Aaron Everitt, broker with The Group, joins us to give his quarterly update on the Northern Colorado real estate market, sharing market and interest rate updates, and examples of opportunity in any market. Aaron is also one of our newest LoCo Next Level members, a partner in a delivery service provider, and Founder of InMotion, our newest sponsor of The LoCo Experience Podcast.
In this episode, we’ll focus in on the founding of InMotion, along with stories of successful scaling opportunities that they’ve been providing to local small businesses through their affordable point-to-point delivery service.
Later in the show, we get into the soup - the Alphabet Soup - and Aaron and I discuss the politicization of the many government agencies assigned to regulate and enforce activities and enterprise in America - particularly on a federal level. FBI, CIA, DOE, DOJ, CPB, FDA, CDC, FHA, DHS, FJB - there are just so many it’s hard to keep them straight!
Aaron is full of wisdom in so many areas. I hope you gain valuable insight from our conversation.
The LoCo Experience Podcast is sponsored by: Logistics Co-op | https://logisticscoop.com/
Follow us to see what we're up to:
Facebook
Music By: A Brother's Fountain
Aaron Everitt, broker with The Group, joins us to give his quarterly update on the Northern Colorado real estate market, sharing market and interest rate updates, and examples of opportunity in any market. Aaron is also one of our newest LoCo Next Level members, a partner in a delivery service provider, and Founder of InMotion, our newest sponsor of The LoCo Experience Podcast.
In this episode, we’ll focus in on the founding of InMotion, along with stories of successful scaling opportunities that they’ve been providing to local small businesses through their affordable point-to-point delivery service.
Later in the show, we get into the soup - the Alphabet Soup - and Aaron and I discuss the politicization of the many government agencies assigned to regulate and enforce activities and enterprise in America - particularly on a federal level. FBI, CIA, DOE, DOJ, CPB, FDA, CDC, FHA, DHS, FJB - there are just so many it’s hard to keep them straight!
Aaron is full of wisdom in so many areas. I hope you gain valuable insight from our conversation.
The LoCo Experience Podcast is sponsored by: Logistics Co-op | https://logisticscoop.com/
Follow us to see what we're up to:
Facebook
Music By: A Brother's Fountain
Aaron Everett is one of our newest local next level members, a real estate expert in Northern Colorado. Partner in a delivery service provider and founder of InMotion, our newest sponsor of the Local Experience podcast. This is Aaron's fifth appearance on the local experience. In this episode, we focus in on the founding of In Motion, along with stories of successful scaling opportunities that they've been providing to local small businesses through their affordable point to point delivery service. We also check in on the northern Colorado real estate market where Aaron shares market and interest rate updates and examples of opportunity in any market. Later in the show, we get into the soup, the alphabet soup, where Aaron and I discuss the politicization of the many government agencies assigned to regulate and enforce activities and enterprise in America, particularly on a federal level. F B I C I A D O E D O J C P B F D A C D C F H A D H s, fj B. There's just so many, it's hard to keep them all straight. And why exactly has our federal government grown to be so large when it's supposed to be about defense and interstate commerce? And that's about it. Aaron is one of my favorite people, and he is full of wisdom in so many areas. So tune in, listen up and learn with our latest episode with Aaron Everett. Welcome back to the Local Experience podcast. I'm here again and for the fourth or fifth time, this is five five, with Aaron Everett, our quarterly real estate update, guy and entrepreneur of all things, all things of all things. always of always things. We, we don't usually we kind of write down an agenda of what we're gonna talk about and stuff, and. We came in talking about stuff, but let's, let's talk with your new, uh, yeah, your new product. You just brought me some of this lovely cider. Yeah, so this is Apple Valley. This is, uh, a cider. So with In Motion, which is a proud sponsor. Yeah, proud sponsor of the Local Experience podcast. Um, one of the things we've been doing as we've trying to develop and build that business is, um, we talked about it last time, but this, there's a really unique piece in Colorado law that allows. For independent brewers, makers, distillers to self-distribute. Yeah. So as long as, uh, somebody's, as long as they're the ones paying the bills, they're the ones paying the commissions, they're the ones doing the stuff, then there's an opportunity for, uh, these small distribu, these small companies to actually, yeah. Do this without distribution. When distribution just can be really hard. They don't have, they don't make enough. They're always kind of, they don't have enough margin already. Right. And then somebody comes. Takes 22% off the top or 30 plus. Yeah. Really more than that. So, so anyway, this is a really cool opportunity that we've had. We've got five different companies now that we're representing in the liquor space. Five soon. 10, probably 20. Yeah, let's, let's hope, right? Um, that would be really awesome. But this one is a, the latest one, so this is a, a Apple Valley cider company. They're out of Penrose, Colorado, and it's all Colorado apples, which is where for people like me, that was like, where's Penrose? It's kind of, it's like two and a half hours from here. It's down by the dunes basically. So it kind KoSA area, Alamo ish, that area. Okay. So cool spot. Um, and they do as much of this outta Colorado apples as they can. So sometimes they have to supplement depending on the crop, but it's another little fruit valley actually in Colorado. Oh really? Mm. And so this is, this is cool stuff. So it's from that valley even Most of it. Yeah. Most of it is They can what they can. So, and then they probably hook up to Palisade and, Hey, you got any extras up there? Anything they can get from anywhere? I suppose uh, sometimes they sub supplement with Washington Apples. Yeah. But for the most part it's Colorado stuff. Um, they do a bunch of different flavors. So they have cherry, black, current, uh, semi. The one we're drinking now is black current, which is, so, it is black current. I've, I've said Coran a lot of my life and I don't think it's right. I think it's current. I don't know. Um, probably so, yeah, fun stuff. We've got, we just picked up a beer called Emporium. They're out of, uh, Lakewood. They're by the old Lakeside amusement park, if you can believe or not. Okay. Yeah. Uh, cool beer. Their, their whole deal is Dazed and Confused, the movie they love. So all their beers are named after different things. So like, conditions of my parole are one of'em dope. Um, a bunch of funny stuff that are, that are from that movie. They're all their deals, all Sessionable beers. So everything is like under six in terms of their av, which is pretty fun cuz then it's something, their idea was that it's a neighborhood pub. They wanted people to be able to come in and enjoy more than be there, be there for three hours. Yeah, exactly. So, and now, Overwhelming them with the amount of sales and things that are going on. Awesome. And so they're, it's, it's great. It's, these are the stories that are just so fun. And do they have to build the relationships with the, with the liquor store or whatever that you're carrying it to? That's what our we're trying to do too. You're, you're kind of, we're you're, you're a proper, cause you're a salesman when you're delivering this, you're basically a salesman for them. Yeah. So I've got a team of people that were out doing that. There's a team in Denver that we linked up with. That's how it all kind of came about, called Stable Beverage. Um, and he's got three or four reps down there. He is, got a rep in, in Grand Junction. Right. And then he's got us up here and we're trying to promote more and more stuff. So outspending time at restaurants and bars with our team trying to figure out, uh, and liquor stores. Can we get it into places. So these are all, what's really fun and we were talking about it before we got on here, so it's just an excuse for you to go to bars and restaurants. is what I think I'm hearing. Is your wife aware of this or, yeah. Well, God, there's, we have a good group of people doing it and spending time out doing it. I'm trying to, I'm actually actively recruiting other people too to come out and do it, cuz I think we've got a big enough territory. Yeah. That we go all the way from, uh, Longmont all the way up to the border and then Estes all the way out to wherever we wanna go. So. Well, and it gives like an opportunity for these end establishments to feature things that people just never would get, they wouldn't get otherwise, you know? Yeah. Period. You know, cuz they're, you know, the Apple Valley cider may not. B, like a big distribution kind of thing. They may never be there. Right. Um, they may not want to do that. Right. They enjoy their, the margin, they get outta their tap room, they enjoy the, you know, their conver like this emporium breweries and other good examples. They, they love what they get outta their tap room, but they also have really expensive machinery Right. That they had to buy in order to get the beer done. And so they want that machine running all the time. Right, right. Well, and to just, can your, your customers want to take some beers home. Mm-hmm. right. And so you want a can, but you know, the more you can keep your Canor machine running, the better ultimately. Yeah. You know, as long as you can make enough beer to put in there. Yeah. So it's just been, I love it. It's like, like we were talking about, I just, the, this whole thing of being able to have something for small business Yeah. That keeps them. Competitive, even if it's not money or financially competitive Yeah. With an Amazon or a, or a Budweiser distribution company. Or even if it doesn't keep them competitive in that space financially, it keeps'em competitive with convenience. So, um, just to set everybody we're talking about in motion here. Yes. Uh, which is really your startup enterprise that Yeah. Kind of take some of what you've learned as a point to point distribution business Yep. And kind of leverage that to help the smaller business that wouldn't necessarily have that ability to, like next day shipping. Right. Like you get with a lot of things. Right. Uh, and but actually provide that with, for a flat fee. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so, and then try to, try to give people that extra level of convenience or layer of convenience and we can do it at a really good margin. Yeah. And it also. in the world we're in, people are expecting convenience. So for that distiller as an example, or that, uh, apple squeezer, whatever they call it. Is it brewing what it is Brewing? Yeah. It's the same process. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So Apple, brewer, cider Brewer, cider brewery, um, cider. So for that person like that, you mentioned they're gonna pay 22 to 30% on their distribution contract kind of thing. And, and you don't have to tell us the exact pricing, but is it less than that for you to just go drop off some cases and stuff? And how can it be like, well, because what happens is they can keep their margins higher. So what, what really goes on in the distribution world is that, let's say somebody comes along and says, I'm gonna buy this. They don't, they actually take possession of it. Right? So they're gonna squeeze the maker for the lowest possible price, right? So that they can then add a margin on top of that, right? That margin can be, cause they're taking the risk of storing it and selling it. They're buying it, whatever they're buying it. So the deal, the, the sort of the trade off, the, the deal with the devil, if you will, is that if you get, if you get distribution, they say, well, cool, we'll do it, but you'll have to sell it at this price and you have to make this much of it all the time. Cuz we have all these customers, right? So the temp, the temptation is, Well, I have all these customers available to me, but I can't, I have to make this much and I have to sell it. It's, and I have to sell it at a volume discount. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, cause through a tap room for a brewery or something, it might be 85% gross margin. They do great in the tap room. Right. Because it's$6,$7 for a 12 or a 16 ounce beer or something like that. Yep. You know? But then to sell a six pack to a liquor store. Little tougher. Yeah. You can't sell a$14 or$18 six pack or four pack of beer. Right. You have to sell, it has to be lower than that. So that means that, and the dis distributor has to take a margin in there too. So Yeah. All of a sudden they just shrink way down in their, in their, what they're actually making. So are you only doing packaged product just like the cans and bottles? Or could you do mini kegs and stuff? We'll do kegs for both the beer really for the, for these guys and for the, for the brewer. Okay. For the beer. We'll do this, we'll do we sell six and and half barrels, so, yeah. Um, so you, you, you're basically a seller with free delivery. You got it That's how long before they closed that loophole in the Well, seems like too free for Colorado these days. I think what's cool about it is because we are an innovative state in the alcohol space. