The LoCo Experience

EXPERIENCE 235 | Unlocking Potential: The Integrative Coaching Approach of Jordan Bonifas

• Ava Munos • Season 5 • Episode 235

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Welcome to another episode of the Loco Experience Podcast. On today's show, I sat down with Jordan Bonifas, founder of Bonifas Coaching.  We kicked things off with some bourbon tasting, comparing Fort Collins’ own Mobb Mountain Distillers and Kentucky’s Basil Hayden, before diving into Jordan's journey.  (PS - Mobb Mountain is the clear choice - tastier and better price) - unpaid endorsement 

Jordan launched Bonifas Coaching in early 2023, bringing together his experience as a wrestling coach, college wrestler, whitewater raft guide, and entrepreneur. His coaching clients include a blend of performance coaching for athletes and strategic coaching for business leaders.  We discussed his transition from operating True Spruce - a vacation rental cleaning business in Steamboat - to moving to Fort Collins and starting his coaching venture, emphasizing lean operations and the importance of strong relationships and open conversation.  Jordan's insights into community, resilience, and integrity were refreshing and shifted traditional paradigms.  

Jordan shared how his unique lifestyle and experiences influence his coaching, and who might be drawn to his methods. Towards the end, he generously offered a free introductory consult for listeners looking to dive deeper into their strategies - just go to https://www.jordanbonifas.com/connect.  

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Music By: A Brother's Fountain

Speaker 7:

Welcome to another episode of the Loco Experience Podcast. On today's show, I sat down with Jordan Bonis, founder of Bonis Coaching. We kicked things off with some bourbon tasting, comparing Fort Collin's own Mob Mountain Distillers, and Kentucky's, Baal Hayden before diving into Jordan's journey. PS Mob Mountain is the clear choice, tastier, and better price. Unpaid endorsement so far. Jordan launched Bonface Coaching in early 2023, bringing together his experience as a wrestling coach, college wrestler, whitewater raft guide, and entrepreneur. His coaching clients include a blend of performance coaching for athletes and strategic coaching for business owners. We discussed his transition from operating true space, a vacation rental cleaning business, and Steamboat to moving to Fort Collins and starting his coaching venture, emphasizing lean operations and the importance of strong relationships and open conversation. Jordan's insight into community resilience and integrity were refreshing and shifted traditional paradigm. Jordan shared how his unique lifestyle and experiences influence his coaching and who might be drawn to his methods. Towards that end, he generously offered a free introductory consult. For listeners looking to dive deeper into their strategies, just go to www.jordanbonis.com/connect/connect. Thanks and enjoy the episode.

Speaker:

Welcome back to the Loco Experience Podcast. My guest today is Jordan Bonface and he is the founder of Bons Coaching. And, uh, he's drinking bourbon, but he doesn't know which of the two yet.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've had a couple drinks. It's, it's delicious. Couple sips, smooth, not a couple drinks, couple sips. Yeah.

Speaker:

So we've got, what was it? It was Mob Mountain and then Basal Hayden. Uh, both kind of their standard bourbon. So do you have a guess at which one this might be?

Speaker 2:

I'm gonna say Basil. Okay.

Speaker:

And what do you like about it or not like about it?

Speaker 2:

Uh, I like the, I like the smoothness. I like the smoothness. And there's, there's just a, a little bit,

Speaker:

a little friendly bite

Speaker 2:

at the end. Bite at the end.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. I, I have the same kind of tasting notes. It's got a nice, kind of a caramel flavor. Yeah. Um, that's actually the local, that's my mountain. Is it? Yeah. Cool. Uh, and it's about 10 bucks a bottle cheaper than the basal Hayden. Yeah. It's good at most places. It, it's so, uh, anyway, celebrating local craft distilling. Good job Mount Mountain. Yeah. Good job. It's, well, we'll see if you like the Baal Hayden's more after the break. Alright. Okay. So tell me about, uh, Bonis coaching.

Speaker 2:

Bonis coaching. I, I founded Bonis Coaching, um, the beginning of 2023. It's kind of combined all my experience, experiences together as a wrestling coach. Mm-hmm. As a college wrestler, as a whitewater raft guide, as an entrepreneur. And then as a, as a certified, um, coach, I've kind of combined all that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I work about half of my business is working as a performance coach with athletes. Okay. Um, anywhere from MMA fighters to equestrians to pilots doing

Speaker:

generalized coaching, or does it include like wrestling's wrestling coaching or, or you're more on the mindset of being more mindset and

Speaker 2:

performance coaching. Okay. Um, and then the other half of my business is working with entrepreneurs on business strategy, but also what's blocking, what's blocking the natural strategy from actually, and leadership executing the strategy. Sometimes it's emotional, sometimes it's mindset. So it's a very integrative approach.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Interesting. So that's, that's, that's what I do.

Speaker:

Do you, uh, do you, are you allowed to say if you coach any, like, famous, uh, athletes or anything like that? Or is that mostly all confidential? Who you're working with?

Speaker 2:

Um, I guess, I guess famous is, is relative, nobody famous. Tom Cruise is probably the most famous person I work with. I'm just kidding. He's not that famous though. He's

Speaker:

kind of over the hill.

Speaker 2:

Um, yeah. Confidentiality wise, some of the, some of the athletes I don't work with. I can't name. No, nobody in the, nobody on t TV too much. Nobody see on tv. My, my niche is, um, in combat sports, so MMA and, and wrestling. Mm-hmm. Um, some division one wrestling and not like wwe. Yeah. Um, but like freestyle, you're not teaching acting or freestyle wrestling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, probably nobody that would pop out to some of your listeners, but in our small niche of the world. Um, you're building a name for yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a little bit. So

Speaker:

where do you get your clients from?

Speaker 2:

I get my clients just from word of mouth and just calling people and having conversations, coffee, having real conversations

Speaker:

and coffee with strangers and stuff like that once in a while.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Just, um, you know, the world is small. Once you get to know a few people, there's very few degrees of separation. Yeah. So just being a good person and

Speaker:

trying to help people, trying

Speaker 2:

to help people. Um, you know, early on there's a lot of noise out there with like Sure. Build your brand. But, um, you know, like with athletes, if you spend too much time building your brand and you're actually not good at your craft, it really doesn't matter. Right? True. Um, you just become so good at what you do, your brand builds around you. And that resonated with me when I started my business. Like I just want to be really good at what I do and really focus on building my craft and helping people. Um, and maybe it's a little bit slower, but I, I decided to get rid of the noise and I think most social media is noise. Yeah. Not that it's bad, but for me, I, I just took the approach of like, I'm just gonna have real conversations and really work with people.

Speaker:

Oh, so like you don't have like 60 videos on LinkedIn or anything introducing your

Speaker 2:

No, I don't stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I don't have Instagram. I do have LinkedIn. Um, but yeah, just conversations with people and trying to just be the best at what I do.

Speaker:

Tell me what, uh, the circumstances were in your life before you founded the, the coaching business.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So the circumstances in my life, when I founded the business, we were, me and my wife and our 2-year-old twins at the time were in Okay. In Hawaii actually. We had a professional vacation rental cleaning business in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Speaker 4:

Okay. And we

Speaker 2:

had that for about six years. And one day I came home from work and my wife. She just had an honest conversation with me. She said, I think I am done with Tru Spruce was the name of the company. Okay. I think I'm done with Tru Spruce. Okay. I said, okay, um, I think I can hire somebody to fulfill your role. But after, after a week or two, I decided too that it was time for something else and we actually, we closed our doors. We didn't sell the business. We just decided that it was time for something else, and that was April of 2022. Okay. Um, so right after the busy ski season Yeah. Our really busy time. Yeah. And in the end of May of 2022, we Were you just like

Speaker:

out to lunch, be back, maybe never.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Well, we, we told our clients, you know, it was the start of the slow season, so it was a pretty clean break. Yeah. You know, we said we're, we're closing our doors. We ran pretty lean as a company. Um, we didn't have any business debt. Our general manager was moving to Taos.

Speaker:

Oh.

Speaker 2:

So it was kind of, kind of a perfect

Speaker:

storm of like Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It was a perfect storm and. We, we decided a 10 day trip to Hawaii on our friend's farm turned into a five month sabbatical. Oh,

Speaker:

okay.

Speaker 2:

And we, we didn't know what we were gonna do. Oh, interesting. You were just

Speaker:

kind of thinking and penciling it out. Probably, uh,

Speaker 2:

yeah, doing

Speaker:

some meditation, some yoga, some fishing, some scuba diving,

Speaker 2:

a lot, a lot of prayer. Um, a lot of surfing, a lot of beach time. And I knew I wanted to coach. I was the high school wrestling coach in Steamboat Springs, and I was really interested in like, motivation, what drives these athletes. Yeah. There's, you know, intrinsic motivation, but stuff like beyond mindset that was holding people back or propelling them. Um, so I got really interested in that and I thought maybe I wanted to be a college wrestling coach, so I applied to some universities, but I didn't really wanna be part of a institution per se.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So it just took a lot of getting quiet. And I've always been, I've always been a fan of leadership and culture and. Just like what really drives performance. And it was in Mau on a Maui, we were actually caretaking this small little farm. And I read this book, it was called Who? I think it was called Like who, the, who says you can't be a coach or who fucking says you can't be a coach? Something like that. Okay. It was like two in the morning. I'm a Kindle

Speaker:

cussing either in the title or the tagline or something. Something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Um, and I didn't know much about like this business coaching or life coaching per se, but I started reading about it and then I, it, it was like an aha moment at like two in the morning and I'm like, you know what? I think I can coach athletes and businesses. Those are two things I love in performance. So that was kind of the genesis of like, okay, I think, I think I'm gonna dive head first into this. And then we actually. Flew back from ha like a week later to Hastings, Nebraska, where I'm from. Okay. So in, moved in my parents' basement.

