going forward she was a stay-at-home mom. And I just had to figure out how I was going to raise my income or salary to 32,000. Oh, by the way, when you're working for yourself, your income sometimes is like variable from week to week, month to month. You sometimes don't get checks because there's no money in the checkbook to pay yourself. So we had those weeks and those times and those months where we had to figure those kinds of things out. But we always seemed to figure it out.- Well, I remember the first time we got together and we talked, Kristin, I think you told me the story that there was times where you were going to go to the grocery store and get some groceries, and Craig is like,"Maybe, maybe hold off a little bit. The money isn't quite there yet." And I remember hearing that story and just like thinking about that as I was driving home and I got home and I told my wife Diane, I was just like,"Oh, I mean, this was incredible. Like, what a story, and they started off and they couldn't afford groceries sometimes." And Diane looked at me like,"Yeah, that was us too."(Craig laughing) And I was like, "Oh my gosh!"- You'd forgotten!- Yes, I had forgotten, but it was funny. But as soon as she said that like, all those memories came back. Like, oh yeah, you're in the grind. You're young, you're trying to make it work. You're trusting each other, you've got faith. You're hoping that it's all going to work out if you do the right things. But it can be a little while before you feel like you have a little more margin in your life. And I think one of the things that you told me, Craig, it was with your business, it was probably about year seven or so where you thought you had a little margin after you paid all the bills. There was still maybe a little bit left in the account at the end of the year?- Yeah.- What was that feeling like for the two of you when that happened?- Well, up and through year seven, we're kind of going on a rollercoaster. We had a tower fall in year one and a half where we had my partner and my brother were on the tower. It fell, terrible injuries. And, you know, we somehow bootstrapped through that and there were other ups and downs. And finally, cellular. What I didn't plan for when I got into business was this thing called cellular was going to come into the scene.- I've heard of that.- Just a year or two later.(group laughing) Well, everyone's got a phone in their pocket or purse now. But back then it was the rich people that had a phone. And it was a big brick style phone. But anyway, about that time, cellular is really getting kicked off. And yeah, year seven, I remember at the end of the year, there was still some money left in the bank account at work you know like, a couple hundred thousand bucks or something. And I'm like, you mean, there was nowhere to spend it? All the bills were paid. And so I asked my accountant at the time, I said, "Okay, now there's money in the bank account. What can I do with that?" And she said, "Well, you can take it." And I said, "Well, what does that look like? How do I take it?" She says, "Well, you just write yourself a check. It's called a distribution." And I said, "A distribution. I haven't heard that before." Well, I was used to doing payroll myself. So I would take a little bit out, give it to Uncle Sam and here and there. And I said, "Do I have to?" She said, "No, you don't have to take anything out. It's just yours, it's your profit." And I was like, "Profit, I've heard about profit." But I didn't know how that actually worked. And so I wrote myself a check. And that was the year we bought our second home. And I was able to write a check big enough to put a down payment on our second home and we kind of moved up a click or two after that. But it was a great feeling, but sort of unexpected. I think by then I was just thinking,"It's going to be a grind forever." And it became a grind later, but it kind of ebbs and flows.- But prior to that, you had, for the business bills, your sister Emily, his sister Emily worked with him.- She was my bookkeeper.- She was your bookkeeper. And tell the story about how she would pay the bills.- When Emily came on board, I would just get the bills in the mail. And, you know, maybe there was one from Xcel Energy and one from Mid-American and one from, and I would just stack them on top of each other. When the new ones came in, they would go on top. The old ones would stay on the bottom. When we got some money in the checking account, I remember the Xcel energy bill was green, so I'd, there's maybe two or three green bills in the pile. I would grab the bottom one and I would write the check and send it in. And when I first got my first bookkeeper, my first helper in the office, I was a one man show in the office. I just slid all that pile of bills over to poor Emily and said, "You're responsible for this now.""Well, what if there's no money in the checking account?""I don't even want to know about it. You just take care of it." Oh, it was such a relief. It just offloaded that concern about, yes, we still don't have any money but at least I'm not the one bringing that home every night, laying awake at night thinking about what happens if they shut off the electricity, you know, or that kind of thing. But so, those are common in those first several years of business. And same thing with our home bills. It was kind of the same story.