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We're the drunkest state in the union, by the way. Are we now? Yeah, we are. Oh, that's impressive. We graduated. That's Wisconsin. We graduated. Dang. Wisconsin was gonna be hard to take down So because of that, I think the producers allow us the chance, like there, that is such a huge deal that, and there's always somebody else opening up. New brewery, true. New distiller, new winery. There's these things that are happening all the time through our state. And so I think, I feel like that's probably when they won't close because I think it's really beneficial. So obvious I'm part of our culture too, right? Obviously that space, the distilleries, the, the cries, the breweries. Who else, what other small businesses are you imagining should really. have a good, strong use case, um, for emotion. Well, so this was really fun. So we advertised on your podcast Yeah. And Sean from the old town Spice Company Yeah. Yeah. Called me and said, Hey, I heard about you on the local experience, or you know, the local experience. Yeah. So we, we really could use you. And so Right. It amazes me that I order two 12 packs of spices of the steak shake. Yeah. And he's like, okay, I'll drop it off tomorrow afternoon. I'm like, you will. Right. Okay. That's cool. But yep. Like, yeah. So he called me and he said, Hey, I could really use, cuz like Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for me now are really busy and I'm really full. What I, what I didn't understand. I mean, I knew it in, I kind of knew it intuitively, but I didn't really understand it. Couldn't put the things together. He supplies spices for all sorts of restaurant right people. He supplies it for breweries, he supplies it for distillers. So all of a sudden we're on this like back and forth deal where I have this chance to build this little small economy based on just the convenience of what we do. Yeah. Now I can go talk to a brewer about, Hey, have you considered using Old Town Spice? Right. Instead of Right. amazon.com or whatever. You're like an in-person affiliate sales organization. I am and ex it's, it's the, it's the I pencil deal. Right. Which is just what I love, which is that all this invisible hand stuff is happening behind the scenes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in the middle of that and it's, there's like an altruism to it. That's really cool. Yeah. But also just so. Just magical about building small business and letting these guys have this chance to do something really cool. So that led to a conversation with Welsh Rabbit, which he's talking to us about now. Delivering their cheese plates to the breweries. Oh, cause he's talking about they have Welsh rabbit cheese plates in various places and stuff already. Yes. And it's a pain in his butt. It is. To run those cheese plates around. And then that leads to a conversation about, well, could I build a cheese of the month club that actually had deliveries? You know, so that kind of stuff. For these small businesses, it's really about if you can build an, oh, that's, so, if you can visualize something about where you need something and you don't want to, you think, well this, these impediment hard to, this is too hard cause I don't know how to do the delivery piece. Right. We're that guy. Well, I'm thinking like cheese plates for brewer. He's like, well, once a week isn't really often enough. Right. Because cheese gets kind of loses its fresh edge, you know? Mm-hmm. even though it's all aged already. Mm-hmm. but it, you know, twice a week if you can do it. And it basically is the same skin off your nose. Yeah. Or your driver's nose, whatever. Yeah. So I just, the whole thing is just really fun because I, I feel like each of these conversations lead to another conversation. Okay. Which leads to another deal where somebody says, you know, I, I just, it's such a pain to run this to this place or do this, or we can fill that space. Do you wanna give any praise to your operations person or anything like that, Because I know you're not executing a lot of this Well, this week I have been. Okay. everybody's on vacation, so every overflow. Right. It's one of those challenges of a small, small business, right? Yeah, it is. It has to get done. It is, well, the team of people that have put this together with me are, there are people that I, I really, um, one of'em was a driver for me, and he's been with me for four years. He's just totally critical to the operation. Yeah. He's instrumental to it because he's, he's my on the road beta sort of data point that gives me everything that's really going on. So, Uh, Brian's awesome. Um, Michelle, who I is right behind me in everything that I do today. She was delivering spices to csu. Um, she's awesome. So do you have a, like an executive assistant? Elle is really who basically that's what she's, she is my, she's I, I, I always tell her, she's like the thing that went behind Hanson Gretel and picked up all this stuff, Cause that's kind of how my life has been. I just scattered all and she tries to find and fix it and she does a great job actually. She's Yeah. Impressive, uh, impressive person for that. So, um, yeah, so anyway, that has been that. Oh, and it's probably gig economy stuff too, like for sales reps, for things like that. Like it doesn't have to be their full-time Yes. Thing it can be. Yeah. I talked to a guy this morning about doing alcohol sales force and he was like, I don't know if I'd have all the time to do it. And I said, well, I'll, I built you, I've built a system that if you're want to go do it for the day, I can create a map for you and a system for you to go do this. Right. And you've followed up. As with our team, you build your own customer base, you build your, you build your base, and what you build is yours. Yeah. Um, and so that's okay. Yeah. I don't know. I, I'm, it's just, it's really been, you're testing a lot of things. I'm testing a lot of things. At some point you probably have to get a little more, I have to be more refined about it. Yeah. Yeah. I do think some of these things though, end up having margin on'em that I think are worth doing. Yeah. So I think, and at the end of it, when I can combine high margin stuff with convenience stuff for small business that I think and believe in should succeed, it makes me feel like we're doing something more than just running crap around town. Who is the quote person? I think it might be Zig Ziegler. That said, um, the secret to, uh, Getting your dreams in life accomplished is to help other people get their dreams in life accomplished. Yeah. I think that's a Ziggy thing, right? It might be. I, I'm feeling more and more like that. To me, that's like, like you are all about that right now in your space. It's like you're helping people do things that they just couldn't do otherwise, that doesn't love to do. They're not gonna go out and buy a truck and then like, so it stops right there for most people I know, right? Like where I don't wanna go buy a truck. Yeah. I gotta get to the scale where I gotta buy a truck and run it all around. How, how busy do I have to keep a truck? And then who's gonna drive that? And then I gotta keep that guy employed. And what if don't have deliveries that day, then we're gonna drive it on his Tuesdays, you know? I don't know. So it keeps, I think it gives everybody this really cool opportunity to just utilize something that wasn't in the space before. And I, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I just, there is a lot about that. How do you, how do you make somebody's, how do you make somebody's dream? come not not come true. It's, it's like your Cinderella or something or whatever. It's like, well, can pay for it. They pay the right price for their dreams. They could come true. I mean, it's like, that's the best part about capitalism. It's like, you need me and I can help you, and you can give me money and I can help you. Yeah. And then you, for sure your customers are giving you money because it's, it's just this really cool deal that goes on behind. Have I told you my win-win win joke from local think tank? No. Uh, I don't know if it's a joke. It's really more of a motto. Uh, and it's uh, at local think tank. We look for the win, win, win win, but we'll settle for the win, win win if necessary. I think it's true. I don't know, like a lot of people talk about, you know, people kind of think things are fair, right? There's this conversation about around fairness and that everybody should have a, everybody should have fair things and, and it all should be fair to everybody, right? Right. The, the what I don't, what I don't believe to be true about that is that Amazon isn't looking to have a fair deal with me. Neither is Walmart. Neither is Costco. Neither is any of the giant corporations that live in our world. Yeah. They're not looking for a fair deal. They're gonna give me the cheapest thing, like whatever I can turn over that says, made in China. Yeah. Whatever trinket I can turn over that says Made in China. Yeah. That's what they're interested in. Right. In order for me to buy cheap stuff and we somehow as Americans exchanged this crazy deal between ourselves and China. Yeah. And said that what's most important out of all of this is that it's cheap. Right. And so we exchanged jobs, handmade stuff, localized economy. We exchanged all of that. Yeah. For cheap things. Mm-hmm. and so I'm not actually looking for fair. Hmm. I don't want, I don't think fair has worked like just as better than fair. I would rather see us see small business, like a thriving Yeah. Community. Yeah. Is filled with small business. When I go to Sheridan to do development work up there. Yeah. It's so interesting to me because every shop along Main Street, which is the main, like that's where people go. Yeah. To shop. They have a Walmart too, but Right. Everything. There's probably a Taco John's, but that's about as far as it goes. Yeah. But everything along the main strip. Is it is something of somebody that's doing handmade stuff. Like they're doing something. Yeah. They're a local person. So the person that owns the furniture store, I went to kindergarten with like I know her. Oh yeah. Cuz you grew up there isn't. Yeah. The, there's a guy that's actually doing pottery in on Main Street and selling it in and making a living. Yes. Red Bison studios. That's awesome. And it's awesome stuff. And they are right downtown and they're right on Main Street. And so when I go there and I see this example of really a really healthy economic community that's localized and I remember what it was like here when I was a kid with Yeah. Local businesses that run, ran every shop pretty much on Main Street. And really, we still have a lot of that going on. We do. We don't have the gap downtown. We don't have these things. Right. So there, there really is like a, I was in Orlando, sorry to cut you off. No, no. I was in Orlando this weekend and uh, last weekend or maybe. Maybe the weekend before it was actually Pod Fest and describing Fort Collins people and stuff. And I was like, well, like the coolest part about Fort Collins is like if a big chain kind of an organization comes and opens a business in downtown Fort Collins. They die. They die. They die. You know, six months, 12 months, 24 sometimes if they're really ambitious, you know? Yeah. But they almost always die It's cool. Like, uh, the other night we came to town and um, ha ha ha. And, and I came to town and we had dinner at the Crown Pub. We hadn't had together, we hadn't had dinner. It's the Crump Pub 22 years ago, which was so fun because at really, like, we got to the chance of watching, um, you know, we, we, we were eating food that we're familiar with the King's Curry or whatever, and we're like, man, this is so cool cuz this is actually what makes our town so special. It's really what makes Northern Colorado as special as it is, is that these places exist. They're, they're real people behind them that are trying to make their career and their life and their living off. Yeah. Serving their community. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that's what I want in motion to be like, I just wanna flow right in there. Be one of those things. Yeah. And be the people that are like, yeah, okay. But we are gonna help you compete with all the people that deliver stuff. Right? Yeah. It's gonna be more money. And yes, it's gonna be kind of frustrating that it's not maybe totally as clean and accurate as Amazon or Walmart or whoever. But you know what? We're helping this guy right. Who lives here and works here. His kids go to school here. Yeah. His, you know, his, they, we shop at the grocery store here. We do the things in this town that make this town special. And yeah, because we exist, we can help them be better. I was just thinking about, you know, the cafe ro. Yeah. Yeah, the coffee. Coffee, uh, it's a Brazilian person that apparently lives in my neighborhood. So if you're listening to this Mr. And Mrs. Cafe let me know. But like he could build a coffee club. He could where, you know, cuz he sells probably$20 coffee ball, you know,$15 at least. And you can't really stop, you know, they're gonna have to buy several at a time or something. Yep. But you know, cuz you can't be be ha be stopping places for$2, you know,$5 even. But even that's what's so fun about this, is that I can build something around the product. I don't have to build it on, it's not a standard flat fee. I don't have to build something that's just specific to making all my margin on everything because I have so much on the truck. Yeah. Because I've diversified what we're doing. I can actually spread that out. And so real estate agents that use us Oh. Are helping a place like Old Town Spicey Shop help their community. Right. Get to restaurants that wouldn't, it's just, it's so It's really fun. Well, and you're. I was just thinking like a lot of you do like real estate signs and stuff like that. Yeah. But like, realtors should hire you to take a gift basket to their clients after they close a deal. And that's, that's one of the things that we want. Yeah. As long as they have recurring things and it's not just a, but even that one off, we could figure out, I mean, if they're a broker, they probably aren't gonna just have one closing a year. They're probably gonna have five. So it's worth our time set, set up and they have signs to move around and stuff like that. So, and it's worth our time at that point to say, look, we can do this for you. We can, here's what would be really cool. You set up a deal with the cupboard to do a, get a closing gift for them that we pick up mm-hmm. at the cupboard and drop off the next day for them. That would be, and so now who, now all these people are benefiting. Yep. The covered benefits. Right. We benefit the realtor benefits the person that got it benefited. Yeah. It's just, it really. And the cover is like, you know, we've got this customer in Red Feather Lakes that comes down once a month religiously. but they would love to be able to like order things online and just have you take it to them. Yep. you know, or whatever. Yeah. And, you know, just silly stories like that, that you can empower through that, like we talked about before. I mean, I use the cupboard all the time because Jimmy's a friend and, and we've been friends forever and he should be in local think tank. By the way, Jim, if you're listening, he's, uh, he's a little bit, but he's a great guy. And I, you know, we, like I said, we played in a band together when we were in high school. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Oh, cool. He's, so the, I I use him as an example because he's a, he's one of those iconic businesses. Totally. Fort Collins. And, and the cupboard should always exist. Hold on. A hundred percent. If, if Fort Collins exists, some version of the cupboard should exist because it's such an important part of our culture. Right. I remember going there when I was a little kid. Right. Only if cooking no longer becomes important. Well without a gas stove, Well, we're jumping to politics. No, no, no. We're not jumping to politics. I wanna stay on this. I'm really amped about this. I think I talked, you know, we, we were talking beforehand, I am like Babyface, George Nelson and o brother where art do when the, when the bank robberies up. And I'm not saying, I'm not implying that what we're doing is bank robbery, but when that, when the adrenaline is going about a new thing like this Yeah. I, it's just so invigorating and it's so fun to watch and it's so life giving to watch this stuff play out in front of me to watch other people go, oh, I didn't know you. I didn't even know this thing existed. Yeah. It's just, it's rich and fun and awesome. Well, and it's been a while, right? Like the feet courier. Yeah. Didn't really do what you do, but kind of, you know, they, they, they certainly did stuff in the office world, right? Yeah. And delivered contracts. Yeah. And mortgage documents and different things like that. And then they got into the hospital work and then they just scaled and sold and whatever. And so the marketplace has been without really, a commercial. Point to point delivery. Yeah. Kind of solution here. Well they, here, their adaptation was to go into the hospital space because obviously there's margin there, right? Because, and documents were dying Right. There's not, it's really, it's really rare that you have to have anything that's actually wet, signed as a signature that you have to get to somebody else, right? There's a few documents left in real estate that are like that, but not very many. Mm-hmm. Um, and so what's really interesting is as the documents started, they moved to that space but then left this whole void of small business that still needs it. Still need it, yeah. Yeah. So there was actually I need to, I'll send you John Shaws contact information and he'll probably pass you along for Da Vinci sign cuz he is like, I have people driving for a freaking hour and a half from Windsor all the time to do some dumb thing, you know, deliver plans to the planning and zoning board meeting or to pick up something from somebody. So, and it's a lot of risk. It is to his organization, to his company, but also to that employee that has to go drive across town and stuff. It's just time too. I mean, talking to Sean at Old Town, spicy, he was like, I said, well, and when I sit down with people and I say, okay, well what does it cost you? You know, because that's how I want to build my pricing. Mm-hmm. and every time all they ever give me is the gas money Right. Right. They're like, okay, well if I took three days out of your salary per month, per month, per week, per week, And then I said, what is that worth to you? Cuz you're not working on your business, you're not growing your business, you're not doing anything to make your business better. Yeah, yeah. You're farting around delivering spices to the food court Right. Like, do you, do you wanna do that or can we give you some? But my goal is always to do the, do it for the price of the gas. Oh, well, that'd be great. That's my goal. Well, that's to see. You should probably, well, I maybe, but I mean, but within reason, within reason, I wanna be able to say, Hey, I don't want you, I don't, I want this to feel as convenient as, you don't wanna be painful for your customers. I don't. I don't. And so if it's painful, we'll try to figure it out. If it's not painful at all, we want more customers like you. Right. you know? Right. Because that's, we wanna spread your messes, spread your product, spread your service. We've done two weeks with Old Town Spice now, and it's been fantastic. Oh, good. Like, it's, it's a great route. It's consistent. We know what we're doing. It's his, he's able to input things and it's, it's very easy for him. I think we, you know, we've had a couple of hiccups as we got started, but it's really been more about normal. Right. It's normal stuff. Like, oh, I didn't, or enter it in soon enough. I should have had it in on Monday instead of Tuesday. All stuff that was very manageable. We still solved the problem. It's very easy to deal with. That's the stuff to me that is like, man, this is fun. So why are you so passionate about local business? Just as a, as a general question. That's good. I just, yeah. It's sentimental to me to some degree, but I, I watched my granddad kind of play this out in front of me to some degree. Mm-hmm. or at least I heard the story over my lifetime. That he couldn't sell lumber. So he opened a lumber yard. He moved here right after he got married. My grandma and him drove around all through the west. They wanted to leave Oklahoma. Surprise, surprise. Why would they wanna leave Oklahoma That's another whole podcast episode. They wanted to leave Oklahoma and they, and they were just enamored with the West. They loved, he loved fishing, so, oh, they, they said, you know, the West would be really fun to go be a part of. So they, on their honeymoon, they left Enid, Oklahoma, and they drove from there and went up all the way through Colorado and Mon, and Wyoming and Montana, and then made this month long loop. Okay. So they went to places like Pinedale and Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, and they made their way up through Douglas, Wyoming. Yeah. All these different things. And they fished along the way and did different things and just kind of, they were trying to figure out where they wanted to be. Yeah. At the end of the day, there were two lumber yards that were in these towns. One was in Fort Collins, one was in a place, in another place in Oklahoma. and he said, I think I want to go to Fort Collins. So he bought, so his dad helped him buy a fledgling lumber yard. Yeah. Where the old and his dad was in the lumber business or whatever. He was on the board of Long Bell Lumber, which ended up being a part of Louisiana Pacific down the road. Okay. Okay. He helped him buy it. Um, it's not quite the Trump story, which I got a million dollar loan from my props or whatever. Right. More like a dad stretch to lever it into getting this thing of security, security added connections and whatever. So they, and then, then lumberyard was fledgling. It was not succeeding. So he bought basically some inventory and a building and moved himself in what my granddad described as a covered wagon to come to. Right, right. Um, they came and found that they weren't selling lumber enough. They weren't so, Solution to that was to get with the builder. He, he got with builders at the Chamber of Commerce. Everybody said, why? What's happening? Why can't you buy a lumber from me? Yeah. And he said, Bob, we like you, but there's actually no place for us to build. We don't know. There's no lots. So we gotta go out and try to figure that out on ourselves. Or we're build busy building houses and we don't have any inventory of lots in front of us. Hmm. So my granddad figured out how to put all this together, buy land, leverage that. To get it put underneath the builders And when they closed on the lot, they also, the deal was that he had, they had to buy the lumber from him, So this was all this like long way around to buy a two before. Wow. Wow. Um, well, he solved, solved his own problem. He solved his own problem, you know. And, and I think what I saw out of that was, and he tells us, he told a story, this is before he died. He told a story and it was in his funeral. Oh. It would be hard for him to tell a story after he died. Yeah. He told a story. Um, uh, we, he had CSU come over and do this video of his kind of autobiography of his life. Oh, cool. And one of the things, one of the stories you told about, talked about was, uh, JC Penney's coming to town. Yeah. Which was a bigger deal, but he, at the time, he was still talking to Mr. Penny. So it wasn't like, you know, it was a big deal, but it wasn't, it wasn't so far removed. It was some corporation. Mm-hmm. somewhere. He was talking to them. And this, Mr. Betson, I think was the realtor that was on the other side of it, and he struck this deal. They built the building that ultimately Ace Hardware is in now. Okay. Lar Bees was in there forever. It was a furniture store. Yep. Yep. Um, but Scott Larbi, yeah. But he built this building for JC Penney's. That was his first commercial deal. Okay. And what I, what I realized about all of it as I've hear, heard these stories over my life was that he felt like everything that he was doing was not, yes, there was money involved in it. Hmm. Yes. There was stuff that he was gonna benefit from, and he could see that out in the future, that there was money from it. But what he really saw was this town was gonna get better because of the work he did. Yeah. So, I'm passionate about that because probably got a little leftover ghost in myself. Yeah. From my grandpa about making Fort Collins, Northern Colorado, a place we all wanna be. Well, and your family did a lot of that with real estate. We did. And real estate isn't as important in some ways as it was. Mm-hmm. Really convenience and. whatever, you know, those kind of functions. Like, not to say that real estate isn't important because where you are is super important. Always, and I think that'll, you'll always be a real estate fanatic, but you wanna live here, right? People wanna live here, so I don't want to, I don't want to diminish that, but why do people wanna live here? Yeah. It's the experience. They live here because it's amazing. It's got everything you want. It's got all the outdoor activities you could ever hope for, right? Just out the side of your door. Yeah. If you're a mountain biker, you love it. If you're a fisherman, you love it. If you're a skier, you love it. If you road bike, you love it. If you're ride motorcycles, you love it. If you like hiking or climbing or it's all here. Yeah. But also those people come back to town at the end of the night after their activities and everything that's here is amazing. Yeah. You have great breweries, you have great restaurants, you have great places to shop. You have this community of people that at the end of the day, yes, it's bigger than it was. but my assistant is always like, you know everybody. Well, yes and no. This is still a very small town. Yeah. So if I walk into a coffee shop and I happen to know somebody, it's not because, it's not because I, I'm really gregarious and love to be out in front of people. It's because this town lends itself to this idea that we all are here together. We're in community, and you're pretty old. And I'm old I screw you, whatever. I think I'm older than you. Didn't we talk about that recently? We did but yeah, I, that's why I'm passionate about it, because I, I actually don't know that it, it, this dominoes all the way up to what I actually do as my primary stuff, which is real estate. If we don't have a great place to live, then who the hell cares what you're buying? Hmm. Yeah. So you're trying to solve your own problems a little bit. Like a little bit. Keep Fort Collins great. Part of that is keeping a vibrant small business community. and it starts with that guy. Yeah. That has a dream in Fort Collins about doing something really cool. Yeah. And if he, if we do that, if we can help that guy be better at what he does and make his life better, make his business more successful, then everything out of that, everybody benefits out of that. Yeah. The next guy benefits that he goes and buys the, the goods from the spices, from the Yeah. The grain from, to make his stuff the, to who he pays rent to, to all of that is be. And at the end of that, then in the real estate world, we will be mores, you know, there's