Speaker:

Oh wow.

Speaker 2:

Um,

Speaker:

started working on the business plan and building a website. Probably. I

Speaker 2:

found a certification program. It was a year long certification, um, to become a professional coach. Oh wow. Um,

Speaker:

did you do other stuff? You just kind of crashed out in the parents' basement with your four year olds at the time, or two? Two, yeah. 2-year-old toddlers. Yeah. Two girls. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So we, we lived there for seven month and then, um,'cause we didn't have any income coming in. Right. We were just Right. We were just, yeah. Trying to just really dive deep. And I had some clients and what's your wife's name? Annie. Annie. Yeah.

Speaker:

And was she, is she in this with you? Is she Yeah, she was actually in it with me. Okay.

Speaker 2:

Um, so we were in it together, which was really cool. And we had some clients on the side just to like sustain us a little bit. Gotcha. But really, 2023 was just like, let's just dive deep. And really like learn this craft,

Speaker:

qualify ourselves. Yeah. To offer value

Speaker 2:

and then bring in all the other things I'm already really good at, to really like create something that to me, I was in the best, in the, I was the best in the world at because nobody has my experiences. Um, so that was the Genesis 2023 was like, let's just get really good at this and be mentored and really learn the craft. And we, we had some clients in 2023 and then 2024 was really like, let's go, let's take off.

Speaker:

Okay. Mm-hmm. And did you move to Fort Collins, Loveland, or, I don't You live in Fort Collins here? Yeah, we lived in Fort,

Speaker 2:

we live here in Fort Collins. We moved back to Colorado in October of 2023.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Welcome back. Yeah, man. That's awesome. Yeah. How long were you the wrestling coach in Steamboat while you were

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Running this property management business?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we started the business in August of 2016, and then I started coaching, wrestling. As the assistant coach in 2017, and then the four years after that, I was the head coach. Okay. Of the high school team. And

Speaker:

how was the high school team? How was your record? Uh, I mean, it's,

Speaker 2:

it's called Ski Town. USA, not wrestling town, USA, uh, for a reason. But I mean, we started, I think the first year I took over, we had like eight kids on the team, not even enough to fill the roster. And we, we grew to like 20 kids, which isn't a lot for some schools, but for us it is.

Speaker:

Yeah. Well, and it meant that the program was catching more attention, was becoming more interesting to the kids that you were building relationships.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And we had, um, some state placers. We had the first girl in Steamboat History place. Okay. Um, when I was there. So we had some state placers and state qualifiers. So, um, at the time I, I had bigger goals, but Sure. Um, I was proud of what we did and I actually had a wedding last month. I, I talked to the new coach who was somebody, um. That was an assistant coach for me and he's like, man, we really appreciate the foundation you laid. And that meant a lot to me because yeah, there's always like things you're like, man, I wish I would've done this or that. But it felt good to just see somebody that was really running with the foundation relayed and, yeah. Yeah. So

Speaker:

you mentioned in the lead up, um, that your experience as a raft guide was, was relevant. And I wondered if on the business side, especially if you do like some team stuff. Uh, because that's, when I think about raft guiding, it's like you can't just tell one person what to do. You gotta tell like eight people at the same time what to do.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, totally. I think from like a business perspective, one thing for me is like you had to build trust with people really quickly and all different types of people. You know, one trip you might have. A group from Texas. The next group might be from India, the next group from California. Yeah. So it's like you have very, what's that

Speaker:

common ground fitment

Speaker 2:

kind of thing. Yeah. Just like being able to connect with people quickly. Be like, you can trust me. Yeah. Even if, even if you're a little bit afraid. So that was really cool just to get a ton of reps with a bunch of different people and build, establish that trust quickly. The other thing that it did was when I started as a raft guide, I wasn't very good. Like we called it rookie, rookie training.

Speaker:

Yeah, right.

Speaker 2:

I, I just, I wasn't very good, but I, I, as a

Speaker:

coach or as a, just a raft, as a raft guide, didn't really know the craft.

Speaker 2:

I just, some people catch it a little quicker and I just didn't. And, but it was really cool because we rafted this section called Gore Canyon. It's a really gnarly class five section. Yeah, yeah. And we're like the only company that does it. So there was always this almost like impossible goal that if, like, if you push yourself, you can guide people down this. So it really taught me about. How to frame your experience with big goals to like filter what you're doing in the present. So throughout that process, I had to continually like be outside my comfort zone and guide whitewater. That was a little beyond my ability.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it really, I got good, really, really quickly

Speaker:

expand your comfort zone. Yeah. And

Speaker 2:

then at the end of my fourth year, I actually guided that and then my fifth year I was guiding it. Okay. So it really was a big shift for me that you can, it's not just about like being delusional, but it's like if you have a really big goal to frame your experience in the present, you can get really good quickly.

Speaker:

And how do you like be consistent toward that goal? I guess like it's little, it's still small bites, right?

Speaker 2:

It, it's small bites, but it's, you have to make sure that there, there's like in the sports world, it's like process over outcome, which is good and all, but you have to make sure. The process is defined by the outcome. Otherwise you're just optimizing a bunch of things that shouldn't even exist.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So

Speaker 2:

it's like, yes, tiny habits and all this, it's good, but Right. If the tiny habits aren't on a pathway towards the right thing. Yeah. You're just wasting time.

Speaker:

I think about Tom Brady. Mm-hmm. Like, yes. He had amazing habits and it was always directed toward we're gonna win the freaking Super Bowl this year.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. That was his goal. So he was willing to get paid less than other quarterbacks so his offensive line could get paid more so we could win Super Bowls. Yeah. So, yeah, Tom Brady's a perfect example. Like his, his process was shaped to win Super Bowls.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. Fair. Alright. Um, I guess, uh, what would you say are, like, do you have differences in your coaching style? Like, you got trained, right? Mm-hmm You spent a year training, plus you read a bunch of different books and, you know, integrated your own experiences. How is, uh, an engagement with Jordan a different engagement, especially I guess from the business community?'cause. You know, I might have a few high performance athletes that listen to this podcast. Mm-hmm. But it's a business focus. So those are the people that may be curious about you and, and why.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Maybe what makes me a little different is yeah, it's, it's very integrative. Meaning, the analogy I use is I think leadership. And I think business is like a river. It starts from the mountain and naturally flows downward. And sometimes we just need to like, let it flow. But what happens is certain rocks get in the way and those rocks can be like past failures. Um, you know, maybe inflating what's risky versus what's not risky. And sometimes a rock is just not having a strategy at all. And the more we focus on those things, we like build up dams and it blocks our natural flow.

Speaker 5:

Hmm.

Speaker 2:

So a lot of working with me is like, how do we remove that dam? Yeah. So things can flow more naturally. This is

Speaker:

the specific challenge I'm finding kind of through. Kind of a process of discovery, I imagine that starts with, um, of what are your real goals? What are the impediments to them?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And what sometimes there's, there's competing goals. Sometimes we have this conscious goal and sometimes we have an unconscious goal that's blocking what we really want.

Speaker:

For your, um, business clients, do you have a, a fitness element to it? I was just thinking to myself, like a lot of business owners, I know it, it feels like when business is good, then they're pretty good at running or exercising or doing a bunch of stuff. But if business gets a little tight or the strategy is unclear or whatever, then so too does the time for physical health pursuits and then, then they suck at running their business even more'cause they're not physically optimized and making space for, for health.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I, I'm, I'm not a health coach, but I, I use. I'll use nature or, or physical exercise if, if I'm working with a local client, client just to disrupt some things. So sometimes we'll just get in the Cold River and, okay. Just, just'cause I do that with athletes, like getting into fight or flight and staying calm under pressure. Mm. So the, the cold water is like a noxious stressor. It puts us into fight or flight, and then we can consciously choose to stay calm.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And sometimes the cold water brings up all of our stress, so if we're holding a lot of tension, the water's gonna feel a lot colder. Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes I'll use that just to disrupt the pattern. Interesting. Um, yeah, sometimes we'll just have the exercise band and we'll do 10 minutes of working out and then get into, get into the coaching.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just wondered if it was an specific element of your, your approach if necessary. Sounds like,

Speaker 2:

yeah, and, and just being outside resets our nervous system. So sometimes just a hike clears our mind a little bit and it's like, oh. You know, what was on my mind actually wasn't such a big deal after all.

Speaker 5:

Hmm. And

Speaker 2:

we can get to the root of, okay, what's, what's really, what do you really want? Or what's really holding you back?

Speaker:

Talk to me about, uh, contrast, if you will. Uh, high performance coaching. Like what? Uh, you know, depending, say, say I'm a, I, I want to do a, I'm, I'm a, I'm a black, or I'm a brown belt juujitsu. Now I'm working toward my black belt, but I also wanna start my MMA mm-hmm. And build my wrestling skills. Traditional.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I think like where, where my coaching comes in, I should probably tap out now first. First I think it's like I, I have an MMA fighter who's, he has a fight in two weeks. And when we first started working together, we had to peel back the layers of like, are you fighting from a fear-based perspective? Are you fighting? From more of like, just really loving to do this and more from like a play kind of

Speaker:

maximizing your own Yeah. Talents and applying that.