- Well, that's something that doesn't get talked about a lot with small business owners in particular of how difficult it can be. And that stress that you carry with you, especially when you feel solely responsible for not only providing for your family, but also maybe if you've got some employees, providing for their families and trying to build something for your future and ideally at some point for your family to carry on as well. And that stress can be a lot. And it consumes much more than your eight to five. Like, you just don't leave that at the office. And so what happens a lot of times with business owners in particular is you bring that stress home with you. So you've now started many businesses and had ups and downs. How have you been able to keep that stress compartmentalized and keep your marriage intact and strong and your family as well?- Well, I would say that from day one, really, he worked eight to five, and then at five o'clock or so,

he was home for all the years, at 5: 16:07

30. And then he didn't work, work was not done in the evening. So we did our family things and you know, school activities and all our kids' sports and things. He never had phone calls. I mean, I don't know if he did or not, but he didn't answer them. He just really didn't work in the evening. And he chose that, he wanted to do that. I didn't ever ask him to do that. He just kind of did that naturally on his own. I know that he laid awake at night some worrying, stressed a little bit. But he really did an wonderful job of separating work from our family life even though it was kind of all one in the same. And so it was, the stress from work really wasn't felt in our home I would say.- I might have felt it in my heart, but it wasn't, I made a conscious decision. You mentioned a little earlier this word, faith. I made this conscious decision to make God my partner. And by doing that, you have to sort of let him do his part instead of trying to take it all on yourself. So one of those deals was at the end of the day, I'm going to go home and I'm going to be a dad and a husband and do those kinds of things, and so I did. Now did I lay awake at night worrying? Absolutely. The wake in the middle of the night, wake up and you're thinking about it. And I remember reading a quote early in my business career. It went like this."Never worry about anything, but have the Spirit of the Lord. And when you have counseled right, never fret about the result. It's in the hands of the Lord." There were so many times we didn't have enough business, the pipeline was only half full or a quarter full, or there wasn't enough cash flow and we weren't able to pay the bills or whatever. But I always felt like with God as my partner, we'll get through it. So I had to repeat that quote over and over in my mind, many times in the middle of the night."Never worry, Craig, never worry. It's going to be okay." And it always, eventually has been. It doesn't mean you're not working hard. You're going to continue to work hard and there's going to be challenges and there's going to be business cycles and national recessions and things like that that are going to affect you. But I just made God my partner. And that meant you got to go home at night and be with your family. And I also remember another conscious decision. Well, my friends are working, business colleagues, working 60, 80 hour weeks and you're only working a 45 or 50 hour week. What happens if your business doesn't thrive and succeed like theirs is going, or might. And I remember kind of saying,"Well, it'll be as big or as small as it's going to be. But this is my deal. I'm going to go home at night." And only just the last couple years I am staying a little bit later.- Yeah, he's staying later now, which is-- But I don't have kids.- Going the other way.- Kind of interesting.- So sometimes I come home to a cold dinner. That's my problem, but I'm trying a little bit better. What I'm trying to do is like, I'm ramping up for that retirement time. Just like really getting home and-- You're cramming for the final.- Yeah, exactly.(Adam laughs)- I would say one thing about him though is that he could do that, shut off at night and be done with work at 5, 5:30, because I always say he does the work of five people.- Well, I don't know about that.- He can run circles around people.- I'm an efficiency expert. I remember as a newspaper delivery boy at 12 years old, I had about 75 homes on my route. And Kristin got me this thing for Christmas called StoryWorth, where you tell stories. And one of the questions that's sent out every week, one of the questions was,"Tell me about your first job." It was as a newspaper delivery boy. And they'd drop off the papers on this one corner in my route. I would walk to the corner. I would unbundle the bundle and fold the papers, put them in my bag, and then I would start walking. And I never wanted to walk on the same sidewalk twice. So I created this route that made sure that by the time I was done, and efficiency, from that point on became very central to everything I do. So I can fly through stuff faster perhaps than the average guy just because I'm always thinking efficiency.