a more opportunity for everybody to benefit from it in their real estate and their property values, the success that they have outta of that, because I like it. Some guy at the bakery brewery that I went to this afternoon is succeeding. Yeah, yeah. Well, um, kudos to Sean over at Old Town Spice Shop. If, if you're out there listening and you've got a, a jar of no mistakes, everything shake in your cupboard, that was a special blend prepared with Old Town. Yeah. Uh, or my former, I think it was Bears back haired blend or something, was what I called it back. That fun? No, I mean like, how fun is that, that it's a long term relationship that somebody out there might be listening to this that would say, you know what? I actually am. So there's an invigoration to me as a small business person that I could do something that would make my customers happier, that would make my business better, that I might be able to make a margin on. And that just, this just makes this whole place way better. Yeah. Well, we're always exploring, looking for that place where we're adding for less than it costs us in some ways. I just hope that that's what in motion can be. We've talked a long time about it today, but it is ex, it's what I'm just, you're jazzed. I'm jazzed upon. I love that you're jazzed. I'm just thrilled about what's happening and just to see, like we've set records day after day of how many deliveries we're doing. Awesome. And my drivers are pumped. That's fun. And even though it's a hard, it's hard work, they know that we are doing something special. Yeah. And that's just, that's super cool. Really fun. That's probably gonna be one of your big challenges is just really like communicating and being a team environment like Zappos or Green Ride Yeah. Or whatever, like those companies that really do a good job of, Hey, this is what we're here for. Yeah. You know, and Yeah. Yes. We started. Here, but this, this dream has blossomed and grown and the impact we can really make is beyond what we can really imagine right now. It really registered with me last week when I was down with all these distillers. Cuz of course when you get to meet people in person Yeah. You realize, wow, this is a guy taking a huge risk. Yeah. Has a huge nut out in front of it. And he probably borrowed from the bank on just like promises and all sorts of stuff. He has nothing to leverage against it. Totally. And maybe his house is against it, his car, his cut, whatever. Totally. When you, when you see that and you see people trying to do that, especially in the like world we're in, which is just every step punishes failure, it just pun, it's just, it's just like promotes, squashing people adherence to the standard way of living or something. Or it's, it's so funny to me. I'm not to venture into politics terribly yet, but, but we can go where we want. The really, really interesting piece to me is to watch people say like, For years, there was this whole idea that corporations were evil and that there was this really, you know, they were super negative. What happened out of all of the last, however many years is that corporations actually got super powerful. Right? And, and while, and while the small business guy had to fight for his life to keep his gym open, or to keep his hair salon open mm-hmm. nobody was having that conversation with Walmart. Right. And no one was saying that Home Depot needed to shut down and nobody told Amazon ever shut down and nobody ever said anything to the big guys about any of it. Right. And they all still got the same loans that the small business guys got too. A lot of'em. Most of them. Yeah. No, it's, uh, that sucks. It's tragic. That sucks because it just absolutely smashes those people. The people that are like trying their best every day and they get up and they fight every day to pay enough to actually be able to pay for the things that they need to their house payment, their kids, their mortgage, the$500 gas bill now that is right out of the moon because Excel did whatever they did, you know? Do you, what do you think a policy prescription for that is? Like, it feels like we should almost have a progressive tax rate, not on like percentages, but based on kind of how big you are. But then that would be kind of restrictive on how big and greater your company. I, it's so hard to, I think it, you know, if you really wanted to solve this conversation and really agitate enough people to make them awaken, you'd put a flat tax on everything. Because if you did, everybody would understand how frustrating this is, right. And how punitive it is. Yeah. Because here's the reality of it, is like, I do fairly well in my life and I've got a lot of things that have happened in my past that make it what it is. My tax return is four feet thick. I mean, it's stupid if I printed it all out, right. It's, it's nuts. Amazon's is just as thick or more, I'm sure it's thicker. It's thicker, right. It's boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff. But I know that Amazon pays a lower tax rate than I do Right. I know they do. Right. And you might pay a lower tax rate than I do. Yep. because you got good tax people. I can't afford the good tax people Exactly. So, so each level and each layer of this is like, it's so sick. And if you really wanted to make it so that people said, you know what, I, I don't buy this, I actually don't buy what you're selling. Like, why are we so invested in the alphabet soup? Is, is anything in the alphabet land of bureaucracies making our life better? I can't, I can't think of one. Well, that's something that's been interesting is that the, you know, the. The Republican Congress kind of called for like a more of a flat tax kind of a thing. Yep. And what was it? They, oh, the, the, the media basically said they wanna raise your taxes. Yeah. And they're like, no, we wanna replace What we have now with this. I think if you can, we get rid of the IRS though, and still function as a nation. Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. You could better. I, I mean, I, I think you have to get rid of some of these things. I don't think there's any need. I mean, w can, here's my exercise I've been doing lately. Okay. People on politics. All right. Alright. So tell me what the FBI's done for you in your life. They found documents in Joe Biden's, Corvette or something. Okay. Whatever. inconsequential in my life. Nothing. Nothing, right? What's the CIA done? Um, well, they assassinated Kennedy That wasn't really good for me. They took, they, they made Iran a forever enemy of the us What's the EPA done for you? Um, they made it so my dad had to build like a$14,000 containment unit around his fuel tank because it could leak even though like he knows. So you can just go down this list and you can say, all right, here's the alphabet soup number one. Alphabet soup number two, alphabet soup number three. And tell me what has the IRS done for you, Aaron like, don't want to get into this I hate the irs. I think it's silly. You tax what you want less of this idea. So you want less income. The big screaming, the big screaming thing. Like, we want less consumption. Yeah. The big screaming deal is like, woo. What would happen to the roads? Well, the IRS has nothing to do with the roads anyway. right? They have nothing to do with it. They tax you and confiscate your money. to pay for a military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about in the fifties. That's what they do. Yeah. There isn't anything that the IRS does that local, that's localized to your life. They don't give you anything except here's what they do. Do they tell the local governments that they will give them money for something and it will cost five times what it ultimately costs Like, there's this great story about a road in New Hampshire that had a bridge that went out, and so they went to the, they went to the, the state, the, the local community said, well, your, the local government said, Hey, can we get some state funding for this? Yeah. State funding said, yeah, sure, we can do that. Here's how what and, and here's what we think. The bridge will cost$200,000 to build the bridge. Yeah. From there, it delayed and delayed because of all the environmental studies and everything else they had to do. Right. To get that. By the time they came back to rebid it, now it was$400,000, so they said, God, we probably had to go visit with the federal government funding, and can we get some federal funding by the time the whole damn thing was done, so 1.2 million bridge. All for something that then a local contract another. And meanwhile, and another bridge went out in New Hampshire, that bridge went out and a, the, a local contractor stepped up and said, I'll do it for 50 grand. Right? And did it all to code, all to everything, all the specifications that were met and done and before they waited for the eight years that it took to get the federal government money. That's all the IRS ever does. is say that they hold out a nugget that says that Here's some money that you might be able to have down the road if you do it our way. So, um, I read a quote on Twitter the other day that I thought was pretty funny. Um, it was An elephant is a mouse designed to government specifications, This, this is it, this is what we're doing. Why do we do this to ourselves? Just to go through the conver. So I again, but what if that bridge fell? Then you're gonna sue that construction company. Yes, absolutely. That's the answer. Yes. That's the answer. The answer is like, too much litness already in our society. No, there's not enough actually. There should be more li there should be more litigation on actual litigation. Actual litigation leveled on and loser pays kind of thing. Yes. Yeah. That, that's exactly what should happen. It should all happen in the court under the, under the statutes of the law. We, we should be under the law. There shouldn't be some bureaucracy upstream that says, well, if you do it our way, then we'll, you know, you'll pay half, pay half. We do the graph, we do all the other thing. So, so I'm down in Denver at, at Thai Brothers, which is a, another distillery. Yeah. Yeah. We sell for'em. Great whiskey, awesome gin, fun guys. Really, really fun guys. They did a thing called a single malt. Which is like, all right, well I don't know what that means. single malt kind of is scotch land. Right, right. And then you have bourbon. And so this is, but this little category they kind of invented. It's a marketing category. Yeah. Right. for sure. That's all it is. They, yeah. They took malted. They, it was a happy accident happened, like single malt something and Right. They, it was a happy accident that happened in their warehouse. They had some grain that went sprouted or whatever, so it malted in so that they put it in and they put it in their whiskey Sure. So they got a cease and desist from using that name. Because somebody somewhere said, that doesn't qualify for one of the alcohols that are a part of the long list, appropriate name, whatever. Right? Yeah. So meanwhile, approved words list, these guys started doing this like, I don't know how many years ago, five or six years ago, other companies have started this single malt thing in their trail, right? And out of the whole deal, the end result is some goober from some regulatory agency shows up and says, you know what? You can't really do that. Right. You need to do it my way. It's just that stuff. I mean, I, this is, this is stuff that I've talked to my kids about. I'm like, okay, go into a restaurant in Fort Collins and look around. Everything that's on the wall, that's dec decorative is probably called Personal property, which is taxed in Laer County. Mm-hmm. if you're a business. So they walk in here, there's a nice little lady with an iPad that walks around and says, well, what'd you pay for that? Right? What'd you pay for that? What'd you pay for that? That stuff is, oh, you want nice stuff that's gonna cost you, it's gonna cost you extra money to operate your business. It's nuts. It's absolutely nuts. And at some point we have to say, I am done with all of you people. If, if 50% of our, I have Persian rugs in my office and I dot don't say out loud. The Turkish, they're cheap ass Turkish rock. I don't know. I get really animated about this. It pisses me out too. It's, it's a, it's a thing that's like, here's a small, here are small. I want small businesses to thrive and the only thing that the government ever does is make it so that Amazon and Walmart and Costco and everybody else that's huge and has all the money to pay off the bureaucrats can survive. Right. That's it. Well, and like you can talk about this as a capitalist. I, a few years ago, you know, my, as you know, my story, my dad has a successful farm and stuff, but for all of my growing up years, he was broke and we were broke, you know, four eaters on a motorcycle mechanic salary and whatever. Yep. But then later he was like, you know, now that I, you know, own much, most of my land and most of the equipment's paid off and stuff, I almost can't help but make quite a bit of money, you know, no matter how the weather is between, if the weather's bad, then the farm subsidy, payments, subsidies, bunch of insurances and everything else. If it's good and the prices are good. And I think we have to recognize that. Yeah. And I wonder to myself, like, I mean, do we want more of that? I think we do, right? Like we want more wealthy people ultimately to be able to be created, but it, it comes without a centralization situation. Mm-hmm. right now, everything has to be run through Washington DC and it's getting worse by the moment. Right. Everybody in Washington has a say over my life. It's weird. It's super weird. It shouldn't happen. Yeah, but they do, they