Speaker 2:

So a lot of it is just, you know, a lot of performance is we're coming from a place where we're carrying all this pressure because we think it's about who we are as a person.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And when, when you're performing that way, it maybe can get us to a point of like, success, quote, unquote, but we, we carry so much pressure that we either burn out or we're just not having fun. Yeah. And when you can start peeling back the layers and separating the skill as a performer from who I am as a person,

Speaker 4:

yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's, it's so much more freeing and it's really hard at the highest level to compete with someone who's playing and isn't carrying that pressure. And they're free, they're free to perform. That's such a different. Way to perform than like carrying this backpack of like, man, if I lose, yeah. I'm, I'm unworthy as a person

Speaker:

that's so familiar to me because in my, in my early college years, when I first moved off campus, um, like, what was it, it was a dollar 70 or something, not even 72 cents an hour to play pool at the student union if you were a student. And so it was pretty free, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, and so I would, uh, bring food to campus and instead of going home for lunch or between breaks, I would just go shoot pool. And I ended up befriending a number of pretty good pool players. My dad had gotten a pool table at home a couple years before, so I was brought a little bit of talent in, but even now when I play pool, like I'm playing

Speaker 4:

mm-hmm.

Speaker:

And I'm judging myself really against my own talent and what I've seen myself do. And so I'm thinking about from a, from an activities based thing, if I. If, yes, I'm a pretty good pool player, you know, quite high performer, but I've got this thing and that thing and you haven't landed very many of those bank shots like that. So let's practice on that specific thing. You know, and your, your backs spin is sometimes strong. Sometimes you, you shank it, what's going on there. Mm-hmm. Or whatever. So if I apply it to my own experience, that's probably the one sport, quote unquote sport that I'm probably the most prolific at or the highest performer at. And it was because it's always been play. Mm-hmm. It was never I'm gonna, but I, I wasn't gonna be get beat up if I didn't win though. Yeah. That's the difference between a, a physical art sport. Right. But if it can still be play, like if I'm fighting knock lights out and I'm holding my own against somebody that really on paper should be whooping me and that can be a win and I'll get him next time, like, that's a lot better than, man, this guy's gonna kick my

Speaker 2:

ass. I know. He's so bad. Yeah, totally. And there's, I dunno,

Speaker:

I'm just thinking out loud here a little bit with you.

Speaker 2:

And there's a paradox that high performers can hold. One is like. I can care very deeply about winning this thing.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because of course we wanna win. Sure. That's why. But also I can play, so it's not one or the other. It's like, oh man, I'm, I'm too focused on winning. It's like you can have the capacity to internally hold both that freedom to play in that just like strong desire just to wanna win.

Speaker:

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Um, I just, actually this is gonna be for some of our listeners having a couple of, not too far from back to back. I had Brad Cooper on, are you connected with him here in town? I don't believe so. Uh, catalyst Coaching 360 is his firm and mostly they coach, uh, organizations. Mm-hmm. Like corporate organizations and their teams specifically. Um, but he is also like a high performance coach kind of thing. But not having to draw on your reserve of mental toughness and only drawing on it when you need to mm-hmm. Is kind of one of his core philosophies. Um, that doesn't sound like it's kind of the same in your space, really. More, or yours is like. Th this is fun and this is what I enjoy about it.

Speaker 2:

Well have you like, flow is fun, right? Yeah. Like when in neurochemically, like it's releasing dopamine, norepinephrine, um, all the feel good chemicals, oxytocin. So when we're in flow, we want more ative flow. We want neuro flow.

Speaker:

That's what, yeah. So, and you mentioned earlier beyond mindset. Mm-hmm. Um, when you say that, what do you, what do you mean by that?

Speaker 2:

Like, there, there's certain times where, like in the mental performance world, it's so much about mindset that it almost becomes like, not helpful anymore. Sometimes, sometimes I look at it from the framework of sometimes, like physically we can hold tension in our bodies.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm. And

Speaker 2:

we don't even need to be in the mind. We can just be in the body. And that tension can release very quickly when we, when we bring attention to it. Um, that's all it's looking for. Same with our emotions sometimes. Sometimes it's not about our mind, it's about emotions we're holding on eternally, internally, and we don't, sometimes we don't even know that we're holding those emotions, but they're dictating our behavior.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. But if you can jump in this river that's 38 degrees and stay there for a minute, you can get through this other thing. Oh, yeah. Or whatever. Like if you do a confrontation, you

Speaker 2:

actually, yeah. You can train that response. Because like the cold water, for example, I know it's trendy to get in cold water.

Speaker:

Sure.

Speaker 2:

But the really cool part about it does, it puts you into fight or flight right away. Mm-hmm. So maybe there's other things that put you in fight or flight. Like a fight, right? Yeah. That's literally, yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Fight. Right? Or maybe, uh, you're speaking in front of a thousand people.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

But your body doesn't know whether you're speaking in front of a thousand people, or it's the cold water. Yeah. So you can train your response to that over and over. So that's interesting's. Yes. It's, it's. You can bring in mindset while you're doing that and you can bring in certain things, but it's also like you actively controlling your nervous system. Yeah. So it's not just, it's the integration of both the mind and the body. I

Speaker:

wonder if I've got a more mellow response somehow to that because I'm thinking about a time when this, this really drunk guy, like threatened to like beat me up out of nowhere one time on the Mountain Avenue. And like I was, I basically talked him out of it because it was gonna be a lot of financial and legal problems. But he had me like on the ground and he was ready to pull me'cause he was crazy. And after it was over and it was gone and I didn't get punched, thank God my friend Ned like puked like, and he was like, am I gonna have to jump in here and try to re,'cause this guy was like a big marine, crazy drunk coked up, I'm sure. Mm-hmm. And I was just like. Well, that was crazy. Ned's over here puking and he wasn't even the one that got like flung to the ground.

Speaker 2:

But But you're saying you stayed like pretty calm. I was like calm. Yeah,

Speaker:

yeah, yeah. And I wonder what that is like, I guess about me. I, I feel like I kind of have this ability to almost detach from the situation itself and kind of observe. And at that time I was like, best thing to do is try to talk this guy out of spear smearing you right now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I, I think there's certainly different personality types that maybe lend themselves to being calm. Sorry, Ned, sorry to ta on you about that story. Yeah. Come on Ned. Man up. But it, but it seems like, what do you think, do you think you had experiences growing up that allowed you to either really like Oh, maybe, yeah, because I got

Speaker:

bullied pretty crazily a few times. Yeah. And

Speaker 2:

so what did you, what was your, what was your response to that while you, you were being bullied?

Speaker:

Well, in one crazy experience, I, I was tried to be drug out of the showers and I was holding onto the top of this wall that was like four feet tall. Mm-hmm. And they pulled me off of it to the point where I fell to the floor and got a goose egg on the, my forehead. Yeah. Um, and I didn't let myself get in that kind of situation in the future really. Um, so probably a defensive posture against, and I guess, you know, and I'm a motorcyclist and I feel like I can spot potentially risky situations and stuff. Mm-hmm. You know, in this particular case I did a terrible job, it seems like. But yeah. Kind of trying to be outside of just my own

Speaker 2:

eyes. So more, more vigilant.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also like not just imagining what's out there from my own eyes, but kind of Yeah. Vigilance, but from other perspectives or angles. Yeah. Potential risks that others might not be thinking through. Well, it's interesting because

Speaker 2:

there's fight flight or even fawn, you know, some people go. Go internal when things happen. So do you think yours was like more of a detachment, or was it just like, I'm just calm?

Speaker:

No, my natural instinct is a fight is a fight. I've gotten myself into some situations where it wasn't even my fight. Yeah. And I had to be the justice person involved or whatever. But in that situation, fighting would've been stupid. Mm-hmm. Because he would've pummeled the crap out of me. Yeah. Uh, he was a immensely superior opponent. Um, and so like, I, but, but I, even though my initial instinct is generally fight, I was able to suppress that instinct for mm-hmm. Kind of the ability to be up in the balcony looking at the situation like, well, if you do the fight button, you're gonna get your ass kicked. Yeah. If you do the flight button, he's already got you. That one isn't gonna work. You know? Yeah. And so it was like, uh, what's, what's another option I can perhaps use? Yeah. And I was talking to his friends, I'm like, dude, you gotta stop it. There's no reason for him to beat me up right now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Well, maybe in that situation you, you learn through other experiences. Like in this situation, diplomacy, I need, I need to be a peacemaker. Right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker:

I don't know. I don't know. It's a mystery. Um, well I feel like it's a good time to call a break.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, let's have a break.

Speaker:

Alright, cheers. Cool. And I probably poured you over, uh, on the whiskey pour. Oh, all good. And, uh, we might move your mic just an inch that way because you tend to kind of go both. I'm moving around straight at me and, and, but we'll figure that out. Cool when we come back. So you, you mentioned back to Fort Collins. Um, did you go to college here or like what, I guess I just, you grew up here?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. No, I, I grew up in Nebraska. Um, back to Colorado is probably, oh, back to Colorado. Yeah. You said I lived, I moved out to Colorado in 2010. Lived in Summit County. Did the. Ski bum thing and then the raft guide thing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so wide living and then

Speaker:

found your, found your way up to Steamboat from there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Found our way up to Steamboat. Okay. And how

Speaker:

did you know that you wanted to be in Fort Collins?

Speaker 2:

My sister has lived here for a while, so we, we would stop here on the way back to Nebraska when we visited from Steamboat. Okay. Uh, so we, we visited here, Atton, we've been here a bunch and yeah. Um, but honestly I was just on a walk in Nebraska and it was just like, go back to Colorado. What are you doing? And

Speaker:

just like, while you're living in your mom's basement kind of thing. Well, we were

Speaker 2:

living just in a rental house. We were out of the mom's basement. Oh, that's good. Um, just that's a little more comfortable. Yeah. Just, just living in a, a small house. We actually called it the stinky house'cause there was like, that's, that's a long story. My wife became pregnant there and they, they actually like needed to. Replace the sewer line, like under the yard.