- Yeah, you're speaking my language. I love it, I love it.- I can't do things five times better than the next guy. But she's very generous in saying five times. But maybe two times at times. Well, I mean, Kristin. Speaking of doing the work of many people. At some point early in the marriage, when you started having kids the two of you made the decision that you were going to stay home and raise the family. And now, please correct me if I get this wrong, but I hear you're called the CFO, the Chief Family Officer.(Craig and Kristin laughing) So tell me about that role and how you think that's helped shape your family and also the business.- Well, I did stay home and I wanted to. I chose to stay home and raise our children. I remember feeling or thinking just a little bit as a young mother,"Mm, I don't have this career or this title." And just maybe feeling a little badly about it, but not for very long. I loved being at home with our children and going to school with them. Our kids went to All City Elementary, which is still in existence today. It's a public school in Sioux Falls, but kind of like a charter school in that the parents attend the school day, half a day per child. So at one point we had three of our children there. So I spent a lot of time with them in elementary school. And I absolutely loved it and was involved in things on a volunteer basis at the school as well, many duties.- Ran the school musical for a couple years and things like that.- Oh, that's awesome.- So it was really fun. So a lot of my time was spent there and with them. And then at their activities, which is very common, all their sports and their music activities. He was at work doing his part and I was taking care of our family at home during the day. In the evening, we would share in those, the duties of our family together. But it just worked very well for us and very smoothly. And I guess I can't really imagine it any other way. We have four children and two are married and we have five grandchildren. And then we have our third son, our third child is engaged actually, and will be married. And then we have a 21-year-old. So, they all live in Sioux Falls here. And my daughter and daughter-in-law who have babies, choose to stay home now as well.- But the boys all work in the business.- [Adam] Oh, do they, okay.- She didn't know it, but she was raising children to succeed Dad.- How about that?- We had three boys and a son-in-law, and all four of them work in my main business, VIKOR Teleconstruction. And one of the things that I think about Kristin is that family was very important to me. Business was important. And sometimes we can get things out of balance and business becomes more important than everything else. But family was very important to me, and so was God. So you have to have these three buckets. You have business, family, and you've got to have some time for God as well in my opinion. She made it so that when I was in the business bucket I could just put my whole heart and soul into it. And so, because I never worried about what was going on at home. She was just, that was just covered. And like I said, in the end, we were raising boys, we didn't know it at the time. In fact, when I was a young businessman, I thought,"My sons are never going to work in the business with me." Because all I could think of is that they would be tower climbers and it was too dangerous. I wanted them to go to college, get degrees, become doctors and lawyers and things like that. But in the end, as they started becoming of age, in their not really late teens, but really in their twenties, and as they started popping out of college and things like that, they all wanted to be in the business. And then the opportunities were much broader for my businesses now so that they could come into the business. And I give a lot of that credit to Kristin for raising such good children. She contributed just as much to the business as I did even though she wasn't there in the office or writing checks or doing anything like that. It was the importance of being at home with the kids.- Yeah, wow, that's awesome. So being a business owner can be really challenging. And you had mentioned there's ups and there's downs. And we've had recessions, we've had pandemics now. All sorts of things And you said, like there's a tower collapse. Are there things that stick out along this journey of being a business owner that you think of back on that were really, really difficult? And how did you manage through those?- Yeah, I think I'll go back and just touch on that tower falling. So we're about a year and a half in business. We're up in North Dakota. There's three guys in a truck at this point. It's just three people as a whole company. And we're doing some maintenance on this tower. And the last thing we're going to do is just climb the tower and do a visual inspection. I wasn't feeling great that day so I asked the other, my partner, my brother, who were the three guys in the truck, if they could climb and I could stay on the ground. So they went up the tower. It's about a 300 foot tower, they're about 180 feet up. I'm out at an anchor point where these guy-wires come down to a point and attach to an anchor shaft that goes underground. The anchor, while I'm standing by it, I hear this sick pop sound and it's whooshing out of the ground. And the guy-wires are going toward the tower and the tower has fallen. And they're up there on it. And I'm like, I just wanted to be up there with them because I thought, "This is it, they're going to die." But they didn't. It was a miracle they survived. And some serious injuries and surgeries and all that. But then what does that do to the business? You're three guys in a truck. Word spreads pretty fast. Most of your people are gone. Everyone just assumes you're going to go out of business. And so we didn't get calls. And so for probably three months, four months, no one called. So I had to take a part-time job.