are talking about gas stoves. We joked about it earlier. you're talking about gas stoves in my house, right? Are you kidding me? Whether you want to believe in the environmental conversation or not. I, and I don't even really want to get into that topic. Even if you, regardless of which, that's very, it's a speck of a speck of a speck, of a speck, of a speck. It's, it's just, it's nonsensical. And when I turn my gas stove off, then the heat goes down and I don't burn my shit. Like there's so much better than an electric stove. I don't know. There's just so many punish me. There's so many things about that. that if we're really talking about the federal government having a say over whether I have a gas stove in my house, we are totally off the wrong side of this deal. Yeah. Yeah. We should never be there. There should never be a Right. A government, so large, even a state government, no one should saying that. No one should be in that space, but especially not a federal government thing. And, and here's what I would say. If a localized government, if Boulder says they want to ban gas stoves, guess what? Fine for Boulder. If they can get the political will behind that to deal with it, because next court, next election, there's a possibility to overdo that. Undo that. Right. Because it's localized. Right. That is okay with me. If that's how, if that's how this needs to go. Yeah. Yeah. Good enough. Well, and that's like the oh, I, I met a guy at Pod Fest that was one of his previous roles was a, a documentary documentarian, I guess. And they did like a six part series about the Colorado weed legalization thing. Oh yeah. And they spent a ton of time in Fort Collins because it was right at that time when Right. Fort Collins legalized some stores opened. Yep. You know, organic alternatives and stuff. And then Ray Martinez and his crew got it, like overturned. Yep. Locally. And then there was an initiative to get back and stuff. Yeah. So they were all like embedded in that whole scene and that's when they, when I said I'm from Fort Collins, he's like, oh dude, Fort Collins was the craziest time of my life. Just about, you know. Yeah. Wait, I think that that's the piece that I don't think people really understand that like, so now if you go vote for somebody at City Council, it probably doesn't matter. They're, they've got state mandates, they've got federal mandates, they've got county mandates, they've got, I don't know, world Health Organization mandates. Everybody's got some mandate way upstream of them. Right. So does it really matter who you elect for District six and Fort Collins anymore? That sucks. Well, I think it does because like I've been reading a lot of like, oh my God, my trash bill went up so much. Why is Republic Services now got a monopoly on our trash system in Fort Collins? And I go back and I'm, I'm like, oh shit. I got voted on like last June or something by our city council. Yeah. And I would have to suspect that Republic Services donated a lot of money to some of the existing city council members because that was part of what made Gallego such an attractive acquisition candidate is cuz they could. it's sway the city council of Fort Collins to give them the contract to take over the whole city. Here's a, like, maybe I'm just a tenfold hat guy or, yeah. But, but what's cool about this whole deal is if that really is the case and that really is the story with just enough time Yep. And enough persuasion, that whole thing can be undone. Right. Cuz it's localized. Well, except for Ram waste lost their company. Yeah. It, it happens. Yeah. It happens for sure. Yeah. Because of the information economy. Yeah. Like there's a lot of people that don't have access to the same information that other people have. No. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, the long, the long, but I was really annoyed by that story. The long point of it is the be we're, but the more local it is, the more accountable you are. A hundred percent. Because I'm, you're probably gonna run into'em at the Rio or, or, you know, like there's a chance that that's gonna happen. Yeah. And that's, that's something that you won. I, I will never run into. Jonis at the, at the Rio. I don't know who that is. that's, well, I think he's our representative from this area. Oh, R. Thanks. So Jonah, what's up? If you're listening, I'd love to have you on Should we take a quick break? Yeah, sure. Sounds good. to the point of it is like, we don't even know our representative's name. Right. That sucks. It's so irrelevant to me. It's so irrelevant. And at some point it's like, well, that the whole deal was designed so that it would work. Um, and be representative of the people and Yeah. We're just not there anymore. Mm. We, and it, you know what, at least city council is at least kind of-ish what is there like, but even that is like Yeah, but it's better. Yeah. Maybe 20,000 people per representative. Maybe 30. Yeah. 20. 30, yep. That's still reasonable. Mm-hmm. I, you know, it's, This, maybe this is, and again, not to cr cloud it with the stupid narrative of red and blue, but one great quote I heard, which was, it won't matter how red your states are, your school districts are all blue. Hmm. And I, and I think that's speaks to the point like, doesn't matter what you vote and who you put in and you can vote for the orange man, or you can vote for the shoulder shaker, you can vote for the guy that's the shoulders. Ron DeSantis is always shaking his shoulders. You get sh you vote for him or you can vote for Joe Biden or Kamala or who would do that? Well, I mean, come on. You can vote for anybody you wanted. Right. The reality isn't gonna make any hill of beans difference in your life other than, because no matter who you replace at the political level, there's, there's an embedded, there's a machine group of people. So you're a deep state guy. I'm a deep, you believe in the deep state? I do. A hundred percent man. Okay. Because I think it's real cuz I have to deal with it. Yeah. I deal with it in real estate. I deal with it in development. There's a real. There's a reality to the idea that like, no matter what I do, and no matter what jurisdiction I go to, they can always defer to somebody else that's, you know, yeah. The DQ or the, this, that and the other. There's always somebody. So do you propose like a French Revolution style thing? Uh, against the deep state? Well, maybe less drastic than hangings. And what's Guines? Isn't that part of their whiskey? Um, No. I'm teasing. I, but we, but we do need to do something. I don't think, I think, you know, like I, we talked about a little bit last time. I think if somebody had STA stood up and said, I, you know, I believe in these things, one of which would be too dismantle the bureaucratic state. Hmm. If somebody says that out loud, they would be really compelling to a lot of people. Hmm. Because I think most people, whether they want to admit it or not Yeah. Are up against the bureaucratic state. Well, even. Like in some ways the Matthew's house. Mm-hmm. the organization where, where you and I really built our relationship is to help people that are in hard times and, and need service and support from the community to avoid being locked into, well, how many stories did we hear? Yeah. Over the course of our lives, when you're stuck in the system, you're just stuck in the system that the only time that any impact ever happened was because they felt like the Matthew's House. They didn't have to tell the story to the bureaucrat. Right. They told the story to somebody who actually was sitting across the table that cared about them. How many times did we hear that story? I mean, it's hundreds of times over the course, the course of our time at the Matthew's House, and it still goes on. It perpetuates itself now always. Yeah. It's a sticky, icky, it's, it's like a spider whip. They will not, they know how to rig this, like they know how to game the system. If you're in a fear of a foster kid and you're in it, How many times did we hear that story that they knew exactly what to say to the person in order to get what they wanted out of it? That's because the bureaucrat has a checklist, somebody somewhere upstream built for them, right? That if they check off, they can get the kid out so they get the next kid in. Right. That's, that's just the most dehumanizing, horrible thing. That's what we fought against the whole time when we were having those conversations. It was like, we need to get less, we get, we need to get more people less dehumanized. Yeah. That's what we have to do. And we have to do that as a society or we don't have a society, so how do we address cities like Fort Collins and, and even some larger places are, I think manageable size where, yeah. Where you can still have community and stuff, but like I was in Chicago recently, you know, big, big, big cities. How do you build like local community feel and love and appreciation in those places? I don't know. You know, it's, it's a tough deal. But I do think if you, like, if you, if you use New York as an example, yeah. There's very few people that go from soho up to the Upper East side or whatever, right? Like, they don't, they actually localize they're hoods. Yeah. They localize within themselves. And, and I think there's something to that. I think even the hard part is, is that I think it's so sensationalized, everything is so sensationalized, so violence is sensationalized there, there's, there's a, there's a huge amount. So, and we don't really actually have the ability to localize local control that, so here, I mean, I'll use the second Amendment in this particular instance. Oh, sure. So the Second Amendment talks about what Congress's responsibility are. Responsibilities are towards guns. So if a Chicago, for instance, wants to regulate. The use of guns in their local locale. Mm-hmm. the second amendment on its principle would say that that's okay, because that's a local issue. Oh. What's happened is that the Supreme Court has, again, the nine oligarchs that rule our lives in every since instance, possible have stepped in and said, no, the Second Amendment is a blanket. It doesn't mean it, it means that everyone has a right to bear arms all the time everywhere. Everywhere has the same rights. Interesting. What, what the amendment actually says is that Congress shall not make those rules. Oh. About speech. Interesting. It says it about, it shouldn't be a national level scope thing, but it could be localized. So when you see a sign on a, even a, even a, a boutique window that says, don't bring your gun in. it's their choice. Yeah. Kind of. And I'm okay with that. Or a city Yeah. Or something. Especially he wants to regulate that thing. Right? Right. But, but we don't live there because you have this national Right blanket. So to go the other direction. And that's kind of where the biggest problem in politics is, is it, is everything is huge like claim to be national scope. And that's where we go into the Brian McClanahan territory, right. Of like, if the, if the United States was just broken into more smaller pieces of local control, where it should function, it would function better, you know, abortion and people would be less freaked out. Another topic that is absolutely bastardized in the whole deal, right? Abortion is, abortion is like, so I'm not for abortion as a person. Yeah. I have a faith that says like every life is valuable no matter where it starts and what stage it's in, along. But the reality is, is like that should never have been engaged with by the federal government on any level, ever. Right. For sure. It, it should have been engaged by local groups that said, you know, in our instance, because of what we have going on, we think X or we think Y. Yeah. And that should be how it should be handled everywhere. And that's really what the court decision said was that this should never have been taken up by the federal government. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. It should have been handled regionally. It should be handled locally. I just feel like the more that we can get that back to here, this sort of centerpiece that, like if I am in Fort Collins, where I live in northern Colorado. Yeah. Yes. Will there be regional issues that each community has to address? Yeah, of course. But if the address, if the community like Fort Collins addresses the how they want to address it, and they could live by the rules that they address it by. They will be a much better, healthier, thriving community than having to go ask for permission from Santa Claus in Washington DC Yeah. So do you think that there's any issues that need to be federally obligated? Like I hear at least arguments for like anti-racism, things like even still in the south it's blacks have a tougher time than they do say in Colorado or in North Dakota or anywhere. I've really experienced, for example, as an example, or, um, other protections I guess in the gay trans world or things like that. Like that states will get freaky. The feds aren't involved, but I don't think the states would get as freaky if the feds weren't involved. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I do think that, and again, the problem between the battle between progressive thinkers and conservative thinkers is never so much about the policy. It's about how fast it happens. So for a progressive, if it doesn't happen tomorrow, it's injustice and it's really, really disturbing for a conservative, they will say, well, look, we don't know, so maybe we need a little bit of time to understand what's actually happening. That drives a progressive nuts. Yeah, so that's where the advocation comes in. It's not so much even about the policy. I don't know what's gonna happen with trans stuff. Not a fan of it. Certainly don't think guys should be swimming in women's or, you know, women's events Like that seems nuts to me. How about m and a m m A? None of it. Like, I don't, I don't think any of it I shouldn't have used nuts anyway, but it, it just, it I, all of that stuff to me is like, I don't know how it's gonna play out, but, but, but at the end of the day, I think it's disrespectful of women, honestly. No, a hundred percent. I have, that's my biggest complaint about it. I guess it's the div. It, there is a loss of womanhood in this whole conversation, and I, and I don't necessarily, I don't know how it's gonna play. The point of it is, I don't know how it's gonna play out. And as a conservative person, conservatively minded person, I suppose I, I don't even know if I want to call myself that, but mm-hmm. that I'm, I'm less because I'll still be your friend if you're a trans person and you're cool. Yeah. I, I kind of, you know, I'm not like, opposed, I don't think we should celebrate. I think for me, I want, I don't know how it's gonna play out. So there's a consciousness about what does that mean, then how we impact and then put that in front of our children and put that in front of our families and put that in front of our churches. And I, I, I don't know that I'm really comfortable with how that should all play out yet, because I don't know what this all means. Yeah. I also don't think that I, I also don't think that I should advocate. from a pol political standpoint that we met, we must do these things in order for these people. Mm-hmm. to feel, uh, uh, sort of venerated or Yeah. Or included, I don't know. Right. I mean, there were weird people in high school. We all had different things going on. Well, and, and it was kind of like if you were the dude that, that wore the metal shirt or the Yeah. Grateful Dead thing or this, this or that. Like you just kind of accepted that you were kind of an outlaw and you, you know what, let's be honest of sorts. Like, you kind of reli Well, that's what you did. Some of this is like, you relished it as that person that wore that shirt, or, you know. Right. And, and I, I feel like the trans and the, and to some extent even, I mean, I have no question that there's people that are born gay. Mm-hmm. Like that are attracted to the opposite sex. There's probably people that feel it in, in the wrong body, all that, but. It's kind of more like outlaw mentality, kind of like when people wore big hair or wear t-shirts or things like that when we were growing up. Except for like, there's, they're asking you to say, no, it's not outlaw, it's normal. That's fine. That to me, is the big problem. That's really my only trouble with the whole thing. Yeah. Like, be what you wanna be, do what you wanna do, you know, don't hurt people and don't take their stuff. It's kind of a good motto. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the part that's hard for me is that it's also like, it doesn't go both ways. So if I say, well, sure, do what you want to do now it's like, but, but hey, hang on. I go to church and I also believe in a lot of things that you don't believe in. I have to conform to a standardized set of orthodoxy. Yeah. That isn't what I actually think. And so when that happens, that's when it is irrelevant. Yeah. You asking me to think differently than I have to, I have to buy into your orthodoxy. Yeah. And if I don't buy into your orthodoxy, then I'm an apostate. It, it's very religious. Oh yeah. It's very, it's very inquisition. It's very complicated. I don't, I actually don't, like, I should have the space to believe what I want to believe about how I see the world and how the world actually works. That's okay. Yeah. It doesn't, I don't have to have you agree with it. but you should not also have to make me agree with you. Have you watched the Vikings series on Netflix? No. Um, Jill and I just started watching like a, almost like a spinoff, uh, of Vikings Valhalla. Hmm. But there was a long series with like, like Iver, the boneless at the end, at Ragnar. Uh, and it was like when the non-Christian, when the, when the Norwegian, when the Vikings mm-hmm. interacted with the, with the Europeans. But then Christianity started to take hold within the Vikings. And then before too long there was like this almost a bigger war between the Christian Vikings and the non-Christian Vikings. The Nu and at least according to the telling of the story, the Christians were the ones being like convert or die kind of thing. Yeah. Which was all the old ways, which is certainly a huge part of Western civilization. Right. Whether that's the Inquisition or whatever, I mean, or the, or the Crusades. There's a long history of Christians basically being like, believe our way or don't. Right. And, and some of that well believe our way or don't, it sounds a lot better than believe our way or die. Well that's maybe more than what it is. believe our way or die. Yeah. Um, and I, and I think that's really, I always talk to people about the first 300 years of the church, first 300 of the years of the church has no bible, has no church building isn't politically legal and becomes a massive worldwide movement. Right. I want that church That's what I want. Yeah. I don't want the legalized church from the edict of Milan. I don't want that church. Yeah. That goes on from them because, you know, because the emperor said that it is legal because I saw chiro in the sky and Yeah. This or that, whatever stuff. I don't want that. Right. I'm not interested, you know, I'm not interested. I wanna be part of it cause it's true. Totally. I'm not interested in Constantine's Church from. 3 86 on. I'm not interested in that church as much as I am interested in the church that existed from 30, 80 or whatever it is to that 386 era. Have you ever visited a, like a Orthodox church? A Greek? Yeah. I actually went a couple of Sundays ago. I took my kids. Oh, really? I did. Yeah. I've been wanting to, um, I really like it. I, it's so different and it's so like, oh, wow, I really am not here. This is so strange. But, but I actually really do appreciate what's going on there and I appreciate what's left over from what happened all those years ago. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. More than anything, when you hear like scripturally people like Paul talking about different things or when you hear even Josephus write about what the church was doing at that era, and there's a bunch of historians that actually write about the church that are not believers. Right. Then those are the most interesting people to me, Josephus is probably the most famous of those, but I, but I think he's the most interesting because what he talks about is how valuable the church was to people because he's the, the Christians, the wave, the movement, whatever this, this sort of thing. These people were being valuable to people that were marginalized. Yeah. Widows, poor orphans, lepers. Women, women all the marginalized of society. Yeah. Were embraced by the believers and that to me is the piece that is we with a lot of marginalized people of society. Yeah. Do you think there's a chance of that? Like, I don't know, a a, a grassroots movement back to a Christian? I still think notion This is getting way too, man. This is really deep. I still think the Jesus story is probably the most compelling story of all time. I still think it is the most interesting piece of, yeah. Jesus and Star Wars look neck and neck. There really There really are. I dunno, is there anything else that's close? Anything is close, right? I mean it's true. It's, there's a piece of it that is really like that idea behind what happens to a. and what are we, what are we, where do we come from? What are we about? Who we made for? Like what is, what do we exist for? Yeah. And that, that idea of, it's a big word, but appreciation between where somebody says, I, I don't actually belong in the place I should be, but something takes my place in order to allow me to be there. Yeah. That's, that's super unique. And it's super unique amongst religions for sure. It's definitely unique about, you know, it's not about, that was, that was the thing that, yeah, tipped me. Honestly. It's not about behavioral stuff. It's certainly not about like how you live your life. Yes, there are certain things that I want to strive to be better at, but at the end of the day, I recognize the fallibility of myself. And so in that I believe that Jesus takes those things and says, you know what? I'm gonna be a better, I'm gonna take your place so that. Those, those things you have to suffer through it cuz you couldn't handle it. You couldn't do it anyway. So that, that piece is why I believe in what I do. I don't, I don't think the church represents that often. I don't think that it's a very good institution in relationship to that. I think it's hard to talk about marginalized people. Talk about people like transgender. Yeah. Homosexual folks. I don't think they've been as kind as they should be. I'm for sure in the that space they should be much more open to understanding that there are dynamics in the human soul that will always be temptations towards darkness. And they should be, they should be open to that. And they should be willing to say, look, I want you to be a part of my life. Yeah. Without the objective of saying, I also want you to not be transgender down the road. Right. Doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to always be supportive. Of every choice that you make. Just as if somebody would come to me and say, I'm not sure that I'm supportive of every choice you make, but I want to have the margin and the space in my life to say that somebody somewhere matters enough that they're created in the image of God. And even if that image has complications to it, that that person is valued and, and whatever you want to name it, however you want to be a part of it, if you want to change how you look, dress up a different way, do whatever, and you feel those things and you identify and you do these different things, and you have all these conversations around that, I think the church has a role in that to say, I understand. Why don't you come and find out the true story of how you're made, who made you and who takes your place? You know what the big problem was? Yeah. Yeah. So, I've got an old phrase. Uh, and it's part of why I'm an anti-vaxxer, apparently, uh, that if it sounds too good to be true. Warning. Warning. Uh, yeah. Um, but like, if it sounds too good to be true, it is usually. Yeah. Um, and that's probably was one of my early objections. Like, once I understood what the good news was against what my evidence of being a shithead was, Yeah. You know? Um, what would you say to people that that raised that objection to that particular question? It is, it absolutely is. It is the good news for a reason. It is too good to be true. It has, uh, it has, it makes no sense. Yeah. It actually doesn't. And, and, and if you really want to break it down and get into weird stuff about like, well, why does God even need a sacrifice? And why does what does this whole conversation, you want to go there? You can, but at the end of the day, I love the Jewish narrative about what happens to us as humans, which is, we're created, we're created in, in an image for relationship. And that relationship is something that is separated because of how we ultimately responded. We are to, I mean, the, the, the Jewish story's so great because it really does, it's boils it down so well. Right. But you've taken basically all of the Old Testament and boiling it into one like chunk. Yeah. You're saying, look, God made something. He made us, he made, he made a whole world. Right. Right. But he chose us and then says, okay, well the, the, the sort of peak of my creation is, is humanity. And here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put you in a place that you have the opportunity to live a very free, loving, wonderful life without any pain. But I'm also gonna put temptation in the same, I'm gonna put it in the same river. Yeah. You gotta decide. and when the, and when the serpent comes and says, Hey, here's what, here's what I can offer you. You can be like, you can be like, God, the temptation isn't about whether or not you ate the, the fruit. Right. Nobody cares. It's not about obedience so much. It's not the obedience. It's really about like, Hey, here's the temptation place. Would you like to be like, God, that made you, yeah. Well, who wouldn't sign up for that? So I don't blame Eve. I don't blame I had him, I don't blame anybody for that story. Right. As even though Adam did, I don't blame anybody for making the choice that they did. Well, it was already poor ordained, presumably. Well, in some ways, yeah, in some cases. That's, I mean, it's certainly how it is anyway. The, the point of it is, is that you fall, like there is this separation that happens. Yeah. Yeah. Because we really can't pull it off. If anybody was honest with themselves and said, can I really do this by myself? Can I live this life by myself? Hmm. I think the answer is no. I mean, we're moving. This is, this is a whole different conversation, but we are moving. Yeah. Part of why we're moving is because I have a son who we are struggling with as a family, and that's okay. Right. It's okay to say that in those places. We aren't, we didn't pull this off as perfectly as we would like to have, and, and so we recognize and fully understand that the, that the situation is not within our control. We're trying our best to give our kid the best tools we can for him to be successful. He may never be as successful as we hope that he might be in this world because he's got troubles and those troubles are real and. My wife and I have wrestled and laid awake