Speaker:

Oh, oh.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, we,

Speaker:

there was draftings going on before that.

Speaker 2:

My, my kids still call it the stinky house. Um, so we moved while I was taking a walk outside of the stinky house, it was just like, Hey, just go back. I'm over it on a stinky house. And just like that, we, we ended up back here and we had

Speaker:

a little bit of savings left to live on kind of thing. Mm-hmm. Or whatever. Mm-hmm. But had to get the coaching business kind of cooking. Yep. Exactly. Interesting. Yeah. Um, by the way, do you want to sample this? Uh, this is, I already gave it away, but this is the basal Hayden, but be welcome to contrast that with the mob mountain.

Speaker 2:

I think it, it has a little less of the bite

Speaker:

for sure.

Speaker 2:

I don't, I don't think it's quite as smooth. I think I'd like the other one a little bit better. Kind of

Speaker:

across the board. Yeah. Like it almost feels kind of wimpy in comparison

Speaker 2:

to me. Yeah. It almost. Looks fine. Yeah, it's, it's, it's good, but not great. Thank

Speaker:

you Mike Glia for bringing that over. Like it's very appreciated. Yeah. Mike is one of the, uh, former facilitators for local Think Tank and we had a bourbon and ping pong gathering a couple weeks ago. It's on its last legs, but much appreciated. Mike.

Speaker 2:

Thanks Mike. Yeah, I think, I think I mean this, it's nice. This is good. It, it's nice. It's

Speaker:

a very nice bourbon, but I'm just really Mob Mountain guys. If you're listening out there, I want you on my podcast'cause you're making a nice production.$40 Bourbon that's local, that's kind of outshines anything that's more affordable than that, that I've found. Yeah. I think's like it's better than Maker's Mark. It's definitely better than Bullet or mm-hmm. Any of those things. And there's most of the good local stuff, otherwise it's like 50 to 65. Mm-hmm. So I agree. Kudos to y'all. Yeah. Good job. Get that market share up there. So, and all you guys listening out there, next time you're giving a gift to bourbon to somebody, uh, make it a mob mountain.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Just. Not sponsored, but should be. Um, so I guess what, what, what do you have for aspirations? Like, uh, is this for you like a, a 20 year solo entrepreneurship coaching business? When we're chatting outside, you mentioned that, um, as your kids start going to school and stuff, you, you imagine having your wife more involved, but like, are you trying to build an enterprise or really just have a freedom, uh, inclusive impact making solo entrepreneurship with support?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I, I don't think I've zoomed out 20 years. Um, I think it can be kind of foolish to do so. Um, personally for me, but I Do you

Speaker:

imagine building a team, I guess is part of how Yeah, I,

Speaker 2:

I would like to have a team. I would like, I would like to either partner, you know, I feel like a lot of reaching goals and there, and there's a book about this called Who Not How by Dr. Ben Hardy. But sometimes to love that

Speaker:

book

Speaker 2:

to get to your next level, it's, uh, it's like partnering with someone. Yeah. And I've, I have, uh, partnered with somebody and we've, we've, we've grown at a pretty fast clip together, like helping his team and I think there, there could be some future endeavors where, where we team up and, and launch something together.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

My, my, my goal.

Speaker:

Some kind of more programmatic thing or something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I, I don't think anything, like, I don't want to be like an online coach or have courses or anything like that. I would like to found a company with someone or help grow a company with equity in it. Okay. And, and really see, um. Where we can grow together

Speaker:

in your space or potentially building widgets.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I, I don't know. And selling them, I don't know about in my, in my space necessarily, but using my skillset to help grow a business. Yeah. That, that would

Speaker:

be, whether it's a service business or a retail store or something that you get excited about again. Yeah. So, because you're obviously excited about the vacation rental support kind of business before I, I would not

Speaker 2:

do, I don't, yeah. That was, you know, I mean, at that time, at that time it was exciting. Yeah. Because it was, I mean, honestly, what happened, we were looking, my, my wife was looking for jobs after the rafting season, and we just noticed like, man, they're, they're paying cleaners more than any other, like, I guess entry level position. Mm-hmm. I, let's just start our own business. Let's just start our own cleaning business.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker 2:

So that's kinda where the idea started.

Speaker:

Oh, okay. And so we just like, let's just, so you were executing a lot of the cleanings as well. You were. Selling it? Booking it.

Speaker 2:

Well we, so we basically, the niche we had, we would clean vacation rentals and we'd work with managers who managed it themselves and then we would do everything else. Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. So that was our niche. Um, but it all started with, I think we could do this. Right. I don't think we need somebody to hire us. Yeah. Like, let's just start our own. Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah. So it was more impulsive than like a love of cleaning or anything like that? Yeah. You just saw a market opportunity. Yeah. Just, sorry,

Speaker 2:

I, I think we could do this. And,

Speaker:

and what were you doing Immediately before

Speaker 2:

we were, we were working at the rafting, the rafting season? Just up Oh, both of your raft guides? She was, uh, the manager for the rafting company.

Speaker:

Oh. So was it that way when you guys met?

Speaker 2:

No, we met before that. Okay. Alright.

Speaker:

Just checking. Thought that was maybe a little, uh, hanky panky.

Speaker 2:

It, it wasn't love at the rafting shop. Those, those relationships usually don't last long. Uh, well that's not true. There's a couple, but, but the, the owner, he was a mentor. He actually ended up marrying us, but he started that rafting company with like two boats and a small outpost and grew to. You know, a company do taking 10 to 15,000 people down the river each year. Wow. So he really, he's just like, just do it. Yeah. Like, start it. You can do it. And we actually, the first, the first client we had responding to our Craigslist ad that probably dates us a little bit, 2016. Um, we didn't even have a place to live in Steamboat. We were camping and we had a, no, we had to borrow a mop that smelled like Pines saw, and we went to Walmart and bought cleaning supplies. Oh,

Speaker:

dang.

Speaker 2:

And, and there's a lesson in that sometimes you have to start, you don't need a perfect website. Right. We didn't even have a website. Right. We just, we, we bought business insurance like two days before. Um, so sometimes you just have to go for it and just keep iterating Yeah. And iterating. Interesting. Um, so that's, that was kind of the genesis of that.

Speaker:

So you were, you're homeless after rafting season. Mm-hmm. Wondering what you were gonna do until the next rafting season or something.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Well, we, we were fully committed. We're like, we can do this. But,

Speaker:

but leading into that, that was a little bit the, the thought.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It was like, what? I thought I was gonna be a snowmobile guide. Yeah. Yeah. So my friend's like, yeah, you can be a snowmobile guide. So I wasn't, I wasn't that worried. Um,

Speaker:

yeah. I mean, you had a couple more Yeah. Months before it was gonna get called again.

Speaker 2:

But, but once we, we had a, you know, we had a couple people pay us for our services. Right. And we were like, we're actually pretty good at this. Yeah. Um, and then back to the who, not how we actually met somebody by just going around and introducing ourselves. And she, she had a very successful property management company and Winter Park. Mm-hmm. She managed like 175 rentals there. And she was starting in Steamboat. They had just moved there as a family. And she, she was like, the first thing she said is like, how did you know to find me? We didn't, we just walked in here. And she's like, I'm looking for someone like you guys. And we went from two properties to like. 10 or 15 Wow. With that one relationship. Yeah. So that, that, that who, not how like it's, it's happened so many times. Yeah. Um, in different aspects. Aspects of your lives. And that's even part, part of why

Speaker:

you connected with me. You're like, I, this Kurt guy seems to know a lot of people and stuff in around Fort Collins and so let's go have a coffee. Yeah. Let's, let's, why not? Yeah, totally. So I dig it. Um, what else? Like from a business front, I can, we can go a lot of different angles, um, but we're gonna eventually gonna jump into the time machine and go back to, did you grow up in Hastings?

Speaker 2:

I grew up outside of Hastings. Okay. Outside of town called Julieta, town of 800 people. Grew up on a farm, so.

Speaker:

So you farm kid?

Speaker 2:

I'm a farm boy. Yeah.

Speaker:

And what, talk about the farm a little bit. Uh, scale crops, crops, critters,

Speaker 2:

crops, corn and soybeans. We had some cows in the winter. Okay. Um.

Speaker:

You just kind of run'em on the cornstalks and stuff like that? Mostly, yeah. Okay. And

Speaker 2:

we had pigs when I was really, really young. Okay. Me too. I remember, I remember my dad had

Speaker:

pigs when I was a little, little small guy. Yeah. A lot

Speaker 2:

of memories in the hay loft. Building forts. Um, yeah. It was, you know, at the time I didn't wanna live on a farm when I was like in middle school. I remember just wanting to be able to skateboard on the road and not have like a gravel basketball court.

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Um, but I'm really thankful I grew up on a farm. Yeah.

Speaker:

What was the, the environment, um, did you have siblings as well?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I had an older sister, three years older than me. She actually moved out to Colorado right after, um, high school.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Um,

Speaker:

and was your dad like, grew up on that farm or started Yeah, my dad,

Speaker 2:

my dad's a fourth generation farmer. Okay. Um, so yeah, I was actually. The house he grew up in is the house we ended up moving to when I was a little bit older. Okay. But yeah. Okay.

Speaker:

Interesting. Yep. Um, and like maybe for those that don't know, Hastings set the stage a little bit there.

Speaker 2:

Uh, Kool-Aid capital of the world. What else do you need? What do you mean The

Speaker:

Kool-Aid? Capital Kool-Aid

Speaker 2:

was invented in Hastings.

Speaker:

Okay. Is that's still there, I presume.

Speaker 2:

Town of 25,000 people. Okay.