- Really? Okay, all right.- Thankfully, my stepfather had a business in town called Dust Tex. They do mops and entry rugs and things like that. And I went and worked for him for a while. And I thought maybe we were done as well. You never know what's going to happen next, you know. There is no like answer, it just happens. And so, but pretty soon people start calling in one job and then another, and pretty soon we're back in. But those are the kind of times that really test you. And later in life, I found this poem that says,"Stick to your task until it sticks to you. Beginners are many, but enders are few." And it goes on with honor, power, place, and praise. But in the very end it says,"That will come life's victories after a while." Now, when you're in all the travail of business, you don't know if the victories are coming. But they do if you stick with it. And so even through that and other ups and downs, I remember a recession in 2001, 2000 period. The tech bubble burst. And all of our customers were technology businesses.(group laughing) Verizon, AT&T, people like that, so they just quit spending. We were probably, instead of three guys in a truck by then, we might have had 25 people or something like that at that time. And I remember sitting in the parking lot with my partner at the time, he's since retired. And we're talking like,"Okay, this is it, what are we going to do? Are we done?" Cuz I mean, everything was looking bleak. Our sales went down by more than 50% in less than 12 months. And we both sat there and decided at that moment,"No, we're all in, we're going to make this happen." I remember going in and going through the books and deciding, "How can we cut expenses? Because the sales aren't coming in to match our income." And I was able to, I remember trimming like 500,000 out of the budget. We all took a pay cut and we came through. And each of those cycles though, they teach you so much. You never forget the lesson. One of the best lessons when you're in a down cycle is you're going to come back out of it. And you don't know that on the first down cycle. You don't even remember it on the second down cycle. But after you've been through a couple, when you hit the next down cycle, you go,"We're going to be okay. We just got to weather it out, it's going to turn." And in my experience, they always turn in maybe about 18 months, sometimes 12 to 18 months. Sometimes a little longer, but in that range. And then you start to come back out of it again.- And that's where your faith comes in too?- Oh, absolutely. That's when you do turn it over to God a little bit at times and say, "Hey, I need your help here. At least mentally help me through this." And he always has been there for me with those kinds of things.- So the two of you have been married 33, 34 years?- 33.- 33 and a half.- 33 and a half, okay, four kids, five grandchildren. So I know a lot's changed in your personal and your financial lives. If you're sitting here today and you're looking back, are there any things that you would do differently than you've done?- No.(group laughing)- Not really, I don't think, there's not a lot that we would do differently.- When I think backwards, it's almost like everything is in the present. And when you think about,"Well, how would I have done this different or that different?" I would say I can't think of anything because it all became the today. It became the building blocks that made it to today. Certainly there's probably decisions along the way that could have been made that would've been tweaked it a little bit better here or there. But if anything I've learned in business, it's this concept of patience. And when you see maybe an employee that's not performing as well, but you see their heart, you can be patient. When you see a system or process that you're trying to change within your business and it's not happening as fast as it could, just sort of be patient. And I've learned that lesson and so if I were to go back and say,"Could we have done better if we'd have changed some things?" Maybe, but now that I look at it today, I mean, very successful, lots of stories, tons of life experience and the businesses have really blessed our family and blessed a lot of other people. When I think about, for example, you think about philanthropy."Well, what are you going to do for philanthropy, Craig?" And I think, "Well, the best thing I can do is right now." And it's not building up a big pot of money to give away someday. Give it away as you go. And the best way to give it away is to your employees. Pay them a fair enough wage that they can get ahead. And don't put as much in your pocket as you go. Give it, and there's other ways to give it away, obviously, as well as that. But by building these businesses and making them, we hope multi-generational with our kids coming in and then the third generation and so on, we're working on that right now. That's one of our big things. Make it so that it can last forever. That's probably the best philanthropic gift that we think we can give to this community and to our family and to others as that unfolds in the times ahead. So going backwards, I can't think of a lot of ways.