at night over and over and over again and said, what did we do wrong? How did we do it? The point is, the world is a pretty tough place. Yeah. And, and we, and we might buy a little bit, increase his likelihood of being successful by making this, yeah. By making these little choices, doing these different things. We're trying to give the best tools we can, but we recognize, I think both my wife and I, at the end of the day, recognize that I have to lean into something that's in more control than me. And if I, if I don't, then I'm going to go down this very futile, futile pursuit of hoping that I'm gonna rescue my child from depression. I'm gonna rescue him from, uh, isolation. I'm gonna rescue him from, uh, his. Sort of insecurities about himself. I'm gonna rescue him from things that may have been truly physical damage in terms of what he was born premature. And there's probably some stuff there that are leftovers in terms of his brain function and stuff. And those are things that we're gonna battle with for the rest of Anais Day. Walking around here, if I don't have something to say, I'm not God. Hmm. I am not the God who can, ma can this, you're not the decider of how things go. Then I usually, then, usually what I end up in is a place that I say, you know what? I'm a f-ing failure. I'm, I'm the disaster as a dad. So it's for the grace that you're here. In some ways it's the only thing and I, I have to extend that over my son. Yeah. And I have to say, and over your neighbor, I'm gonna do the best and your wife and your spouse. And like, I'm gonna do the best I can with the information I have at the moment. And. and I'm gonna love my child and kind of all assume the same for you. And I'm gonna hope you look part of the faith a little bit. Yeah. And I'm gonna hope that I'm extended grace, which is what makes us so gullible to like con artists and stuff like that. And it's also the piece that I think the church has failed at so miserably. Like we have not extended grace to people. We have said that they need to look and behave and be and do things as long as you're perfect. We love you. We love you As long as your kids show up here and don't have this and that. No. Be students please at Archer School. Cause we got all we need of those. We don't, we're not good at it. So I, I would hope that some of this in my life and how I choose, I suppose on some level to live my life is that I want, I want people out there when they're around me to know that I'm a gracious person. Yeah. And that I'm probably, uh, craving grace on the other side from them. So, uh, what I think I'm hearing is a little more do grace. Don't talk about it. Kind of thing. I, I, I do think that that's really the piece of life that I think the church hasn't been very good at. Yeah. And I don't, certainly don't mean to turn this into a religious podcast cuz that's not really what it, what what it is, but in, oh, we didn't even do the real estate update yet. Yeah, we haven't done that yet. We've drank half a bottle of Whiskey um, rates came down as six point no, 5.99%. Yeah. The other day I heard like, yeah, not that we need like a U-turn, but might as well. No, no, we might as well, I mean, might as well. I think, uh, real estate's interesting. I I still think we have a very healthy market. There's, I still think History St. Sellers in the market. No, uh, that's still a short inventory's such an interesting dynamic of our world because we just addicted everybody to 3% rates. There are so few people that are going, you know, that equity that's out there is worth me selling my house for Right. To replace it with a higher payment. They're like, I've got a 3% first mortgage now. Yeah, it's, I can take a bunch of cash off the table, but then I have to pay more. It's tough, I think. Okay. I think that, so there's still a supply shortage. I think I'm hearing terrible, terrible splash here in northern Colorado. this is interesting. Last week, uh, in Greeley, well, weld County, let's just say Weld County. There were, I don't know, 460 sales, let's say. I think that's pretty close. This is for the month of January, um, 460 sales. There were also, uh, 460 listings, so it was exactly one month supply. Yeah. I, that's crazy. A healthy market's six months, right? Like there should be bad properties. There should be good properties. Right? And there should be mediocre properties like the average property. There should be like average stuff and there should be a spectrum around that. We don't have that. We have so little inventory. That people go, there's some buyer for every listing. Yeah. And new construction is kind of the one space that's got a little relief valve in it. New construction is um, definitely offering incentives. Yep. They're definitely offering. Oh, they're okay. Yeah, they are, they're definitely are. So like did one yesterday that was a, uh, journey house. Um, journey's got a reputation in town. I actually sell a lot of journey houses cuz I think for what they are, they do, they're great. First time home buyer houses, I'd certainly prefer journey over Dr. Horton, you know? Agreed. Uh, even, even if, even if they weren't local. Yeah. Well even, but especially because they, that the guy lives here, right. The money that he makes is gonna push right back into our town. Yeah. So I, even though the, you know, people have a lot of stuff to say about Journey and that's negative, I actually think like, hey, they do what they do. They serve a purpose. If you bought a Hyundai, you, you got a Hyundai, you know what you get, you know, a Kia, whatever, you not buying a Porsche Right.$50,000 off the price and a 3% incentive toward lending. Oh wow. So, okay. Good things are happening in that space. They're the one space that I'm seeing it happen. On the other side of it, I just was trying to write a contract last week on a house in Old Town. Multiple offers. You're talking, I mean, we were the last of the two competing offers. House was listed at 5 75. We wrote an offer at six 10. Chose not to do an appraisal gap cuz I don't believe in those things. And we lost the deal actually because we didn't do that. Mm-hmm. Um, so lots competition, so Yeah. Right. Location. And this was, this is a house where my house is, we're still. That's what I'm hearing. This house and this house, actually, you'd have to pull off of Taft Hill Road to get into the garage. So this is not like, not old town like my place. No, no, no. This is over on Taft and by the So special properties at least. There was another one downtown that was, I saw that, uh, we were pursuing, it was listed at five 50. It was two bedroom, one, two, bedroom, two, one and a half. No, no. Just one bath. Two bed. One bath on Meldrum. 600 block of Meldrum. That house, uh, was listed at five 50, sold for over 600. Hmm. Or is under contract for over 600. Yeah. So that's still happening. Yeah. Yeah. It's still, it's, we just don't have enough cool stuff that's hitting the market. Yeah. When cool stuff hits the market, you have an opportunity to just get it done. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I do think the interesting piece we have, so kind of the first time home buyer market is back alive again for the first time. New construction in a while. Absolutely. New construction. Push a new first it was, I just did the deal. I did with Journey was a first time home buyer. You can actually buy something for a change. Can He can do it. Yes. His payment is high. Yep. It's also he He got in. Yep. He wasn't competing with 75 other people for that same house. Right. So some good things are going on in the market that's, that are stabilizing that a little bit, but I still think we're woefully undersupplied. I think we still have major political issues to overcome in terms of our ability to develop and do things. We have to make this reconciliation. Are we going to be a place that wants new people to come or not? Right. If we do want new people to come, we have to have a, we've change some things, very different policy about what we're doing. Yeah. And that's a, it's, I don't. maybe the, you don't see it happening. I keep asking. Maybe the, that question the, probably the truth is the dies been cast. Like we are what we are. We're not going to suddenly unwind and be, have a pro-growth city council in Fort Collins. Yeah. I don't think it's gonna happen. Seems unlikely. That seems very unlikely. So if that's case, then that means demand is gonna remain high. We're gonna still see, get in. If you can, whatever you need to do to try to grab your fingernail on, get in and claw on to get on, even at high interest rates, it will give you a chance to sort of be a part of that. Yeah. Um, if you financially can swing it, it's probably prudent. Probably. So. And actually what's really cool is I've actually doing more first time home buyer classes than I ever do. Hmm. So I'm doing two in February because I have that much demand for it. Wow. Um, and that's because I think people are realizing like, I still could get on, yes. I'm gonna have to stretch a bit. I'm gonna have to be a part of this deal. But at some point, If I look at statistics, the number is the number. Yeah. It's growing. Town is growing. Place is growing. Lots of stuff is happening. That means there's opportunity there. So I do, yeah. Real estate is, uh, good. I think some cool things are happening. McKinney's, man, I don't even know if this is even a piece that I can say, but they're, well, they'll suit you if you're not supposed to. They're, they're activating. It's not, it's kind of like the worst kept secret in northern Colorado. They're activating on the mall, which I think in Fort Collins, which will be really good. Oh, um, I heard about that. Yeah. They're basically gonna tear the whole thing down, right? Start over. Yeah. Which they should Macy's out. So the, the big players that were there that were kind of handling, so, so did Fort Collins take a major ass bath on that whole thing? Well, here's the dynamic that I think people don't understand. There were players in the mall that owned their own property. So Sears owned its own right? Mac's owned its own. JC Penney's owned its own section in the mall. That's how we set our deal up. They were condos within within that thing. So it wasn't, it wasn't just as easy as like, no, it was a complex deal. Reinvent the whole thing and make it amazing. It wasn't quite that simple. No, it was super complicated actually. And when we were going through the sale of the mall initially, your family, we, our family, we were trying to figure out what the, what the best way through it was. We thought about redoing it, making a two-story mall and doing all, and we making a lifestyle center. That was a big deal. It was gonna be a huge capital investment. We also looked at it and said, man, malls just seem like they might be changing. Like this might be changing. This might be the end of the deal. Like, I don't know if anybody wants, wants to walk around inside anymore. Yeah. And the group that bought it ultimately was G G P, which was a huge, they were the second largest real estate investment trust in the country at the time. We'd go through away, they were buying malls because they were cheap. Yeah. And. Lost their marbles. As it turns out, they weren't cheap. They were They really got messed up. That got spun out into a Howard Hughes co corporation. That Howard Hughes Corporation. Then ended up begin getting this sec. This particular asset that Howard Hughes stuff was all the toxic assets. Okay. the four Collins Mall was actually in that Howard Hughes joke. Cause was a toxic guy. I said to them, and so ultimately that deal got bought by a Canadian company. It's, it's been a mess. That Canadian company then when it went in with the objective of trying to make it so that it was, that was the Alberta development. Yeah. Right. They wanted to do the condos, which they got. Right. Approved. Right. Ultimately, and McKinney's ultimately ended up building those Oh. All that stuff. The, like whatever they're called around the mall. Yeah. Yeah. Mick Winnie ended up doing that, and then the rest of the mall was sort of run by this group. Well, they've stunk at what they were doing and they couldn't keep anybody in there. They kept raising their rates and it was like, right. If you wanna be in the mall, it's$45 a square foot plus triple. I would way rather beaten up someplace that isn't the mall. Yeah. Certain places have succeeded over there. Mm-hmm. I mean, I think Torchy's Tacos is probably the most recognizable, but like the sleep number of stores done fine too. Yeah. There's, there's a few others on the, on that, around the periphery. Yeah. Has done fine. The mall itself. I think even the movie theater isn't too bad. It's not too bad. I think the mall itself has struggled because, yeah, and, and you can play racquetball in the mall, without anybody being pissed. Well, maybe not racquetball, but mini golf at least. You could do a lot in there and nobody would know. That's sad and that's tough. Like, and that's tough for businesses in that and all the rest of it. So I don't, you know, this is a tough, tough deal. I do think if that gets redeveloped into what it should be, which is a, a, a truly sort of center of town. It really is the center of town. Yeah, well it's Midtown. It should have probably some other, you know, they should court another Trader Joe style thing. That, that should be in there. There should be, there should be some sort of a cool. community, like gathering place. Yeah. That would be prudent no matter what they do. And I think, again, I would certainly prefer Mc Winnie's to be involved in that versus other people. Agreed. So, all right. Go get it. Troy do it or whatever. Yeah, go. I mean, I'd prefer that. Fix it up. I think