Speaker:

Um, I was thinking maybe a little smaller. It's on I 80, is it? It's

Speaker 2:

about 20 minutes off I 80 north

Speaker:

of, right?

Speaker 2:

Yep.

Speaker:

Yep. Okay. And

Speaker 2:

or sorry, sorry. South of I 80, south of I 80. Okay. Yeah. And just, there's a college there, there's a small college there and it's surrounded by corn fields. And so fields like how far from Omaha? Two and a half hours.

Speaker:

Okay. Yeah. And uh, so there's probably like, in that region, there's a lot of kids at the school that are coming from those farms.'cause there's. Small firms all around there. But then there's also a bunch of town kids, like you said, that had basketball hoops didn't have ground.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Cal Pie High. That's where I went. Adam Central. So it was okay. You know, back, back in the day, it was definitely the country school. It was more Okay, okay. Pro, probably more town, kids high. Um, yeah, so three high schools in my town. Um, I went to the country school just a little bit outside of Hastings.

Speaker:

Yeah. Let's go to like. Kind of when you started remembering yourself from like that five, six, 7-year-old, um, did you say your sister was younger or older?

Speaker 2:

She's three years older. Three years older. Mm-hmm. So

Speaker:

the little, the kid, brother, and, uh, like who you're, you're, you're kind of a shorty. Were you were I was, I was really a small kid for most of my growing up peers as well. Uh, what was the, the, like, what were you good at? Were you sporty? Were you already a wrestler?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I, I, I started wrestling. I was five and I was pretty, pretty, pretty good at it right away. Yeah, because you can be good at wrestling. Uh, I was a rut. I really was. I was pretty small. Yeah. I was Kurt the

Speaker:

squirt.

Speaker 2:

So the rut and the squirt, uh, you, you really grew up, man.

Speaker:

Yeah, I was, I was four foot 11 in seventh grade, and then I was five foot one at the end of 10th grade.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh, man. Yes.

Speaker:

And like a hundred pounds both times. Um, I, I was

Speaker 2:

bigger than you, man. Yeah,

Speaker:

you were. Um, but now I could totally kick your butt. No, just kidding. You would. I've, I've met pocket rockets like you before. What do you weigh? Like one 40 or something? I'm, I'm

Speaker 2:

like one 50.

Speaker:

One 50. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You'd be a formidable opponent for two of me. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. So, and, and so 5-year-old you is also formidable right from the start.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was pretty scrappy. Um, wrestled a lot with my dad as a kid. Um, yeah, I just, was he a

Speaker:

wrestler?

Speaker 2:

He, I think he wrestled a little bit, not like, you know, nothing serious enough to

Speaker:

know how not to hurt you, but trained you up a little bit even. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And he, uh, he, he coached a lot of the sports I did. He was a pretty good athlete, so I, I did it all, you know, it was just, it was small town Nebraska. Sure. And we kind Did you wanna be on the team?

Speaker:

You could, you just did

Speaker 2:

everything. Yeah. I, I played basketball, I wrestled, I played midget football, um, you know, ran track. I did cross country later in high school. What was

Speaker:

your track events?

Speaker 2:

I did in high school. I did the mile in like the 800 and the four by eight.

Speaker:

Okay. Yeah. I was a miler mostly. I was slow. Yeah. I broke my arm one year and so did track that year just taking shape for basketball.'cause you know,

Speaker 2:

yeah. Track was kind of the fun. It was after wrestling and I took wrestling very seriously. Mm-hmm. And then it was kind of fun just to be outside and yeah, I, I would still train, but it was more do anything active. Kind of more laid back.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. Did you, uh, like have the kind of town where, or were you close enough to town? You could take your bicycle to town, like before you, but you got a driver's license at 14 Probably anyway.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Well, you could get your school permit at 14. Yeah. Um, I definitely couldn't, I could ride my bike technically from my house, but it was, it wasn't a common, it would've been a pretty, pretty long jaunt. Catch

Speaker:

a ride with your sister instead? Uh, I did,

Speaker 2:

I did have some growing up. The neighbor kids I guess were like a mile away, so I would ride my bike to, to their house and Okay. And we would. Have fun playing in the country. That's the stage. Pretty good.

Speaker:

Yeah. Um, what other observations about Hastings, uh, would you like to share?

Speaker 2:

I mean, Hastings, it's full of, it's just good hearted people. Yeah. Like, people a little bit like Colorado, like Colorado has a little bit of that Midwest vibe where people just, they'll help you if you have a flat tire Yeah. On the side of the road, they're gonna help you. You're not

Speaker:

gonna have 20 people pass by you. You're gonna have zero people pass by you. Yeah. The first person will probably help you. Right.

Speaker 2:

Change, change that. And it, it's a, um, I grew up just in a blue collar environment. Like I learned the value of work ethic very young. My first job, one of my first jobs besides helping my dad was detasseling. Which if you my wife did that, yeah. It's a terrible job. It's hard, it's hot. Um, and yeah, back then it was like five bucks an hour, but that was a lot of money when you're 12.

Speaker:

Right, right.

Speaker 2:

So I, I just learned the value of, of hard work. Um. At a young age, which, which I appreciated.

Speaker:

And can I ask, how old are you? Like

Speaker 2:

I'm 39.

Speaker:

39? Mm-hmm. So that would've been high school would've been like, 2005 is when I finished. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Um, and then what, like where did you go to school? I assume

Speaker 2:

college.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Uh, I went to Morningside College in Iowa. I wrestled there.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Um, scholarships. I had a scholarship and then I wrestled for two years. And, um, I was just a little bit burnt out. I was tired of cutting weight. Right. I wasn't having much success and

Speaker 3:

I kind of wanted

Speaker 2:

something different. And I got, after wrestling, I, I got really excited about like, adventure. So I actually studied abroad in Italy. Oh, cool. Which you just said you have an exchange student.

Speaker:

Yeah. Where in Italy were you?

Speaker 2:

I was in a town called Temo,

Speaker:

which is Temo Mall.

Speaker 2:

It's like Te Malls. The, the West Rome is on the west side. If you go directly east, almost to the Adri. Yeah. Um, that's, that's a small town. Okay. Of Omo. It's about 60,000 people. It was the first year the college had an exchange with the program. Oh, cool. Cool. I didn't speak a, speak a lick of Italian. Mm-hmm. I just, something attracted me to Italy and, and I went and it was for a full year. I went for just over three months, like three and a half months. Okay. A little shy of a semester. Um, I hardly ever went to class. It was so funny, like not a whole lot of people spoke English. It was kind of a shock. I'm sure. Um, even a lot of the students were Spanish, um

Speaker:

Right. Because Spain and Italy are kind of buddies a bit.'cause they can almost, yeah. They can learn each other's languages pretty quickly.

Speaker 2:

And then I met my friend William. He was, um, his mom was from Spain, his dad was from England. And he's just like, Hey mate, what's up? I'm like, ah, we speak English. And, and we kind of became, uh,

Speaker 5:

yeah. Partners in

Speaker 2:

crime. And we found out, I found out like early on, like I was the only American there and. They, the teachers took a liking to me kind of.'cause I was just like, I didn't speak very good Italian. I, I always just say no. So I don't know. They'd ask me something Italian, I'd be like, no. So, or in Italian they'd say, B BA means, I don't know,

Speaker 5:

B.

Speaker 2:

So like, they would laugh at me, but it was all in good nature. And then I, I started missing class here and there, and it was always fine. They'd like, give me, um, like good grades. Yeah. So then like, we went to Venice, we went to Rome, we went to Florence and we They hooked you

Speaker:

up? We were,

Speaker 2:

yeah. The last, the, the, the final, uh, final exams. There was a teacher in there and she gave me all the answers. So I got, I got two. I got two A's and A B. Um, I only had three classes in, in the other class. That's crazy. And you

Speaker:

probably didn't learn very good Italian either, because you, Paolo Italiano. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I, I speak pretty good Italian. Oh, you do? I,

Speaker:

well, at least you learned Italian. Yeah. I actually,

Speaker 2:

what was cool was after, after I studied in Italy and I finished, I have a degree in psychology. And then I actually backpacked around Central America and I picked up Spanish pretty quickly because I just Yeah. Um, you know, Latin languages, so Yeah. Yeah. It's a

Speaker:

kissing cousin with Italian. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So I actually, I, I really, and Portuguese.

Speaker:

Yeah. Right.

Speaker 2:

So it was a, it was a really cool experience. Oh, that's

Speaker:

interesting. Well, I'll have to get you together, uh, with Sarah sometime, because Yeah, man, it'll, you know, she talked to the guy at the La Pina Mano is from her region in Italy. Is where his, uh, the, have you had those, the flatbread pizzas? No, I haven't over there. Well, they're in the exchange. Go there. Cool. Commercial for you, mano. Um, but, but he's, I think he's maybe Hungarian, I believe by birth, but lived in Italy for quite a while. Mm-hmm. And, and took that concept. And so like where Sarah's from is where Pina's are from.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's cool.

Speaker:

And so they were able to talk Italian, but it's. There aren't that many Italian speakers around. No, there's not. Um, and so opportunities to speak with somebody, uh, from time to time, uh, in Italian would be fun for her. Yeah. Well, let's have dinner and, um, we'll meet. Yeah, sounds good. You can buy me a drink. So, um, okay, so you're just three months in Italy though, but this is kind of like a, a changing moment for you of sorts or like, what was the reset button, or Not at all yet. It was just more of, I if was a reset eye opener,

Speaker 2:

just more of I knew I wanted to have some type of adventure and it was definitely outta my comfort zone. And I, I don't know, like what the, there wasn't like some big enlightening experience. It was more that I just really love connecting with people from different places. And I think, I think it's good just to, you know, I was very dedicated to wrestling for a long time throughout high school and college, and it was almost just like a disruptor. Um,

Speaker:

well, and plus you're a small town farm kid. Yeah. And you're all of a sudden you're, you're kind of. Building your knowledge about what it is to connect with people from different kinds of places, spaces, cultures, backgrounds. Mm-hmm. And that was formative for what was to come, obviously. Yeah, totally right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's intriguing how, you know, and were you flowing by the end of that?