- And we have given to others along the way. Just in private ways.- So, financially speaking, the stage you're at right now, what's most important thing for you? Is it that philanthropy? Is it passing into a new generation? Is it security, like sleep well? What is it for you now?- Craig has taught me and others about the open hand versus closed hand or closed fist. So if you try to hold onto your money and think,"I'm just going to accumulate, accumulate and I'm just going to keep it, it's mostly for myself, mostly for me," that doesn't seem to work as well as having an open hand and being very giving with finances and money that we're blessed with. I think we believe that any success that we have is can be attributed to God. And we're shepherds, stewards of what we've been given. So as we feel, we try to be givers, I guess. And we're trying to teach that now to our children that it's a culture that at VIKOR that is talked about and there are giving programs there, opportunities for employees to give or choose a cause to give to.- That's great.- And we just want to make sure that as Craig is heading towards retirement now and working towards that and our children and other employees' management team are working for that succession, towards that, making sure that the culture of giving is maintained. That we give to our employees, that they give to one another, and give to others in the community or others that they care about. That's really important to us. And probably most importantly that our children know that. How are we going to be stewards to the blessings that we've been given?- Wow, that's incredible. So Kristin, we kind of glossed over that story about the groceries and maybe not having enough money at certain points to just go to the grocery store and pick up some groceries for the family. What was that like for you? How did you feel in those moments?- Well, I do remember exactly where I was. When Craig asked me, came up and said,"You know, honey, we're really short on money and I think it might be a good idea if we just didn't buy groceries for a little while." And I guess I remembered looking at him and thinking, "Okay." It was a little shocking. Even though I kind of knew. I was aware that we were financially not doing great. But it was early, very early in our marriage. And I just thought, "Okay, we can do this. This is going to be difficult." It never occurred to me that we might come at a point in our marriage when we literally couldn't go to the grocery store. But that is a reality for many folks. So it was hard and difficult at that time. I don't remember what we ate.- There's usually some stuff still left in the cupboard, right?(Kristin laughing) There's like dried beans and some rice.- You asked your brother for some tuna maybe?(group laughing)- Those are the kind of moments that cause the entrepreneur to lay in bed at night awake when he's thinking about,"I do not want to tell my wife this, but I have to." Later, we would share the checking account duties. At that time, they fell in my lap. And so I was the only one that knew that both the checking account at home was close to zero and the checking account at work was close to zero. A lot of times when the checking account at home was close to zero, Craig could say,"Well, I'm just going to throw a few hundred dollars over." I always ran it through payroll, that kind of thing. But at that time, I couldn't do it, and so...- I don't remember how long that went on actually.- It was probably a few weeks or something. Maybe a month. There was a couple times I couldn't make payroll and had to tell my employees that they weren't going to get paid on Friday. But if they could be patient, I think I could pay them on Monday or Tuesday. And it was like manna from heaven. It seemed like it always came. But those are stressful,'cause employees can't wait for their checks. They need groceries, too.- They need groceries too, yeah, yeah, exactly. Have all of your businesses and ventures been successful?- They have not.(Craig and Kristin laughing)- [Adam] You're serial entrepreneurs.- You're going to have some wins, you're going to have some losses.- Yeah, he is a typical entrepreneur, I think, always needing to be creating something. And he loves having something to create or being involved in building something new. So one day I came home, I don't know where I was, but out doing something and came home and he was at home in the kitchen baking some bread, making a loaf of bread. And I said, "Oh wow, what are you doing baking bread?" He said, "Well, I think I'm going to start a Great Harvest Bread store here in town. And I said, "Really?"