make it nice. They, they will, they can pull that off and then have the capital to do it. And I think it's still, at the end of the day, it's in the middle of town. It's where people will go if the right thing is there. Totally. It really is. And so it'll be good for the city if they, if that gets redone. I think, uh, old Town is, uh, has gone, gone through its lull. I think there's some things there that are, um, there's some spaces down there that are too big. It's still unobtainium, kind of. Yeah. There And there's some spaces that are too big. The old, uh, what the Rio moved into during their fire, um, is too big a space. Yeah. That needs to be chopped up again, as it should be. You know, that we used to be, I just saw that signage. I was like, oh, that's not, that's not gonna work. It's way too big. So there, there's some things there and I think the, the, they have the right people in play. They're Ike's doing some stuff and they're, they'll, they've got the right brokers in, in Old Town that will help understand how to make that what it is. Yeah. And so I think if that happens and some other things happen in Fort Collins, we'll we will remain healthy. Um, I still think Old Town is still gonna have its appreciation. That's gonna be very valuable. I think it's gonna still remain. Historically it's been 10%. I think that. Untrue. Yeah. So 10% a year. I think that we're gonna still see that. I think. Um, we were in Oak Park Yeah. A few weeks ago, Jill and I, and we took Manuel, our exchange student down there. Yeah. And the size of the houses that were built, about the time of the houses of my neighborhood in Oak Park. They're gigantic. Yeah. It's like, oh my gosh. Like Mountain Avenue is like kind of the big old houses in Fort Collins. Yep. And they're just like tiny compared to the old houses in Chicago. Well, yeah. I mean, Lloyd Frank, Lloyd Wright was a huge part of that. Yeah. His whole deal was like, everybody should have an acre. So they That's it. Well, they pretty much nearly got that. Yeah. They're big deals. Yeah. They're really expensive. Yeah. I think Fort Collins stays for healthy. I think there's nothing. And again, you're not scared. No, I think the epicenter will always be csu. Hmm. It's a big deal. It's been a huge part of our community and it has employs a ton of people. So the epicenter of growth will focus around that. So anything in Old Town, those things, they're gonna stay healthy because CSU consistently. So I think the topic for our next conversation will be, is the university model dead Well, yes, but Well, that's, it'll take 20 years. Yeah. It's a long time. the Uni C CSU will, will adapt. Okay. Uh, I do think that will happen. The, the land grant will remain and they will have, it will not disappear. It will need to mo, it will need to change, it will need to morph. It will need to become something better and more valuable to the economic situation that we're in. That will have to happen. Will that mean a lowering of tuition or a lower of lowering, of, of property values around values? Csu No, no, it will not. fair enough. The, the land grant will remain impactful. Upon the success of Fort Collins. And I think, uh, I think that the long run, it's been a very good symbiotic relationship for the most part. I, I do think there are issues with csu. I do think there are issues with what it has become and what it will sort of have to morph its way through if in order to remain valuable. I feel like they've made some smart moves lately, but I do think, yeah, CSU is a, it's, I I preferred have CSU here over Boulder Fair oversee you. Right. So given all that, I do think our town remains in a great position and I think it will be healthy. I think it will be a healthy community. I think people will listen to the first half of this podcast and resonate very much with the idea that local businesses should survive. And if they do, because we have good people here, then that will mean that we will have a great town, good place for, for them. And yes, it will be expensive. Yes. I hope that there are solutions. I hate the new attain up. The, the language change is so silly. There was an affordable, it used to be called affordable housing. Now it's obtainable housing. Oh, right. I hate that shift. I, I don't, we need affordable housing for blue collar people because blue collar people make this town better. Yeah. The person that makes the burrito at Elbo Burrito should absolutely be able to afford a house here. Hmm. They, they should, and it's not, it won't come through government. It, it gets worse if government gets involved. Right. We're talking about that bridge earlier. They, it will not, that will not help, but that has to be at the, but people that choose to create spaces where blue collar type workers can and would enjoy living for an appropriate price. Yeah. It should happen. They would, they would find a, a large market and. The real estate world needs to adjust itself to that too, which I think is important. That's an important piece of this. We need to be in a place where like, well, we've always said, well, if it doesn't have three bedrooms and two basses not sellable in the future mm-hmm. we need to be much more, uh, in tune with the idea that look smaller, more maneuverable spaces that are flexible for people like that, that are in the blue collar space that can't afford the three bedroom, two bath on one avenue. Yeah. Yeah. We should build stuff like that and we should be, we should be promoting that kind of stuff and not being saying, well, it's never gonna sell in the future. Right. Which has always been the, it's the wrap on realtors, right? It's like the, the lazy button is so consistent within real estate stuff. It's like if it doesn't have three bedrooms and two baths, I don't know what, I don't know. It doesn't sell so I don't want it. I don't want it. You don't want it and you shouldn't buy it. I think the truth is, it's like even, even Sheridan in Wyoming is much more interested in seeing like tiny house stuff, right? Tiny house, house developments because they know that they have a shortfall, right? For of, of houses that actually are affordable, not obtainable, affordable. Yeah. I don't want obtainable to be the word, right? It needs to be affordable and it should be, well, housing that people should be a part of, and in an information economy, it doesn't really matter. Like it shouldn't really matter how you market it. You know? It's what, what can I really afford? What can I, what can I attain? What can Iain, what can I really afford? What can I afford? Yeah. Not like what with my mortgage, can I still feel my, and what do I enjoy? Yeah. Like Jill and I would probably be really happy in a tent if we could hike a lot and Yeah. See live music occasionally. I, I, you know, so we don't ha we don't ask a lot. I have a really good friend, she's a lending officer at elevations. They live in a one bedroom house in Loveland and it's ti I mean, it is tiny little house. They love it. Yeah. It's what they love. They have an Airbnb in the backyard. They do all this and they like maximize their property. That's what. Well, I actually really appreciate Loveland because they, they don't, their whole stance on Airbnbs, their stance on, like, they're not like authoritarians on that. Not at all. And so like, so we should all buy properties in Loveland. Probably these people. Well, it's interesting, these people, so they have a little house in the front. They have an Airbnb that they run next door and they have a tiny house in the backyard that they run as an Airbnb in the backyard too. Yeah. They're maximizing their two lots to the highest of, and best use of what's available that is currently. Yeah. And at some point, yeah, maybe they'll want to build a new house. Maybe they're wanna do something else, but for the moment they're maximizing what they got out of it. Yeah. And, and they're, they're smart about it. They're using it to what property should be used for, in my opinion. Your choice. Everybody should, it's your property. Do what you want to do. You should have the right to do what you wanna do with it. So yeah. Anyway, I like it. Um, I feel like we've talked about faith, family, politics so many times and throughout this conversation, we don't really need to. Um, in motion. Do you have a website up properly now or is it still email, internet in motion. If you want more information still in motion, NOCO gmail do com. That's the one. That's the one That's still where we're at. So no, we don't have anything new. I am excited. I I did join, uh, your, one of your chapters. Oh yeah, that's true. So that's been a long time coming, um, in and out of things. We're chasing it for a while in and out of things at the beginning. I'm really, we did the, the little event, uh, at the beginning and I was, I I, that was a sell for me actually. Really? It was really cool. Yeah, it was really cool. And so I would, I would make a plug if people are interested in that and they're still into this and they're listening to us. Song, Kim's pretty awesome. Uh, man, I was, it was, there's just stuff there that even in an, in a couple of hours conversation was, so, it was just really helpful. I like people that are like, Super smart and humble. It was fun. And uh, that's mostly the people I tried to bring around and these kind of things. It was fun to see people pick at picket at things that were, um, not necessarily troubles, but just picket stuff that I could be better at. Yeah. And in an hour's conversation there were, there was a full long papers list worth of stuff that I could do better. Yeah. And that was, that was really a good sell. And I think, I think, um, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm excited for your business. I think that's this, this kind of stuff and the stuff that you're doing to help small business again, be better is we what we need, we need that. Yeah. In our community, we need small business to be healthy. I just want to be an advocate for that for the rest of the days that I'm walking around. Fair. I just think small business should be really good and I think, well, yeah, it's important. I feel like I am the bottleneck all the time. I, I. Have I talked about that t-shirt yet? No. Would you wear a T-shirt that said I'm the bottle deck It's pretty funny. and probably pretty real for most CEOs, almost all CEOs and presidents and owners, right? Like there's like, yeah. If Colorado has 4 million people, there's there's 200,000 people that should have a I Im the bottleneck. I'm in the bottleneck of my company. Yeah. Yes. I, I, yeah, I I think that's true. I think it's, uh, I don't know. That's what was really fun about that evening, right? To sit down and actually just go through that and go, man, I, I could think about this differently. I, even though I felt like intuitively I might have known some of those answers, you don't tell, you hear'em out loud. It's really hard. Well, and the big thing is to embrace them. The peer pressure of not coming next month and not having done shit about the things Yeah. That you heard the month before. Yeah. That's a big deal, right? Yeah. Like, um, Yeah. So, uh, yeah, whatever kind of plug I can give. It was a really cool experience. Well, after three months here, we'll have you back again. You can be like, oh, it actually has been a cool experience, or it's been working. By the way, this is the last time you'll hear me in motion ad cuz local think tank is lame. And so is the local experience podcast No. I, I I just, I hope it takes more than one, but Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Mutual fan club. This is a, uh, this is a cool thing and I, I, I'll, I mean, I think I, we, it embodies a little bit of the, how we have operated over the years. It's what I love about being here as much as I, there are moments that I go, God, I, there would be so many other places that are easier to do business. There's so many other places that would be. The money's better, whatever. Right. You know, like all those little conversations that happened in your head. I could, we Anna. Yeah. If you just wanted to build houses and storage complexes in Sheridan, it's very easy to do You could do that for the rest of your life. And I, you know, Anna and I years ago were like, let's move to Vermont Right. Or whatever, maybe. Right. We still like skiing. Let's go there. Um, I think there's a piece to, of this whole thing that I, that it's embodied in this deal that I think I want a mutual society of people that look and say, I wanna make your business better. I wanna make your life better. I wanna make your community better. I wanna make your church better. I wanna make your family strong, your family stronger. This, this kind of world that we're in, there's something that you can't just, I don't think you can just dismiss it because it's not easy. Yeah. Yeah. I, I hate that that empowers government to be more authoritarian. Right. Because everybody's like, well, yeah, but it's so awesome. I, I hate that portion of it, but I also think the truth of it is, is like you can, you can live and exist in a world that doesn't require you to be involved in their world so often and so much because you have good people around you that make your life better. Yeah. Agreed. There we go. Well, this has been fun. Yeah. Off the top, top fist thrive. It's like, well, I wonder how Joe Rogan has, like, whatever, you know, Adam, uh, Brian, Brian Callahan. Anyway, he's got a bunch of people that he's had it on a bunch of times. Yeah. And I don't know how his does it, but I always like talking to you. It's fun to do. I like it. I think we're having, uh, I think we got a, a bright future for, uh, local business in Fort Collins. Yeah. Rock Island local business. There you go. Thanks, Aaron.