Speaker 2:

Fluent

Speaker:

flowing? Flowing?

Speaker 2:

Oh, flowing.

Speaker:

You're talking about being in flow. Yeah. Oh man.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I feel like I was, you know, me and William, we did this funny thing where sometimes we would just hop on a bus, not like, really knowing where it was going. Um, and it was funny'cause sometimes it would like take us to where we needed to go and it was like, oh, this is cool. Sometimes it didn't, sometimes you'd end up in like a town trying to figure out how to get handle. Um, but it was, I guess it was just, uh, an experience of being, being able to go on an, an adventure for the sake of being on an adventure and. Also, also just grow like as a solo traveler and have to figure things out. Yeah. Like on

Speaker:

your own. And you said that later you traveled to Central America mm-hmm. Different things. Was that like immediately upcoming or did you have to go back and finish college and stuff? Yeah, I

Speaker 2:

finished, I had, I had like a semester left in college. I finished barely, it was hard. I was pretty checked out. Um,

Speaker:

with what kinda a degree? Psychology. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I, I actually worked, my first job outta college was as a youth care specialist at like a juvenile, um, addiction

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Type, type place.

Speaker:

Yeah. You can go here instead of going to jail. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Which was really eyeopening. Interesting. Yeah. Some, I would get confused, some

Speaker:

different kind of cultural experiences than the rich people that you get to hang out with around Italy and whatever.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And I'd be walking around that place and they'd think I was like one of the, one of the kids there and be like, how'd you get here? Like, I work here. I work here. Um, yeah. So I, after that, I worked there. And then before I moved to Colorado, I backpacked, um, through Central Amer, Mexico and Central America for just over three months, three or four months.

Speaker:

Okay. Mm-hmm. What was your favorite part about that?

Speaker 2:

Probably, probably just meeting, meeting the locals, meeting the, the people. I volunteered on a coffee plantation for a month in Guatemala. A heavy Mayan population. Sure. Um, just very, very kind people. They don't have very much.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

They would kill a chicken and cook for you the day you got there. Um, just really learn more about some of the culture there. And then while I was traveling, I just tried to stay with like local people. Yeah. You just meet people, Hey man, you know a place to stay around here. Yeah. You can crash on my couch, buy me dinner, you can crash on my couch. So just meeting locals and

Speaker:

Oh, interesting.

Speaker 2:

Learning, learning about them, learning about their culture and meeting other travelers too.

Speaker:

And I guess you hadn't met your wife by this point in time. No, not yet. Um, what's next?

Speaker 2:

Uh, so I guess what, what's next is I returned home. I decided I wanted to move to Colorado. I got a job on the ski resort in Keystone.

Speaker 4:

Okay. And

Speaker 2:

I met my wife at a friend's giving party right before I moved to Colorado. Oh. Oh, really? So I moved in

Speaker:

Hastings. In Hastings at, at

Speaker 2:

a mutual friend's house.

Speaker:

And she was from there too, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

But we, we just didn't know each, we didn't know each other, but we had a mutual friend. She was back, um, on like college break. Sure. And I was just finishing college and moving to Colorado.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. Um, can I get a, like a, a 90 seconds on, and I'm sorry, your wife's name again was Annie. Annie on Annie's background. Was she farm girl, town girl. Like,'cause you're like kind of this a. Worldly adventurer almost, that's been near homeless for a third of the last few years at this point in time when you guys are, are connecting, right? Yeah. And like, I'm just kind of curious about who Annie is. Yeah. And, uh, anyway,

Speaker 2:

Annie's amazing. But she, she grew up in an interesting household. Her, her father, um, was from, I think from Kentucky where he was born. But he grew up in Nebraska and he was in the Air Force in Thailand. And Annie's mother is from Thailand. Oh. And she, she came over to college, um, when she was 18 or 19, I think. Oh, wow. And her father was like,

Speaker:

oh, I, hey, you're super cute.

Speaker 2:

I was in Thailand and Oh yeah. Probably spoke some tie to her. Right, right. Um, so Annie, you know, she grew up going to Thailand once a year. Um, kind of this small town Nebraska meets the heart of Bangkok.

Speaker:

Yeah. Well, and one. Was there a second Asian student at Hastings High School?

Speaker 2:

Uh, her cousin. Something with her, another one. Moms. Her mom's cousins. Right. Um, yeah. But almost none. Right? Oh yeah, totally.

Speaker:

Um, but totally, I imagine kind of raising an American fashion, right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I think, you know, a little bit of,

Speaker:

with a little more o open influence because of that travel to Thailand every year, right? Mm-hmm. Like you'd been opening your eyes beyond Hastings and Yeah. She had always had'em opening away.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker:

Hmm. Okay. Um, and so you guys meet right before you're gonna move away? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So we meet and I move and we just, we stayed in touch a little bit. Like I said, we had mutual friends, so she would come out to Colorado on ski trips or, uh, to a concert at Red Rocks. When you

Speaker:

came home for Christmas or when you'd be hanging out with Annie all the time, your parents were like, why didn't

Speaker 2:

you hang out with us more? Yeah, exactly. And we, um, we did that for a couple years, just stayed friends, and then she finished college. And she decided to move out to Colorado. Oh, cool. Um, and she, she worked as the manager at the rafting shop. I was, I was the raft guy, like

Speaker:

right outta college. She's all like, boom. You're the manager of the rafting shop.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, pretty much. That's pretty cool. The testimony her, she worked as diligence the receptionist the first year and then managed at the next year. Yeah, yeah. Um, and yeah, we lived in a little popup camper down by the river.

Speaker:

That's cool. Um, what a fascinating start to, uh, a marriage and a life. And then, you know, before too long you've got this kind of thriving property cleaning service.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And we spent, we spent two of the winter, so we work in, um, the rafting company in the summer and then the winter one winter we worked in California on different farms. There's an organization called Wolfing, worldwide Organization of Organic Farms. Okay. And they basically give you a place to live, usually a camper in exchange for. Like part-time work. Yeah. And they'll give you food and a place to stay and then you can go explore.

Speaker:

It's almost like a Peace Corps kind of thing that you learn a bunch of stuff too. A little bit. Yeah. So we were, you weren't in detasseling corn or anything though?

Speaker 2:

We weren't detasseling corn. Okay. Hell no. Um, yeah, so that was cool. One winter we spent in California just traveling up and down the coast. And then the next winter we actually, a bunch of the rafting company, like 15 of us, took a trip down the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe and then we road tripped in South Africa. And then we spent Wow. A couple months in Southeast Asia. Wow. So we did, we did a really epic trip together.

Speaker:

That big of a group.

Speaker 2:

15 of us were in Africa for two weeks and then there was four of us that road trip from Cape Town to Durban. And then me and Annie went to Southeast Asia. Yeah. For a couple months.

Speaker:

What an interesting, like you guys were Van Lifeing. Uh. But even with less. Mm-hmm. Uh, way before that was even a thing. Hardly. Did you have inspirations in that pursuit or was it just kind of freethinking and let's just do this?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. One thing was like, when we were working on the farms together, people were just like, you guys are like really, like, great, you guys worked together really well. Hmm. And they would like, like, are you cool if we just go on vacation and you guys like, run the farm? We had a couple people just like leave the farm to us. And there was this, there was this farm with this old couple Bruce, which

Speaker:

only could have happened if you had that farming background. Yeah. It's like that probably I'm

Speaker 2:

Well that, that, that got us in the door for sure. Hey, I'm a, I'm a farmer, but a lot of it was just like vegetable gardens for CSAs or Sure. Like growing chickens, food. But

Speaker:

you wouldn't be so good at it without all that deep background.

Speaker 2:

It, it did, it definitely helped for sure.

Speaker:

You know, you went to school for psychology, not horticulture.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. But I, yeah, I was comfortable just like working machines and, yeah, just, just things like that. Um, but there was this one guy named Bruce, and they had this really cool farm and we, we stayed with them for three weeks or a month, and he, like, he was kind of an old gruffly guy, you know, and, uh, kind of hard to break his exterior. And, but I got to know him pretty well and he just looked at me the day we left and he's, he just looked at me in the eye and he said, you know what? You guys are like gonna find something where you guys are really great at, and you guys can do anything you want to do. And it just, I still think about that. It almost makes me cry.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Like almost like confirmation, confirmation to go for it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah. Well, I think that's with any endeavor. Mm-hmm. Right. And one of the things I compliment you on is that shift out of, you know, was like the, the, the Airbnb kind of business and stuff, both, you had gotten kind of tired, but also the, the market has changed a lot since then.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah,

Speaker:

totally. You know, and so even had you. Continue to try to pursue that. It probably wouldn't have been what it once was.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. We saw the storm coming a little bit, right. The riding was on the wall. Right. And

Speaker:

so opening up a new chapter, making some new reflections and like, are you gonna turn your, your clients into like hippies that can live in a van down by the river? Uh, if they want to,

Speaker 2:

I mean, if they want to, if that's their calling. You know? Um, I, I feel like just that, I guess like lifestyle a little bit just opens you up to like experiences where you have to be pretty lean, you know? Yeah. You don't, you don't need much. You, you can be scrappy. And, and it helped us in business too, because there's a lot of really bad business advice out there. Sure. And, and the truth is, like for us anyways, the minute you start thinking you need to take out loans or you know, buying new company vehicles, your cash flow just dries up. Hmm. So we just, some of that scrappiness we learned traveling. And just living in campers like we took with us as business owners and we, we were like profitable from day one, you know? Right. It was always about bottom line for us, you know? Is your