(Adam and Craig laughing)"Okay, all right." And and his bread was delicious, by the way. Very good bread baker, as was his mother. So he went off and went to school at bread school for Great Harvest.- In the middle of my time running VIKOR.- Yes, yes, so apparently-- I don't know what the people at VIKOR thought.(Craig laughing)- Apparently he wasn't busy enough at that time and went to the school and learning and signed up for the franchise and opened a Great Harvest Bread store here in Sioux Falls which was next door to what is now our organic grocery store, Pomegranate. But Great Harvest opened first and it was a beautiful-- We made it about six years.- Uh-huh, a beautiful store.- We never made any money. There was never a profit.(Kristin laughing) You know how many loaves of bread it takes to make a million dollars?- No.- A lot.(group laughing)- Okay, so speaking to future entrepreneurs. Think that through a little bit. And you know how many loaves of bread we needed to sell in a day to really break even? About 150. Not a ridiculous amount. When all you can sell is 100, 125, then it doesn't work.- No, it doesn't.- Over time, and that was, and I remember our customers saying, "You're closing? We love Great Harvest." And I'm like, "Tell your friends, because we just don't have enough of you coming in. So that was a one of those experiences.- It was sad, when it closed, but necessary.- Well, for what it's worth, I know it's a small consolation at this point. Your bread was delicious.- Do you remember that?- I do remember, I do remember the story, yes. That was fantastic. Thank you for sharing that story.- [Craig] Thank you.- All right, let's wind down with the advice portion of the show here. What advice would you give to entrepreneurs or people who are considering becoming an entrepreneur? Especially if like you two, they're in a committed relationship and they're just starting off?- I would say to buckle up.- Yeah, I was going to say buckle up.(group laughing)- Buckle up and be ready for an awesome ride. And hold on to each other during it. And be brave and willing to take risks.- That's awesome.- That's great. Wow, going backwards in time, If you'd have told me that when we started, I would've like, "I love you." That's great advice.(group laughing) Yeah, entrepreneurialism and entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Obviously built into it is being risk-taking, risk takers. And so yeah, I agree. Be willing to take risks and stick to it. Don't give up too soon. Now, sometimes the bank forces you. Or not the bank, but the finances force you into it. But the other thing I'd say, make sure you're choosing something that has legs if you can possibly figure that out. But then just really keep your mind open and your heart open to where that road takes you, but it's a great road, it's an exciting road. It's very, very rewarding to be an entrepreneur and to see your businesses flourish. And be willing to take the whys in the road when they come as well. And sometimes they come, and sometimes the why is you take both roads. I'm, you know, I'm doing towers here and I'm going to do groceries over here.- I was going to say diversity, diversity. Diversify as you go is very important.- Yeah, so that's probably the best advice I can think of right now.- What about the advice you give to a young Craig and Kristin?- Just love each other and have fun cuz it's going to be wonderful.- Yeah, love each other. Love yourself too. You know, give yourself some latitude and some slack and don't be too hard on yourself. Try to follow a good path, you know, live a clean life. We did that, so I'm not trying to give myself that advice again. But I think I would give anyone that same advice.- You would also say to stop and smell the roses along the way, too.- My mother told me that once, that "Craig, you got to stop and smell the roses, you know, you get a little bit intense at times and you need to." I see a picture in my mind of us standing in front of this Elkhorn Arch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And the family's there. And Craig's got a clenched fist probably because I was trying to get the picture just right or something. But it's symbolic to me of that was an intense time of my life. So sometimes just(Craig breaths in deeply) take a breath and everything's going to be okay.- Awesome, let's leave it there. Craig, Kristin, thank you so much for being on the show. You have an incredible story and I know a lot of people are going to get a lot of really great lessons from your story and thank you for being so willing to share it.- Thank you.- Thank you Adam, been an enjoyable conversation.- Thank you. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please subscribe and share with your family or friends. If you have a topic you want us to cover in future episodes, send us a note through our website. And if you're at the point where you want an expert opinion on your finances, reach out and we'd be happy to start a conversation. And remember any comments, insights, or strategies discussed on this podcast are intended to be general in nature and therefore may not be suitable for you and your situation, whatever that may be. Before acting on anything we discuss, please consult with your attorney, CPA, and/or your financial advisor.