Speaker:

financial acumen actually pretty good? Like, you know, a balance sheet and a Oh, totally. P and l, yeah. Up top and bottom.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I mean, my wi that's definitely my wife's stronger suit, but we're, we're both pretty financially literate and we just like being lean was just kind of

Speaker:

choose to work with smaller numbers than some people strive for.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And, and to us it was always about the bottom line. Like there's a lot of talk about like, I make this in revenue, seven figures, but to us it was always like, what's our bottom line? Yeah. Are we profitable? Are we cash flowing?'cause that's really, and that was always important to us. Like, let's just stay lean, be able to cash flow. And it gives you an element of not just resilience, but um, like the word I use is anti fragility.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Like, um, you can pivot, you can be adaptable, you can. You can, something like COVID happens and you don't have to sweat because you're like, Hey, they closed down every vacation rental during the busiest time of year, spring break, and we're good. Like, we don't have to, we don't have bills to pay, we don't have debt. Right. So it it, there might

Speaker:

not be any customers, but Yeah. We also don't have a bunch of overhead. Yeah. So

Speaker 2:

there was, there was some lessons there of just being able and also being able to pivot and be like, we're gonna shut our doors and it would be nice to sell this, but it's also time to move. Yeah. Like, we both feel it. So it, it, it allows you to have a level of boldness and adaptability when you run that way.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. I, I have a observation about the world or culture or whatever you wanna call it, that, um, most people try to out earn their expenditures mm-hmm. Rather than underspending, um, their revenues. Yeah. And. Uh, it's so obvious that the better thing is to underspend your revenues. Yeah, totally. But people just like have this like, oh, if I could just make that much more, then I can afford this lifestyle I'm been living.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Or yeah, when you, and, and it also just, it helps you like, you know, prioritize. Like, what do I care about? Yeah. You know, for us, we're, we're fine with driving old Toyotas, you know, that's, that's cool with us. Like, we don't need new cars, but we, we do value being able to go to Hawaii for five months and be able to

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Hang out and have those experiences. So it's just like, what, what do we, what do we value? What do we want to focus our energy on? And then when you do have, you know, when there's fruit, you can enjoy it a little more because like, hey, we've, uh, our spending's been low and Yeah,

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker 2:

Let's have a little bit of fun. Like, it's all good.

Speaker:

So that's such a counter-cultural experience, especially from. You know, the market where you spent a lot of time in Steamboat Springs, right? Mm-hmm. Because although Steamboats a lot better than a place like Aspen nor Vail in terms of it's, you know, showing off your car or whatever. But still, it's kind of a keeping up with the Joneses kind of town these days. Mm-hmm. Um, how, how would I say this, right? Like if I'm the business owner that says, no, I'm doing this because I want the Mercedes, SLR, um, they probably just shouldn't call you.

Speaker 2:

No, they can call me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean we, I'm, I'm, yeah, I, I've worked with plenty of people. It just

Speaker:

seems counter-cultural to the, the happy to couch surf three months, kind of.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Well, we, we've had our foot, you know, when we were, we worked with people who had multimillion dollar homes and we. We also had our foot in the, the local culture of dirt bag climbers and skiers and Yeah. But yeah. You know, there is, if you value having a new car like that, that's cool. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think, I think some, I think a lot of stuff is just noise. Yeah. And the people I like to work with are people that are willing to get rid of the noise and focus on the signal. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Like,

Speaker 2:

what do you really want? Let's strip everything away and let's just go for it. Yeah. And most people I work with, when we strip it away, they, they really don't care about signal. They don't really want an SLR. Yeah. They, they wanna make an impact.

Speaker:

Yeah. You know? Yeah. Whatever. That's in medicine or in support. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Medicine or just supporting the community or maybe it's, or, or business, whatever. Or business. Maybe their business, um, supports the community or, you know, maybe just through their business they want to develop leaders. Like, I feel like most of the people that I work with have a, have a bigger vision than. Just like, yeah, we wanna grow in revenue and we wanna win, and that's all good. But I also want to, you know, be a great father or be a great husband, or, you know, travel, like you said, go, go travel with my wife and create these really cool experiences. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so part of it is just stripping away the noise and being like, what, what matters, what really matters? And then giving, giving yourself permission to just go all in.

Speaker:

Yeah. I dig it. Um, I feel like we should hit the ping pong ball challenge let's do it. All right. So you are gonna pull three balls out of this jar. I can pass the whole jar to you. Do

Speaker 2:

one at a time or all three.

Speaker:

Uh, just grab all three and we'll ask you the questions. All right. As we go. You can go in any order you wish I got number 12. Totally random. Okay. Let's just start with that one. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received about business?

Speaker 2:

The

Speaker:

best, best piece of advice that you've received?

Speaker 2:

Um, back back to my mentor. That was the raf the, the owner of the business. Yeah. Just, just start and then iterate on starting. It's like, just get in the arena. Yeah. Don't sit on the bleachers and think too hard about it. Yeah. Um, so just, just go for it, I think is the best piece I've got.

Speaker:

Alright. I dig it. Uh, next, number

Speaker 2:

16.

Speaker:

Who's had the, this is the same question just about who has had the most, well, maybe not, who's had the most significant influence on your life?

Speaker 2:

Oh, sign. Um, the right answer is your wife. Probably, maybe not. Maybe grandma. No. Well, no, honestly. Yes. Yes, my wife, because she, she did take a chance on me, a, a dirt bag raft guide, a chance on me, um, my parents for sure. Um, I'm a man of faith, so, so God. Um, and, and yeah, Allen, my, my mentor in the rafting company, he had a, he had a super big impact as well.

Speaker:

Do you wanna talk about the, the faith background a little bit?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I mean,

Speaker:

um, you were in Hastings, so like, what is that? Is that Catholic country? Yeah. Is that, yeah, I

Speaker 2:

grew up going to a Catholic church, but honestly I, from, from high school until the last two years, um, yeah, God was in the background, but I. I wasn't really, you know, I had no desire to really like, go to any type of organized religion. Yeah. But just

Speaker:

you didn't deny God, you just didn't really go to church? Didn't deny I didn't talk to him much. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Um, didn't really care what he had to say. Um, but just through, through the path of entrepreneurship, like, it, it can be hard. It can be like, man, I've, I've got three kids to feed. Mm-hmm. Like, what am I doing? You know, there can be just sometimes just like

Speaker:

you weren't instantly overwhelmed with clients.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I just wasn't magically, you know, seven figure coach. Right, right. Um, there's a lot of promises of that, a lot of programs that promise that. But, um, yeah, it's hard, you know, and for just me and my wife's relationship there, there had to be something, something bigger. And just through, through getting silent and meditation, I, I started hearing God and just like trust me. Like you don't necessarily have to make the perfect decision. Like you can just walk along the path and do your best and. The next step will manifest itself in a way. Just do your best, uh, be in integrity, truly care about people. And, and for me, usually the path presents itself when I can stay connected to that.

Speaker:

Okay. So you haven't re-engaged in a community of faith? Yeah. Yeah. We, we, no, you, we

Speaker 2:

go to a local church here, two Rivers,

Speaker:

but not Catholic. Oh. Two Rivers not Catholic. But, uh, you know, I know so many people go to that church Yeah. These days. Yeah. It's been interesting gathering. Yeah. I don't, I haven't never been there, obviously, but

Speaker 2:

yeah, I've met a lot. We've been going there for not quite, yeah. Probably a year and a half. And yeah, I've met some really cool people. Um, although, yeah, I, I do find a lot of beauty in, in the Catholic church of probably things that I just went through the motions growing up and didn't really know the depth of Yeah. What, what the words meant and what some of the rituals were. But now reengaging with it a little bit in scripture. I'm, I'm getting some of the depth that I missed as a

Speaker:

Yeah. Younger person. Well, and some of those Bible churches really. You know, that's what they focus on. Yeah. Right. Is understanding the Bible, whereas the Catholic church is a little bit more about the lessons. Mm-hmm. And not as much about like where it's at. Who said it? The context.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. A lot of, a lot of prayer and a lot of, um, yeah, A lot of like deep, deep rituals and I guess sacraments. Um, yeah. Yeah. So there, there's some beauty in that too.

Speaker:

Well, and Sarah's from a Catholic tradition of course. Mm-hmm. And so she came to church with us this yesterday. Uh, and it was the first time she'd ever been, you know, to a church. Not Catholic. Not Catholic. Yeah. And uh, and I'm kind of curious'cause we're just down the street from St. Joe. And I'm like, well, let's take Sarah to church at the Catholic church and I assume we can go, right? Yeah. Uh, and let her like, let,'cause I haven't been to a Catholic church service in years. I, I think I went once or twice way back in the day with friends when,'cause I grew up in the place where like Lutherans and Catholic kind of equally balanced. Yeah, I Maybe that's Hastings too. I don't know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'd say so.

Speaker:

Yeah. Um, and is there others, is there any other, or Methodists here and there kind of thing or whatever? Yeah, some Methodist Luther

Speaker 2:

Catholic, some Methodist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A Presbyterian.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. Hardly any like independent churches like Fort Collins. There must be,

Speaker 2:

I think there's a lot here. College I about half. Yeah.

Speaker:

Of the active church members are like independent and non, non-affiliated

Speaker 2:

almost. You know, the first time going to two Rivers, like there's coffee and it's loud and like you used to like growing up, it's like a Catholic church. Very quiet. You know, you do put your hand in the holy one, dude, you're gonna

Speaker:

take the coffee right into the pews

Speaker 2:

of you. Whoa dude. Are.

Speaker:

Interesting. Um, the third question,

Speaker 2:

please. Eight 18.

Speaker:

18. If you had to pick a smell to describe your personality, what would it be? Oh, probably Sagey. Sagey. Yeah. Interesting. Let's, uh, expand on that a little bit. Um, is that like, it's, well say I think of a little bit, but like patchouli,

Speaker 2:

I'm just kidding. Yeah. Patchoulis too much. I'm not about to a hippie. Um, but

Speaker:

it's a little bit earthy. It's a little bit

Speaker 2:

willing to sleep outdoors if I have to. Yeah. Like I can rough it.

Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Um, but also, you know, sage smells good too. So

Speaker:

when you guys get out in the outdoors now, what, uh, how do you go about it? Are you tenting?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah, we have the tent. We, we actually had a camper, um, but it was, it was kind of a pain in the butt just to store and hook up and get ready. So, you know, usually I just take the kids and. Pull out, get out the tent. And

Speaker:

does Annie come too, or is that Dad? Dad and kids time? Last

Speaker 2:

year it was dad and kids, because our youngest, Hannah was six months old or four months old, so. Okay. Um, so that was usually dad and the twins. Right. But, uh, yeah, Annie, Annie will sleep in a tent for sure.

Speaker:

Let's talk about the twins a little bit, if we may. Yeah. Um, is it, is it boys?

Speaker 2:

Uh, boy and girl.

Speaker:

Boy and girl, yeah. So fraternal twins, obviously.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, fraternal, unexpected. Um, Annie was pregnant. We went to our first appointment and the doctor, he spoke really fast and he just said two sacks. Like two sacks, I think that means twins. And he's like, I'm, I'm looking for more. And we're just like, holy shit, don't fight anyone. Like, is this what I think he says? And he's like, you're having twins. And it was like, oh my gosh. It, it honestly is like the, the most exciting thing that's happened to me. Yeah. Um, that I, I think you asked like, what's, what's the craziest moment of your life? Yeah. And that, that might've been the craziest moment, the local

Speaker:

experience. That's a

Speaker 2:

local experience. Yeah. Do you wanna

Speaker:

describe it a little bit more, the setting and what you were up to in the, you were the wrestling coach, I suppose.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was the wrestling coach, so yeah, they were born in June, so what, what's nine months before that? Um, I think it was, yeah, before, yeah, like

Speaker:

September.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So before the started of wrestling. But yeah, we were excited. Annie was, she knew she was pregnant and we went to the steam belt hospital and. Yeah. We're just expecting them to confirm and yeah, we walked outta there just like, almost like, uh, that feeling of the night before Christmas, just like, I can't believe this

Speaker:

was that fall of 2020. It was 2020. Yeah. So, yeah. So it was COVID Nation. It was COVID Nation. Yeah. Hell of free time on your hands. Uh, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. No, totally man. Just as has a lot of COVID babies. Right. Um, but yeah, it's, it's been such a blessing. Like the two of'em, just what I've learned as a parent, and people always ask like, how do you do it? And it's like, well, I didn't really have an option. I couldn't even sell one of'em. But I, it, it, it is such a awesome, I feel,

Speaker:

how are they together? Like, are they're buddies? Buddies, best buddies?

Speaker 2:

Buddies? Yeah. The sister Esme, um, she's, since she was a little baby, um, her aunt and grandmother called her lit picky. New, that means like hot pepper and tie. Okay. She's, she's a little spicy. She's a firecracker. Uh, my son, his name is Pax, that means peace and he's definitely like a peaceful boy. Oh. Um, but they're, they're friends. The sister probably dominates their relationship a little bit. Um, and then we have a young daughter, Hannah, she's 18 months. So, which is

Speaker:

where you guys were in your Hawaii? Yeah. There was a

Speaker 2:

little ode to, um, yeah, owed to the road to Hana with her.

Speaker:

You got Jill and I, uh, did the road to Hana in a, uh, rental Austin Martin. Oh, did you really? A fiat. So, uh, it was a fiat whatever the Yeah. The fiat spider is or something. It's basically a Mazda Miata, but with a little different power plant. Yeah. So you did, you did that. We did the all the way, but we had to turn around and come back.'cause the road was still under construction on the north side or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So, but, uh, yeah, I loved that area,

Speaker 2:

so it, it was a ode to our, our kind of road to Hana in the, the last couple years of our life.

Speaker:

Yeah. Really cool. Um. What else? We, we kind of jumped right into the loco experience from the ping pong ball challenge. Yeah. Uh, anything else that you wanted to talk about? Oh, current events? Should we do current events? Let's do it. Um, Donald Trump sent the National Guard into DC and said, we're gonna take control of the police force there. Oh, wow. And plane the city up today. Uh, how do you feel about that?

Speaker 2:

I didn't know about that. So Donald Trump sent, like federal,

Speaker:

basically had the federal is federal. Somebody is gonna take charge of the Washington DC Police Department and they're gonna send a National Guard to support and get rid of the crime. And he invited the homeless people to move out of dc.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, I guess what comes to mind is that, um, there's a quote by Thorell. For every hacking of the leave, there's one striking of the root of evil. So it sounds like if you really, you know, you're just hacking at the leaves if you think that's gonna solve the homelessness crisis, right? Like

Speaker:

Yeah. Um, what does it say The hacking of the leaves? For, for, for

Speaker 2:

every, for every hacking of the leaves. There's one, one striking of the root of evil. So it's like, you know, it just sounds like, yeah, you're hacking at the leaves. You're not really getting to the root of why are people homeless, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think even in Northern Colorado, like there's, you know, there there's ways we can go about like helping people, getting them in housing, um, supporting them. And I, I think there, to me it brings up like, how do we really solve all this crisis? Well, it's mostly a mental illness Yeah. Crisis, honestly. So drug

Speaker:

addiction and mental illness crisis. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Not, not to get into politics. I think it's, uh, yeah, probably a lot of noise. More of a

Speaker:

part of the theater. Yeah. Part part of theater. That's if,

Speaker 2:

if there was, if there was actually, uh, some. Some good things that were happening to actually, um, you know, help some of these, some of these people and get to, to the root of what's causing the homelessness. That would be cool. But Yeah. Yeah. Brute force isn't gonna solve anything. Well,

Speaker:

agreed. Agreed. And it's a fascinating, I was talking with Ben about it earlier, it's like it's got the highest media income of any place in the country. Yeah. And it's starkly divided between people that make 400,000 or more and people that make less than 50. Mm-hmm. And there's just, you know, a very tiny minority otherwise. Yeah. And, and, and of those people that make a bunch of money, it's all because they're attached to the government nipple in some fashion. Yeah. And, um, you know, obvious like what, 87%. Democratic voters and things like that. How about, uh, should DC be a state?

Speaker 2:

Oh, man. Um,

Speaker:

get you into trouble here. Should

Speaker 2:

DC It seems like it should be, right?

Speaker:

I don't know. There's a, people trying to make that case, but of course there are democrats'cause they vote 87% Democrat. Yeah. Um, part of DC was seated back to Maryland years ago. Mm-hmm. And so I read a logical thought that said, let's just have the White House and the Capitol and about, that's about it. Be Washington DC mm-hmm. And we can do all the important stuff there. And then the rest of it can go back to Virginia and those people can vote in Virginia.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. That kind of sounds like the Vatican a little bit, right? Well,

Speaker:

exactly. Yeah. If you make it its own kind of state, is it then a city state? Yeah, that's, that's what I wondered online about a little bit is like separateness. Yeah. Is it valid or is that just being, it's a high hill, you know, I, I

Speaker 2:

think. I mean, this might get philosophical, but I, I think, I think everybody, despite their political leanings, um, Democrats, Republican, in between libertarian, like we can all have a little bit more compassion. Yeah. And, um, there, there's, well

Speaker:

hopefully we want all want for the better, but of Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And, and certainly communities will be better if, if people can not be living on the street. Right. I think that's,

Speaker:

unless it's elective. Yeah. As in many months, if you, and, and I think

Speaker 2:

the discouraging thing is, like you said, there's a lot of money in DC Yeah. Like billions and billions of dollars. And if some of that was shifted to solving some of these problems, I feel like we, we could, you know.

Speaker:

Well, yes. And like there's a lot of six figure income earners like solving homelessness in la. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And there have been over the last 10 years, an increasing number every year probably. Yeah. And they like, their, their jobs almost rely on not solving homelessness. So why the hell would they solve homelessness?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. No, there, there's, there's a lot of corruption in it too, right? Yeah.

Speaker:

Anyway, um, do you have any questions for me? There's a, there's a lot of hacking here. How do you like your sunglasses, by the way?

Speaker 2:

Ah, I'm gonna wear'em, uh, here on the way home, you know, hopefully have'em forever.

Speaker:

I hope so. They're, I mean, they're not super expensive, so be really careful. Don't put'em in your pocket with your keys if you're gonna try to keep'em forever.

Speaker 2:

No, no. Thanks for, thanks for having me on, man. And I know, um, it talked about bringing a gift. I didn't bring a gift, but, um, if, if anybody wants to have a, a call it a adventure VIP coaching day, I'm happy to offer that too.

Speaker 3:

Okay. Whoever

Speaker 2:

wants to have it, we can get outside. We can either jump in the river, we can go for a hike. Um, if you have a business, we can do a really deep dive into strategy. Um, so I'm, I'm happy to offer that too, to your listeners. All right.

Speaker:

I dig it. Yeah. Appreciate your time.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, man. I appreciate you.

Speaker:

Crowd speed.

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Curt Bear

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